Sleuthing Women

by Lois Winston

  Charlie and Jonette and Bitsy were on the police department’s suspect list. I didn’t think Jonette or Bitsy did it, and I didn’t want to visit Charlie in prison. So I had to find someone else to take the heat off these official suspects.

  “Your mother is interested in Montclair?” Dr. Brinkley asked when I was seated in his pale-blue office. Montclair’s head administrator had a gentle, jovial demeanor that put me in mind of Santa Claus.

  Mama was now, whether she knew it or not. I needed a cover story so that I could verify Denise’s presence here the night of Dudley’s murder. I crossed my fingers and hoped God wouldn’t fry me on the spot. “Mama is increasingly isolated as she ages. A place like Montclair with an activities program would put that spark back in her eyes.”

  Dr. Brinkley nodded enthusiastically and handed me a glossy folder. “Our dynamic program director gets everyone involved in activities.”

  The thought of living in a place where I didn’t have to cook, with on-site facilities for haircuts and church, with a heated indoor pool and exercise room, along with a craft room and a quilting room seemed to be Paradise on earth.

  “One of the things that led me to make a visit without Mama is that I’m concerned about security. How do you protect the elderly against outside threats?”

  Dr. Brinkley puffed up with pride. “Our check-in procedure restricts entry into the residential area. Visitors sign our logbook. Then the receptionist cross-checks the name with our residents’ approved lists before letting them through the locked exterior door. Each resident has a locked suite with no exterior entrances.”

  The logbook was the key. If I could look through the sign-in log I should see Denise’s signature for the day of and the day after Dudley’s murder. “Do any people move out because they don’t like it here?”

  “Our residents tend to stay put. All of our floors are secure and handicap accessible.” Dr. Brinkley gestured towards a framed picture hanging on the wall. The picture was a schematic drawing of the facility floor plan with names penned in each apartment.

  I stood and perused the wall schematic with great interest. Sure enough, Denise’s mother, Louise Wagner, lived in a first-floor apartment. There were only two vacancies in the entire facility. “How much do these suites go for?”

  Dr. Brinkley stood and motioned me towards the door. “The fee schedule is outlined in the folder I gave you. Why don’t I show you around and you can get a feel for Montclair?”

  By the time the tour was over, I wanted to sign myself in and never move out. I thanked Dr. Brinkley for the tour, “accidentally” knocked the logbook off the wooden stand, then quickly bent to retrieve it.

  I flipped through the pages until I saw Denise’s squiggly signature. She’d signed in at seven p.m. the evening of Dudley’s murder and signed out at seven a.m. the next day. Disappointment bit me hard on the butt. I’d hoped to snoop around and find something to incriminate Denise and all I’d done was wasted my Wednesday morning.

  I lifted the logbook to its stand. “I’m so sorry. I’m not usually so clumsy.”

  “No problem, Mrs. Jones,” Dr. Brinkley said with practiced ease. “Come back, and bring your mother with you. She’ll love it here.”

  Fat chance of that. Mama wanted to live at home and nowhere else. It wouldn’t matter if this place was the Taj Mahal or some other wonder of the world.

  When I returned to my office, I tossed the glossy Montclair packet on my desk and got back to work. I didn’t give the retirement home another thought until Mama fanned the colorful pages past my face that afternoon.

  “What’s this?” Mama waved the packet like a matador signaling a bull. “Are you trying to get rid of me? I won’t go in an old folk’s home. I’m not old.” Mama made a big show of dropping the information into the trashcan. The packet hit bottom with a loud thwack.

  Which should have tipped me off that she was seriously pissed. Mama lives to recycle. Ordinarily, she would no more toss a piece of paper directly in the trash than she would purposefully dismember her grandchildren.

  Her refusal to consider Montclair annoyed me. Those wide carpeted hallways, the soothing music, the oversize watercolors on the walls, and the yummy smells from the cafeteria made a nice package. “It’s a wonderful place, Mama. You should take a look at it so you know what’s available.”

  Mama got down in my face and snarled at me. “What’s out there is a bunch of old folks waiting to die. There’s nothing at Montclair that I want. All I need is right here in this house.”

