Wreath of Deception

by Mary Ellen Hughes

  Schroder’s only comment, thankfully, was a grunt as he put his truck into drive and took off.

  Thinking it best to drop the subject of Carrie’s nonexistent brood, and wondering where in the world the name “Alphonse” had popped up from, Jo gazed around at the landscape as Schroder drove on the paved cart lane.

  “You really keep things beautiful here,” she said.

  “Ain’t easy.”

  “I’m sure it isn’t. Especially when there’s dry periods like we’ve had. How do you manage to keep it all so green?”

  “Sprinkling system. Pipes are underground, grass gets watered overnight.”

  “Really? So, what, does someone have to be here to turn it on and off?”

  “Nah! It’s all automatic. When it works, that is.” Jo saw the muscles in Schroder’s cheek quiver, and wondered just how hard he was clenching his jaw.

  “You’ve had problems with it?” she asked, knowing the answer but hoping she could get him to elaborate.

  He shot her a dark look. “Thought I did. Wasted a lot of time working at it. Darn near tore the whole thing apart before I figured out what was happening.”

  “Yes?”

  “Where’re those fools going to? I told them the fourth green!” Schroder began beeping his horn and waving furiously to get the attention of the truck ahead. It pulled over, and he stuck his head out the window, spewing words Jo hadn’t heard in a long time, dealing mostly as she did with the genteel ladies of her craft shop.

  “Sorry,” he apologized, as he pulled his head back in.

  “That’s all right, I understand. It’s not always easy dealing with people who don’t have their mind on the job, is it?”

  “You got that right, lady. And I don’t always have final say about who gets hired around here either. Gordon’s picked a few prizes.”

  “Yes, I heard that Kyle Sandborn might have been one of those prizes.”

  Jo watched carefully, but Schroder suddenly had a need to spit, turning his head away and out the window once more. Jo was finding Schroder to be a tough nut, but she pressed harder.

  “Kyle was the fellow who was killed at the craft shop. He worked here at the tennis desk.”

  “Yeah.” Schroder stared ahead.

  “He seemed to be quite a goof-off around here. From what I heard.”

  “Lady, I’ve had my fill of goof-offs. If they work for me, they don’t work for me long. If they get in my way, they just better watch out. That’s all I can say. I hope that nephew of yours knows how to follow orders or he won’t like it here.”

  “Oh, Charlie can —” Jo started, but Schroder wasn’t listening anymore, having pulled over and braked behind the first truck. He swung out of the cab in an instant, barking out directions in the process. Jo climbed down, and watched as Charlie pitched in with the crew, hauling out tools and equipment, and then got to work. Not exactly what he’d bargained for when joining this detecting expedition, she knew, but he dug in gamely.

  Jo saw she wasn’t going to get anything out of Schroder while he bustled about, clearly furious over the damage done to his course by the renegade SUV, and intent on erasing all signs of it as quickly as possible. She watched him handling the crew. He’d never earn there affection with his drill sergeant manner, and the ones who didn’t work as hard or as fast as he thought they should, got the full blast of his wrath. Thankfully, Charlie wasn’t one of those. Or perhaps Schroder held back with her there.

  Eventually, the ruts got smoothed and reseeded, and the crew packed up to go. Charlie, red-faced from the heat but with all ten fingers safely intact, took his place once again in the back of the pick-up. Jo climbed back into Schroder’s truck as she saw him heading over. He barked a few more orders, then jumped behind the wheel and headed back toward the shed.

  “The kid’s not too bad. If he wants the job, I’ll put him on the list. Might be someone leaving before too long.”

  “That’s great,” Jo said, feeling a twinge of guilt at the deceptions involved, but felt reasonably sure that Charlie wouldn’t leave a hard-to-fill gap by not following through on a call-back. “You run a very tight ship, Mr. Schroder.”

  “Learned a long time ago you gotta show who’s boss.”

  Jo could see that was very important to Hank Schroder. Which is why it must have really rankled to be played for a fool by Kyle Sandborn. Had he known it was Kyle, though? Schroder was being very closed-mouthed on the subject. Jo decided to try him on another one.

