Mallory, Jo was learning, was a very clever woman, but had she been clever enough? Jo got a revealing look at her tonight. But a lot more, she was sure, remained hidden. How was she going to dig it out?
After taking a few minutes to regain her composure, Jo rejoined Rafe in the buffet area, finding him, for once, standing alone and with no mound of food in hand. He looked over at her approach and smiled just a bit guiltily.
“Sorry, I seem to have been neglecting you,” he said.
“No problem. I’ve been having a very interesting time.”
“Did you want to have a dance?” he asked with no discernable enthusiasm.
“Thanks,” Jo said, “but I think I’d rather just stroll around and listen to the music.”
Rafe obligingly held out his arm for her to take, and they wound their way through the crowd toward rooms neither had yet seen.
“So,” Jo asked, thinking of the aspiring actresses, “will you be getting some good new blood for the playhouse?”
“That remains to be seen. Having played the second lead in a high school production of Grease doesn’t automatically translate into working on a professional level.” Rafe sighed. “Sometimes, though, I have to take what I can get.”
Jo noticed Heather Bannister standing alone on the other side of the room, and followed the woman’s gaze to see Heather’s husband, Kevin, putting in an order at the nearby bar. Suddenly Alexis sidled up to Heather, and Jo watched them talk, Heather looking not terribly pleased. Jo could sympathize and wondered what was being said.
“Ah, Rulenski,” a male voice boomed. A tall, large-chested man stepped up to shake Rafe’s hand. “I hear you’re doing Barefoot in the Park next. Any room for the wife in it?”
As Rafe went into a diplomatic explanation of the sparseness of roles for the play and how they had already been cast, Jo glanced over toward the Bannisters and saw Kevin heading toward Heather, two stemmed glasses in his hands. He stopped abruptly, possibly on seeing Alexis, and veered off in another direction. Interesting, Jo thought.
Rafe was introducing her to the large-chested man, and Jo turned back to find her hand quickly swallowed up in his much larger one and heartily pumped up and down.
“Crafts, huh?” the man, whose name Jo had missed, said.
“The wife likes crafts. I’ll have to send her over. Where did you say your shop was?”
By the time Jo explained her shop’s location and answered several follow-up questions, Alexis was no longer to be seen, and Kevin Bannister had delivered Heather’s drink. The two looked to be in close consultation, and Jo could only guess as to its nature.
The large-chested man moved off, to be replaced by several others, all interested in Rafe’s theater plans, and most offering suggestions for changing them. Mallory Holt was nowhere in sight, nor Sebastian, nor Alexis. Given their early-bird habits, Ina Mae and Loralee were likely tucked in their respective beds by now, and Jo began to long for the comfort of her own soft pillow as well.
When the last of a seemingly endless stream of theater enthusiasts took off, Rafe turned to Jo and asked, “Had enough?”
“Absolutely!” she answered, and they headed to the coatroom to retrieve their wraps. They weren’t the only ones, unfortunately, and they had to wait in a slowly moving line, then join a second line to wait for Rafe’s car. Jo glanced around several times, wondering if Russ Morgan had left already, and if so, with whom, but saw no sign of him.
When the Miata was driven up, Jo and Rafe scurried out through the cold to it, and Randy Truitt opened the door for her to slide in.
“Thanks, Randy,” she called out, her breath fairly freezing in place.
Randy only nodded, looking somewhat grim, and Jo supposed the pace might be getting to him, not to mention the cold. Her own toes had turned numb in that short run, and she hoped the Miata’s heater would kick in rapidly.
Rafe, thankfully, drove off with care. The streets, despite evidence of having been plowed once or twice, were slippery, and Jo felt the car fishtail slightly on a curve. Rafe chatted on, though, seemingly more concerned with a few criticisms he had received that evening than with the driving conditions.
“That tall woman,” he groused, “what’s her name? Used to be some kind of teacher.”
“Ina Mae?”
“Yeah. I think she’d like to see us put on a stream of G-rated Pollyanna-type stories. How does she think I’m going to get an audience for that kind of stuff?”
“From the families of Abbotsville, I suppose.” Jo reached down to rub her chilled toes.
“Right. The families who stay home to watch their rented DVDs. They’re not going to drag themselves to our playhouse. The people that do come want sophistication; they want mind-blowing drama, they want . . .”
Rafe ranted on about the supposed preferences of his audience, and Jo wondered when he had actually offered them such things at his playhouse? Not as long as she’d been in Abbotsville, which admittedly hadn’t been very long.
They came to Jo’s street, and Rafe groaned at the sight of its unplowed surface. He gamely turned into it, though, and bumping through high ruts, pulled up in front of Jo’s house. He reached for his ignition to turn it off, but Jo stopped him.
“Never mind walking me to my door. There’s no use you ruining your shoes.”
“You’re sure?” Rafe asked, unable to completely cover his relief.
“Absolutely. Thanks for inviting me, Rafe. It was a highly interesting evening.”
