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Wreath of Deception

Page 11

by Hughes, Mary Ellen

Jo thanked her profusely and added Phyllis to the list. One professional craftsman had finally agreed to come from the Eastern Shore with his array of hand-carved waterfowl. And the group from the Methodist church was gradually coming together too. That left several “maybes,” including a basket maker who had run a highly successful table last year, and Jo planned to make a few nudging phone calls today. She needed a nudge herself. She hadn’t yet considered what her own table would hold, what with all that she’d been dealing with lately. This was a great opportunity to give her struggling shop a new image and help erase pictures of Jo’s Craft Corner surrounded with police tape and crime-scene cleanup crews from people’s minds. She needed to make the most of it.

  Since business had been slow that day, possibly due to the sporadic rain, Carrie had taken the opportunity to make a quick run to Sears and pick up some new work clothes for Dan that were on sale. Jo looked up as her friend came in, arms full of bags, appearing triumphant.

  “Good luck?” Jo asked.

  “Not only,” Carrie crowed, “did I get two new pairs of work pants and a new flannel shirt to replace that ratty blue one he keeps wearing, all at one-third off, but I stocked up on underwear and socks for Dan and the kids at half price.”

  “Woo-hoo!” Jo hooted. “But nothing for yourself?”

  “Oh, I don’t need anything,” Carrie said, then grinned slyly. “But I did see one or two things that Dan might want to get me for Christmas. He tends to need very precise suggestions for his gift lists. Including exactly which end of which department of which store to find the thing.”

  “It’s only a kindness to give him such help,” Jo replied.

  “That’s how I feel.” Carrie set down her bags and looked around. “Any activity here while I was gone?”

  “A little,” Jo said. “That woman who dithered back and forth on the yarn for her sweater after asking your opinion over a dozen times came in and bought the yellow acrylic.”

  Carrie grinned. “My advice was to go with the navy worsted, but, oh well.”

  “And Javonne Barnett stopped in to give me the full name of Genna’s boyfriend. It’s Pete Tober. She tracked it down through Genna’s friend’s mother, who came in for a teeth cleaning.” Jo grinned. “Nothing like a small town, is there?”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “And not only that, but remember Dawn, the girl I spoke to in the park? Javonne’s pretty sure she’s Dawn Buchmann, which means she has a reason not to want to bad-mouth Pete. Dawn’s husband, Jack, has a sister married to one of Pete’s brothers.”

  “Ah, family ties.”

  “Exactly, with tangled family loyalties.”

  “So,” Carrie asked, “now that you know who Pete is, what will you do?”

  Jo frowned. “I don’t know yet. Genna was so anxious to convince me Pete was incapable of such a crime. But her eagerness tends to make me more suspicious since it tells me the thought already occurred to her and that she’s been trying to convince herself of its impossibility.”

  “The conversation you overheard came across as controlling on his part, wouldn’t you say?”

  Jo hesitated. “Yes and no. It sounded like Pete’s attempt at control, but Genna didn’t sound all that compliant to me. She was standing up for herself. I wish I had been able to hear more, though.” Jo laughed at herself. “I can hardly believe I’m saying that, or doing that. Tiptoeing up to listen in on conversations. Next thing I’ll be sending away for my super-duper lock-jimmying set.”

  “Whatever it takes,” Carrie said, and Jo saw she was only half joking. The front door jingled as a customer walked in and Jo got up to wait on her as Carrie lugged her Sears bags to the back.

  When they picked up their conversation again, Carrie’s thoughts had turned to Charlie and how good she felt watching him at work at the playhouse.

  “He was, like, electrified, Jo,” she said, rephrasing much of what she had already related the night before. “I mean, all he was doing was fetching and carrying tools and such for the scenery crew, and once in a while he turned the screwdriver on a couple of braces. But he was having a ball doing it! His eyes were going every which way, drinking it all in.”

  “He liked the camaraderie, maybe?”

  “That could be part of it. He’s drifted away from a lot of his old friends when he stopped doing sports, mostly because they were still busy with practices. But there also wasn’t that mutual interest anymore. He made a few new friends, but there didn’t seem to be much enthusiasm. That’s what I was seeing in him again. Enthusiasm.”

