“People are taking bets on the Cow?” I asked. I couldn’t imagine its odds for survival were high.
“He bet that the Cow would be destroyed by a means other than fire. That was the year it got hit by a runaway RV.” Harper smiled wryly. “Not even Dieter predicted that.”
“Have you ever placed a bet with him?”
“Are you kidding? I trust that guy as far as I can throw him.”
“But isn’t betting illegal?”
Harper stuffed the papers back inside the box on the floor. “Only if you get caught.”
Fabulous. Dieter had turned the tea room into a part-time casino. Did Adele know? I dismissed the idea. She’d never allow gambling in her perfectly proper tea room. With Adele in jail, I’d have to deal with this, and I really didn’t want to. My jaw tightened. “You said you wanted to tell me something about Adele?”
Harper busied herself straightening the papers in the box. “About Adele? No, not really. More about Christy. And it’s confidential.”
I frowned at that. “Too confidential to tell the police?”
“I was wrestling all last night with if I should tell you. A … client of mine told me something about Christy. She’d been”—Harper scrunched up her face—“not exactly blackmailing my client, but she was holding some information over her head.”
“What sort of information?”
“I can’t tell you that. But it might have damaged my client’s business if it had gotten out.”
“Which could be a motive for murder. Harper, you have to tell the police.”
“My client’s a woman. You said Herb heard Christy arguing with a man. I’m not going to blow my client’s confidence for nothing.”
“But if Christy made a habit of this sort of thing, she may have had other victims.” Something gray whipped past me, and I swatted at the air. Why was Harper arguing about this?
“Look,” she said. “Let’s see how things go with Adele. She’s got a good lawyer, and I can’t believe the police have anything but circumstantial evidence against her. If things look like they’re going badly, I’ll talk to the police.”
“Things are going badly. Adele is in jail.”
“Just … let me think about it. Okay?”
“Think fast,” I grumbled. I couldn’t force Harper to call the cops. Besides, she and Adele went way back. I couldn’t believe she’d let her best friend since fifth grade twist in the wind.
“We need to concentrate on this Herb guy,” Harper said. “Look, I’ve got a client who’s a private investigator. Let me ask his opinion. Maybe he can give us some tips on how to find him.”
Still annoyed, I grunted my assent.
Harper handed me the box of papers and left. I prowled the museum looking for more hiding places, but didn’t find any caches of hidden records.
At ten o’clock I opened the museum and was pleasantly surprised by the steady stream of customers. For a moment, I fantasized about making a go of the place. Could I make it work? I shook my head, banishing those thoughts as unrealistic. One busy Sunday did not a successful business make.
In spite of the crowd, there were gaps between selling tickets and answering questions. I couldn’t do anything for Adele, so I called the San Benedetto Historical Association. The nice lady who answered the phone didn’t know any more than I did about Cora McBride, but for a small donation offered to research the crime.
“But I have to warn you,” she said. “If you’re looking for court records from that era, they’re kept at the police department.”
“Not the courthouse?”
She sighed. “The police department had plans to open their own museum and took all the records. But the museum was never opened, so they’re sitting in their archives, by which I mean their basement. Do you still want me to see what I can find here?”
I did, and I gave her the pertinent details and my credit card number. She promised to email anything she turned up.
Feeling virtuous, I opened a bag of pretzels and returned to the inventory.
Adele’s family lawyer ambled through the door. Roger was out of his legal togs and wearing jeans and a black golf shirt. “Hey, ghost lady.” He opened his arms wide. “How about a hug?”
“I don’t do hugs.” At least not with relative strangers.
“I had to try.” Shrugging philosophically, he drew a folded piece of paper from his back pocket. “Adele asked me to give you this.”
I took the paper and unfolded it. A to-do list: Pick-up morning coffee (on order under my name) for Dieter (daily). Feed cat (daily). Collect spare keys from Wine and Visitors Bureau, etc. Oversee installation of marble counter on Wednesday … It was a long list, but I knew it was only a fraction of Adele’s daily grind. How many other lists like this had gone out?
