I couldn’t stop feeling the way I did, though. Being with Lonnie wasn’t like being with either of my exes. My husband had been a youth and alcohol induced indiscretion. My subsequent boyfriends had been ‘safe.’ They, like I, hadn’t been interested in permanence. Sure, I’d lived with my last fella, but that’s only because we got on well professionally. I’d known that from the start. He did, too. We’d agreed—no complications—no commitments.
Everything here was… well… complicated. Including Lonnie. Especially Lonnie. Just the thought of him evoked the taste of his lips to mine. His special, desert wind imbued scent filled my imagination.
I thrust the thought of him from my mind as I entered the coffee shop and stood in line. It was cool inside. The last time I’d stopped by was to talk with Doctor Wilson outside. Other than that, the closest I’d got to good coffee was the fast food place on the way to Old Timers Town. I was tea’d out. And after my fright from last night, and Lonnie’s anger, I was definitely ready for a steaming mug of coffee.
Instead of getting a paper to-go cup, I ordered ‘in’ so I could hold the ceramic mug. I needed the comfort and security of it between my hands. I found a seat and savored the scent, then the taste as it tickled my tongue. With limited seating, it was probably a rare feat to claim a table to oneself, and within minutes, a woman tucked into the seat across from me. I kept my eyes on my drink.
“Excuse me,” she said. I looked up. It was Jeanine Pryor. Her short, blonde hair was newly dyed, and perfectly coiffed.
“Hello, Jeanine,” I said. “Your hair looks really nice today.” I’m a firm believer in finding something good to say to people. Gets you on their good side right off the bat.
“Why, thank you,” she said, and touched it with her palm. The large gold hoops bobbed in her ears.
I went back to nursing my mug, didn’t figure she was in the shop for any other reason than I was. But, I was wrong. She’d come to see me.
“Mary… um… Raymond,” she said. I looked up, and met her eyes. Then glanced around the room as if, maybe, she meant somebody else. “I know you’re investigating,” she added.
“Yes?”
“You know, the death of Doctor Wilson’s wife. I’m a little concerned because, you see, I believe I’ve provided an alibi that isn’t quite,” she paused, “…isn’t quite true.”
“Please, go on,” I said, and took a sip of coffee.
She looked quickly around, and at the door. Sure she was looking for the doctor I turned to follow her gaze. But we were alone. Well, as alone as one can be in a small coffee shop full of people. The buzz of voices insured that we weren’t likely to be overheard.
“Well,” she patted her hair again. “I wasn’t quite truthful about that trip to T or C.”
My ears perked up, but I didn’t speak. Sometimes, if the interviewer allows the interviewee a lot of latitude they pass on more information than they intend. They are also less likely to change their mind about providing the details they had intended.
“Warren,” she ducked her head and raised her gaze to the ceiling. “Doctor Wilson, that is. He accompanied me to the spa. We discussed our plans for the future during our ‘couples’ midnight oil treatment. But afterward. Well, I spent the night alone.”
“Huh.” So, neither of them could alibi the other. “Did you check out at the desk?”
“Yes. We’d ordered dinner in, and he hadn’t left a card. He’d used the office card to purchase the room. Then, when we do this sort of thing,” she squirmed, fisted a hand, and held it against her lips. “I usually put the incidentals on my card, and he paid me back in cash later. That’s what happened that night, too”
“Then, you have an alibi.” I had a thought. “How did you get home?”
“I took the bus.”
“Do you have the stub?”
She searched in her purse. “Is it important?”
“It might be,” I said as she shoved and stirred things around in the purse. Finally, she pulled it out of her purse and triumphantly handed it to me. It looked authentic.
“I would say, Jeanine, that you have a darn good alibi.”
“Yes, I suppose I do.” She looked frightened, and again glanced toward the door.
I glanced, too. “He doesn’t hurt you?”
“Oh, no. But if he…”
She didn’t have to finish. I knew exactly what she meant. If he had killed his wife, he could just as easily murder her.
