Right now, a clunky silence followed the statement. India glanced curiously between us. Fitz, maybe thinking he’d stuck his foot in his mouth, segued smoothly into sleuthing plans.
“So, Andi finds out if the McClays are back in town. And maybe you can casually bring up Mary Beth’s murder as a news event, and see what kind of reaction you get out of the daughter. We’re making progress,” he repeated.
“And maybe we’re barking up the wrong tree again,” I said, unexpectedly feeling an avalanche of gloom rather than encouragement. “Maybe we’re not even in the right forest.”
“Let’s see, are those similes or metaphors?” Fitz asked. “I can never keep them straight.”
India pounced on my meaning instead. “You’re saying the killer could be someone way outside people we’re suspicious of?”
“Exactly. For example, Mary Beth’s cousin told me that down in California, ‘Trafalgar’ advised a woman with cancer to try alternative cures, and she died. Suppose her husband or kids blamed Mary Beth for her death and came up here to wreak vengeance? Or maybe Sloan Delaney’s current wife heard about her husband’s towel-snapping relationship with Mary Beth, and decided to get rid of her? Or maybe someone she’s already scammed on an investment scheme did her in? There could be any number of people we know nothing about who wanted her dead.”
I was still considering the unknown possibilities when Fitz got up to refill our new coffee mugs. He changed the subject with a bit of news. “Matt has a date tomorrow night. He’s taking a woman who works at the library out to dinner.”
“Hey, that’s great! Did he meet her there at the library?” I asked.
“Well, actually, I set it up,” Fitz admitted. “I was talking to her at the library, and she seemed nice. So I got them together.”
“I hope it works out.”
“They have a lot in common. About the same age, and they both read a lot. So, how’s things at church?”
Fitz’s foray into matchmaking for Matt had lifted my spirits briefly, but the question he asked brought me down again. “I’ve had a couple of prayer chain calls. A woman in the choir has just learned she has breast cancer. I passed the request along the chain.”
I didn’t add that it was Janice Morgan who’d called. And that she’d included an added tidbit that we should pray for Nicole and Mike Nestleton, an active church couple she’d heard were on the verge of divorce.
“And you prayed for the woman with breast cancer?” India asked. A skeptical note in her voice suggested that was probably as effective as dropping a bottled note into Vigland Bay and hoping a cure would wash in with the next tide.
“Of course.” I looked between them, exasperated with their doubts, but exasperated with myself too. I was thinking now that I should have taken a solid stand and told Janice I’d happily pray for people who needed prayer, but I didn’t really want her gossipy speculations. “I know you two probably don’t think prayer makes any difference, but I do.”
At least I thought I believed that. Although I had to admit, I could think of a lot of prayers that never seemed to be answered. But then I sometimes thought it was a miracle any prayers were ever answered, considering how minuscule we were in the immensity of the universe God had created.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The coming weekend looked quiet until Friday morning when I received a call from a woman who said she’d seen the new website. She identified herself as Joni Jenkins and said her family was having a surprise reunion in celebration of their parents’ 60th wedding anniversary on Saturday.
“I was planning to take them in my car, but they’ve never been in a limo, so it just occurred to me that riding in one would be so exciting for them! I know it’s late to set this up, but if there’s any way you could work us into your schedule—?”
I figured there was no need to tell her that at the moment my Saturday schedule was as empty as old Mother Hubbard’s notorious cupboard. “I’d be delighted to help with the celebration. Where is the reunion?”
“When we were kids Mom and Dad used to take us to this wonderful government campground in the woods out northwest of town. Lots of fun for me and five brothers and sisters. So that’s where we’re having the reunion. I know the campground holds really happy memories for them. It does for all of us.”
“The limousine isn’t exactly an all-terrain vehicle,” I said doubtfully.
“No problem. It’s a forest service road, of course, not paved. But my sister and brother-in-law drove out there a couple of weeks ago and said it was in good shape.”
“There’s been quite a lot of rain since then.”