  I had no plans to stick Mama anywhere, but it irked me that she wouldn’t even look at the materials. I grabbed the packet out of the trash and showed her the glossy pictures inside. “See how lovely this is? Activities. A pool. Great food.”

  Mama rolled her eyes and tapped her foot impatiently. “If I added one more activity to my life I couldn’t think straight. Why would I want to live thirty minutes away when my life is here in Hogan’s Glen? Besides, I don’t have any intention of moving into an old folk’s home.”

  “It’s not an old folk’s home.” It was my turn to roll my eyes. “Montclair is a Retirement Center. That means there are all kinds of fun programs out there and I bet it’s affordable too.” I thumbed through the pages until I found the price list, tucked way in the back of the stack.

  I skimmed the info until I found the bottom line. My mouth fell open. The price for the living quarters started at two thousand dollars a month. Holy cow.

  If we sold this house and the girls and I lived in the Gray Beast, I could keep Mama at Montclair for a few years, but that would be it.

  “What?” Mama asked, her brown eyes smoldering embers of coal.

  “This place is expensive. How do people afford it?”

  “Who cares?” Mama said. “I won’t be stuck in the middle of nowhere with someone else thinking up make-work for me to do. My life is here, and I’ll thank you to quit interfering in it.”

  I pointed to the price list. “When folks buy into this community, they don’t get their money back. In addition, they pay a monthly rent to live there. This is not a good investment. Who would throw such massive amounts of money away?”

  “Lots of folks,” Mama said. “Particularly if it got unwanted relatives off their hands.”

  Mama’s caustic tone ate at my heart. Did she think I didn’t want her? I rushed around my desk and hugged her. “You’re not unwanted, Mama. The girls and I need you here. Montclair appealed to me. If it weren’t for the expense, I wouldn’t mind living there.”

  Mama looked at me like I’d lost my mind, but then she held me close. “These places don’t take children. Are you gonna hand your girls over to Charlie while you make potholders for the rest of your days?”

  “If I can’t afford Montclair for you, I sure can’t afford it for me, even if I met the minimum age requirements, which I don’t. The concept just appealed to me. Solitude with comradery, exercise without athleticism, meals without having to cook, that sort of thing.”

  Mama soothed the hair back from my face and kissed my forehead. “Honey, you don’t need to move into a retirement home for that, you just need a vacation. That’s all.”

  “Right.” A vacation wasn’t likely, not when I was trying to keep Jonette, Bitsy, and Charlie out of jail, not to mention trying to build up my client base. Who would do my work if I took time off?

  “I mean it. A vacation would do you a world of good. You ought to take Jonette and go up to Berkley Springs. Soaking in that mineral water and getting a massage or two would do wonders for you.”

  So would getting laid, but I didn’t see any help for that either. I wasn’t about to run off and leave Mama in charge of the girls for a long weekend. You had to stay on top of teenagers or they ran all over you.

  I wasn’t sure Mama still had the right stuff anymore. I had visions of her being tied to a kitchen chair and stuffed in the coat closet as Charla and Lexy’s friends drank all the booze in the house, played Russian Roulette with the
guns under my bed, and tore up the furniture.

  “I’ll think about it,” I said to placate her.

  ~*~

  Britt Radcliff dropped by my office the next day. His sour expression could have sucked the joy out of an amusement park.

  “We’ve got to stop meeting this way,” I teased, but Britt didn’t crack a smile. So much for trying to lighten his mood.

  Britt flipped open a small notebook pad. “I’ve got Charlie Jones down at the station. He says he was here the night bank guard Bennett Glazier was killed. Is that true?”

  I wasn’t keen on it getting around that Charlie had slept over. “It was a one-time thing.”

  Did Britt think I was sleeping with Charlie? I flushed with heat. It shouldn’t matter what Britt thought but it did. I wished I could come right out and say that I wasn’t sleeping with my ex, but I didn’t want to broach such a humiliating subject.