  Jo saw the same thing in her friend’s eyes at the moment. Carrie was delighted with the new interest that was making her son happier.

  “I presume you shared all this with Dan?”

  “Yes, of course.” Carrie’s glow dimmed a bit. “He’s still not great with it. I wonder if he worries this might be taking Charlie off in a strange, new direction.”

  “What, like to New York, like me?”

  Carrie grinned, and Jo remembered how her announcement that she was moving to New York had astonished Carrie and Dan, whose idea of a life-altering change was relocating from the town they had all grown up in to Abbotsville, a mere twenty miles away.

  “You and Dan tried your best to talk me out of it at the time. You probably thought you’d never see me again, that I’d disappear altogether into the bowels of the big city. But that didn’t happen, did it? We stayed friends the whole time, and I got to do what I loved.”

  “Yes, of course. And I see that, but maybe Dan still thinks you would have been better off, safer perhaps, to stay near home.”

  Jo thought about that. Would she have given up ever knowing and loving Mike, who she had met and married in New York, to avoid the final pain of losing him? Tough choice, because that pain was the worst. But no, she wouldn’t pass on the time she had with him. Only someone outside her shoes could think it might have been better not to have had the good in order to avoid the bad.

  “Charlie’s only fifteen,” Jo pointed out. “He’s not going to be making any life-changing decisions for a while. I hope Dan will see that this might be only one of many things Charlie wants to look into.”

  “I hope so too.”

  As if their thoughts had mysteriously drawn him to them, the door jingled as Charlie bounced in, his school backpack hanging from one shoulder.

  “Hi Mom! Hi Aunt Jo.”

  Jo heard a liveliness in his greeting that had been missing before. Carrie was right. Even now, coming from a day spent at school, Charlie seemed energized.

  “Charlie! Is it that time already?” Carrie looked up at the clock. “How was your day? Are you hungry?”

  “Nah, I stopped at McDonald’s with some guys. Got some fries.”

  As he swung his heavy backpack onto the counter, Jo caught the aroma of fried burger grease still lingering on his clothes, and, though she had cut down on such high-fat treats some time ago, it triggered a hunger pang. She wondered what Carrie might have around to nibble.

  “That’s why I came here,” Charlie explained. “Aunt Jo, remember those guys I knew who worked at the country club?”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, they had a lot to say about Kyle Sandborn, the guy that got offed here.”

  “Charlie,” Carrie automatically admonished, but mildly.

  “Tell me,” Jo urged.

  “I was cool about it,” Charlie said, clearly pleased with himself. “I mean, I didn’t just come right out and say, ‘Give me all you know about this guy.’ I acted like I might be interested in getting a job there, which I might,” he said defensively. “You never know.”

  “So I asked them what it was like working there, and this one guy, Garth, says it’s okay except for having to work for the grounds supervisor, Hank Schroder. Schroder’s an old guy but an ex-Marine who runs the crew like a drill sergeant. Garth said everything has to go exactly his way, and he won’t let you dig a hole without making sure you’ve got exactly the right shovel and
measured everything ten times. He drives them all crazy.”

  “How does this fit in with Kyle, honey? Kyle didn’t work for him, did he?”

  “I’m getting there, Mom. Then they start laughing, Garth and these other guys, ’cause they’re remembering how Kyle used to play tricks on Schroder.”

  “That’s interesting,” Jo said.

  “Uh-huh! Kyle used to do things like sneak over and turn off the sprinklers after Schroder walked away. He’d do this over and over until Schroder thought something was broken and took the whole system apart, checking it out. When he didn’t find anything, he’d set the sprinklers up again, watch it til he was okay with it, then, when he finally relaxed, Kyle would turn them off again.

  “Schroder would accuse the guys, but they could always prove they were nowhere near. So he’d take it all apart again and go crazy when he couldn’t find a problem.”

  “That’s kind of mean, isn’t it?” Carrie said.

  “Yeah, I know. These guys, Garth and the others? They’re not the brightest bulbs, if you know what I mean, but they wouldn’t snitch on Kyle because of all the guff Schroder gave them.