“There’ll be travel trailers and tents and a couple of big motor homes going up there. Along with several 4-wheel drive pickups. My brother says we’re just a bunch of good ol’ beer-and-barbecue rednecks. I guess I’m the black sheep of the bunch. I actually went to a ballet one time. And what’s worse, I enjoyed it! Anyway, the weather’s supposed to be great until Sunday evening, and we’ll all be out of there by then.”
“You’ll want me to come back on Sunday, then, to bring them home?”
“Mom and Dad will spend the night in my sister Suzanne’s motor home. That thing’s big enough to hold a square dance convention. One of us can bring them home on Sunday.”
I figured the limo and I could go wherever a square-dance-sized motor home could go. And this would be at least a half-day gig which would help my sometimes ragged bottom line. “Sounds good.”
I should have been hearing that melodramatic musical score that portends a movie disaster, but the phone line was blissfully unmusical. Or I was blissfully deaf to the warning.
With the big anniversary cookout scheduled for early Saturday evening, we arranged for a two o’clock pickup time at the parents’ address.
The woman had a final flash of inspiration. “Hey, I’m going to blindfold them! Then they won’t have any idea where we’re going and arriving at the campground will be an even bigger surprise.”
“Won’t a blindfold kind of cancel out the thrill of riding in a limo?”
“Oh, I’ll let them see the limo first so they’ll know they’re in it. Can we drink champagne en route?”
A 60th anniversary, a big family reunion, and champagne while blindfolded. I felt a twinge of envy. No such celebration looming in my future. But, if I didn’t delay too long, there was still time for a first, second, or third anniversary, maybe even a 20th or more. I peered into the vision to see who partnered these fantasy anniversaries. He looked a lot like Fitz.
Joni brought me back to earth. “Actually, Mom and Dad don’t drink anything alcoholic, so it’ll just be sparkling apple juice for them. And I’ll probably have to sprinkle something with fiber in it. They’re that age, you know. The Bran Flakes Generation.”
“There’s a small refrigerator. Or I can bring an ice bucket for the juice, if you’d like.”
“That’d be great. This is going to be so much fun!”
After the call I checked the freezer to be sure I had a good supply of ice, then settled down with the phone and started calling hair salons. Who’d think a town the size of Vigland would have so many? I got nowhere on the first five, but on the sixth, a cheery woman said, “We don’t have a Megan here, but Megan Toth is the owner over at A Hair Above.”
“Okay, I’ll call there. Thanks.”
“But whatever you need, sweetie, a cut or a perm or a new style, anything, you just name it and I can do it for you here.”
“Thanks. I’ll keep you in mind. But this time, I do want Megan.”
“Actually, I’m not sure she’s even working now. The divorce and all, you know. Though I’m sure inheriting all that money from her grandmother helped ease the pain.” A bit of snideness there? “I could get you in yet today, if you’d like.”
I had to admire her determination, if not necessarily her ethics, at client-snatching. I looked up the number for A Hair Above, dialed, and asked for Megan Toth.
“Speakin
g.”
That caught me so off guard that it took a moment to organize my thoughts. “I’ve heard great things about your, uh, work. Do you do hair coloring?”
“Oh, yes. That’s one of our specialties.”
“I’d like to get mine colored then. Can I get in early next week?”
“Well, let’s see” I heard a rustle of pages. “Meredith has time on Monday—”
“No, I’d like you to do it. Though Monday would be good. My hair’s looking pretty bad.” Actually, that was all too true. At my age it isn’t dark roots you get. The roots are gray, as if someone rubbed your scalp in a bucket of ashes.
“I can’t do it Monday. I have to run over to Sea-Tac to pick up my parents that morning, and I’m booked full that afternoon. . .” More rustle of pages. “But I could work you in on Tuesday at one-forty-five.”
Hey, there it was! An instant answer to my main question. The McClays would be back in Vigland on Monday. And the other woman had already confirmed Megan’s inheritance, which definitely put her in the target group for Mary Beth’s investment scam. But I didn’t want to back out now. Maybe, with her trip to Sea-Tac as a starting point for conversation during my appointment, I could find out more about banker McClay.
