by Ellery Adams
“Murphy didn’t even let her jail cell grow cold before she’s back there again,” Bennett said.
James pushed his plate away. “And we’re back to square one.”
“Negative square one,” Lindy said. “Murphy looks guiltier than ever.”
Chapter Thirteen
James stood on the bathroom scale and viewed the results with a disbelieving eye. “I’ve gained three pounds,” he moaned to himself. “I’ve got to get serious about my diet.”
He showered, then walked with a towel around his waist to the closet. Selecting gray slacks and a white button-down shirt from what he called the “fat” section of his clothing, he dressed. He picked a thick black cable-knit sweater from the dresser and pulled it on, then studied himself in the mirror, turning for a side view. “This sweater adds a couple of inches to my waistline, but I’d rather be warm.” He turned off the light and left the room.
On impulse, he peeked into the room that had been his office and was now a soft pink nursery waiting for the birth of his daughter. A white crib, rocker with pink cushions, and a small white dresser had been the only furniture he and Jane could fit in the tiny room. A copy of Pat the Bunny sat on top of the dresser next to a stuffed bunny, a tan bear wearing a pink ribbon around his neck, and a fluffy white lamb. Over the dresser, a framed Charles Dickens quote that read, “Chapter One: I Am Born” hung on the wall. Above the crib, Lindy had painted butterflies in white and a darker shade of pink than the wall.
James closed the door behind him, wondering again what name he and Jane would give to their little girl. After some discussion where they’d tossed names back and forth, Jane had said she’d like to wait until they could see their daughter before naming her. James wanted to name her Jane after his wife, but she had said the name was too ordinary. James had his own ideas about that, but they could wait until after the birth.
Downstairs in the living room, Eliot sat on the floor playing with the Lincoln Logs set Jane had found at the church yard sale the previous year. Snickers sat nearby watching him. Jane was curled up on the sofa in her warm floral robe, a mug of hot chocolate in one hand, the TV remote in the other. The TV volume had been muted. James was amused to see Jim Topling, the overexcited meteorologist, pointing and waving his arms in front of a graphic of the Quincy’s Gap area. James noticed that the snowfall totals printed in large, bold numerals had increased from Topling’s previous prediction of twenty-six inches to thirty inches.
James dropped a kiss on the top of his wife’s head and smelled her eucalyptus shampoo. “Not that guy again.”
“Daddy! I’m building a house!” Eliot hollered.
James bent and kissed his son. “I see that, and you’re doing a great job. Have you had breakfast?”
Eliot nodded. “Mommy made blueberry pancakes.”
James’s stomach growled.
Jane made as if to rise. “Eliot and I ate all that I made, but I can whip up another batch. There are more blueberries.”
James placed a hand on her shoulder. “Sit right where you are, honey. The bathroom scale’s headline was worse than Topling’s. I’m going to grab a yogurt and make some whole-grain toast with avocado.”
“Mmm, avocado toast sounds good.”
“I’ll make you a piece too,” James said, pleased that she had a good appetite and hadn’t been sick to her stomach.
“Are you going down to Cardinal’s Rest for the Saturday reunion events today?” she asked.
James lowered his voice. “After Murphy was arrested again last night, I think I need to. I’m hoping Lucy will be there so that I can talk to her. There’s also the reunion organizer, Joy. I figure she knows everything about the actors. She’s a superfan, if you know the type. Devotes her life to the show and its fans.”
“I can imagine.”
“She’s protective, though. I don’t know how to question her.”
“Flatter her. Offer to help her. Do they have merchandise out that you could fold? Programs that need straightening?”
“Those are great suggestions. It certainly comes in handy having an intelligent, beautiful wife,” James said.
“A lazy wife. I’ve got all the ingredients to make pumpkin bread, but I don’t know if I can get up off this sofa.”
“Then don’t. Eliot, you help Mommy out today, okay. I have business to attend to.”
“Okay,” his son responded, his attention on building construction.
