by Edie Claire
Chaz nodded. “We don’t know what they said. But it didn’t seem to take too long.”
“Well, that’s one good thing,” Bess replied tiredly. “Do you all have solid alibis for this morning?”
Chaz and Ned exchanged an uncomfortable glance. “Not really,” Chaz said sheepishly. “We both just kind of woke up and came to work. We didn’t talk to nobody.”
“Your mother didn’t see you leaving?” Bess asked.
Chaz shook his head. “She goes to work early. Besides, I live in the basement. She doesn’t come down there much. Not since I got the third boa and started raising my own feeder mice. When I got the second boa, she said—”
“And you?” Bess asked Ned, cutting Chaz off. Did you ride the bus yesterday or did you walk?”
Ned’s voice was a mumble. “I walked. I only take the bus if the weather’s nasty.”
“You didn’t see anybody on the way?”
He shook his head gravely.
Bess exhaled. “Well, I’m sure that’s the last we’ll hear of it, regardless. I want all of you to stop worrying. Whatever happened to Ms. Crane, it had nothing to do with any of you or with my theater, and the detectives will realize that soon enough. Now!” She clapped her hands together briskly. “Let’s get this painting done, shall we?”
As the men shuffled back to work without enthusiasm, Leigh cornered her aunt by the stairs to the annex. “What was all that about?” she whispered. “Where did Mom go?”
“Stroth stepped on a paint can lid and tracked spots all the way to the parking lot,” Bess explained.
“Oh, dear,” Leigh commented. “Poor man.”
“Indeed,” Bess agreed.
“Does he really suspect that someone from here assaulted Sonia?” Leigh pressed.
“I doubt it,” Bess said unconvincingly. “But something those two across the street told him made him want to talk to Chaz and Ned. They both live nearby and have worked in the building before, you know. He seemed to be pumping them about the local rumor mill, things people might have heard or seen around the time Marconi disappeared.” She sighed. “I just hope Ned doesn’t quit on me. He’s been jumpy ever since you found the body, and Chaz’s constant nattering about satanists and devil worship hasn’t helped one bit — and then Stroth had to go and question them! I had hoped to keep one of the men on to clean the building for us, and Ned was willing, but if he runs for the hills now, I’ll be out of luck. Chaz is worthless and I don’t trust Gerardo — if Allison says he speaks English, he speaks English, even if he won’t admit it. And I still think Gordon is hiding something!”
As Bess paused to take a breath, Leigh felt a wave of sympathy. As if Bess didn’t have enough to worry about just getting the building ready for the show! “On the bright side,” Leigh said cheerfully, “The play’s going to be great. The actors are all really good, and so funny! Just think, a mere” — she looked at her watch — “twenty-nine hours from now, and your first audience will be rolling in the aisles!”
Bess let out a humph, but Leigh noted the usual sparkle creeping slowly back into her eyes. “Let’s just hope they’re falling out of their seats from laughter,” she said drily, “and not carbon monoxide poisoning.”
Chapter 14
“So,” Maura said, sitting up in bed with her legal pad and pencil at the ready. “Lay it on me, Allie.”
Leigh suppressed a sigh. She knew that her daughter, for whatever reason, loved both digging into the past and solving puzzles. It made sense that the mysteries of the theater building would hold strong appeal, particularly during a week off from school. It also made sense that as long as Allison was going to look up old newspaper articles potentially related to the Marconi case, she might as well make copies for Maura, who could not physically acquire them herself and who might otherwise have a long wait marshaling another of the already overworked county homicide squad for the task.
But still. No matter how one justified it, it certainly looked to Leigh’s eyes like her eleven-year-old daughter was taking her role — however harmless and incidental — way too seriously. And Maura, who had always treated the Pack like small adults, could hardly be counted on to disabuse the child of her notions.
