Larkspur

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Larkspur Page 18

by Sheila Simonson


  "But if Lydia killed Denise..."

  "If she killed my mother, I want her to suffer."

  A long silence fell. I sank onto the rocker.

  For the first time, Ginger put her hand on his arm. She looked at me.

  I swallowed. "But you were right, weren't you? That she was being unfair to Ginger. And besides, she...your mother was teasing you. Neither of you would have said what you said if you'd known what was going to happen. She loved you, and she knew you loved her."

  That started Dennis crying again. Ginger comforted him. I went back into the kitchen to collect my wits. When I returned, they were looking a lot more comfortable with each other.

  Dennis gave me a wavering smile. "What do you think I should do?"

  "Talk to Jay." When he frowned I went on, "He won't assume Lydia's guilty, you know, and he needs all the help he can get."

  Ginger stirred. "Does Dennis have to...?"

  I turned to her. She was looking uncharacteristically vague. "Have to what?"

  "Have to mention that he and Denise quarreled?"

  "He'll think I killed her," Dennis said miserably.

  I sat down again, and the rocker creaked. I wasn't sure Dennis was wrong. "You may have to go over the conversation a couple of times, but Jay doesn't go off half-cocked. He wants this killer. Why not help him?"

  The phone rang. I dashed back to the kitchen. It was Mother. She apologized for not congratulating me with the proper fervor and begged me almost tearfully not to run off to Nevada.

  "I was pulling your leg, Ma." I craned round the corner. My guests were showing signs of restlessness. "Look, I can't talk now. I've got company."

  "At eight forty-five on Sunday morning?"

  "Ginger and Dennis."

  "Oh. Tell Jay..."

  "He's already at the courthouse."

  "Well, darn it, Lark, I want to talk this over. It's important."

  "Lunch?"

  We agreed that I'd drive out to the lodge for lunch. Ma wanted me to bring Jay. I said I'd try but not to count on it. Ginger was up and pacing by the time we'd settled everything. I hung up.

  "Come to the courthouse with us." Ginger planted her feet on the carpet and raised her chin, her face flushed. "Jay will listen if you explain about the quarrel."

  That was nuts, and I told her so. Jay was a pro. He'd probably have someone else question Dennis anyway, and he'd dislike my intrusion.

  Ginger dug her heels in.

  We dickered. Finally I gave up and agreed to drive to the courthouse with them. The phone rang. Janey wanted to get together with me. She was leaving for Oregon Monday. She sneezed. Allergies. Did I want to go for a run?

  I did, but I put her off, hung up, and phoned Jay to warn him we were coming. He sounded distracted. He could not lunch with Ma. I was disappointed but not surprised.

  I decided the session at the courthouse might take a while, so I went into the bedroom and changed into a skirt and top that might pass muster at the dining room of the Eagle Cap Lodge. We didn't reach the courthouse until nine thirty, and we drove in separate cars.

  The Monte County courthouse is a stolid late-Victorian structure with a jail circa 1970 tucked around back. Jay's office was on the third floor of the main building. He met us in the hall, which smelled of wax, room-freshener, and ancient crime. He gave me a brief kiss and shook hands with Dennis and Ginger.

  "Dennis has something to tell you," I prompted, feeling like a fool.

  Jay said easily, "I was going to come over to see you later, Dennis. I thought you needed a little time. Your memory was bound to be loused up yesterday." Not for nothing was Jay trained to negotiate with hostage-takers. I practically felt Ginger relax. Dennis still looked apprehensive, but he had stopped twisting his hands.

  Jay led us in through the main office with its bullpen of desks. A bored deputy was reading True Detective at the booking station, and Carol, the dispatcher, gave me a smile from her communications board. Kevin wasn't at his desk. Probably at church. He was a devout Methodist. I flipped Carol a wave and followed Ginger into Jay's office. It was kind of crummy--badly in need of fresh paint and furnished in New Deal leftovers--but it had a corner window on a spectacular view of the Siskiyous.

  Jay was making preliminary rumblings. Time for me to bow out. I was about to say so when the sergeant on duty entered with her notebook, looking trim and official, and Ginger grabbed my arm.

  "Don't leave us," she hissed.

  I rolled my eyes at her.

  Her perm was electric that morning, and her eyes pleaded.

