by Anna Castle
Like those pfeffernüsse. Holy guacamole! All I’d suffered was a deep sleep and a short hangover. It never occurred to me the cookie doctor might have been aiming for a more lethal result. Krystle and I had been amazingly lucky. Stupefyingly lucky, which was great, but not entirely a good thing in the larger view. Because it meant we not only had a poisoner in Lost Hat, we had an incompetent one. That was bad; that was very, very bad.
I finished the hallway area and lugged my bucket to the kitchen sink to dump the dirty water and refill it with the bleachy soap solution. Then I went to the front corner of the studio and started working my way back. Ty would figure out the spyware thing and put Greg out of business. I didn’t need to worry about that. But what about our poisoner? Was anybody looking for him or her? Or them? Maybe there was more than one: a smart one and a sloppy one.
Did the sheriff even know about the blackmail angle? I kind of doubted it. They had an IT guy at the courthouse; surely he’d be looking at people’s computers or something. There’d be rumors. Maybe Finley had snuck into Greg’s office to search for evidence for official reasons, not personal ones, except he hadn’t seemed to get any further than Krystle and me.
I was mopping in circles, following my own tracks. I had to do something and the only thing I could think of was to find the flash drive or whatever it was with our secrets on it. Yes, Greg probably had copies backed up in his online vault, but I couldn’t do anything about that now. He was bound to have offline copies, too. Whenever I left Austin to come out here to visit Aunt Sophie, I always disconnected my backup disk and hid it at the bottom of my laundry basket. OK, not brilliant, but how many burglars stop and do your laundry?
Greg had copies on some device somewhere in his house. I’d bet a couple of porcelain shepherdesses on it. If I could find it, I’d have something solid to give the sheriff. He could figure out who had the worst secret and that would lead him to the poisoner. The fact that this was originally Krystle’s idea worried me a little, but hey, she was a planner. She had a pretty good strategy for launching her TV career. And she’d grown up in this town. She must know how things worked, locally. Plus, she was bold enough to go with me.
I mulled it over while I finished cleaning, giving the kitchen an extra polish so Marion would be impressed tomorrow at lunch. I kept coming back to that memory key with the secrets on it. That key was the key. The poisoner’s name was on there somewhere. Find it and the sheriff could do the rest. Also, it would not feel terrible to deliver the crucial evidence to the law before Ty’s wizards found that Trojan spybot. Rescue me, will you? Thank you very much, I already rescued myself. And the rest of the townsfolk, too.
I took the shortcut to the dump, which happened to go down Greg’s street. Robbie Albrecht was in the front yard trimming shrubs with a big pair of loppers. I slowed down and waved. He scowled at me and turned his back.
I wondered what small crime poor Robbie had committed. It couldn’t have been very bad; Robbie was a great kid. He and his friend Skip had lugged Aunt Sophie’s antiques upstairs when I moved in last December, without breaking one small thing. They’d cleaned and painted and refinished my studio floors, for fairly low wages. He didn’t deserve to have his secret spilled, especially not to Marion. If I got to that memory key first, I could do a little selective deleting before I handed it over to the authorities.
And, it occurred to me as I turned the corner, yard work was a good excuse for hanging around somebody’s house. If I could figure out a time when Greg was guaranteed to be busy, like in a client meeting or something, maybe Krystle and I could grab some tools and just saunter on up the driveway to his back door.
The dump charged me thirty bucks for the garbage. I swung past Greg’s office building on the way back, not that I was obsessing or anything. The front lot was full. I recognized Mr. M’s new silver Prius and Marion’s burgundy Highlander. The other car, a gray sedan, was probably Burrie’s. It looked like the museum board was having an after-church meeting, probably about the website. Why hadn’t I been invited? I’d bet a trip to the dump Greg was showing them my designs and taking credit for them at that very moment. Worse, if I’d known about their secret meeting in advance, I could be inside his house right now, flipping through his underwear drawer and tossing his laundry basket.
My frustration boiled up again. That guy was ruining everything I valued: my love life, my first effort to get involved in local affairs, my art, my best teenaged buddy. He had to be stopped. But without proof, I couldn’t call the sheriff. Ty could get proof, if he had time, which he didn’t. He expected me to lay low until he did. As if! Laying low probably worked great for overweight gangsters in motels with pizza delivery and ESPN. I would have to tie myself up and lock myself in the closet.
And I’m here to tell you, that’s a lot harder than it sounds.
Chapter 23
Back at home, I scarfed a sandwich and decided to do some yard work myself, since I was already dirty. I would clean everything within my reach and then find out where Krystle lived and go propose my new plan. I raked up the pecan leaves in the back yard and heaped them into something resembling a compost pile. They were bound to have leaflets about compost at the Extension Agency. Now that I was a homeowner, I should probably start learning about these things. After I nailed the Lost Hat poisoner to the courthouse door.
Pleased with my work, I went through the house to grab some tea on my way out to sweep the front walk. When I opened the front door, I nearly ran smack into Marion, who was standing on the porch with Principal Burwell-Jones. They were dressed like church ladies and for a minute I thought they had come to solicit for some off-brand religion.
“What’s up?”
