I didn’t appreciate what sounded like morbid curiosity and just mumbled something about police investigation.
“They know who did it?”
“They’ve charged a suspect, but there are doubts about his guilt.” I didn’t mention that those doubts were mostly mine, not the authorities.
“I guess I’m just lucky it didn’t happen right there at the house or I might never get the place rented again.”
All heart, this guy. More concerned about his rent than a murdered woman. I was just about to hang up when he coughed and said, “I mean, I feel bad about Mrs. Delaney and all, but we need the rental income. The exotic fish and quilt business is kind of slow right now.”
“Perhaps because it’s a . . . rather unlikely combination.”
“Well, yeah, you could be right.” He made a thoughtful pause, but then his morose tone perked up. “Maybe I should try lizards instead of fish.”
Right. That should be perfect. Wiley’s Exotic Lizards and Quilts. Much better for business. “Good luck,” I said.
I tried the number he gave me for the cousin, but I got an answering machine, something about a service, although surely it wasn’t the kind of service it sounded like. I decided I’d call back rather than leave my name and number. I didn’t want to get on some robo-call list of clients of this service.
Phreddie wanted out, then, so I swept the back patio while he made his daily property inspection. The phone was ringing when we went back inside. It was Janice Morgan from church, with new names to add to the prayer list. “And don’t forget the people we’re already praying for,” she added. “Lori Crampton is home, but they’re still holding our esteemed youth pastor down there.”
“Because he went down to bring her home?”
“Because he’s the one she ran off with.”
Ka-chung. Another Christian failing to add to Fitz’s list. My own Christian failing too, because my curiosity poked its nosy head up. I determinedly slapped it down. “I’ll pray for all of them.”
I did pray, called the next name on the prayer chain, and then gave the limo a good vacuuming. By then it was time to have lunch and get into my chauffeur’s uniform for my afternoon appointment.
***
I got home about 3:30. Fitz and I had intended to eat at a new Italian place up by Wal-Mart that evening, but he called to say they had a last minute call to take a group of people on a dinner sail. He also said he’d located two names on Annabelle’s list. One was a young woman who worked in a New Age shop and tried to sell Fitz on the benefits of hanging a crystal around his neck, a crystal which she’d be happy to provide for him at a very reasonable price. She told Fitz that Trafalgar certainly was real, and she was trying to contact him on her own. So far without success. The other guy, Hammer, the tattooed guy whom Tom had also mentioned, thought other-dimensional entities existed, but that Mary Beth was, in his words, phony as the body parts of a certain actress. Fitz detoured naming either the actress or her body parts. His conclusion was that neither the woman nor Hammer was a likely candidate for an investment scheme, and we could cross both off a suspect list. Another dead end.
After Fitz said his usual, “I miss you,” I tried Judee Hanson’s number again. This time I got a live person, although what she said was, “Lulu speaking.”
“I’m trying to reach Judee Hanson?” I said doubtfully.
“That’s me, otherwise known as Lulu.”
“My name is Andi McConnell, from here in Vigland.” Now came the tricky part. Lulu/Julee might well react with hostility toward someone working on behalf of the man accused of killing her cousin, but I didn’t think I could ethically not tell her what I was doing. So I launched into it. “I’m working on Tom Bolton’s defense—”
“The guy who killed Mary Beth?” she said, her familiarity with the case suggesting she either lived close enough to follow it in the newspapers, or Detective Molino had updated her.
“The guy who’s accused of killing Mary Beth,” I corrected.
“You’re his lawyer?”
“No, just a friend trying to help. I’d really like to talk with you.”
“Sure, though I don’t have time right now. I’m just heading out to a party. But I plan to be over at Mary Beth’s house next week. I’m waiting for the lawyer to get a judge to sign something so I can put her things in storage. The landlord is already making threats about hauling off her stuff.”
“Yes, I talked to him.”
“Anyway, I have, let me check, oh, yeah, a party over in Vigland next Wednesday afternoon, so I’ll try to take a look at the place afterwards. Although I’ll probably have to get a locksmith to let me in because I don’t have a key.”