  Jay and Dennis were looking at us, Jay frowning.

  "Dennis remembered something that may be important," I said, resigned to my role as go-between. "But he and Denise had a disagreement over the phone, and he's sure you'll arrest him for murdering Denise if he tells you about it."

  Jay turned to Dennis. "I can't make promises, but we're pretty sure you're clear on the first murder, Dennis, and I think there's only one killer."

  Dennis and Ginger sighed in unison.

  To my surprise Jay took Dennis through his story then and there, though they went out with the sergeant when Dennis was ready to sign a statement. When they returned, minus the sergeant, Dennis looked almost tranquil. I heard Ginger expel a long, relieved breath as she rose to go.

  Jay kept us a few minutes while he told Dennis about the state lab's computer search for the owner of the partial thumbprint they had found on the gun that killed Miguel. Dennis got interested in--or perhaps distracted by--the technicalities. If my mother had been murdered, I wouldn't have been able to listen, which may be one of the differences between men and women. I think Jay was trying to give Dennis the illusion of progress.

  Dennis and Ginger went off hand in hand. I looked at Jay. "Are you going to arrest Lydia?"

  "Not yet, but you can bet I'm going to question her."

  "Any other developments?"

  His mustache whiffled. "Have you no faith?"

  "In you, yes. In your gizmoes and gadgets very little. I'm going to lunch with Ma. Any messages?"

  "I won't be married in a monkey suit."

  "How about gorilla?"

  He kissed my cheek, a chaste office-type kiss, and escorted me to the elevator. "We may have a witness at that construction site above Denise's house. Kev's looking into it."

  I punched the Down button. "I heard a power saw when we first got there. Do you think Lydia...?"

  "Hush. Time will tell." The elevator door opened and disgorged half a dozen scruffy citizens, two I recognized as reporters, and a female deputy who smiled at Jay. We both smiled back.

  I got into the elevator. "I'll call when I get home."

  Jay blew me a kiss and turned back to his office as the door closed. Both reporters followed him.

  I reached Eagle Cap Lodge about half an hour before the appointed time. I could have gone up to Ma's room but needed a moment to sort out my thoughts. She was going to want to talk wedding. I walked around and admired the gardens. The patrons looked very expensive. When we finally went down to lunch, Ma did talk wedding.

  The fashion for bloated ceremonies, grotesquely expensive and full of Bride Magazine ideas of Meaningful Symbolism, was then at its height. My mother is not a slave to fashion, so I was a little surprised that her plans leaned in that direction.

  I put both feet down hard. I also pointed out that Jay had been married before and was not, as it were, a virgin. That distracted her from visions of color-coordinated tuxedoes, as I had hoped I would, but she grilled me about Jay's first marriage so mercilessly I took refuge in fiction. I didn't know the details. He and I hadn't got around to discussing them. So I made up a plausible and dignified scenario. I think Ma believed it. I also resolved to cross-examine Jay as soon as possible.

  Mother refused to see me wed in a forest glade near Lake Alice, though I catalogued the advantages of a double ceremony with Dennis and Ginger, only half joking. We finally settled on a small private ritual in our backya
rd in Childers, New York, and even set a date in August. I could see Ma was mentally reviewing her roster of caterers, so I mentioned the partial thumbprint on the Beretta.

  She leaned forward over her crab Louis. "Will a partial thumbprint show anything useful?"

  I paraphrased Jay's description of the lab's new computerized matching system.

  "Heavens. Does he think an arrest is likely?"

  "He said there might be a witness near the farmhouse."

  "Do you think the killer was Lydia Huff?"

  I took a bite of asparagus. "It seems more and more possible. She has to be at least a material witness."

  "That's a strange family."

  "How so?" I thought they were depressingly normal.

  Mother buttered a bit of her roll. "It feels as if it were straining to fly apart. Bill is very unhappy."

  "Very sloshed."

  Ma chewed. "That's a symptom. And Janey's a puzzle."

  "I should go running with her today. I suggested it while we were at the lodge, but I keep putting her off."

  Mother regards voluntary physical exercise as a fly-by-night fad, so she ignored my mild guilt. "What does Janey do for a living?"

  "Works in a public library up in Oregon. She's a librarian, not an aide, so she probably makes a living wage. What I don't understand is why she's staying with Lydia, whom she obviously despises."

