Stax crinkles her nose and looks me in the eye. “Chill out, will you? I’m about to climax.”
An intense moment follows where I’m not sure if Stax and I will erupt into fits of laughter. A perplexed look from an oblivious Ruby defuses the urge.
“I mean, I’m getting to the point. It so happens that the lady who runs the Jazz Palace once used the Petrick Travel Agency to book a series of Caribbean cruises and so knows both Marlene and Anderson. She made a comment that Marlene’s ex-husband came every now and then and that caught my ear.
“I ask if she meant Anderson and she says yes, even described him, so there’s no doubt who we’re talking about. Of course, Anderson and Marlene are very currently married. Ain’t no ‘ex’ about it! I ask if he came in alone and she says ‘No, he always comes in with the same woman,’ and described this mystery chick as younger than Marlene (surprise, surprise, the dog), wears a lot of make-up, but more classy than trashy, and—get this—she’s redheaded.”
Ruby’s lips purse and she taps at them with her forefinger as though to make them behave. Stax’s little tidbit obviously holds a significance that evades me.
“You know what this means, right?” asks an animated Stax.
“What it might mean, dear,” counters Ruby.
They look to me for accord and are rewarded with a blank stare. Stax lays her best ‘are you an idiot?’ look on me.
“Maybe I missed something,” I say, “but whatever you think this means or might mean is lost on me. Anderson is stepping out with a redhead? That’s unfortunate, but not what I’d call shocking.”
Stax throws her arms up. “Oh, come on, Lacy! How many good looking redheaded women do you think there are in Cedar Mill?”
“I wouldn’t have the slightest …”
Then it hits me. “You don’t really think—?”
Ruby uncaps her black marker and reaches up to the white space just under the word ‘Suspects.’.
“We’d be remiss to ignore it, dear,” Ruby says as a name begins to emerge under that flawless hand of hers.
I think to myself that it can’t be. There is no way. But I know I am fooling myself. I’ve read enough murder mysteries to know that it all too often turns out to be the last person you expect.
“Well, we’re off and running,” chirps a chipper Ruby. “We’ve got our first suspect.”
And that suspect is Gretchen Herring.
TWELVE
I argue for Gretchen’s innocence and virtue like a good friend should. But I had to concede certain salient points: Gretchen works with Anderson at the agency and the boss having an affair with the help is the oldest cliché in the book; Gretchen knows Marlene, is familiar with Chicken Hill, and was on the scene at the time of her disappearance. Oh, and she is definitely redheaded. There must be other redheads in Cedar Mill. Hundreds of them, no doubt. But I can’t think of a single one other than Gretchen who might fit the description provided by Stax’s source.
I’ve never seen Gretchen with make-up on or wearing anything fancier than a singlet and shorts, but that’s how we all look when we run. Who at Run For It would ever guess I am the owner of a dark blue denim halter top? In an effort to persuade my partners of Gretchen’s good will I mention how she came to my house on the evening before the run to apologize for Marlene’s behavior. My good intentions quickly backfire.
Stax slaps her thigh. “That settles it! She’s guilty as sin.”
“How do you figure?”
“What’s the best way to avoid suspicion?”
“Don’t commit a crime.”
“Okay, but suppose you’ve committed one?’
“Why don’t you tell me.”
“You pretend to be the victim’s friend!”
“So that’s what you’ve got? She’s friends with Marlene so we assume it’s all an act just to get close to her and kill her?’
“Why not? It made sense to Perry Mason.”
“Ruby, what do you make of all this?”
Ruby lowers herself onto the edge of an antique settee and exhales. “I’m not yet ready to put a noose around the girl’s neck.”
“Thank you!”
“As you say, she may only have been a friend to Marlene and not a diabolical villain hiding in plain sight.”
The image of little Gretchen as an evil crime genius raises a laugh in me that I make no attempt to squelch.
“However,” continues Ruby, “there are some unflattering facts to consider.”
Stax rubs her stubby little hands together excitedly. “Uh huh. Here comes the gospel.”
