by Ada Bell
She made a valid, if frustrating, point. If what Thelma said was true, then anyone could have walked in and murdered Earl. My suspect list was essentially everyone within a fifty-mile radius who knew how to open a door. Even Kyle fit that description.
“What did you see when you walked in?”
“There he was. Sitting in his normal spot with his back to the door, head on the kitchen table.” She shuddered and wiped her eyes. Poor Thelma. She really did care about Earl. You know, unless she was acting and she was the person who murdered him. I still knew nothing, including whether to trust a word she said. “For a moment I wanted to believe he was sleeping, but then I saw the way his eyes stared blankly into space. I thought he might’ve suffered a heart attack until I looked down and saw all the blood.”
“That’s horrible,” I said honestly. “What did you do?"
“I screamed. I ran to him. I dropped to my knees.”
Reaching over and patting her hand, I reminded myself not to feel too terrible for her. Even if she didn’t do it, she still could be the one who set up Olive. Someone had to drop that handkerchief.
“That must’ve been awful for you,” I said. “Did you call 911?”
She nodded. “I didn’t want to believe he was dead. I still don’t want to believe it.”
“I’m so sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you.” She sniffled and sipped her tea. “I know you don’t want to believe Olive killed my Earl, but all the evidence points in that direction.”
“I saw their argument, Thelma,” I said. “Earl walked in yelling, threw a figurine at the wall behind the cash register, and stormed out. That was it. Olive barely had time to blink.”
“Then why did she come here after that?”
“She didn’t. The car you saw belongs to Sam, Olive and Maria’s son.”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “I know what I saw.”
“I’m sure you do. The car was here. But did you see Olive in the flesh?”
“Well, no. Just the car.”
“That’s Sam's car. He has the title they signed over to him when he graduated college.”
“So Olive’s son did his dirty work!”
I shook my head. “No. Sam was dropping some paperwork off, and he was on the road to New York City before two. He would have been long gone by the time Earl came into Missing Pieces. You must’ve seen the car earlier than you thought, because it wasn’t in town at four.”
Thelma’s eyes widened. “Are you sure about that?”
“Positive. I know Olive didn’t do this. One reason I’m here is, I was hoping you could remember something, anything, that might help me prove her innocence.”
She stood up straight and sniffed loudly. “I’m sorry, but I really don’t know anything else.”
“You didn’t see anyone enter Earl’s house before you went over there?”
“No, but I was finishing up dinner. The last half hour or so is the most important. Brushing butter over the biscuits, mashing the potatoes, pulling the stuffing out of the bird and fluffing it up. It all takes time.”
“I understand. Thanks for the tea.” Since she wasn’t going to tell me anything useful, I might as well go home, get another cake for Kyle, eat the entire thing in one sitting, and then come back to search Earl’s house later.
Before doing that, I’d need some way to get Thelma out of the house for a couple of hours. I no longer thought sneaking past her and getting in undetected was an option.
I just had one more question. “Is there anyone else who might have had a motive to hurt him?”
She sighed. “No. Earl was such a lovely man. Everyone loved him.”
“Do you know Wendy Diaz?” I lowered my voice. “I heard that Wendy’s the number two bowler in the league, behind Earl. When I talked to her, she lied about her alibi. Sheriff Matthews didn’t care at all when I told him.”
“That’s because they were together. Wendy and Tim have been having an affair for years. Every Wednesday afternoon at his place. It’s his day off.”
Oh. Well, that explained a lot. Including how Sheriff Matthews knew I was asking questions about Earl’s death. Darn it. There went my number two suspect. At this rate, Kyle was moving up the list.
I just needed that stupid murder weapon to tell me once and for all what happened. And I still didn’t have the first clue how or where to get it. Even when the coroner’s report was released, I expected it to conclude that Earl had been killed with a cast-iron skillet. I already believed he hadn’t been.
“How did you know that?”
