Dying for a Clue

by Judy Fitzwater

  “Have you got something...”

  “How about one of your bank deposit slips,” Jennifer suggested casually. “That would already have your address. You can simply add your motel and room number.”

  The woman stopped for a moment, as though considering if that would be all right, and then pulled out her checkbook, removed a slip from the back and scribbled something on it. Then she handed it to Jennifer.

  “Great. I’ll be in touch,” Jennifer assured her, stuffing the paper into her bag.

  The woman grabbed Jennifer’s wrist. “You said you’d—”

  ”Make sure you see her. I will. I promise. But, Mrs. Robbins, one person has already died, and another was shot,” she said gently. “I have to be sure that when you see her, Diane will be protected.”

  She’d have to come up with a meeting place that was both public enough to be safe and isolated enough to allow privacy.

  “And why should I trust you?”

  “Because you don’t have a choice.”

  The woman nodded. She’d see her daughter soon. Jennifer vowed. She would see to it.

  Chapter 21

  “Well, this is a first.” Dee Dee raised one eyebrow at Jennifer, who was dropping dumplings into a large pot of broth. “Since when did you come to, let alone volunteer at a Wednesday night church supper? I thought that when you went to a church, it was First Baptist.”

  “Your mom needs the help. She told me so over the phone. You couldn’t expect her to set up tables for over two hundred people all by herself.”

  “She has help,” Dee Dee told her with a sweeping glance around the huge kitchen buzzing with women chopping salad, pulling apple pies from one cavernous oven, checking on vegetable dishes, and extracting huge bowls of coleslaw, fruit salad, and various other food jumbles from the refrigerated units.

  “I believe how she put it to me was, ‘Jennifer wants to come to the Wednesday night church supper. What’s she up to this time?’”

  Jennifer stuck her chin out and continued dropping the soft dough into the broth. It foamed and rolled in the hot liquid.

  “Where’s the pepper?” she asked. “This stock’s not going to be fit to eat if we don’t find something around here to flavor it.”

  “Don’t change the subject,” Dee Dee warned. “Are you here because I told you Mrs. Collier was coming?”

  Jennifer threatened Dee Dee with a large wooden spoon. “I’m here because...because...” It wasn’t right to lie, especially not in church, even if it was only the kitchen. She always felt like God took it personally.

  She could tell Dee Dee she was there because she’d hoped to take a decent home-cooked meal back to the girls, but Dee Dee didn’t even know they were staying with her at Sam’s.

  “While you’re trying to come up with a fib that you think you could technically classify as truth, you might want to cover that pot if you want those dumplings to cook right.”

  As Jennifer capped the pot with an ill-fitting metal lid, she said, “So, does brother Donald make these get-togethers?”

  “Collier?”

  Jennifer nodded, leaning back against the counter and watching Dee Dee mop up the broth she’d slopped on the stove top.

  “Not since his wife died a couple of years back. Real sad story. She was very active in the Right to Life Movement although she never had any children of her own. And then to top off the irony, she died of ovarian cancer.”

  Jennifer winced. “Her husband was in the fertility business.”

  “Yeah. But she believed people shouldn’t tamper with God’s plans for them, not through abortion and not through fertility clinics.” Dee Dee patted her shoulder. “Check out the door. Ruthie Collier has arrived.”

  She was wearing the same navy suit she’d had on at the funeral, complete with white silk blouse and pearl earrings. Her hair was brushed off her full face and her red cheeks and wrapped into a twist at the back. She had Dee Dee’s mother, Fran, in a death grip of a hug.

  The woman drew back but continued to hold both of Fran’s hands. “Oh, darlin’, you don’t know what a relief it is to come here tonight!” Her voice boomed across the kitchen, so that anyone who was the least bit interested couldn’t have failed to hear it. “What with all the goin’s-on we’ve had down at that clinic—police every which way, in and out, in and out. It’s been the most awful mess. Paul is just beside himself. He can hardly get any work done, and the clients...Well, I’ve been on the phone all day Monday, Tuesday, and even this mornin’ trying to reassure them when I wasn’t busy with the arrangements for the funeral for poor Bev. Wayne’s too shaken to make a single decision. Can you believe it? Shot dead, a bullet straight through her throat. Lord o’ mercy, it just makes your blood crawl to think of it.”