After a long discussion with Warren, Leigh had agreed to bring Allison to talk to Maura again this morning about murder and mayhem, but only on the condition that the girl would then go straight to the Koslow Animal Clinic and spend the rest of the day with her grandfather, immersed in the comparatively healthier realm of puppy dogs and kitty cats. Since Randall was scheduled to do first examinations today on both a giant litter of borzois and two different batches of kittens, the deal had been an easy sale.
But Leigh still wasn’t looking forward to the first part.
Allison pulled a bunch of papers out of a very un-girl-like leather satchel and held them out in front of her. “Well,” she began with poorly concealed excitement, “the first related story I found came on March 31st, 1961. That’s when a man named Clyde Adams was reported missing by his family. He lived in West View, and the last anyone saw him was at a bar around six o’clock in the afternoon. He never came home. The article doesn’t give any more details, it just says the police were investigating.”
“Good, good,” Maura encouraged. “What next?”
“The murder of the custodian was reported two weeks later, on April 14th. It doesn’t give a lot of detail, either. It just says that the victim was a man named Bill Stokes, that he was thirty-six years old, and that he had been employed as custodian for the Saving Grace Free Gospel church for the past two years. It says that he was killed by a blow to the head, that his body was found inside the church by the pastor the next morning, that he was survived by a wife and two stepchildren, and that police were investigating.”
Allison put down the papers and looked up at Maura. “That article doesn’t link the two men at all. But Grandma Lydie told me that everyone in West View was talking about it from the minute the janitor showed up dead. She was only a teenager when it happened, but she still remembers it.”
Leigh frowned. So Allison had been pumping Lydie for information, had she? Leigh had to give the girl credit. Frances would have refused to talk about the unseemly incident at all, and Bess hadn’t spent much time in West View after she hit the age of consent and became the family wild child.
“The two men had some kind of feud going,” Allison continued. “Grandma Lydie said that as best she can remember it, the janitor guy, Bill Stokes, wasn’t very well liked. He had a prison record, and he was loud and rough. But he had gotten married to a woman in the church and settled down some, and the pastor gave him the job to help the family out. Grandma Lydie said that after Clyde Adams went missing, a lot of people started accusing Bill, because the two men had been seen arguing not too long before. Of course, none of that was in the papers.”
Maura nodded. “What did Lydie say happened after Bill’s body was found? What did people think then?”
“She said there were all kinds of theories. Some people thought that Clyde’s wife killed him, like for revenge. She was a character — I’ll tell you more about her in a minute. And some people started wild rumors that he’d been killed by the church members in some sort of ritual. Grandma Lydie said almost nobody really believed that, but everyone was talking about it just the same. And some people thought Bill’s own wife killed him, because he was abusive and maybe she was having an affair with Clyde. But most people thought Clyde killed him. That maybe they’d fought earlier and Clyde was injured and went into hiding, but then came back and finished Bill off. Clyde never showed up in West View again, which made that theory seem more and more likely as time went on.”
“Any more news articles?” Maura asked.
“Only two,” Allison answered, looking at her papers again. “One was the obituary for Bill Stokes. It was really short. It just gave the same information as the first article, except that it said he had been in the navy and in the bricklayer’s union, and the
n it gave his wife’s first name as Millicent. It said that his murder was unsolved and that the police were still investigating.”
Allison shuffled her papers and cleared her throat. “But two months later, there was a long article in the local section about Edna Adams, Clyde’s wife. She was complaining that the police weren’t doing enough to figure out what happened to her husband, and she was irate because she felt like they were treating her husband like a suspect instead of a victim. She gave a long list of all this great stuff her husband had done, trying to make him sound like the perfect man, you know. But Grandma Lydie said Edna was a nut and probably made up half of it. You can read it yourself if you want — it sounds pretty fake to me. But what was interesting about that article is what it says about Millie, Bill’s wife. The reporter was careful how he phrased everything, but it’s pretty clear that Edna thought Millie flipped out and killed her own husband because he was beating up on her and the kids. And Grandma Lydie admitted that’s what she always thought, too. Millie and Bill were living in a tiny little house not far from the church, and the neighbors said there was always a lot of fighting and screaming going on. She could have ambushed him in the church and walked right home after.”
