“I agree, it is far-fetched,” Libby allowed. Certainly, her dad thought it was. “I’m just covering all my bases.
“It’s like something straight out of a horror movie,” Lori declared. “Although, I suppose just for the sake of argument Ada could have put her dad’s pain pills in his drink. Anyone in the house could have done that. But arranging for Joel Grover’s death? How would she have done that?” Lori sat back in her chair. “And even if Ada had done that, why would she then go to McCready and insist he investigate when the deaths had already both been ruled accidental? Why open up that particular can of worms? She was home free.”
“True,” Libby allowed.
Lori continued. “I’m sorry, but I just don’t see her doing something like that. In a horror movie, yes. In real life, no. In real life, twelve-year-olds tend to run away to their friends’ houses and drink too much and get really, really sick.”
“True,” Bernie said, remembering the really sick part as she buttoned up the top button of her camel’s hair coat and turned up the collar to thwart the stream of cold air blowing on her neck. “I’ll tell you one thing,” she said. “If I were the Sinclair family, I think I’d be doing something else on New Year’s Eve from now on. Like going to sleep at ten and calling it a day.”
“That’s what I do,” Lori volunteered. “The older I get the less I like New Year’s Eve and I haven’t had a New Year’s Eve like the Sinclairs’ have had, let alone two. Thank God.”
“Two deaths on two New Year’s Eves,” Bernie reflected. “Definitely not the Sinclairs’ good luck holiday. I don’t think eating lentils or black beans for prosperity is going to change that.”
“Maybe they should switch to celebrating Chinese New Year,” Libby suggested.
“Or the solstice,” Lori said as she leaned forward, started fiddling with the papers on her desk again, stopped, and leaned back in her chair again. “Now, Peggy’s death was clearly a homicide,” she continued, returning to parsing the topic at hand.
Libby nodded. “As was Henry Sinclair’s.”
“That could have been a hit-and-run,” Lori pointed out.
Libby leaned forward. “Do you really believe that?” she asked.
“I’m not sure,” Lori admitted. “The circumstances suggest otherwise from what you’ve said, but it was dark, the weather was bad, and there are no streetlights or sidewalks where Henry was walking. Add the fact that he was walking with the traffic and dressed all in black and you have . . .”
“A recipe for disaster,” Libby said, finishing Lori’s sentence for her.
The three women shifted in their seats and listened to the sound of a truck going by on the road near the mall.
“On the other hand,” Lori observed after a minute, “I have to say that Ada disappearing the way she did doesn’t look very good. People from around here are saying that she did it, that she killed Peggy and ran over her uncle.”
“And do you believe that?” Libby asked.
Lori frowned. “I mean, it’s possible.”
“But you don’t believe it,” Libby intuited from the expression on Lori’s face.
“No, I don’t,” Lori allowed.
“She’s running because she’s scared,” Bernie told Lori, remembering what Ada had said and how she’d acted.
Lori leaned forward, picked up her pencil again, and began tapping it on the stack of papers in front of her. “I understand how one could see her disappearance as an admission of guilt. Still, it is a stretch. Her killing Peggy . . . and maybe her uncle.” Lori’s frown turned into a grimace. “It’s true she wasn’t getting along with them . . . but killing someone . . . that’s quite a leap. It’s amazing how the people here always jump to the worst possible conclusions.” Lori shook her head and followed up with, “Ah, the joy of living in a small town.”
“You know the family, right?” Bernie asked when Lori didn’t say anything else.
“Not intimately,” Lori replied. “We don’t run in the same social circles, but, yes, I know them. We chat when we run into each other at the grocery or hardware store or the movies. As I just said, it’s a small town. People know people. Or if you don’t know them, you know their relatives. You hear things. Plus, doing what I do”—she indicated her office with a sweep of her hand—“I hear more than most.”
“And . . . ,” Bernie prodded when Lori didn’t continue.
“I don’t like to say bad things about people,” Lori confided. “Repeat rumors and gossip. There’s enough of that going around.”
