by Curry, Edna
I tried to hide the contempt I felt for his kind of reasoning. It irritated me to no end and I felt insulted for all the women he, and men like him, hurt in their pursuit of having their fun on the side.
I’m bitterly prejudiced against cheaters, since my ex, Arthur, was one. His excuses had sounded remarkably like Sam’s. Fury heated my blood. I remembered how angry and helpless I’d felt at Arthur’s betrayal and the pain of my bitter divorce. I couldn’t control a sudden shudder.
I should excuse myself from this case on the grounds I couldn’t be unbiased. But I needed the money, so I knew I wouldn’t do that.
The coffee was done, so I got up and poured us each a cupful, giving myself time to get my own emotions under control. “Where are you staying? I mean, are you back in your house yet, or hasn’t the Sheriff removed his crime scene tape?”
“Yeah, I’m back in my house. Ben took his yellow tape down, so I’m okay.”
“When’s the funeral?”
“The visitation is tonight at the Canton Funeral home from six to eight. Services are at the First Christian Church tomorrow at one.”
He said it in a monotone that told me he’d recited the information to people throughout the day. He probably had to remove himself from the meaning of the words in order to get through repeating them so often. I was truly beginning to believe he really had cared for Clara and he hadn’t killed her. So who had?
“If you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to take a quick look at your house.”
He sent me a puzzled look.
“Why?”
“It helps me figure things out to actually see the layout of the house and garage, where the car was and where your bedroom is. Could I?”
“I don’t see how that would help, but if you think it will, I suppose it’ll be okay.” He rose. “Come on, then.”
I hesitated. “Is now a good time?”
He shrugged. “As good a time as any. I took a few days off from work. Can’t settle down to think about things there, so might as well let the others handle stuff.”
I got in my little red Chevy and followed his silver Mercedes to his house. I parked behind him at the curb out in front. As I got out of my car, I saw the curtain move in the window of Agnes’ house. She was monitoring whatever happened in the neighborhood, just as she’d said.
Sam unlocked the door of his house. I walked in after him. Ahead of us was a stairway leading to the main floor. He opened the door to our right.
“The garage is in here. Clara always parks her car in the first stall and I park mine over there.”
Both stalls were empty now, but I got the drift. The garage was unfinished with a cement floor with pegboard and shelving along the walls holding tools and garden supplies. Metal furnace and air conditioning air ducts ran along the ceiling, with vents to allow the garage to be heated or cooled, although I imagined plenty of heat or cooling energy was transferred through the metal ductwork into the garage without the vents open.
Unfortunately, those vents had most likely carried the carbon monoxide throughout the house very efficiently.
“Your car is in the shop now?”
Sam shook his head.
“Sheriff Ben still has it. Checking it to make sure there’s nothing tampered with on it,” he growled. “He sees conspiracy everywhere. Damn car just needed new brakes. Weren’t nothing else wrong with it. Have you seen enough?”
As I nodded, he closed the door to the garage, then started up the stairs.
“What’s this way?” I asked, pointing to the other downstairs door.
“That’s the laundry room and downstairs bath—mud room, Clara called it,” he said over his shoulder, leading the way up the stairs to the main floor.
He showed me around the house. It was laid out in a simple, three bedroom, kitchen, dining and living room style, with the bedrooms over the garage.
“This is our bedroom, where Clara was,” he said, his voice breaking over the words. “I haven’t changed anything. I’m sleeping in the spare room for now.”
I looked around the master bedroom. It was small, compared to most homes of the well-to-do families in town, maybe fifteen-feet square. Their bed was queen sized with a scarlet plush fabric headboard and no footboard. Six plump white pillows and snowy white sheets covered the bed. A soft white blanket and a scarlet silk quilt lay half thrown back toward the foot of the bed.
A large Cherry wood dresser, chest of drawers and matching bookcase were set against the other two walls. The bookcase held a variety of books, mostly mysteries and romances and a few hardcover copies of the latest NYT bestselling novels. One romance paperback lay on the bedside table with a bookmark in it about halfway through. Apparently, Clara had been reading it. She would never learn the ending now.
