Here Comes the Ride

by Lorena McCourtney

  “Oh, yes. And she had control of the trust fund, of course.”

  “You don’t like mathematics?”

  “Well, yeah, I do.” She sounded as if she made the admission reluctantly, as if she’d have preferred to say she hated the subject. “I was taking advanced college level courses even in high school. Numbers are solid. They don’t change on you. Two plus two equals four is going to come out the same tomorrow as it does today.”

  “Unlike people?” I guessed.

  “And God.”

  “God doesn’t change!”

  “I’ve been thinking about it, and I really do have trouble just taking things on faith. It would be a lot easier if I could come up with a mathematical equation that proves God exists.”

  “But can you come up with a mathematical equation that proves He doesn’t?”

  She blinked. “I guess not.”

  “Okay, so if you like math, why were you unhappy at Dartmouth studying it?”

  “Mostly I didn’t want Michelle telling me what to do,” Pam admitted. “I decided I’d rather go off somewhere and write mysteries. Which infuriated her, of course. She put anything to do with creative writing on a level with Tattooing 101.”

  “So you’re writing a mystery in which you kill off the stepmother.”

  She whirled as if I’d jabbed her with a tattooing needle. “How did you know that?”

  “I’m nosy. I snooped.”

  I expected chastisement, maybe even a heave-ho down the stairs, but she just smiled wryly. She didn’t even ask when or how.

  “Well, you’re honest about it. Which is why I trust you.”

  “I’d suggest you not let the authorities get hold of that manuscript. Given that it concerns murdering a stepmother, it might give them suspicious ideas.”

  “You didn’t mention the manuscript to them?”

  “No.”

  “See? That’s why I can trust you. Anyway, I thought of that already.”

  I wondered what she’d done with the manuscript, but she didn’t elaborate.

  “Anyway, married to Sterling, I figured I’d have plenty of time to write or do whatever I wanted.”

  Right. Sterling would probably never notice what she was doing unless she smashed his cell phone with an overweight manuscript.

  “And after losing Dad, and then Mike, I guess I wanted to . . . belong to someone.” She sounded wistful.

  Don’t we all? For a moment I felt a echoing wistfulness in myself. Mostly life on my own is fine, but sometimes . . . But hey, who was Mike?

  “Mike and I had broken up, and I felt as if I were just blowing in the wind.”

  So, Mike was another man. “It’s better to blow in the wind than be weighed down with the wrong anchor.”

  Pam lifted her neatly shorn eyebrows. “Words of wisdom and experience from the older generation? Or a bumper sticker?”

  “Whatever.”

  She blinked hard for a few seconds, but she wasn’t one to give in to emotions. With a wry smile she finally added, “The only point against Sterling was that Michelle thought he was catch of the year. But I decided there were enough advantages to marrying him that I could ignore her approval.”

  “What about his grandmother’s ring?”

  “I’ll give it back to his folks. I’m sure it was their idea for him to give it to me. He’d never think of anything so sweet and sentimental himself.”

  She dismissed Sterling with a brisk gathering of scattered place cards, then picked up the top one on the stack. “Okay, let’s get started. Who’s Rosamund Blanchard?”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “I think she’s a MOB. The one whose daughter is the foot model. She was unhappy about the bridesmaids’ shoes.”

  “Murderously unhappy?” Pam asked.

  “I wouldn’t think anyone could be murderously unhappy about shoes. But I’m a tennies person, and maybe it’s a different world when you’re into Manolo Blahniks or Ferragamos.”

  Pam pulled a manila envelope from a box on top of her file cabinet. She labeled it Probably Not and dropped the place card inside. “For now anyway. No one’s a definite no at this point.” She picked up another card. “So here’s Kristin Deacon.”

  We looked at each other blankly for a minute until Pam finally said, “I kind of remember her. Red hair. Supersized boob job. Maybe she was the bridesmaid Michelle eliminated?”

  “No, I think that was a tall blond.”

  Pam added Kristin to the Probably Not folder, and we worked our way on through the cards. Groomsmen, husbands of MOBs, miscellaneous Hollywood people, plus a number of names that left us both blank, possibly locals. At Stan Steffan’s card, we looked at each other again.