  “On the way here we looked at the place that young woman fell to her death. Genna Hunt.”

  Schroder grunted.

  “I had met her recently, so what happened seemed especially tragic. Did you know her, Mr. Schroder?”

  Schroder shot Jo a quick look. “Yeah.” Jo waited. “She’s related to my ex-wife,” he said, then fell silent once more. Jo was about to ask in what way, when Schroder spoke again.

  “Never did like those people.”

  “Oh?”

  “Bunch of busybodies, always poking their noses in where they shouldn’t.”

  Schroder stared straight ahead as he said it, but Jo wondered if there was a veiled warning for her in his comment, because of her questions.

  “I’m new to Abbotsville,” she said, “so I still have a lot to learn about the town. I’ve noticed one big difference, though, from New York City, where I lived. There, people barely knew their neighbors. In this town I’ve found quite a tangled network of relationships among the townspeople. Everyone seems to be connected to everyone else in one way or another.”

  “You got that right. Tangled network.” Schroder seemed to mull over the words. “A net. Things get caught in nets, don’t they?”

  “Sometimes they do,” Jo agreed.

  Schroder spit out his window.

  “The dumb ones, that is.”

  CHAPTER 20

  “How’re you feeling?” Jo asked, as she and Charlie made their way back to the clubhouse.

  “Okay. Just pretty hot. And dry. Schroder didn’t even give me a soda or anything. The other guys had there own stuff to drink, but I wasn’t going to ask anyone for theirs.”

  “Sorry you got sucked into that job, Charlie. Hank Schroder just got an hour’s free labor out of you, didn’t he?”

  “I didn’t mind. But I didn’t get to talk to anyone much. It’s hard when you’re scraping away at dirt. And riding on the back of that truck I was too busy trying not to get mashed by that sliding roller thing.”

  “You deserve a big, icy drink.” Jo held open the door leading to the restaurant/bar. “As do I. Schroder’s truck wasn’t air conditioned. Or maybe he kept the windows open to accommodate his delightful little habit of watering the landscape with his, uh, saliva. Let’s get our drinks to take out. I want to stop in at the tennis shop.”

  They each ordered a large Coke and gulped down a large portion thirstily, then Jo led the way to Kyle Sandborn’s old job area. Tracy, the blond desk attendant, was sorting through a shipment of tennis T-shirts, and looked up with a bright smile at their entrance. To her credit, it faded only slightly as she recognized them.

  “Hi! How’s the craft show coming together?”

  “Little by little.” Jo thought Tracy looked a bit stressed, despite the cheery “greeting” smile she had flashed. “How’ve you been?” she asked.

  “Hanging in there, I guess. It’s been kind of a rough week.”

  “Sorry if I’ll be adding to it, but do you mind if I ask a bit more about Kyle?”

  Tracy shook her head. “No, go ahead. Might as well.”

  “I wondered, since I only saw Kyle’s less attractive side that day at my shop, did he have a charming side? Were girls attracted to him?”

  Tracy thought for a moment. “I wasn’t. But maybe that’s because I saw too much of him around here. He wasn’t bad looking, but that’s not the only thing that matters to me.” Tracy shook out a brightly striped tee, and slipped it onto a hanger. “I guess, now that I think about it, s
ome of the women players used to flirt with him a bit. He was on his most charming behavior, of course, dealing with the members here at the desk. They never saw the other side of him, the side that dreamed up scandals about them when they were off on the courts.”

  “What I need to know is would he be likely to stir up jealousy from someone’s boyfriend, if Kyle seemed to be getting too much attention from the girlfriend?”

  “Maybe,” Tracy said, hesitantly. “If the boyfriend didn’t really know him, that is. Kyle wasn’t really a studly type. He didn’t go after girls. Not that he was gay or anything. I don’t mean that. He just seemed too involved in himself, in his ‘big acting career’ that was coming, to care much about anything else.”

  “Told you,” Charlie said smugly to Jo. “Pete Tober would never have been jealous of Kyle.”

  “But perhaps,” Jo argued, “he didn’t really know Kyle, as Tracy says. Perhaps he just saw the ‘actor’ Kyle, with Genna gazing lovingly at him on stage.”