“You’re filthy,” Marion said. “We’re here to look at those books.”
“Books?” I’d forgotten about her call that morning. “Oh, the books!” I looked at the broom in my hand. “You caught me in the middle of a clean-a-thon.”
“Try to speak English, Penny, if you please.”
We exchanged glares. Burrie cleared her throat. “Where might we find the books?” She had dark circles under her eyes and looked like she’d overindulged the night before, although I couldn’t imagine that ever happening. She was still spiffy, though, in a gray wool pantsuit with a gray silk shell. The gray gave a sallow tinge to her papery cheeks, but it made her stiff coiffure gleam like brushed metal.
“They’re in the garage. It’s quickest to go out the front.” I gestured down the porch steps.
Marion and Burrie exchanged a disapproving glance. I should have asked them inside first. Too late now.
I trailed them to the driveway and hoisted up the garage door. “Et voila!” I gave my best spokesmodel impression, sweeping my hand across the neat stacks of paper bags.
“You put them in bags?” More tongue-clucking from Marion.
“That’s all I had.”
“They’ll have to do.” Burrie drew a tissue from the black handbag on her arm and gingerly lifted a book from the topmost bag.
I leaned my broom on the wall and walked into the garage, pulling the light chain as I went. Behind their backs, I rolled my eyes and mouthed a silent curse. Hopefully, they would do a quick count and haul them off to the library. I grabbed the basket of clean rags from the top of the dryer and offered one to Burrie. “I dusted each book before I put it in the bag.”
She smiled as if she knew better than to trust the likes of me.
“Penny was going to throw these books away,” Marion said.
“I was not! I was going to take them to Half-Priced Books in Austin.”
“It’s the same thing,” Marion said. “They pulp half of what you bring them.”
“No, they don’t.”
“These are perfectly good books,” Burrie snapped, exhibiting one for my edification. “We can use them in the library. Or—” She and Marion exchanged another glance, this time with an energetic vibe. I smelled committee work ahead.
“We could have
a library book sale.” Marion nodded sagely at Burrie.
“Even if we only charged a quarter a book, we’d make a goodish sum,” Burrie said.
“Did I hear someone talking about a book sale?” Mr. Muelenbach strolled across the grassy strip that divided his driveway from mine. He was wearing burgundy silk pajamas, sheepskin slippers and a fawn cashmere robe. He looked like the Thin Man with a ponytail. I was envious. If I had a lounging outfit like that, I’d never take it off. I mostly slept in running clothes that were too ratty to run in.
The three senior board members started unpacking my neatly packed bags, gabbling about books and planning the library sale. Mr. M. and Burrie dickered about each and every point, with Marion as the tie-breaker. She was pretty even-handed. My job was to fetch and carry and keep my opinions to myself. I kept hoping they’d talk about Greg or Jim or something useful, but no, they kept to the topic at hand, sorting the books into a series of little stacks in my driveway. I was sent inside to get marking pens to label the bags. Then I was sent in again to find packing tape, which I did not have: a major failure on my part. They actually sent me out to buy tape and pick up a load of boxes from behind the liquor store.
To give credit where it was due, they did an awesome job of getting those books ready for a sale. When they finally finished, Marion dusted her hands together and gave a happy sigh. “Now, how about some coffee?” So polite of her to offer, considering it was my house.
“I’ll put a pot on.” I buzzed inside and barely had the coffeemaker loaded before they came trooping in the front door. I heard Burrie say, “I’ll go find the little girl’s room.”
Marion opened every cupboard, pretending to be looking for mugs but really just snooping. She suddenly laughed, with one of her rare flashes of charm. “You’ve got enough dishes here to serve an army! We’ll have to hold the next family reunion in your backyard.”
We were joking about how that would work when Burrie joined us, with a grim expression on her face. “I had no idea things had gotten so bad here. With Sophie, I mean.” To my surprise, her accusing scowl was aimed at Mr. M., not me. “This place is stacked to the rafters with all kinds of junk.”
“Not all kinds.” Mr. M. parried her scowl with a grin. “She mostly went in for Texana.”
“Except for the porcelain,” I said. “What’s the deal with all the shepherdesses?”
He and I traded chuckles, which brought Burrie to the boil. “Be serious! She was obviously losing her grip. You should have kept a better eye on her, Alfred.”
“I don’t think—” I started to defend him, but he ran right over me.
“Sophie was fine. I kept as close an eye as I could without invading her privacy.” He nodded toward me. “And Penny was here, every other month or so. There are no fire hazards or rodent habitats or anything untoward. So she liked to collect things? She was an antique dealer, after all. She just stopped selling the stuff after Gertie died.”
“You haven’t even cleaned out Gertie’s bathroom,” Burrie scolded me. “Leftover meds, oily tubes of ointments. Why, there are lotions in that cupboard older than I am.”
“Then they really must be antique,” I said before I could bite my tongue.
Hot pink spots burned in Burrie’s ivory cheeks as her black eyes shot death rays at me. It set me back a step and startled a hoot of laughter out of Mr. M.
Marion frowned in our general direction. “Penny’s barely been here two months, Burrie. She had to get her studio up and running first. I’m sure she’ll get this house squared away in no time. She’s really a very tidy girl.”
