by JoAnna Carl
I turned to VanDam, deliberately ignoring McCullough. “Nice of you to come by. I thought you’d be summoning me to your headquarters.”
“We will. This is just preliminary. Informal. Hogan says Mary Samson asked you to call her last night. Do you know why?”
“No, Lieutenant, I have no idea, and I’ve been kicking myself all day because I didn’t just take her aside someplace and demand to know what she wanted to talk about.”
“So you have no idea?”
I sighed. “At the WinterFest committee meeting, Joe and I had urged everyone to tell the Lake Knapp police if Dr. Mendenhall called them. Nobody there popped up and said he had, except Mary. She said she’d had a crank call from someone who sounded drunk. She seemed really disturbed when Joe and I said it might have been Mendenhall.”
“Had he said something that frightened her?”
“Anything frightened Mary. But she seemed most afraid that she would have to repeat what he had said. It must have been obscene. Or at least it seemed obscene to Mary.”
VanDam nodded, then asked me about my movements during the previous evening. When I said Joe and I had gone directly from the reception to Herrera’s to have dinner with Hogan and Aunt Nettie, McCullough growled deep in his throat, and VanDam gave him a look. I’m not sure how to characterize that look—stern, maybe, or meaningful—but McCullough didn’t say anything more. I concluded that he was unhappy because I had an alibi of sorts. Of course, we didn’t know for sure when Mary had been killed. It was possible the phone call to Mendenhall’s cell phone was made before she died.
“What time did you get home?” VanDam asked.
“It was around ten,” I said.
“And you didn’t go out again?”
“Not until I got worried about Mary—because I thought the call to Mendenhall’s phone might have come from her house.”
VanDam glanced at McCullough again. “Actually,” he said, “I might as well tell you this. A couple named McNutt—”
“Sure. Maggie and Ken.”
“They invited Ms. Samson to have dinner with them, there at the Warner Point restaurant. So she left for home around nine. We assume she got home about nine fifteen.”
“Oh.” I swallowed hard. At least Mary hadn’t been alone on her last evening. I reached into my top drawer and pulled out a Kleenex. “Sorry,” I said.
“But that leaves you and Joe on your own at the time Mary was killed.” VanDam was completely deadpan, but McCullough smirked. I realized that the Lake Knapp detective must be pushing VanDam to use this line of questioning.
The realization made me mad. “Yes, Joe and I were together all evening,” I said. “We could have combined our efforts and killed Mary. Do you want to take casts of our shoes? Examine our clothes for bloodstains?”
VanDam glared. “I’ll settle for a look in your car, Lee. It’s just routine.”
“I realize that, Lieutenant VanDam.” I reached in my desk drawer, took my keys out of the side pocket of my purse, and shoved them across the desk to him. “Here. The van is sitting in the alley. White. Dallas Cowboys sticker on the back window.”
“Do you want to come?”
“No, thank you. I have work to do.”
I led VanDam and McCullough back through the workroom and the break room, then opened the back door for them. I let the heavy metal door slam behind them, and I went back to my desk.
I had almost stopped seething ten minutes later, when VanDam came back.
“You’d better come out here, Lee,” he said.
“I trust you and the sergeant to look the situation over.”
“Don’t be snotty, Lee. We need to ask you something.”
Mystified, I followed him through the workroom and the break room and out the back door. The rear of my van was popped open, and McCullough was standing under the hatch.
“What is it?” I said.
Silently, VanDam pointed. “Do you have an explanation for this?”
I followed his gesture and saw that he was pointing to an old-fashioned iron skillet.
It was lying on floor of the van. And it was surrounded by reddish brown stains.
It didn’t take a genius to figure out that the iron skillet had probably come from Mary Samson’s kitchen and had been used to beat her to death.
Chapter 11
If I’d felt like chewing a tablecloth when Mendenhall’s cell phone was found in my pocket, that feeling was complete calm compared to the way I felt when I saw that skillet. It might as well have had “murder weapon” painted on it in luminous paint.
