by Edie Claire
"It's too early to draw conclusions," she answered. Then, hearing a formal voice in the hall behind her, she turned around.
"Excuse me, Miss Koslow. Are you a member here?" It was one of the county homicide detectives that had interviewed her earlier that morning. No—she thought, glancing over his shoulder—it was two of them.
"I'm not a church member, no," she answered, grateful of the fact. "I'm here with my aunt, Bess Cogley. She's a member."
"I'm on the Executive Board," Ed said proudly, drawing up to his full height. "We’re the ruling body, in the absence of a pastor. Can I help you?"
The detectives conferred. "We'd like your permission to have a look around the church. Are any of the other board members here?"
Leigh could swear that Ed's eyes flickered with fear for a moment, but he recovered quickly. "I suppose I could round up a quorum," he said congenially. "In the meantime, help yourselves to some refreshments."
The detectives waited patiently in the hallway while Ed hobbled around the crowded parlor, tapping Bess and several others, who followed him—at various speeds—back to the doorway. Leigh recognized Betty Ivey among the throng, as well as the youth leader who had offered pizza and donuts to everyone at the wedding rehearsal. She tended not to forget men like that.
"Ted Hugh's around here somewhere, too," Ed said, breathing a little more heavily from his effort. "But we've got a majority—not counting Humphrey, of course."
The detectives explained their mission, and the board members nodded in agreement. Bess's eyes sparked with curiosity, and she didn't waste a moment in pulling Leigh aside once the detectives had departed.
"What do you think they're looking for?" she whispered.
Leigh knew exactly what they were looking for—and she knew it wasn't going to take them more than five minutes to find it. She was just grateful not to be a part of it. She opened her mouth to answer, but her words were interrupted by a light tap on her arm.
"Excuse me," a squeaky woman's voice asked politely. "I'm a little confused. Could you tell me what's going on here?"
Leigh turned around and surveyed the newcomer with wide eyes. For a moment it seemed that Marlo Thomas had gotten caught in a time warp—or perhaps it was Mary Tyler Moore? The woman in front of her was wearing a dark brown minidress, tights, and wedge heels under a short, fur-trimmed coat with matching beret and muffs. She was as petite as an elf, with a face that looked fresh and young—yet at the same time, artificially preserved. Her dark eyes looked questioningly at Leigh from behind overlong bangs, while the rest of her odd, brownish-gray hair flipped up at shoulder level.
"I'm sorry," Leigh said, distracted. "What did you say?"
The dark eyes seemed perturbed, but the woman's voice was smooth. "I was hoping you could tell me what all these people are doing here. Is this some sort of reception?"
The noise level in the room gradually diminished as more and more people turned to stare at the woman in the doorway. Leigh looked out over the crowd, surprised by their reaction. Granted, Marlo/Mary didn't blend in perfectly, but she wasn't nude on a horse, either.
"Please, come in," Leigh answered, feeling a little sorry for her. "This isn't a funeral, but it is an informal visitation of sorts. You haven't heard the news?"
"What news?" the woman said, stepping fully through the doorway. Leigh heard a gasp from behind her as her aunt got her first good look at the visitor.
"Oh, my God," Bess said softly.
"The news about Reginald Humphrey," Leigh answered, wondering what her aunt's problem was. "He was the pastor here."
The woman's dark eyes turned up to Leigh and widened. "Was? You mean he's gone?"
Bess tugged furiously on Leigh's sleeve, but the words were already out of her mouth. "He's passed away, I'm afraid. Did you know him?"
The woman didn't answer, but walked a few steps past Leigh and out into the room. "Catch her!" shrieked Barbara, who had been watching the exchange from a few yards away. Leigh stood still, wondering why on earth Barbara thought the woman was trying to escape. It was only after the miniskirted figure had crumpled to the floor that she got the drift.
A circle formed immediately around the prone figure, with Bess shoving her way to the front on hands and knees. "Give her some air!" she commanded, taking the woman's hand and gently patting it.
"Well, I'll be darned!" Ed remarked, his cane shaking beneath him. "Is it really her?"