  “Maybe?” Pam said.

  Nothing truly solid to go on with the Stan Man, except that hostile confrontation Shirley had overheard. But murdering Michelle, if he was trying to pry money out of her for his new movie, didn’t sound logical. Still, Stan Steffan struck me as a streetwise guy who’d know about such things as butterfly knives, and he was big and beefy enough to use one. And call me judgmental, but I was just suspicious of him.

  “A Maybe,” I agreed. Pam labeled a new envelope and stuffed his card inside.

  We came to Mrs. Steffan’s name farther down in the jumbled pile. Pam tapped the card reflectively.

  “Even if there was something between Michelle and Mr. Steffan a long time ago, I wouldn’t think Mrs. Steffan would do anything about it at this late date. I can’t really imagine her jumping up in her flowered dress and attacking Michelle. She’s not exactly your all-around athlete.”

  I agreed. Although if the murder weapon had been an umbrella, I might have considered it. Then another thought. “Unless she was afraid Michelle would get a part in the new movie, and she and Stan might revive an old relationship?”

  “I hadn’t thought of that.” Pam wavered a moment, then dropped Mrs. Steffan’s card in the Maybe file.

  My own thought was that Mrs. Steffan might be of greater value as a source of information than as a suspect. She might know something about Michelle’s past relationships with Hollywood people, some old grudge bitter enough to carry over to the present. She might even know something about Michelle’s early relationship with Pam’s father and birth mother.

  I started to mention this to Pam, then backed off. Not knowing about her father’s death was frustrating for Pam, yes, but frustration might be preferable to entangling herself in that past. Better she let go and move on. Which didn’t mean I wouldn’t try a bit of probing with Mrs. Steffan myself.

  “What makes you so certain there wasn’t anything going on between Michelle and Stan Steffan now?” I asked.

  I thought she was ignoring my question, because she riffled through the remaining cards and pulled out two, and it was another minute before I realized this was an answer when I saw the cards. Uri Hubbard. Cindy Hubbard.

  “Michelle’s partners in the new fitness center?”

  “Cindy started out as Michelle’s personal trainer. She came here to the house several days a week. They were really good friends, the BFF type.”

  “Best Friends Forever?”

  Pam nodded. “I think Uri was working at a health club over in Olympia. Then they all got together on starting a new fitness center here in Vigland, and Uri and Cindy have been living in a cottage in the woods over on the east side of the property. But I think Michelle’s and Cindy’s BFF relationship may have been under some strain lately. They were arguing a lot about the center.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen them coming and going to a cottage.”

  “There’s a separate gate over there. I think Michelle was putting up most of the money for the health club, but the big drawing card was some new exercise machine Uri invented. It’s supposed to take off weight and build muscles and probably raise your IQ too. There’s one down in Michelle’s Fitness Room, but they were planning a big public unveiling at the grand opening of the club.”

  “But what
would this have to do with a relationship between Michelle and Stan Steffan?”

  Pam hesitated. Finally she said, “I think Michelle and Uri had something going, which may have been another strain on the BFF relationship.” Wryly she added, “If you had your choice between Uri and Mr. Steffan, which would you choose?”

  Stan Steffan, sixty-five-ish, paunchy, heavy-jowled, and arrogant.

  Uri Hubbard, tall, muscled, and buff, with distinguished good looks and that handsome silver mustache.

  Like choosing between Pam’s egg-yolk beetle and my glossy limo.

  Then Pam shook her head as if angry with herself. “It isn’t right, is it? Saying ugly things about Michelle when she’s dead. And I don’t know for sure about her and Uri. I’m just guessing.”

  “But it’s a strong guess?”

  “I saw him kiss her one time. It didn’t look like a business-partners kind of kiss. And I ran into him in the upstairs hallway just outside Michelle’s bedroom one night.”

  “A business meeting, perhaps?”

  “At two a.m.?”

  “The truth can be ugly. But it may have to be brought out if it will help pinpoint who killed her.”

