That was a request I had no trouble keeping. As we drove through the shrouded streets, I wondered about the sanity of the trip. Even if we made it to the Barons’ house—which I was beginning to doubt was going to happen—how were we going to question them? We’d both been pretty blunt before, but tonight we were going to push it all of the way. It probably wouldn’t be the smartest thing I’d ever done, and that encompassed quite a few boneheaded moves I’d made in the past.
I kept my thoughts to myself until Maddy neared the house. It had helped our travel that not many other folks were out in the fog.
I touched her arm lightly. “Pull over here, would you?”
She nodded as she did as I’d asked. “Are we going to sneak up on them?”
“We could do that if we parked in their driveway,” I said. “I want to talk to you before we just go barging in there.”
“You’re not getting cold feet, are you?”
“I’m shivering everywhere, including my feet. Maddy, what if we’re right? What if one or both of the Barons killed Richard Olsen? Shouldn’t we have some sort of way to defend ourselves?”
“I’ve still got my stun gun,” she said, “and you’ve got your pepper spray.”
“I’m talking about calling Kevin Hurley,” I said.
“I’m sure the chief of police is going to trot right over to watch our backs, especially after the argument you two had this evening. Eleanor, I hate to break it to you, but I doubt if he’d cross the street to pour water on either one of us if we were on fire. We can handle this.”
“You’re delusional; you know that, don’t you?”
She smiled at me. “I think it’s one of my best features. Don’t worry, we’ll be safe enough.”
I questioned the wisdom of the confrontation, but then I remembered how the couple had come into my kitchen and threatened me. That got my blood boiling again. I wasn’t about to let them get away with it, and the murder investigation almost became secondary in my mind to standing up for myself.
“Let’s go,” I said.
“That’s the spirit.”
We got out of the car and walked the hundred yards to the Barons’ house. They had a porch light on, which served as a glowing beacon for us.
I’d no sooner walked onto the porch when Faith Baron pulled the door open, dressed in a fancy party outfit.
“Come on in, Thompsons,” she said. Then Faith saw that it was us.
“What are you two doing here?” she asked, the pleasant greeting dying on her lips as she spoke. “I thought my husband made it perfectly clear that we were finished talking to you.”
I patted my empty jacket pocket. “We didn’t come to talk. We’ve still got that letter you wrote Richard Olsen, and we wanted to see how you’d tap dance your way out of it when we show it to your husband.”
Faith stepped out onto the porch, pulling the door behind her. “Give it to me.”
“No,” I said. “After we show Steve, I’m saving it for the police.”
She looked surprised by that statement. “How could they possibly care that I was having an affair with Richard Olsen? Just because I slept with him once didn’t mean I murdered him.”
I heard a rustling in the bushes nearby, but when I turned to try to see what it was, I couldn’t spot a thing.
Faith followed my gaze and commanded, “Buttons, get in here. It’s no night for a cat to be out running around in the fog.”
When there was no further movement, I turned back to her and said, “Go get your husband. We’re not leaving until we talk to him.”
“Don’t do this,” Faith said, the commanding tone in her voice becoming all at once compliant. “He doesn’t know, not for sure, at any rate. That letter will kill my marriage.”
“Like you killed Richard?” Maddy asked softly.
“Neither one of us killed him,” she said curtly.
“But you chased him down the road in your car the night he died, didn’t you?” I asked.
I was surprised to see a puzzled expression on her face. “That would have been impossible.”
“How’s that? We’ve got witnesses,” I said.
“They didn’t see us,” she said. “Our car was in the shop that night. Call Bob Pickering and ask him if you don’t believe me. We were supposed to pick it up, but our dinner reservations were too early, so we took my husband’s car. By the time we got back into town, Pickering’s was closed, so I didn’t pick it up until the next morning.”
“You’re lying,” Maddy said, but there wasn’t a lot of belief in her words.
“Call Pickering and ask him yourself,” Faith said. “Just don’t show my husband that letter until you find out I’m telling the truth.” The pleading in her voice died as she added, “If you show him tonight, by tomorrow morning I’ll make sure he gets every inspector on the payroll checking out your pizza place. It’s up to you.”
I turned to Maddy. “This can wait until tomorrow.”
“Okay,” she said.
I looked at Faith and said, “If you’re lying to us, we’ll be back.”
“Fine. Just go now, all right?”
“We’re leaving.”
Maddy and I were twenty yards away, safely buried in the fog, when we heard the front door open. We could both hear Steve Baron say, “What are you doing out here? I thought the Thompsons were here.”
“It’s the cat,” Faith said. “She won’t come in.”
“Then leave her,” her husband ordered. “Get back inside. You don’t want to look like an idiot when our friends get here.”
“Yes, dear,” Faith said, and as she walked back inside, I saw her look back over her shoulder toward us.
We made it back to Maddy’s car, and I dug out my cell phone.
“Who are you calling?” she asked.
“Bob Pickering. I have to see if she’s telling the truth.”
