Smoke in Mirrors

by Jayne Ann Krentz

  Herb sat down in the chair in front of the computer and put on his reading glasses. “Give me what you’ve got.”

  She ran through her notes very quickly.

  Herb thought for a while. “This is easy.”

  “Easy?”

  “Well, I’m sure Leonora and her friend will make it a lot more difficult than it needs to be on accounta when you’re that age, this kind of thing is always more complicated. But we’ll see what we can do. Get her on the phone.”

  Gloria took her cell phone out of her pocket and punched in Leonora’s number.

  Leonora answered on the first ring.

  “Gloria?”

  “Yes, dear. I’m here in Herb’s apartment. He’s ready with his advice.”

  “Great. I’ve got a pen and some paper. Fire away.”

  Gloria looked expectantly at Herb.

  “Feed ’em,” Herb said.

  Gloria frowned at him.

  “What did he say?” Leonora asked.

  “Hang on a second, dear.” She looked up. “What did you say, Herb?”

  “I said, tell Leonora and her friend to cook up a real nice meal for those two men they’re after. Way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. Always has been, always will be.”

  Gloria spoke into the phone. “Herb says to cook a nice meal for the gentlemen in question.”

  “Cook for them?” Leonora sounded skeptical. “Isn’t that a little old-fashioned?”

  Gloria held the phone away from her face. “Leonora says that sounds old-fashioned.”

  “Look, you came to an expert for advice,” Herb said. “I’m giving it to you.”

  “Take it easy, I was just double-checking.” She went back to the phone. “Herb says the old adage about the way to a man’s heart being through his stomach is still valid.”

  “Well, all right. Any advice on the meal?”

  Gloria held the phone away again. “Any advice on what to serve, Herb?”

  “Lasagna would be nice.” Herb leaned back in his chair and got a wistful expression on his face. “With lots of cheese. And maybe a nice green salad made with romaine lettuce and some of those little crouton things. Some red wine. Good bread. And don’t forget dessert. Dessert is real important.”

  “Are you getting this down, dear?” Gloria asked.

  “I got the part about the lasagna, salad, bread and red wine. What about dessert?”

  Gloria looked inquiringly at Herb. “What’s best for dessert?”

  “Pie,” Herb said. “A big slice of hot apple pie with homemade crust. The flaky kind, not that ready-made cardboard crap they sell in the supermarkets. And a big dollop of vanilla ice cream on top.”

  “I can tell someone is pining for the days when he didn’t have to worry about his cholesterol medication.” Gloria chuckled. She went back to the phone. “Did you hear that, dear? Apple pie and ice cream.”

  “I heard.” Leonora paused and lowered her voice. “What did he say about my other question? You know, the one concerning the man who likes to work with tools and is afraid of marriage and having a family?”

  “Hang on, dear.” Gloria looked at Herb. “What about the chances of an academically inclined woman finding true love with a man who likes to work with tools and is afraid of marriage?”

  “Don’t see any problem there.” Herb looked wise and all-knowing. “Been my experience that a man who’s good with his tools can handle just about anything that comes along in life.”

  “That sounded very cryptic,” Leonora said on the other end. “What’s it supposed to mean?”

  Gloria scowled at Herb. “What’s that mean? That stuff about a man who’s good with tools being able to handle things?”

  “Never mind,” Herb said enigmatically. “Tell her to concentrate on finding some good recipes for lasagna and apple pie.”

  “That’s it from this end,” Gloria said. “Good luck, dear.”

  “Wait,” Leonora said. “One more thing. Say this person from an academic background, say she had already served one meal to this man who’s good with tools.”

  “Yes, dear?”

  “Say that what she fed him was leftovers,” Leonora said grimly. “Would that be a problem? Has she already shot herself in the foot?”

  Gloria put her hand over the mouthpiece and looked at Herb. “She wants to know if she has already shot herself in the foot because she served this tool man a meal made up of leftovers.”

  “What kind of leftovers?” Herb asked.

  Gloria took her hand off the mouthpiece. “What kind of leftovers?”

