He continued. “If you’re really worried, try to fit in a half-hour walk every day and cut back on pasta and potatoes.”
“Practical advice.” I leaned forward conspiratorially. “I wonder if you could give me some other advice.”
He mirrored my posture, eyes wide, ready for the secret.
“I’ve got a friend who’s new to town, and she’s looking for a psychotherapist. I don’t know what to tell her. You’ve lived here your whole life, and you’re tapped into the medical community. Do you have any recommendations?”
Elbows on the counter, he stroked his chin. “A psychotherapist, you say.”
I nodded. “Someone told her about a group that works out of the Blackwell Building.”
“Hmmm.” His thoughtful expression was a tad overblown. “This, um, ‘friend’ of yours …”
Uh-oh. Quentin thought I was making my friend up. That I needed a therapist. I opened my mouth to protest, but decided that would only make it worse. I’d learned a few things about effective fibbing over the last few years.
“What kind of therapy is she looking for? Family-oriented? Cognitive behavioralism? Trauma recovery? Addiction, maybe, or marriage counseling?”
As he considered the sordid possibilities, a wicked gleam came into his eye. I could almost see his mind fill with a whole host of problems lurking behind the exterior of my seemingly ordinary life. The look reminded me a bit of Penny and the obvious delight she took in leaping to gossipy conclusions and then spreading them around.
“My friend—her name’s Lucy—I don’t know her all that well, so I’m not sure what kind of shrink she’s in the market for. She was all set to go to one of the Blackwell therapists, but then the woman died suddenly from a heart attack. Morter, Miser. Something. So whatever she offered in the way of counseling is what my friend is looking for.”
“Do you mean Elizabeth Moser?”
So he’d known her. It was a start.
I nodded enthusiastically. “That’s her. Sad what happened. I hear she was pretty young.”
But Quentin didn’t look uncomfortable or even very interested. “Yes, quite unfortunate.” He was looking over my shoulder. I glanced behind me. Mr. Kringle had abandoned the front counter and moved closer. He stopped and fussed with a display of fountain pens.
“Did you know her?” I asked Quentin quickly.
An abbreviated shake of the head in the negative. “Not that well. Like you, she came in every once in awhile. I’m not sure what her therapeutic focus was. Your friend should check with Ms. Moser’s colleagues to get a recommendation.” Gone were the air quotes around the word “friend.” Chalk one up for me.
But that was probably the best I’d get. If he was responsible for Elizabeth’s death, or if he’d been one of her “S” clients, I wouldn’t find out by talking with him more today.
“Thanks so much. I’ll pass that on.” I gathered the weight-loss supplements and returned them to their positions on the shelves. “Guess I’d better find that birthday card I came in for.”
“You have a nice day, now, Mrs. Ambrose.” And he turned toward the owner of the store who had moved up to the side of the counter.
I retreated to the card rack. After I’d found something suitable, I’d check out their fancy journals. Erin needed something nicer to write in than that red spiral notebook. Twelve years old. Good Lord, where had the time gone? Pretty soon she’d be driving.
What was that ticking sound? Not my biological clock, surely.
Back home the garden needed—no, demanded—to be weeded. It was amazing how hard it was to keep up with everything when Meghan was gone. Maybe I’d grab Erin and get her to help me weed after she got home from school. In the meantime, I had an hour I could spare to the job myself. The chickens would be delighted with the gleanings, especially since once of the most common invaders among the early greens was chickweed—their favorite. It didn’t make a bad salad for us humans, either, especially mixed in with some young dandelion greens.
The sun had burned off the clouds above, leaving only a few mares’ tails wisping against the blue. It felt good on my bare arms and face. The dirt was damp but not soggy, perfect for pulling weeds from the raised beds.
I do some of my best thinking while working on mundane chores. Thoughts like: How do you find out if someone went to a therapist or not? And why hadn’t Elizabeth contacted the police and the Swensons as soon as she was aware of the threat? Or had she contacted one or more of the family? Nothing about her name seemed to resonate with Quentin. Was I obsessing about something that was simply fiction? Had Elizabeth died from natural causes or not?