“No gospel, Miss Stax. As I’m sure you’re aware, gospel means ‘good news’, and I’m afraid there’s no good news to be had in this mess. No, our mission is the truth, only the truth. In the case of Miss Gretchen, she worked in close quarters with Mr. Petrick, did she not?”
I jump in. “Yes, and also Marlene.”
“True, but it is Anderson and not Marlene who was seen with this redhead at a nighttime hot spot.”
I concede the point.
“Gretchen is a young woman,” continues Ruby, “and it’s not unheard of for such a creature to fall under the spell of a handsome older man. And suppose such a woman, while in the clutches of what she believes is true love, makes moves to rid the board of other pawns blocking her ascension.”
“You tell ‘em, sister!” cheers Stax.
I narrow my eyes at Stax. “Do you really think Gretchen did it?”
“Oh, I don’t have the foggiest. But I do like that it’s my clue that put her name on the board.”
I am white-knuckled and ready to scream. If we are going to treat this like a game, then it is time I play my hand.
“You know, Anderson wasn’t the only one ‘stepping out.’”
“What do you mean, dear?” inquires Ruby in her usual soft-spoken fashion, in contrast to my frustrated barking.
“Yesterday, before our meeting at the café, you’ll recall I stopped in to get some chocolates from Hilda? Well, she heard of Marlene’s disappearance and shared a little piece of gossip I didn’t think too much of at the time. But in light of all this suspicion facing Gretchen, I feel I should say something.”
Stax holds her arms out expectantly, as though waiting for me to throw her a pass. Ruby remains her usual prim self but I can feel the weight of her eyes on me.
“A few days ago, only two days before Marlene disappeared, Hilda said Marlene was in her store sitting for some time with Chase Reynolds. I have no idea what it means, but there it is.”
Stax slaps my knee. “Chase Reynolds? As in our Chase Reynolds?”
“Yes, the same. Hilda said they shared a table and looked rather cozy.”
“This does complicate things,” observes Ruby.
“How so?”
“Well, we seem to have both Mister and Missus Petrick enjoying clandestine rendezvous. Whether it is with or without the knowledge of the other remains unclear. It may or may not have anything to do with what happened to Marlene, but the little feather in my brain tells me not to ignore it.”
“Feather in your brain?” I ask.
“Yes, you might call it instinct. It’s a little tickling of the senses I learned long ago to ignore only at my own peril.”
“And it’s telling you what, exactly?”
“I make no claims of telepathy, mind you. I just can’t help but feel that somewhere in these private and sordid relationships is the answer to our questions.”
“Wait, are you saying you think Chase might have killed Marlene?” Stax spoke as though the idea only just occurred to her.
Ruby stands from the settee, tapping the air with the capped end of her marker.
“Not necessarily. However, Chase is also a married man. Married to our beloved Marti. Purely hypothetical, as is everything we’re discussing, but what if …”
Ruby paces, eyes down, as though working up the courage to say the words I am thinking. She pauses, turns towards us, and takes a deep breath be
fore continuing. “What if Marti found out about Chase’s indiscretions and decided she should take it upon herself to trim the weeds, so to speak?”
A lively discussion follows as Stax puts up a defense of Marti Reynolds much stronger than my efforts on behalf of Gretchen. I agree Marti is no more likely than any of the three of us to be the murderer, but I hold back in my defense of Chase. I recall the way I felt when I was in that little office with him in the bowels of Run For It; how I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. Trapped is the only way I can describe it. And that’s how I verbalize the episode to Stax and Ruby.
It might all be in my head. Goodness knows I’d been a blender bottle of emotions all day and the salacious tidbit Hilda gave me about Chase and Marlene must have colored my judgment about him to some extent. There is nothing about our exchange I can point to as being evidence of guilt, but there is something he said as I left that stood my hairs on end.
“Sometimes, when you have an idea, it’s better to keep it to yourself.” I repeated Chase’s words verbatim to Ruby and Stax.