  Ma paused to appreciate a chunk of Dungeness crab. "Perhaps she's trying to protect her father. The children of alcoholics are often parental. Is she an only child?"

  "I don't know." I sipped my iced tea. "But Lydia's the parental one--toward Bill, I mean. She's a classic enabler." I described how Lydia had intercepted Bill that first night at the lodge and sent him up to sleep off the booze. And how she had hovered over him the next morning, talking baby-talk, when he was hung-over.

  "How did Janey react to that?"

  I didn't remember Janey reacting at all. Janey was beside the point, anyway, if Lydia was on the verge of arrest. It was true that Dennis's "evidence" was shaky and uncertain. I could see why Jay hadn't sworn out a warrant, but if he found the smallest fragment of corroboration I knew he would act.

  "Are you going to that cocktail party at D'Angelo's apartment this afternoon?"

  "Certainly." Mother took a last blissful bite of crab. "We have to look at the notebooks again, talk things over."

  "I wish you wouldn't go."

  "Why?"

  "Lydia's bound to be there." If she wasn't in custody. "I don't trust her an inch." I folded my heavy cloth napkin. "I don't trust any of them. Not after yesterday."

  "Yes, I see your point. Nevertheless," she said, signing the check and writing in her room number, "I am going. I'll see you at ten tomorrow morning, darling." She was going to drive in to the bookstore, and we would have lunch again before she drove the rental car to the airport. She was flying out north, via Portland. "Keep me posted, and tell Jay I want to see him before I leave."

  I wondered how Jay felt about August weddings. I would find out.

  Chapter XIV

  The phone was ringing as I came in the door. I kicked off my shoes and padded over to it in time to hear Jay leave a message on my answering tape. I interrupted him as he finished. "Have you had lunch?"

  "Lark? Did your mother go to D'Angelo's?"

  I checked my watch. "Should be there by now."

  "Who else was going?"

  "Martha, Win, the Huffs." I carried the phone over to the refrigerator and started poking in the freezer compartment, looking for something to nuke for dinner. Fish? Chicken Cordon Bleu? Weight Watchers' Lasagna?

  I heard Jay draw a long breath. "We've got an awkward situation here."

  "No kidding?" He'd been in an awkward situation since the discovery of Miguel's body. "Give."

  Hesitation. "Will you just go on over there and keep an eye on your mother?"

  "Crash the party? Come on."

  "The thumbprint on the clip was Bill Huff's. We got a match."

  I shut the refrigerator door and leaned against it. My brain kicked in. "Then, if it was Bill's gun..."

  "All we know is he loaded the clip. Probably not recently. The gun was unregistered."

  "Then how...?"

  "We took his prints at the lodge. The Navy has them, too, but it takes time to pry information from the feds, so we just sent what we had down to Sacramento and told them to cross-check the suspects. We couldn't tell for sure that the print matched, but the new computer came up with Huff on the first try."

  "Impressive."

  "Yes. Will you go on over to D'Angelo's? If Janey is still at the Huff place, we'll try to execute the search warrant, and she'll probably call Bill. When he comes to the house, we'll take him in for questioning. Meanwhile, someone should keep an eye on Lydia."

  "Haven't you questioned her yet?"

  "We only got the good word an hour ago. I phoned and asked to see her at seven. She said she was going to D'Angelo's. I needed more evidence anyway, so I decided to delay..." His voice came back strong. "I may have made another mistake. I don't want any more victims."

  I got the point. My pulse raced. I envisaged Lydia's craftworker hands twisting the scarf around Denise's neck.

  "You'll have back-up, but I don't want to alarm the suspects. I'll send a car to D'Angelo's. Check in with the deputy when you get there."

  "Who?"

  "Dan Cowan."

  I refrained from groaning. After all, Cowan had saved Jay's bacon two days before. "I'm on my way."

  "Lark?"

  "What?"

  "Take care."

  "You, too," I muttered. "I love you." I hung up, dashed into the living room and scuffed back into my shoes, grabbing my purse. I locked the door behind me out of pure habit and clattered down the back stairs to my car. I don't remember the drive to the apartment complex. I probably broke all kinds of speed laws.

  I wheeled into a spot marked Visitors and jumped out. As I did, a marked sheriff's car, no siren or lights, nosed into the lot. I stood on the curb until Cowan saw me and rolled down his window.