Okay, those were more questions than helpful thoughts.
Darn it, the buttercups were already invading the snap peas …
Focus.
So far I had a passing acquaintance with Quentin Swenson, and an even more passing one with Glenwood. The day before I’d met Dorothy and Victoria. That left Willa. Oh, and the mysterious Normal, Dorothy’s brother. But Barr had warned me to stay away from him, and Felix had indicated in milder terms that Normal wasn’t exactly one of the good guys.
Of course, I wasn’t exactly looking for a good guy; I was looking for a murderer.
A murderer who went to a psychotherapist. That didn’t sound like Normal. Besides, I’d promised.
For the life of me, I couldn’t imagine Dorothy going to see Elizabeth. Even if I did manage to stretch my mind around that concept, there was no way she’d tell anyone if she was planning murder. I’d only met her once, but between that one encounter and what Tootie had told me, it was clear Dorothy would never have ceded control to anyone by giving them damning information.
In which case, Dorothy could be the potential victim. Now that was easy to imagine. Not only was she overbearing and difficult, but supposedly her death would net her relatives a significant amount of money.
What about Victoria? I didn’t have a clear enough impression of her from the one meeting. I mentally added her to the list of real suspects, though she, of course, could also be a victim.
Then there was Glenwood. He was uber-aware of his own awesome looks, and came across all suave and smooth as silk—until Grandmother showed up and made him look like a fool. It had been half-embarrassing to see him reduced to a pathetic mouse in his own place of business by an old lady in a wheelchair. But wasn’t that exactly the kind of person who went to a therapist on the sly? Someone who presented a strong (and handsome) face to the world yet needed someone to help him deal with all the secret insecurities and resentments?
I added Glenwood to the suspect list with his older sister. Which didn’t remove him from the list of possible victims, of course.
Next was Quentin Swenson. Though I knew his wife better than I did him, Iris and I weren’t exactly best friends. Of all the family I’d had the most interaction with Quentin, and he was the only one I’d actually talked to about Elizabeth Moser. His reaction to her death had been somewhat distant, but if he really had only known her to speak to that wasn’t unusual. And my pointed questions about her age and psychotherapy specialty had met only ignorance.
Did I think he was lying? Not really. I tentatively took him off the suspect list forming in my brain and added him to the victim list. I could always add him back if new information came to light.
Victoria and Glenwood. That was all I had so far. I needed more information about them and about the other Swensons.
I leaned back on my haunches, gloved fingertips still trailing in the dirt of the asparagus bed. There was someone else I didn’t know enough about. Elizabeth Moser herself. After all, she’d started this whole thing. And she could have ended it if she hadn’t died. Her death—and the timing of it—was darned suspicious, and in the back of my mind looking into the Swenson family was not only to prevent a possible murder in the future, but trying to find out whether someone had killed Elizabeth.
Elizabeth, who had lived only a few blocks away.
Standing, I put
my hands on my hips and surveyed the garden beds. I’d made some progress. They could keep for another day.
My watch told me I still had time for a little walk over to Avenue A.
I knew Elizabeth’s address was in the phone book but went in the back door to the basement and looked it up online instead. After I’d written it down, I brought up her psychotherapy website. My fingers brushed the screen over her gap-toothed smile for a moment before I shut the computer back down.
_____
The postage-stamp lawn in front of Elizabeth’s small white house desperately needed cutting. Maroon and white Oriental poppies grew up between blowsy pink peonies in the front garden, and some kind of fruit tree—peach?—shaded an ivied corner of the porch. A stone pathway led from the public sidewalk to the steps. The whole of the front yard was enclosed by a low wrought-iron fence. The overall effect was casual and welcoming.
Except for the closed curtains and neglected yard.
