by Ken Casper
Thoughts of death and murder scattered like wispy puffs of smoke when his lips met hers. This time he didn’t retreat but plunged forward, deepening the kiss.
Unsteady, unsure, he rose to his feet and half turned from her. “It’s wrong for me to lead you on, Gwyn,” he insisted. “I—”
“Wrong?” Gwyn blinked. “It doesn’t feel wrong. It didn’t last night. It doesn’t now.”
“Do you think truth and justice always win out?” Frustration, longing, the memory of what it was like to hold her in his arms, to make her a part of him in the most intimate union a man and a woman can share, flared into anger. “Fielder’s convinced I killed Frannie and buried her on property I knew would one day be mine. When Tessa Lang asked to dig on my property, I refused her so adamantly she had to get a court order forcing me to allow it. How do you think that looks?”
“It’s circumstantial evidence. It doesn’t prove a thing,” she insisted.
“And how do we know there won’t be more circumstantial evidence turning up that’s even more damning.”
There are secrets at Beaumarais.
“If you’re trying to scare me, Jed, you’re not doing a very good job. You didn’t kill your foster mother. There is no proof that can be uncovered to the contrary.”
“That we know of. And what don’t we know, Gwyn? Can we even be sure Fielder or that journalist won’t manufacture something . . .”
“That’s why you have one of the best criminal attorneys in the country,” she interjected forcefully, maybe because he really was frightening her now. It wasn’t unknown for police departments to plant evidence. Sometimes it was for expediency, sometimes because they sincerely thought they had the guilty party but didn’t have a strong enough case. She didn’t know Sheriff Logan Fielder very well, except that he did seem utterly convinced Jed was guilty. Was he prejudiced enough to railroad him?
“Thorny isn’t going to let them get away with anything. He’s the best.”
Jed exhaled and seemed to wilt. “I know that, and I’m very grateful to you for getting him for me—”
“Damn it,” she sputtered, “I didn’t do it for your gratitude—“
“Shh,” he murmured, and put a finger to her lips. “I know, sweetheart.” He bracketed her slender neck between his hands. “But we have to be practical and realistic. Until this is settled, I can’t let you get any more involved with me—”
She shot to her feet, almost knocking him down. “Don’t tell me what and who I can get involved with, Jed.” Her voice was shrill with anger. “That’s not your decision, it’s mine.”
“Gwyn—“ he pleaded softly.
She moved away from him, took a step toward her cello, paused and, on a deep breath, spun around in the confined space and looked down at him.
“All the years I was growing up, Jed, I was told what to think, how to feel, what was appropriate, what was not, whom I could and should associate with, whom I could not. Well, those days are over.”
He remained on the edge of the bed, his elbow resting back on the mattress. There was fire in her eyes, which he liked, and sadness in her message, which tore at him. He realized for the first time how unhappy her young life must have been, ordered around like a servant, cosseted in fine clothes and cold, sterile luxury. He comprehended something else, too. He’d been more fortunate than she had—in spite of her pedigree. He might be illegitimate and rejected by his only blood relation, but he’d been cared for by a kind woman who’d genuinely loved him, who’d valued him as a person, not a trophy.
“Nobody,” Gwyn announced forcefully, “is going to run my life for me. Not parent or friend . . . or lover. If you don’t want me—”
“Gwyn,” he interrupted, and surged to his feet, “I don’t want to change you. I love you just the way you are. And I don’t want to run your life.” He took one small step and stood only inches from her. He looked straight into her eyes. “I love you for your strength and independence, for your drive and compassion.”
She bit her lip, and he drew her into a warm embrace. “What I’m trying to say,” he murmured in her ear as he stroked her back, “is that I have nothing to offer you. Until this murder is cleared up and I’m free of suspicion, I’m a liability to you.”
She squeezed herself tightly to him. “Just love me, Jed,” she whispered against his chest. “That’s all I ask of you. Just love me.”