Aunt Nettie came out into the alley to see what was going on, and later she told me I was as pale as her big white-chocolate snowman. But I didn’t get hysterical or break into sobs.
“Lieutenant VanDam, I’ve never seen that skillet before in my life,” I said.
“Hmmm,” he answered.
VanDam said the skillet would have to be tested. A technician appeared, bagged the skillet, marked it as evidence, then cut the stain out of the carpet that covered the floor of the van. He bagged that, too.
McCullough smiled like a proud grandpa through the whole procedure. I bit my tongue to keep from telling him that if I ever murdered anybody, it wouldn’t be a harmless person like Mary Samson. It would be him. And it would be justifiable homicide.
They didn’t arrest me.
After watching for a few minutes, I turned and walked back into the break room and sat down on the comfortable couch Aunt Nettie provides for employees. It was Aunt Nettie who went to the phone and called Joe. Unfortunately, he wasn’t at his shop, and he wasn’t answering his cell phone. She left messages both places.
Then Aunt Nettie sat down beside me. “Listen, Lee,” she said, “you go home or go out to hunt Joe down or do whatever you need to do. Don’t worry about the shop today.” She gave me a hug.
I shook my head. “Joe will call when he can. There’s no point in chasing around town after him. It seems anticlimactic, but I guess I’ll go back to work.”
“If you need a lawyer . . .”
“Last night you said there’s no point in having a police chief in the family if you don’t use him. The same thing goes for having a lawyer in the family, I guess. I may need legal help, but I don’t want to move on that without talking to Joe first.”
Then I stood up and went through the workroom to my office. I wouldn’t say I worked very effectively, but I did work. In fact, I had a panicky feeling that I’d better get as much done as I could before they arrested me.
I didn’t quite abandon my efforts to call all the WinterFest committee members and check their alibis. I caught Johnny Owens at his studio.
He obviously had people there, apparently WinterFest tourists he hoped might buy something. So I asked him to call me back. In a half hour, he did.
“Hey, hey!” he said. “Made a sale.”
“Congratulations! At your prices, one sale means a successful weekend.”
“Well, I agreed to come down on price a little. Why did you call?”
I had decided simply to be blunt. “Johnny, I’m asking all of the members of the WinterFest committee what they were doing Tuesday night.”
There was a moment of silence. “I don’t think I’ll tell you. It’s too embarrassing.”
“Aw, come on, Johnny. Joe and I really need to find that out.”
“You’re getting into my secret vices, Lee.”
I was afraid to ask. So I didn’t say anything.
Johnny chuckled. “Oh, well, it’ll ruin my tough-guy image, but I’ll tell you. I was watching a DVD of Ratatouille.”
For a second the word meant nothing to me. Rat-a-tat? Something about a drum? Then I remembered. “The movie? The cartoon about the rat who wants to be a chef?”
“Right. You’ve caught me in my secret vice. Animated films. I have a huge collection.”
“I wouldn’t call that a vice, Johnny.”
“It’s kind of a crazy thing for a grown man to d
o. But I’ve always loved cartoons. My childhood ambition was to be an animator. That’s what got me interested in art.”
I thought of Johnny’s giant metal pieces, created with a welding torch and sledgehammer. “You certainly got away from your original interest.” Then I remembered the tiny delicate drawings that Johnny made when he doodled. “Except for those little people you draw when you’re bored. And our snowman mascot.”
Johnny laughed. “Maybe I’ll turn to cartooning yet. It ought to pay more than weird metal sculptures. But the cops already asked me about this, Lee. Apparently Mendenhall did try to call me. My number was in his phone records, but I didn’t talk to him.”
“Had you turned the phone off?”
“No. My Chicago dealer phoned about seven thirty, and we talked for forty-five minutes. Mendenhall must have called while the phone was tied up.”
