A Midnight Clear

by Libby Howard

  “Ewww. Yuck.” She wrinkled her nose. “All that septic system stuff. And toilets. Have you seen how messy guys are when they pee? I’m not crawling around the base of a toilet for a living. No way. And plumbers don’t wear cool clothes either.”

  We made it home before the judge and Henry. Madison dashed up the stairs to wrap her gifts while I stashed what I’d bought in my bedroom and went downstairs to decide what to have for dinner. I was just about to pull some ground beef out of the freezer when I heard a knock on the door.

  Heather stood outside, shifting her weight nervously from foot to foot. “Hi Kay. I’m here early and thought it would be weird and kind of creepy if I just sat in my car. Can I come in?”

  “Of course!” I opened the door wider. “Madison is upstairs, but she’s wrapping gifts and doesn’t want anyone to see. Come join me in the kitchen,”

  I led her through the house, telling her to go ahead and sit on one of the stools. “Can I get you some coffee? Hot tea? Iced tea?” I asked holding up the kettle.

  “Oh, I really don’t want to be a bother.”

  As if pouring something in a glass or mug was a bother.

  “Well If you want hot tea, that’s what I’m making for myself.” I pulled two cups out of the cabinet and sat one in front of her. “The box of teas is right there. Go ahead and pick out what you’d like.”

  Heather made herself busy with the teas while I put the kettle on and began defrosting the ground beef. Finally she selected a ginger peach herbal tea.

  “Good choice,” I told her. “Are you done your shopping yet?”

  “Pretty much. I’ve got stocking stuffers to get, but I like to grab those at the last minute.”

  I had some decorative stockings I’d hung from the mantel, but hadn’t thought about filling them at Madison’s and Henry’s age. Heather must have seen my surprised expression because she laughed.

  “I know, I know. It’s just me being sentimental. I’ve never been able to give up playing Santa, although the past few years the stockings mostly have hair ties, nail clippers, and USB sticks among the candy. They’ll be grown and gone and I’ll still be filling their stockings.”

  “That’s a nice tradition.”

  We chatted about our childhood Christmases while I started browning the ground beef. When the kettle whistled, I filled the pot and put the tea in to steep.

  “Did you hear about what happened with Judge Reynolds last night?” I asked as I took the stool opposite Heather.

  She nodded. “I heard it on the news this morning and couldn’t believe it. I’ve been to those parties with Nate a few times and security is always tight.”

  “They had guards everywhere last night.” Oops. Did she know I’d gone with her soon-to-be ex-husband? Deciding I better explain further, I continued. “He wanted to attend and asked if I’d accompany him. It was a great opportunity to network and hopefully bring in more clients.”

  She slowly shook her head, not appearing at all bothered that I’d gone to the party with Judge Beck. “I really didn’t know Rhett Reynolds that well. He pretty much stayed in his county. He wasn’t one to go to all the social functions. I was really shocked when I heard he and Judge Dixon’s wife had been having an affair. How the heck did he meet her? Helen isn’t the sort of woman to be hanging out in Polefax County, and he is absolutely not her type at all. I mean, he’s not exactly an Adonis nor is he rich and powerful.”

  “And then he dumps her,” I said, pouring our tea and nudging the sugar over to Heather.

  “At least Helen made out like a bandit in the divorce.” Heather scooped a spoonful of sugar into her cup and stirred it. “I was convinced Stuart Dixon would find a way to make sure Helen walked with only the clothes on her back, but the woman is set for life. Fastest divorce ever. Belinda said it took their lawyers all of five minutes to type it up and it was done. They’d agreed on everything beforehand. Weird.”

  “Do you think she killed him? Or his ex-wife?”

  Heather looked up in surprise from her tea. “Helen? Are you kidding? I’m willing to bet she had a new man on her arm five minutes after Rhett broke it off—if he was really the one who broke it off.”

  “Really?” I frowned, trying to remember who had said Rhett Reynolds had broken the relationship off, and that Helen was upset over it. Maybe they were wrong. Maybe they didn’t know Helen Dixon as well as Heather seemed to have.