“That sounds like a threat to me,” Stax says. “Did it sound like a threat to you?”
“Well, it is a heck of a way to say ‘good afternoon’,” I reply. Truth be told, it’s more the words than the tone I found menacing. But is that genuine menace or just my frazzled nerves?
In the end we chose objectivity over sisterhood. After all, this is a hunt for a potential murderer and not a popularity contest. If Chase is indeed carrying on with Marlene, it raises the specter of motive for both himself and Marti (assuming she knew) to want Marlene removed from the equation. Both were not only at Chicken Hill but organized the run and had ample opportunity to set up some sort of trap.
But what of the scissors? Marlene was being stalked by someone planting scissors where she was sure to find them. This means whatever happened to her was not a crime of impulse or passion but was an act both cold and calculated. Very cold, in fact, as it hearkens back to an almost-forgotten murder from eighteen years ago. Gretchen would have been but a small child herself at that time.
Ruby assures us that in the beginning stages of an investigation it is healthy to have more questions than answers, but I am finding it all quite frustrating. For good measure, and because he’s the spouse, Anderson Petrick is added to the growing list. We now have four suspects on the board but not a shred of evidence to support an argument against any one of them.
“It’s time we start gathering evidence,” I say.
Ruby moves across the room towards a large mahogany desk. “That’s very astute of you, Lacy. Yes, we now must work to prove or disprove our various theories.”
“What if instead of that we find evidence that makes someone else look suspicious?” asks Stax.
“Then we add them to the list and keep moving forward.”
It is one thing to talk of gathering evidence, but how does one go about it? We’re not the cops, or private investigators.
“So, where do we start?” I ask.
“We start right here and now,” Ruby says, returning to her spot on the settee, but now with a small laptop computer. Who knew she was so techy?
“Lacy, you’ll recall Stax was creating a spreadsheet for all the runners who were towards the head of the run at Chicken Hill. It is to trace similar runs they participated in over the last six months or so to see if there is any noticeable deviation in their times yesterday. A significant break in stride could be quite telling.”
“And what did you learn?”
Stax shrugs her shoulders. “Don’t know. Ruby got me the times from yesterday about ten minutes before I had to head over here. I entered the data and saved it but haven’t had time to look it over.”
Ruby opens the laptop and logs on. “Stax was good enough to e-mail it over to me so she didn’t have to bring her hardware. But I’ll let her have the honors. Besides, reading spreadsheets was not one of my majors.”
Ruby hands the computer over to Stax who spends a solid minute perusing the screen like a doctor reading charts. As I wait for Stax to interpret the data for us a telephone in another room rings out and Ruby excuses herself to answer it.
“Whoa, I didn’t see that coming,” says Stax, reacting to whatever she sees on her screen. I am about to inquire when Ruby reenters.
“That was Marti,” she says, and from her somber expression I didn’t expect any good news. “She’s just returned from Chicken Hill. The police have completed their search.”
“Still no Marlene?”
Ruby shakes her head. “Marti says they had a dozen or more people searching the hill and the area around it. They were out there for hours so they must have been over every inch of ground a few times. I dare say I have new respect for the Cedar Mill Police Department as that was a more thorough search than I expected.”
“For all the good it did,” I say, sounding too much like a sulking child. “Did they find anything at all?”
“Nothing they thought relevant. Marti mentioned a patch of material they found, not so much because they found it suspicious as they aren’t sure what it is.”
“And what is it?”
“Marti couldn’t say, but she had the presence of mind to retrieve a piece they discarded. Smart girl.”
“So, back to square one—a runner who disappears into thin air, a murder no one else thinks has been committed, and four suspects, none of whom are particularly suspicious.”
“Uh, make that five suspects,” Stax says, wearing the smirk she affects whenever she thinks she’s being clever. One cheek pushes up and makes her glasses crooked. It’s funny the things you notice about a person once you get to know them.
Ruby rushes over to sit next to Stax. “Oh, you’ve got something?”
“I just might. Most of the runners were right on track with their accumulated averages. But one was either not having an easy go of the hill or else was up to no good.”