Maura’s eyebrows knit with concentration. “Did Lydie say anything about Bill’s body being found sprawled on the altar? Was that mentioned in any of the news reports?”
Allison shook her head. “Grandma Lydie said she wasn’t sure she believed that part.”
Maura blew out a breath. “I wouldn’t either, but it happens to be true. It’s in the reports.”
Allison deflated a bit. “Oh.”
Maura looked at Leigh. “Would your dad remember this stuff?”
Leigh was about to answer that there was absolutely no chance of that — that her veterinarian father paid no attention to gossip that happened right under his nose, much less in the community at large, but she didn’t get the chance.
“He doesn’t remember anything,” Allison supplied.
Leigh’s teeth gritted. Who else had the girl pumped for information? She made a mental note to keep the child away from Merle and Earl.
Maura settled back in her pillows. “Days like this,” she said wistfully, “I really wish Mom were still alive. Memories like hers don’t come along every day.”
Leigh smiled her agreement. Mary Polanski might have ended her days with Alzheimer’s, but her brain, in its prime, had catalogued more information than most people could manage in three lifetimes.
“You’ve done excellent work, Allie,” Maura praised, straightening back up and holding out her hands for the article copies. This is all very interesting.”
“I know there’s a link to Marconi’s murder,” the girl said with sudden passion, handing over the papers. “There just has to be! But there’s still a missing piece, somewhere.”
Maura looked at her thoughtfully. “It’s possible,” she agreed. “What’s needed is a thorough background check on everyone involved with the building, and with Bess’s theater efforts. If there’s a link, we’ll find it — eventually. Stroth and I have already started on the task, but there’s only so much I can do from here, and he’s swamped, particularly since the assault on Sonia.”
She turned to Leigh. “Which has been ruled an attempted homicide, by the way. She took a glancing blow to the side of her skull, which usually means the victim ducked or turned at the last second. If she’d been hit straight on, the doctors say the blow would have been fatal.”
Leigh felt a sinking feeling in her gut. “Is she still unconscious?”
Maura, oddly, made no response. Instead, she turned back to Allie. “Thanks again for sharing this. And now I believe you have some vaccinations to assist with?”
Allison smiled. “That’s right.” She leaned over to look at Leigh’s watch, and her eyes widened. “We’d better go, Mom. I don’t want to miss the borzois!”
Now it was Leigh’s turn to smile. This was appropriate behavior for an eleven-year-old.
It lasted all of five minutes. Just as they were pulling up to the curb outside the vet clinic, which was only a few blocks from Maura’s house, Allison dropped her next bombshell.
“Mom,” she said heavily. “I think you should know that Matt and Ethan, and Lenna too… they’re all pretty sure they know who killed Andrew Marconi.”
Leigh shifted the van into park and tried not to get nauseous. “Oh, they do, do they?”
Allison nodded. “They already told Aunt Bess, but they wanted me to tell you, because… well… you know how upset you get.”
Leigh’s heart beat like a jackhammer. “I do not!”
“Anyway,” Allison said smoothly, “They think it was Ned.”
“Ned? You mean, just because of the way he looks?” Leigh asked. “And acts?” she added after a beat. She could hardly accuse the children of making an assumption based on Ned’s physical appearance. He did act every bit as weird as he looked.
“I think his looks are a big part of it,” Allison admitted. “But they’ve convinced themselves he’s in love with Aunt Bess.”
Leigh swallowed hard. “And they think this… why?”
Allison shrugged. “Just because he seems to like her, and he always jumps to do whatever she wants. I think they’re wrong, though. I think he just likes her a lot because she’s nice to him, and most people aren’t.”
“What does any of that have to do with Marconi?” Leigh asked.