Rafe grinned. “That’s one way of putting it. Thanks for coming along.”
Jo gritted her teeth and pulled off her sandals. It would be a frigid run in bare feet, but she couldn’t afford to ruin her good shoes. She hopped out, holding Javonne’s dress up knee-high, and made her way up the snowy walk as rapidly as she could manage. She knew she must look like a duck on drugs, but her appearance, at this point, was the least of her concerns. She waved to Rafe once she’d reached her door and had turned the key in the lock, then watched him drive off, after a worrisome but brief tire-spin in the snow, and sincerely hoped he’d make it home without trouble.
Jo dropped her shoes in her little foyer and made a mad dash to the bathroom to wrap her icy feet in a warm, fluffy towel. Once the feeling returned to her toes, she carefully removed her borrowed finery, returned her silk camellia to its wreath, wiggled gratefully out of her “corset,” and flopped into bed to soon find images of her dance with Russ Morgan inexplicably weaving their way through her dreams.
Chapter 20
The next day, Jo arrived at the craft shop a half hour early, which, being Sunday, meant around 11:30. She had left word at Otto’s for Randy to come shovel the snow in front of the shop, wishing she’d thought of mentioning it the night before. Who knew when he’d get her message? Charlie had taken care of her walk after the couple of previous snowfalls. But since he was temporarily out of commission, it looked like it was up to Jo, unless Randy miraculously appeared.
Bundled up in a parka, wool hat, and snow boots, Jo managed to clear the deep snow from her shop door to the curb, and a couple of feet or so on each side, before finding herself puffing. She decided that would do, that her doorway was at least minimally accessible, and set her shovel aside to open up shop. She had doffed her wet outerwear and was setting up her coffeepot when the phone rang.
“Jo’s Craft Corner,” Jo sang into the phone, pleased at the early sign of interest in her shop on this cold, quiet day.
“Jo!” Carrie’s voice cried into her ear. “Did you hear about the accident?”
Jo’s first frightened thought was for Rafe and his fish-tailing sports car. “What happened? Who was it?”
“Alexis Wigsley. Her car spun into a telephone pole over on Greenview Street. She’s dead!”
“Alexis! Dead?” Memories of having seen and spoken with Alexis only hours ago rushed over Jo, making that difficult to believe.
“How awful! But how did it happen?” Jo asked. “Was she that reckle
ss a driver? I know the conditions were terrible, but we’re talking about town driving.”
“Greenview is fairly steep,” Carrie pointed out. “And it curves sharply near the bottom. But you’re right. It does seem like she’d have to be going awfully fast. I don’t know. Maybe we’ll find out more. I’ll be in as soon as I can get there. Did you have any trouble driving this morning?”
“Not once I got out of my driveway. Two wonderful neighbors with snowblowers helped with that.”
“Great. I’ll ask Dan to come clear the shop’s walkway.”
“No, don’t, Carrie.” Jo knew Dan would be able to pick up a few dollars clearing parking lots and long driveways with the snowplow attached to his pickup. There was no way she’d interfere with that. “I’ve made a decent dent in the snow, and someone’s coming to finish it for me.”
“All right. I’ll see you soon, then.”
Jo hung up, stunned at the news about Alexis. Knowing the woman, Jo figured she probably had stayed to the very end of the ball, letting the driving conditions worsen as she caught as much gossip as she could and caused as much trouble—Jo stopped at that thought. Alexis had certainly caused trouble, at the ball and on a daily basis. Could it possibly be . . . ? No, Carrie had described an accident, pure and simple. Unfortunate, but unforeseen.
Still, Jo couldn’t shake an uneasy feeling. To distract herself, she began unpacking an order that had arrived the day before: silk flowers and greenery that needed to be sorted and tagged, then placed on the proper shelves in customer-friendly bins. She clicked on her radio for further distraction and dug in, finding, before she knew it, that half her job was done and that Carrie was stomping snow off her boots outside the door.
“Sorry it took me so long,” Carrie said as she came inside.
“No problem. I haven’t had a single customer yet.”
“Everyone’s probably waiting for the streets to clear a bit more. They’ll venture out, little by little.” Carrie headed for the stockroom to pull off her boots and jacket. “They’ll want to talk about the latest bad news.”
“I’m still floored by it myself. Not grief stricken, I have to admit, just stunned. But I hate for that to happen to anyone.”
Carrie called from the back room, “Don’t apologize for your feelings—they’re honest. I suspect we’ll hear too much insincere bewailing today. Most people have difficulty saying a bad word against the dead. But Alexis was a troublemaker, and that’s the truth.”
“That she was, and to the very end, I’m afraid,” Jo said.
When Carrie came out front, Jo told her about the scene she witnessed in the hotel’s kitchen the night before.
Carrie scowled, shaking her head. “That’s outrageous. As if poor Xavier didn’t have enough trouble as it is. Do you suppose he even got paid for the work he put in?”
“I couldn’t say. That manager seemed anxious to put on a big show of apology to Mallory. I doubt he worried much about what Xavier was owed.”