“And if she’s not, we’re going back, aren’t we?”
I nodded. “I’m tired of this mess. I just want it to be over.”
“Dial away, then.”
I had Bob’s home number and dialed it, my hands shaking as I did. It wasn’t just from the cold fog, though. I was getting close to finding the killer. I could feel it.
“Sorry to call you so late,” I said when he picked up.
“I was just catching a movie,” he said. “Don’t tell me you lost another window, Eleanor. You still owe me the deductibles for your insurance on the last two.”
“I’ll come by in the morning and pay them,” I said, “but I’ve got an odd question for you tonight about one of your customers.”
“I don’t exactly have privileged information on any of them,” he said, “so I’ll tell you what I can.”
“It’s pretty simple. Were you working on the Barons’ VW the night Richard Olsen was murdered?”
“No, not that night,” he said, and I felt my spirits soar. So, she’d been lying to me after all.
I was about to thank Bob and hang up when he added, “I’d fixed it that afternoon, but they didn’t pick it up until the next morning. Something about an early dinner reservation, I believe. It came up all of a sudden, and they asked me to stay late so they could pick it up after dinner, but I told them in no uncertain terms that they weren’t the only ones who’d be eating that night, and they could just as well wait until morning to pick it up, which is what they did. Why do you ask?”
“Where were the keys when it was in your garage?” I asked.
“On the peg board with all the rest of them,” Bob admitted. “Believe it or not, I don’t have duplicate keys to all of my customers’ cars.”
“Could anyone get to that board with the keys on it?”
“No, it would have to be one of my mechanics, since the board is back behind the desk.” He thought about it a second, then admitted, “Though if a customer was there paying a bill, they’d be close enough to it to just reach over and snag a key. What’s going on, Eleanor?”
“Nothing.
I was just asking.”
“There’s more to this than you’re saying.”
“We can talk about it tomorrow,” I said. “I’ll be by before nine to pay you.”
“That’s fine. You don’t have to rush.”
“I hate owing anybody money, especially my friends.”
After I hung up, I told Maddy what I’d learned, finishing up by saying, “So we have to take the Barons off our list.”
“Not necessarily,” Maddy said. “Have you ever considered the possibility that they left the car at Bob’s on purpose so they’d have this alibi if anyone found out they’d been chasing Richard all over town?”
“I don’t see how,” I said. “They left the car there at the last minute, according to Bob. I can’t see them going through all that work, then killing Richard Olsen in the heat of the moment.”
“What makes you think the murder wasn’t planned?”
“The knife, mostly,” I said. “It was from his own kitchen. That sounds like it was spur of the moment to me.”
“Or is that what they want you to think,” Maddy said.
“We can go round and round like this all night, you know that, don’t you?” I asked as a pair of headlights started toward us.
The car slowed near us, and for a second I had an irrational thought that the police chief had been following us and was going to arrest us both.
Then the sedan pulled into the Barons’ driveway, and I realized it was most likely the long-awaited Thompsons.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said. “This fog is giving me the creeps.”
“Okay, but I still say we bust in there and take care of this, once and for all.”
“If I thought we had anything that even approached being solid, I’d agree with you. Maddy, whether we like it or not, this is just one more dead end.”
“We’re not just giving up, are we?”
“Maybe for tonight, but don’t worry, we’ll start poking around again tomorrow.”
“That’s my girl,” she said as she started her car and drove me home.
I’d had such high hopes for the Barons as our main suspects, but suddenly I wasn’t all that certain anymore.
Maddy was right about one thing, though. One or both of the Barons might have been clever enough to set the whole thing up.
But if they were that smart, were we good enough to catch them?
By the next morning, the fog had lifted, and the world looked bright and fresh. I had coffee in the dining room as I admired the way the sunlight reflected off the oak that Joe and I had so painstakingly restored. Maddy had tried to convince me to move out soon after my husband’s death, but I couldn’t do it. My life was in a shambles, but I had a home, a haven that protected me from the world and, more importantly, kept a strong link to Joe that would never end.
And one dinner out with David wasn’t going to change that. I’d have to call him sometime soon to let him know that our one chance was over. I might be able to open my heart again sometime, but it wasn’t now, at least not with him. The closeness and easiness we’d experienced almost felt like a betrayal to my husband’s memory, though I knew it was a ridiculous way to look at it.
But feelings weren’t always logical, and mine at the moment were swirling in a thousand different directions.
I got dressed and left the house early. Maddy and I hadn’t made any specific plans for today, but I had a stop to make before I went to the Slice. I owed Bob money, and I was going to take care of that as soon as I could.
I found Bob talking on the phone, his face already frosted with grease.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t know what to tell you,” he said into the receiver. “Your car was running fine when you left here.”
He shrugged an apology, but I just smiled as I got my checkbook out. I knew my deductible, so I could write the check. I probably should have just dropped it off in the mail, but I wanted a chance to thank Bob again personally for taking such good care of me.
