“You must be the aunt whom Tiffany stayed with for a few days last week,” I said. “Tiffany’s my children’s favorite babysitter. I had no idea she had a half brother or sister in town.”
Sabrina grimaced and took a pause from the cigarette she was inhaling along with her cherry pie. “She doesn’t. I ran into Lindsay for the first time in …two decades last year here at the club. But, unfortunately, I suppose, I asked her about her son. She’d had a little boy. She said he died in a car accident.”
“Oh, how horrible!” Then I paused, trying to make sense of this news. Her son had died, yet minutes ago Lindsay and another waitress had been complaining noisily about parenting. Then I remembered that this affair with Preston had taken place more than twenty years ago. She’d most likely had another child or two since then. “How old was he when it happened?”
“She didn’t say. She just snarled, ‘He died in a car wreck,’ and turned her back on me. As if the whole thing were my fault.” She shook her head indignantly, then glanced straight ahead and smiled. I was slightly startled to see Emma already seated in her chair. The tall, curved wing-backs had blocked my peripheral view.
“There you are,” Sabrina said, as Kimberly returned to the table, too. “You were gone so long I was starting to think you fell in.”
“We were adding up our scores.” Emma laced her fingers and flashed one of her stunning smiles at me. “The four of us tied. According to our rules, that means we buy for the person on our right. So thank you for the cheesecake, Molly.”
I rang the doorbell at Stephanie’s house. Estelle, the nurse, answered. She gave me a smile that showed she remembered me and said, “Hello. Mrs. Saunders is upstairs.” She glanced behind her shoulder, then whispered, “You wouldn’t happen to know anyone looking to hire a private nurse, would you? I could start right away.”
“No, I don’t. Sorry. I’ll let you know if I hear of anything.” This gave me the opportunity to speak to Estelle in private and complete our conversation from this morning.
I stepped inside and said quietly, “When I was here earlier today, you started to tell me about another time when Stephanie was going through her safe.”
She nodded and whispered, “I got the feeling she was searching it as a result of something the policeman had said to her.”
“What did he say?”
“I really don’t know. I was upstairs at the time and couldn’t hear. But when I came down, I saw—”
“Molly, hello,” said Stephanie as she headed down the spiral staircase. “I thought I heard the doorbell.” Wearing purple super-stretched pants and a matching knit top, she was not dressed to her usual standards. I almost outclassed her in my preppy-putter look, having come straight from the club. Stephanie smiled at the nurse. “Estelle, I didn’t realize you were still here. I thought you’d already left to get those supplies that Mikey so desperately needs.”
“I was just on my way out,” she answered. She grimaced at me to show her frustration with her employer, then said to me, “Will I be able to get anything for you, too?”
“Uh, no.” She had hit the word will so hard it could only have been meant as a clue. She was trying to tell me Stephanie had searched the safe for Preston’s will. “But thank you for asking.”
Estelle nodded and went out the door.
So Stephanie had apparently examined a copy of Preston’s will. She might have suddenly become worried she hadn’t been named the sole beneficiary. Perhaps Tommy had inquired about another relative, such as the Muellers.
“It’s been so long since I had a baby,” Stephanie said to me, letting out a sigh of deep exhaustion and sweeping some errant tresses into place. “I’d forgotten how they go through diapers.” She turned and headed for the kitchen. “I’ve got to get some lemonade. Mikey nurses constantly. It sucks the fluid out of me so fast I feel like a wrung-out sponge.”
I followed, realizing this was the first time I’d been in the kitchen since I’d seen Preston’s body. I eyed my surroundings for signs of the previous violence. The rug was now spotless as was the oak kitchen floor where Preston’s body had lain.
Stephanie strolled to the refrigerator, showing no signs of the hesitancy and queasiness I felt. This particular part of her home had been where her husband had died a horrible death. Yet she seemed utterly unfazed.
All along, I had tried to blame shock for her odd actions. She definitely wasn’t in shock now. The only other explanation I could come up with chilled me: that Stephanie had killed Preston.