Jo then told Carrie about Alexis’s intrusive advice to Lisa Williams, and what had surely been a most unwelcome conversation with Heather Bannister. She skipped her own annoyance at Alexis’s chasing off of Russ Morgan at the end of their dance, having decided, while thinking it over as she’d sorted through the greenery that morning, that he was unlikely to have lingered with her much longer anyway. Russ Morgan’s sole purpose, she figured, was to warn her away from interference in the Parker Holt case. Once that was accomplished, he surely had more important people to talk with.
“And then,” Jo continued, “there was Mallory Holt and her not very well-veiled threat to me.” Jo described the scene that occurred after Mallory had learned about Jo’s visit to Sebastian.
“Well, you had quite a jolly time last night, didn’t you?”
Jo laughed. “It wasn’t the senior prom, I’ll admit.” Except for that one, lovely, too-short dance, she mused wistfully.
The sound of stamping outside her door shook her back to business. “Our first customer of the day.”
A large, well-bundled woman opened the door and walked in. “Well! That was an invigorating walk! Very few people have shoveled their sidewalks yet, but the snow-plows did a good job, so I walked in the street. Need to get a few things, including some scrapbooking papers for the project I’m in the middle of. Did you hear about poor Alexis?” the woman asked, bright eyes going from Carrie to Jo. “I’ve been absolutely heartbroken since Mary Louise called me this morning. Poor, dear Alexis.”
Carrie caught Jo’s eye as if to say, And so it begins.
The afternoon continued in that vein, the flow of people to Jo’s craft shop increasing as the wintry sun grew brighter. Most bought craft items, some simply accompanied buyers, but all discussed Alexis Wigsley’s terrible crash. Jo learned little more about the accident, other than that it had occurred at 12:30. Kimberly Costello told her that part, explaining that she had been up with her new baby and, living only one street over from Greenview, had heard the crash, though she didn’t realize at the time what it was. But when sirens soon followed, she knew something bad had happened.
Ina Mae stopped in around midafternoon, complaining that her power-walking group had cancelled because of the snow.
“I thought I’d come out anyway,” she said, “for some fresh air.” As she began to browse through Jo’s beading section, Ina Mae overheard two women commenting on Alexis’s accident.
“She must have been driving terribly recklessly,” the older of the two said. “I heard the damage to her car showed she was clearly traveling at a very high rate of speed.”
Ina Mae spun around to contradict them. “Alexis would never have driven recklessly. She was an extremely cautious driver ever since a cousin of hers was killed over twenty years ago in a car accident.”
“She was?” Carrie asked. “I didn’t know that.”
“Yes, it was a hit-and-run accident out on Route 30. The cousin was in a coma for days before succumbing. Alexis was quite shaken by it and wouldn’t drive for months afterward. When she did resume driving, she was very careful.”
The other customer looked like she didn’t quite believe Ina Mae as far as Alexis’s careful driving, but Jo knew her friend well enough to know she never made a statement she wasn’t 100 percent sure of. Why then did Alexis’s car show such high impact?
The answer came much later in the afternoon. All the customers had cleared out, and Jo was doing a quick mop-up of melted snow on her floor. The phone rang, and Carrie picked it up. Jo could tell it was Dan, and she turned back to her mopping, though her ears perked up when Carrie’s tone of voice changed dramatically. When her friend hung up, Jo looked over for an explanation.
“That was Dan,” Carrie said unnecessarily, her thoughts clearly still on what she had just heard.
“Is something wrong?” Jo asked.
“Alexis’s car crash. We were all wondering about her driving speed? There seems to be an explanation.”
Jo waited.
“Dan got this from someone at Hanson’s Garage. They towed the car. They also saw a major problem.”
Carrie looked at Jo with worried eyes. “Her brake lines were cut. It wasn’t an accident after all, Jo. Alexis was murdered.”
Chapter 21
Jo closed up shop at six and stopped on the way home to pick up a precooked chicken and fixings from the supermarket’s salad bar, feeling too mind-boggled after what Carrie had told her to think of cooking. After she had her dinner and cleaned up, she brewed a cup of tea and settled on her living room sofa, prepared to kick off her shoes and mull over the events of the last two days. She didn’t get beyond the first sip before the phone rang. It was Carrie.
“Jo, I’m at the hospital. Sylvia’s here because she started having problems. Xavier’s a wreck, and he needs someone to be with him, but I can’t stay much longer. Dan’s still out plowing parking lots.”
“I’ll be right down,” Jo said. She set her tea down and rushed about to gather up her
things, managing to pull into the hospital’s parking lot within twenty minutes. A short time after that she was heading rapidly down the corridor to Sylvia’s room.
“Jo, we’re here.” Carrie’s voice came from a little seating alcove to the right, and Jo braked to see her friend sitting next to Xavier. Xavier’s forearms were on his knees, his head hanging low, and as he lifted it up to look at Jo, it seemed to require much of his last remaining strength.
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