Bernie sat back, clasped her hands together, rested them in her lap, and waited. In her experience that first sentence was always the prelude to someone doing exactly the opposite.
“But,” Lori said, “I guess this case is different.”
“Anything you could tell us would be very helpful,” Libby told her. Then she, too, sat back; folded her hands in her lap, as her sister had done; and waited.
Chapter 19
Lori reached over and turned the heater a notch higher. After a moment, she began. “I’ve lived in this town for the last forty years and been editor of the Sunset Gazette for the last fifteen and the one thing I can say about the Sinclairs is that there’s always been drama. Lots of drama.”
Bernie asked the obvious question. “What kind of drama?”
“Not comedy, that’s for sure,” Lori replied. “My husband used to say the Sinclairs put the d in dysfunctional.” She went on to give examples. “Like when Ada’s mom, Linda, found out that her husband was having an affair with Vicky—this when Vicky was working for him as an assistant—Linda locked him out of the house.”
“Doesn’t seem unreasonable,” Libby observed.
Lori raised a finger. “That’s where most people would walk away. Does Jeff walk away? Or bang on the door? Or call a locksmith? No, he does not. He gets in his SUV and bashes the front door in.”
“Messy, but effective,” Bernie commented.
“And then,” Lori continued, “to put the finishing touch on everything, Linda goes into the garage, gets a five-gallon container of gasoline, throws the gasoline on the SUV, and lights it up. Fortunately, the firemen arrived in time to save the house from going up in flames as well.”
“Obviously, Linda was unclear on the concept,” Bernie remarked.
Lori went on. “Yes. It was quite the story—not that I wrote about it in the paper.”
Libby cocked her head. “Why not?”
“The publisher is a family friend of the Sinclairs,” Lori told her. “I also couldn’t write about the time Ada got into trouble for shoplifting and for doing E.” Lori extended her hands palms upward. “Mickey Mouse stuff, right?”
Bernie and Libby nodded.
“Most people,” Lori said, continuing her narrative, “would have grounded their kid and left it at that or sent them to a therapist, but Linda hired some people to come and kidnap Ada and take her to some camp or other out west in the middle of nowhere. One of these outdoor, living in the wilderness kind of deals.”
“Like boot camp,” Libby said.
Bernie wrinkled her nose. “Lucky our dad didn’t believe in that,” she commented, thinking about all the stuff she’d pulled in her adolescence.
“Anyway,” Lori went on, “Ada was there for three weeks before she ran away and hitchhiked back.”
“I’m impressed,” Bernie said. “Shows determination.”
“Then she went and had a mini nervous breakdown—or at least that’s what her mother said.”
“And judging from your tone of voice you didn’t believe it?” Bernie asked.
Lori shrugged. “Some people said it was drugs and she was in a rehab facility. The other story I heard was that Ada had tried to stab Vicky, her new stepmom to be, and Linda had worked out a deal and put her daughter in a psychiatric facility so she wouldn’t get arrested.”
Libby thought about the crack someone made at the Sinclairs’ New Year’s Eve dinner about Ada needing to go back on her me
ds and wondered if that’s what the person who’d made the remark was referring to. “How about the rest of the family?” Libby asked.
Lori rubbed her forehead. “Pretty much the same kind of stuff. Lots of fighting, saying bad things about each other, borrowing money and not returning it. And let’s not forget Henry.”
“What about him?” Bernie asked.
“He was a real hound dog, if you get my meaning. Always sniffing around.”
“And his wife put up with it?” Libby asked.
Lori shrugged again. “She didn’t throw him out, if that’s what you mean. Too nice for her own good if you ask me. And,” she continued, “Ada’s brother and sister weren’t exactly stellar in the behavior department, either. I think the brother or maybe it was the sister, I can’t remember now, stole their neighbor’s car . . .”
“Would that be Peggy’s?” Bernie asked.
Lori nodded. “. . . and cracked it up.”
“What happened to the kid?” Bernie asked.