“IT SEEMS TO ME,” Gwyn said that evening, after they’d finished dinner and were sitting on the veranda watching the last streaks of sunlight burnish the tops of distant cypress trees in a dusty golden glow, “that even if the good sheriff’s mind—”
“You use the term lightly, I assume,” Jed interjected.
“Even if the good sheriff’s mind,” she repeated with feigned annoyance at the interruption, “is made up, it doesn’t mean we can’t explore the alternatives.”
“Elementary, my dear Watson. We just check the Yellow Pages under Murderers.”
She arched back in her seat and slanted him an irritated scowl. “There shouldn’t be too many candidates for murderer in a town this size.”
Gwyn gloried in the prospect of working with him on a real puzzle, one that mattered. That is, she would have enjoyed it if his life hadn’t been at stake. What were the chances of his knowing the murderer? And what would his reaction be when he discovered who it was? Suppose it turned out to be one of his foster siblings?
She gave herself a mental shake. It wouldn’t be. It couldn’t be. She’d heard him talk about Emerald Monday and Will McClain often enough to know they couldn’t have done violence to Frannie Granger. In fact, she’d heard enough about the dead woman to wish she had met her. A simple, hardworking woman who had a heart of gold—and stainless steel, if what Jed said about her was true.
Jed shook his head. “I don’t see how Frannie could have been a threat to anyone. She did her job and minded her business. I never knew her to gossip, so even if she had learned something unpleasant about one of her clients, for example, she wouldn’t have gone spreading rumors.”
“Maybe she knew something but didn’t realize it, or someone thought she knew something.”
“Like what?” Jed asked unconvinced. “This is a small town. It was even smaller then. There weren’t many secrets.”
There are secrets at Beaumarais.
“How about infidelity?”
Jed pursed his lips. “Sal Borden, the guy who owned the real estate agency back then, was routinely unfaithful to his wife. But everybody knew it, including his wife. Mike Garfield, the barber, ran high-stakes card games and craps shoots at his place on Saturday nights, but as I recall the previous sheriff even participated in them from time to time. And Billy LaDieu, who owned the feed store, was reputed to have a still in the back room. But those were all open secrets, Gwyn. I can’t imagine what Frannie could possibly have found out that would be a threat to anyone, especially when she was the soul of discretion herself.”
“Jed, there had to be a reason she was killed. What was it?”
He shook his head in frustration. “She wasn’t a live-in servant who might hear all sorts of private conversations. She was a day cleaner. Most of her clients weren’t even home when she cleaned their houses, at least not after they got to know and trust her. Many of them would put the key under a doormat or in a flowerpot and leave a check or even cash for her to pick up when she was finished. Some people didn’t even bother to lock their doors back then.”
“Is there anyone she would have talked to if she had come upon something that made her uncomfortable?”
Jed shrugged. “Maybe. Her best friend was Joleen Berber, a nurse who worked in a geriatric center in Marshall.”
“Is she still around?”
He nodded. “Lives over on White Lane. I used to bump into her from time to time, but I haven’t see
n much of her lately. She’s retired now. Keeps pretty much to herself.”
“Would Frannie have confided in her?”
Jed rubbed his jaw. “I don’t know. As I said, Frannie didn’t gossip, but Joleen did. Whether she could keep a real confidence I can’t say. She came by the house quite a bit, but I really didn’t have much to do with her.”
“Perhaps we can talk to her and find out if she knows anything.”
“It’s a thought. She was the first person I called when Frannie didn’t come home. I thought she might be over there, but Joleen hadn’t seen her. She got pretty upset and started phoning around on her own. That’s probably how Social Services got wind of Frannie’s being missing and why they came and took Emmy away.”
Gwyn stretched out her legs. “For the time being we seem to be stuck on motive. What about opportunity?”
Jed seemed to brighten marginally. “I know who didn’t do it—other than me, of course. Emmy and Will went to school that morning. They were just rushing out the front door to catch the bus when I stormed out the back.”
