by Lucy Ness
“Anything I can help with?” She came around the desk to stand beside me and checked my computer screen. “One of those find-your-ancestors sites? What are you up to, Avery? Oh.” She read the name up in the search box at the corner of the screen and stepped back like she’d been zapped by lightning.
“You don’t think it’s a good idea?” I asked her.
“Well, I think . . .” She smoothed a hand over the tailored navy blue pants she wore with a green sweater. Her smile came and went. “Of course I don’t know if it’s a good idea or not. I don’t know what you have planned.” She slanted me a look. “What do you have planned?”
“It might not matter.” I stretched, and since I was getting nowhere fast with my research, I closed the website I’d been reading and sat back. “I’ve been trying to do some Internet research ever since I found out about the inauguration. But I can’t find one trace of Dodie Hillenbrand. Not in Ohio. Not anywhere.”
“Why are you looking for her?”
“Oh, it has nothing to do with that sign you took down,” I assured her. I didn’t want her to think I was second-guessing her first presidential decree. “It’s just that Gracie told me Dodie worked here in the house before the house was the club.”
“Yes, that’s what I’ve heard.”
“So I was thinking that she’s really got a kind of connection no one else does. And if we could find her—”
“It was a very long time ago,” Agnes reminded me.
“And she’s ancient by now.” I grabbed a pencil from my desktop and tap, tap, tapped out my frustration near my keyboard. “For all I know, she’s probably dead.”
“Probably.” The very thought seemed to cheer Agnes. She beamed me a smile. “And if she’s not, she certainly would be too old to come here for the inauguration. That is . . .” She gulped. “If that’s what you were thinking.”
“It was,” I admitted. “I thought Dodie would be a great connection to the history of the house. She worked for the Dennisons. She was the cook here for a number of years after the club took over. But then, I thought about it, and I knew it would be asking too much to expect her to join us on Sunday. It’s too short notice. So I gave up on the idea completely. Until this morning, that is, that’s when I thought that if I could locate her, I might be able to FaceTime an interview with her, or at least talk to her on the phone. I’d like to hear some of her stories, find out what things were like here. You know, when the club bought the property.”
“Oh, that would be interesting.”
Which didn’t explain why Agnes’s top lip curled.
“You’d rather I didn’t.”
“It isn’t that. Not at all.” Agnes’s smile was as soft as a kitten’s belly fur. “It’s just that, well, it seems like an awful lot of trouble for you to go through. Especially since we don’t even know if the woman is still alive. It’s Tuesday. The inauguration is Sunday. Far be it from me to tell you your job, Avery. That was best left to Muriel.” She smiled at her own catty remark. “I’m just saying, with the florist to deal with, and the woman who will be playing the harp during the cocktail hour, and with making sure Quentin and Geneva can handle things in the kitchen . . .”
“You’re absolutely right.” To prove I wouldn’t let myself be distracted by the rabbit hole that was Internet research, I popped out of my chair. “I have to measure the mantel in the ballroom and let the florist know how long the flower spray there will need to be. And Quentin’s making samples of the hors d’oeuvres he’s thinking about making. If you’d like to help us decide which ones we’ll serve, stop into the kitchen later.”
“Oh, I’d like that.” Agnes bustled away, then stopped and swung back around. “There will be desserts, too, I hope.”
“Crème brûlée in individual ramekins. Cake pops. Four different flavors. And pavlova. Quentin says it’s your favorite.”
“Quentin is a genius.” A smile on her face as wide as that mantel I had to measure, Agnes returned to the ballroom.
“You ain’t actually going to give up on that Dodie, are you?”
I might have known Clemmie would be back. She perched on the edge of my desk, her legs crossed and her arms braced behind her on nothing at all.
“It looks like I might have to. I’m not finding out much of anything, anyway. Except . . .” A thought struck. “You were here when Dodie was around. You must have been.”
She nodded. “I remember hearing the name. You know, when I was listening from down in the furnace room. I remember some other stuff, too.” She gave me a broad wink.
“Like . . . ?”
“Like the fact that some evenings, Dodie would tell everyone here she was going home, only she wouldn’t. She’d wait around until everyone else was gone, and then she’d sometimes meet somebody.”
“Somebody who?”
Clemmie shrugged.
“How do you know?”
“Hey, I might be a ghost, but I know the sound of barney-mugging when I hear it.”
I did not need her to elaborate. Times change. So do words. But I had a feeling I knew exactly what Dodie was up to when she was barney-mugging.
“With who?” I asked.
“Whom.” Clemmie wiggled her shoulders and corrected me, then squealed a laugh. “That’s what those swells used to say. You know, when they were all being oh-so correct and trying like the dickens to impress each other even when they were down there in the gin joint breaking every law on the books.”
“So who . . . whom . . . no, it’s who this time. Who was Dodie meeting?”
“Can’t say. Don’t know. A big-timer, if I had to guess.”
“Was it old man Dennison himself? Or was it after his time. I hope it was after he’d sold that house. That would be awful, wouldn’t it, if it was Dodie and Mr. Dennison? Mrs. Dennison adored Dodie’s cooking. If Chauncey cheated on her with Dodie . . .” I could only imagine the hurt and betrayal, and it made my stomach sour.