“You’ve seen Adele?” I asked Roger. “How is she?”
“I think she’s more worried about what’s going on out here now than about a future in jail. That’s a good thing.”
“But since you’re not her criminal lawyer, how did you get in to see her?”
He quirked a brow. “I got myself on the list.”
“Can I do that?”
“No. It’s a very short list. So can I tell Adele you’ll take care of that?” He tilted his head toward the to-do list on the counter.
Unenthusiastic, I reviewed it. “Sure.” But with Adele behind bars, how could I say no? The museum was closed Mondays and Tuesdays, and I probably could get most of the stuff on the list done then.
“Thanks,” Roger said. “I’ll let her know. Is there anything else you’d like me to tell her?”
I thought of Dieter’s betting operation. “Please tell her everything is okay with the museum, and I’ll take care of her list. Do you know when she’ll be released?”
He shook his head. “It’s the weekend. She’s stuck at least until her bail hearing on Monday. And who knows what they’ll set bail at?”
I hesitated. “You’re a lawyer.”
“That’s what they say.”
“You know, I heard something that might bear on Adele’s case.”
“Oh?” Roger poked my open bag of pretzels. “Do you know what’s in those things?”
“Pretzels?”
“Sodium and thiamine mononitrate! It can cause allergies.”
“I seem to be doing okay.”
He shook his head. “You only have one body.”
“I heard Christy liked ferreting out secrets and using them against people,” I said, trying to get the conversation back to Adele and away from my eating habits.
“Blackmail?”
“If it’s true, there may be other people out there with reasons to kill Christy.”
Roger raised his brows. “If it’s true. Christy was a lawyer, and attorneys know lots of secrets. But we’d be out of jobs pretty quick if we held them over our clients.”
“You worked with her. Was there ever any hint that she might have been doing this?”
He shook his head. “There is such a thing as professional ethics. You need to be careful who you share that gossip with.”
I nodded, chastened. But the power of gossip was that it was frequently true. Christy hadn’t been the nicest person. But Roger was right—it was a big leap from being unpleasant to being a blackmailer.
He opened his arms. “Come on. Hug?”
“Out.” I pointed to the door.
Laughing, he left, the bell above the door jingling in his wake.
Sure, there were professional ethics. But it was Roger who’d told me everyone lied in court—including attorneys. And as an estate attorney, Christy would know where a family’s proverbial bodies were buried.
I took another look at Adele’s to-do list and frowned over the third item: Collect spare keys from Wine and Visitors Bureau, etc.
&nbs
p; “Etc.”? Did that mean there was more than one spare key outstanding? Dieter had one, but he needed it to get in and out of the building for the construction. Adele couldn’t want me to confiscate his key. But if it wasn’t Dieter, then who was the “etcetera?”
I growled beneath my breath, startling an elderly woman in khakis and a fisherman’s hat. She jammed a dollar in the tip jar and scuttled out.
ten
At lunch, I closed up the museum, putting a We’ll be back at … sign on the door, and drove to the Wine and Visitors Bureau. Faded grape vines twined up its low brick walls, and a small “educational” vineyard stretched off to one side for visitors to explore.
I strolled past the wine barrel in the lobby and veered left at a placard advertising wine tasting classes: Every Sunday at 3:00! Sponsored by the Ladies Aid Society!
In the tasting area, a handful of tourists bellied up to the bar, swishing wine in their mouths.
A woman slid down the counter toward me. “Are you here for a tasting?”
Regretful, I shook my head. No drinking on the job. “No. I’m with the Paranormal Museum. I was told you had one of its spare keys?”
She pointed to an open door. “Ask at the office.”
I nodded and wended my way past displays of T-shirts and corkscrews and purple wine goblets to the open office door.
