The next day was Friday. There was no sign of Chester’s crew. Every time I looked at the plywood blocking the doorway, I had this image of myself as Pinocchio, or perhaps more accurately, Geppetto. “Please, Fairy Godmother. If I’m good and tell no lies, turn this block of wood into a real door.”
A little after eleven-thirty that morning, the doorbell rang. BC stopped barking when she recognized Tiffany, with Jenny a step behind her, as though she’d been dragged along as an unwilling passenger. I automatically glanced at my watch and said, “Shouldn’t you still be in school?”
“Study hall,” Tiffany said with a shrug. “We can’t stay long.”
“Come in.”
Tiffany took a step back. “Actually, I’m gonna wait in the car. I just, like, wanted you to talk to Jenny.”
While Tiffany trotted off, I looked at Jenny in surprise.
She frowned, then knelt down to pet the dog. “Everybody’s telling me to do this or do that, and I don’t know what to do, and Tiff got the idea that you’d be the best person to talk to because you know the least.”
I laughed. “Apparently, Tiffany knows me better than I thought she did.”
Jenny blushed and rose, stuffing her hands into the pockets of her faded jeans. “What I meant was, you don’t know my mom, and Tiff says you and her mom are always butting heads. I just…don’t know how to decide something like this. I thought I knew, but now I’m all confused.”
The two of us sat and talked, and Jenny voiced a litany of complaints about her mother, every one of which was, sad to say, told in such graphic detail as to be both believable and depressing. I found myself not giving advice at all so much as being a sounding board for Jenny’s complaints about a rough childhood. I told her that she might want to consider talking to a therapist, not because there was something wrong with her, but because so much wrong had been done to her.
At length, Tiffany Jet herself back inside to say that they had to get back. Jenny stood up and said, “Thanks, Molly. Tiff’s right about you.”
“That I don’t know anything?”
“That you’re easy to talk to.” She rushed out the door, and I sat there grinning from ear to ear, wishing I had a tape recorder to replay Jenny’s compliment so my own children could hear. Of course, they would correctly point out that my being easy for Jenny to talk to was mostly due to my not being her mother.
The doorbell rang again and I answered immediately, expecting to discover that Tiffany and Jenny had forgotten to tell me something. To my surprise, it was Danielle Underwood, looking fit to be tied.
“You really can’t keep your nose out of our business, can you?” she immediately snapped.
“What are you talking about?”
“You know perfectly well what I’m talking about. I saw my son’s girlfriend leaving your front porch just now. How dare you butt in this way, after I already told you I forbid it!”
“For your information, though it’s none of your business, I was talking to Jenny about a different matter entirely. Your son’s name never even came up.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I don’t care whether you do or not. And what are you doing here in the first place? Are you spying on me?”
“No. Didn’t Chester tell you? I’m here to measure for your blinds. I’m a subcontractor. You ordered vertical blinds from Chester.”
I dragged my hand through my hair and shut my eyes, unable to hide my frustration at this news. Apparently things weren’t going quite badly enough with the sunroom. Time to get Danielle Underwood out here as a subcontractor. “The glass panels aren’t even in place yet. All that’s there is the roof and the aluminum framework. We’re not ready for the blinds.”
“Of course not. But I need to measure for them now so that they can be made.”
Thinking I might just get a little pleasure out of watching her have to climb down from my house and hoist herself up into the sunroom, I said, “Okay. This way.” I pointed through the glass doors to the room, such as it was. “This is the only access we’ve got. The kids use the slide.”
She looked at me and said, “Molly, I hope you understand. I’m not some maniac where my son is concerned. I just can’t survive his getting into another relationship with an older woman.”
“I’m happily married. I have a teenager myself. There is no possibility whatsoever that I’m going to develop a romantic attachment toward your teenage son.”
“No, but your friend seems to have her eye on him, and I’ve decided in order to keep her away, it’s best to keep you away, as well.”
If she was making some kind of outrageous accusation toward Lauren, I was going to throw Danielle out on her keister.”What friend of mine are you talking about?” I asked, my hands fisted.
“Stephanie Saunders.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Danielle! Stephanie would no more allow herself to be attracted to a teenage boy than she would to, well, to you or me. Status and image are everything to her. Imagine what it would do to her reputation if she were to take up with a high school student.”
She paused, then said quietly, “Jeez. I never….” She met my eyes. “You’re right. I never thought this through. Neither she nor you would—” She shook her head. “I was so crazed when this thing came up with Corinne. I honestly thought she was a friend of mine, and I couldn’t have been more shocked. Ever since then I’ve been paranoid toward all women.”