❃ ❃ ❃
Suddenly, Doctor Warren Wilson had rejoined my suspect list. Without his alibi, he’d had plenty of time to get back from T or C and do away with his wife. He could also have gotten into the school as easily as I had. He could then have placed the frog on the top shelf, and hidden it in plain sight. One among many. And in the event that it was found, Patsy Daniels, the harborer of the murder weapon, would be considered guilty.
I hurried home to let the ladies know the latest, forgetting my plan to stay out of it. “Hey,” I said as I popped open the door and saw them gathered around the game table.
“Dee’s out of jail,” Maria said over the hubbub.
My eyes found Dee Garfield in the center of the commotion. I ran across the room and hugged her. “Oh, I’m so glad you’re safe,” I said. “I’ve been worried that you wouldn’t get released.”
“I knew you would do your best to get me cleared,” Dee said. She touched a hand to my face. “Thank you for being a good friend, Raymond.”
I ducked my head, embarrassed at the show of appreciation. “It’s nothing,” I said. “We all helped. And none of us believed you were guilty. Not for a moment.”
“That’s right,” the girls agreed.
“Now, what’s this news you’ve got?” Dee dragged me over to the table, and pushed me down into a chair. The other ladies followed suit, and we plopped our elbows on the table, comfortably. Mother sat in her green chair, wore her benevolent, all-knowing expression, and tried to knit.
“I just saw Jeanine Pryor.” I glanced fervently from face to face.
“So?” Paisley had pulled out her deck of cards, and for the first time in days, laid out a hand of Solitaire. Soon, others followed suit, and I realized they’d been so anxious over Dee and her family, they hadn’t had the heart to play. I listened to the comforting thwack of cards being pulled from each deck, and laid on top of other cards.
“Ladies,” I said. “We now have an additional suspect.”
“Jeanine?” Paisley paused in the continual motion of hand to deck to table to hand.
“No. Doctor Wilson.”
The ladies sucked in a loud, collective breath. I related what Jeanine Pryor had told me. How she had a near ironclad alibi, and he had none.
“Our suspects are now Doctor Wilson, again, and Patsy Daniels?” Maria patted Dee’s hand as it lowered to the table, a card in tow. “And now your family is completely safe.”
I agreed. Jennifer, Mac, and Dee had fallen completely off the suspect list.
“I see how Patsy could be a suspect.” Donna paused with a card held thoughtfully before her gaze. “After all, she had the frog in her office. But what about the doctor? How will we find out if he killed his wife? Just because he doesn’t have an alibi doesn’t mean we can prove anything.” She lay the card down with a soft thwack.
She was right. I tried to think of an answer, but nothing came to mind.
Mother’s needles stopped their clacking, and I realized that, just like the cards, I had grown accustomed to their sound. “I believe,” she said, “we will have to set a trap.” Another thing Lonnie would disapprove of.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
After his chiding, I didn’t look forward to seeing Lonnie again. I mean, I did, but I didn’t. And what would he think about my new information? Most likely, he’d think I was meddling again, even though the information had just dropped into my lap. So, I decided to not decide. It’s not like I was going to break any laws this time. If I saw Lonnie I’d tell him what I’d
found out. If not, then I’d go along with Mother’s idea.
But, before setting any kind of a trap, I needed to know more about what was going on with Patsy Daniels. Sometimes it’s easiest to find something out by not taking the direct route. Like Donna and I had done getting home the previous night, I decided to take the circuitous route. The best way to approach her was to talk about Doctor Wilson.
I knew that I would find Patsy in the Blue Gringo over the lunch hour. It had been a busy morning. So far, I’d been chastised by Lonnie, met with Jeanine at the coffee shop, talked with Dee and the ladies, and now I was on a mission to extract information out of Patsy. Who knew? Maybe she and the doctor were in league with one another.