We said good-bye, promising to wave at each other at the opening of the play that evening. I hung up, frustrated. So far the only person who had a real alibi for Tuesday, when Mendenhall was killed, was Maggie McNutt, who had been at play rehearsal all evening. And Maggie would never kill anybody while a play was in production; she would be so concentrated on her rehearsals that she wouldn’t notice anybody needed killing.
I hadn’t checked on Mozelle or Amos Hart—I was still surprised that they had been together for the art show opening—and I resolved to do that. I was reaching for the phone when the Reverend Charles Pinkney walked into the shop.
Reverend Pinkney was minister of the Warner Pier Non-Denominational Fellowship Church. I might have refused Amos Hart’s invitation to sing in the church’s choir, and I’d never attended services there, but I knew Reverend Pinkney by sight. As I say, Warner Pier is a small town.
Reverend Pinkney had been pointed out to me several times by several different people, usually with the words, “He’s my preacher!” The identification always featured a heavy emphasis on the “my.” Occasionally the report ended with the word “meant.” As in, “I’m so glad I found his church. It was meant.”
The “my preacher” and “his church” comments had led me to believe the Non-Denominational Fellowship Church centered on Reverend Pinkney. I’m not an expert on theology, but I always distrust churches built as personality cults. And the secondhand reports of his sermons seemed to reflect the view that if we do good and believe the correct theology, God will reward us with prosperity and happiness. This doesn’t jibe with my observation that the most loving and faithful people around still have lots of troubles and woes. They usually just cope with them better. Anyway, I didn’t think I’d fit into “his” church.
So I pretended to study my computer screen, but I confess that I was checking out Reverend Pinkney as he walked across the shop. He was a handsome man of around thirty, tall, with dark hair that had been expertly cut. He wore a puffy winter jacket that looked like the real thing—down stuffing rather than polyester—and he was carrying a large file folder. He smiled broadly as he spoke to the girl at the counter. I assumed he was buying chocolates. Then I realized that the counter girl was gesturing toward my office.
She called out, “Lee! Reverend Pinkney wants to talk to you.”
I motioned to him and tried to smile. “Come in!” I kept my seat, determined that I would treat the fabled preacher as an ordinary caller. In fact, maybe I could pump him a bit—get some information about a couple of his parishioners, Mozelle and Amos Hart.
Reverend Pinkney came into my cubbyhole, smiling a toothy smile and holding out a hand. “Hi,” he said. “I’m Chuck Pinkney, and I want to ask a favor.”
I shook his hand. “What do you need?”
The Reverend Pinkney opened the large folder he was holding and pulled out a flyer for his church. “Could we post one of these in your window? We’re having special services during WinterFest.”
I looked at the flyer. Probably some church member had produced it on a home computer, but it was still slickly done, with four-color printing on good paper. It featured a photograph of the church with a family of happy snowmen on the front lawn. Not real snowmen. Plywood snowmen. Or maybe snow people, because two of them were women. And each fake snow person held a Bible. I could tell their books were Bibles, because they held them clutched to their snowy chests so that gold lettering reading “Holy Bible” was visible.
I usually turn down requests to hang stuff in our windows. I hate to see a shop window so cluttered that passersby can’t see what’s inside, and we already had two WinterFest posters up. As a committee member I hadn’t felt I could refuse to hang those. But being cooperative might help me pump Reverend Pinkney.
Reverend Pinkney—Chuck—smiled winningly. “It will only be for ten days. The services are this Sunday and the next.”
“Sure,” I said. “You can put it up. Do you need tape?”
He produced a tape dispenser from his pocket. “I’m all set. And I’m glad to meet you, Lee. You’re on the WinterFest committee, right?”
“I handle the money. Nothing creative. But I believe a couple of our committee members are in your congregation—Amos Hart and Mozelle French.”
“Yes, Amos has been holding his chorale rehearsals in our church.”
“The committee appreciates your support, Reverend Pinkney.”
“Chuck. Please. And it’s not my support.” He grinned, displaying plenty of that old S.A., and I saw that his sex appeal might be one of the attractions of his church to the women members.
“It’s not your support?”
“Use of the building is up to the church board, not the minister. They make the decisions.”