"Really who?" Leigh asked frantically, guilt at her obvious faux pas coming on strong. "Who is she?"
At first, no one seemed willing to answer her. Then Bess spoke up with a sigh. "This," she announced, patting the woman's cheeks, "is Reginald Humphrey's widow."
Chapter 13
"If that woman is a missionary," Leigh said emphatically, "I'm the Ayatollah."
It was late afternoon, and she had finally managed, after no small amount of coercion, to get her aunt home. "I don't believe it. Do you?"
Bess sat on the couch, her bum foot propped up on the coffee table and surrounded by cats, several of which seemed to like the taste of plaster. The primarily Pekinese, Chester, lay upside down in her lap, enjoying a belly rub. "Of course not," she answered smugly. "I never did. I don't even believe she's really his wife."
"But what about the picture in his office?" Leigh asked, smarting a little. She was annoyed at having been one of the few people in the church parlor not to recognize Noel Humphrey, but she was at a fair disadvantage. Though no one at the church had ever met Noel, most had seen more recent pictures of her hanging in the parsonage. All Leigh had had to go on was a black and white photo from the sixties.
Bess shrugged. "I'm not saying they weren't ever married. What I am saying is that she's anything but the loving, devoted wife he always portrayed her as. The bit about being called to live on separate continents indefinitely is a crock—as anyone with half a libido should know. I always thought she was just a prop."
"Well if that's true," Leigh reasoned, "why would she show up in person now?" She poured herself a glass of Lemon Blennd and returned to the living room, giving a wide berth to the television set on which Punkster crouched, ready to spring again.
"I'll bet she was part of the plan," Bess said confidently. "I still think Humphrey was trying to pull some grand vanishing act. Only something went terribly wrong." She paused, as if thinking something she didn't want to say out loud. "Or perhaps she was just passing through and wanted to say hello," she finished dismissively. "In any event—I agree with you. No way was that woman ever a missionary."
Leigh shook her head thoughtfully, replaying Noel's actions after she had come to. They hadn't made any sense at the time, and they still didn't. The woman had immediately started crying buckets, explaining how she had come back from Africa with plans to surprise her husband. How a person was supposed to react to news of a spouse's sudden death, Leigh wasn't sure, but she suspected most would ask questions. Noel hadn't asked anything. She had just gushed on about how much she loved her husband and how she didn't know what she would do without him. Then she had bolted outside to her "borrowed" Monte Carlo, claiming she needed to be alone for a while. For all anyone knew, she might never come back.
The Lemon Blennd was lukewarm, but Leigh drank it anyway. Given the day's long chain of disturbing events she would have preferred something stronger, but she still had to drive home tonight. Home. It had a nice ring to it. She glanced at her watch; Frances was supposed to be staying with Bess tonight. Ordinarily she didn’t look forward to seeing her mother, but—where the heck was she? Given the inevitable publicity surrounding Humphrey's death, she should have arrived in a panic hours ago.
Leigh got up and looked out her aunt's front window. "I've been wondering about Francie myself," Bess said, mind-reading. "I can't believe she knows yet. She's going to have one serious conniption when she finds out you trampled onto another body. And me—I'll catch hell about the parsonage fire all over again. If there's an investigation into Humphrey's death—"
"If?" Leigh asked incredulously. "What do you mean 'if'? You can't really believe Humphrey locked himself in a freezer!"
Bess tilted up her chin stubbornly.
Leigh sighed. She hadn't told Bess about the curtain yet, but there was no point in trying to keep it a secret. Shortly after Noel's departure, the detectives had asked everyone to leave, explaining that the church would be sealed off temporarily. They had clearly discovered the curtain's mate, and were probably looking for more evidence to prove that Humphrey had been killed at the church. If they found it, Warren's uncle would be suspect number one.