  But just whom would this kind of truth pinpoint? Stan Steffan was the one who had the power to put her in a movie, and power can trump good looks and muscles.

  “Maybe Uri thought she did have something going with Mr. Steffan and got jealous, with or without good reason, and took action?” I suggested.

  “In that case wouldn’t he have put the knife in Mr. Steffan, not Michelle?”

  True, which tended to drop Uri out of the Maybe category. Yet I couldn’t get past the uneasiness I felt with how quickly he’d appeared at the body.

  Pam tilted her head thoughtfully. “I’d be more inclined to think Cindy was afraid she was going to lose Uri to Michelle, and she could be the one who ‘took action.’ Since they were also arguing about the health club so much, maybe Cindy figured she’d just as soon Michelle was out of the picture. Two birds with one stone and all that.”

  I thought back to the only time I’d seen Cindy, there beside Michelle’s dead body. A petite woman, smaller than Michelle, but trim and fit. With the qualifications to be a personal trainer, she probably had sufficient strength to wield a knife. This was where that angle of the knife in the body might be important. It would definitely be different if petite Cindy rather than someone taller had done it.

  “What do you know about Uri and Cindy?”

  “Not a lot. Except Uri is an unusual name, and he talks with a bit of an accent. Although I’m not sure what kind of accent.”

  The possibility that Cindy might have decided to do away with her rival, and/or her adversary in the business, definitely put her in the Maybe file. Yet wouldn’t the new business collapse without Michelle’s money? I was still thinking about that when I saw Pam slip both cards into the Maybe folder.

  “Why Uri?” I asked. “You’re thinking maybe Cindy didn’t know about his relationship with Michelle, and Michelle threatened to tell Cindy so Uri killed her?”

  Pam looked surprised. “I hadn’t even thought of that, but it’s possible, I suppose.” She thoughtfully jiggled the envelope between her fingertips. “Basically, I was just thinking, if he’s cheating on his wife, I don’t think he falls into the good-guy category.”

  Possibly a bit judgmental, but it worked for me. Could Uri have been hiding some if-I-can’t-have-her-no-one-else-can rage? Or could there have been some murder-deep conflict over the health club, and Uri and Cindy were knife-deep in it together?

  On with the names. Two more went in the Maybe file, one of them the blond ousted as a bridesmaid, another the guy I thought had lost the most money to Stan Steffan in the poker game. Neither struck me as really viable suspects, and I thought Pam was grabbing at straws to include them, but she insisted. We were almost through the stack of cards when the phone on the nightstand by Pam’s bed rang. There was a private, unlisted line to Michelle’s office, but the main phone system was set up to ring downstairs where Shirley could screen out unwanted calls or transfer the call on to Michelle or Pam.

  “We can finish this up tomorrow,” I said, not wanting to intrude. Maybe it was Sterling calling.

  “No, that’s okay. It’s probably just a guest who forgot something.” She crossed the room and picked up the phone.

  I studied the remaining names. Sterling’s parents. Would they have any reason to want Michelle out of the way? I couldn’t think of any, and neither could I imagine either of them having the level of nerve or rage it took for murder. Although Phyllis had turned tigerish when she thought Sterling was threatened. . .

  But Michelle was no threat to Sterling; she’d given a big thumbs-up to Pam marrying him.

  Sterling himself? Certainly no obvious motive. Which might only mean we hadn’t yet discovered an unobvious one. Which could be true of any number of people.

  I considered people whose names were not on place cards. All the people hired to make this wedding work, from harpists to caterers to parking-lot guys. Doubtful on any of them. Except for one, who stood out like the stink he’d made. The fog machine operator.

  In fact, I now wondered why Pam hadn’t started with him rather than all these guests. Without the bizarre performance of the fog machine, there’d have been no opportunity for murder. So did that mean he could be the murderer? Or a murderer’s accomplice?

  Although it was possible, of course, that the fog machine simply malfunctioned, and the killer took advantage of the situation. Yet if that was true, what kind of person just happened to be carrying a fancy, collector’s-type butterfly knife?