“I’ll look at it again, but I’ll tell you right now, I couldn’t find anything wrong with it the first time.” He paused, then added, “Then take it to a Mercedes dealership if you think they’re any better than I am.”
He slammed the phone down with a flourish.
“Let me guess—another happily satisfied customer,” I said as I handed him the check I’d just written.
“Some people shouldn’t own automobiles. I had it in my shop two days, but none of the guys could find anything wrong with it. I didn’t charge her a penny, but did that satisfy her? It did not.”
He shook his head vigorously, then added, “Let’s talk about more pleasant things.” He looked at the check, then said, “Exactly right. You didn’t have to bring it by, though. I trust you.”
“How else could I do this?” I asked as I hugged him.
He pulled away quickly. “Hey, you’re going to get yourself dirty.”
“I don’t care. Thanks, Bob. You’re a lifesaver.”
“Anytime,” he said. As I walked back to my car, he added, “Just not in the next three days. I should be able to get more windows in by then.”
“Hopefully that trend is over,” I said.
I’d come to ask him about the Barons’ VW as well, but as I started to speak, the telephone rang again.
He said, “Pickering’s, hang on a second,” then looked at me. “Was that all?”
“I hate to bother you, but do you have a list of cars that were here the night Richard Olsen was murdered?”
“No, but I could probably scare one up for you. Why, is it important?”
“I don’t know, but it might be.”
He nodded. “I’ll have it for you sometime after lunch. Is that soon enough? We’re really buried right now.”
“That’s fine. Thanks again,” I said, but he was already talking on the telephone again. I would have loved to go through his receipts and appointments right then, but I’d already pushed my luck with him, and if there was one man in Timber Ridge I didn’t want mad at me, it was my mechanic.
I walked in the door three minutes before nine and found Maddy pacing around the dining room of the pizzeria.
“Why isn’t your cell phone on?” she snapped at me.
“It is,” I said.
“Oh, really?” She pulled her own cell phone out and punched in a number. The phone rang and rang until Maddy said, “If it’s ringing, you’re not answering.”
I pulled the phone out of my purse and flipped it open. The screen was blank.
“I must have forgotten to turn it off yesterday. Can I borrow your charger?”
“It won’t fit your telephone,” she said as she stowed hers back into her purse.
“What’s so urgent that it couldn’t wait until now?” I asked.
“This,” she said as she waved a piece of paper in front of me.
“Am I supposed to know what that is?” I asked.
“You should. It’s the paper I pulled out of Richard Olsen’s safety-deposit box.”
“Where’d you find it?” I asked as I held out my hand.
“It was in my jeans. I don’t know how I missed it the first time I checked.”
I tried to smooth the paper out, but it was wrinkled beyond belief. “What happened to it?”
“I washed it, okay?” she said with a snap to her voice.
“It’s not going to do much good then, is it?”
“There’s one thing you can still read. The paper must have been folded just right, but it’s still there.”
I studied the paper but couldn’t make anything out. “I’m sorry, I don’t see it.”
She snatched the paper from me, then frowned as she looked at it. “It was right there,” Maddy said as she pointed to a spot. “Hang on a second.”
She turned on one of the lights and held the paper up to it. “Come here. You can still see it.”
I leaned forward and tried to see what she was talking about. At first I missed it, but then she shifted it just
right, and for a moment, I caught a glimpse of something.
It was a series of letters and numbers: SN3 769.
“What does it mean, though?” I asked Maddy.
“You don’t bank at Third Southern National, do you?” she asked.
“You know I don’t,” I said.
“One of my husbands used to,” she said. “I’ve been staring at that number for an hour waiting for you to answer your phone or show up. I’m not positive, but I think Richard Olsen had another safety-deposit box that we didn’t know about.”
“Even if that’s what this is—which I’m not saying at all—we still can’t get in. We need Sheila for that.”
“Then let’s go see if we can find her,” Maddy said. “We’ve got time before you have to rush your crust.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “She’s not exactly our biggest fan at the moment, is she?”
“All the better to ask her before she leaves town,” Maddy said.
“How do you even know where she’s staying? There’s no furniture left at the house, and I don’t see Sheila curling up on the floor, do you?”
“I’ll have Tom Frances call her and have her meet us.”
I couldn’t think of any more reasons to say no. “Call him, but if he refuses to do it, I’m making dough.”
“He won’t say no,” Maddy said.
She called him, and within one minute, he agreed to make the call.
“Remind me never to get on your bad side,” I said.
“You’ve got it.”
Her phone rang, and after a brief conversation, she hung up. “Funny thing is, Sheila’s at her brother’s house after all. Tom wasn’t too pleased with me, but he said he’d come by in half an hour. Come on, what are we waiting for, a golden invitation?”
Reluctantly, I followed my sister out to her car. “We’re running out of time, you know that, don’t you?”
“All the more reason to jump on this while we can. Just take it easy, we’ll be there in a flash.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of. You drive too fast, you know that, don’t you?”
“At least it’s not foggy anymore.”
A Slice of Murder Page 24