“Great. I’ll be there. The name is Andalusia McConnell.” I held my breath for a moment, but there was no reason for her to connect the name with the person from Andi’s Limouzeen Service whom she’d hung up on. It didn’t occur to me until after I’d given the name that I could simply have used a fake name. Deviousness may be handy for a sleuth, but it doesn’t come naturally to me.
“Fine. We’ll see you on Tuesday, then, Anda-umm-lee-”
“Andalusia. I was named for an area in Spain.”
“That’s better than what a friend of mine did. She named her baby Katrina, after the storm.”
“Makes you wonder what parents are thinking sometimes, doesn’t it?”
It was a throwaway, meaningless line on my part, but an odd little silence followed. Also probably meaningless, unless she was applying it to something to do with her own parents.
Then she said, a little hastily, I thought, “Thanks for calling. See you Tuesday,” and hung up.
Leaving me with a hmm feeling.
With the appointment taken care of, I tucked my cell phone in my pocket and went outside to whap the new dirt piles the underground yard critters are always building on my lawn. Tom had told me I should do what he did, trap them. But when I looked at the mean-looking traps at the hardware store, I’d rejected that idea. Now, I shoved the piled-up dirt back into the tunnels with a shovel, then tamped it down with the handle. Which I suspected was about as effective as trying to get rid of them by dancing around the tunnels in a pink tutu while singing “Singin’ in the Rain.”
I saw Tom standing by his chain-link fence. He was staring vacantly into space, hands shoved into his plaid pants. On impulse I walked over, thinking I should do something to try to cheer him.
I leaned against the shovel. “Isn’t this a beautiful day? It’s nice to see sunshine after all that rain. And the trees are so gorgeous now, with the leaves all turned color.”
Tom glanced up at the blue sky, then at the golden leaves on the maple trees in my yard. “Yards will be a mess when all these leaves blow down.”
Good ol’ Tom. If someone gave him a solid gold brick, he’d complain about how heavy it was. But then, I had to admit that he didn’t have much to feel cheery about.
“Fitz and I have been talking to some people about Mary Beth’s—” I broke off, reluctant to use the crude word murder with him. “—about what happened to Mary Beth. We’ve come up with a couple of possible suspects.”
I expected him to mutter something about that being a waste of time, because Trafalgar had done it, but instead he said, “I’m beginning to think maybe Mary Beth was a big phony. That she did just make up all that stuff about Trafalgar. And then used him like some kind of puppet to spout whatever she wanted him to say.”
The unexpected leap into reality surprised and encouraged me. Maybe now Tom could do something practical in his own defense. And I thought his puppet comparison was a good one. Yet I could also see that a switch to reality in Tom’s thinking about Mary Beth wasn’t exactly lifting his spirits.
“So you don’t think Trafalgar did it?” I asked to make sure I hadn’t misunderstood him.
“Puppets aren’t killers.” His voice plunged to a doomsday level, but at the same time I heard a catch in it. “And neither am I.”
“I don’t think you are, either.” I’d have reached through the fence to pat his arm reassuringly, but five-foot-high chain link isn’t made for friendly gestures.
“So I’ve been trying to figure out who might of killed her,” he said.
“Good. Any ideas?”
He kicked at a trio of mushrooms coming up in his lawn. He hadn’t been tending his yard much lately. “I’m thinking maybe that guy in the shower did it. Who knows where she picked him up? She picked me up in the parking lot at Wal-mart. Though I never made it to the shower.”
I hesitated, wondering about telling him who the “guy in the shower” really was. But it probably wouldn’t make him any more unhappy than he already was, I decided.
“Actually,” I began slowly, feeling my way, “Mary Beth didn’t just pick him up somewhere. He was her ex-husband, Sloan Delaney, and he’d been hanging around Vigland off and on for quite a while.”
