Sleuthing Women

by Lois Winston

  Too bad. I couldn’t get past all that he’d put me through. I couldn’t pretend that his adultery and our divorce had never occurred.

  I put on a determined face and went downstairs to fix breakfast. Time folded in on itself as the four of us sat down to eat at the kitchen table. Charla talked nonstop while Lexy sulked because she couldn’t get a word in edgewise. Charlie’s warm gaze rested as frequently on me as it did on the girls.

  I could almost see the wheels turning in his brain as he tried his old life on for size. In the old days I would’ve gone along with his wishes so that I didn’t make waves. I wasn’t that person anymore. My purpose in life no longer revolved around making Charlie happy. The sooner he came to terms with that, the better for all of us.

  Charlie offered to drop the girls off at school, and they left in a clatter of noise. Even my normally quiet Lexy seemed animated by her father’s presence.

  But, after they left, I sat down with a cup of coffee and wondered just what I’d done. I’d fixed Charlie his eggs just the way he liked them, the way I’d made them a hundred bazillion times before. I’d added that dollop of milk to his coffee before I sat the cup on the table in front of him.

  Good heavens. I’d been acting like I was his wife. That wasn’t going to happen. I wouldn’t let it. Only, there was a lot of comfort in a familiar routine. And after sixteen years of marriage, I was very familiar with Charlie Jones.

  He’d given me that unshaven boyish grin as he left, the one that had always melted me down to my toes. A part of me was whispering seductively in one ear, “You could have him again.” But the other part of me was shouting, “You don’t want him.”

  Mama walked into the kitchen dressed in her triple-stranded pearls, mauve suit, and burgundy pumps. “I heard a man’s voice. Who was here?”

  Mama’s bedroom overlooked the driveway. She’d have to be blind to have missed Charlie’s BMW.

  I drew in a deep breath, bracing myself for the explosion sure to come. “Charlie spent the night.”

  Mama’s penetrating stare would have broken another, lesser woman. “I thought we agreed that you were over him,” Mama said.

  “We did, and I am. He slept on the couch, Mama. He needed a place to stay.”

  “Hasn’t the man ever heard of motels?” Mama poured a cup of coffee, then joined me at the kitchen table.

  I’d already had this conversation with Charlie. “He’s the father of my children. Even if he is a puke, I couldn’t turn him out in the street.”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  Lord, you had to love my mother. She was unswervingly loyal in her convictions. “It was my choice. I don’t see why we can’t be civil about this.”

  Madonna must have sensed my distress. She came over and thrust her big Saint Bernard head in my lap. Her brown eyes radiated sympathy. I rubbed her head and she licked my hand.

  “You always were softhearted, Cleo. Make sure that man doesn’t take advantage of you again.”

  “Hey. I resent that remark. There’s a difference in being softhearted and being stupid. I learned my lesson about Charlie already.”

  “Keep that in mind.” After she felt her warning had time to sink in, Mama added, “What time are you going over to the office today?”

  “Soon as I finish up here. I’d like to start with the Bluemont Hills audit.” I also planned to make a phone call about Valley Land Company.

  It had occurred to me during the night that Valley Land Company, the White Rock housing development, and Dudley’s death might be connected, but I wanted to move cautiously. A lot of money was tied up in this stalled development. A misstep here could cost me my pride, my biggest client, or even my life.

  Mama left and I did the dishes. This was good thinking time for me as I mindlessly loaded the dishwasher. Before Dudley’s murder, I seemed to be caught in an out of-the-way eddy of life. Now it seemed as if my life was shooting through rapids, zipping from one exciting hydraulic to the next.

  No longer was each day an ordeal to endure. I wasn’t looking backward anymore. My future seemed as bright as the gleaming white azaleas and sunshine-yellow forsythia blooming in my yard. The new Cleo was getting on with her life.

  My immediate goal was to find out who killed Dudley. I wouldn’t let Britt send Jonette or Bitsy to jail for a murder they didn’t commit. I had one or maybe two men, if you counted Charlie, who were interested in me, although I wasn’t sure that either man was a good catch. But, hey, I had a future. Life was good.