She filled a beautiful, hand-blown indigo-colored glass with lemonade from a matching pitcher, which she returned to the refrigerator. After taking a long sip, she said, “Oh. I’m sorry. Would you like some lemonade? It’s fresh-squeezed. That Estelle is an absolute wonder. I’ve offered her a permanent position.”
I shook my head and sat down at the oak, country-style kitchen table. “Okay, Stephanie. Explain to me why you didn’t tell me Hank Mueller was Preston’s brother-in-law.”
“Was that important?” An infuriating smirk crossed her lips.
“Oh, cut the crap, Stephanie. I’ve known you too long to fall for the blonde-bimbo routine. What are you trying to pull on me, and why? You’d better clue me in fast or you’re on your own.”
She pulled out a ladder-back chair across from me and, in what looked almost like a swoon, slid down onto it.
“What do you mean?” she asked, appearing to be quite shaken by my words.
“I’ll tell Sergeant Tommy everything I know. And I won’t do one more thing to try and vindicate Tiffany, which, as you might recall, is how you suckered me into this whole mess in the first place.”
Stephanie pursed her lips so tightly they looked white despite her lipstick. As if she were making a supreme sacrifice, she eventually said, “I neglected to tell you, because it was our own private business.”
“If that’s the best you can do, I’m going straight to Tommy Newton with everything I know.”
Stephanie clicked her tongue in annoyance at me, leaned back in her chair, and crossed her arms. “Preston and Hank Mueller disliked each other, intensely. Preston felt forced to keep up social appearances. They were both excellent golfers, and when the Muellers joined the club where we were already members, Preston realized it would have been uncouth not to invite him to play a round or two together. Once they did, I suppose they enjoyed themselves. Although, personally, I think golf is the world’s most idiotic sport. Grown men thwacking away at a tiny little ball, chasing it for miles. Honestly, Molly. Why ever do you do it?”
“Most sports are comprised of ‘thwacking at’ or ‘chasing’ some sort of ball. Let’s just get on with your story, shall we?”
She gave a lazy sigh. “At any rate, Hank joined Preston’s regular golf group and they went to the club every Tuesday. Even when their game was snowed out or rained out, they met for drinks.”
“Who belonged to the foursome before Hank joined last year?”
“It was some older fellow. He dropped out of the group six months prior to Hank Mueller’s arrival in Carlton.” She gestured casually with one hand “Had a heart attack or moved away. Whatever.”
“Why did Hank and Preston dislike each other?”
She widened her eyes, but said only, “Personality clash.”
“That’s it? A ‘personality clash’? A clash that was so severe you neglected to even mention to me the two men were in-laws?”
She smiled at me, took a long drink of lemonade, and murmured, “Mm-hmm.”
“Oh, come off it, Stephanie! That excuse is utter nonsense, and we both know it!”
“‘Come off it’?” She rolled her eyes. “You sound like a child, Molly. No wonder you managed to blend in with my daughter’s friends so easily.”
I balled my fists on my lap. “Tell me the truth, for once! Why do you suspect your daughter of killing her own father? Did she confess to you?”
“Of course not,” she snapped, glaring at me. “I told you wh
y. Because Preston said ‘Tiffany,’ before he died.” So now she was angry at me? That did it.
“Was that before or after you searched his pockets?” I asked loudly. “Before or after you dragged him into the kitchen? You want to know what I think, Stephanie? I think you killed him.” By now I was shouting, and Stephanie’s gestures for me to quiet down only increased my anger. “I think you were so fed up with his unfaithfulness you shot him. You invented this thing about him saying ‘Tiffany’ before he died, and you called me because you knew I have a soft spot for your daughter.”
“Keep your voice down, Molly,” Stephanie finally growled at me.
She had a legitimate reason to hush me, not wanting me to wake the baby, but I was too enraged now to care. I shouted, “All that I’ve done is muck up Tommy’s investigation, when it was you all along! I’ve loused up my marriage for you! Because my husband was right about you all along. He was right about everything! And I’ve been a damned idiot, thanks to you!”
Stephanie was now staring into her lap, her cheeks crimson. For a moment, the silence rang in my ears, but then I heard a small whimper behind me and turned. Tiffany was standing in the kitchen doorway. One look at her face told me she had overheard much of my tirade.
