Murder at the Book Group

by Maggie King

  “Carlotta?”

  “Yes, Carlotta. Fancy-assed name. Maybe she changed it to Carlene after the incident with the fiancé and the tapes.”

  “Fiancé? Tapes?” Maybe I was about to hear an expanded version of Jeanette’s fiancé story. Jeanette had alluded to tapes that one of Carlene’s lovers had made.

  Linda laughed. “Sorry. I’m getting ahead of myself. Where was I?”

  “The Christmas party.”

  “Ah, yes. The infamous Christmas party.” Linda took a deep breath and began. “Carlene had her fiancé with her, a lawyer. He was actually very nice, but for some reason felt he had to tell us that he and wifey-to-be didn’t have sex ’cause they were born-again Christians. I mean, why did I have to know that?

  “Anyway, the four of us kind of hung out together at this party. On the way home, I noticed that B.J. reeked of perfume. When I asked about it, he said he’d danced with someone who’d gone overboard with the stuff. I was suspicious but didn’t really know what to think. Well, I did know what to think, just didn’t want to. I didn’t remember him dancing with anyone. I came to realize that he and that floozy Carlene took off somewhere for a quickie. So much for her being a born-again Christian.”

  I wanted to cheer in triumph at the confirmation of B.J.’s identity. I hoped my feigned amazement at Carlene and B.J. having a quickie masked my elation. “You’re kidding! A quickie? Did they leave the party at any point?” I doubted Carlene was a born-again Christian on either coast, so I left that aspect of Linda’s account alone.

  “I’m sure they did, but all I would have thought was that they were going to the restroom. I mean, it was a party, who really pays attention?” Linda’s expression turned hard. “Maybe they did it in a stall.”

  Or on a desk. Aloud, I asked, “You said you came to realize that they went off somewhere. How was that?”

  “It was the tapes that I found in B.J.’s desk. Tapes of him . . . and Carlene. You can just imagine what they were doing.” A note of pain crept into her voice, replacing the previous hostility.

  “Oh, Linda, I’m so sorry—”

  With an impatient gesture, Linda dismissed my expression of sympathy. “I started following Carlene home from work. I expected B.J. to show up but I never saw him. Maybe they went somewhere else. One night I went to her apartment and, get this—there was another man there! He said she didn’t live there, but I didn’t believe him and said I’d wait. I sat by the pool, one of those apartment complexes with the courtyard, pool, the whole Southern California bit. And, finally, she came home.” She paused in her narration.

  Jeanette had mentioned Marty’s Hideaway as Carlene’s “trysting” spot when Hal was visiting, which might explain B.J.’s not showing up at the apartment. Should I tell Linda it was Carlene’s brother Hal in the apartment? And ask if she’d recognized him at the memorial service? No, I concluded. She’d wonder how I had that information. “And then?” I asked.

  “I told her to stay away from my husband. Or she’d regret it.”

  “How did she respond to that?”

  Linda shrugged. “Don’t remember. I do remember neighbors opening their doors, watching us, and the guy from Carlene’s apartment coming out and escorting her inside.”

  So Linda was leaving the pool incident out of her tale. I nudged her some more. “I guess your confrontation was pretty loud to get the neighbors outside.” She allowed that the exchange was heated but didn’t offer additional information.

  “The next day I sent copies of the tapes to her. And to the fancy lawyer. Thankfully he had given me his card at the party.”

  I felt my sympathy for Linda slipping away. It was bad enough to send the tapes to Carlene, but sending them to the lawyer was over the top. Linda had no doubt suffered pain over B.J.’s infidelity and the tapes might have been too much to bear. But still. As for B.J., where was he in all of this? Had he emerged unscathed from this tragedy of sorts? Trying to sound neutral, I asked, choosing my words and tone with care, “When were the tapes recorded?”

  “According to the date stamp, exactly one week before the Christmas party. I guess the tramp wasn’t cut out for celibacy.”

  No, Carlene and celibacy were not a match made in heaven. Aloud, I asked, “Did she know it was you who sent the tapes?”

  “As opposed to who? B.J.?” She laughed. “Why, I never thought of that. So I guess she never knew for sure who sent them.” She sounded pleased with the notion.