“They’re the worst-kept secret in town. Everyone knows.” Everyone except me, apparently. Was I even a resident of Shady Grove? In the kitchen, a phone rang. “Excuse me. I’ll be right back.”
After she left, I looked around the room. Although Thelma was significantly younger than my great-grandmother, it appeared that they had the same sense of style. Pink floral paper covered the walls, a lush pink carpet on the floor. How did she keep things so clean? Kyle would destroy this room in thirty seconds flat.
On the mantel, I spotted a familiar-looking figurine. A gold person standing on a black base, leaning backward and holding a giant ball. It stood more than a foot high. Curious, I wandered over to take a closer look. This thing looked like it had been through the wringer. Deep scratches covered most of the inscription, but I could still make out the words “Lead Actress” and a bunch of letters that didn’t appear to spell Thelma Reyes. Interesting. I thought she’d never won.
With a glance at the kitchen doorway, I whipped out my phone and googled the year. Apparently, the Daytime Emmy Award for Lead Actress had gone to someone I’d never heard of. Not Thelma, according to the picture.
My fingers itched to find out how this came to be on the mantel in front of me. It was none of my business. It had nothing to do with why I was here or finding out who killed Earl. Probably. But, I mean, he’d been hit with something heavy, and this statuette looked pretty beaten up.
One eye still on the doorway where I expected Thelma to reappear, I hefted the statuette and tested its weight. You could take the girl out of science class, but you couldn’t take the science class out of the girl. I’d done about a hundred hours of lab to get my associate’s degree. We weighed all kinds of stuff, especially in my geology lab. After a while, you tend to get a feel for it.
The statuette probably weighed about six and a half pounds. With the right amount of force, it could absolutely be used to bash someone’s head in. And it was so shiny, I could see my face in it. This thing had been polished very recently. Cleaning off the blood?
This was one of those moments where my newfound powers were both a blessing and a curse. If I could trigger a vision, I might be able to find out if the award had been used to kill Earl.
Alas, I did not know how to do that. But I had to try.
First, I lifted the tiny figure sitting atop the base. “Tell me your secrets!”
Nothing happened. Thelma’s voice carried from the kitchen, letting me know that her phone call continued, but she could wrap it up at any moment. I tried rubbing it, but since it wasn’t a magic lamp and there was no genie inside, that didn’t work at all. Leaning forward, I kissed the statue’s tiny face. Nope, that wasn’t it.
Finally, desperately, I hoisted it up in front me, grinned as broadly as I could, and said to absolutely no one, “I’d like to thank the Academy.”
A ha! The room shifted around me.
I stood at a podium, clutching the statue, gazing out at a sea of faces. Looking down, I discovered that I wore a low-cut pink-sequined evening gown and the highest heels I’d ever seen. Good things my visions didn’t require me to walk anywhere.
My mouth opened, and a voice I recognized as Thelma’s spoke. “I’m so sorry to tell you all that Kim couldn’t be here tonight, but I am thrilled to accept this award on her behalf.”
Heh. The sudden vision made me like Thelma a b
it more. It took guts to steal someone else’s Emmy after accepting it for them. The list of suspects would be one. You had to be very extra to then scratch their name off the metal and display the award on your mantel like your own.
On the other hand, if Thelma had used the Emmy to kill Earl, chances were that moment would be the one sent to me instead of the moment she took possession. So either she wasn’t the killer or she’d used something else.
With a sigh, I set the award back on the mantel. My eyes landed on Thelma’s open purse sitting on the chair beside the fireplace. Did I dare? What would happen if she caught me going through her stuff?
She had left me alone.
She might be a killer.
She wouldn’t be on the phone much longer.
This could be my only chance to find a clue.
I reached for her purse and grabbed the first item sitting on top: her checkbook. I hadn’t seen one of these since my mom taught me how to do a budget in the fourth grade. One thing I remembered, though, was that a lot of people kept carbon copies of written checks for their records.
