The Eleventh Hour

by Anina Collins

  Not that I wanted to hear the comments repeated again, but I’d expected more than just to hear him affirm he knew what was said about me and my single status. Unable to stop myself, I asked, “What have you heard?”

  Alex remained silent for a moment, instead looking around the coffee shop, but as if he’d decided there was no point in hedging on this issue, he turned back to face me and frowned. “That you had a number of chances to get a good husband and didn’t and now it might be too late. That you’ll end up like the others in town who are still unmarried. That you chose to take care of your father instead of looking for a husband, and now that choice has come back to haunt you.”

  He stopped and then added, “That you’ve just about run out of time.”

  Swallowing hard, I tried to put on a good face. That last one hit a little too close to home. “Well, it’s nice to know that the town I’ve lived all my life in thinks that of me.”

  “The women at the bank who whisper behind your back in line and the ones who gossip about you when they see you on the street are what this town is about. That’s why I said you’re not like them.”

  It hurt to think that he’d only been in Sunset Ridge for such a short time and had heard these things about me. The same people who smiled and waved when they saw me walking to and from The Eagle thought so little of me that they’d consigned me to old maid status and nothing more, even though I was only in my early thirties.

  The same people who had cried and wrung their hands when my mother died and then wept as she was lowered into her grave thought of me as a lost cause simply because I hadn’t achieved the one thing they had in life. Forget all my other accomplishments. Forget that I had graduated at the top of my class from Sunset Ridge High School. Forget that I had graduated with honors from the University of Maryland. Forget that I was a good person and treated them like people who deserved a smile and respect when I saw them on the street.

  No, all that mattered was I hadn’t found a husband to take care of me. As if it was the 1950s and I needed to be taken care of.

  I drank the last sips of my coffee and pushed the cup away from me. “They can think whatever they want. You can too, for that matter.”

  “Want to know what I think?” he asked with an intensity in his eyes I hadn’t seen since the night before when he pointed his gun at my head.

  I did and I didn’t. After knowing him for such a short time, I respected Alex. Maybe my admiration was based on my desire to be more like him, at least when it came to solving this case. I didn’t know. I just knew that whatever he said could hurt me and what I thought of him.

  “Sure. Everyone else seems to have an opinion on my life, so why shouldn’t you?”

  Leaning in toward me, he shrunk the distance between us until all I could focus on were those deep brown eyes so full of passion. “I think it’s the twenty-first century, and if you want to stay unmarried for the rest of your life, you’d still be head and shoulders above everyone in this town. And for what it’s worth, I haven’t seen a man in the entire time I’ve been in Sunset Ridge who was worthy of you.”

  “Oh.”

  That’s all I could get out I was so shocked at his answer. I didn’t know what I’d expected him to say, but it hadn’t been anything like that.

  “So that’s why I think you’re nothing like the people in this town, and to me, that’s a good thing. Now if we’re done with the small minds surrounding us, I say we talk about how our case is going.”

  “Well, okay. I say we do. Where should we start?”

  Grinning again, he answered, “Shelley, of course.”

  I couldn’t stop myself from rolling my eyes. At some point soon, I truly hoped we’d get to speak to someone else in this case.

  “Fine. Shelley it is. I think I should mention that when I talked to her that first time she was nothing like she was today. I got a far nastier feel from her whenever she said Geneva’s name.”

  “Like when she used the word poor every time she said it?” he asked.

  “Yeah. I don’t know if they call that a Freudian slip or whatever it is, but considering the one real thing she and Geneva had in common was money, I can’t help but think whenever she says poor Geneva that she’s digging at her, even in death.”

  “From the whispers I’ve heard around town, I’m thinking Shelley isn’t exactly of Geneva’s ilk.”

  I couldn’t help but smile at that description. “You could say that. Geneva was old money. You know the kind. They own entire towns and have streets named after their families. Shelley was new money. She became a wealthy woman after divorcing her third husband. So no, she wasn’t of Geneva’s ilk.”

  “Do you think she and Geneva had a problem that would make her want to kill her?”

  Shrugging, I shook my head. “I don’t know. Is jealousy enough a reason to kill someone?”

  “It always has been in my experience.”

  Thinking back to my conversation alone with Shelley, I remembered her stopping herself from speaking ill of the dead woman. “She did almost call her a bitch when I spoke to her the other day. She didn’t say anything more about it and I didn’t want to push her, but there had been something between them that had ruffled dear Shelley’s feathers.”

  “I wonder what that was.”

  “She also said something else to me that she didn’t when you were talking to her. When it was just me, she said she saw something shiny or silver on the mystery man who was visiting Geneva. She said as she was watching from her window, she saw the glint of something silver as he walked up the stairs. Maybe a ring.”

  Alex thought about this for a moment and said, “Tall, dark, well-built, and wearing something silver or shiny that could be a ring. Maybe a married man. Do you think she was telling the truth?”

  “I have no idea,” I admitted truthfully. “My gut says she and Geneva weren’t as close as she claims they were. Does that mean she killed her? I don’t know. Something upset her enough to make her want to call her a name, and I wouldn’t be surprised to find out Shelley had a healthy dose of jealousy for all the things Geneva had. She’s not exactly deep.”

