“Go for it, Pop. You’ll perform a real service if you can find lost bifocals and keys.”
Val caught her mother’s wink and smiled. They both knew Granddad had trouble finding his own glasses and keys. He wasn’t good at finding much of anything . . . except trouble.
“The course isn’t teaching me how to locate small stuff like that. It’s a serious course. We had a unit on locating lost folks, even the ones who don’t want to be found.”
“That reminds me,” Mom said. “Earl told me the Philadelphia police located the man Fawn was divorcing. He’s in custody. I’m sure her mother will be happy to hear her daughter’s murderer is behind bars.”
“The murderer is behind bars?” Granddad stroked his chin. “I wouldn’t take that as gospel truth yet.”
Val picked some grapes off a stem. “Just because he’s in custody doesn’t mean he’s guilty of murder.”
“The two of you egg each other on.” The doorbell rang. Mom set her wine glass on the counter. “I’ll get it. That’s probably Fawn’s mother.”
Her grandfather put down his beer. “I’m not looking forward to this.”
Neither was Val. “Let’s make the best of it. We’ve both been obsessing about who the strangler’s intended victim could have been. But we know very little about the actual victim. That’s like cooking a dish without a key ingredient.” Understanding the character of the victim had helped Val figure out Bayport’s other murders. Maybe it would help this time too. “We can find out more about Fawn if her mother can bear to talk about her.”
“I’ve been to a lot of funerals. Talking about the dead person is part of grieving. We’ll hear about Fawn, but only what her mother wants to remember about her.”
They went to the sitting room to meet Fawn’s mother.
Mercy Schrank was in her late fifties, short and plump with a round face. She had hair the color of orange juice, except for gray roots. She apologized for intruding, thanked them for their condolences, and asked to see where her daughter had spent her final moments.
Granddad took Mrs. Schrank through the kitchen to the backyard and, after a few minutes, returned to the kitchen. “She wanted to grieve alone. I invited her to stay for dinner, told her what we were eating, and she accepted.”
“You know, she drove almost five hours to get here,” Mom said, “and she’s planning on driving back tonight. What do you think about offering her Jennifer’s room?”
Val didn’t like it. “Not without Jennifer’s permission. She left some things in the room and said she’d come by for them tomorrow. I suppose I can call her and ask.”
“Don’t do it yet,” Granddad said. “Jennifer will ask for her money back, and Fawn’s mother may not even want to stay.”
Mom finished her wine. “I’ll go tidy the bathroom upstairs in case she does. We can change the sheets later if we need to.” She left the kitchen.
Val put her grandfather to work making the salad while she cut up the onions and mushrooms for the beef stroganoff. “If Mrs. Schrank doesn’t want to drive home tonight, maybe Monique will put her up. She has spare bedrooms because her children and in-laws aren’t staying there tonight. I’d rather ask her for a favor than Jennifer.”
Mom returned to the kitchen with a plastic trash bag. “I emptied the wastebasket in the bathroom and replaced the towels with clean ones.”
Granddad grabbed the trash bag. “I’ll take care of that.” He headed out the back door.
Five minutes later Val glanced out the kitchen window and saw him talking to Fawn’s mother in the backyard. They returned to the kitchen together.
“It’s so peaceful out there,” Mrs. Schrank said. “I’m glad Fawn didn’t die in some alley in a city. The police chief told me that Jennifer Brown, Fawn’s friend from high school, is staying here. Is she around? I’d like to talk to her.”
Granddad shook his head. “She’s gone out for the evening.”
Val’s concern that Mrs. Schrank would find it too hard to talk about her daughter proved unfounded. Over dinner, she talked of nothing else besides her daughter and her husband, Gerald.
“Fawn’s daddy left before she was even born. I married Gerald when she was about ten, and we moved to Franklin. He was good to her, even adopted her and gave her his name. That town was always too small for her. She was a restless girl, wanting to go places.” Fawn’s mother ate a bite of the beef stroganoff. “She had a beautiful voice. Sang solos in the choir when she was fourteen or fifteen. But then she decided to be a pop singer and quit the choir. Gerald did not like that at all, or the people she was hanging out with at school. He said they were leading her down the road to perdition. She didn’t take kindly to his scolding.”