With a glance at the door and crossed fingers, I opened the book to see where Thelma had been spending her money. I didn’t know what I expected to find—“for murder” written in the subject line?
The first check had been written to the grocery store in Willow Falls on Wednesday. Fascinating. She’d spent thirty-one dollars and forty-one cents. Pi! The second check was from the same day, written to a Doctor Tom.
Hmmm. Thelma hadn’t mentioned visiting the doctor. She probably thought it was none of my business. She’d be right, but that didn’t stop me from googling. When his website filled the screen, I stifled a gasp. Doctor Graham Tom, specialist in plastic surgery. I knew she didn’t look her age.
Not exactly what I’d hoped to find, but still interesting. The carbon copy before that was from the first, written to the phone company. No surprises there. All were in sequences, so nothing appeared to be missing.
As I replaced the checkbook in her purse, something crinkled under my fingers. A receipt from the grocery store. A-ha! What time did she write that check? My eyes skimmed the page, widening to note that she’d purchased a pre-roasted turkey, hot stuffing, and rolls from the bakery. Home-cooked meal, my ass. Thelma certainly had her secrets, but was being a killer among them?
Then I found the time stamp. Almost five o’clock.
Willow Falls was at least forty minutes away. The police estimated the time of death to be around four. Not long after he left Missing Pieces. If Thelma was buying this stuff at five, she must’ve gone to Earl’s house right after she got back. Earl had to have been dead when she entered his house.
The good news was, I hadn’t been sharing my nephew’s cake with a killer. The bad news was, at this rate, Olive would never be free.
Chapter 18
By the time I finally got home, I felt like I’d run three emotional marathons. Thelma didn’t kill Earl with her (stolen) Emmy. She wasn’t even in town when he died, but she wasn’t likely to appreciate having to tell anyone where she’d been.
I did learn that Wendy was sleeping with Sheriff Matthews, which explained a lot. But I hadn’t gotten to look inside Earl’s house, and I didn’t love the idea of sneaking back in the middle of the night. Especially because with my luck, Thelma would use her uncanny sixth sense to spot me and insist I come in for a nightcap.
Theoretically, I could call Rusty and ask him to help me get a peek inside. But something about asking the next of kin to help me look for the murder weapon didn’t sit right, even after our afternoon of vision-testing. Also, if I found what I was looking for, the thought of him watching me relive his uncle’s death was cringe-inducing. Not gonna happen. There had to be another way.
Kyle came racing up to the kitchen door when I entered, with as much energy as if it wasn’t ten minutes before bedtime. “Aly! What did you bring me?”
I shot a guilty glance at my brother, who looked up from the table where he sat typing away on his laptop. The Memorial must’ve ended earlier than expected. “I, um, may have promised Kyle a treat.”
Kevin smiled. “It’s fine. I told him we could wait up. Although I was going to call in another ten minutes or so.”
“Sorry. I guess it’s a good thing I’ve got dessert.” After having to give away Kyle’s cake, I’d stopped on the way home and gotten ice cream after all. At least in January, I didn’t have to worry about it melting on the way home.
“Yay!” He jumped up and down clapping while I got bowls from the cupboard. Without waiting for me, Kyle yanked the silverware drawer open, grabbed three spoons, and ran to the table. Carrying everything else, I followed.
“What’d you get?” Kevin asked.
“Caramel fudge chunk for us, vanilla for Kyle.” Kids had no taste at all. Ah, well. More for me.
Opening the cartons, I quickly scooped everything into bowls and handed them out around the table. You’ve got to love Northeastern winters—the ice cream was harder from sitting in the basket of Olive’s bike than it had been when I pulled the cartoon out of the freezer case. I hoped no one cracked a tooth.
Kyle made airplane noises as his spoon swooped through the air. Kevin and I both watched him, absorbed in our own thoughts. It was nice to have family time together, especially after the frenzied week we’d both had. Once my classes started, I wouldn’t be home before bedtime most nights.
“I hear you taught my son a new word this week.”