When I got to the Gringo, Patsy was in her customary seat, and the jukebox was blaring. I crossed to the bar and ordered a soda and fried pickles. I grabbed my drink, and went to join Patsy. As usual, she didn’t welcome me. Nor did she tell me to get lost.
“Hey,” I said as I sank into a chair opposite her.
“Hello,” she said, and sipped on her beer.
I sipped my own drink, and set the glass on the table. “So, I guess Dee Garfield got out of jail,” I said.
“Oh?” she rolled her bottle in her hands, sliding the bottom around in the water it had leached onto the table. She seemed to like doing that.
“Yeah. I guess the police have to start fresh on suspects again.”
“They’re not onto the Garfield girl anymore? Or her father? It seems like a family thing to me.”
“Nope.” I took another drink and watched her over the top of my beer. Nothing in her demeanor had changed.
“Still could have been the father. He was pretty mad at Doc Wilson.”
“So I’ve heard.” I wiped my finger down the side of my glass, drawing a line in the sweat that had already gathered there. “What about the doctor?”
“What about him?” Patsy looked up at me, then over at the bar and licked her lips. I noticed that her bottle was near empty.
“Want another one?”
She nodded, and I raised a hand. The barkeep headed over. “Hey Raymond. Patsy. What can I get you?”
“Get my friend another,” I said.
“Sure,” he cracked his knuckles and winked. Boy, am I not cut out for bars. But, I’d spent more time in this one than I ever had in any before. And all for the sake of my mother’s friend, and now my sister. And, I’d been in this particular bar in wet t-shirt style. I’d probably get winks from all the guys from now on.
After her beer came, I continued my examination. “I hear you’re friends with the Wilsons.”
“The Doctor,” she said.
“Yeah.” Tammy Lynn was dead. But she hadn’t needed to say it. The meaning was all over her two words.
“What do you think about him? Think he could have killed his wife?”
She shrugged, and took a long slug. “Sure. Anyone can kill.”
“I don’t know about that. Not me or you.”
She didn’t respond right away. “You know,” she finally said. “Me and my husband have been pretty good friends with them.”
“With the Wilsons? I mean, before Tammy Lynn died?”
“Yeah. We used to party with them.” She got up and crossed to the jukebox and dropped in a few quarters. I watched her scanning titles, and punching numbers. She sauntered back, shimmying a little to the tune “Boot Scootin’ Boogie.” But she didn’t sit back down, just swayed with the music.
“We used to go dancing,” she said. “With Warren and Tammy Lynn. But not lately. I mean, before. Anyhow, I think maybe he was having an affair. Pretty sure. Yeah, he could have killed her. Or one of his women could have done it.”
“One of his women?”
“You know. There were lots.” I saw a flicker in her eye. Jealousy? “Tammy Lynn was my friend, you know.”
“Yeah, I heard.”
She put her hands out like she was dancing with a partner, and kept swaying around. “That night,” she said, and paused. “We should have been out with them. But Warren called and backed out. So me and Frank stayed home.”
“Hmm.”
She shimmied away and spun around the dance floor. Alone. She thought she’d played me. I’d seen it in her eyes. Along with the jealousy.
❃ ❃ ❃
So, Patsy thought she could play me? That wasn’t an easy thing to do. Except maybe for my ex-husband. Or my last boyfriend. There was more than one way to skin a polecat, and, in this case, it was to talk to the spouse. The way Patsy hung out in the Blue Gringo, their relationship was bound to be a little rocky. Maybe I could learn something from Mr. Vice Principal.
My mother’s friends, by unspoken agreement, had begun hanging out around our place, which freed me up to do the dirty work in our investigation. I took Paisley along, because she had a grandson in the high school, and she thought it might come in handy in some way. I didn’t see how, but since I’d taken Donna for a ride in the Jeep, I figured it was Paisley’s turn. And Paisley knew where the Daniels lived, which saved me the effort of finding their address and plugging it into my cell phone’s map application.
They lived out of town, toward Magdalena, but not in the ultra-exclusive neighborhood where the Wilson place was. A dog met us in the driveway, and I noticed goats behind the fence. Patsy didn’t particularly strike me as the goat keeping type.
