“Did Trafalgar tell you not to tell anyone else about it? That it was confidential information he wasn’t giving anyone else?”
“How did you know that?”
“I know he told at least one other person the same thing.”
“But why would Trafalgar try to lead us astray? He couldn’t benefit, not off there in some other dimension” Her indignation fizzled as realization dawned. “But, of course, if there was no Trafalgar, and it was all Mary Beth. . .”
I didn’t say anything, just let her work it through for herself. I felt, oddly, a little guilty for disillusioning her about Mary Beth and Trafalgar. They’d obviously brightened her life for a while.
She banged her fist on her thigh. “I feel so stupid! So innocent and trusting. So dumb. Dora and I are the very people con artists target, aren’t we? Lonely, gullible little old ladies.”
“I think perhaps you’d have wised up before you actually invested any money.”
“Maybe, maybe not. At least now, with Mary Beth dead, she can’t—” Annabelle broke off, her expression stricken. “But I don’t mean to suggest I’m glad she’s dead. Money isn’t that important. No one should have killed her, even if she was . . . well, whatever it was she was doing.”
“That’s right. And the person who killed her shouldn’t get away with it.”
“They’ve arrested that man—” A blink of confusion. “But you say he didn’t do it?”
“The police seem pretty sure it’s him, but I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“For one thing I’ve known him for a long time. He’s not easy to get along with. He’s nosy and cranky and kind of a troublemaker. But I don’t think he’s a killer. And for another, he’s convinced Trafalgar killed her.”
“Trafalgar? That’s ridiculous! Even I’m not that gullible.”
“He was also seeing Mary Beth romantically. Until they had a falling out. But I still don’t think he killed her. I think the killer may be someone connected with this investment scheme. Someone she either had scammed in the past, or was trying to work a scam on now.”
“You have to be careful, you know,” Annabelle said unexpectedly. “What if I were the killer? And you just blithely drove out in the woods with me, all alone? I could have killed you and buried you right out there with Godzilla.”
“It would have taken a while, with that spoon.”
She chuckled, then sobered. “But chasing around, talking to strangers, could be dangerous. One of them might figure he or she had to get rid of you before you found something that incriminated him.” She paused. “Or her.”
What she said was true. I shouldn’t assume that even a little old lady like Annabelle was harmless. I’d made the mistake of doing that in the past, in another murder situation.
“I’ll remember that,” I assured her. “One other thing, do you know names of anyone you met at the channeling sessions? Particularly anyone you think could have been a likely target for an investment scam?”
“Let me think.”
I dumped our cups and crumpled napkins in the trash barrel by the door of the store. By the time I got back to the limo, Annabelle had scribbled several names on an envelope. As with Tom, some were just first names, but several had last names also. She’d obviously been friendlier and gotten to know people at the group sessions better than he had.
“I don’t know how likely any of these people were to have money to invest. Though people can surprise you, you know. I saw one girl there with a stud in her tongue, and wearing jeans and sneakers with more holes than a package of Swiss cheese. And I know she gave a hundred dollars as a love gift.”
Yes, I know how people can surprise – and deceive – you. Everyone’s a suspect, as I’d learned from Fitz. “Do you mind telling me how much you gave?”
“Dora and I just gave ten dollars each at the group sessions. But we went up to twenty-five for the private ones. Mary Beth never said they cost more, and I don’t remember now how she put it, but I had the impression a larger love gift would be appropriate then.”
In the parking lot at Annabelle’s condo, she gave me a big hug and said, “You know, I think what would please Godzilla most is if I go to the kitty rescue place and find another cat that needs a home.”
“I think Godzilla would highly approve. Just don’t pick up any stray, other-dimensional entities,” I advised.
She gave me another hug.
***
India and I didn’t get together that evening to talk about the website after all. I got a last-minute call to take a couple over to Aberdeen in the limo, and business comes first.