The metal gate felt cold in my hand. It squawked open and then closed behind me, and the stones wandered me up to the porch. Oh-so-casual, I looked around, wondering if any of the neighbors were watching. It wasn’t like I was casing the joint, but they wouldn’t know that. And in a town like Cadyville, folks would be paying attention to the empty house that belonged to the woman who died last month.
Or had it? She could very well have rented this house. By now it could be cleared out just like her office had been, and rented to someone else. The possibility made me inexplicably sad.
There was nothing to do but ring the bell, so I did.
Nothing.
I tried it again and again met with no response. The window in the upper third of the door reflected the sky. I stepped up and cupped my hands against the glass, peering inside. I could see all the way to the back of the house where a curtain was open. Plants clustered in front of that window, straining for sunlight. A wood-floored entryway opened into a living room. The built-in bookshelves were empty, and while there was a small table and a couple of floor lamps, I didn’t see any larger furniture.
Backing up, I stepped off the porch and made my way under the fruit tree and around to the side of the house. I discovered two windows, both too tall for me to see over the sills, even on tiptoe. The first was curtained. The second showed a six-inch gap in the fabric, but I was still too short to see in very well. I looked around for something to stand on. An empty flowerpot caught my eye. I imagined Elizabeth filling it with dirt and artfully arranging annuals. The timbre of her voice echoed in my mind as I dragged it to the window, turned it over, and stepped up onto it.
A weathered pine dresser rested against the wall on the right. A vanity chair sat at an angle in the middle of the room. A Boston fern hung from the ceiling in one corner. There was no bed.
I saw all of that in the nanosecond my eye was drawn to the closet directly across from my perch. The open closet, with all the built-in shelves.
“What do you think you’re doing? Get down from there this instant!”
My arms pinwheeled backward as I struggled not to fall on my behind. Staggering down from the upturned flowerpot, heart all thumpety-thump in my chest, I nearly knocked over the speaker.
She surveyed my antics with a less-than-amused turn to her nearly lipless mouth.
“Oh, you startled me,” I rasped, then tried to clear my heart out of my throat. Tried again. “It’s not what you think.”
“And what, precisely, do I think?” Her short, iron-gray hair looked like it had been combed with a piece of buttered toast. Thick glasses cut some of the vitriol from the eyes behind them, but her gaze still pinned me to the ground.
“It looks bad, me looking in the house this way. But I only wanted to see if Elizabeth’s things were still here.”
The skin around those laser eyes relaxed the tiniest bit.
“See, I only heard of her death recently and …” I trailed off. Wait a minute. I really hadn’t done anything wrong. Taking a step toward her, I asked, “Are you one of Elizabeth’s neighbors?” Should I have used the present tense? “Were you, I mean.” That didn’t sound right, either.
I shut up.
Her lips thinned even more. “I live next door. We keep an eye on each other around here.”
“You know, I was just thinking that. It’s one of the wonderful things about living in Cadyville. I’m Sophie Mae Ambrose.”
“Mrs. Charles Deveaux.”
Who introduced themselves with their husband’s name anymore? Still, I’d taken Barr’s last name. The alternative, of course, had been to keep my first husband’s last name, and that just hadn’t seemed right.
She sniffed. “I don’t think you should be back here.”
“All right,” keeping my tone conversational. I turned the flower-pot over and returned it to its original position and began walking toward the front of the house. Mrs. Deveaux had no choice but to follow me.
“Did Elizabeth own this house?” I asked.
Suspicion filled her gaze. “You don’t know?”
“I only know she lived here.”
“From reading the obituaries?” All sarcastic.
I stopped and put my hands on my hips. “Listen, I understand you found me looking in the windows of your deceased neighbor’s house. I get how that looks suspicious. But do I really look like a thief?”
“I don’t know. What does a thief look like?”
“Tell you what. How about if you call the Cadyville police? Have them come over. In fact, ask for Detective Ambrose.” I wasn’t proud of what I was doing, but I wasn’t above doing it, either.