Our morning at the bookstore felt like a month ago, but the look on my brother’s face brought it all rushing back. Grrr. Stupid Brad. “Sorry.”
“No worries. I was a little surprised when he asked if I’d m-u-r-d-e-r-e-d anyone, but we’ve moved on.”
A bark of laughter escaped me. Oh, man.
“When do you want to go buy your car?” Kevin asked. “Classes start soon, right?”
“Ten days. I can’t believe it.” It didn’t seem right to go car shopping while my boss sat in jail for murder. “Next weekend?”
“You don’t think that’s cutting it too close?”
I shrugged. “That gives me a week to figure out what car I want online and get pre-approved for a loan. My generation doesn’t buy cars the same way as yours.”
“Ouch,” Kevin said. “What a way to talk to the person you need to co-sign.”
“Good thing you love me.” I blew him a kiss. “Seriously, I’m waiting for my first paycheck. The keyword is ‘cosign,’ not ‘buy for me.’”
“Got it. Next week it is.” He paused. “I’ll get the spare car seat out of storage.”
The one that had been in Katrina’s car when she died. We’d returned her leased vehicle shortly after the move, and the seat went into the basement. I wondered what else of my sister-in-law’s was down there. Maybe there was something I could use to answer a few questions.
Kyle looked up from his now-empty dish. “More, please?”
“No more, buddy. Time for bed.” Kevin stood and walked with my nephew toward the stairs. I watched him thoughtfully.
My brother had never spoken about the day his wife died. Her obituary said only that she passed, but not how. When I first moved in, I’d chalked Kevin’s silence up to grief. After all, I didn’t want to relive the worst moment of my life by telling the story over and over, and nothing close to losing a spouse ever happened to me.
But now, it had been over a year. In many ways, Kevin was moving on. He seemed lighter and happier. He slept better, he laughed more. He wasn’t dating, but that could take time. Shady Grove might not be a hot spot for thirty-something singles, but he worked in Albany one day a week. Besides, plenty of people in Shady Grove and Willow Falls managed to find love. Why should Kevin be any different?
To be fair, I didn’t know how long it took to recover from something like this. But I knew talking about it might help. Especially now that Earl’s death had to be bringing up a lot of thoughts and feel
ings. Losing a bowling team member obviously wasn’t the same as a wife, but still. Better not to let things fester.
When Kevin returned downstairs and settled onto the couch to do some work, I grabbed two mugs of hot cocoa and handed him one. “Hey. How you holding up?”
“Fine. Why?”
“It’s just… I don’t know. Losing someone unexpectedly can be hard.”
“Let me stop you right there. I barely knew Earl. We were bowling acquaintances.”
“I wasn’t talking about Earl.”
At that, Kevin’s head shot up. “I’m fine, Aly.”
“Are you? Are you really?” I leaned forward. “You never talk about Katrina. Not to Kyle, not to me. By moving here, you’ve isolated yourself from all your old friends. But also…” I gestured around the room. “Where is Katrina in this house?”
“What are you talking about? I donated her clothes before we moved.”
“I know that, and I understand. But her fingerprints were all over the old house. She picked out the paint, the furniture, the décor. Everything.”
“We have a three-year-old,” he said. “I can’t exactly leave knick-knacks all over.”
That was a fair point, and I said so. “Okay, but pictures? Do you want Kyle to grow up not knowing what his mother looked like?”
“I have pictures. They’re just not out.” When he looked up at me, tears shone in his eyes. I hadn’t seen him cry since the funeral.
“I’m so sorry. I get that it’s painful, but I think it would help to talk about your unresolved issues.”
He slammed his laptop shut and stood. “I have no unresolved issues.”
The lie was so apparent; it was almost laughable. “Kev, what happened to Katrina? You never even told me how she died.”
“It doesn’t matter. She’s gone, and that’s that.”
“It does matter. Was she sick? Was it an accident?”
“An accident,” he said shortly. “Let’s talk about something else.”