  ~*~

  I took a break from work and walked Madonna down to the bank to deposit the checks that arrived in today’s mail. Since it was such a nice spring day, I chose the long way to the bank. Madonna and I went out the back door and cut through Old Man Putnam’s driveway and over into the park. After that, we followed Schoolhouse Road west to Burkittsville Road and came up on the bank from the side street.

  The first thing I noticed as I approached was that Main Street was a parking lot. Vacant cars pointed in the direction of the yellow crime scene tape surrounding the bank.

  Had something else happened in Hogan’s Glen? What danger lurked in our sleepy little town?

  Questions churned in my head as I made my way towards the throng of people gathered at the barrier of crime scene tape. I recognized the massive bulk of my neighbor Ed Monday and stopped next to him, reining Madonna in close. Ed’s bald head gleamed in the sunlight. I leaned around his portly figure to catch his eye. “What’s going on, Ed?” I asked.

  Ed glanced over at me and then back at the bank. “The bank guard was killed last night,” Ed said, shoving his fists in the pockets of his worn jeans. “Shot. Right between the eyes.”

  I felt icy talons gripping my stomach. I believed something suspicious was going on at the bank, and now the guard was dead? Did the police see the same connections that I did? “The guard?”

  Ed nodded glumly, his attention fixed on the scene before us. My mind started churning around the new pieces to this puzzle. How did this all fit together?

  Why would the guard be shot, unless the bank was being robbed or unless the guard saw something he shouldn’t have? Was this about White Rock or Valley Land Company? I glanced around the crowd, noting faces of friends and acquaintances. Our illustrious mayor was nowhere in sight.

  I shivered in spite of the warm day. Hogan’s Glen was not a good place to live these days. Two murders in less than a week was two more than we’d ever had. Two murders meant it wasn’t a fluke circumstance. This was terribly serious. We had a serial killer in our midst.

  What else connected Dudley’s murder to this one? Anyone with half a brain could make the connection to the bank. Lots of money flowed through that bank, and who better to know the transaction details than a bank officer like Charlie or Dudley?

  Charlie hadn’t had an alibi for Dudley’s murder. Suppose he’d gone to the bank first and murdered the guard before he came over last night? Had he used me to establish an alibi for the guard’s murder?

  Had I slept with a serial killer under my roof?

  How well did I really know Charlie Jones? Just because I’d been married to him for sixteen years didn’t mean that I knew him. I’d had no knowledge of his adultery until it smacked me square in the face. Maybe I’d missed the real Charlie Jones all these years. Maybe I’d only known the man he wanted me to see.

  I exhaled shakily. There was no reason to jump to conclusions. Just because Charlie worked at the bank, that didn’t automatically make him a mass murderer. Lots of people worked at the bank. But still.

  I felt very uneasy. A killer was running wild in our town. How could I keep my family safe if the police couldn’t catch this person?

  Uniformed policemen stood on the sidewalk next to a cluster of bank employees. I watched in morbid fascination as Detective Britt Radcliff scribbled on his notepad, then moved on to question the next bank employee. The group shifted and I found myself looking right at Denise. She was dressed in one of her sickenin
gly flattering suits, her blond curls cascading about her face just so.

  She caught my eye and smiled smugly. I didn’t smile back. We were not friends.

  Her smile was the same sort of smile she’d given me in the old days when she’d been sleeping with my husband behind my back. It was the kind of smile that said I’ve got hidden secrets.

  Well, I had a secret too. Her husband spent the night at my house. He wanted to divorce her. I hoped the cops grilled Denise about this murder every bit as thoroughly as they’d grilled Jonette over Dudley’s death.

  I wasn’t exactly friends with my neighbor Ed Monday, but at least I didn’t want to spit on him every time I saw him. Ed appeared to be transfixed by the scene. He nearly jumped out of his shoes when I tapped his shoulder to get his attention.

  Oops, I had forgotten about his need for personal space. “Sorry,” I said hastily. “Didn’t mean to startle you, but I wanted to let you know I have someone looking into the problems with your account.”