  “Did Carlene stay away from B.J. after that?”

  “I don’t know. I continued to follow her for a while until B.J. told me she’d left the company. I watched out for any new tapes, but never found any. Of course B.J. probably noticed that they’d disappeared and couldn’t very well ask me about them. So if there were others he’d certainly stash them somewhere where I couldn’t find them. As for Carlene . . . I don’t know if she wound up marrying the celibate lawyer. He certainly didn’t deserve a woman like her,” she sniffed. “Unless he was the forgiving sort.”

  “What was the lawyer’s name?”

  Linda made a show of summoning the name from her memory before shaking her head. “Can’t remember.”

  Likely story. I felt sure his name was seared on her brain for eternity and her lapse owed to contrariness. “Did you ever confront B.J. about the tapes?”

  “Nope.” She shook her head emphatically, spraying water on me in the process. It dawned on me that we were still standing and that, aside from the towel she wore like a scarf, Linda was still naked. Should I sit on one of the wooden benches and give my feet a rest? No, that would place my line of vision somewhere I didn’t want it to be. I started shifting from one foot to the other and continued to look straight into Linda’s smudged eyes.

  She went on. “So, like I said, Carlene left the company. And then, let’s see, B.J. and I moved to Cincinnati. His dad was sick, so we decided to be dutiful children. I had an idea that moving back to our roots would help our marriage. By that point I was blaming the L.A. environment for all our problems. But they got even worse in Cincinnati.”

  Cincinnati. I recalled Jeannette’s saying they’d moved to a “cold-assed place that started with a ‘C.’ ” Cincinnati qualified on both counts.

  “And how did you end up in Richmond?”

  “After B.J.’s dad died my mom got sick. She lives in Richmond, so again we did the dutiful children bit and moved here. B.J. continued to tomcat around. My mom and sister urged me to get a divorce. After all, the kids were grown. And so I did. Then I married Lloyd. And B.J. married his bimbo of the moment.”

  “Bimbo?” Then I realized that I was missing my prompt to act stunned and confused at Linda’s revelation that she and B.J. were no longer married. Acting confused wasn’t a problem, it was remembering to act confused that could trip me up. “You mean . . . you’re not married to B.J. anymore?”

  “Well, no,” Linda rolled her eyes. “Why on earth would I be, after the hell he put me through?”

  “Yes, well, you have a point. So that wasn’t B.J. with you at the memorial service the other day?”

  Linda sighed. “Actually, it was. When Lloyd and I showed up, B.J. latched on to us. Most unfortunate. Lloyd can’t stand him.”

  “That’s right, now I remember. You were with two men. Which one was B.J.? The tall blond one?” I figured that guessing the wrong one added credence to my not knowing who was who.

  “The dark-haired one in the shades. Brooding, kind of. Cross between a gangster and the guy in Wuthering Heights, what’s his name?” Linda snapped her fingers. I always wondered why people used finger-snapping to summon up stray bits of information.

  “Heathcliff,” I offered. From what I’d gleaned of B.J., I thought him too shallow to compare him to a bitter, tortured, and fictional Victorian romantic. But lest we got sidetracked by literary characters reinvented as modern-day sleazebags, I asked, “So it sounds like you and B.J. are on good terms. Despite Lloyd’s feelings.”

  “I suppose.
We have to be for the kids and grandkids. Plus we live in the same area, so I run into B.J. and the bimbo more often than I’d like. Like here.” She wrinkled her nose in distaste.

  “Here? At the gym?”

  “Yeah. I haven’t been here on a Sunday. And believe me I won’t be again. First I run into Kat, then B.J., and now you.”

  “B.J.’s here—now?”

  “I just said he was.”

  I wanted to meet the now infamous B.J., but it struck me as unseemly to ask Linda to introduce us. It shouldn’t take me long to find someone who resembled the image in the photo. But I still had issues to iron out with Linda and didn’t want to let her go. If I missed B.J. I could always ask Kat to look up his address and phone number. But as with Linda I preferred to approach him in person. “What does B.J. stand for?”

  “Benjamin Joseph.”

  Linda was starting to fidget, so I stepped up the pace of our conversation. “How did you come to meet up with Carlene again? At the signing?”

