In high school, Thea had never understood Annie’s attraction to him, except that he’d been a good-looking boy and a star player on the football team. Over the years he’d gotten a bit jowly and paunchy, and his once-broad shoulders had now taken on a couch-potato’s slouch. But he was still good-looking enough—and Thea supposed charming enough—to find an always-eager line of younger women willing to take him to their beds.
Dan stared at his own hands for a long moment and then slowly raised his eyes to meet her gaze. “You know, I think George was upset about something before he...ah, died.”
Thea waited and when it was clear he wasn’t going to say any more, she asked, “Any idea what it was?”
Dan’s gaze slid off to a point on the wall behind her head. “Not really. As I’m sure you’re aware,” his gaze met hers once again and a faint smirk trembled at the corners of his mouth, “George and I were not the best of friends.”
Thea nodded. “I heard.”
The smirk left and Dan’s eyes grew reflective. “That’s why I was surprised when he approached me...”
“When was this?”
A shrug. “Couple of days before he...you know.”
“Okay. Go on.”
“It was at a SOD meeting. Right after the meeting broke up he made a beeline for me and told me that he wanted to talk to me about something important...”
“SOD business?”
“I don’t know. For some reason, I don’t think so.”
“Then what?”
“I don’t know. We got interrupted before he could say anything more.” He paused and then added, “But then something strange happened.”
“What?”
“Well, this is something I forgot until yesterday when Annie told me that you’d run into Bob Rutledge out at Rivercliffs.”
Thea glanced over at Annie, who had her back to them as she worked in the kitchen, but Thea had no doubt that her friend was listening to every word they said. “What was that?” she asked.
“Well, when George was walking away from me I saw him turn at one point and stare daggers at someone.”
Finishing the thought for Dan, she filled in the name. “Your good friend, Bob, right?”
He blinked at her, then nodded. “Yeah, it actually startled me,” he said. “George looked kinda crazy, like he was a villain out of one of those cartoon-shows we watched as kids, and he was giving Bob one of those ol’ Evil Eye curses.”
CHAPTER 25
Thea didn’t quite know what to make of Dan Biggs and the information he had given her about George. For starters, she didn’t trust Dapper Dan. He had been playing fast and loose with the truth for so long she wasn’t sure he would recognize it if it came up and planted a big, sloppy kiss on his puffy face.
He had been cheating on Annie ever since their wedding day nearly thirty years before. Thea knew this from personal experience; on that memorable day she had been the Maid of Honor. Evidently, Dan must have assumed this gave him proprietary rights to her. At the reception, on her way back from the ladies room, she suddenly found herself grabbed around the waist and pulled into an unoccupied room. She hadn’t expected to be subjected to the drunken pawings of Dan Biggs, and it both sickened and infuriated her.
Luckily, he was so drunk she was able to outmaneuver him and get away before he was able to back her into a corner. She had never told Annie about that incident, but every once in a while during many an emotional phone call, when Annie would at first cry and then start making apologies for him and his nearly nonstop affairs, Thea had been tempted to tell her.
Over the years, she had watched and marveled at his uncanny ability to realize when he had gone too far with Annie; suddenly he would dump his current mistress and walk the straight and narrow path until Annie would change her mind about leaving him. But after a few months of that, he always reverted to type and Annie would call Thea up, sobbing over rumors about Dan and his latest bimbo. In the last seven or eight years she hadn’t done much sobbing; now it was more or less as if she was resigned to the inevitable. That, or she just didn’t care as much.
So Thea wondered if Dan was in one of his “make nice” periods, trying to keep Annie with him by coming up with something that might be of interest to her old friend Thea. Was that what this revelation about George and Bob Rutledge was about? And, of course, Annie was eager for Dan to give Thea this information, as it served to move the focus of her friend’s suspicions away from both Dan and Heather.
Through a bit of deviousness, Thea managed to hang on to the salad bowl Annie had brought over the previous evening. She’d washed it out at the last minute, so it wasn’t dry when the Biggses were ready to head home. The next morning, returning the salad bowl gave Thea the perfect excuse to drop in on Annie. Plus, she wanted to get Bob Rutledge’s phone number.
After breakfast, she called Auntie D. and asked if she could come over and stay with Mother, but her aunt said that she couldn’t come until the afternoon. Thea didn’t want to wait, so she got Mother dressed for the outdoors, wrapped up the salad bowl, and they set off to walk to the Biggses’s house a few blocks away.
The house was about the same early-20th-century era as George’s, but had been remodeled. Thea guided her mother up a walkway to the back, where Annie’s studio was. It had been the original sun porch, but several years ago Annie twisted Dan’s arm into making it her exclusive domain. The truth was, it had been part of a deal she’d made with him after one of his girlfriends called the house to tell Annie that her husband wanted a divorce, and asked why wouldn’t she let him go? Cornered, Dan agreed to drop the girlfriend, and then, to assuage Annie’s outrage, let her quit her job as an art teacher and transform the sun porch into her studio so she could pursue her dream of being a full-time artist. Just to rub it in a little, Annie had put up a sign over the door to her studio. It read: Hell hath no fury...