  Which brought me full circle to the thought that no way could the incredible stink have been an accidental malfunction.

  Sometimes, when I’m tired or nervous, I have a tedious dream in which I walk round and round on what seems to be a giant cookie. I felt as if I were cookie-walking now.

  But it shouldn’t be difficult to find out who supplied the fog machine for the ceremony. Efficient Michelle had surely kept records about everything.

  I hadn’t been paying attention to Pam’s telephone conversation, but now I realized it was mostly a one-sided dialogue. Her lips were parted and her eyes wide, but she wasn’t saying anything, and she’d gone peculiarly pale.

  “I-I’ll have to think about it,” she said finally. The person on the other end said something more, and she scribbled on the scratch pad by the phone. “But I’ll have to think about it,” she repeated with an edge of stubbornness.

  She put the phone down and slumped on the bed.

  “Is something wrong?”

  She picked up the pad and looked at what she’d scribbled. Reading upside down . . . a skill I’d cultivated because Fitz’s TV detective used it so effectively, and it was kind of fun . . . I could see that it was a phone number.

  “That was Mike.”

  Mike . . . Mike. I ran the name through my mental directory of guests and came up blank. Then a dawning. “Mike, the old boyfriend?”

  “He wants me to meet him. He says he has to talk to me.”

  “Do you want to see him?” I asked, puzzled why his call had jittered her so badly. Until the obvious thought hit me. “Are you still in love with him?”

  “No!” The answer was almost too quick. She paused. “I was so young when we were together, what did I know about real love?”

  As if she were so old and jaded now! But I know that young love can sometimes be very deep. And last a lifetime, even if mine didn’t.

  “Does he know about Michelle’s murder? And that you didn’t marry Sterling after all? Or did he even know you were getting married?”

  “He didn’t mention any of that, but the murder has been all over the news. They made a big deal about it ending the wedding.”

  I hadn’t seen either newspapers or TV, but I knew Shirley had turned away many phone calls from reporters, and there’d been a few of them hanging around the gate, even taking phot
os through the bars. I’d squelched an urge to stick my thumbs in my ears and wave fingertips at them.

  “He just said he had to see me.”

  If he still had feelings for her, which seemed an obvious reason for the call, calling the day after the collapse of her wedding struck me as short on sensitivity. But then, the early bird gets the worm and all that.

  “Are you going to see him?”

  She looked down at the scratch pad still in her hand, then up at me. “Will you come with me?”

  “Me! Why would you want me along when you meet an old boyfriend?”

  “Last night, at the wedding—” She broke off as if checking her mental time frame.

  I had to agree. The wedding seemed much longer ago than last night. A veil of unreality hung over the whole evening, like a lingering shroud of that fog.

  “Yes, last night at the wedding,” I encouraged, because she seemed to have stalled.

  “I-I thought I saw him.”

  “You mean he . . . what? Gate crashed?”

  “I don’t know. But just after the fog started, I thought I saw him looking at me over that bank of flowers.”

  “The flowers where the fog machine was concealed?”

  She nodded. “Except I’m not sure I really saw him. Maybe I was imagining it. Maybe I just wanted to see him. Maybe some foolish part of me hoped he was going to swoop in like a knight on a white horse and rescue me, and so I imagined him. But then after Michelle was murdered I was afraid I hadn’t imagined him. . . .”

  “Are you thinking he could have had something to do with the fog machine?”

  “Back in college he played drums with a band. They used a fog machine with some of their performances.”

  “So what you’re saying is—?”

  “I-I think maybe . . . he killed Michelle. If he was there, at the fog machine, and the terrible smelly fog was what made the murder possible . . .”

  “But why would he want to kill her? You haven’t even seen him since . . . when?”

  “Over a year ago. You think I’m a total flake, don’t you?” she demanded suddenly. “First I think Michelle killed my father. Maybe my mother too. Then I think she’s going to murder me. Now I think the guy I was in love with may have killed Michelle. What other weird ideas do I have bouncing around in my head? Maybe Phreddie is really a space-alien from the Planet of the Cats, with plans to turn the world into a catnip farm?”