“Actually, I may know where Mary Beth kept a key. If it’s still there.”
“Really? You were a close friend of hers?”
“I’d met her. I happened to, umm, encounter her ex-husband at the house the other night. Sloan, I believe his name was. Maybe you could tell me something about him?”
“Does the fact that we always called him Slick Sloan tell you something? I didn’t realize he was still in the picture.”
“Slick Sloan?” I repeated, startled.
“Oh, yeah, He’ll figure a way to get his hand in your wallet if he can. Sell you a car that’s been wrecked and had a fancy paint job over lousy repair work. Need some phony documents? Slick knows where to get ‘em. He could also get you a bargain price on tools, though you might later find out they were stolen. If ol’ Slick is still around, maybe your friend didn’t kill Mary Beth.”
“Really? He’s a . . . killer type?”
Brief hesitation, then she sighed again. “Oh, I’m probably being unfair. I never liked him, but, no, I don’t think Sloan’s a killer type. Just a small-time crook. He sold me a laptop computer that worked for about two days before it went belly-up. He’s a guy who’d rather cheat someone out of ten bucks then work a few hours to earn fifty. But good looking, if you like the type. Which I guess Mary Beth did.”
“He said he was into buying and selling antique and classic cars now.”
She laughed. “Which is probably Slick’s upgrade on being a used-car salesman. You say you ran into him at the house? This was after Mary Beth was killed?”
“Yes. He said he was picking up some things he’d left there.”
“More likely picking up anything he could lay his hands on. Mary Beth usually had some of her ‘love gifts’ stashed away. Or he wouldn’t be above grabbing anything from loose change to baubles she conned out of some sucker.” She paused and made another sound, this time closer to a regretful groan. “I’m sorry. Mary Beth had her good points, but I guess it’s obvious we weren’t BFFs, isn’t it? Though we were at one time. But after she latched onto her ‘entity,’ and then Slick too, things were different. Still, it’s terrible that she was murdered.”
“Yes, it is. But I just don’t think my neighbor Tom did it.”
“Okay. Now, about that key—”
“Why don’t you give me a call when you know for sure when you’ll be here in Vigland? I’ll meet you at the house and we can look for the key together.”
“Does Sloan know where that key is?”
“He’s the one who told us where Mary Beth kept it. We’d kind of accused him of breaking in, and he was very righteous about using a key to get into the house.”
“If he knows where the key is, he might go back in to see what else he could grab.”
It occurred to me now that the ex-husband might not have put the key back where he’d found it. “I could run over to the house today and see if the key is there,” I offered.
“That’d be great. And pick it up, so he can’t get in again. I’d appreciate that.” Apparently she trusted me, this stranger on the phone, more than the Slick Sloan she knew. “As I said, I have a party in Vigland next Wednesday afternoon, so I think that’s when I’ll make it to the house. But I’ll call you.”
“Good.” I gave her both my home and cell
phone numbers. “Thanks.”
I hung up wondering about Judee/Lulu. A party this evening. Another party Wednesday afternoon. It was more than ever sounding as if the “service” she offered was exactly what it sounded like on her answering machine.
***
I went out the next morning and found the key under the flower pot beside the back door, exactly where Sloan Delaney had said it was. I can’t say I wasn’t tempted to go inside and look around, but I restrained the impulse since I really hadn’t any right to do that. Or maybe it was more a fear that Detective Molino’s personal radar would hone in on me, and he’d come running. And then how would I explain my presence in the house?
I had a busy, profitable weekend. I saw Fitz only on Sunday morning, when we went to church together. I hadn’t been planning to go, but he said he didn’t want what he’d said about Christians to deter me from going, so we both went. Janice Morgan was at church that day. I didn’t talk to her, but I wondered if she’d had a change of heart about leaving the church. She was flitting around like an overweight butterfly. Or was she just reluctant to leave now and miss out on juicy inside gossip about the Texas runaways and the missing missionary money?
