His blank expression clearly said he didn’t know me. “Ladies,” he leaped to his feet.
Since to her mind I was her nephew, I expected Mother to respond to his obvious gender gaffe. But, she didn’t. She also had nothing to say. I thought quickly. What the heck was the handyman trying to get at with this note? It clearly had to do with Patsy or Tammy Lynn. Or both. So I started with Tammy Lynn.
“We’re conducting an investigation.” I glanced at Mother for approval. She nodded in agreement.
“Sure,” he said. “What’s it about? Mrs. Wilson?”
“Precisely,” Mother said. “Were you on duty the evening that she passed on?”
“Was killed, you mean?” He propped his elbows on the counter. I nodded, and he continued. “I was. Someone’s here all night, and it was my shift.”
I had a rare moment of brilliance. “Was Tammy Lynn here?”
“Yeah. She came in about eleven that night.”
Huh. “Did she often work late?”
“No. Not her.”
“But someone else did?” I crossed gazes with Mother. She pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows in a knowing expression.
“Sometimes a coach or a teacher might stay late. But unless it was a game night… let me see, that was a Sunday night.” He checked his calendar. “Yep. Sunday. Only person that ever came in on Sunday night, except that night of course, was Vice Principal Daniels.”
“Ah.” Mother and I said. This unison thing was starting to get to me. On the one hand it’s kind of funny, but on the other, it’s apparent there isn’t an original thought in my head.
❃ ❃ ❃
“Is Mrs. Daniels here, at the moment?” Mother raised her giant purse higher in front of her, elbows jutting out at her sides. Definitely more shield like than usual.
The security guard ran his stubby finger down the list. “Yes.”
We headed for the front of the school, and entered by way of the main entrance. The legal way. It was a new experience for me.
“I believe,” Mother said, tipping her head toward me, and speaking in a hushed tone, “that Mrs. Daniels and Mrs. Wilson encountered one another on the night of the murder.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Some people just naturally rub a person the wrong way. Maybe they don’t look at you straight, or they blink too many times. Perhaps they sound cranky, even when you know they aren’t because they just won a hundred dollar scratch off ticket. Patsy Daniels was one of those people, with her constantly red-rimmed eyes and ruddy chin. It’s probably pretty shallow of me to react that way to superficial things, but with Patsy, I couldn’t help it. I’d tried. I truly had, with the multiple times I’d invited myself to her table in the Blue Gringo.
Maybe she felt the same way about me. The good thing about this sort of wrong way rubbing is that no one is the wiser. Not unless someone acts on it. I wondered if the high school nurse and the Vice Principal had nails in their relationship, too.
“You went to my house,” Patsy said, by way of greeting, her face twisted in anger. Uh-oh. Guess I acted on it. She turned toward Mother, as if I no longer existed.
“Hello, dear,” Mother said sweetly, also as if I didn’t exist. Patsy came around her desk and gave Mother a hug. We live in a small town, plus, my mom had been the high school’s Lunch Lady, retired. Of course they knew each other. I just hadn’t realized how well. And mother had me do the investigating?
“I just need a little information,” Mother said.
“Anything you need,” Patsy said, with a completely sincere expression. She had returned to the business side of her desk.
“Tell me where you were the night Tammy Lynn Wilson passed.” Straight to the point. And, she made it sound so innocuous. Passed, instead of murdered.
“I was at home, of course,” Patsy said. She sat.
“No, dear,” Mother said, and set her giant bag on the desk between them. “The only way we can get to the truth…” I’d heard that line before.
Patsy hid her hands in her lap, like a small child, being chastised by her mother. I was beginning to rethink my mission in life. Maybe I should become a lunch lady.
“You were here, dear?” Mother nodded as she spoke, her ‘caring’ gaze trained on Patsy.
Patsy nodded, still hiding her hands. I glanced around the room, and took a step closer to her desk. What was that? Under Mother’s purse?
Patsy’s gaze followed mine. Her eyes widened. She reached for the object, but Mother kept her bag firmly in place, atop a forest green accounts book.