Gwyn aligned her face thoughtfully. “Okay, that eliminates them, but I never really thought they did it, anyway, and apparently neither does Fielder. He must have checked their alibis at the time. So who else?”
Jed closed his eyes in concentration. “I don’t know. Frannie’s first job that morning was at the Jennings’, but if I remember right, the sheriff asked Catherine about it, and she said Frannie never showed up.”
Gwyn got up and began to pace. “Maybe we’re going at this all wrong. Why does it have to be someone she knew or who knew her?”
“A random killing?” he asked skeptically. “If that’s what it was, Gwyn, there’ll never be a solution—not after all this time.” And I’ll always be a suspect, he thought despondently.
“You’re right.” Gwyn sighed. “Let’s forget about that. Do we know what she died of?”
“All Thorny’s been able to find out is that she had a fractured skull. That indicates violence.”
She fixed him with raised eyebrows. “Or an accident.”
He gave it a moment’s consideration. “I don’t buy it, Gwyn. If it was an accident, why not call for help and explain what happened? Why bury her?”
“Suppose the person with her didn’t feel safe calling the police.”
He thought for a moment. “Somebody with a criminal record, you mean?”
She nodded. “Was there anyone in town like that in those days?”
“Burt Hawkins’s son, Carlyle, went to prison for a couple of years for car theft and writing bad checks, but I think he was still there when Frannie disappeared. Besides, he wasn’t violent. A little stupid, maybe, but not violent. He’s been dead for six years.”
Jed stopped to think. “A few drunks in town were familiar with the inside of the jail, but . . . wait. There was someone. What was his name? He worked as a handyman when he was sober. Frannie hired him to enclose the north end of the back porch to make a separate bedroom for Will. What was the guy’s name?” Jed paced, then raised a finger. “Hank Belmonte. He was probably about thirty-five or forty at the time, but could have passed for sixty after one of his all-night binges. Spent most Saturday nights in the jail. He started the job, then Frannie disappeared. He never came back.”
“Was he violent?” Gwyn asked.
“I don’t remember ever hearing about him getting into a fight with anyone . . . although there was one incident when he threw a chair through the window of Catfish Corner because the owner refused to serve him and asked him to leave.”
“And he was working for Frannie when she disappeared?” Gwyn. asked.
Jed’s face took on that faraway look again. “I wonder what ever happened to him.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
JED DROVE down a country road under a dense canopy of oak, elm and sycamore trees to a house several miles outside Uncertain.
“Tell me about Joleen Berber,” Gwyn prompted as they glided by a relaxing pastoral scene of heavy-uddered cows grazing in a sweet green meadow.
“Not much to tell,” he responded, “or at least not much I know about her. She was a nurse who worked in a geriatric center in Marshall, and I think did volunteer work at a street shelter.” He climbed a gentle hill. “She was a couple of years older than Frannie, which means she must be close to seventy now. Never married. She and Frannie were best friends for as long as I remember. Joleen stopped by our house almost every afternoon, supposedly for a cup of tea but really to gab. Joleen did most of the yakkin’. A regular chatterbox.” He chuckled. “She seemed to know everything about everybody.”
“A gossip,” Gwyn concluded, but not unkindly.
He grinned. “In spades.”
He pulled up in front of a place that wasn’t much bigger than Frannie’s. White clapboard with shrubs and a neatly trimmed lawn, but no flower beds, the kind of nondescript residence one tended to characterize as a house rather than a home. Jed switched off the engine. Gwyn noticed that the wide picture window to the left of the front door and the single sash to the right were covered with foil.
“It looks rather foreboding,” she commented before they got out of the car.
Jed frowned. “I haven’t seen much of Joleen the past few years. She used to be a ball of energy, full of jokes and laughter, but she became rather reclusive after Frannie disappeared.”