“Nothing from what I heard,” Lori replied in answer to Bernie’s raised eyebrow.
“Peggy worked for the company, too, didn’t she?” Libby asked, rechecking her facts.
Lori nodded. “From the beginning. She’s in charge of shipping.” Lori corrected herself. “Was in charge of shipping.”
Bernie flexed her fingers, trying to get some feeling back in them. “So, the Sinclair kid got away with stealing the car because she or he was the boss’s kid?”
Lori made her hand into a gun and pulled the trigger. “Bingo. Bernie gets it in one. And, I have to add, Vicky’s kids weren’t too much better than Linda’s. In fact, they were even a little bit worse, if memory serves. Lots of parties, lots of drinking, lots of missing school. They both got thrown out of the community college they were going to for cheating.”
“The usual stuff,” Bernie said.
“Maybe for you,” Libby observed.
“Hey, it’s not my fault that you always got caught,” Bernie told her. “Sorry,” she said, turning to Lori. “Go on.”
Lori nodded. “And things got even worse behavior-wise after Jeff and Joel died. By that time, Jeff had divorced Linda and married Vicky, who was claiming that Jeff had left his part of the business to her, while Linda was claiming that Vicky had forged a new will. Linda challenged the will in court, but the two women ended up settling instead. Then Marty and Peggy threw their hats into the proverbial ring.”
“You’re kidding,” Libby exclaimed.
“Nope,” Lori told her. “The whole thing was a bonanza for the lawyers. Finally, everyone came to their senses and settled.”
“I can see that. Do you know the settlement terms?” Libby asked.
Lori jammed her hands underneath her armpits. “Not officially. But I heard that Vicky and Linda got shares, as did the other people who worked there, on the condition that everyone take a salary reduction.”
“Why would they agree to that?” Libby asked. “I don’t think I would.”
Lori answered, “Because the business was on the brink of going under.”
Bernie shook her head. She didn’t get it. “Then why did they stay? It seems like a bad deal to me.”
“My guess?” Lori asked.
Bernie nodded and rubbed her thighs to get the circulation going. Her legs were beginning to feel like Popsicles.
“Because everyone saw the potential of the hair growth product they were developing and no one wanted to give up on it. And they were right. They stayed the course and now everyone is going to get millions. I mean, growing back your hair? That’s golden.”
“But what happened before?” Bernie asked. “Why was Sinclair Enterprises going downhill?”
“A lot of infighting. Distribution problems. Not enough advertising. They had problems with some of their products. Their shampoo left a film on your hair and their conditioners were hard to rinse out. But they’ve improved their products and lowered their prices. And then their formula for their hair regrowing product, Hair for All, didn’t always work. Evidently there were a few glitches.”
“That’s what my dad said,” Bernie noted.
“But new products take a while to develop,” Lori said. “Of course, there was this guy Mason who claimed their product made his hairline recede.”
“Did it?” Bernie asked.
“He was losing hair pretty fast at that point anyway, so it’s hard to tell. But Mason was convinced. In fact, he was so upset he even tried to shoot Joel Grover. I still remember Joel running down Main Street and this guy Mason running after him yelling, ‘Stop, stop. I want to kill you,’ and waving a gun in the air.” Lori couldn’t help it. She laughed at the memory. “Fortunately for Joel, Mason was using his father’s gun and didn’t know how to release the safety.”
“What happened to Mason?” Bernie asked.
“Nothing, really,” Lori told her. “He plea-bargained the charge down to two years’ probation and when that was done he moved away.”
“Unlike the Sinclairs,” Libby noted.
“Well, they certainly don’t seem to bring out the best in each other,” Bernie observed. “It doesn’t sound as if the Sinclair family is big on talking things out. Little things become big things. So, you get this pressure cooker. And the pressure builds and builds and then blammo. Someone goes nuts.”
“The question is who,” Lori said.
“I wish I knew,” Libby told her.