She had managed to work it all out in her mind, and she knew the detectives wouldn't be far behind her. Someone had taken the curtain down from Humphrey's office window, wrapped up the body—and the insulin kit—inside it, and carried the bundle through the woods to the animal shelter. The Ivey sisters couldn't see anything on that side of the church, and there weren't any other houses close by with a good line of vision, so barring a passing car, getting there unnoticed wouldn't be too difficult. Getting rid of the insulin kit made sense if the person had not wanted Humphrey's absence to be noticed right away—and putting the body in the freezer made more sense than dumping it in the leafless forest, where the bright orange curtain would stick out like a sore thumb.
Even the Ivey sister's timeline made sense, if you considered that they were really identifying cars—not people. They saw Humphrey's car leaving first, but it would have been too dark to identify the driver. The killer could have driven Humphrey's car to the park to get it out of sight—so that at least temporarily, everyone would think Humphrey was alive and well someplace else. Then the killer could have walked back to the church—and driven his own car home.
Leigh didn't want to say what she was thinking out loud—it might be a jinx. Things looked bad for Ted Hugh, but things had looked bad for her once, too, and she had been innocent. More importantly, Warren was convinced that his uncle wasn't a killer, and Warren was an excellent judge of character. She had to give Ted the benefit of a doubt.
"I realized something back at the church, Aunt Bess," she began. Her aunt didn't need to know her suspicions about Ted, but she did need to know that what had happened to Reginald Humphrey was no accident. "The body wasn't wrapped up in a blanket, like I said at first. When I thought about it, I realized it was a coarser piece of fabric. A curtain."
It took only a moment for Bess to understand. When she did, her face fell. "The missing curtain in Humphrey's office," she said dully. "So. You think he was moved from there."
Leigh nodded. They were both quiet for a moment before Bess spoke. "Well, I guess that explains why his desk drawer wasn't locked, doesn't it?" She laughed humorlessly, then her voice turned sad. "I wanted to believe it was all Humphrey's fault, you know," she admitted. "That it was all a stupid accident he brought on himself."
"I know," Leigh said sympathetically.
"But if someone really did kill him, and it happened at the church—"
Bess's voice trailed off, and Leigh didn't ask her to complete the sentence. She knew what Bess was thinking. If Reginald Humphrey had been murdered, there was corruption within the First Church of the New Millenium that went beyond simple fraud. And there was another criminal still out there—someone more dangerous than Humphrey had ever been.
***
"Why do I get the idea you didn't ask me out here just for my company?" Maura asked skeptically, scooping up a large slice of the pepperoni and black olive pizza Leigh had ordered.
"You're paranoid by nature?" Leigh suggested.
"Only where you're concerned," Maura quipped.
Leigh feigned offense. "My rep is largely undeserved, you know." She pulled two slices of pizza on her own plate and dug into them hungrily.
"I forgot to ask," Maura said between bites, "how'd your Mom take the news?"
Leigh stifled a grin. "I wouldn't know. She was in Grove City all day shopping the outlet malls—she still hadn't heard when she showed up at Bess's."
Maura raised her eyebrows. "And you took off in a flash?"
"Wouldn't you?"
"No comment."
They both ate quietly for a while, and Leigh rehearsed what she was going to say. Her role in this whole mess was so confusing she could hardly keep it straight, and Maura's being involved in the investigation only made things worse. She couldn't let on that Bess had broken into the parsonage—or the mini-storage—yet the fact that Humphrey was very likely running some sort of con might be important. And it was important to the church that the killer be caught—unless, of course, it was Warren's uncle, in which case his whole family would be devastated.
She sighed. Was there no way out? She wanted to help, but almost anything she said was likely to get somebody in trouble.
"You're not working on the Humphrey case now, right?" she began uncertainly.
Maura finished swallowing a trail of cheese, then answered. "Not officially. The break-in issue is settled—it belongs to homicide now." She studied Leigh's face. "Still, if there are things you don't want to go on record, don’t tell them to me. I have obligations."
Leigh nodded. She had expected as much. Maura was one of the most scrupulously honest people she knew. "I'll be straight with you," she said finally. "I keep hearing and seeing things that might be important, but I don’t know that they are for sure, and passing them along could get other people into trouble."
Maura studied her. "Guilty people or innocent people?"