They stepped out into the humid air and walked up the chipped concrete path to a little wrought iron railed stoop. The chalky, white-paneled door had an unused look about it and Gwyn would have thought the house vacant, except for the aging Ford Escort sitting in the carport at the end of a narrow driveway. Jed pushed the button on the right side of the doorjamb.
The woman who answered a minute later was of average height, with watery blue eyes and steel-gray hair coiled atop her head. She had a stocky build and her shapeless, drab brown dress made her appear dumpy. Her plump face also had an unhealthy pasty look about it.
“Hello, Joleen,” Jed began.
She didn’t open the screen door separating them. “What do you want?” Her voice held a raspy, querulous tone.
“I’m sure you’ve heard they found Frannie,” he said with quiet sympathy.
The old woman closed her eyes briefly. “She’s dead. Murdered.”
“I just wanted to come and tell you how sorry I am. I know how close the two of you were. Even after all these years, this news must be very difficult for you.”
She pinched her lips together.
“Do you think we can come in?” he asked politely. “I’d like to ask you a few questions about her.”
Rather than answer, the woman shifted her gaze to Gwyn.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Joleen, this is my friend, Gwyneth Miller,” Jed announced. “She’s renting Frannie’s house.”
“Forgive us for dropping in on you like this,” Gwyn said politely, “but you may have heard that Sheriff Fielder thinks Jed had something to do with Mrs. Granger’s disappearance.”
“That’s nonsense,” Joleen snapped.
“My sentiments exactly,” Gwyn agreed. “We’re hoping you might remember something that will shed light on what happened, something to help us convince Fielder to look elsewhere for whoever killed her.”
“I can’t help you,” the old woman declared. “I don’t know who killed her.”
“We just want to talk to you for a minute or two,” Jed assured her. “Then we’ll go.”
Joleen heaved a sigh. The prospect didn’t seem to please her, but she unlatched the screen door and walked away from it.
They stepped into a dark and shabby living room that smelled of stale cigarette smoke. Gwyn had to resist the urge to tear the foil off the picture window above the couch. On the other hand, the light of day might make the place look even worse. She a
nd Jed waited until their hostess had taken her seat in an overstuffed chair, then they sat on the worn couch.
“I understand you were her best friend,” Gwyn said. “It must have been terrible to have someone you’re so close to just disappear without a trace or explanation.”
Joleen’s heavy face seemed to sink further. “I knew she had to be dead.”
“How’s that?” Jed asked.
She glared at him. “It’s the only way she could have vanished like she did—without a word.”
“I didn’t realize you thought that,” he commented. “At the time you seemed intent on finding her.”
She picked up the cigarette that was smoldering in an ashtray overflowing with curled butts. “If I’d said anything I would have had Fielder and his people on my back.” She pulled a drag on her cigarette and let the smoke out through her nose. “But I knew. Deep down inside, I knew.”
The room remained silent for what seemed a very long time. Finally, tamping out her butt, Joleen looked at Jed. “I don’t know what you think I can tell you.”
“I was a teenager, Joleen, focused on myself, school, music. You knew her better than anyone,” Jed reminded her. “You would have noticed if she was having problems, or if she had plans to go away.”
“Where would she have gone?” Joleen scoffed as she used a butane lighter to light up again. “And why? Her whole life revolved around you kids.”
“From what I’ve heard,” Gwyn contributed, “the sheriff thought at the time that she’d just sneaked off to be by herself.”
Joleen scrunched up her lips and shook her head in disgust. “Logan Fielder is an ass.” She took a deep drag and watched the smoke she expelled form a cloud over her head. “He was then. He is now.” She settled back in the chair and closed her eyes. A tone of impotent rage rang in her voice when she spoke. “He wouldn’t listen to me. Why, I asked, would Frannie go off without any of her clothes? And how could she get away when her car was still sitting in the driveway? Stupid. That’s what he is.” She puffed angrily. “Even when Frannie didn’t come back after several weeks, he still wouldn’t admit something bad must have happened to her.”