I hadn’t heard about any kids in her household. So, I didn’t look for any. I wasn’t surprised when Paisley agreed. There were no kids in the Daniels household. It was easier to take Paisley along than my mother. I couldn’t help but compare this time and my last trip to the Wilson house. She was content to follow me up the walk. Frank answered the door when I knocked.
Frank was a short, stout, man. He was much older than Patsy, who’d been in school the same time as me. This man was very gray, including his skin. I could tell he wasn’t well. I didn’t intend to ask with what.
“My son is looking for summer work,” Paisley offered when Frank gruffly asked what we were selling. “He’s up at the high school, going into tenth grade.”
“Oh,” he said. “One of Patsy’s kids.”
Paisley launched into a description of her boy’s merits, but Frank didn’t seem to listen, nor care. But, he suddenly changed his mind. “Listen,” he said. “My wife don’t spend much time on the place. We could use a boy to keep the goats.”
Paisley brightened, and I elbowed her as surreptitiously as possible. We weren’t there to get her kid a job on a possible killer’s place.
“What I’d like to know,” I said, “is if you can tell me anything at all about the Wilsons.’ We’re concerned about the possibility that Patsy might be accused of the murder.”
He guffawed, then bent over in a sudden flurry of coughing, and spat a great clod of blood on the ground.
Paisley went white and nearly puked, and I had to send her back to sit in the Jeep. “She’s not feeling too well,” I told him. “It’s an age thing,” I added, so he wouldn’t be concerned it could be something catching.
He laughed at that. “I’ve got the lung cancer,” he said. “Nothing can hurt me more’n I’m already hurt. It’s gonna kill me. Then I’ll be leaving Patsy alone.”
He didn’t seem too bent out of shape by it.
“So, about the Wilsons?”
“Ah, that night, when Tammy Lynn bought it? That’s what you’re after.”
“Sure,” I said. “If you’ve got anything to tell me.
“Not too much. I woke up with a migraine middle of the night. I get them, you know. Patsy wasn’t here. She told the Sheriff she was. Well, she wasn’t. More than that, I think she wanted me to think she was, ‘cause the time on my phone, and the time on the clock didn’t match up that night.”
“Interesting. Are you telling me that you think your wife might have killed Tammy Lynn?”
“Well, I don’t know about that,” he said, and spat again. He scratched himself where the sun doesn’t shine. “S
he may have done. She ain’t above something like that. But, then, I don’t suppose you are, either.”
I didn’t respond.
“What I think, and what is, are two very different beasts,” he said. “But, here’s what I think. Patsy went out a lot, over with those people. She was friends, or so she said, with Tammy Lynn. But she spent more time with the husband, I’ll warrant.”
“You think she was having an affair with Doctor Wilson.”
“I think she was one of his women, yes.”
“One of?”
“Oh, come off it. You’re a woman. You’ve seen him. He’s so full of hisself, and the broads are full of him, too, if you get my meaning.” He looked me up and down, and licked his lips. Yikes. No wonder Patsy didn’t spend much time at home. And, I didn’t think Paisley would want her grandson out here alone. I had some things to tell her.
“I get it,” I said. “Thanks for your time, Mr. Daniels.”
“Sure thing.”
❃ ❃ ❃
“He wasn’t nearly so bad when he was younger,” Mother said. “It must be his cancer.”
“And maybe being married to Patsy,” I said. Mother actually laughed. That was, maybe, the second time she’d laughed since I came home. The only other time was that first trip in the Jeep.
“What makes him less capable of murdering Mrs. Wilson than Patsy?”
“Nothing,” Mother said. “But what would his motive be?”
I wished the other ladies had remained. But as soon as I got home they took off, said they would hear about it later. But, they walked out together, and I heard Paisley telling the tale. It actually made it easier for me. I wouldn’t have to wait on them in the morning.
It's Marple, Dear Page 17