  “You know…” Heather sipped her tea pensively. “I’d be willing to bet that Helen used Rhett as a way to get a divorce from Stuart. He’s never cared about her affairs with the tennis instructor or the guy behind the counter at the coffee shop, but he’d never turn a blind eye to Helen having an affair with one of his peers.”

  “But if she wanted a divorce, why not just tell him and start the proceedings herself? It’s not like the man has to do that. I can’t see any advantage to taking up with Judge Reynolds to make her husband divorce her.” A horrible thought went through my mind. “Unless he was one of those controlling jerks who never would have consented to a divorce otherwise.”

  But that didn’t make sense either. If Stuart Dixon was one of those sort of men, then he hardly would have quickly and easily divorced the woman who’d cheated on him with a peer—or agreed to let her have more than half of the marital property.

  Heather shrugged. “The fire had gone out between him and Helen a decade ago. At this point, theirs was more a marriage of finances and gracing the society pages. Stuart was probably relieved. Although I still can’t believe he let her walk with so much money. There might not have been any passion left between them, but he loves his money just as much as Helen does.”

  Helen Dixon moved down a few notches on my suspect list, but I wasn’t ready to let her go yet. I still wanted to hear a few more opinions about the woman’s affair with Rhett Reynolds to completely cross her off. Her ex-husband, though, was moving into one of my top spots. Heather might not think he cared enough about Helen to kill out of jealousy, but there was still the money. Rhett Reynolds had caused his divorce and cost him a lot of money in the proceedings. But if he was angry enough about that to kill Rhett Reynolds, then would Helen be the next to die? Although the murder of both his ex-wife and her lover would put the police right at his door. So perhaps Helen was safe for now.

  “Mom!” Madison bustled into the kitchen and gave her mother a hug. “You’re early.”

  Heather lifted her cup. “Just having some tea with Miss Kay and talking over Christmas traditions.”

  Madison glanced over my way. “Miss Kay, do you mind if Mom and I go into the front room?”

  Ah Christmas. It was a time for secrets.

  “Go right ahead. Heather, fill up your teacup first. I’ll stay in here and work on dinner.”

  Which I’d decided was going to be stuffed cabbage. I had no idea if the judge would want any or not, but stuffed cabbage was a comfort food I’d grown up with. Just the idea brought back memories of childhood winters, my mom at the stove while I read or colored at a little child-sized table in the corner.

  Heather and Madison left, and in their place a ghost appeared.

  “Thank you. I appreciate you not hovering around while I had a guest.”

  I could have sworn the ghost nodded. Again my kitchen window frosted over and the word “Ruby” appeared.

  “She called me when Madison and I were on the way to the mall,” I told the ghost. “She’s doing better this morning. I offered to help her go through your things when she’s ready. If I don’t hear from her in a few days, I’ll call and invite her to lunch or something.”

  Two lines appeared under the word on the window. What did he mean? I’m sure he was worried about his daughter. It was clear they’d been close, and I could believe he’d still be concerned about her after his death, but what exactly did he want me to do?

  “Can’t you go visit her yourself? I know she can’t see you, but you could communicate with her like this—with words written on the window. And
that way you’d be able to see firsthand how she’s doing.”

  The frost suddenly melted off the window, leaving me unenlightened. Maybe the spirit could only do this around me? Maybe something kept him from going to see his daughter, that tied him to me and my house? I eyed the window and had one of those “duh” moments.

  “Who killed you, Rhett? Write the name on the window. Who killed you?”

  The window frosted over and I held my breath. I could hardly go to the police and tell them a ghost revealed the name of his murderer, but if it would be a whole lot easier to look for proof if I knew who’d done it.

  But a name didn’t appear in the frost on the window. Instead there was a symbol—a dollar sign.

  Chapter 9

  Money. Was that the motive? Had my wild idea about Stuart Dixon been right, or was there someone else at that party who had a financial motive to murder Rhett Reynolds? Those were the thoughts running through my mind all evening and during my morning yoga with Daisy.