Allison’s eyes rolled. “Nothing, Mom. That’s what I keep telling them! They think Ned killed Marconi and stuffed him in the attic because Aunt Bess wanted the building, never mind that Aunt Bess swears she never met Ned until a couple weeks ago! And they’re convinced that Ned whacked Sonia just because Aunt Bess didn’t like her. If you remember, she did make a pretty big production of throwing Sonia out, in front of the cast and everybody.”
Leigh remembered.
Allison sighed. “I know it’s weak, but there’s no talking them out of it. So they made me promise I would warn you to stay away from Ned today, and to be sure not to tick off Aunt Bess when he’s around. Okay?”
Leigh blinked. So the Pack was trying to protect her? That was rich. Touching, but rich.
“Well, that’s thoughtful of you all,” Leigh said sincerely. “But I’m not going to the building today. Not until we all go to the show together tonight.”
Allison’s dark eyes twinkled. She put a hand on the door handle. “Sure you won’t, Mom. See you later.”
And with that, the girl hopped out of the van and skipped across the street into the clinic.
I will not, Leigh thought.
Her phone rang exactly six seconds later.
It was Bess. “Leigh? Where are you, kiddo?”
“I’m outside the clinic,” she answered warily. “Why?”
“Oh,” Bess said, sounding disappointed. “I thought you and the kids were coming back this morning.”
“No, you didn’t.”
Bess clucked her tongue. “Well, I hoped you would. I’ve run into a bit of a problem, you see. The men are AWOL.”
“What?” Leigh replied, distressed. “You mean all of them?”
“Well, none of them are here,” Bess said anxiously. “And there’s so much work to be done today!”
“Like what?” Leigh asked, aware of a giant sucking sensation even as she asked. “Did they say they would come in today?”
“Of course!” Bess insisted. “The basement floor needs to be polished; Francie is going to supervise that right after lunch. But now that the weather’s finally dried out a bit, I wanted them to spruce up the grounds — everything is so terribly overgrown, you know. And it needs to look nice, especially around the parking lot and the front entrance!”
Leigh bit her lip. Why would the men not come to work? That Ned would fail to show was not surprising, given how freaked out he had been by Stroth’s interview yesterday. But Gerardo still seemed to have something to prove, and Chaz — well, who else could
Chaz talk to all day? His boas?
“I just don’t know what to do!” Bess fretted.
Leigh sighed. Her aunt was playing her, and she knew it. Bess could easily hire a lawn company on her own dime to take care of the grounds, and Frances could polish the floor herself in less time than it would take to supervise the men to do it “properly.” But those facts only begged the question of why Bess really wanted Leigh there. Could it be that, despite Bess’s seemingly limitless bravado, she was less than comfortable working in the building alone?
If so, she would never admit it.
The giant sucking sensation concluded with a pop. “All right,” Leigh capitulated. “I’ll swing by on my way home. Maybe the men are just running late this morning.”
When she reached the theater eight minutes later, her aunt met her in the parking lot. If Bess had not, Leigh might very well have circled the lot and headed right back out, seeing as how Ned, Chaz, and Gerardo were all plainly visible mowing grass, pulling weeds, and trimming shrubs, respectively.
“We had a little miscommunication,” Bess said cheerily, opening Leigh’s car door for her. “They thought I said an hour later than I thought I said! They all got here just as I hung up the phone with you. How funny is that?”
“Hilarious,” Leigh said without humor. She considered not getting out of the car, but ultimately she relented. There was a reason Bess wanted her here, and she knew her aunt would come out with it sooner or later.
It had better be sooner.
“Since you’re here,” Bess prattled, noticeably more nervous than usual, “why don’t we sit down in the annex kitchen and have some tea? I brought some of that huckleberry flavor you like so much.”
Bess continued to talk of nothing until they were both seated with steaming cups in their hands. Then her gaze drifted suddenly into space, and her worry lines deepened.
“Aunt Bess,” Leigh prompted gently. “What is it?”
Bess’s lips pursed. “That Detective Stroth came by here again this morning.”