“Wish I could help. But like I told you, my days just sort of flow, one into the other, so I can’t tell you when it was. And I never did hear much from him. Just some mumbling. You know, like sweet nothings.” She sighed. “And that Dodie, she’d giggle and flirt. And it’s funny, because now and again, she’d go into the basement for something or other, and I’d get a look at her. She wasn’t the giggle-and-flirt type, if you know what I mean. Hardworking. Down-to-earth. But then, love does strange things to a woman. It can make some of them really goofy.”
True enough.
Other things could make a woman goofy, too, and if I needed the reminder, it came when Patricia zoomed into the club.
It was Tuesday, and I had plans for later in the day. Goofy plans that included keeping a very close eye on Patricia.
I busied myself sorting through a stack of mail that I’d already gone through earlier that morning.
“Good morning!” Didn’t it figure, the one morning I didn’t want to talk to Patricia for fear of looking too guilty about spying on her, she was dead set on visiting. She planted herself in front of my desk. “How are the plans going?”
As if I had to think about it rather than school my expression so it didn’t give me away as a spy, I finished with the mail, tapped it into a pile, and set it down. “You mean the inauguration?”
Patricia laughed. “Of course that’s what I mean! We’re good?”
“So far,” I reassured her. “Food sampling later this afternoon. I hope you have time to stop by. I ran into Reverend Way this morning.” I didn’t have time to wonder if a lie about a clergyman counted as extra big. “He told me he’s rescheduled tomorrow’s Kids Coats meeting for tonight.”
Patricia’s dark brows dropped low over her eyes. “Yes. I wish he’d quit doing that. It’s hard to change plans in midstream.”
“You had something else planned for tonight?” What, like I hoped she�
��d say no, that she’d admit the only Tuesday she’d had other plans was the Tuesday she killed Muriel?
“Nah, nothing like that at all.” Patricia waved away the question—and my crazy idea about how easy it might be to get her to confess. “Just the Kids Coats meeting.” She started toward the ballroom, then stopped so fast, the sneakers she wore with dark brown pants and a blue sweater squeaked. “I keep forgetting to tell you, Avery.” Patricia spun back around and came to stand near my desk. “I didn’t think you’d mind. I asked Jack Harkness for a little help with the inauguration.”
Like what, escorting his fiancée to the cocktail party?
It was small-minded of me to even think it. I banished the thought with a figurative whack to the forehead.
“He’s doing some research. You know, in the old books. Since we’re not allowed to touch any of them until he’s completely finished with Marigold, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to ask him to take a peek.”
“What’s he looking for?”
Patricia’s shrug was quick and broad. “Just thought he might find some interesting tidbits. Let me know if he comes up with anything.”
I assured her I would. And reminded her there would be cake pops available later.
Before the Kids Coats meeting.
And my surveillance.
* * *
* * *
It was fall and by six forty-five, the sky had already darkened to a deep indigo edged in the west by flaming clouds in shades of pink and orange.
“Red sky at night,” I mumbled to myself from the spot I’d staked out near the window closest to my desk. “Let’s hope what results is delight.”
“You mean like you finding out that Patricia is really the killer.”
I knew Clemmie was looking over my shoulder. Even though I couldn’t see her reflection next to mine in the window, I could feel the cool breath of her presence. Together, we watched the sunset for a few more minutes, until the sky was navy blue and dotted with silver stars.
“As much as I want to find the killer, I don’t want it to be Patricia,” I finally said. “I like Patricia.”
“I bet somebody, somewhere, liked the goon who shot me, too.”
It was an interesting thought, and a grim reminder that murder leaves a wake of ache and despair, on both the killer’s and the victim’s friends, family, and acquaintances.
I turned to face Clemmie. It was better than trying to address the nothing that looked back at me from the window.
“Do you know who it was?” I asked her.
“Who shot me?” As if she’d never even considered the question, she wrinkled her nose. “Like I told you, it was that tough. He was an ugly pug wearing a dark suit. And he was the one who was jawing with the other tough at the table near the stage.”
“But don’t you wonder who he was? What his name was? What happened to him?”
“It never seemed nearly as important as what happened to me,” she said, but she didn’t have time to say more. She pointed over my shoulder and hopped up and down again, her shoes silently hitting the parquet floor. “Isn’t that her? That Patricia you’re watching? She’s out of that meeting, Avery. She’s headed for her car.”
Clemmie was right. Patricia crossed the parking lot, heading for her car. Like she had the Tuesday before, she’d left her meeting early. I was ready. I grabbed my car keys from the top of my desk and ducked away from the window so there was no chance Patricia would see me. As soon as she pulled out of her parking space, I was out the door and in my car.
I reminded myself not to be too eager, not to drive too close, not to get too nervous. Tell that to the drumbeat of anticipation that pounded through my veins.
But then, maybe this was actually good news.
The thought hit just as I stopped three car lengths behind Patricia at a red light.