  “Charlie’s been arrested for Glazier’s murder,” Britt explained. His rigid posture and curt tone implied that this was serious business indeed. “What time did he arrive and depart on the evening of the murder?”

  My heart skipped a beat. Charlie, arrested for the bank guard’s murder? I leapt to my feet so that Britt wasn’t looking down at me.

  Charlie needed my help. I wasn’t going to spend the next few years taking the girls to prison to visit their father. “He arrived between ten and ten-thirty p.m. I was watching that TV drama where half the program is devoted to cops and the other half is devoted to lawyers. I’d been watching the show for a while, but I wasn’t to the lawyer part yet. Charlie spent the night and he left the next morning to take the girls to school. That time I know for certain. It was a quarter of eight.”

  “Any chance he slipped out during the night?”

  “It’s possible but extremely unlikely. Dudley’s dog would have heard him moving about the house. If Charlie had been up after we went to our separate beds, I would have known about it.” It was extremely clever of me to have worked the fact that I didn’t sleep with Charlie into the conversation.

  Britt scribbled down a few notes on his pad. His stern features were inscrutable. Was my recollection of the evening the same as Charlie’s? “What time did Bennett Glazier die?”

  “The medical examiner believes it was after midnight, but there are a few hours’ variance.”

  So Charlie might not be off the hook. It was possible he murdered the guard first and then came over to my house. “Do you have any other suspects for Glazier’s murder?”

  Britt sighed heavily. “A whole bank full, but the evidence points to Charlie. He accessed files on his bank computer the night of the bank guard’s murder. He didn’t have an alibi for either murder. We have a ballistics match. The same gun was used for both murders.”

  My skin prickled. Charlie was in big trouble here. “But you said the evidence pointed to Jonette not so long ago.”

  Britt sighed. “Jonette has a solid alibi for the second murder.”

  “I can’t believe Charlie killed anyone.”

  “Reliable sources confirmed Charlie and Dudley had a heated discussion at the bank on the afternoon of Dudley’s murder. This information didn’t come out until we questioned the bank employees after the second murder.”

  Discussion? I doubted it was that civil. Charlie was used to being king in his own domain. Dudley had clearly encroached on Charlie’s territory. “What about?”

  Britt looked pained. “Stay out of this. Charlie Jones wasn’t right for you, and it always boggled my mind that you couldn’t see it. Don’t get sucked into his problems.”

  I exhaled slowly. Britt didn’t trust Charlie. Unless new evidence came to light, Britt would lock him up and throw away the key. “Charlie used people, but he could be generous and charming.” Why didn’t Britt see that?

  “He’s a long way from that person now. Rumor has it his wife’s been sleeping around on him and he’s unhappy about that.”

  Who wouldn’t be?

  “We have a cold-blooded killer on the loose,” Britt said. “Lock your doors and stay in at night.”

  He couldn’t scare me off so easily. “You’re concentrating on the wrong people. What about Robert Joy?”

  “What about him?”

  “He blames Dudley for that White Rock boondoggle. I bet he lost a lot of money because of Dudley’s wink and promise business philosophy.”

  “You think these killings are related to Old Man Wingate’s farm? Isn’t that far-fetched?”

  “If you don’t like Robert Joy for the murders, what about my oddball neighbor? Ed Monday hides out in his house and he has a problem with the bank.” I took a deep breath. “Right before Dudley’s death, Ed was escorted from the bank by the security guard. The same guard who is now dead.”

  Britt scribbled a few words in his notepad, then flipped it shut. “Do you suspect everyone in Hogan’s Glen?”

  “All I know for sure is who isn’t the killer. It’s not Charlie or Jonette or Bitsy or Violet Cooper.”

  Britt visibly started. “Violet Cooper? How does she fit into this?”

  Did he think I was making all of this up? “She blames Dudley for the schoolteacher pension fund swindle. He was on the board when all that went down. But I spoke with her and she’s legally blind. She couldn’t do it, although her son Jasper is certainly angry and hotheaded enough to have killed Dudley.”

  “I don’t like you snooping into everyone’s business.”

  “That’s the beauty of this. Accountants get paid for snooping through dirty laundry.”