Bernie nodded and pulled the neck of her turtleneck sweater up to her chin. She sighed. Was that her breath she was seeing? “Last question.” If she didn’t get out of there soon, she’d be frozen to her chair. A slight exaggeration, but not by much. “Do you know if Ada had any friends?”
“Not many, from what I understand,” Lori replied. “She pretty much kept to herself. But there was one.”
Bernie and Libby leaned forward and waited while Lori looked up Ada’s friend’s name and her last known address.
“She used to be friends with my daughter,” Lori explained.
Chapter 20
It was late by the time Bernie and Libby left the office of the Sunset Gazette. In the interval, the clouds had gathered, the wind had picked up, and the air smelled of the snow that the weatherman had promised was on its way.
“I need a hot drink,” Libby announced to Bernie as her sister drove out of the parking lot.
“And a hot bath,” Bernie added. She couldn’t feel her feet anymore. “I don’t know how Lori Scheu works there,” she added. “It’s like being in the tundra.”
“There’s no ‘like’ about it. It is the tundra.” Libby stuck her hands under her armpits to try to warm them up. The tips of her fingers hurt from the cold. “I hope I didn’t get frostbite.”
Bernie snorted. “Be serious,” she said.
“I am,” her sister replied. “She’s got to be wearing at least three sweaters under her jacket, as well as a couple of pairs of tights, and wool socks,” Libby said, referring to Lori, “and I’m just wearing one layer.”
“I don’t think all those layers would have helped,” Bernie observed. “I don’t know what would.”
“I’m not sure our conversation helped, either,” Libby said as Bernie turned onto the main road. Libby squinted. Was that white thing she saw drifting down from the sky a snowflake? She wasn’t sure, but she certainly hoped not.
“Of course it did,” Bernie said, turning her head to look at her sister. “We got the name and address of a friend of Ada’s, didn’t we?”
“If the address is valid.”
“Why shouldn’t it be?”
“Maybe she’s moved.”
“And maybe she hasn’t. Maybe Ada’s staying there. And even if she isn’t, maybe this Kate Silverman can tell us something. Maybe she can point us in the right direction.”
“Possible,” Libby admitted. “I suggest we go home, warm up, get ready for the evening rush, and check it out tomorrow. ”
“We should go now,” Bernie countere
d.
Libby frowned. “Why? If Kate Silverman is there now, she’ll be there tomorrow.”
A car behind Mathilda honked and Bernie realized she’d been sitting at an all-way stop sign. She waved an apology and made a right onto Avondale.
“Highbridge Court is on the way home,” she told Libby.
“No it’s not,” Libby protested.
“It’s not that far out of the way,” Bernie replied.
“How can you say that?” Libby demanded. “It’s in the opposite direction.”
“Just a couple of miles.”
“I need to warm up,” Libby said.
“The heat will come on in the van soon.”
Libby made a rude noise. “I’d get warmer holding my hands over a candle.”
“Don’t whine.”
“I’m not whining.”
“Really?” Bernie said.
“Yes, really.”
“Then what are you doing?”
“How about taking my best interests to heart.”
“I don’t even know what that means.”
“You could call.”
“I know I could call, but it’s not the same, and if by chance Ada is there she’ll take off on us.”
“Why would she do that?”
“Duh. Because she probably thinks we let her uncle know where she was.”
Libby checked her watch. “We need to get back to the shop.”
“We still have some time.”
Libby half turned toward her sister. “No we don’t,” she snapped. “Mrs. Hare is coming in for her order.”
“Which is already boxed and waiting for her. Don’t you care about Ada?” Bernie asked, careful to keep her eyes on the road.
“Frankly, at this moment, I care about not getting pneumonia,” Libby retorted.
“You’re not getting pneumonia and we’re going,” Bernie told her.
“Sez you,” Libby shot back.
“Yes, sez me,” Bernie answered.
“Why does it always have to be your way?” Libby demanded.
“Because I’m driving,” Bernie replied, “and our deal is that the driver gets to choose. If you want to drive, just say so and I’ll pull over and then we can go where you want.”
A Catered New Year's Eve Page 14