His head jerked up. “I thought her ex-husband’s name was Mike and he was back in Texas or somewhere.”
“It appears there was more than one ex-husband. I think Mike was an earlier one.”
“Figures,” he muttered. Poor, disillusioned Tom.
“Anyway, Sloan Delaney is one of our strongest suspects too. He was in her house several days after the murder. India and I ran into him there.”
“Maybe he needed another shower.” That almost sounded like a witty crack. While I was still pondering whether that was possible from Tom, he added, “And then I’ve been thinking about another guy.”
“Someone who came to the group channeling sessions?”
“No. The second time I went to that house where Mary Beth was working that day she was killed, a hippie-looking guy was just leaving. You know the kind. Dirty hair, scraggly beard, jeans patched with a flag, gold earring. I asked Mary Beth who he was, and she said he’d showed up at the door looking for a handout. Said she’d given him a dollar just to get rid of him.”
Here was someone else who was far outside the people we suspected in Mary Beth’s death. Could she, in fact, have been killed by some transient who checked her out, saw all that jewelry, and figured she was a good target for robbery? Tom’s arrival may have scared him off temporarily, but maybe he’d returned to kill her and make off with the necklace. And now he was long gone.
If so, he was someone Fitz and India and I, for all our determined sleuthing, would never come across. And, most likely, neither would Detective Molino, who had his made-to-order killer in Tom.
“Did you tell anyone from the sheriff’s department about this?”
“I never even thought about it until yesterday.”
“Maybe you should give Detective Molino a call.”
“I don’t think it’ll do any good, but I guess I could.”
Would Detective Molino thank me for all the calls I was sending his way? Well, I might not have a big J emblazoned on my chest, but I was concerned about Justice.
“Or maybe it would be better to tell your lawyer.”
“Yeah. Whatever.”
I picked up the shovel I’d been leaning on. “I’m praying for you, Tom.”
I expected that would earn a sarcastic retort, but instead he muttered, “Can’t hurt, I guess. You got any ideas other than the guy in the shower?”
“One or two.”
“I figure there’s someone sittin’ out there right now feeling all safe and smug. I’m maybe on my way to prison for life, and h
e’s not got a care in the world.”
“I doubt he’s that comfortable. A murderer always has to worry that new evidence or a new witness may turn up and change everything.”
A thought that made me hurry back to my house to make a call.
Chapter Twenty-Six
A call I couldn’t make, I realized when I reached the phone. Some sleuth I was. I didn’t even know Amy’s last name so I could look her up in the phone book. I could call Danielle and ask, but I wasn’t particularly eager to talk to the Blond Leech. Was this important enough to warrant a drive out to see Amy?
I decided it was.
My old Toyota was parked behind the limo in the driveway. I jumped into it, not even thinking about what I was wearing until Amy answered the door and stared at me doubtfully.
“Amy, it’s me, Andi. Remember? From Andi’s Limouzeen Service.”
Double take and a blink. “Oh, I’m sorry! I didn’t recognize you without the chauffeur’s uniform and cap. You look . . . different.”
I glanced down. I hadn’t changed out of my standard, zap-the-yard-critters outfit. Jeans, blotched and ragged from use, not fashionably ripped and faded. Gray sweat shirt with an unidentifiable stain and an elbow ripped out. I’d need an upgrade to qualify as a bag lady. “May I come in and talk to you for a minute?”
“Certainly.”
She led me into a living room with a mixture of antique, beaded lamps and a new sofa, old-fashioned paintings and a modern, Scandinavian type chair, a combination that surprisingly made a pleasingly eclectic blend rather than a hodgepodge. I turned to look back at the door. No peep hole.
“Did you check to see who was at the door before you opened it?”
“No. I don’t get many visitors. I guess I’m always glad to see whoever comes.” She sounded apologetic, as if she realized that wasn’t the attitude she should be taking. “Please, sit down. Can I get you some coffee or tea?”
For Whom the Limo Rolls Page 20