Annabelle called early Monday evening. She said she and her friend Dora had been talking, and Dora had come up with the name of someone else who could have been a target for an investment scam.
“Her name is Megan, and Dora said she’d recently inherited money from a grandmother. Dora couldn’t remember her last name, just that it began with a T. She also said the woman was going through a really bad divorce.”
Inherited money. With a woman probably in a vulnerable state because of the divorce. Right up Mary Beth’s scam alley! But without more than Megan and T. to go on, it would be the old needle-in-a-haystack thing trying to find her. And I didn’t even know where to find the right haystack.
Annabelle apparently realized that too. “I know that isn’t much to go on,” she said regretfully, “but Dora did say this woman had a hair salon. She didn’t know the name of it, but you can probably find out. You seem good at things like that.”
I appreciated Annabelle’s confidence in my abilities, but I hadn’t high hopes I could do anything with the limited information. And then Annabelle added a zinger. Although she probably didn’t know it was a zinger.
“The girl’s father came to the group sessions a couple of times too. He was rather prosperous looking.”
Banker/commissioner-candidate Anderson McClay and his daughter! The daughter who had hung up on me, I remembered reluctantly.
“And I have a new cat!” Annabelle said.
“Hey, that’s great!”
“She’s an older kitty, a calico. She’s been at the rescue house quite a while because she is old, and everybody wants those cute kittens. But I figured we belonged together. Two little old ladies, set in our ways, taking care of each other in our old age.”
“What’s her name?”
“They called her Mama, but I’ve named her Cleopatra.”
“She has an image problem?” I guessed, remembering how Godzilla had acquired his name.
“She’s . . . not cute. But beautiful on the inside.”
“Godzilla would approve.” I certainly did.
***
Fitz, India, and I got together later that evening to compare notes. Fitz had found another older woman who’d been told by Trafalgar that he could help increase the small estate her husband had left her to a size where she could help her grandchildren with college expenses. She had no idea where Mary Beth had found her, but after questioning her, Fitz had figured out that it was probably through an obituary in the local newspaper. He had another piece of information from another younger woman who’d been at the channeling sessions. She’d told Fitz that an older man had warned her after a session that he was almost certain Mary Beth had some kind of con game going, but that the authorities didn’t appear interested in doing anything about it.
Again, this sounded like an angry Anderson McClay. Had he decided, if the police weren’t going to do anything about Mary Beth’s con game, he’d take care of it himself before she conned his daughter out of her inheritance?
India, after reporting she’d gone to her first website design class that day, said she’d also searched the Internet for names on our list. One name that had turned up frequently because of his candidacy for county commissioner was again Anderson McClay. She’d also found several articles about Mary Beth’s channeling activities in California, a couple of them taking her seriously, a couple slyly making fun of her. She’d also turned up some minor police reports on Sloan Delaney.
“I’m impressed,” I said.
India laughed. “Out there in the middle of nowhere with Connor, with not a lot to do, I spent time checking up on everyone I’d ever known. I never learned how to hack into sites like Conner could, but I learned how to use just one little fact to take you to something else, like the links of a chain leading you through the forest.”
“Although, in total, even though all this is interesting, we aren’t a whole lot ahead of where we were before,” Fitz pointed out. He sounded mildly frustrated. “We have names of people Mary Beth may have been planning to scam, but apparently she hadn’t actually done it to any of them yet.”
“Which isn’t going to carry much weight with Detective Molino,” India said. “So far, no one makes as good a suspect as Tom.”
I gloomily had to agree. “I wonder if Detective Molino ever located Sloan and his red Corvette? I’m thinking Slick Sloan knows more than he let on. And I’m still wondering why he was so anxious to get away from us that night. Mary Beth’s cousin said on the phone that Sloan was no killer, just a small time crook, but. . .”
“Sometimes small-time crooks graduate to bigger crimes,” Fitz said. “But why would he kill Mary Beth?”
“Right,” I said. “The MOM problem. Means, opportunity, and motive.”