In fact, with a sudden rush of limo activity, I didn’t get over to India’s place until Wednesday evening. I took my cell phone along because Fitz had said the Miss Nora might get back to the marina that evening. She showed me what she had started on a website. It looked workable, with all the necessary information, but, as she said herself, a little plain and bare-bones. Then she surprised me by saying she’d been out to the community college and signed up for a three-week crash course in web design. She’d been fortunate enough to get in on classes starting this coming Monday.
We sorted through the photos to pick a suitable one. The limo looked good in all of them. The photos of me, not so much. My cell phone rang while I was trying to decide which photo would be the least unflattering to put out there for all of cyberspace to see.
“Your wandering sailor is home from the high seas. Is his faithful maiden waiting to greet him?”
I had to snort at all that. Bremerton wasn’t exactly the high seas, and I, while I might be faithful, was as much maiden as Phreddie was cougar.
“I heard that,” Fitz said. “But I’ll bring goodies anyway. Mocha latte and pizza?”
“And a cappuccino for India. I’m over at her place.”
“You’re not at church? Isn’t Bible study on Wednesday nights?”
“I skipped tonight.” I hesitated. “Something . . . came up.”
Chapter Eighteen
Fitz arrived half an hour later balancing a cardboard tray of drinks from the espresso stand on top a pizza box. I introduced Fitz and India to each other. Tonight India was wearing jeans – the skinny kind that sizzled on her but would look like lumpy denim glue on me - and even in her bare feet she could look down on both Fitz and me. She looked great. Maybe Secret View Lane . . . and sharing her secret about her name and past with me . . . was good for her.
Fitz distributed the drinks, and I opened the pizza box.
“Oh, good,” India said. “Pepperoni. No anchovies!”
Before he arrived, India had said I should go on home, that she didn’t want to intrude on my date. I’d told her Fitz wouldn’t mind. In fact, I knew he was interested in meeting her. People always interested Fitz. I’d warned him not to ask nosy questions, that she was a very private person.
He’d lifted his eyebrows. “You mean keep my charm under wraps?”
“I know how difficult that will be, since it just oozes out of you, but try to keep it under control.”
So now we ate pizza, topped with alfalfa sprouts. Fitz puts alfalfa sprouts on everything, and he’d stopped at the store to pick up a carton. India looked skeptical at first, but she tried the combination and pronounced it good.
We looked at photos for the website, picked one, and discussed whether having quotes from satisfied customers would be appropriate on the site. We chatted about the Miss Nora, and the guy working on the boat who’d showed up in a sweatshirt reading, Fight Crime – Shoot Back. We talked about India’s and my encounter with Mary Beth’s ex, how his actions had been quite peculiar for an innocent man. I also told them both about meeting Annabelle today, but I left out Godzilla. I didn’t want his burial with a spoon to come off as frivolous, because it was a very private and serious matter for her.
“Anyway, I now have the names of several more people from the channeling sessions that Annabelle gave me, and also a name and number for Ma
ry Beth’s landlord back in Tennessee.”
“We don’t have a charter trip scheduled until next week,” Fitz said. “How about if I track down some of these people?”
“Good.”
“I can see if any of them show up on the internet,” India offered.
I was hoping Fitz wouldn’t get around to asking why I hadn’t gone to Bible study this evening, but he did. Somewhat reluctantly I told them about the dismaying happenings that had recently taken place with people at the church.
“I don’t want to be critical. We’re all sinners and that’s what Jesus’ death on the cross was all about. Payment for our sins. But it seems as if there should be a higher level of ethics among Christians.” I felt awkward and confused about all this, uncomfortable talking about it too, as if I were somehow betraying God.
“It makes you feel skeptical about God?” Fitz suggested.
I nodded uneasily. “Yeah, I guess that’s it.” Shouldn’t a great and loving God inspire a better level of behavior than what we were seeing here? Shouldn’t people be able to look at Christians as good examples? If what I was seeing was the kind of lifestyle God inspired, was he really all that good and great a God?