  “I hope it wasn’t the bank guard.” Sunlight flashed off of Ed’s thick glasses.

  I narrowed my eyes. Was that a joke? Did Ed Monday have a sense of humor? “It was someone else.”

  “Good,” he said glumly. “Doesn’t look like the bank guard would help me now anyway.”

  What was that old saying? Dead men tell no tales? The bank guard was dead. Dudley was dead. And if this continued, someone else would be dead soon. Everyone knew bad news happened in threes.

  Would it be another bank employee? What underlying cause connected the murders? I didn’t know.

  “Hey, Clee. What’s all the excitement?” Jonette joined us at the taped barrier, her leopard-print spandex short skirt and top leaving nothing to the imagination.

  I motioned towards the bank. “The guard was killed last night.”

  Jonette whistled appreciatively. “This has the makings of a regular crime wave. What the heck is going on around here?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know, but I have this vision of Denise sleeping her way through the bank hierarchy, killing them for sport.”

  Ed Monday shocked me by laughing. “That’s rich,” he said.

  “That’s jealousy talking,” Jonette’s amber-flecked eyes scowled at me in consternation. “Denise would be pained if she so much as broke a nail. I can’t see her murdering anyone, and believe me, I’ve got her number. We’ve got something much bigger going on. I can feel it.”

  Jonette was about as psychic as I was, but in her current occupation as barmaid she came across all sorts of people. Perhaps she had some insight into Denise that I was missing. Or at least some objectivity. I couldn’t be objective about the woman who had ruined my life.

  It was very unsettling that we were having a major crime spree in Hogan’s Glen. I had Mama and the girls to consider. “The bank guard was Bennett Glazier. Did you know him?”

  “What do you want to know about Bennett?” Jonette asked.

  My eyebrows quirked up. “You know him?”

  Jonette nodded. “He’s a regular down at the tavern. My guess is that last night he had his usual three whiskey sours, then he walked home. He lives in one of those duplexes over by the park. Bennett never hit on me, but he couldn’t take his eyes off of my boss.”

  The bank was between the tavern and the park. Bennett must have seen something unusual at the bank on his way home and stopped to check it out. Or had his sexual orientation triggered a murderer’s rage? “Dean and Bennett are gay?”

  “Dean is not gay. I can attest to that one hundred percent,” Jonette said. “As for Bennett, I’m not sure he was out of the closet, if you know what I mean. He was more like a wannabe, in love with Dean, but Dean wasn’t interested. That unrequited love thing.”

  Ed Monday’s ears turned pink. I guess this conversation was too racy for him. He ambled away, leaving me to wonder why he’d been standing here. Behind that shambling gentility, did a raging fire burn out of control? My instincts told me that he had a secret. I had two problems with that information.

  First, my intuition was shot. How could I put much stock in my insights when I knew that I’d missed big on perceiving a major problem in my marriage? Second, not all secrets were large enough to kill for. What if Ed Monday had some minor secret that he didn’t want getting out? Was that why he kept to himself? To keep from being recognized?

  I couldn’t pigeonhole Ed Monday any more than I could solve Dudley’s murder right now. I didn’t have enough information, but I couldn’t help feeling that I knew more than I thought. What I needed was a block of time that I could sit down and think this out.

  For instance, Jonette was the police’s top suspect in Dudley’s murder. How did she rank in their standings for the latest murder? She knew both victims. Some assumptions could be made from that.

  Assumptions that would be dead wrong if you didn’t know Jonette.

  Voicing my suspicions to a murder suspect wasn’t particularly brilliant, but I wasn’t one to stick just my big toe in the shallow end of a pool. It was more my style to dive in headfirst in the deep end and worry about the outcome later.

  “Don’t shoot me for asking, but do you have an alibi for last night?” At her pained expression, I qualified my remark. “I know you didn’t kill Bennett, but can someone verify your whereabouts last night?”

  Jonette planted her hands on her hips. “Are you asking me if I shacked up with anyone last night?”