Val suspected that Gerald didn’t give his wife much chance to talk and she was making up for it now. She paused in her monologue only long enough to take a bite and wash it down with water. No wine, beer, or even iced tea for her. Gerald didn’t approve of alcohol or caffeine. Mrs. Schrank had perfect timing, forking food into her mouth only when Val’s mother, the one person at the table who might want to change the subject, was busy chewing.
“Fawn went to Blue Ridge Community College. She finished there and was going to transfer to a university, but then she took up with a rock band. Gerald said they were all taking drugs. Fawn ended up marrying the guitar player, Bo Finchley. Gerald said Fawn would regret it.” Mrs. Schrank paused for a drink of water. “Bo made her sign on to loans he took out. She took out loans, too, so she could finish her degree online. Then Bo went on the lam and left her to pay all his debts. Even then, she wouldn’t come back home. Just wouldn’t admit she was wrong and Gerald was right.”
Val took advantage of a pause in the monologue to divert the meandering stream of words in a direction she wanted it to go. “Were Fawn and Jennifer good friends in school?”
“They were in the drama club together. Fawn got the good parts in the musicals because of her voice. Jennifer designed the sets for all the shows. They were two of a kind, Fawn and Jennifer, both of them itching to leave their small town and make a splash in a bigger pond.”
Val could sympathize. After graduation from college, she’d found the big pond alluring too. “Did you know Jennifer’s parents well?”
“Just to say hello to. Jennifer’s family had more money than we did. They lived in a better part of town. Jennifer had more freedom than Fawn. She got to use the family car on weekends. Gerald always said high school kids were too young for cars. Jennifer used to give Fawn a ride to parties and such. Lucky for her Fawn was there when a young fella on a bicycle shot out in front of the car.”
Val snapped to attention. “Why was it lucky?”
“Fawn saw the whole thing and told the police what happened. They might not have believed Jennifer without a witness.”
“I hope no one was hurt badly,” Granddad said.
“The man on the bicycle died right there. Cracked his head open. No helmet. Jennifer had the right of way and wasn’t speeding or anything. The police tested her for drink and drugs, but she was clean, thank the Lord. Still, it was a mighty bad thing, right before graduation. Jennifer and Fawn were so sad about it. They didn’t even enjoy their graduation parties.”
Val glanced across the sitting room toward the study, wishing she were sitting there in front of her computer. That accident was worth researching. Mrs. Schrank had made her daughter into a heroine who’d vouched for her friend’s version of the accident, but something different might have happened. Maybe Fawn was driving, perhaps without a license, and prevailed on Jennifer to lie about who’d been behind the wheel.
Val tuned her mental dial back to the Mrs. Schrank station.
“Fawn and Jennifer lost track of each other for a long time. And now, after they just found each other and Fawn was going to be part of Jennifer’s wedding, another terrible thing happens.” Mrs. Schrank’s eyes glistened with tears. She rose abruptly from the table. “It’s time I got on the road. Thank you all for dinner
.”
Granddad stood up. “You’re welcome to spend the night.”
“I couldn’t do that. Gerald wouldn’t like it if I didn’t come home tonight. Tell Jennifer I’m sorry I missed her.”
Val and her mother cleared the table while her grandfather saw Mrs. Schrank out.
Granddad joined them in the kitchen. “I feel sorry for that woman, losing her daughter and going home to Gerald, but I’m glad she’s not staying here. She would have kept us up half the night with her chatter.”
The three of them barely spoke as they cleaned up after the meal. Val appreciated the silence, still shell-shocked from Mrs. Schrank’s volley of words.
When Mom went upstairs to grade papers and Granddad took out the kitchen trash, Val went into the study. She fired up the computer, convinced that she could find details about the accident Fawn’s mother had mentioned. Long simmering anger over the accident might have led someone in the bicyclist’s family to go after Jennifer, or both Fawn and Jennifer, believing they’d lied about the accident.