  Judge Beck had eaten the stuffed cabbage, even forcing out some compliments. Clearly that was going to have to be a dish I made when he was working late.

  I pulled into the parking lot, easing my ancient sedan into a spot between J.T.’s Jeep and Molly’s new Scion. “New” was a relative term. It was new to her after having been through several previous owners. It was a 2003, but it ran and in spite of its age wasn’t rusting away into oblivion like mine was.

  Molly Warner had been hired at my recommendation after she’d helped nab a killer, and I was thrilled to have her in the office. She was a quick learner, enthusiastic, and it meant I was no longer drowning in work. I hoped to eventually turn most of the routine skip tracing over to her in the next month and start to take on more cases with an actual investigative component.

  “What, no muffins or scones?” J.T. lamented as he saw me walk into the office empty-handed.

  “I had a busy weekend. I promise to do better.”

  “You better.” Molly waved a finger at me. “I’m pretty sure home-baked goods are in my employment contract.”

  I held up my hands, conceding defeat. “Lemon zucchini bread tomorrow morning, I promise.”

  Now that I wasn’t working three to four hours every night after work, I might be able to step up my cooking game a bit, although if I was being tasked with providing regular breakfast goods, J.T. was going to need to do their share as well.

  “If you guys are going to demand baked goods, then I’m demanding lunches. Any time we have to work through lunch, the company pays.”

  J.T. winced. “Okay. But if this starts happening more than twice a week, I’ll need to reconsider.”

  Cheap penny-pincher. I hoped he wasn’t bargain hunting on Daisy’s Christmas gift. Although from what I’d seen, J.T.’s frugal nature vanished whenever he was spending money on Daisy.

  We spent a few hours going over our caseload, including a new batch of skip trace work from Creditcorp. It seems quite a few people had fallen on hard times during the holiday season, and we were supposed to dig up any information on current employment and residence. J.T. had four auto repossessions and two bail jumps, and four bail bond requests that needed processing.

  All this made me feel bad about my job, as if I were a horrible person for tracking down people and ruining their holiday season. I know that they’d all made commitments on either appearing in court or paying their debts, and that they’d gone back on those commitments, but I still felt bad. Things happened. They’d happened to me. It could have been me J.T. was tracking down after Eli had died and I’d found myself overwhelmed in debt. I was still digging my way out of that hole. The judge’s rent payments had been a help. My job and promotion had been a huge help. Month my month, dollar by dollar, I chipped away at the debt and hoped that in a year or two I’d be able to replace my car, replace appliances, and repair my home without falling to the edge of poverty.

  Just before lunchtime I got a call that made me realize my dreams of a relaxing evening were going up in flames.

  “The police want to talk to me,” I told J.T. “It’s about a murder victim I discovered at that swanky party I was at Saturday night.”

  Molly’s eyes widened, her mouth forming a huge “O”. J.T. laughed.

  “I swear on all that’s holy, Carrera. You can’t even go to a holiday party without stumbling over a murder victim. Couldn’t you just eat shrimp and avocado toast, and drink wine?”

  “I tried, but all that wine meant I needed to use the restroom, and there was a murdered judge on the floor.”

  Molly let loose a few obscenities, a habit I was trying to cure her of. “Ooo, sorry! I mean, holy cow, Kay. A judge was murdered at a Christmas party? That’s scary.”

  It had been scary, but a few days had put a few layers of protection and normalcy around the incident.

  “Anyway, the police wanted to ask me a few questions, so I need to drive to the capital. Hopefully they won’t keep me all day.”

  “You’re not a suspect are you?” Molly practically danced with excitement over the prospect.

  “I found the body. I was wearing a white dress that didn’t have one drop of blood splatter on it. And I was dancing with Judge Beck when the murder was likely to have occurred.”

  “They’re hardly going to think a sixty-year-old woman in an evening gown is going to kill a man she just met.” J.T. shot me a sideways glance. “Unless he took the last shrimp puff.”