  “Potato salad and some sandwiches.” Leonora hesitated. “The potato salad was made from your recipe, Grandma.”

  Gloria looked at Herb. “My potato salad and some sandwiches.”

  “No problem with your potato salad,” Herb said. “Tell her she’s still in the running.”

  Gloria cleared her throat. “Herb says your friend who served the leftovers is still in the running, thanks to my potato salad.”

  “Oh, good. Thank Herb for us, Gloria.”

  “I will, dear.” Gloria ended the call and dropped the cell phone into her pocket. She beamed at Herb. “I appreciate this, Herb.”

  “If I get her married off for you, you’re gonna owe me, Gloria.”

  “I’ll cook you a nice lasagna-and-apple-pie dinner.”

  “Forget the lasagna and apple pie. You know what I want.”

  She sighed. “Your name on the column.”

  “You got that right. We got a deal?”

  “Deal,” Gloria said.

  They were standing on Deke’s back porch looking out at the cove. Wrench was investigating some bushes at the foot of the steps. Technically speaking it was twilight but it was hard to tell for sure, Thomas thought. The fog had come in again, blurring the line between day and night. The wispy stuff had thinned a little during the afternoon but it had never entirely dissipated. Now, in the face of the oncoming darkness, it was once again growing dense.

  In fact, he decided, the fog this evening was downright eerie. With a little imagination you could almost convince yourself that it was some kind of otherworldly vapor. It seemed to rise up from the cove, weakening the barrier between the real world and the one on the other side of the looking glass.

  Down below on the jogging path, occasional shadowy silhouettes appeared and disappeared in the mist. Each was heralded by the distant, hollow echo of shoes hitting pavement. You could tell whether the next figure to materialize briefly would be a runner, a jogger or a walker based on the rhythm of the footfalls.

  “So, Rhodes was checking up on her?” Deke asked.

  “Either that or he was planning to steal her identity but it seems a little unlikely that he’d choose her for a target.”

  “Yeah. He was checking her out,” Deke said softly. “Just like we checked him out. What the hell is going on here?”

  “Wish I had an answer to that one.”

  “She’s stirring things up, isn’t she?”

  “Who? Leonora?” Thomas exhaled deeply. “I think you can say that, yes.”

  “I had a feeling she would. Like I said, she’s a catalyst.”

  “You were right.”

  A brisk, martial-sounding thud-thud-thud preceded a sturdy aerobic walker who appeared briefly and then vanished in the mist.

  “She seemed right at home at your place last night,” Deke offered very casually. “Using your shower and all.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Cassie mentioned that she passed Leonora on the jogging path early this morning. Said it looked like she was on the way to your house. For breakfast maybe.”

  “We’re both early risers.”

  Deke nodded. “Something else you two have in common.”

  “Something else?” Thomas glanced at him and then went back to watching the ghostly joggers. “You’ve noticed other things Leonora and I have in common?”

  “Sure.”

  Thomas hesitated but curiosity
got the better of him. “Such as?”

  “Hard to explain. Maybe it’s the way you two do things.”

  “The way we do things?”

  “Yeah, you know.” Deke moved one hand a little, searching for the words. “Once you’ve made up your mind to do something, you just keep at it until it’s done. You make a commitment, you keep it, even when you’ve got some doubts. Look at how you’ve stuck by me this past year. I know you’ve wondered, deep down, if I was looney-tunes.”

  “Hey, so what if you are a wack-job? You’re still my brother.”

  “And the Walker brothers stick together, right?”

  “Right.” Thomas wrapped both hands around the railing. “If it’s any consolation, I don’t have any doubts about your mental health. Not anymore. When it comes to your conspiracy theories, you’ve made a believer out of me.”

  “I think I’ve got Leonora to thank for that,” Deke answered. “My point is that she is a lot like you in some respects. Look how she put her life on hold to come here to find out what happened to her half sister. That’s the kind of thing you would have done. Hell, it’s exactly what you did.”

  Thomas shrugged. “You’d have done it for me.”