Patsy had no choice, with the ‘Lunch Lady benevolence’ gazing down upon her. Would you like peas with that dear? Yes, of course you would. You will take them, and you’ll like them! I slid the book out from beneath my mother’s weapon of a purse, and away from Patsy’s fingertips. I flipped it open to the pages of erased and re-entered numbers.
“You don’t use ink? No of course not, then you couldn’t change the amounts.” I’d learned in school, way back when, that you should always use ink. For exactly this reason. Well, if you were honest, anyway. But, if you were an embezzler?
“How foolish,” Mother said, and shook her head sadly. “Did Mrs. Wilson suspect?”
Holy Cow, I thought. We’d just solved the case.
Patsy nodded her head, miserably. She raised a hand from her lap, and stuck a finger in her mouth. She nibbled and tore at already savaged nails. Huh. How observant can I be? I’d been so fixated on her red face, that I’d entirely missed the fingernails. In fact, I hadn’t noticed them all week! It suddenly made her a bit more sympathetic figure. And an obviously agitated one!
“You’re embezzling?” Mother asked, but we already knew her answer.
“I’m just borrowing it,” Patsy said around her fingers as she chewed and tore at what remained of the nail tips. Mother shook her head in her disappointed fashion, and Patsy amended her response with a sheepish “yes.”
“For your husband?” I blurted, with sudden insight. She glanced at me, but looked at my mother when she answered.
“We can’t afford his treatments, and the school insurance doesn’t begin to cover it. His cancer is… advanced.” Now, she’d entered the realm of tragic. The term ‘heel’ came to mind, especially in relation to me.
Mother took the journal and placed it in her old lady, oversized bag. “We’ll see that this gets into sympathetic hands.” She glanced over at me, and I knew she meant Lonnie. She got up and marched out of there in her funny new fashion. Tiny steps, bag held shield like in front of her. I followed her out. We hadn’t solved the case? It seemed, to me, to be the alignment of murder perfection. Weapon, motive, and opportunity.
Chapter Thirty-Three
I pulled the Jeep into the garage when we got home. Rain threatened, and I didn’t want to leave it out. Hail, the weatherman forecast. My ragtop wouldn’t last long with icy pellets pelting it. Somebody had swept the garage yet again, and tossed out a pile of old magazines that’d been in a bin by the door—probably there since the day Dad hauled me away.
“The good Vicar,” Mother explained. But, I figured it was the handyman. The one I hadn’t managed to actually see. Or maybe, Mother’s Solitaire Club. They had been spending a good deal of time with her lately. We passed through the workshop and into the house. Paisley stood at our kitchen sink.
“You’re back!” She finished drying a saucepan, then offered it to me. I took it from her, and according to her direction, climbed onto a step stool she’d aligned under a rack of pots and pans. “Thanks,” she said. “Those have been hanging up there for quite some time. Now they’re fresh and clean. The dust is all gone.” She sang it like “ALL gone.” The way mothers do with their babies.
“Careful, or you’re going to be the next Gladys Martin.”
“Who?” She dumped the white plastic wash basin with a whoosh of loud, soapy water.
“From Miss Marp… er… nothing.” I ended lamely.
She rubbed her hands dry on t
he towel. “I found this,” she said, and handed Mother a manila envelope. Not another one. I sighed. I could smell the rain coming in, and I had hoped to hole up in the house the rest of the afternoon.
Mother opened it, and dumped its contents onto the table. Paisley giggled and touched a tiny plastic baby, the kind that goes on top of ‘baby shower’ cupcakes. Okay, a baby. But what possible meaning could we get from a used hamburger wrapper? “Huh?” I unfolded it, and flipped it over several times. Nothing. No message.
Paisley broke into peals of giggles, and held her side. “Ooh, I’ve got to pee.” Mother waved her open hand toward the bathroom, but Paisley stopped her mid-gesture. “No, I’m okay now.”
“Then, perhaps you can tell us what it means,” Mother said, in a dry, very Miss Marple tone. “So that we can all share in your laughter and ‘have to pee’ together.”
“Look,” Paisley said. She turned the burger wrapper over, logo side up. Next to it, she set the baby.
“Oh, for goodness sake,” Mother said. But I knew what Paisley was getting at. It was a word game.