  “Then,” Charlie paused dramatically, “Kyle changed the timer on the sprinklers without Schroder knowing, and they all went off when a bunch of bigwigs were on the golf course. It soaked them, and they were jumping up and down, they were so mad. And Mr. Gordon,” Charlie said to Jo, “you know, the manager? He really chewed Schroder out and said things like maybe Schroder was getting too old for the job.”

  “Uh-oh. How did Mr. Schroder take this?”

  “He was steaming. Garth said his skin under his gray buzz cut turned bright red.”

  “That’s sounds awfully immature for someone Kyle’s age,” Carrie said doubtfully.

  “Yeah I know, but Garth also said there’s a guy married to Kyle’s older sister who might want Schroder’s job. They live in Virginia and want to come back here. He thought Kyle might be trying to open up the job for him, but he was having a ball at the same time, doing it.”

  “Did Schroder figure out what was happening?” Jo asked.

  “I don’t know. These guys started acting stupid, so I couldn’t get to that.”

  The phone rang, and Jo reached for it. It was Loralee.

  “Jo, how are you today?” she began. Jo sensed Loralee had called for reasons other than to check on Jo’s health, but Loralee, ever the soul of old-fashioned courtesy, was not one to rush into things. Eventually, though, after a comment or two on the weather, she got down to it. “Jo, dear, Ina Mae asked me to tell you that she found out through that walking group of hers that the young man we were discussing the other night, Pete, works over at Hanson’s Garage. Ina Mae would have called you herself,” Loralee explained, “but she had to rush out for another one of her meetings, book club this time, I believe.”

  “Hanson’s Garage? Thank you for calling me with this, Loralee.”

  Loralee had a question about her scrapbooking project, which Jo discussed with her for a couple of minutes. After hanging up, she shared with Carrie and Charlie what she’d learned.

  “This is the boyfriend,” she explained to Charlie, “that you overheard mentioned backstage.”

  “The guy who was happy Kyle wasn’t going to be the lead with his girlfriend?”

  “Uh-huh. I overheard him talking to Genna as they were leaving the theater last night, mad about something else. I’d like to find out more about him and maybe talk with him, but I’m not sure yet how to go about it.”

  “I can do it,” Charlie quickly offered, clearly buoyed up by his recent success.

  “What? How?”

  “Guys like me hang around garages all the time. It’d be no problem.”

  “No, Charlie,” Carrie said, her expression firm. “I don’t think that’s a good idea at all.”

  “Mom!”

  “I mean it. I don’t want you hanging around someone who might be dangerous.”

  “Your Mom’s right,” Jo agreed. She wasn’t about to start sending her only godson out alone into unknown territories.

  Charlie looked ready to argue, his jaw beginning to jut, but then he gave in. Jo figured he might have been thinking he already had one precarious situation going—his time spent at the playhouse—and didn’t want to jeopardize it.

  “Okay,” he said, picking up his backpack, “but I still think it’s a good idea.”

  As the door jangled closed behind him, Jo turned to Carrie. “Well, Charlie’s come up with another suspect for us—Hank Schroder of the country club.”

  “I know,” Carrie said, looking pleased but also concerned.

  “I’m sorry, Carrie. I shouldn’t have let Charlie get involved at all, should I?”

  “But he is involved, Jo, just for caring about you like the rest of us. Don’t worry, he’s a sensible kid. He won’t do anything foolish.”

  Carrie smiled confidently and wandered away to tidy up the yarns. But Jo noticed her glancing out the window often, as if her thoughts were following Charlie on his way home.

  Chapter 15

  Jo had mixed feelings as she pulled up to Hanson’s Garage. She’d called ahead to arrange for an oil change and recognized Pete’s voice on the phone. It gave her an odd feeling as they spoke, knowing his thoughts were on one thing—garage business—while hers were on the much less prosaic notion of murder.

  What would she accomplish by coming here? Part of it, she was aware, was simply heading off Charlie, in case he decided he knew best after all. It was getting hard to remember the old Charlie, the one who had to be dragged away from his mind-numbing Game Boy. Jo was happy to see his new energy but feared it might push him too far toward playing private eye.