James and Jane smiled at one another. James went into the kitchen and made enough avocado toast for him and Jane to share. After breakfast, he packed himself some apples and peanut butter for a snack, then returned to the living room. “Eliot, do you want to get dressed and help me feed the birds?”
“I’ll help tomorrow, if that’s okay,” Eliot said, carefully positioning a crosswise log.
“All right. But remember that the birds need our help more than ever in winter. They need the energy that food provides to keep warm.”
James went to the hall closet to get his coat.
Jane said, “Before you go, James Henry, tell me how the Bronco is doing.”
James came back into the room, feeling like he had a guilty sign painted on his forehead. He didn’t want to leave Jane on a bad note. “I had a little trouble yesterday, but it was just the battery.”
“The battery, huh? Didn’t we replace that last year?”
“Must have gotten a lemon.”
“I see. James, I’ve been meaning to tell you. You know my friend Denise in Lamaze class found out she’s having twins.”
“Oh?”
“They already have four children, so this will make six. She and her husband have decided to sell their Ford Explorer and upgrade to a larger Chevy Suburban. Denise said she’d give us a good deal on the Explorer. It’s a 2010 and only has sixty-four thousand miles on it.”
James raised his eyebrows. “That’s well below the average miles for an eight-year-old vehicle.”
“It is. So what do you think?”
James wrapped his scarf around his neck. How he wished he didn’t have to answer the question. “Well, if we decide to get another vehicle . . . I mean, in the future if the Bronco . . .”
Jane turned the volume back up on the TV.
“I love you,” James said, raising his voice to be heard.
“Love you, too,” Jane responded without taking her eyes from the TV.
James saw that Miss Pickles watched him, tail swishing back and forth in a gesture he knew indicated displeasure.
James stepped outside into the frigid air, which seemed to cut through to his very bones. He got in the Bronco. “She’s got your replacement lined up,” he told the truck. “You’d better start or else.” He turned the key in the ignition. The Bronco roared to life.
By the time he got to the fellowship hall in Cardinal’s Rest, James had decided that Jane was jumping the gun. They didn’t need to junk the Bronco. It had done fine. Sure, it needed repairs now and again, but that was cheaper than replacing it.
He entered the hall and immediately noticed that the turnout today far exceeded that of the day before. The actors were back at the autograph table, each with long lines of people waiting to meet them. Valerie Norris had a pile of her books on her table. A young man took money for the purchases, then passed the books to Valerie to sign. Up on the big projectors, one side showed the cast members from an episode of the show playing Monopoly. The other showed a photo of the actors as they were today playing the game. The photo was from the shoot James had witnessed at the Red Bird.
James saw Gillian and Bennett sitting together at the same table as yesterday, the one next to the table reserved for the actors. He reached them and said, “Where’s Lindy?”
“She’s at my house,” Gillian said.
“Statistics show that between forty and fifty percent of marriages end in divorce,” Bennett said.
“Bennett! Lindy and Luis haven’t even been married two months. They aren’t getting divorced! Thi
s is their first major fight and it’s a doozy. They have to learn how to handle disagreements. Lindy needs a quiet space away from Luis to meditate about her expectations in regards to Luis and his mother.”
“I take it Luis didn’t send Alma back to Mexico yesterday,” James said. He thought about Lindy’s hot temper and imagined that the argument must have been intense.
“No, he didn’t,” Gillian replied. “As I told Lindy, it was unrealistic to expect him to send her off with one day’s notice. Still, they did have another fight about it, and Lindy felt the need to leave for a while. I think it’s a positive sign that she couldn’t bring herself to go to her parents in DC and is remaining in Quincy’s Gap. This way, she can continue teaching and seeing Luis every day without the stress of living under the same roof as his mother until the situation is resolved.”
“What can I do?” James asked. “Should I talk to Lindy?”
“Between all the special teas Gillian’s been brewing, the essential oils burning, the healthy food, and the sappy movies those two watched on TV last night, I’d say Lindy is doing pretty good,” Bennett opined. “It’s Luis I’m worried about. I’m going over there later today to check on him.”