  “Genna Hunt?” Tracy asked. “That girl that was killed?”

  “Yes. Did you know her?”

  “Kinda.” Jo waited for another Abbotsville ‘tangled network’ explanation, something along the lines of: "my mother’s-cousin’s-dry cleaner’s-neighbor." What actually came surprised her.

  “She roomed with Bethanne Fowler, our tennis pro.”

  “Oh!”

  “Bethanne’s a wreck. She canceled all her lessons this week. I was on the phone for hours, getting in touch with everyone. It’s been a madhouse around here, with Mr. Gordon running in every other minute, insisting we find another pro to step in before all the tennis programs fall apart. Like we have pros sitting out there just waiting to be called!” Tracy sighed. “This was the first chance I’ve had to do anything with the clothing. The new shipments have been piling up. These shirts have been sitting here for days.”

  “Genna roomed with your tennis pro,” Jo said, still holding tightly to that nugget amidst Tracy’s flowing vent. She glanced at Charlie, whose eyebrows were wiggling.

  “Yes. They’ve been friends, I heard, for years. Practically sisters.”

  Was this significant, or merely a coincidence? Whichever, it was the first real connection between Kyle and Genna that Jo had found so far, tenuous though it may be. It definitely warranted looking into.

  “I see how hard this must be on Bethanne,” Jo said, “especially coming, as it does, on the heels of Kyle’s death. I image Bethanne and Kyle were rather close too?”

  Tracy looked puzzled. “Close? No, I wouldn’t say that at all. They really didn’t like each other very much. Kyle mixed up Bethanne’s lesson appointments a couple of times, and I remember that made her pretty mad. I wondered, actually, if Kyle did it on purpose, ’cause he sometimes referred to Bethanne as the ‘Prima Donna’, behind her back, of course. He did have a point, though. Bethanne sometimes acted like we were all working here specially for her convenience. It got on my nerves too, but if I was too busy to do what she wanted, I told her so, and she usually backed off. Kyle, I think, needed to do more, just to prove to himself he was superior or something.”

  The phone rang, and Tracy excused herself.

  “Well,” Jo said quietly to Charlie, “that’s interesting, isn’t it? I wonder what else we can find out.”

  She glanced around, noticing for the first time several photos on the wall, and went to examine them. Many were of tennis teams, groups of men or women arranged smilingly around a trophy, the date superimposed on the photos. The more recent photos contained a recurring figure, a young woman, dark haired and a bit shorter than the others.

  Jo gawked, and, hearing Tracy finish on the phone, called out, “Is this Bethanne, here?”

  Tracy came over and peered at the photo Jo indicated.

  “Uh-huh. That’s her. Her teams did really well this year.”

  “She has quite a resemblance to Genna.”

  “Yes, she does, doesn’t she? Bethanne used to joke that with a little make-up she could stand in for Genna in one of her shows at the playhouse and no one would notice until she opened her mouth and tried to sing.”

  “She’s right. They could practically pass for sisters. Did Genna play tennis?”

  “A little, but just for fun, not anything like Bethanne. I think she preferred the fitness classes here for her exercise. Bethanne got her a good discount on them.”

  Jo moved over to other framed photos. These were groups of people in evening clothes, posed in the country club’s dining room.

  “Those were for the Muscular Dystrophy Ball,” Tracy explained. “All the big-wigs were there. It’s a huge fund raiser.”

  “Yes, I recognize Mayor Kunkle from pictures in the paper, and Bob Gordon. Oh, and there’s a couple of my workshop ladies, Loralee Phillips – doesn’t she look nice – and Deirdre Patterson and her husband, the state senator.”

  “Uh-huh. They always show up for those things. And there’s Bethanne, over here. I’d hardly recognize her out of her tennis togs, but she looks great, doesn’t she?”

  “Yes, she does. She supports the Muscular Dystrophy cause?”

  “Oh, she didn’t have to pay for those dinners. Those tickets cost something like two hundred a plate. Mr. Gordon wanted her to be there so he could introduce her around as the club’s pro.”