  “Sometime before the signing, I got an e-mail from Creatures ’n Crooks announcing that Carlene would be there. Of course, I had no idea it was my old enemy, what with her name being different and all. When I saw her, I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was like it was yesterday—she hadn’t changed one bit. When she claimed she didn’t remember me or B.J.—that really got my goat. Of course, I knew she was lying.”

  “She was probably afraid of you.”

  “As well she should have been,” she said, barking a laugh. “I got to talking to Kat and she told me about the book group and Carlene’s website. She gave me her card and said to let her know if I wanted to come to the group and she’d give me directions. Which I did.”

  “But why? Why did you show up when you loathed Carlene so much?”

  “To make her squirm.” Linda noted my discomfort and looked amused. “Actually, I thought she and I could chat a bit. Maybe work out a financial arrangement. Know what I mean, Hazel?” She gave me a provocative look.

  What could she mean? Then it hit me. “The tapes! You still have the tapes!”

  “Bingo! You win the prize!” With yet another amused look, she said, “I’m sure Carlene wouldn’t have wanted her husband to see them.”

  I felt stunned. I’d certainly opened the floodgates. Either I was good at this stuff or simply lucky enough to approach someone who was ready to open up about Carlene. It made sense—I didn’t pose a threat, and so far my agenda for ferreting out Carlene’s killer remained hidden. I hoped. I wish I’d thought to bring along my recorder. All the gadgets in the world did me no good if they weren’t at hand.

  “But Linda, that’s—that’s blackmail.”

  She pretended to recoil in horror. “Oh, Hazel, blackmail’s such an ugly word. So distasteful. But yes, I was planning to lean on her a teensy bit. A simple business arrangement. I’m always a little strapped for cash . . .”

  I narrowed my eyes. “How did you know she had a husband?”

  “It says on her author blurb that she and hubby lived in Richmond. Gotcha, Hazel!” After yet another harsh laugh, she went on. “Remember how I said she looked the same after so many years? Those tapes could have been made yesterday.”

  “Meaning that if her husband saw them, he’d think they were made recently.”

  I wanted to smack the smug look off Linda’s face, but I opted for bringing her down several notches. “What about the date stamp? You said it was a week before the Christmas party.” The now years-old date would make the tapes an unpleasant viewing experience for Evan but far from a show of infidelity.

  Linda stopped and looked uncertain for an instant before she recovered her aplomb. “Oh, you must be able to remove the date stamps. With today’s technology, I’m sure that’s not a problem. Speaking of technology, in 1996 I wasn’t into the Internet like I am now. I could’ve gotten even more money from her if I’d threatened to digitize the tapes and upload them.”

  The downside of the Internet—it opened up countless ways to humiliate people on a global scale.

  Linda said, “But there’s no point in discussing it now, is there? She’s dead. Killed herself, according to Kat. I had a tape right in my purse. But when I couldn’t manage to talk to her alone, I left, thinking I’d try another time.” I had an image of Linda going through her purse and pulling out her book. But she’d pulled out a number of other items as well—a VHS tape among them. Had Carlene seen it? If so, her already elevated anxiety level likely ratcheted up several notches. At last I had a bead on what Carlene meant by a “huge mistake.” Her history with Linda and B.J. qualified in the mistake arena.

  Linda said, “She probably couldn’t handle her guilty conscience any longer. Seeing me again was just too much for her, so she doctored up her tea and . . . bye-bye. Thankfully, she did herself in, else I guess I’d look like a pretty good suspect.”

  You look like a good suspect to me, I thought. I paused to take a deep breath, trying to marshal my thoughts.

  Linda’s eyes took on a nasty gleam. “You think I killed her, don’t you, Hazel? I bet you don’t believe she committed suicide.” I was getting on shaky ground. Linda’s buying the suicide verdict and feeling safe in revealing her uncharitable feelings toward Carlene had given me a feeling of security that I now realized was false. And still no one in the locker room. Should I call Kat? I reached into my pocket and pulled out my phone. Acting nonchalant, like any person obsessed with her cell phone, I pretended to check messages, placing my finger over the speed dial button for Kat. Just in case.