Thea could see Annie already at her easel, her back to the door. She raised her fist to knock, but Mother grabbed the knob and pushed the door open.
Annie turned. “Oh, hey,” she said, her gaze not quite meeting Thea’s. “You didn’t have to bring the salad bowl back. I would’ve picked it up.”
“That’s okay,” Thea replied. “I wanted to get Mother out of the house, and I also need Bob Rutledge’s phone number.”
Annie nodded. “Sure.”
Mother had gone straight to Annie’s easel and was studying it. The colors were bright—vivid pinks and mauves that could have been an abstract sunset.
“What’s that?” Mother asked. “It’s pretty.”
Annie smiled and put her arm around Mother. “You like those colors, huh?”
Mother nodded.
“You want to play with those colors yourself?”
Mother’s nod was more eager this time. She reached up and tried to unbutton her coat but her fingers were uncoordinated, and Annie had to help her.
Once the coat was off, Annie led her over to a beat-up old desk and chair. On top of the desk was a sketch pad which Annie handed to Mother. Then she gave her a box of chalks and pulled out the exact same colors as the ones in her painting.
For a moment, Thea wondered if Mother would understand what she was supposed to do with the chalks and the sketch pad, but she needn’t have worried. Mother grabbed a bright pink chalk and began to scratch out lines, both horizontal and vertical. Next, she added purple.
“Wow, Daphne,” Annie said. “That really looks great.”
Mother grinned and reached for a cerulean blue piece of chalk.
Annie looked to Thea. “Give me the salad bowl, and I’ll go hunt in Dan’s study for Bob’s phone number.”
Thea glanced at her mother, who seemed to be totally absorbed in what she was doing. “I’ll come with you,” she said to Annie.
Her friend gave her a resigned nod, but didn’t protest.
After leaving the salad bowl on the kitchen counter, Annie led Thea to Dan’s study, a room that Thea had rarely set foot in.
“Thanks,” she said, writing it down. “I’m hoping I can meet with him later for coffee....”
An awkward silence filled the room as her voice trailed off.
She gazed at Annie, but her friend’s eyes were cast down as if she were looking at something on the desk.
Thea took a breath. “Are you ever going to talk to me about Heather?” She kept her tone calm, non-threatening.
Annie turned her head away, as if looking directly at Thea would cause her pain.
“I can see what you’re doing,” Thea continued. “You’re grasping on to every other possible person who could be a suspect: George’s cousin, a hit man, your very own husband, and now you’re pushing Bob Rutledge forward. Anybody—as long as it’s not your daughter. Why are you so afraid that it’s Heather?”
Annie’s eyes darted to her briefly, then slipped off to the side. “I-I’m not,” she said. Then she shook her head. “We’d better get back to the studio. Your mother has probably chalked everything by now.”
Watching Annie’s tight, rigid back as she followed her out of the room, Thea could feel another fiber fray away from the already-thin rope of her patience. A few more and the rope would break.
CHAPTER 26
Annie was partially right: Mother was covered with chalk dust when they returned to the studio, but she was the only disaster area.
She smiled and giggled when Annie brushed her off, and then giggled some more when Thea washed her face and hands. Too bad Annie was being such a ditz, she thought. Otherwise, she’d suggest Mother come over for some regular art therapy.
When they arrived home, she fixed lunch for the two of them and then called Bob Rutledge. When she said “coffee,” he volunteered that he was at City Hall, and there was a Starbucks close by; he’d meet her there at 3:00.
Bob Rutledge wasn’t at the Starbucks when she arrived, so she ordered herself a decaf latte and found a table in the back, away from the other patrons. He burst through the doors a few minutes later, looking somewhat harried. It was the first time she had seen him in regular clothes: a tweed sports jacket, khakis, white shirt and no tie. He gave her a wave and then went to the counter to place his order. After he got his coffee concoction, he approached the table wearing a sheepish grin.
“Sorry,” he said. “I was on a phone call about SOD business, couldn’t get away.”
She didn’t return his smile, letting him know that this meeting was not exactly the social event he assumed it was.
His smile faded and he sat down, making himself busy with checking the opening in the lid of the coffee container, and then taking a careful sip before putting the cup down. “What was it you wanted to talk to me about?” There was a hesitation in his voice that surprised Thea. He was already on the defensive—clearly there was something going on underneath his friendly exterior.
She figured he had been in contact with Dan, so there was no point in being oblique. “It’s about George,” she said. “Or, rather, something that Dan Biggs told me last night—about you and George. Something that happened shortly before George’s death.”
He blinked at her. “I don’t—I didn’t see George before he died.”
She watched his eyes, looking to see if his memory would kick in. “What about the SOD meeting? Wasn’t there one just a few days before George was killed?”
She had deliberately used the word “killed” to see what kind of reaction she would get from him. She wasn’t disappointed. She thought she saw him flinch, but he tried to cover it up by reaching for the coffee container. Time to turn the knife. “Don’t you remember that meeting?” she prodded.