Payton had said he met Jennifer ten years ago when she was still in high school. That would have been around the time of the accident. Val looked up Franklin, Virginia. The town near the North Carolina border had a population of less than a thousand, smaller even than Bayport. Val’s online search turned up nothing about the death of a bicyclist in the vicinity of Franklin, Virginia, ten years ago . . . or at any time.
A creaking noise from the floor above made her look at the ceiling. Jennifer’s room was above the study. Val listened intently. No other noise. The old house did give off random noises now and then. She continued her online search, expanding it to include adjacent counties and nearby cities—Petersburg, Richmond, and as far away as Charlottesville, where Payton and Noah had gone to law school. No results from that. Ten years ago, not every local newspaper posted every article online.
The floorboards above creaked again. Someone was definitely in Jennifer’s room.
Chapter 19
Val left the study and crept up the creaky stairs. Someone could have slipped into the house, possibly while she was in the kitchen with Mom and Granddad, cleaning up after dinner. Maybe Jennifer had returned for an item she’d forgotten to pack.
Her bedroom door was ajar. Val pushed it open wider. Granddad, wearing rubber gloves, was rooting in the wastebasket. “Get out, Granddad. You can’t go poking around in a guest’s room. It’s an invasion of privacy.”
“Shh. Your mother will hear. I’m finished and I’m leaving.”
Val eyed his gloved left hand. He was clutching something small. “What are you taking?”
“I’ll show you. Come on downstairs.” He removed a key from his pocket and locked Jennifer’s door behind them as they left.
It was probably illegal for a property owner to unlock a room he’d rented and snoop in it. Though Val didn’t approve of what he’d done, she was curious about his find.
Once they were downstairs, she motioned him into the study and closed the pocket doors that shut it off from the sitting room. “I hope you haven’t found evidence related to the murder because it probably can’t be used in court now that you’ve removed it.”
“This isn’t evidence of murder, but you got to follow every lead. That’s what they teach in my investigator course.” He showed her two tags snipped from items bought at Bayport Outfitters on Main Street. “They used to carry only ladies clothes there, but now they sell other things too.”
“I’ve seen souvenirs, kid’s clothes, and small toys there. Let me see the tags.” She looked at them. “They have product codes on them, but I don’t know how to decipher them.”
“Can you take these tags to the shop tomorrow and find out what she bought? I’d do it, but you can come up with a better cover story for a shop like that. Dollars to doughnuts Jennifer bought clothes there.”
“That’s a safe bet.” It dawned on Val why he’d grabbed the garbage bag from her mother before dinner. “Did you find anything in the trash from the upstairs bathroom?”
“Sure did. Band-Aids with blood on them. I saved them.”
“Why? To prove that Jennifer or Sarina cut herself?”
“Or Noah. The hall bathroom isn’t locked. Maybe he couldn’t find a bandage in his bathroom, so he looked in the hall bath.”
“You have sales tags and Band-Aids, Granddad. That’s not much to show from pawing through trash.”
“I’m not finished yet. I still have to check the trash in Sarina’s and Noah’s rooms. I need you as a lookout. I figured I was safe in Jennifer’s room because she wasn’t coming back here after dinner, but the other two might. You just park yourself at the window seat upstairs and watch. If you see any of them, come and get me.”
That would make her an accessory to his snooping. “It’s not worth doing. You expect a murderer who left no traces at the crime scene to drop something incriminating in a wastebasket? Dream on.”
“Our murderer might get sloppy, figuring he or she got away with it. In the garbology unit of my course, we read about cases cracked because of things that turned up in the trash.”
If Val didn’t help him, he would snoop on his own without a lookout . . . and risk getting caught. She trudged upstairs after him and took up her post by the window seat. From there she had a good view of the street. No cars or pedestrians in sight.
Granddad waited at the top of the staircase, a key in his hand, until she gave him a nod. Then he hurried toward Sarina’s room.