I shuddered at the thought that the whole scene was peaceful. A perfect place for romantic love making. Instead, Clara had died there.
Four closet bi-fold doors covered the opposite wall. All were partly open, revealing both his and hers wardrobes neatly divided. Shoes lined the floor below the hanging suits and dresses.
A modest home and modest clothes. Nothing shouted rich about this couple. Nor did anything seem unusual or out of place. The whole house was simply decorated. The furniture and decorations were nice, but they weren’t expensive or unusual. Most of their things had probably come from the local furniture and clothing stores.
Nothing seemed unusual about the spare bedroom where Sam was sleeping, either. Some clothes in the closet, shoes on the floor. Clean, neat, sterile.
The third bedroom was set up as an office and den. One side of the room had all the usual office equipment and supplies. The other side was furnished with matching Lazy-boy chairs and a wall TV set. One corner even held a tiny refrigerator, a microwave and a coffeepot. I saw a video and DVD player and a bookcase filled with tapes and discs.
“We sometimes brought some work home, but we mostly used this room to watch movies,” Sam said. “Clara loved to relax here. Sometimes we made popcorn or cocoa.”
I nodded, eyeing the computer. “Did you share this computer?”
Sam shook his head. “No, I used this one. Clara used a new, slim laptop that I got her last Christmas.”
“Did the police take it?”
Sam wrinkled his brow, perplexed.
“No, I don’t think so. Why would they want that? It should be in her desk.” He walked over to a huge roll-top desk in the corner of the office, and rolled up the cover. He pulled out a laptop. “Here it is if you want to look at it.”
“Are you sure you don’t mind?”
“Not if it will help you figure out what really happened to her.” He turned the computer on and then handed it to me.
“Thanks. Do you know if Clara kept her schedule on it?”
“No, I don’t. She had a PDA that she kept in her purse. Sheriff Ben took that. She wrote everything down in it. She and Helen had dozens of things scheduled all of the time with various committees and groups around town. I guess someone else will have to do those things now.”
His voice broke as he dropped into an easy chair, staring out the window.
“I’m sure they’ll all miss her very much,” I sympathized.
I sat at the desk, running through the computer’s menu, looking for anything that could be an appointment calendar. Aha! Clara had done what a lot of people do, kept a schedule on both her computer and her PDA and synchronized them often. Sam agreed to my making a copy, so I pulled out the spare jump drive I always carry, copied the file, then slipped the jump drive back into my pocket.
So, the trip wasn’t a waste after all. I didn’t know what I’d expected to see as far as the crime scene was concerned, maybe just anything that didn’t fit. However, I hadn’t seen anything which seemed wrong. I sighed, and thanked Sam for his trouble.
My cell phone chirped as I drove back to my office. I glanced at the caller ID—it was my mother. She seldom called unless she wanted something. We’d never been close.
I stayed in Minnesota and she stayed in Florida with her new husband, Carl, my stepfather. We both liked to keep distance between us.
“Hi, Mom. How are you?” I said as my heart knotted up. I’d forgotten she had used to work on a lot of charity things with Clara before she’d married again and opted for Florida sunshine instead of ice and snow. So, of course she’d come home for the funeral. Why hadn’t I thought to call her?
“Lacey, dear. I’m fine. I’ve just arrived for Clara’s wake and funeral. I’m at Jerry’s house.”
I wrinkled my nose. Jerry was her stepson, Carl’s son from his first marriage. Jerry and I had rubbed each other the wrong way since those two had gotten together. Carl had money and Jerry was sure I was a gold-digger who wanted to inherit his share. Strangely, he didn’t think that of Mom. He and Mom got along fine. So I guess he just didn’t like me. The feeling was mutual.
Jerry runs the local garage and gas station I used to patronize. These days, I avoided it like smelly dog droppings.
“Oh?” I said. Where else would Mom stay? She always stayed at Jerry’s house when she came to Minnesota.