“Anyway, I guess what I’m thinking of doing is changing churches.”
“You know what that equates to, don’t you?” India asked.
“What?”
“Jumping from coach to first class as the plane goes down. You’re still headed for disaster, you just have a different view.” She patted my arm. “Sorry. Maybe Cynic is my middle name.”
“Hypocrites,” Fitz said, his tone uncharacteristically harsh. “It’s an old-fashioned word, but it still fits. People who say one thing, do another. Go to church on Sunday, and come up with phony damage charges to keep the security deposit on a rental on Monday. Go to Bible study on Wednesday, do a shoddy repair job on a car on Thursday. Act all pious on Sunday morning after cheating on the wife on Saturday night. They’re all over the place.”
India tilted her head. “You sound like a man with personal experience.”
“Oh yeah, personal experience, every one of ‘em. And there’s more.”
I looked back and forth between them. I knew India had hard feelings about God and the church from something in her past, but I’d had high hopes that Fitz and I could share a path to the Lord together. He went to church with me fairly often. He gave generously when the offering was taken. He volunteered on the men’s group at church that helped older people with yard work and repairs. Although he seemed doubtful about that talking donkey in the Bible, he was fine with the parting of the Red Sea.
But now this, sounding as if he’d happily ship most of the Christians he knew off to some desert island.
“There’s more?” I said uneasily.
“We had a neighbor when we were living in Texas, Christian guy who couldn’t carry on a conversation without sermonizing. His wife was diagnosed with schizophrenia, but he wouldn’t let her be treated for mental illness or given medication. He insisted she just needed to pray more. Read God’s word more. That whatever was wrong with her was the result of ‘unconfessed sin.’”
I didn’t want to ask, but India did. “What happened to her?”
“She committed suicide.” His scorn was palpable as the lingering scent of pepperoni pizza in the air. “And then there was the guy who got several friends of mine to put money in a land deal in Florida. Five years and it’ll be worth ten times what you pay for it, he claimed. Yeah, right. In five years you couldn’t buy a Big Mac with what those places were worth.”
I felt a little helpless in the face of this unexpected outburst, as if I were trying to navigate a rough sea in a rusty washtub. Lamely I said, “But that was all a long time ago.”
“The hypocrites aren’t all in the past,” Fitz said. “When Matt and I were up at Friday Harbor with the Miss Nora a while back, I saw a guy there that I’d seen a couple times when I went to church with you here.”
“So?” I asked warily.
“So, in church he’s with a wife and a couple of teenage kids. Up there, he appeared to be on very cozy terms with a younger woman who was not his wife. And, when I was shopping for a new car, I answered the ad of a guy who had a good-looking Jaguar for sale.”
“You looked at a Jaguar?” Every once in a while Fitz shows a streak that astonishes me. I’d never have guessed he had a Jaguar streak.
“He was passing it off as in top shape, but the transmission was about shot.” Fitz apparently detected my skepticism about his skills at identifying car problems, even though I didn’t actually say anything. He grinned. “Yeah, I know. I can’t tell a transmission from a trailer hitch. But I had a friend look at it, and he knows.”
We’d gotten sidetracked from the subject of Mary Beth and her scam, but I couldn’t help asking, “The Jaguar owner was a Christian?”
“Right up front in church every Sunday I’ve been there.”
My washtub felt as if it were headed for the bottom of the rough sea. “How come you never mentioned any of this before?”
He shifted uncomfortably in the chair. “You’ve seemed pretty gung-ho about church and all, and I didn’t want my . . . reservations to come between us. But tonight you seemed to have some doubts of your own.”
Right. At the moment my beliefs felt about as solid as Jello in hot sun. Had I been as naïve and gullible in my growing spiritual beliefs as Annabelle Dietz now felt she’d been in her response to Mary Beth and Trafalgar? Maybe it wasn’t that I needed to change churches; maybe I should take a flying leap out of the whole church scene. And yet something none of us seemed to be considering jumped into my head.