He shook his head. “They all sort of run together in my mind sometimes. But, no, I don’t think there was anything special that happened at that meeting.” His gaze slid away from hers for several beats and then his brow furrowed. “Wait a minute,” he said, coming back to the present. “There was something strange about George that night. I do remember it now.” His eyes met hers straight on. “He was hostile to me throughout the entire meeting.” He smiled grimly. “Or, I should say, more hostile than usual. In fact, I recall a couple of people commenting to me about it.”
“After the meeting, did he approach you or say anything to you?”
His hands played with the protective collar on the cup. “No. No, I don’t think so. But...wait. I do remember him hanging around a bit. That was unusual. Most of the time he was the first one out the door when the meeting ended because, well...we all knew he had to get home to relieve whoever was taking care of your mother.” He gave her an apologetic glance. “So, I don’t know. I think that if George had been determined to talk to me that he would have.”
She frowned. “I wonder what he was doing,” she said, more to herself than to him.
He cleared his throat. “You know this animosity between George and me was nothing new, don’t you?”
“No,” she said, taking a sip of her latte, before adding, “In fact, I don’t really know that much about you.”
He grimaced. “Just what Annie’s told you, I’ll bet.”
“That and the bio that’s on the newspaper’s website.”
“Oh, well, that’s pretty thin.” He cast her an inquisitive glance. “Want me to fill in the blanks?”
She shrugged. “Up to you.”
At this rebuff, he blinked and then stared at her, disappointment clearly written on his face. She held his gaze, showing him she couldn’t be intimidated, but then she felt her resistance weaken.
He was a handsome man, in a careworn sort of way. Deep worry lines framed his eyes, which held a sadness that touched her unexpectedly. Truth be told, she did want to know as much about him as possible, but to what purpose? Was it really because he was a suspect in George’s murder or was it the alternative? That he was an attractive man taking an interest in her—and that hadn’t happened to her in a long, long time. Either way, it was time to take the leap.
“Whatever you feel like telling me,” she said, trying to keep her tone noncommittal.
He took a sip of coffee and leaned back in his chair. “Well, you know from that bio that I’m related to Peg Collins. She was my aunt.”
“Was?” Thea repeated. “Did she die?”
“Yes, two years ago. Very sudden. A heart attack. Did you know her?”
“Not really. I knew who she was, of course. The grande dame of the Collins family. Enough to recognize her picture in the paper.”
A smile played across his mouth. “She’d be happy to hear that—she expected people to know who she was. It fed her ego.”
Thea wasn’t really interested in hearing more about the woman who had once ruled local society, but she wanted to draw him out, so she asked, “What was she like?”
“Well, for the most part she was that image she liked to project. You know, the gracious hostess, the society matron...”
Thea gave him an impatient wave with her hand. “I don’t want to hear about her image. I want to know what she was really like.”
He blinked as if she had startled him. “Okay, well, she could be tough as nails—especially when it came to family. Very protective.” He paused for a moment, then added wistfully, “If it hadn’t been for her I wouldn’t be here right now...” As his voice trailed off his eyes glimmered, as if there might be unshed tears being held back.
Sensing there was more to come, she sipped her coffee and waited.
He took a deep breath, rubbed a hand over his eyes, and continued, “In that bio you saw there was a big gap, right?”
She nodded. “You got married and had a couple of kids and came back from Europe to live here. Delaware, if I remember correctly.”
“Yes.
Wilmington.” His eyes met hers briefly, then he went back to fiddling with the collar on the cup. “I met my wife Alexa in Portugal. We were married within a year. We had two kids—a boy and a girl—by the time we’d been married three years. I had it all—beautiful home in Lisbon, traveling all over Europe—life seemed to be everything I ever wanted.” His chest fell as he let out a long, deep sigh.
That sigh told Thea a lot. She knew better than to ask what had happened. He would tell her, in his own time.
“Then I got a promotion,” he said, his voice a bit uneven. “Back to the States. It was a big step up for me. My wife didn’t relish the idea of leaving Europe and her family but, well, she had known that marrying an American meant that at some point we’d probably be moving here. So she adjusted, made the best of it. I really admired the way she threw herself into the soccer-mom role, joining the PTA, making cakes for bake sales...” He chuckled. “In her own country she was an aristocrat, used to being waited on, but here in the States she was just like everybody else’s mom, wearing jeans, driving the kids around to their activities...” He fell silent again for several long moments, lost in his memories.
Thea sipped her latte, but it had cooled and lost its flavor. She put it down.
He lifted his eyes and met hers briefly, before dropping his gaze back to the table. “We’d lived there about a year before I went out and bought a boat,” he said, his voice not much above a whisper. “Not big. A runabout. I’d always wanted one since I was a kid in Michigan. We took it out on Chesapeake Bay. I’d taken a course in Safe Boating; we all had our life vests on...”
His hands had forgotten the coffee cup and had come together, clasped in front of him. Thea was struck by how much this posture made him look as if he were praying. She remained silent, expecting that what he was about to tell her did not come easily to him.
What Has Mother Done? Page 15