“Let me know if you want me to go with you,” James offered, then remembered his ongoing disagreement with Jane over the Bronco. “Not that I’m an expert. Today, I want to talk to Lucy. With everything that happened after Kitty Walters showed up yesterday, I never got a chance to fill her in on our investigation. Maybe she can talk to me while she’s on duty.”
“Should be okay,” Bennett said. “That Joy person would throw herself between anyone bothering any of the actors. But let me warn you before you go over there: Lucy’s been watching Amber Ross’s YouTube videos.”
“Bennett, there’s nothing wrong with Lucy trying to improve her appearance,” Gillian said.
Bennett snorted. “Square eyebrows and brown stripes across her face aren’t helping her look better. Sullie snickered when he saw her.”
“They’re not brown stripes, or at least, that’s not what they’re supposed to be. It’s called contouring and the technique is supposed to shape the face. I’ve never tried it myself.”
“You’d better not, woman. I won’t be seen with you if you start doing yourself up that way.”
Gillian sighed. “You’ll hardly be seen with me regardless, won’t hold my hand in public, won’t kiss me outside of the house.”
“Let’s not start that,” Bennett said with an edge to his voice.
“I’ll be back soon,” James said, thinking it an excellent moment to leave.
As he made his way to Lucy, he saw that Hearth and Home was once again playing on a large TV set up in front of folding chairs. At least two dozen people sat watching it.
“Instead of signing autographs, why not reenact a scene from one of the shows?” a woman in the row nearest James said.
“I think that would be wonderful,” replied her friend.
“So many memories,” stated another woman. “Precious moments throughout the show. Such a great family. And they’re still all together except for little Tammy.”
“She’s hit the big time. This reunion is small potatoes for her,” the first woman responded.
Joy Carmichael’s voice boomed from behind James. “Miss Bell, the actress who played Tammy, is shooting her new action-adventure movie. She’s sent her regrets and has filmed an apology to fans, which we’ll show during tonight’s activities.”
The women looked chagrined and went back to watching the show without further comment.
James seized the opportunity to speak to Joy, who today wore a vivid blue tracksuit with her “Hearth and Home Always in Our Hearts” button. Remembering Jane’s advice, he spoke in a tone of polite formality he reserved for strangers. “Ms. Carmichael, may I say that you have amazing organizational skills? As Quincy’s Gap’s head librarian, I can appreciate how much time and effort went into putting these events together so flawlessly.”
She smiled. “What a nice thing to say! And you are?”
“James Henry. I’m here with friends. We plan on staying all day, so if there’s anything we can help you with during the break, please allow us to be of assistance.” There, James thought, that sounded nonthreatening and ingratiating.
Joy looked toward the merchandise table. James noticed there were boxes behind it. “I might take you up on that. In the meantime, you should watch the next episode of Hearth and Home. It’s special.”
“Oh? I think I saw all the episodes when I was younger,” James said.
“You’ll want to rewatch this one. While the exteriors of the house were filmed at what’s now the Red Bird B and B, everything else was shot on a soundstage in Hollywood with the exception of this episode.” Joy’s voice grew animated with excitement. “It’s called ‘We Don’t Speak French Here’ and is set at the beginning of autumn. Joshie—that’s Brandon Jensen—takes a sleeping bag and hides out in the woods because he and his father have fallen out.”
James felt a glimmer of a memory.
“Although Joshie helps out on the family peanut farm, he wants to go with a group of fellow high school students, including his best friend, who are taking a two-week trip to France. When his father tells him that they can’t afford it and that it would be a waste of time anyway, they argue. It’s a brilliant display of Joshie’s—I mean Brandon’s—acting abilities as he lives in the woods on a supply of granola bars. He was only twenty-two playing seventeen when they filmed it. Of course, he had a crew with him.”
“That’s, um, quite an accomplishment,” James said. “I’ll try to catch it. Well, I won’t keep you.” James resisted the urge to bow.