“Was it Gretchen?” I surprise myself by arriving so quickly at her name.
Stax shakes her head. “Close, but no dice.”
Close? “You don’t mean Carly, do you?”
It was a shot in the dark, but when Stax puts a stubby finger to her nose to signify ‘Bingo’, I knew I’d hit home.
It’s not that I thought Carly incapable of murder—if personalities were admissible as evidence then any case against her would be a slam dunk—but it doesn’t fit in this case. Why would she want to hurt Marlene? She is no less pretty, a good ten years younger, and to all appearances quite harmonious with her.
“How much time are we talking about?” I ask. Maybe it was too marginal to matter.
Stax runs her finger across and along the screen. “It looks like over the past three trail runs she’s been pretty consistent, even PRing each time, though only by seconds. Then we get to Chicken Hill and she’s a full eight minutes past her last time. I’d say that’s pretty substantial. It’s like she lost eight minutes somewhere on the trail.”
“Eight minutes is a long time,” Ruby says. “But of course, we can’t jump to conclusions. There might be a perfectly innocent explanation.”
“Maybe, but how would we find out what that is?” I ask.
Ruby stares at me for a moment. It is as though time froze or someone hit pause on the room. “Oh, that was a serious question! I thought perhaps you were setting me up for another one of your private laughs with Miss Stax. But you really mean it when you ask how we might find out why Carly lost so much time in her run.”
“Err, yes,” was my meek reply.
“I thought all of us learned in kindergarten that the best way to get a question answered is to ask it. My, how your teachers have failed you.”
Gulp.
Stax places the laptop on the hand-carved eagle table in front of her and retrieves her cell phone, brandishing it in the air like an icon. “You need someone to make calls? I’m your girl. I got most of their numbers already, and if I don’t have it, I can get it.”
�
��Very good, Stax,” Ruby says with exaggerated approval. “That’s precisely the kind of gumption we need if we’re going to get Lacy off the hook.”
“What!” I don’t bother to hide my consternation. “I’m loaded with gumption! I’ve got gumption up to my eyeballs!”
“That ain’t gumption, honey, that’s cleavage. And it looks like I’ve got you beat on both counts.”
Shut up, Stax.
“I’m glad to hear that, dear,” Ruby says as she buzzes her way back over to the dry erase board, “because I’ve saved the dirtier work for the two of us. Now, Stax, be sure to call Carly first and get her explanation. Maybe disguise your intention by offering your condolences on the confusing disappearance of her friend. It might have been pretend, but she did seem rather flustered yesterday after the run—”
I was dying to jump in and find out what this ‘dirty work’ is that Ruby signed me up for. But she was on a roll. As she spoke, she wrote Carly’s name on the board.
“Now, make careful note of what she says, down to the syllable. After this, call the other runners who started behind her but finished ahead of her. They must have passed her on the trail, so it’s important to find out if they saw Carly, and if so, what they saw. Oh, and ask if anybody else was with her. We’d be remiss to assume we’re only looking for one culprit. With that in mind I should add one more entity to our rogue’s gallery.”
She stops for a breath and to write the word ‘Unknown’ under Carly’s name on the board. I assume this refers to the yet-to-be-captured salon slayer from Marlene’s past. The idea that this ghoul could be traveling in our circle gives me chills. But I am not about to let it distract me from my goal of finding out just how much dirt is going to be under my nails.
“Ruby, about this ‘dirty work’ you mentioned …”
“Yes, dear?”
“What do you have in mind?”
“I thought we might pay a visit to the Petrick Travel Agency. As it’s the den not only of our victim but two of our suspects, it could prove a boon to our investigation.”
That didn’t sound too dirty to me. “I’m not sure how much Anderson would want to tell us and I bet Gretchen would feel a bit ganged upon with the two of us throwing questions at her. But, if you think it could be worthwhile, I’m more than game. I’ll take my lunch early tomorrow so we don’t miss them, assuming they break at noon.”
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