  “Sure.”

  They both looked out at the cove for a while. The fog coalesced into an impenetrable veil. The thud-thud-thud on the path announced a covey of joggers. They materialized in the mist, three middle-aged men who should have known better. Thomas wondered if any of them had started to notice some problems in his knees. Just a matter of time when you got close to forty.

  “I hear we’re invited to Leonora’s house for dinner tonight,” he said after a while.

  “Cassie called about an hour ago. She said she and Leonora are going to cook for us.”

  “Be a good chance for all of us to put our heads together and discuss strategy.”

  Deke’s face became impassive. “Cassie thinks I’m obsessing.”

  “You are. So what? It’s what we Walker boys do.”

  “Might be a little embarrassing talking about some of this stuff in front of her,” Deke said.

  “Nah. Look at it this way, after six months of doing yoga with you she knows as much about this mess as the rest of us. Maybe she can give us a different perspective, the way Leonora is doing.”

  “I never thought about it that way.” Deke hesitated. “I just don’t want her to conclude that I’m a total space cadet, you know? Things are awkward enough between us as it is.”

  “Give her a chance, Deke. Also, you could look on the bright side.”

  “What’s the bright side?”

  “Worst-case scenario is that, even if Cassie decides you’re a total nut case, we get a home-cooked meal and the company of two very nice ladies tonight.”

  “There is that,” Deke said.

  Maybe Leonora really was some sort of catalyst, Thomas thought. A lot of things around here were starting to show signs of movement and change.

  He and Wrench walked back to the house along the jogging path. The late afternoon rush hour was in full swing. Runners, bikers, walkers and people with dogs crowded the trail. Twice he almost got run down by a jogger. Life in the fast lane was dangerous.

  The phone was ringing when he and Wrench let themselves into the hall. He closed the door and picked up the cordless extension.

  “This is Walker.”

  “Thomas?” Leonora said.

  “I’ll be there in about half an hour.” He glanced at his watch. “I need to shower and change.”

  “No rush. Cassie and I are still fussing with the last-minute stuff. I called to ask if you would mind bringing your tools?”

  A rush of red-hot anticipation warmed his blood. “Don’t worry. I never go anywhere without my tools.”

  There was a short, startled pause on the other end of the line.

  Leonora giggled.

  “Actually, I was referring to your other tools,” she said. “The kind you keep in your workshop. I’ve got a leaky faucet in the bath that has gotten so loud it’s keeping me awake at night.”

  “Oh, those tools. Sure, I’ll bring some of them, too.”

  Half an hour later, freshly showered and dressed in a button-down shirt and chinos, he went into the workshop. He selected a wrench and some other odds and ends he figured he might need to fix a leaky faucet.

  When he emerged, Wrench was waiting for him at the front door, leash in his mouth.

  “Sorry, pal, not this time.”

  Wrench looked pathetic.

  Thomas crouched in front of him and rubbed his ears. “Here’s the situation. There’s a possibility that I might get asked to spend the night at her place. I don’t think I’ve got a chance in hell if you’re there with me. It’s one thing to ask a man to stay over. It’s another thing altogether to invite him and his dog to spend the night. See what I mean?”

  Wrench remained unconvinced.

  Thomas gave him one last pat, rose and went out the door. The wrench was heavy in the pocket of his jacket.

  “Care for some hors d’oeuvres, Deke?” Cassie said.

  She offered him the bowl of steamed and salted soybean pods. He eyed them closely and then took a small handful.

  “These are interesting,” he said. “Tricky looking, but interesting.”

  “You’ll get the hang of it after a while,” Leonora assured him. “Watch me.”

  She put the end of one of the salted pods into her mouth, held on to the other end with her fingers and winkled out the soybeans with her front teeth. She dropped the empty pod into a small bowl.

  Deke tried the same process. There was a loud sucking sound.

  “Got ’em,” he announced. He tossed the empty pod into the bowl.

  “If you can do it, so can I,” Thomas said.