  But after her intriguing evening at the playhouse, Jo wanted to get a better understanding of Pete Tober, and to do that she had to talk to him face-to-face, and watch him with others. Was it a foolproof way of judging if the man was capable of murder? No, but it was a start.

  A large man in oil-stained overalls came over, and she realized it must be Pete, whom she had previously seen only from behind and by mottled streetlight. His face was that of a boxer’s: broad, with blunted features. Only his friendly smile saved him from looking intimidating.

  “Mrs. McAllister?”

  “Yes.”

  “Pull over to the first bay there, will you? Leave your keys in the ignition, and I’ll drive your car onto the lift.”

  Jo followed Pete’s direction, wondering at the same time what he must think of her rusty old Toyota. Some might have dumped a wreck like hers before putting any money whatsoever into it. But hey, it was only an oil change, a bit sooner than she needed it, but it wouldn’t break her. The noises she was beginning to hear in her transmission were something else, but she wasn’t going to think about that now.

  “You said something about coffee, when I called?” Jo asked, as she climbed out.

  “Yes, ma’am. Right there in the office. There’s magazines to read too, while you wait.”

  “I’d like to watch, if you don’t mind.”

  Pete hesitated. “I don’t know. It’s pretty dirty, and there’s no place to sit.”

  “I don’t mind, really. I promise to stay out of the way.”

  Pete glanced over at an older man nearby—Mr. Hanson, Jo guessed. The older man nodded. “All right. Sure.”

  “Great.” Jo got her coffee and carried it out to see her car rising several feet into the air. She saw its battered underside for the first time and prayed that it would hold together for a few more months.

  Pete had been polite, but she would have expected that. He wouldn’t last long in the business if he weren’t. She chose a spot and stood quietly, trying her best to disappear into the background, watching his interaction with the other workers. His banter with them seemed easy. She knew she had been forgotten when cusswords slipped in, not in anger but in usual guy talk. This was a far different world from her craft shop, and the testosterone floating about was nearly
palpable.

  Gradually Jo caught on that Pete was second in command, under Hanson. Pete didn’t do her car’s oil change, but oversaw a younger guy working on it, as well as checking out an engine job on a Ford pickup in the next bay, and making occasional phone calls for parts.

  As she watched, Jo formed an impression of an efficient, conscientious mechanic. But then she remembered Genna’s admission of Pete’s temper, even as she had defended him for at least not being underhanded. Did he have a Jekyll-Hyde personality? Could he turn on the charm or turn on a foe as easily as the twist of a faucet? So far, Jo couldn’t say.

  The wall phone jangled, and Pete reached for it, barking, “Hanson’s.” He had his back to Jo, but she was only a few feet away and could hear him well, even as his voice dropped.

  “Yeah, I’m glad you called back. I can’t talk long, but I wanted to tell you I found a place.”

  Pete shifted his weight as he listened, then apparently interrupted the speaker, saying, “No, wait, wait, wait. I know all that. But I’m telling you it doesn’t matter.” Pause. “No, it doesn’t! I’m telling you it’s not good, and you’ve got to get out of it.”

  Pete’s tone had risen, growing demanding and agitated. Then it suddenly softened. “Baby, look—” Was he talking to Genna? “I’m only thinking of you, of what’s best for you.” Pause. “Yes, I do know that.” Pause. “No, I don’t think that. Genna, for God’s sake, use some common sense!” He had escalated to shouting. “Fine! Great!” He slammed the phone on its hook and stomped out of the bay, disappearing from Jo’s view, and she soon heard the sound of something metallic and hollow being kicked. Hard.

  A few heads in the garage turned at the noise, but no one commented, although glances were exchanged. When a young mechanic walked near Jo to get a tool, she commented, “Sounds like your boss is upset.”

  “Ah, it’s nothing,” he said, smirking. “Woman problems.” This thrown out with an air of worldliness by a guy who, Jo guessed, still needed a shave only every other day.

  “We should be done here in just a few minutes,” he said.

  “Great. Thanks.” Jo sipped at her coffee and wandered to the bay’s open doorway. Pete was nowhere to be seen. After a few minutes, however, he returned to the garage, looking calm, though grim, and jumped right back into his work.

 

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