  Alex laughed out loud. “No, she’s not, and if her act today is any indication, she’s what my father used to call hot to trot. Maybe she was jealous of what Geneva had in her mystery man and wanted it for herself.”

  “Hot to trot. An oldie but a goodie, and in this case, I think we can safely say it fits. So Shelley is suspect number one and the mystery man is suspect number two?” I asked, happy to be making some progress.

  “Assuming there is a mystery man. All we have is Shelley’s word for it, as of right now. I think we need to find someone else to corroborate her claims. Maybe one of Geneva’s other neighbors?”

  “Sounds like a good idea.”

  “Okay, let’s go,” he said eagerly as he stood to leave, but I grabbed his arm to stop him.

  “Not yet. I think since you seem to know so much about me that I should get to know more about you.”

  “There’s nothing more to know about me, Poppy. I’m that guy who showed up at your door with a coffee this morning.”

  Shaking my head, I said, “Yeah, well I think there’s more, so turnabout is fair play. If we’re to be partners, I think I should know more about you other than you’re good at getting coffee shop waitresses to divulge my favorite blend.”

  He slowly sat down again, and I saw by the hesitant look on his face that he didn’t want to let me know more about him. But I wasn’t going to be the only one in this who had been laid bare.

  “I don’t want to pry, Alex. That’s not what this is about. But you can’t deny that you know an awful lot about me, and I know next to nothing about you.”

  He took a deep breath and slowly exhaled before nodding just once. “Okay. What would you like to know?”

  I’d wanted to know the answer to one question since meeting him, so I asked. “Why did you retire from the Baltimore police so young and then move here to Suns
et Ridge, of all places?”

  “That’s a lot for one question,” he said, avoiding answering.

  “I have more,” I said with a smile. “I just thought I’d start with the obvious one. You’re very young to be retired from anything.”

  A frown settled into his features that made me momentarily regret saying anything, and when he spoke I knew that he’d been the Alexander I’d read about in that woman’s obituary.

  “I left the force after my wife died, and for a while I stayed in the house we’d found together. I thought I could live there, but that wasn’t the case. So I moved away from everything that reminded me of that life and bought a house here.”

  The way he said it told me he was trying to be matter of fact about how much it hurt to lose his wife and leave the life they’d made together in Baltimore, but the sadness in his eyes showed me how much he still remained outside the land of the living.

  “Well, I guess we better go then.”

  “No more questions about the kind of man your new partner is?” he asked as a look of relief washed over him.

  I stood from the table and tossed both of our coffee cups away in the trash. “Nope. Thank you for being willing to answer any. I appreciate that, Alex.”

  “I have one for you, actually. That picture in your kitchen, the one of Ireland, if I’m not mistaken. Did you take that yourself?”

  “No. I wish, but as much as I say I’m going to take a trip there, I’ve never gone.”

  He smiled as I set our plates on the counter for Jennie. “So you’ve got the wanderlust, huh? See? You’re nothing like the people here.”

  “I guess it seems pretty pathetic spending all my time dreaming about places I’ll probably never get to, right?”

  Alex shook his head. “Dreaming of something more is never pathetic, in my opinion. Take it from me. When you stop dreaming, you stop living.”

  I didn’t know a whole lot about my new partner, but I knew enough to believe that no matter how dark things had been for him, he never stopped dreaming, no matter what he thought.

  Chapter Ten

  The Sunset Ridge Decorating Committee met every third Tuesday at seven PM in the back room of McGuire’s Bar, despite the fact that none of the members ever frequented the bar at any other time of the month. They filed in the front door one by one, each woman clutching a binder with their information on that month’s meeting agenda, and walked past the bar without even as much as a hello to my father.

  This happened every third Tuesday night of each month like clockwork, and over time, my father had learned to accept the fact that the four ladies weren’t so much being rude when they didn’t speak to the owner of the building where they met as being what they considered to be proper ladies. These women lived in some kind of time warp where polite women of society didn’t go to bars.

  Alex and I sat at a table against the far wall away from the front door and watched them walk in and go directly to the back room, eyes straight ahead and chins raised. Standing next to us, my father saw the confusion on Alex’s face just as I did and attempted to explain.

  “They never speak. Never even say hello when they come for their meetings.”

  “That seems a bit rude, doesn’t it?” Alex asked.

  My father looked over at me and smiled. “I’ll let Poppy tell you about them while I get your scotch.”

  As he walked away, I nodded. “It’s not so much rude as just who they are.”

  A look of judgment came over him. “You know you’re making my point from lunch.”

  “I guess, but I don’t like thinking that they look down on my father,” I said as defensiveness pinched at me. “For the life of me, I can’t figure out why they decided to meet here in the first place.”

  Just then, my father returned with Alex’s drink and answered my thought with the story of how the Sunset Ridge Decorating Committee with its four prim and proper ladies chose McGuire’s Bar for their meetings.