  He put the tip of a soybean pod into his mouth and scraped lightly with his front teeth. When he was finished he held up the empty pod in triumph.

  Everyone laughed and reached for more.

  Leonora exchanged a look with Cassie. So far, so good. The evening was off to a promising start.

  Thomas sniffed the aromas emanating from the kitchen. “Smells good. What’s for dinner?”

  “Spinach and feta cheese lasagna,” Leonora said. “Cassie made an apple pie for dessert.”

  “Lasagna?” Thomas got a dreamy expression. “Oh, man. I really, really like lasagna.”

  “I can’t even recall the last time I had homemade apple pie,” Deke said. “It’s my favorite.” He looked at Cassie. “Didn’t know you could cook.”

  “You never asked,” she said sweetly.

  He blushed furiously, reached for his beer and changed the topic. “Good news, bad news from the grad student who ran the tests on that sample of Rhodes’s nutritional supplement.”

  “What’s the good news?” Thomas asked.

  “It’s just colored sugar and cornstarch.”

  Leonora raised her brows. “And the bad news?”

  “It’s just colored sugar and cornstarch.”

  Thomas grunted. “In other words, we’re not going to get him for selling drugs.”

  “Not this easily, at any rate,” Deke said. “He’s a phony but I don’t think you can say he’s doing anything that’s dangerous or illegal with that nutritional supplement he’s selling.”

  Leonora looked at him. “Anything new on the old Eubanks murder?”

  He swallowed more beer and slowly lowered the bottle. “Like I told Thomas, nothing that would explain Bethany’s interest in the case. According to the old records, it was just one more interrupted burglary in progress.”

  Thomas picked up another soybean pod and put it between his teeth. “Eubanks was in the math department. Bethany was a mathematician. Are you sure there’s no connection?”

  Deke shook his head. “Not that I can see.”

  “You know, she was your wife, but I knew her, too,” Thomas said. “If you ask me, there’s only one reason why Bethany might have taken an interest in an old
murder case. And that’s because it somehow impacted her own work in mathematics.”

  Deke stiffened. “You make it sound like she didn’t care about people.”

  Thomas shrugged. “I’m not sure she did. Not in the way you care about them. Oh, she liked to have people take care of her so that she could focus on her work, but she didn’t go out of her way to help anyone else. You know that, Deke.”

  There was a short, strained silence. Leonora met Cassie’s anxious eyes. She knew they were both wondering if Deke would explode into a furious defense of his dead wife.

  End of dinner party.

  But to her amazement, Deke just scowled.

  “She wasn’t cruel or mean or unkind,” he said, sounding stubborn but not angry.

  “No.” Thomas leaned back in his chair and regarded his brother. “She wasn’t any of those things. She was simply self-absorbed. Most of the time she was off in her own world, doing her own thing. All she wanted was to be left alone with her work.”

  “She was brilliant.” Deke took another swallow of beer. “A genius. Geniuses are different.”

  He didn’t offer anything else in defense of his dead wife.

  Cassie seized the bowl of soybeans. “Have some more?”

  “Thanks,” Leonora said quickly. “I’d love another one.”

  There was a small flurry of action as Cassie shoved the bowl in front of everyone, one by one. Deke and Thomas were both equally willing to be distracted. They helped themselves to more of the green pods.

  Leonora released the breath she had been holding. “All right, it looks like the Eubanks connection is a dead end for now. We’ll have to concentrate on another angle.”

  “I’m not so sure about that,” Cassie said slowly.

  They all turned to look at her as if she had just announced that she could fly.

  “What do you mean?” Deke asked in surprise.

  “If you really want to find out if there’s anything more to the Eubanks murder than what was in the papers,” Cassie said quietly. “I have a suggestion.”

  “Go on,” Thomas said.

  Cassie sat forward. “On Tuesdays I teach a yoga class for seniors at the Cove View Retirement Community. One of the members of that class, a woman named Margaret Lewis, used to be the chief secretary in the Department of Mathematics at Eubanks. She worked at the college for over forty years. She would have been there at the time Sebastian Eubanks was murdered.”