“Wrapper. Baby.” I tried the words. “Burger. Baby. OH, I get it! Mac. As in BIG. Plus baby. Mac’s baby.”
“Somebody would like us to ask Mac about his child,” Mother said.
“But, we already know the answer,” Paisley said. “Tammy Lynn Wilson.”
“Wait. What?” I bit out the two words in my usual guttural fashion. “Tammy Lynn was Jennifer’s mother? How did that work?… But that’s incest,” I said.
“No,” Mother said. “If Jennifer is Tammy Lynn’s child, then she is not related to Doctor Wilson. Except by marriage. So no incest.”
“Oh. Yeah.” But that didn’t mean his affair didn’t have an even larger factor of yuck.
“Does that give Mac a motive?” Paisley pulled aside the curtain to look across the drive.
“It would,” I said. “But he’s got an alibi.”
“Mac has one, and so does Jennifer. Everyone except for Dee.” Mother moved behind Paisley and gazed at the other house. This was getting too crazy for me. People had alibis, then no alibis. They had no motive, then suddenly had motive.
It was time to take stock of what we knew. The Solitaire ladies gathered in the evening, just before the rains began. The lights flickered off just after the last lady, Maria, arrived. I lit a ‘hurricane style’ lantern Mother had above the sink, and brought it into the living room. I set it in the center of the card table. Mother pointed to four candle sconces on the wall, so I lit those, too. I thought that in view of the electricity situation Mother would sit at the table. But she didn’t, instead she was content to sit in her own green chair. In the subdued, and flickering light, we discussed the cast of characters involved in the murder of Tammy Lynn Wilson.
“We learned several new things today,” Mother said. The ladies sat in their accustomed spots, and she turned to face Dee. “First, and possibly the most important, is that Jennifer is Tammy Lynn Wilson’s child.”
Dee paled, then shook her head in quick little motions and waved her hand in dismissal. “That’s old news.”
“Not to us,” Mother said.
Dee glared at Paisley. “It’s not my fault,” Paisley said, in her defense. “It was the note.” The other ladies glanced from one to another, confused.
“The one I got in the manila envelope.” Mother explained, and they burst into a flurry of excited conversation. Who could be our secretive informant? Nobody knew, though they had ideas. Dee thought is was Mac, Maria thought it was Lonnie. Donna and Paisley both thought it had to be the Vicar… er… the Priest. But my suspicion still centered on the handyman. But, when I mentioned the handyman they all clammed up.
Who the HELL is the guy?
We soon turned back to Dee. She explained that Tammy Lynn had given Jennifer to Mac shortly after she graduated with her nursing degree. Mac had offered to marry her, but she wanted to be free to start her career, without a baby in tow. Tammy Lynn’s mother, and she, Dee, had made the arrangements. She admitted that that’s the reason Mac had been so angry with Doctor Wilson. Not only was he married to Tammy Lynn, but he was also having his way with the daughter. It did, indeed, smack of incest. We all agreed that Dee was too frail to carry out a murder that included knocking a woman over the head, hauling her into, and out of, a vehicle, and then dumping her in the river. Single-handed, even, because the two people who might have been her accomplices had alibis.
Scratch Dee off the list again.
Second was Patsy Daniels. As I’d already determined, she was an embezzler, and she had the motive. Particularly because she was stealing from the Nurse’s Office accounts, and Tammy Lynn had discovered her. She had the opportunity, because, according to her own admission, Tammy Lynn had confronted her at the school on the evening of the murder. This was supported by the security guard’s records. Finally, she had possession of the murder weapon. The large ceramic frog.
Our third suspect was Doctor Warren Wilson. Unbeknownst to him, his alibi had crumbled, which gave him the opportunity. He had the motive, because not only was he a nefarious womanizer, but he was also engaging in sexual relations with Tammy Lynn’s natural daughter. In addition, he had access to the murder weapon in the same fashion that Donna and I had. To wit: it was extraordinarily easy to break into, and out of, the high school.