  “I definitely could kill someone under the right circumstances, but it wouldn’t be over a shrimp puff.” I tossed an eraser at my boss. “I’ll call you when I’m on my way back.”

  “I’ll keep working on these skip traces and let you know where I am,” Molly told me.

  “And Kay?” J.T. tossed the eraser back at me. “This trip doesn’t get expensed. It’s not for a paying client.”

  Figures. Cheap penny-pincher of a boss.

  Officer Perkins wasn’t at this interview. Instead there was a woman with steel-gray hair in a severe shoulder-length cut with Bettie Page bangs. She introduced herself as Detective Burgess, and after procuring me a soda she sat opposite me.

  Detective Burgess paged through a file for a few minutes before speaking up.

  “So at the party, you spoke with Irene O’Donnell?”

  “I spoke with a lot of people at the party, including Irene O’Donnell.” I took a breath and counted the names off on my fingers. “One-on-one, I spoke with Horace Barnes and Justine Sanchez, the wife of Judge Sanchez. I spoke with Ruby Reynolds, the daughter of the deceased. I also spoke with Irene O’Donnell and the lieutenant governor.”

  “So tell me about your conversation with Irene O’Donnell.”

  I took a deep breath, knowing that I wasn’t about to lie to the police. “She was really drunk,” I began. “We went over to the bar and she ordered two wines. Then she asked me about my job as a private investigator and offered to hire me.”

  “And did she hire you?”

  “Not as of this time. I didn’t think I could help her, and told her so.”

  Bettie Page-Burgess fixed me with a thin-lipped glare. “What did she want your help with?”

  “She’d been having some conflicts with Judge Reynolds in the courtroom and wanted me to check into his background.”

  “Did she seem upset? Angry?” The detective narrowed her eyes.

  “She seemed drunk,” I shot back. “I left her at the bar downing wine, and didn’t see her after that.”

  The detective sat back in her chair. “You didn’t see her at all the rest of the evening?”

  I saw where she was going with this. “I’m guessing close to a hundred people were crowded into that party. There were a lot of people I never saw that evening, or only saw once.”

  She nodded and wrote a few things in her notepad.

  “You know there are a lot of other people with a motive to kill Judge Reynolds,” I volunteered. “The woman he dumped, Helen Dixon. Her husband that she cuckolded with Rhet
t Reynolds, Stuart Dixon. I’m sure there were even more people who might have wanted Judge Reynolds dead.”

  I didn’t think a woman could have a more bored and disinterested expression on her face. “What exactly did Irene O’Donnell want you to dig up on Judge Reynolds?”

  I waved a hand. “Nothing specific. Just anything that could possibly be enough of a scandal to get him unseated. She didn’t murder him. She was drunk and it’s a long stretch to go from wanting to find dirt in someone’s background to bludgeoning them to death with a toilet tank lid.”

  Detective Burgess leaned forward onto the table. “How did you know it was a toilet tank lid? Cause of death and weapon has never been released to the press.”

  “I was there, remember?” I shot back. “I saw him. And I couldn’t see anything in that restroom that might have been used to bludgeon someone. Those toilet tank lids are heavy. And in a restroom, they’re conveniently at hand. Besides, it couldn’t have been Irene. Blood splatter would have shown on Irene’s dress.” I suddenly thought of something. “You know who was wearing a red dress? Helen Dixon. Blood splatter wouldn’t have shown on her dress.”

  I was pretty sure it would have, given that anything stains silk. Plus I couldn’t see Helen Dixon bludgeoning someone to death either given what I’d been told about her. At this point I was just throwing things out there.

  The detective fixed me with a long stare, then glanced back down at her notes. “Did you see anyone on the way upstairs? Someone standing near the elevator? In the hallway?”

  I thought for a moment. “There were two security guards standing near the stairs. Lots of people dancing. No one was over by the elevator, or upstairs that I saw or even heard.”

  “What floor was the elevator on when you hit the call button?”

  I frowned, closing my eyes to try to envision the scene. “Third, I think. I’m not positive.”