A plump woman in a fuzzy gray sweater scowled at her computer screen. I rapped my knuckles on the door frame.
Her head jerked up, and then she smoothed her expression into a smile. “Can I help you?”
I edged past open boxes filled with posters for the upcoming wine festival. “I’m Maddie Kosloski, temporary manager of the Paranormal Museum. Adele said you had one of its spare keys?”
“Ah, yes.” She rummaged through a desk drawer and lifted out a small key ring. “I’m a little sorry to hand it over, but I suppose it’s for the best. Er, has Adele decided to keep the museum open?”
“For now. Why?”
She pried the key off its ring and leaned over the desk to hand it to me. “Oh, no reason. There does seem to be a strange synergy between your museum and the wineries. Chuck, the past owner, used to joke that after a round of spirits, tourists wanted to experience the real thing. I tried to explain that ‘spirits’ refers to distilled liquor, not wine, but he wouldn’t let go of the joke.”
I had noticed a high percentage of museum visitors with glowing cheeks and noses. Synergy indeed.
“Chuck was a faithful sponsor of our winery map.” The woman tapped a stack of folded papers. “And the Paranormal Museum is on it as a result. I do hope Adele plans to maintain the tradition.”
“Things are in flux right now, but I’ll be sure to let the future owner know. That said, we are running low on maps at the museum.”
She gave me a stack. “Take these. They’re free for all our sponsors.”
“Thanks for managing the museum during the interim. I know it wasn’t your job.”
She waved her hand, dismissing the idea. “Oh, it’s our job. Like it or not, we have to stick together. People come to your museum and stop at the wineries, and vice versa. I know not everyone in town likes the museum, but I have to admit, I enjoyed it. Though several of our volunteers flat-out refused to work there again with all the weird stuff going on.”
“Weird stuff?” Something fluttered in my mid-section.
She tugged her gold necklace. “Strange sounds. Cold drafts. Things moving around. Of course, there’s no such thing as ghosts. I told them it was a combination of the construction next door and their imagination. But let’s face it. You’ve got some strange exhibits. And if I did believe in demons, I’d swear that African mask has got one.”
African mask? I tried to remember seeing one and failed.
“And now that Christy Huntington has been killed there, the museum’s haunted reputation can only get worse. Not that I think a ghost killed her. But I can’t say I’m all that surprised that someone did.”
“Oh?” I put the maps in my messenger bag.
“That woman overcharged me on a trust. I guess someone had to pay for her designer clothes and fancy car. But my friend paid one thousand dollars for her trust, and I paid Christy six. It was criminal! I complained to her, and she basically challenged me to sue. At that moment, I wanted to …” She pressed her lips together.
“‘Let’s kill all the lawyers’?” I quoted.
“Henry the Sixth !” She clapped her hands together. “You know your Shakespeare. Though I suppose if every lawyer got killed for overcharging, we wouldn’t have any left.”
“Mmm.” I had no idea what the going rate for a trust was, and guessed it depended on how complicated you wanted to make it. But six grand did seem like an awful lot.
The woman’s eyes narrowed. “You know, we’re looking for another actor for our Shakespeare in the Field series this summer. Are you … ?”
“No, no. I can’t act my way out of a paper bag.” I backed out the door. Shakespeare in the cow pasture was more like it. It was a lovely pasture, and they’d built a little stage of sorts, but a cow pasture was still a cow pasture.
I thanked her and drove back toward the museum, stopping at a taqueria. Standing at the counter, I ordered a burrito and waited. That quiver in my stomach surely had been hunger, not unease. Ghosts in the museum. Ha!
I emerged from the restaurant, foil-wrapped veggie burrito in hand. A familiar figure passed me on the sidewalk, stopping me in my tracks.
“Herb?”
He glanced over the shoulder of his dingy beige windbreaker and broke into a run.
“Wait!” I chased him down the street, passing a dog walker. One of her shelties dodged in front of me, and I tangled the leash. She shouted at me. Ignoring her, I disentangled myself and plunged on, flattening against a brick wall to avoid a woman with a stroller.