  “You know anything about these murders, you jolly well better tell me.”

  “I told you everything I know.”

  “Investigating homicides is dangerous. Stay out of this.” Britt stormed out of my office without waiting for my reply.

  I ground my back teeth together and ignored the resulting jaw pain. Wasn’t it obvious that I was doing his job? My friends and family weren’t killers.

  If Britt didn’t see that, how was he going to solve these murders? No matter what he said, he needed my help. I was clearly better at detecting than he was. Britt should have stuck to teaching Sunday School.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Lexy had a twenty-four hour vomiting bug and I did the Mom thing for the next few days. By the time I got my life back I was in desperate need of golf therapy. It had been two weeks since I’d swung a golf club and that was unacceptable.

  My phone rang Wednesday morning as I headed out to my golf league. I didn’t want to be late. But what if the call was one of my girls with an emergency? I walked back into the kitchen and grabbed the phone. “Hello.”

  “Cleo, it’s Charlie.”

  Did he think I wouldn’t recognize his voice? “Yes?”

  “I need to talk to you.”

  I glanced at my watch. If I were late checking in at the course, I would lose my preassigned tee time in the first group. And since the tee times rotated, I didn’t often get the chance to be in the group that went first. “I’m in a hurry. Can’t this wait?”

  “This won’t take but a minute. I looked into that bank loan of your sketchy neighbor. All the paperwork is here. Ed Monday took out a loan, all right. And he hasn’t paid a penny back to the bank.”

  Ed took out a loan? “I don’t get it. I saw the man almost have a heart attack when he opened his statement. He swears he didn’t take out a loan.”

  “Believe me, Ed Monday took out a loan.”

  The sarcasm in Charlie’s voice wasn’t lost on me. I well knew that tone. It implied that I’d wasted his valuable time.

  “All the paperwork is in order,” Charlie said. “Dudley was always very thorough about that sort of thing.”

  The hair on the back of my neck snapped to attention. “Dudley?”

  “Dudley was the Loan Origination Officer for this loan. Why do you find that strange?”

  “My neighbor said he’d talked to Dudley and that Dudley promised him he’d get it straightened out. Why wo
uld Ed lie to me?”

  “I’ve never felt good about Ed Monday living next door to you and Charla and Lexy. He probably killed Dudley over this loan. I want you and the girls out of that house today.”

  I glanced up at the clock, aware that my morning was ticking away. What a time for Charlie to be concerned for our safety. “Oh, for heaven’s sake. Ed’s my neighbor, not a career criminal.”

  “How much do we know about him, Clee?” Charlie asked. “He hasn’t lived here very long. He’s a stranger, really.”

  It didn’t matter that I’d had the exact same thoughts myself. The fact that Charlie believed my neighbor was guilty automatically pushed my buttons to defend Ed. I gazed at the shuttered house next door and it didn’t appear threatening to me. Sleeping maybe, but not threatening. “I’ve lived next door to the man for over a year. He doesn’t stay outside long enough to murder anyone.”

  “I don’t know, Cleo. What causes a person to snap? How do you know he got upset over a bank statement? What if it was something else?”

  What was he implying now? That I didn’t know what I was talking about? “I saw the statement, you blockhead,” I shouted into the phone. “What if it happened just as Ed said? That he didn’t take out a loan and when Dudley looked into it and discovered Ed was right, what if the real killer took Dudley out of the game? For that matter, what if Dudley and the killer were in league together?”

  “Dudley was my best friend. He was not a crook.” Charlie said. “He wouldn’t have killed for the fifty thousand this loan is worth. Not when he routinely administered million-dollar trust funds. Fifty thousand would have been small change to Dudley.”

  How could Charlie remain so loyal to a man who’d had an affair with his wife? “Look. I don’t have time to discuss this right now. I’m late for an appointment.” I took a deep breath. “Thanks for looking into Ed Monday’s banking problem. I appreciate your help.” The conversation I had with Britt Radcliff came back to me. Was Charlie out on bail or had the charges against him been dropped? “Are you out on bail?”