“Oh, no,” I moaned, rising. Her short hairstyle and over-sized, grungy clothes made her look painfully waif-like. I hadn’t stopped to realize it was after four; high school let out at half past three. “Tiffany. I didn’t know you were home. Everything you’ve just heard was said out of anger. It wasn’t—”
“I did shoot him,” Tiffany said, crying.
Stephanie rose and rushed over to her, wrapping her arms around her daughter. “Don’t listen to her, Molly. She’s just trying to protect me.”
“Preston wasn’t my father,” Tiffany sobbed. “Hank Mueller is my father.”
“What?” I cried, confused now to the point of desperation. “You’re saying your uncle is your father?”
“How did you know that?” Stephanie asked Tiffany in a harsh whisper.
“Aunt Sabrina told me. Last year.”
Stephanie grabbed Tiffany by both shoulders and said firmly into her daughter’s weeping face, “Sabrina had no right to tell you. I would have told you myself if I had any idea you’d find out that way.”
Tiffany was shaking her head and sobbing loudly.
Stephanie raised her voice and said, “Tiffany, that was just a biological fluke. Preston is your father in every other sense of the word.” She cast a sideways glance my way, then returned her attention to her daughter. “Preston and I were already engaged, and I’d just found out he’d…” She stopped, studying her daughter’s face. Stephanie shrugged and said gently, “Hank was just a one-time fling when I happened to be vulnerable. I had cold feet about the marriage, and Hank and I were drunk. That all happened before Hank had even started dating your Aunt Sabrina. It was a bad mistake on our part. which your father, Preston, and I put behind us a long time ago.”
Though I said nothing, I had a rare moment of appreciation for what Stephanie had just done. Stephanie must have found out that Preston had cheated on her when they were engaged. That was why she’d been receptive to Hank’s advances. She’d omitted this detail because she didn’t want to smear Preston further when speaking to Tiffany.
Tiffany, still shaking her head and crying as if she hadn’t heard a word Stephanie had said, leaned past her mother’s shoulder to look at me. Tiffany moaned, “He said he was going to have Cherokee arrested. So I killed him. I—”
“Then where’s the gun?” I interrupted. “How did you get hold of it in the first place? And who was that shooting at us from behind the bushes?”
I paused. Stephanie released her grip on her daughter as both she and Tiffany looked at me. Tiffany’s sobs quickly began to subside as we all realized the same thing. “Damn.” I punched my thigh and cried, “You idiot!” meaning me. “I got so angry I’d forgotten about that.” I turned to Stephanie. “You weren’t the murderer. You were in the house when the person shooting at us ran away.” I looked at Tiffany. “And you were with me. So unless you hired someone to shoot at us…”
Tiffany shook her head, dabbing with a tissue at her eyes tear-streaked cheeks. “No, I didn’t hire anyone. I just claimed I shot Daddy because what you were saying to Mom made sense. And I couldn’t bear to let her go to jail.”
My knees were shaking. I sank back into the chair, struggling to regain my composure. “Don’t mess around with making false confessions, Tiffany. You can get into big trouble that way.”
Stephanie, too, was horribly shaken. She pressed her temples with the heels of her hands for a moment, then she combed her fingers through her hair and turned toward Tiffany. She gently touched her daughter’s face and said, “Look at me, Tiffany. I had nothing to do with your father’s murder. Nothing. Don’t let anyone—” she turned her head to give me a quick glare and repeated pointedly “—anyone, convince you otherwise.” She took a deep breath. “Heaven knows this is a dysfunctional family, but show me one that isn’t. And this is all we’ve got. The three of us are going to get through this as a family.”
For a moment, I thought she was including me in the trio, but then I realized to my relief that she meant Michael. “Stephanie, I’m sorry I falsely accused you. It’s just that your reactions have been so bizarre. I can’t figure out why you’ve done a single thing you’ve done since this all started. I wish you could explain it to me.”
“I wish I could, too, Molly.” She managed a sad smile. “I’m going to check on the baby. And if he’s still asleep, I’m going to join him.” She turned to leave and said, “Tiffany, why don’t you show Molly to the door, please.”