He turned his steps in the direction of where Lucy stood. As he got closer he silently groaned at his friend’s appearance. Bennett was right. Lucy had used some makeup product to shape her eyebrows into a square with a tail. The brown streaks on her cheeks had a bright, shiny white cream or powder smeared above them. The same white cream ran down her nose, ending at the tip, which gleamed under the hall’s fluorescent lights. Her lips had been outlined above her lip line with a dark color, then filled in with a lighter color lipstick. The over-lining made her lips look unnaturally big. Even with all that, James thought the worst was her eyelashes, or rather, her false eyelashes. Extraordinarily long and spiky, Lucy had glued them above her natural lashes, but left a gap where her eyelid showed. The lashes must have been uncomfortable because Lucy kept blinking rapidly.
James’s heart went out to her. Darn Sullie for behaving like a fool over Amber Ross! James didn’t say anything about Lucy’s makeup, though. Instead, he touched her on the arm. “Can you talk to me while you’re watching them?” he asked, motioning toward the actors’ table.
Lucy crossed her arms. “Sure, James, but even you can’t deny that Murphy is guilty of assaulting Kitty Walters. You saw her.”
James nodded. “I did. Murphy’s not herself. She’s grieving over Ray Edwards, and to find out that he had another woman must have thrown her over the edge. But I’m not trying to make excuses for her.”
“Good. She’s being held in jail until she can go before a judge on Monday morning.”
Which meant she wasn’t out trying to find Ray Edwards’s killer. The supper club needed to step up its efforts. “Lucy, I want to fill you in on what I’ve found out.”
James proceeded to tell Lucy everything Murphy had told him about the night Edwards was murdered, his own observations of the actors staying at the Red Bird, his conversation with the Lydells and with Arthur Pritchard IV.
Lucy frowned while he spoke. James couldn’t help noticing that the false eyelashes on her left eye started peeling off toward the inner corner of her eye. Lucy must have felt it, because she smashed her fingers down on the lash. “So you’re telling me that Murphy thinks Valerie Norris, having learned how to pick locks while doing research for a book, picked the lock on the door, entered the suite, and killed Ray Edwards all so t
hat Murphy would be pushed down the ladder of the publishing business. Really, James?”
“I don’t think it’s enough of a motive either. But maybe someone else picked the lock. There are hundreds of videos on YouTube that show how to do it.”
Lucy shook her head. “We examined the lock. There are no scratches, no marks, no signs that someone tried to force it. And you won’t convince me that either of the Lydells would commit murder. I’ve known them all my life.”
“What about Arthur Pritchard? You saw him arguing with Edwards that night we were all at Mamma Mia’s.”
“You shouldn’t have gone out to his farm without me, James. Pritchard or Lydell.”
“I didn’t think to ask you. I thought you were convinced Murphy is the killer.”
Lucy tapped her foot. “I am. Come on, James. Pritchard wouldn’t get his hands dirty. He’s wealthy and wouldn’t risk his freedom.”
“But his racehorses—”
“At most, Pritchard would build a stable on the opposite side of his land for them. Maybe even buy another property and move them. No, James, as I told you before, this comes down to a matter of opportunity. Only Murphy had the opportunity because she was the sole person in a locked room on the third floor with Edwards. I admit that her sentiments about saving the Hayes House and Tavern are admirable, but you told me that Murphy and Edwards argued about it. Who knows what other business decisions they disagreed on. Plus, now that we know Edwards lied to Murphy about being in love with her and wanting to marry her, it makes her motive even stronger.”
“Murphy didn’t know about Kitty Walters until she walked in here yesterday,” James argued.
“So Murphy says.”
“When it comes down to it, we only have a ring and Kitty Walters’s word that Edwards was engaged to her,” James pointed out. “She could have bought that ring herself. Maybe it’s not even a diamond. I hear they make convincing fakes nowadays.”
Lucy bit her lip and looked toward the actors, behaving as if she were considering their safety. When her gaze reached Brandon, she smiled. “Brandon’s still a heartthrob. Very masculine, and the way his dark hair has that deep wave is sexy. Not to mention his dreamy eyes.”