  Jennifer nudged Dee Dee. “You didn’t tell me Mrs. Collier was such a great friend of your mom.”

  “She isn’t. That’s just Ruthie’s way. She treats everybody like long lost kin.”

  Good. Maybe Jennifer could get herself adopted into the clan.

  She wiped the flour on her hands onto her smudged, full-length apron and came up behind Fran. “How long should I leave those dumplings in to cook?”

  Fran broke away from Ruthie, and raised an eyebrow. It was obvious where Dee Dee got her attitude. “Use a toothpick to see if they’re done, but turn off the fire before they’re cooked all the way through. They’ll have to sit a while before we get this crowd fed.”

  Jennifer reached past her and offered Ruthie her hand. “Hi, I’m Jen,” she said as bright-eyed and bubbly as a ten-year-old hoping to earn a scout badge.

  Ruthie looked at her, puzzled. “I don’t believe I’ve seen you before.” She said it as if anyone who came to First Presbyterian was supposed to make application through her.

  “Just helping out tonight.”

  Fran gave Jennifer an enigmatic once-over and backed away. “I’d better check on those dumplings.” She touched Ruthie’s hand. “You hang in there. As they say, this, too, shall pass.”

  Ruthie rewarded her with a big smile and started to turn back toward the door.

  Jennifer stopped her with, “Mrs. Collier.”

  The woman turned back, and Jennifer realized she’d better have one heck of a good reason for detaining her.

  “Yes?”

  “I’ve heard a lot about your husband’s work,” Jennifer began.

  The woman smiled as if to say, “So what?”

  “I have a friend who already has a child, two actually, but she’d like to have more. A lot of places would tell her to be thankful she has any, but that doesn’t keep her from wanting another one.”

  That wasn’t a lie. April loved her children more than life itself, and she did want more even if this latest one was giving her fits refusing to be born. Of course, fertility had never been an issue for April.

  “Well, darlin’, you just send her right over to the East Lake Fertility Clinic. We don’t judge a person’s motives or pretend to know what’s best for them. You see those two young’uns out there?”

  She pointed through the door to a little towheaded girl who looked to be about six and a boy closer to twelve, with spiked hair, who looked totally uncomfortable in a white dress shirt and black trousers.

  “They’re my two youngest. If it hadn’t been for the clinic, I wouldn’t have had a one. Now my oldest is scheduled to bless us with a grandbaby in three months. And I have another one around here somewhere who’s still in college, barely twenty years old, and already engaged. Some would say he’s too young, but I say thank God for the miracles He grants us. Of course, sometimes He has to use real-life people to produce them.”

  “Is that what the clinic does, create miracles?”

  Mrs. Collier pursed her lips for a moment, and Jennifer thought she detected a hint of sadness. Then the woman smiled, showing lots of perfectly capped teeth. “I suppose so. For some of us, our children are our lives. They have to be. Not everyone understands that, not even people who make t
hose miracles happen.”

  She patted Jennifer’s hand. “You send that friend of yours on over. Paul will tell her what can be done. He tells it like it is.”

  “You must really admire your husband,” Jennifer said.

  The smile slid from the woman’s face. “Paul has given me almost everything I’ve ever wanted. You tell your friend, maybe he can give her what she wants, too.”

  And with that she left, leaving Jennifer with the impression that Ruthie Collier felt more like a client than a wife. She watched as Ruthie immediately latched onto a tall young man with a handsome profile. She turned back toward Jennifer, pointed, and mouthed, “He’s mine,” and then smiled broadly.

  She knew what Paul had given Ruthie: her six children. But what was it that she’d wanted so much that Paul hadn’t given her?

  “I didn’t find any chicken in this pot when I stirred it, Jennifer,” Dee Dee said, brushing past her with oven mitts covering both hands and carrying the pot of dumplings. “Is this vegetable broth?”