She blinked.
“Yes, Ambrose. He’s my husband, and I’m sure he can set the record straight.”
Indecision played across her face, then seemed to settle. “Elizabeth owned this house. Fixed it up nice and took good care of the yard. Good neighbors are like gold. Who knows who will move in now.” Mrs. Deveaux did not give the impression of great optimism.
“Who is taking care of her estate?” I asked.
“Her sister has been coming up from Yakima on the weekends, getting the house ready to sell, getting rid of Elizabeth’s things. She didn’t have a will, I guess. And she had a collection of craft supplies that her sister simply does not know what to do with. I told her to put it all on Craigslist.”
I wanted to know so much more about Elizabeth. Dr. Simms didn’t think she had a boyfriend or even dated. Did she have a best friend? How long had she lived here? Did she seem happy? But asking questions like that would only reveal I didn’t really know her at all.
So I wrote down the name and phone number of the sister in Yakima, thanked Mrs. Charles Deveaux for her help, and encouraged her to continue keeping an eye on Elizabeth’s little house.
As I walked home I thought about the questions I’d wanted to ask about Elizabeth. Barr was right; I kept thinking of the dead therapist as my friend, as someone who needed my help even though I’d never met her. Because of her practical problem solving. Because of her voice on the tapes.
Because of the fear I’d heard in that voice.
Those things, and the fact that an otherwise healthy person had died of a heart attack in her forties.
I really had a bad feeling about that last now. Because in Elizabeth’s closet I had seen two very interesting things.
The first was shelves and shelves spilling over with balls and hanks and skeins of yarn. That told me she had been a knitter, weaver, or hooker—some kind of fiber artist. That would be the “collection” her cranky neighbor had mentioned. I knew exactly who would be interested in that stash, though. My friend and spinning mentor, Ruth Black. And it was quite likely Ruth could tell me more about Elizabeth as well. Knitters tend to socialize with each other.
The second thing I’d seen before being rudely interrupted was slightly more ominous. Tucked onto one of the fiber stash shelves were two bottles. Both had labels with the stylized Grendel design on them.
Elizabeth could have bought that
mead. Anyone could have given it to her. It could be pure coincidence.
Sure.
I called Ruth Black to see if she knew Elizabeth Moser. She was running errands, but her Uncle Thaddeus assured me he’d give her the message when she got home.
“I’ll be leaving shortly,” I told him. “So maybe I’ll try back later.”
Erin walked in and started rooting through the refrigerator.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
She looked at me like I was slow. “Teacher planning day. Early dismissal. Remember?”
“But I thought you were going over to Zoe’s after school.”
“Her mom is taking her shopping. I didn’t want to go.”
“Oh.”
She sat down at the kitchen table with a glass of milk and a handful of molasses oatmeal cookies. “What’s the big deal?”
Oh, to have that metabolism now. I nibbled at a pear and regretted skipping lunch. “Not a big deal. When we were at the wine shop yesterday, I found out they give tours at the Grendel Meadery. One starts in about half an hour, so I was going to take a quick buzz out there and see what’s up. I can go another time, though.”
Erin, mouth still full, stopped chewing and looked at me with pleading eyes. She swallowed and took a glug of milk. Through her white moustache she said, “I want to go with you.”
“What on earth for?”
Her hand crept toward the red notebook on the table beside her glass. “Please?”
“You want to take notes about how to make mead?”
“Sure. Why do you really want to go on the tour?” she countered.
“To learn about how they make the honey wine. It’s bound to be similar to what we’ll be doing when your grandmother shows us how to make the dandelion wine.”
She made a face.
“Remember Barr’s root beer story?”
Her head bobbed and her eyes brightened at the reminder of exploding bottles.
“Well, Tootie said she’d show us how to make ginger beer, too.”
“Ginger beer?”
“Ginger ale. Same thing.”
Wined and Died: A Home Crafting Mystery Page 7