And finally, there was Emma. But, if my mother wasn’t going to mention it, neither was I. As for opportunity, I had not yet established whether my sister had, or did not have, an alibi. For motive, she’d somehow been involved in the death of a girl she had confessed to have loved, and Patsy Daniels was somehow also involved in that long-ago death. Plus, the recent release of Anthony Sanders from his most recent stint in prison seemed to have pushed her over the edge, emotionally. And, again, as for the murder weapon, she would have access to the Vice Principal’s office in the same fashion as I. Furthermore, if Tammy Lynn’s murder was in revenge for Tonya’s death, then setting Patsy Daniels up for the murder could be seen as just retribution.
With only the second and third suspects on the table, my mother and the Solitaire ladies decided that we needed to learn more about the good doctor. Should I meet up with Lonnie and tell him what we’d figured out? Hell, no. He still needed a little time to cool off. And I wasn’t going to do any breaking and entering.
Chapter Thirty-Four
It seemed that each of my interviews with Doctor Wilson had been on his terms. I needed to catch him out of his element. To do that, I needed bait.
Donna immediately volunteered.
“Ai, ai,” Maria said. “For this, we need a secret weapon.”
“Who would that be, if not me?” Tipping her head back, Donna tossed her hair, cocked her hip, and ran one hand down her side sensuously.
“Maria is right,” Mother said. “We need someone who can catch the doctor off guard.”
“And I can’t?” Donna stuck out her bottom lip in a pretty pout.
“We need someone that Doctor Wilson won’t connect to me,” I said, trying to steer clear of the ‘age’ thing Mother and Maria clearly had in mind. “If I’m to do the interrogation, that is?” I looked from Mother, to Maria, and back. Perhaps they had different ideas than I had. If so, they had another thing coming. They might boss Donna around, but they couldn’t control me. And, that’s why I went by Raymond, I told myself. So take that, Mother Marple.
“So, who’s the secret weapon, then?” Donna still sulked, a long frown marring her usually perfect features.
“My daughter,” said Maria. I recalled our encounter with Diana Montoya from several days back. She clearly had the sophisticated ‘it’ crowd appearance and behavior that attracted the doctor. And she was younger than this gray-haired crowd.
“Good idea,” I said. “Now, where am I meeting him?”
❃ ❃ ❃
The cemetery was the last place on my mind when I allowed my mother’s Solitaire Club friends to plan my meeting with Doctor Warren Wil
son. Diana, it turned out, worked at the funeral home. Apparently, she was uncommonly good at separating money from mourners. Most important, for our plans, Tammy Lynn had not yet been released for burial.
I arrived at the cemetery early. A private enterprise, the Family of Grace Cemetery encompassed sixty acres of prime grassland near the Rio Grande, with another twenty-five acres which had already been fully developed. I headed to the location Diana had indicated on a map of the facility. “These have the best view of the river,” she said. “Since the doctor hasn’t yet selected his plot, this is where he will, no doubt, want his wife laid to rest.”
“What if he doesn’t care where she goes?”
She wagged her eyebrows in mock sexiness, and tossed her hair over her shoulder. “Then, Tammy Lynn will definitely get a view.”
“What if he’s a cheapskate?”
“He won’t be.” She showed her teeth in a faux caring smile. Her look of concern was, somehow, quite sensual. Yeah, he’d pay whatever she asked. Of that, I felt certain.
In the ‘garden,’ I found a seat overlooking the section she intended for him. Two plots, his and hers.
I had brought a bible and an umbrella as part of my disguise. The umbrella to act as both sunshade and also block my face from his view. I was certain he wouldn’t look my way, anyway. Not if he had to tear himself away from Diana.
I was right. When they arrived five minutes later, he had eyes only for her.
He walked beside her as they approached. Diana swayed her hips and smiled seductively. Even her perfectly shaped breasts seemed to strain at her tight blouse, drawing his attention toward her. She gestured toward a row in development. Her bare wrist extended to the side in a languid fashion—to be kissed by the sun—and her creamy palm flexed backward on her wrist. Her curved fingers leisurely indicated the available plots. He seemed hypnotized by her sensuality. She laughed, and his eyes rose to feast on the movement of her throat.
It's Marple, Dear Page 19