  “They’ll never know the difference.”

  “I knew Mom shouldn’t trust you.”

  “She said make dumplings. I made dumplings. It’s not like you didn’t fry enough chicken to keep the congregation in protein into the next millennium.”

  Dee Dee threw her a disgusted look. “So, you gonna stand there all day, or are you going to help?”

  “Sure. What do you want me to do?”

  “Grab whatever seems done in there and bring it out to the serving tables. And hurry. They’re already queuing up.”

  Indeed, the line snaked down the side of the room and back between two rows of tables. She and Dee Dee were used to feeding a whole lot more people than this at one time, but with the number of cooks in the kitchen, the place was abuzz with confusion.

  “Jennifer.” Fran brought her up short. “Stand back out of the doorway. The ladies know exactly what to do.”

  She stepped back, and several women swept past with dishes. Fran handed her a dozen utensils. “You be responsible for taking in extra serving spoons. Any dish that doesn’t have one, you stick it in. Since you made it, I’m going to put you to ladling out the chicken and dumplings. I’ve got Dee Dee on the lasagna. Lydia’s handling the fried chicken, and Esther’s covering the meatballs. Everyone can help themselves to the salads and vegetables. We have more than enough of those.”

  Sounded simple enough, but throw in lots of hungry kids, and it wasn’t exactly the kind of catered party Jennifer was used to. But what the heck, if it took food to bring people together, than so be it. Fellowship was what it was all about, and if she had to pay for meeting Ruthie Collier by spooning up dumplings, she supposed it was a fair trade. Even if she hadn’t learned a thing.

  Dee Dee was two women over, behind the serving tables. She leaned out past Angie Watson and admonished Jennifer. “Don’t serve a full scoop, and remember to put it in one of the upper corners, not the main compartment, otherwise they won’t have room for much else. And if you get too much broth, it’ll spill over into their vegetables and ruin everything.”

  As if she had never served before in her life. She’d been doing it for several years—with Dee Dee—and still Dee Dee never failed to think she had to tell her how. Fine. If she felt it necessary to exercise her Type A personality, that was okay. Jennifer just wished she were further down the line, on the other side of Dee Dee. She felt sure that, at the end of the evening, she’d be getting a critique of her method.

  Grace was said, and Fran opened the line. Jennifer made sure the dishes in front of her stayed neat and helped the little ones remember the green stuff.

  In no time she found herself dipping from the bottom third of the pot. She glanced around to make sure she’d saved enough, and noticed Ruthie Collier, with four youngsters and the young college student she had claimed, coming up next. Two of the little ones asked for dumplings. They had little else on their plates.

  “This is a family favorite,” Ruthie assured her, offering her own for a serving. She looked at the plate as Jennifer handed it back to her. “Looks like you don’t have much of the chicken left, but that’s all right. The dumplings are the best part.”

  “That’s right,” Jennifer agreed.

  The young man behind her, the one with the handsome profile, shoved his tray in her direction. Jennifer tilted the pot to get a decent scoop, looked up, and dropped her ladle into what was left of the mashed potatoes.

  The young man, at first startled, drew back, recovering nicely. “Hey, that’s okay,” he assured her, obviously responding to the look of terror on her face. “I’ll have something else.”

  All she could do was stammer, “I’m sorry, really, so sorry.” But she couldn’t tear herself from his face as he stared back at her.

  With one blue eye and one brown.

  Chapter 22

  Isolated and public, those were the conditions Jennifer had put on a meeting place for Diane and Anne Marie Robbins. She could think of only one place in Macon that fit that description, the Ocmulgee National Monument on the east side of Macon, especially at eleven o’clock on a Thursday morning. Hardly anybody was around, except the park police, who kept a discreet presence, just in case.

  It was one of Jennifer’s favorite places to visit. Lots of luscious, well-cared-for rolling grass interrupted occasionally by man-made pyramidlike hills left by earlier inhabitants of the area. A peaceful place where the present tried hard not to intrude on a silent, mystical past.