Since I lived in what had been Uncle Henry’s house and Mom and her brother Henry hadn’t gotten along, there was no way she would stay with me. Besides, she adored her two-year-old step-grandson, Jimmy. I pushed away the familiar pang of feeling hurt and left out that talking to Kate always stirred in me.
“You should have called me about Clara,” Kate said.
Naturally, Mom would lay on a guilt trip the first chance she got.
“Sorry. I’d forgotten you knew Clara.”
“No matter. Elaine called me.” A hint of pleased one-ups-man-ship colored Mom’s voice. I think she’s actually happy when she finds one more thing I’ve done wrong in her eyes. “Do you want to come for supper here and then we can go to the wake together?” Kate asked, as though her invitation covered her preference for her stepdaughter-in-law over me.
Her invitation was really a demand.
“All right, Mom. I’ll see you there in an hour.”
I needed to go home to shower and change clothes first. Mom would have a fit if she saw me in old clothes. Besides, if I was going to the wake, I needed to dress up a bit. However, I wasn’t changing only to avoid a lecture from my mother.
I’d intended to go to Clara’s wake anyway, to see if I could learn any more about what was really going on. So, going with Kate was probably a good thing. If I went alone, people might wonder what I was doing there, but they wouldn’t if I was with my mother and the rest of Clara’s charity workers.
Mom didn’t approve of my PI business. I smiled to myself at the thought of how much she’d hate knowing she would be helping me tonight.
Chapter 6
An hour later, I drove to the other side of town and parked on the tree-lined street in front of my stepbrother’s house. Yellow and rust-colored mums bloomed in every neatly mown yard. The suburban street shouted traditional families—mom and apple pie. An uneasy sense of not fitting in slid over me.
Elaine met me at the door of her neat, little yellow rambler with a friendly smile. I adored both Elaine and little Jimmy, who was in the terrible twos stage, but so cute and loving, I always had to forgive his antics.
We exchanged hugs.
“Come on in. Jerry’s not home yet, but we’ll go ahead and eat so you and Kate won’t be late for the wake.”
“You’re not going?”
“No,” Elaine said. “I didn’t know the Carters very well.”
Kate came forward, giving me a hug, then checking me over with a sniff. “Couldn’t you have worn a dress for a wake, Lacey?”
I rolled my eyes at her expected disapproval. “This is a very nice pantsuit, Mom. It’ll be fine. You know I wear dresses as seldom as possible.”
“I know.” Kate sniffed turning and heading to take a chair at the dining room table beside Jimmy’s high chair.
Elaine pointed me to a chair at the other end of the table, then said, “Oh, Kate, you’d better not sit next to Jimmy in your good clothes. You know how he messes.”
“I suppose. Sorry, Sweetums.”
Kate dropped a kiss on Jimmy’s forehead then moved to the opposite side of the table, taking the chair next to me.
“Can you keep an eye on Jimmy for a minute? Go ahead and start eating or you’ll be late. I’ll dish up the rest of the food and be right back,” Elaine said.
“Sure,” I said, looking doubtfully at Jimmy who beat a spoon on his high chair’s tray.
“We’ll watch him,” Kate agreed as Elaine disappeared into the kitchen.
We made small talk for a few minutes, passing the roast and vegetables, but Mom soon wanted to know if Paul and I had set a wedding date yet.
“No, Mom,” I said, rolling my eyes.
“Well, when are you going to set a date? It takes time to plan a decent wedding, you know.”
“You’ll be the first to know, Mom,” I promised through clenched teeth. I bent my head over my plate to cut another slice of roast. Why are mothers so set on marrying off their daughters?
“Humph. I’d better be.”
I decided to change the subject and see what my mother had to say about Clara. “Mom, there’s a rumor going around that Sam was unfaithful. Did Clara ever say anything about that?”
Kate frowned at me. “Lacey, it’s not nice to gossip about the dead,” she scolded.
I decided to level with her. “I’m not gossiping, Mom. Sam hired me to help him. Sheriff Ben thinks Clara was murdered and that Sam did it. Sam says he’s innocent. I’m just trying to get a handle on who else might have had reason to want her out of the way.”