“Since the murder weapon was the necklace, the ‘means’ were there for anyone to use, Sloan included,” Fitz mused, apparently thinking out loud. “If he had a current relationship with Mary Beth, he probably knew where she was working that day. So there’s the opportunity. But motive—?”
“I keep thinking back to that day you and I—” I nodded to Fitz. “—were talking to Tom over on his deck. He scoffed at the idea Mary Beth could be running an investment scam. He said she didn’t need money because she had some big payoff coming soon.”
“A big enough amount that her ex-husband was willing to kill her for it?” India asked.
“Could be, but apparently she hadn’t received the actual money yet,” I pointed out. “So why would he kill her before she got it?”
“Maybe she had some expensive piece of jewelry another admirer had given her, and she’d lined up a buyer and was just waiting for the big payoff,” Fitz suggested.
I pondered that possibility. “So was Sloan snooping around in her house that night looking for that piece of jewelry?”
“Or maybe he was looking for something Mary Beth had that would enable him to claim the money she was expecting.” India said. “Not necessarily jewelry.”
“Such as?” I asked.
“There are bonds or financial instruments of some kind that are pay-to-bearer rather than naming a specific person. Although I can’t say I’ve ever had any personal experience with them, so I don’t know how they work,” Fitz admitted.
“Or maybe it was an I.O.U. of some kind,” India suggested. “Or a key to something. Like a safe deposit box.”
“Even with a key, Sloan couldn’t get into a safe deposit box unless his name was listed on it,” Fitz pointed out.
“Maybe some other kind of lock-place to store valuables then?” India said.
“And maybe Sloan found the I.O.U. or key or whatever it was, and that’s why he was willing to use his Corvette like a bulldozer to get away. He didn’t want the police showing up and catching him with it. Whatever it was,” I said.
<
br /> Fitz came up with a new possibility. “Maybe whatever big payoff Mary Beth was expecting wasn’t necessarily legal.”
I nodded. So did India.
“What we need to do,” she said, “is find Sloan Delaney.”
***
Judee Hanson called Tuesday when I was just starting dinner. She apologized for not getting back to me sooner, but she said the attorney had only that afternoon gotten things set up so she could move Mary Beth’s belongings to a storage unit. “So I should be there tomorrow, about four o’clock.”
“After your party?”
“Right.”
“Do you have a, uh, party tonight?”
“Not tonight, but this coming weekend should be busy.”
Sounded reasonable for the kind of “service” she was apparently running. “Okay. See you tomorrow at Mary Beth’s house, then.” Uneasily I wondered what she’d be wearing. Leather bustier and thigh-high boots? See-all bikini and four-inch stilettos?
“Don’t forget the key.”
I had to turn down a late afternoon limo run to Sea-Tac in order to keep the appointment with her, which I didn’t like to do for financial reasons, but I figured meeting Judee was more important. I intended to drive my old Toyota rather than the limo to Mary Beth’s house, but, as it turned out, my early afternoon limo job ran overtime and I wound up going directly to the house in the limo.
The parking area in front of Mary Beth’s house was empty when I arrived. I walked around back to see if Judee was there, but that space was also empty. The back door was still locked, and it didn’t look as if anyone had tried to force it open. I went back to the limo and waited. About ten past four an older model SUV arrived. I slid out of the limo. The occupant of the SUV also slid out.
We stared at each other.
She obviously wasn’t expecting a limo.
And I wasn’t expecting what I saw.
Chapter Twenty
A clown. A barefoot clown.
“Hi! You must be Andi. I’m Lulu the Clown, at your service.” She bowed and twirled into a little dance. The baggy pants, polka-dot blue on one side, polka-dot red on the other, billowed and flapped. Purple suspenders crossed a rip in the green-and-white striped shirt. An oversized red wig bounced above huge black eyebrows, a bulbous nose, and an oversized mouth. She sang too, a catchy little ditty about Lulu was here for fun and play, Lulu was here to celebrate your day.
For Whom the Limo Rolls Page 15