  I groaned. Why was everyone obsessed with sex? I hadn’t noticed this preoccupation until I didn’t have a sex life, but now it seemed that sexual innuendoes were everywhere. “Jonette, who you sleep with is your business. In fact, I’d rather not know the details. All I want to know is, do you have an alibi for the time of the murder?”

  “Seeing as how I don’t know what time the murder was, that makes having an alibi a little challenging. Fortunately, I have someone who can corroborate my story. Britt’s had a deputy tailing me for days now. I spent last night home alone with the police watching my house.”

  I exhaled sharply. “Well, that’s a relief.”

  “No kidding,” Jonette said. “I was worried about spending the rest of my life in an orange jumpsuit.”

  I nodded towards the thick knot of bank employees. “Do you think it’s one of them?”

  Jonette shrugged. “How should I know?”

  “I thought you knew everything.”

  “Don’t confuse me with your mother.”

  I arched an eyebrow at her. “Fat chance of that.”

  NINETEEN

  Denise knocked on my door several hours later. Just the sight of her in that wrinkle-free, cleavage-displaying business suit stirred the hair on the back of my neck. I wanted to take this opportunity to kick the crap out of her for ruining my life, but I was bigger than that.

  Maybe.

  “Cleo?”

  “Yes?” I stood just inside the screen door. Not inviting her in, but not doing anything bad either. Mama had gone down to the church office to help fold the monthly newsletter and I was home alone, unless you counted Madonna who was snoozing on my bed.

  Denise had been inside my house exactly one time and I’d vowed she would never enter it again. On that singular occasion two months ago, Denise had come to pick up the girls instead of Charlie. Since Lexy was still in the shower, Charla had invited her new stepmother up to see her room.

  Denise had felt faint. I couldn’t much blame her for that as Charla’s room looked like it had been hit by a tornado. Anyway, I’d come home to find Denise in my bed. I’d gagged, evicted Denise, and then burnt my bed linens in the backyard.

  I wanted to snap and growl at her on general principle. Instead I schooled my features into those of a woman who had moved on.

  “Charlie won’t be picking the girls up this weekend,” Denise said. “He’s off on a fishing trip and I’m just too frazzled to deal with the children after what happened at the bank this morning.”

  As if I wanted her alone with my girl
s. I’d just as soon send both girls to lion tamer school as to send them off to spend the weekend with Denise. “No problem. When do you expect Charlie back?”

  Her thick lips drew down into a face-wrinkling frown. “Don’t know for sure. He left yesterday afternoon and I haven’t heard from him.”

  And she wouldn’t if I knew her husband. He’d come home when he was good and ready. It could be a few days, it could be a week or more.

  That man didn’t believe in calendars or clocks once he started fishing. He spent time up there clearing his head. And from what I’d seen, he needed to have his head cleared.

  “I told the police I hadn’t heard from him since early yesterday afternoon,” Denise said. “They’re up at the lake looking for him. They want to talk to him about Bennett Glazier’s death.”

  That got my attention. First because Charlie would be pissed that anyone bothered him while he was fishing, and second because she was lying about the time he left. Was there more she wasn’t telling me? “Oh?”

  She wiggled and her boobs waggled and I remembered how those boobs had mesmerized my former husband. Was Denise using this opportunity to punish Charlie for threatening to divorce her? She didn’t know him very well if she thought she could manipulate him that way.

  “It appears Charlie stopped off at the bank on his way out of town last night,” Denise said. “The police took Charlie’s computer and they won’t let the rest of us go back to work until they check out all the computers. Can you imagine how long that will take?”

  I could imagine it all right. This was a small town and folks would be greatly inconvenienced. No telling how many would move their accounts to a Frederick bank after this. Our independent bank didn’t stand much of a chance of survival if it remained closed for any length of time. “Oh dear.”

  It was possible that Charlie went to the bank and worked for a bit after he left her yesterday. But not probable. Charlie was a fairly linear guy.

  If he was upset and wanted to go fishing, there wasn’t any way he would stop at the bank and work for a few hours. It was fairly miraculous that he’d veered off his course to spend the night here.