  “Sure I do, Linda. The police ruled it a suicide. And she did leave a note. That’s good enough for me.”

  “I bet it is good enough for you. Seeing as you had a motive for killing her as well.”

  Hearing Linda’s goading tone, I felt it best not to respond. My tale of Carlene stealing my faux fiancé had served me well in getting information from Linda; on the other hand, it cast me as a viable suspect in Carlene’s murder. I just met Linda’s raccoonlike eyes and kept my own counsel.

  She moved closer to me, looking menacing. I pictured headlines: “Local Romance Author”—okay, aspiring author—“Killed in Smelly Locker Room by Overweight Naked Woman.” Maybe she’d take that towel from around her neck and wrap it around mine. “Let’s just say that I did in fact do it . . . Just how is anyone going to prove it?”

  How indeed?

  With a self-satisfied smile, Linda backed off, grabbed her cosmetic bag, and slipped her feet into a pair of flip-flops. How did I miss the black polish on her toes and fingers? Easy answer—I’d been focused on maintaining eye contact. The malevolent gleam returned to her eyes. “Yes, well, I didn’t kill her. Granted, I had a motive, but a living Carlene was potentially too valuable to me. And now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to take a shower and get the hell out of here.”

  Linda turned toward the shower area, but I had a few more questions. I doubted I’d have another chance to ask them so I’d have to risk her impatience. “Wait a minute, Linda. Did B.J. and Carlene keep in touch over the years?”

  “Don’t know. Don’t care.”

  “Well, if they didn’t, how did he know about the memorial service? For that matter, how did he even know she lived in Richmond?”

  Laughing, Linda said, “Why, he had me to tell him.”

  “When? When did you tell him? And what did you tell him? After all these years, did you call him and tell him that his former lover killed herself at a book group that you attended?”

  “Well—yeah, but that wasn’t the first time I called. I called him after Carlene’s book signing to tell him that I’d seen her. Let me tell you, he was surprised. He laughed when I said she didn’t remember us.”

  “Did he get in touch with her?”

  “I haven’t the faintest—wait, do you think B.J. killed her?”

  I huffed my impatience. “Like I said before, I have no problem with the suicide verdict. But tell me this, Linda: why did you all show up at the service? I mea
n, after all you’ve told me, I can’t help but wonder. I can understand B.J. wanting to go, but why you and Lloyd?”

  Linda glowered at me for a moment before answering. “To pay our respects, of course. And now can I please take my shower?”

  I swept my hand out in a be-my-guest gesture, leaving Linda to her ablutions. Not bothering to change, I stashed my gym bag in the nearest locker and made a beeline for the exercise area, hoping for a showdown with B.J. Now that I knew he lived in Richmond I had him pegged as the man in the car.

  CHAPTER 18

  AS I MADE MY way around the gym I carefully scrutinized the men, fervently hoping to ID one of them as B.J.—if, in fact, he was still there and looked at all like the ten-year-old photo Jeanette had sent. If that test failed, I’d visualize the men in suits and sunglasses to come up with an approximation of the man at the memorial service.

  I remembered Kat’s glowing promotion of the gym as the perfect place to meet men. “All that sweat and state of undress” was the way she’d put it, with her hallmark lascivious cheer. No doubt true, but I wouldn’t know from personal experience. If things didn’t work out with Vince this time around, perhaps I’d invest in a fashionable exercise wardrobe and put the gym idea to a test.

  I found Kat guiding a plump young woman through a weight-lifting routine. Kat waved and said, “Later.” I continued my search for B.J. And just what was I going to say to him? Not to worry, I told myself—while unnerving, I’d survived my chat with the naked Linda.

  My gym friend Joe waved as he jumped off his treadmill. He grabbed a bottle of cleaner and a towel from a bin and wiped down the machine. Again I thought of the sweat and state of undress phrase as I admired his well-developed muscles, showcased by a loose-fitting tank top. His signature Cincinnati cap crowned his head.

  Cincinnati. B.J. Benjamin Joseph. The propensity that some had to use their middle names.

  “Hi, Joe. Or should I call you B.J.?”

  His smile faltered. “No one’s called me that in quite some time.”