Two minutes later, he joined Val by the window seat. “Nothing but used tissues in Sarina’s trash. Maybe I’ll have better luck in Noah’s room.”
A car slowed down in front of the house. Val couldn’t see who was driving, but the car looked like Noah’s sedan. “It’s too late, Granddad.”
They waited until they saw Sarina open the sedan’s passenger door.
Granddad pulled Val away from the window. “Let’s take the back staircase. They won’t even know we were up here.”
Once downstairs, she said goodnight to him and took the side door to the driveway, avoiding Noah and Sarina who were coming in the front door.
On the way to her cousin’s house, Val kept her eye on the rearview mirror, but saw no cars following her.
The house was dark except for a light in the hall. Val crept through the kitchen-family room and looked out the sliding door in case the prowler had returned. Everything outside was still. She went to bed.
* * *
Val woke up at the same time she had on the previous two mornings at her cousin’s house. Today, though, she didn’t have to fix breakfast for Granddad’s guests. He and Mom would take care of it. Val packed the small suitcase she’d brought on Friday night and stopped in the kitchen where Monique was pouring coffee. “Thanks for putting me up this weekend. Did you check the backyard this morning for signs of a prowler?”
“Yes, and I didn’t find anything.” Monique handed Val a mug of coffee. “I have some photos to show you on my big monitor.”
She took Val to a tiny room off the hall. A thirty-inch monitor dominated the space Monique used as an office.
Val perched on a stool next to her cousin’s desk chair. “Are these photos from the festival?”
“They’re from Friday evening when I walked around the historic district taking pictures of people shopping and eating. I’d like you to look at some pictures I took around six thirty.” Monique moved her mouse and clicked to open a photo of a man at a small outdoor table, wearing a crab hat. People were eating at similar tables around his, but none of them wore the souvenir hat. He sat alone, holding a phone, his thumbs in a position to punch buttons.
The crab hat and the angle of the man’s head made it hard for Val to see his features. “Who is he?”
“My face-recognition software says it’s this man.” Monique brought up a headshot of Noah. Then she zoomed in on the face of the man sitting alone at the table.
Val saw the resemblance. “Yes, that’s Noah. Based
on this photo of him at the table, your software found his headshot among your photos?”
“The other way around. I started with the photos I took of the wedding group. The software derived the characteristics of each face and then looked for matching faces in the set of photos I took over the weekend. It didn’t find many matches, but I thought this shot from Friday evening would interest you.”
Val studied the objects on the table in front of Noah. “A glass of wine, utensils, no food. The table is set for one person. He’s waiting for dinner. What’s that small, rectangular thing near the folded napkin?”
Monique zoomed in on it. “It looks like a phone to me. He has one phone in his hand and another one on the table.”
“The one on the table could be the smart phone I’ve seen Noah using at the house. I can barely tell that the thing in his hand is a phone.”
Her cousin magnified Noah’s hand. “He’s cradling it. It’s not a fancy phone with a large display. Some people have one phone for business and one for personal use.”
“And some have phones that can’t be traced back to them.” Val remembered Sarina’s remark that Jennifer’s harassing message had probably come from a disposable phone. “The one he’s holding could be a burner phone, to use when he doesn’t want someone to know who’s calling or messaging. Where was he when you took this picture?”
“On the patio at the Bayport Bistro.”
Val hadn’t tried the recently opened bistro, though she’d walked past it. It was at the corner of Main Street and Locust Lane, with its patio facing the lane. Aha. “Right across from the Bugeye Tavern. Payton and Jennifer had dinner there on Friday night. Now I understand why Noah’s wearing a crab hat. He didn’t want them to see him there. If they were sitting in the glassed-in porch at the tavern, he could have watched them.”
“And I watched him. He finished thumbing his text message as his dinner arrived. He ignored his food and stared at the tavern’s enclosed porch. I wondered what interested him so much, so I snapped a picture of the people seated there.” Monique switched to displaying thumbnails of photos. She selected a photo showing tables near the floor-to-ceiling windows on the tavern’s porch.
Final Fondue (A Five-Ingredient Mystery) Page 19