  Some of the mounds held secret chambers, only one of which was open to the public. Jennifer and Sam stood guard at the low, narrow, tunnel-like entrance that led to the meeting chamber where tribal leaders had met long ago to plan, to pray, to resolve their differences. It seemed like an apt place for mother and daughter to come to terms.

  It was certainly better than a carousel at the local park at midnight. She’d seen that one done in so many movies she knew better than to step onto anything that moved when bad guys were after her. Running was one thing. Running in circles was quite another.

  And she had the reassurance of bright sunshine. Everything—even death—looked less ominous in the daylight.

  Sam paced the sidewalk, restless, obviously not at all sure Jennifer had made the right decision by bringing mother and daughter together so soon. He didn’t really need to be there, but he’d insisted on coming, apparently so she could watch him fret. But then, he had that basic newspaperman’s skepticism to work with while she had her feminine instincts. Whenever she ignored them, she was almost always sorry.

  “It will be all right,” she assured him. “No one will be looking for Diane here.”

  “At the moment, I’m not as worried about who’s looking for her as I am about who she’s talking to.” He stuffed his hands in his trouser pockets and rocked on his heels.

  “Anne Marie is her mother. How can you believe she wouldn’t have her best interests at heart? Besides, you didn’t talk to her. I did. She wouldn’t hurt Diane.” She hoped. No, she was sure of it, and she’d appreciate it if he’d stop planting doubts in her head.

  “Maybe not intentionally,” he conceded. “I’d feel better if Diane would lie low until we really know what’s going on.”

  “She’s about as low as she can get. The girls are going bonkers, staying cooped up like they’ve been. I had to go out and buy them Cake.”

  “Cake? I saw a big container of Dee Dee’s cookies in the cabinet. Have they gone through all of them already?”

  Jennifer rolled her eyes. “I think you and I need to start listening to some new radio stations. Hear anything from the police?”

  “They’re following the drug angle. Seems there were some narcotics taken that night at the clinic.”

  “A few moments passed after they shot Johnny and before they came looking for us. Maybe they were setting up a cover by grabbing a few painkillers.”

  “Could be. If those creeps in the alley were actually looking for drugs, I can’t help but
wonder why they’d hit the place so early—before eleven o’clock—rather than waiting until the middle of the night. And there’s always my original question: Why that place?”

  “Could have been the first in a series,” Jennifer suggested.

  “I haven’t heard of any other break-ins at medical facilities.” He shrugged. “The police can’t seem to come up with another motive, so they’re going after what they have.”

  “Did you talk with Wayne Hoffman?”

  “Yeah. Decent guy. Devastated by his wife’s death. Seems like he was totally devoted to her.”

  “So, did he have any idea who might have killed her?”

  “Nah. He didn’t even know she was going to the clinic that night. Gave him some story about taking in a late movie with a friend. He’d fallen asleep on the couch watching some crime show. He didn’t even stir until a couple of policemen showed up banging on his door and told him she was dead.”

  “Home. Alone. No alibi.”

  “Except for the kids sleeping upstairs,” Sam said. He raised an eyebrow at her. “You think he got himself a buddy and a truck, showed up in the alley, killed his wife, and then searched Diane’s dorm room and broke into your apartment just to throw us off track?”

  She glared at him. She hated it when he was so logical. “Even I know that when a spouse dies, the other spouse is always the first suspect. Besides, we still haven’t actually established a link between Beverly’s death and what happened at my apartment or Diane’s dorm room.”

  “Okay, we won’t cross him off. But I did ask around. The neighbors seem to think they were a loving couple, nice family, and everybody I talked with—including acquaintances, family, co-workers—really liked Beverly.”

  A little obvious hate about now might be helpful.

  “Did those colleagues include any of the doctors at the clinic?”

  “Yeah. McEvoy. He struck me as kind of a cold fish, more the scientist than Mr. Congeniality.”

  “What’d he have to say?”

  “That she was a good nurse, but I had the impression he thought she was a little overly involved in her patients’ lives. Too emotional to make good judgment calls.”