This was my chance to say something to Tiffany, to compensate somehow for my horrible gaffe in not checking to make sure she wasn’t within earshot. But I was at a loss for words. If only that had been the case a few minutes earlier.
We trudged silently to the front door, which Tiffany opened for me. She stopped suddenly, glanced down, and said, “Oh.” Then she called over her shoulder, “Mom, we got another package.”
Stephanie changed courses at this news, heading toward us instead of up the stairs. “It must be another baby gift,” she said happily.
The package that Tiffany had retrieved from the porch was a cube of about six-inches, wrapped in brown paper. The dimensions weren’t the same as the ones I’d seen from STOP. Yet something, maybe the brown wrapping, made me—to quote one of my favorite quips from Yogi Berra—feel as if this was “deja vu all over again.” So I said to Tiffany, “Can I see that?”
Without waiting for Tiffany’s answer, I snatched the box from her. It had a typed address label, to Mrs. Preston Saunders at the complete mailing address. No markings indicated how the package had arrived. There was no return address. My heart pounded. I sniffed at it and held it up to my ear.
Both Tiffany and Stephanie looked at me as if I were insane, but made no comment.
“Were you expecting a package?” I asked.
“Let me have that, Molly,” Stephanie said, reaching for it. “We’ve been getting baby gifts from acquaintances in other parts of the country. I’m sure that—”
I held it away from her.
“Give that to me, Molly. It is mine, isn’t it?”
“I’m sorry.” I backed out the door wrapping my arms around the package to prevent them from even touching it. “I know this is crazy, but the label reminds me of the one I got from STOP. I’m taking the box to Tommy Newton to make sure it’s safe before anyone opens it.”
Stephanie put her hands on her hips and glared at me. “Pardon me for pointing this out to you, Molly, but you received dog excrement, didn’t you? If that’s what’s in this box, it would certainly be distasteful, but hardly dangerous. Now give me my package. This minute.”
I shook my head, muttered “Sorry,” and took it to my car. The two Saunderses stood staring at me in the doorway as I drove off.
I could
only guess at how Tommy would treat me when I gave the package to him.
For once, Tommy merely listened when I barged into his office at the station house and set the package on his desk. He agreed that it was “better to be safe than sorry,” and told me to wait in his office while he had it X-rayed.
After a long wait in Tommy’s tiny office, I grew bored and impatient. I made use of the time by making my flight reservations for Saturday morning. That bought me just a little more than three days to solve this thing, or I’d be stuck in Florida till the police figured it out. If they ever did. By the time my flight arrangements were completed, it was almost five thirty. Next I decided to call my husband at work to do some marital damage control. To my surprise, the receptionist told me he’d left for the day a half hour earlier.
I called home and he answered on the first ring.
“Jim,” I said quickly, feeling a little on edge, “Is everything all right?”
“If you call my being married to Nancy Drew all right, I suppose so,” he answered testily. “Where are the kids?”
“At Jon’s and Katie’s houses. I’m picking them up at six.”
“I’ll go get them now.”
“Why? I’ll get them on my way home.”
“Because I want to explain to them why they’re flying with you to Florida tonight, that’s why.”
My stomach knotted. “I didn’t even golf with Preston’s foursome. I barely even met them. So please don’t be upset with me.”
“We’ll talk about it when you get home. Are you about to leave?”
This was not a prudent time to let on that I was currently having a possible explosive device analyzed at the police station, so I just said that yes, I’d be leaving here soon.
But several minutes passed. By the time Tommy finally returned, I was in the process of writing a note stating that I couldn’t wait any longer so please call me at home. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him heading toward me carrying some kind of a long, bouncy tube by the middle. As he neared, I realized it was a “party snake,” those springs that pop out of peanut cans to scare the living day-lights out of some unfortunate peanut lover. That must have been what was in the box. I felt only slightly vindicated about having snatched it from Stephanie. Though she wouldn’t have enjoyed something springing out at her, it was actually a less onerous—and odorous—practical joke than dog poop.
Death Comes to Suburbia (Book 2 Molly Masters Mysteries) Page 16