“I hope that means the board has to come down in the evenings to let the singers in and out for rehearsal instead of sticking you with the job.”
Reverend Pinkney—Chuck—laughed. “Amos has a key.”
“He’s on the staff, isn’t he?”
“Yes and no. We can only afford to pay him in the summer, when our choir—and our congregation—is much larger than it is this time of the year. Our year-round staff is only me and two part-timers, a secretary and a custodian.”
“He talks as if he’s pretty active down there.”
“Yes, Amos is on the board, and every Wednesday night he’s there putting the choir through its paces.”
“I guess he’s been there even more lately, getting the chorale ready for its performance.”
“I think they’ve rehearsed every night.”
Had Amos been at the church the night Mendenhall was killed? “Oh? Did they rehearse Tuesday night?”
“I’m not sure. I don’t think the chorus was there in the evening. The soloists were practicing Tuesday afternoon, so I got a preview.”
“How did the soloists sound?”
“Great! Amos is a very good director, and he’s recruited some fine singers. He’s one of our church’s most active laymen.”
“It sounds as if Mozelle is also an active member.”
“Definitely! Mozelle is currently our board chair.” Chuck flashed those teeth again. “Do you and your husband have a church home, Mrs. Woodyard?”
“Please call me Lee, Chuck. And, no, we haven’t quite settled that question, since we were brought up in different denominations.”
Chuck responded with a one-paragraph wrap-up of the advantages of his church to couples like us, even producing a second, smaller flyer with the church’s meeting times and phone numbers. It seemed Joe and I could each keep our core beliefs intact at Warner Pier Non-Denominational Fellowship. The Reverend Chuck Pinkney did his presentation well. He used words like “contemporary” and “spirit-filled.” His brief description was obviously well-rehearsed.
When he stopped for a breath, I stood up. “That’s interesting. Now, let’s see about hanging those flyers.”
Chuck smiled, but his smile had grown a little stiff. Had I snubbed his spiel? I hadn’t intended to be rude. Trying to act friendly, I escorted him to the front of the shop and selected a spot for his f
lyer. He taped it in place, and I turned toward him, ready to shake hands and end our little interview.
Chuck took my hand, but instead of saying good-bye, he frowned and lowered his voice. “Mrs. Woodyard. Lee. I feel that I must say one thing to you.”
“Certainly.”
He seemed to find it hard to get the words out, but he finally managed. “Since you don’t have a minister of your own . . . If you or your husband should find yourselves in need . . . I mean . . . Well . . . If I can be of service, please don’t hesitate to call me.” Then he almost ran out the front door.
I stood looking after him, perplexed. What was eating the man? Why did he think Joe and I might need pastoral care?
Then, behind me, I heard a whisper. “She’s the one the waitress was talking about,” it said.
I turned to see two women who were looking at everything in the shop except me. One was a bleached blonde and the other an overdyed brunette. I’d never seen either of them before. Tourists, I thought. Tourists drawn to Warner Pier for the WinterFest.
Had they been whispering about me? It didn’t seem possible.
Then one of them—the blonde—sneaked a peek in my direction. When she saw me looking at her, she jumped and looked panicky.
They had been talking about me.
I slunk back to my office. Some waitress had told them about me. I was “the one.” I didn’t have to ask why I was being singled out.
I was the murder suspect. The probable killer.
And the Reverend Chuck Pinkney thought I might need pastoral care. I eyed his flyer. Had he really wanted it in the window? Or had it been an excuse to come in and offer his services? Maybe he wanted a dramatic confession, one he could describe to television reporters.
I resisted the temptation to go back out into the shop and tear the flyer down. I turned back to my computer screen and pretended to read what was up on it.
But if I’d had a tablecloth handy, I’d have chewed it to shreds.
Chapter 12
That may have been the lowest moment in my whole life. As I sat there at the computer, I couldn’t think of a lower one. I even ran a collection of low moments through my brain, trying to think of which was the worst. Only one came close.