  "Evening, Ms. Dailey. Which unit is it?"

  D'Angelo lived in a townhouse, two-storey, two bedrooms up, at the edge of a grassy common that led to the swimming pool. Rose bushes in full flower lined the short walkway to his door. I pointed. "Over there."

  "Okay. If you need help, open the door and yell. I'll sit where I can keep an eye on it." Dan was chewing gum and sounded bored.

  "Thanks." I jogged across the lawn and up the walk. I hadn't seen Ma's car in the lot, though that meant nothing. It was an undistinguished vehicle, and the lot was nearly full. I leaned on the bell.

  Martha Finn opened the door almost at once. When she saw who it was, her eyes widened briefly, but she was an actress. She gave me her number two smile, gracious welcome to interloper. "Hello, Lark. What a nice surprise." She was wearing a cool lilac-and-pink striped caftan that looked like I. Magnin.

  I hoped my skirt wasn't too crumpled. I had given no thought to the tale I'd have to spin, either. I presumed Jay didn't want me alerting Bill and Lydia before he had a chance to put his deputies in place at the Huff's house. "Er, ah, is my mother here?"

  "Surely. Come in. Win and Mary are sorting papers, but we were about to have a drink. I hope you'll join us."

  "Uh, thanks." I followed her solid, graceful form down the hall and stopped dead in the archway that opened on the sunken living room. All four occupants of the room gaped at me--Ma, D'Angelo, Lydia, and Janey.

  "Hi." Confusion set in. Where was Bill? "Did you get your run in, Janey?"

  Janey twitched a smile. "Couple of miles at the high school track." She looked relaxed, as if she'd had a good workout and a cool shower. She was wearing a long-sleeved pink tee shirt and pants made out of pink sheeting fabric.

  All four of them sat around the low myrtlewood coffee table, Janey and Ma on cushions on the carpet, D'Angelo and Lydia chummily together on an oatmeal-colored sofa.

  "
What are you doing here?" Ma put the question the others were probably too polite to ask. The table before her was covered with neat exercise books, the kind with marbled cardboard covers. She squared one of the piles.

  "Jay's on duty. I got scared alone in that apartment."

  This was truly feeble taradiddle at five in the afternoon, but for some reason everyone fell for it. Martha practically shoved me into a low-slung chair, and everyone clucked. It was all so innocent and kind-hearted I began to feel like a paranoid wacko. Lydia told a crisp little tale of being left alone while Bill attended a reunion. She got scared and almost shot one of the cats, she said. Ho, ho. I didn't ask her which gun.

  Martha had gone off toward the kitchen to fetch munchies. Janey followed her. D'Angelo rose and went to a small cabinet on rollers that was stocked as a bar.

  I looked at Ma. She was frowning slightly. I cleared my throat. "Get all the papers sorted?"

  She tapped the pile of notebooks. "What we had to. Did something happen?"

  Unwilling to lie to her, I just shook my head. I turned to Lydia. "I thought Bill was coming. Too bad he couldn't make it."

  She gave a brief, tinkly laugh. "Oh, you know Bill. He deputized Janey, said he had business calls to make for the paper. I think he wanted to loll around and watch the Cubs on cable." Her eyes glittered. They were the color of gray that sometimes seems incandescent. I had noticed the glow before, but I didn't know what it meant. She didn't say a word about her upcoming interrogation.

  She trilled another laugh and rose. "Let me help you, Win. What do you need?"

  D'Angelo was setting out glasses. "Poll the company. Gin and tonic, right, Mary?"

  Ma nodded.

  "Me, too," Lydia echoed, giving a little nervy bounce. She trotted off toward the kitchen.

  "Lark?"

  I started. "Just ginger ale, Win. Thanks." I wished Jay would hurry up. If Bill were home, Jay would probably do his search, take Bill in for questioning and stop for Lydia on the way.

  The ordeal began to stretch before me forever. I wasn't keeping much of an eye on Lydia. Guilty and a bit scared--what the hell were they doing in the kitchen?--I got up. Ma was still watching me, still frowning. Apparently D'Angelo had noticed nothing strange in my behavior. He had gone off into a discussion of the early notebooks, rattling glasses and ice cubes while he talked.

 

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