Herb dodged around a cinderblock building, and I piled on the steam. I rounded the bend into an alley. Aside from a neat line of garbage bins, it was deserted. Herb had vanished.
Wheezing, I braced my hands on my thighs. Herb was skinny. He’d probably run track in school. I had not.
A battered yellow VW Bug blasted down the alley in front of me. I ran to the end of the block, but by the time I rounded the corner, the VW was a fading speck in the distance.
Something warm dripped down my fingers. I’d crushed my burrito into an hourglass shape. Green sauce oozed from the edges of the aluminum foil onto my hands.
Stomping back to my pickup, I swaddled my burrito in napkins to staunch the bleeding and drove back to the museum. I devoured it at the counter, ignoring the cat’s hopeful looks.
“It’s vegetarian,” I said when his plaintive mews turned to yowls. “You wouldn’t like it anyway.”
GD sniffed and leapt onto the rocking chair, curling into a ball.
Tossing the foil into the waste bin, I busied myself with the inventory and a steady stream of visitors. Maybe the wine had lowered their resistance to the museum’s high ticket prices. But even at ten dollars a ticket, I couldn’t see how the museum could pay the rent and its owner’s salary.
The bell over the door tinkled.
Detective Slate walked in, wearing a rumpled black blazer and an absentminded expression. He nodded vaguely, his deep brown eyes seeming to see past me, and came to a halt in the spot Christy’s body had lain. I shivered, remembering that moment when it had felt like he’d looked inside me.
The cat raised his head, staring at the detective, fascinated.
He stood there a long time, looking at the floor, saying nothing. Then he paced in a slowly widening circle. GD sprang from the chair and stalked his black-loafered heels.
A pimply teenager emerged from the Fortune Telling Room. Wide-eyed, he tiptoed to my desk and whispered, “Is he a medium or something?”
“Or something,�
�� I said. “Best not to disturb him.”
“Gotcha.” The teenager leaned against the counter to watch.
The detective turned on his heel and disappeared into the tea room. With a sigh of disappointment, the teenager left.
I pretended to read my inventory binder, pencil poised above the paper as if on the verge of making a notation. We’d been cleared to open the museum and tea room. And I had tidied up, shifted things about since the murder. What was the detective searching for? I loosened my grip on the pencil and wiped my damp hands on my jeans.
Finally, detective and cat emerged from the tea room and came to stand in front of my counter. “Did you find Herb?” Slate asked.
“Not yet. I saw him in town earlier today, but he eluded me.”
“Eluded?”
“He might drive a yellow VW Bug.”
Slate raised an eyebrow. “Might?”
“I was chasing him down the street—”
“You were what?”
“And then I lost him and an old VW blasted past. I think it was Herb.”
The detective shook his head. “I know Adele’s your friend and you want to help her. But do me a favor and don’t chase down any more suspects.”
“But I can’t find his name on any of the receipts. Oh, I heard that Michael St. James had a real fight with Christy last week at the Bell and Brew.”
“Mmm.”
“The owner, Jim, told me about it.”
“Hmm.”
“I don’t suppose you can discuss Adele’s case,” I said.
“No.”
Feeling foolish, I fumbled for something to say. “What about a closed case?”
His brows rose. “A closed case?”
“Cora McBride.” I pulled the photograph from beneath the inventory book. “This portrait is an exhibit in the museum. She died in prison for the murder of her husband—a local crime.”
“What year was the murder?”
“Herb told me 1899, though I haven’t been able to confirm that yet. The photo was taken in the 1890s. Or is it a daguerreotype?” I really needed to learn more about these exhibits.
“It’s a photo. Daguerreotypes were replaced with simpler processes during the Civil War.”
The Perfectly Proper Paranormal Museum (A Perfectly Proper Paranormal Museum Mystery) Page 8