Oh, spare me!
Chapter 24
It was almost dark by the time they left. I wanted nothing more than a hot bath, a frozen pizza and a couple of hours of Battlestar Galactica on Netflix. I didn’t have the strength to deal with Krystle’s energy. Besides, the easiest way to find out where she lived was to ask Tillie.
I spent Monday morning scanning yearbooks, because they were there and I was too restless to do my own work. I was stashing them back in the closet when Tillie came in. She started helping me, the way she does, before she said, “I was going to ask you about these. Do we have a new project?”
“Sort of.” I hadn’t decided what to say to her. Krystle and I were risk-takers; we’d made that clear enough. But Tillie? Not so much. I changed the subject. “Do you happen to know Krystle’s telephone number?”
“Krystle? She’s probably at work.” She wilted right before my eyes, disappointment written all over her. One short sentence, six pages of subtext. I could not conspire with Miss Popular and leave Tillie out in the cold.
I put the last stack of yearbooks in the closet, ushered her into the kitchen, and gestured at the chairs. “Let’s sit down.” We had a few minutes before Marion was due for lunch. “The thing is, there’s a kind of thing,” I said. “Kind of a blackmail kind of a thing.”
“Blackmail!”
“Hard to believe, I know. But it turns out Greg Alexander, our local Internet provider, has been snagging secrets out of people’s emails and blackmailing them.”
Tillie gasped, her lips forming a perfect O. She really ought to be a mime. With her dark features and her ivory complexion, she achieved high-contrast without the greasepaint. “That’s horrible!”
“Yep.” I nodded. “He’s got like half the town doing him favors and giving him gifts, like bottles of bourbon and tins of cookies.”
“And hand-knit sweaters? I wondered where that came from. He’s never had a girlfriend that I know of and if his mother was a knitter, he’d have a hundred of them.” She cocked her head. “So your payment is about old yearbooks? What was your, uh—”
“What’s my secret?”
“You don’t have to tell me.” She shook her head vigorously.
“Yes, I do, because you’re my best friend and I need your help.”
Tillie blushed and ducked her head. Then she looked straight at me and folded her hands together on the tabletop. “OK, I’m ready.”
I drew in a breath, ready to tell my tale again. Second time, same as the first. A little bit shorter and a lot less worse. “A couple of weeks ago I took some photographs of Ty, upstairs.” I pointed at the ceiling. “He was, um, you know, naked. On the nude side. Not dressed.”
“Penny!” Tillie looked shocked and impressed in equal measure.
“They weren’t pornographic, not even a tiny amount. They were cool. Black and white. You know: art.”
“Art, right. Cool. But naked!”
I let it go. “So anyway, they were good. I mean, I thought they were OK. And then I remembered about this photography contest and I thought, well, what are the odds? So I submitted them. Online. And that’s when Greg got hold of them.”
“Oh, no.”
“Oh, yes. He grossed them up, pasting — I don’t even want to say. Basically, he turned one of them into hideous pornography. Then he emailed it to me and said he would plaster it all over the web if I didn’t do stuff for him.”
“Omigod! What kind of stuff?” She was clearly imagining the worst.
“Nothing like that! Just do the museum’s website and let him take credit for it and scan all the high school yearbooks and let him get paid for it.”
“That is so totally unfair!” She lavished on the sympathy, making me feel justified, comforted, and motivated all at once. Confession really was good for the soul. I let the part about Krystle slide, because her secrets were not mine to spill, not even the bare fact that she had a secret. That meant the breaking-and-entering portion of the program also had to slide.
We managed to get through lunch with Marion without spilling any beans, although I was pretty sure she knew something was up. She acted like she didn’t want to know, which was exactly where I wanted her. After she left, we got the yearbooks out again and started scanning. It went a lot faster with two, even though Tillie had to pause every third page to go, “Omigod! Is that So-and-so?” We were well into the sixties whe
n my mailbox dinged.
A message from Greg, to my complete lack of surprise. The new question was, how could I keep from gloating out loud about his upcoming comeuppance?
Chapter 25
Greg frowned sternly as I waltzed into his office. He shook his finger at me. “You failed to meet my deadline, Penny. I thought we were clear about the rules.”
“Did my best, boss.” I spread my hands wide in a mock-apology. “I’m still working on it, actually. Tillie’s helping.”
A wary look stole across his face. “Really? Did you tell her why you’re doing it?”
“Not in so many words. She’s a helpful gal.”
“Hmm.” He watched me walk in and plant my butt in the client-slash-victim chair. I sat up straight with my hands in my lap, trying to pretend to be all humble and worried. I evidently failed miserably, because his eyes narrowed and his pouchy lips pursed. “You seem awfully chipper today.”
“I feel chipper. My first social event in Lost Hat was a great success. And I got to see my boyfriend: always a happy occasion.”
“I noticed him at the wake. Did you tell him about your photos?” He seemed to brace himself a little for my response.
“He was only here for eleven hours, Greg. This may astonish you, but we actually did not spend all of our time talking about you.” Which was true. Not an answer to his question, but true as a matter of fact.