  “It began back when Jefferson Girard was first in the mayor’s office. He came to me and asked if his wife’s club could meet in my back room once a month. It seemed like he was just trying to help them with a place that would be open when they needed it. I figured it was the neighborly thing to do, and when the newly elected mayor asks you for a favor, you say yes. I quickly realized that he chose my bar here because he would be attending every meeting and Jefferson Girard does love a good glass of whisky.”

  I watched as the former mayor entered through the same door his wife and her fellow committee members had a few minutes earlier and sat at the edge of the bar where he could clearly see into the back room.

  “Dad, I don’t think you’ve ever told me why Mayor Girard accompanies his wife for every meeting.”

  My father got a sly look on his face and snorted. “I never did find out why, even though he’s pretty talkative when he’s drinking, but I think he worried that she might do something that would hurt him politically. Now he just comes out of habit.”

  Alex perked up at my father’s answer and asked, “Something that would hurt him politically? Like what? Any idea?”

  “I’m not sure. Poppy can tell you that she’s more than happy to give her opinion whenever and wherever she can.”

  I finished his incomplete statement. “Whether it’s been asked for or not.”

  My father smiled. “She also has some quirks. I guess you’d call them idiosyncrasies.”

  “Like expecting to be called First Lady still, even though her husband is no longer the mayor,” I explained.

  Alex stifled a laugh and looked over toward the back room where the ladies had assembled. “Really? That’s odd.”

  Leaning down toward us so he could whisper, my father added, “A long time ago, back when you were a little girl, Poppy, I remember it was rumored that she had a drinking problem too.”

  “Then this is a strange place for her husband to want her to come once a month, isn’t it, Dad?”

  He shrugged, as if he’d asked himself that question before and never found an answer that satisfied him.

  Alex seemed to be enjoying our little gossip session and said, “Perhaps it’s the perfect place for her husband.”

  “He certainly does enjoy those four or five he has every third Tuesday. And the ones he has every Thursday night when he comes in,” my father said.

  “Four or five drinks in an hour?” Alex asked with curiosity. “That sounds like a lot.”

  “You know, I’ve never noticed that but now that you mention it, he does drink quite a bit in the time he’s here. I better get back up there and not keep him waiting.”

  My father left, and I tapped on Alex’s arm. “I think I know how you’re so good at seeing these people for what they are. You’re getting to see them with fresh eyes, while we’ve been around them almost our entire lives.”

  “I’d like to think it’s more than that,” he teased before taking a sip of his drink. “Maybe I’m just an excellent student of human nature.”

  “I don’t doubt it, but I think the fact that you are watching them for something as opposed to us just seeing them all these years helps.”

  He nodded but said nothing in return, instead taking a few more sips of his scotch before he asked, “How well do you know the women on this committee? They look like they’re not your common Sunset Ridge citizens, sort of like our victim. They certainly aren’t like Shelley.”

  “Oh, they aren’t. They definitely consider themselves in the upper class of our little town’s society, but even so, they aren’t of Geneva’s station. I met with them the other day for a piece I have to write for The Eagle, and they had some very interesting things to say about her.”

  “Not exactly her biggest fans?”

  “You could say that.”

  “I’m intrigued. What exactly did they say?” he asked, leaning forward toward me so he could hear me when I whispered all they’d told me.

  “I think it would be better coming straight from the horses’ m
ouths, don’t you think?” I asked as I stood from the table. “Grab your drink and follow me.”

  I walked toward the bar and sat down on the side directly in front of the back room entranceway. Alex followed and sat on a barstool next to me. The mayor was far enough away that if we kept our voices low, we might be able to discuss the case, but in truth, I had a feeling we’d be doing more listening than talking. Unless the four ladies of the decorating committee had drastically changed who they fundamentally were, they’d give us an earful about Geneva Woodward.

  He leaned in next to me and said quietly, “Do you think they’ll just start talking about her without anyone asking a thing?”

  I turned and saw the skepticism in his eyes. “I’m betting on it.”

  Mrs. Girard opened her black binder and read the minutes of the last meeting as the other three women listened to their own words intently, like even a second time they loved hearing what they’d discussed. The First Lady stressed the importance of their idea to purchase new red, white, and blue bunting for the Founders’ Day celebration and patriotic holidays coming up in just a few months. The other three nodded their heads in agreement as they no doubt had the month before and then the reading of the minutes ended.

  “They really do take this committee seriously, don’t they?” Alex said in a low voice next to me.

  “I’m sure Mrs. Scanlon has memorized the Parliamentary Procedure handbook.”

  He craned his neck to see the women and asked, “Which one is she?”

  I looked over toward the former mayor to make sure he didn’t know we were watching the ladies, but his attention was on the glass of alcohol in his hand and the basketball game on the television in front of him.

  Looking back toward the committee meeting, I gave him the rundown on each of the women. “The lady with the grey hair and the face that looks like she’s worked every day of her life is the chairwoman of the decorating committee, Mrs. Scanlon. Regardless of what her face is telling you, she’s never worked as long as I’ve been alive.”

  Chuckling, he joked, “Maybe it’s the rotten insides of her coming out.”