Kate looked appalled. “You think someone killed Clara because they wanted Sam? Lacey, that’s ridiculous. He’s not that great of a catch.”
I shrugged. “I didn’t say that. It’s possible, though, isn’t it? He’s good looking enough, and has money, too, especially if he inherits the factory, you know. Maybe the killer just wanted their money.”
Mom shook her head. “Their money is all tied up in that stupid factory. Clara complained about it often enough. She said they couldn’t ever do anything fun like travel because it took all their money to keep the factory going. They worked ridiculously long hours. Everyone thinks owning a business is so great, but it’s a lot more work than fun.”
“I suppose you’re right about that,” I said as Elaine returned, ending my opportunity for questioning Kate.
Things weren’t jiving here. Clara had complained of working long hours to my mother, yet Helen had said she only worked a couple of days a week. Hmm. If the rumors of philandering were true, maybe Sam only claimed to work long hours to cover his time with other women.
Elaine took her place next to her son and filled their plates. She’d made a beef pot roast and vegetables—one of my favorite family meals.
“Delicious as usual, Elaine,” I praised her.
“Yes, it is very good,” Kate agreed.
Jealous envy turned my stomach at Kate’s compliment. Why did Kate always praise her stepdaughter, but not her own daughter? I tried to push the ungrateful, whiny thought away.
Jerry walked in as we were almost finished eating, smelling like gasoline and sporting grease covered hands.
Kate got up to hug him, but I settled for saying hello from my chair. Jerry gave me a cold look and only grunted a reply. He headed to the bathroom to wash the grease from his hands.
By the time he had returned, Kate and I were getting into our coats at the door, ready to leave.
Now in clean jeans and tee shirt, Jerry rubbed his son’s head affectionately and took his place at the table.
“I hear you’re gonna help Sam Carter get away with murder,” he sneered at me.
“What happened to innocent until proven guilty?” I asked, trying to keep a civil tone in my voice.
“Innocent, ha.” Jerry said. “And don’t let Paul find you in Sam’s bed or you might be minus a fiancé,”
he said with a pleased smirk.
“In his bed? Are you nuts?”
“Well, he’s had every other woman he’s come in to contact with, so why not?”
I blew out a disgusted puff of air. “You’re really something else, Jerry.”
“Humph.” He snorted as he began filling his plate.
I glared at Jerry, then turned to Elaine. “Thanks so much for dinner, Elaine. I’m sorry for having to eat and run. Here we’re leaving you with the dishes when you already have your hands full taking care of Jimmy.”
“Oh, no problem,” she said smiling at us. “That’s what the dishwasher is for. I’ll see you later, Kate.”
Jerry ignored us. I hurried Kate out the door before the altercation could get any worse.
“Can’t you be a little bit nice to Jerry?” Kate complained as she got into her car.
“Why do you always blame me? Why not scold him for not being nice to me for a change? He insulted me,” I shot back, fighting back angry tears.
She ignored me, getting into her car. As I turned to go to my car, she called out to me, “Aren’t you riding with me?”
“No. It’s closer for me to drive straight home afterward rather than coming back here. Besides, I might need my car,” I said in as level a tone as I could manage. I continued toward my little red Chevy.
I wanted to have my own wheels handy so I could walk out when I felt the need. I’d had a long day and I was tired, and not in the mood to be dependent upon Kate’s whims. Or to listen to any more comments that would emphasize how much she preferred her stepfamily to her own flesh and blood. I turned on my CD player, deliberately pushing the well of fury away, allowing the soft, soothing strains of a violin slow my breathing and loosen the tightness in my throat.
I let her lead the way for the ten-mile drive over country roads to Canton. Kate is a notoriously fast driver and I’d rather follow than have her pass me up in short order.
The weather was lovely, the sun just setting. I pulled down the visor against the glare, but admired the variety of reds in the western sky. One thing I really missed, living in the St. Croix valley, was not being able to see the sunrises and sunsets. All the trees hid the horizon, so when I happened to be up on level ground at the correct time, I made a point of noticing. It always relaxed me.