Leigh considered. The fact that Bess was technically guilty of breaking and entering probably didn't matter anymore, now that Humphrey wasn't alive to complain—or to finish setting her up for arson, if in fact that had been his plan. But Bess had lied to the fire investigator. As for Ted Hugh, Leigh still didn't want to presume what he was guilty of, but she was certain he was guilty of something.
She sighed with exasperation. "I don't even know."
Maura pulled a paper towel off the roll Leigh always kept on the table, wiped her mouth and fingers, and leaned back in her chair.
"Look, Koslow. We're on dangerous ground, here. I'm not on this case and I don’t want to be on this case—especially if you and your aunt are trying to hide something. You don't want me pestering you to spill your guts and I don't want you asking me for insider information. So let's not talk about it. Deal?"
Leigh nodded glumly.
"The detectives working on this are good," Maura continued. "They'll find out what went down."
Leigh took a swig of tea and studied her friend's face. Maura's voice had been unusually edgy as she mentioned the other detectives, and Leigh had a sinking feeling that things on the new job were not going all that well. How much grief had missing the body in the freezer earned her? A good ribbing from the other detectives, at the very least.
Leigh sighed. She wanted to help, but doubted she could. Maura's suggestion was probably for the best. They should stay off the topic of Reginald Humphrey altogether. Furthermore, she should stay off the topic of Reginald Humphrey altogether. She could chauffeur Bess around and provide moral support for Warren without getting any more involved. Really, she could.
"So, where's Harmon?" Maura asked in a lighter tone. "I figured you'd ask him up, too."
Leigh felt a tad guilty. She, Maura, and Warren had been the three musketeers in their college days at Pitt—the Creative Genius, the WonderCop, and the future President of the United States. The threesome still routinely enjoyed pizza feasts together, but the truth was that if Warren had accepted tonight, three would have been a crowd. She had gone to his apartment the minute she got home, but he wasn't there. She had even left a note—but he still hadn't showed. So, she had called Maura. Maura who was still blissfully unaware that Warren was also involved in the Humphrey case.
"He's got some family problems," Leigh explained.
"Oh?" Maura asked, sounding surprised. She and Leigh had family problems aplenty, but Warren had always seemed immune. "His pare
nts okay?"
Leigh explained about Warren's father, and decided she might as well explain about his uncle, too. She didn't get any farther than his name.
"Ted Hugh is Harmon's uncle?" Maura asked, nearly choking. "The guy who—" she stopped herself. "This is not good, Koslow."
Leigh shook her head in agreement. Maura wasn't even working the case, and she had already heard something about Ted Hugh? It did not bode well.
"I'm staying away from this one," Maura resolved. "If the detectives know—" she stopped herself again. "How's Harmon taking all this?"
"As well as could be expected, I suppose."
"Katharine Bower still around?"
Leigh bristled. "They're still dating, I think," she said stiffly, "but I don't know how serious it is."
Maura stared at her for a moment, then stifled a smile. "Actually, I was just asking in case Ted Hugh needed a good attorney."
Leigh's face reddened. "Oh."
***
Shortly after dinner Maura departed to visit her mother at the assisted living complex, and before the door had completely closed behind her, Leigh's phone rang. She dove after it anxiously. Warren must be home. Perhaps he would invite her down?
"Hello, Warren?" she said hopefully.
"No, dear," came a voice as flat as death. "Just your mother."
A ten-ton weight settled on Leigh's insides. "Oh. Hi, Mom."
"You'll have to come back to Bess's."
Leigh's voice was thin. "What? Why?"
A long exaggerated sigh flowed over the telephone wire. "I should think you'd be a little bit more concerned about protecting yourself."
Leigh waited for an explanation, but none came.
"You have talked with your lawyer, haven't you?" Frances asked accusingly.
Leigh held the phone away from her head. She was tempted to hang up and claim a disconnection, but her mother was wise to that one. She counted to five instead. "Mom," she said finally, trying her best to come up with a soothing tone. "I haven't been accused of anything. I just found the body. He was already dead—he'd been dead for days. This is not like what happened before. Okay?"