“So you think God is a phony because these people are?” I asked.
Fitz and India looked at each other. His forehead wrinkled. “Well, uh, no, not exactly,” he said. “But . . .” His voice trailed off as if he couldn’t quite pinpoint what the but was.
But I could see that my impulsive question had given them something to think about. Gave me something to think about too.
Hey, I was often hoping God would speak to me. Maybe he just did!
Chapter Nineteen
Next morning, with no limo appointment until afternoon, I decided I’d take advantage of the time difference between Washington and Tennessee to make that phone call to Mary Beth’s landlord. It should be about10:30 there now.
When the phone picked up a man said, “Wiley’s Exotic Fish and Quilt Store.”
Fish and quilts? Did they wrap the fish up in blankets at night? I was so startled that it took a moment to adjust my thinking to this odd combination.
“Is anyone there?” he demanded into my silence. “Who is this?”
“I’m sorry. I’m calling from Vigland, here in Washington. I’m looking for Wilson Evertson—”
“That’s me. Wiley Evertson. Look, if you’re calling to complain about car tracks on the lawn or the broken-down bushes, or some other dumb thing about that place—” His grumpy tone suddenly turned hopeful. “Or maybe you want to rent the house?”
“Is it for rent?”
“Yes, in spite of what that uppity neighbor thinks, it will be rented again. It’s a rental. That is, if I can ever get that creepy woman’s stuff out of there. From what I’m hearing now, she was carrying on weird séances or talking to aliens or something like that.”
“Mary Beth is dead. Murdered, in fact, in case you didn’t know.”
Small silence until he muttered, “Yeah, I know. I guess I shouldn’t be saying unpleasant things about her, should I? She always paid her rent on time, and she never griped about the plumbing or demanded new carpeting or anything. But now I’m wondering if I’ll have to get the place fumigated or disinfected or something.”
Fumigated? Again I unexpectedly felt defensive on Mary Beth’s behalf. “Mary Beth claimed to be speaking to some entity in another dimension. She didn’t have a whole herd of entities stashed in the closet or under the sink.”
Smal
l, grumpy noise, as if he suspected I was being facetious. Which I guess I was. So, trying to sound more respectful, I asked, “How did Mary Beth happen to rent the house?”
“I put a classified ad in the weekly newspaper there in Vigland.”
“Did she have references?”
“She said she’d always owned her own place before, so she didn’t have any rental references. I was concerned about that, so, just to be safe, I charged her a bigger deposit than usual. And it’s a good thing I did.”
“Are you going to have her belongings removed?”
“Some relative called and said she’d try to do it. But she had to see a lawyer to make it legal. I guess they haven’t found a will. But if she doesn’t get that stuff out of there pretty quick, I’m going to call a mover myself. I’m not obliged to have the house sit there for months with no rent coming in, am I?”
“If you’ll tell me this relative’s name and how to reach her, I’ll see if I can do anything to help.”
“You will?” He sounded surprised at my offer. I didn’t admit my motive wasn’t all noble helpfulness; I had my own reasons for wanting to talk to this relative. “Yeah, well, okay. That’d be great. I’ve got her name and number here somewhere—”
Shuffling noises, clunk of phone, a voice asking if he had a foxface rabbitfish in stock, finally another scuffling noise as he picked up the phone again. “Here it is. Judee – that’s with a couple of ee’s, not a y, kind of pretentious if you ask me – Judee Hanson. She said she’s a cousin.” He added a phone number with the same area code as Vigland, although that covered a large area and didn’t mean she was anywhere close by.
“Thank you. I’ll see about contacting her. Are you getting something done about the yard damage?”
“Some yard maintenance outfit should be out there within a day or two. I can take what it costs out of the security deposit.” Small hesitation. “She really was murdered?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“How’d they do it?”
For Whom the Limo Rolls Page 14