If Patricia really did have someplace else to go this Tuesday night, maybe it meant she had someplace else to go the Tuesday Muriel had been killed, too. Is it possible that when she left the Kids Coats meeting that night, she hadn’t gone back to the club? That she wasn’t a murderer?
I hoped so. Oh, how I hoped so, and that drumbeat of worry shifted rhythms ever so slightly. Now my heart pounded out hope.
I was still unfamiliar enough with Portage Path to not know where we were headed, but I faithfully followed Patricia’s fuel-efficient hybrid car farther into the heart of town. She turned down a street that had a tire repair shop on one corner, a long-closed gas station on the other, and all around me, I saw remnants of Portage Path’s industrial past. A retail establishment with boarded-up windows here. A long-closed factory there. The street curved and sloped down to the meandering Portage Path River (which, from what I’d seen of it, was really more of a stream) and at the bottom of the hill, Patricia drove past the broken bottles and piles of litter than pocked the street and toward a metal building that looked a whole lot like a barn. There was a rusted metal fence around the parking lot, where weeds cracked the pavement and garbage dotted the ground.
There were other cars there, too, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I hung back and let Patricia park her car. When she got out, she was carrying a duffel bag and had something big and misshapen flung over her shoulder. I waited until she was inside the building to find a parking place in a corner away from the one blinking light that was someone’s idea of security.
When another car pulled into the lot, I sank back in my seat and watched. This was another woman, about Patricia’s age, and she, too, had a duffel bag, and when she opened the door of the building, a stream of anemic light hit the pavement and a muffled cheer washed outside.
More curious than ever, I slipped out of my car and over to the door just as another car pulled in. I melted into the shadows next to the building but apparently not quickly enough. When a woman approached, she nodded a greeting.
“It’s not the night for trials,” she said.
“No. I . . . uh . . . I knew that.”
She looked me up and down. “You’re too young, anyway. And too scrawny from the looks of it.”
I couldn’t tell if this was meant to be a compliment or the ultimate of insults.
She turned away and grabbed the door handle.
“But I can still go in, can’t I?” I asked her.
She looked at me over her shoulder. “You got ten bucks?”
I assured her I did.
“Then come on in.” She yanked the door open further, stepped back to hold it open, and waved me inside.
She cursed, too, when I stopped just inside the door, surprise freezing me in place.
“Get a move on, skinny chick!” The woman edged around me and hurried down a hallway behind the nearest tier of bleachers.
Ahead of me, the floor sloped down and on either side of it, there were bleacher seats where those spectators I’d heard from outside huddled in groups of threes and fours. Before I took another step, I heard a cough from over on the left and turned to find a woman seated on a metal folding chair with a lopsided tray table in front of it. She barely looked up from the screen of the phone on the tray, just held out a hand.
I grabbed ten dollars out of my purse and set it down on the tray, and the woman scooped it up and stuffed it in an old cigar box. Since she didn’t acknowledge me or tell me where to sit, I decided I had free run of the place. I walked the aisle between the bleachers and on toward the center of the building and the oval, light-colored floor painted with orange concentric circles.
“Hi!” I gave a little wave to a man in a red T-shirt and a fuzzy red wig who was sitting nearest to the aisleway. “Can you tell me—”
“Not now, honey!” He shushed me by frantically waving his hands. “It’s about to start.”
I wasn’t sure what it was. I had no idea what was going on.
At least not until I heard a voice from behind
me, close to my ear.
“You can’t stand there looking like a deer in headlights, Avery. They’re going to know you don’t belong.”
CHAPTER 19
I almost didn’t recognize Oz. But then, the other times I’d seen him, he was working, and though he wasn’t a flashy dresser, he’d always looked neat and professional. Suit. Tie. Nicely pressed shirt.
Now . . .
Not sure if my eyes were playing tricks on me, I shook my head, squinted, and looked him over.
All the way from the jeans and the purple T-shirt to the purple glitter in his hair.
He was munching a bag of popcorn and he held it out, offering me some.
I declined. I was way too busy sputtering to eat. “You’re . . .” Since my brain refused to process what I was seeing, my mouth wouldn’t work. “Why are you . . . What are you . . . What’s going on here?”
The crowd roared and Oz put a hand on my shoulder and turned me to face the center of the building just as two groups of older-than-middle-aged women roller-skated onto the rink. Half of them were wearing red T-shirts and white helmets with red stars on them. The other half was in purple—T-shirts, helmets, short shorts.
“Portage Path Pirates versus the Cleveland Eerie Rovers. Senior women’s roller derby,” he said.
“But I don’t . . . It can’t . . . Why is—”
“Ooh!” As if he were the one out there on the rink who just got blindsided by a short woman in purple with a skull and crossbones tattooed on her right upper forearm, he oofed. “Did you see that?”
“I didn’t. I don’t know where to look.” The action moved fast and the more I watched it, the more my brain scrambled. Bewildered, I looked over the scrum of women vying for . . . whatever. “Oz.” Because he was paying more attention to the action than he was to me, I tugged at the sleeve of his purple shirt. “What are you doing here?”
Because that same woman with the skull tattoo did something that was apparently good, the crowd roared and Oz had to raise his voice. “The same thing you’re doing here.”