  “I see. A little business promotion.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did she go as Bob Gordon’s date?”

  “Oh, no! Mr. Gordon always took his wife.” Tracy pointed to a well-dressed, round figured woman on one of the photos. “That’s her there.”

  Jo looked more closely and saw a smiling woman holding firmly to her husband’s arm as they posed for the camera. Jo imagined that grip never loosening as Bob Gordon introduced his tennis pro around the room.

  “So Bethanne attended on her own? No boyfriend?”

  “None that I knew of. There was some talk, well, never mind.”

  “What?”

  Tracy flushed. “It’s not important. Just more of Kyle’s crazy imaginings. I shouldn’t have brought it up. Especially with Bethanne so miserable now, with what happened to her best friend.”

  Jo longed to hear more, but Tracy’s face had closed down. Her sympathy for her coworker’s pain was not going to allow her any leeway toward negative gossip. All Jo could do for now was file away the comment for reexamination in the future.

  “Yes, I’m sure she must feel terrible over Genna,” Jo said.

  “Oh, definitely, especially since she blames herself!”

  “She does? How?”

  “Oh, you didn’t know? It was Bethanne’s dog that Genna was walking! Genna wouldn’t have been out at all if Bethanne had come home early enough to take Mojo out herself.”

  “Mojo?” Charlie, who had been silent until now, yelped. “Her dog’s name is Mojo? I thought it was one of those little yappy types, you know, a Toto. The kind people call Muffin, or Pookie, or something. Why’d she call it Mojo?”

  Tracy looked confused for a moment, then laughed. “Oh, you’re thinking of that guy that looks like a Sumo wrestler or something, on, on, what’s that show?”

  She and Charlie batted around the names of a few television shows, arguing in friendly fashion over which one was the right one, but Jo didn’t care much what the little dog was called. What had struck her, and she was sure would strike Charlie as well very soon, was that Genna strongly resembled Bethanne, and was out at night walking Bethanne’s dog. Had Bethanne, in fact, been the intended target, not Genna?

  It seemed very possible, and if so, that would change everything.

  CHAPTER 21

  Jo had more on her mind than wreath making as her workshop group gathered once again for their next project. She wondered what might be in their thoughts as well, since they had become nearly as involved as she with this entire mess. You’d never guess to look at their faces, however, as one-by-one they filed through her door, smiling ingenuously and chattering on things as inno
cuous as the recent spurt of warm weather and how it might affect their gardens' mums. It began to lull Jo, at least for the moment, into the pleasant feeling that life in Abbotsville was simple and serene, and the most difficult problem facing her was how to present tonight’s project.

  Aware the feeling wouldn’t last long, though, Jo gathered her supplies and called the group to order, after first popping open a soda from the cooler kept well-stocked with a variety of drinks for the sessions. Some of the others had already helped themselves to their favorites.

  “Tonight, ladies, we’re going to make this spring wreath,” she paused as they ah-ed delightedly, “and I have a variety of materials lined up here for you.”

  “I want to hang my wreath on my front door,” Javonne said. “But Harry just painted our door red – which I love – but those pink flowers you have on yours won’t work for me. Can I change them, Jo?”

  “Absolutely. What I have here is just the prototype. It can be adjusted any way you like. Color is the easiest.”

  “Your wreath turned out great!” Deirdre said, reminding Jo that she had seen it at Jo’s house before it was finished, when Jo had fixed her bracelet. “I don’t want to change a thing, except maybe I’ll hang a tag on mine saying, ‘handmade by Deirdre Patterson’. It’ll impress everyone to pieces.”

  Ina Mae and Loralee agreed they liked Jo’s prototype, and Jo launched into the step-by-step instructions, which included wrapping ribbon about the grapevine base, making a multi-looped bow and more. The women happily got to work. As Jo expected, Ina Mae was the one to bring up the subject of murder.

  “Well, Jo,” she asked. “What’s new on the investigation?”

  Jo noticed that the group had become so comfortable with the topic that they barely glanced up from their projects. The interest, though, was clearly there, as the chatter quieted down for her answer. Jo told them about her meeting with Hank Schroder.