“I can imagine how horrified you must have been. Again, though, I would never do what Corinne did. Under any circumstances.”
“I realize that now.”
“Thanks.”
She slid open the door and gracefully leaped down to the ground. “If it’s all the same with you, I’m just going to get this over with really quick and get out of here.”
Though I gave her a few token don’t-be-embarrassed statements and truly did appreciate her apologizing, I, too, felt uncomfortable. She’d lashed out at me for merely speaking to her son. Maybe she was capable of murdering someone who’d had an inappropriate relationship with him.
The phone rang during dinner that evening. That was especially annoying, because I’d managed to actually get all four of us seated and eating while the food was still warm. I answered, and a young voice said, “Molly? It’s Jenny Garrett.”
“Hi, Jenny. How are you?”
“I’m fine. But I’m kind of worried about my mom. You haven’t heard from her, have you?”
“No, why?”
“She was supposed to pick me up from Tiffany’s house hours ago, and she never showed.”
“Could she have gotten the time or date confused?”
“No, and I’ve been calling the house. There’s no answer.”
“Is there a neighbor you can call?”
“I tried that, but nobody’s ever home when you want them to be. Tiffany’s supposed to be babysitting but I told her I’d take care of it till my mom got here, so she’s still on the other line, and Stephanie’s someplace, too, and I just…Tiffany’s gonna get off the phone any moment and I don’t want to have to get into this. You know?”
I resisted the temptation to say, “Huh?” She wasn’t making enough sense for me to grasp what Tiffany was up to, but she was obviously worried about her mother and wanted to check on her whereabouts. “Tell you what, Jenny. I have to go talk to your mom anyway about some PTA matters. I’ll head out there just on the off chance that she’s there and…has fallen asleep or something.”
“Yeah, well, I guess that’d be okay. This just…I don’t know. She used to do things like this a lot, but I can’t believe she’d do this now. You know?”
“Don’t worry. Something probably just came up that got her distracted.”
“Yeah. Probably. Could you, like, call me as soon as you get there? I mean, even if she’s not home?”
“Of course.” I asked for the address, which she gave me, and muttered a few more reassuring phrases about how there was nothing to worry about, then hun
g up.
“What’s up?” Jim asked. He’d already risen from the table.
“That was Jenny Garrett. I’m going to go see if her mom’s all right. She—”
“I’m driving.” He snatched up the slip of paper on which I’d written Olivia’s address. “Karen, Nathan, we’ll be back soon.”
I was worried, too. Olivia’s behavior sounded strange. Reuniting with Jenny had become her number one goal. Why would she be late?
We arrived at Olivia’s house, and I breathed a sigh of relief that it was intact. During the course of the drive, I’d envisioned it as a pile of still-smoking cinders.
Jim pulled into the driveway, and I got out. “Wait here for a moment, Jim, while I ring the doorbell. Let me just make sure that if she’s here, she’s fully dressed.”
I glanced at the garage door, wishing there were some windows to peer through to see if there were any cars inside.
No one answered the bell. I knocked as well, but there was still no answer. Telling myself I would check first and then decide what to do afterward, I turned the knob and discovered that the house was unlocked,
Now my heart was really thumping. I opened the door and looked inside. The room was a horrid mess, and the air smelled foul. Keeping my place on the front stoop, I called, “Olivia? It’s Molly. Are you home?”
“She’s not answering?” Jim asked, stepping onto the porch behind me.
“No. What’s that smell?”
“Car exhaust,” he said, shock registering on his face. He stepped inside the house. “The whole house reeks with it. Go see if you can open the garage door from the outside.”
While Jim went into Olivia’s house, I raced around to the garage door. There was no handle on the garage door; it could only be opened from the inside.
“Oh, my God,” I murmured. I could hear the faint sounds of an engine idling in the garage. The sounds were coming from the garage. A thin cloud of exhaust emanated from the cracks in the garage door.
The door began to rise. I grabbed a gulp of air and dodged under the door while it was still rising.
“Molly?” Jim called.
“Here,” I responded, still trying to preserve my breath. The cloud of exhaust was so thick, it was hard to see anything. My eyes were stinging and tearing up, compounding the problem.
Jim had found his way to the driver’s door. “I’ll carry her outside. Turn off the engine.”
With the added lighting of the dome light, I found my way to the passenger door and opened it, steeling myself to shut off the engine no matter what happened. Meanwhile, Jim deserted the driver’s door to open the door to the backseat, throwing me into a momentary confusion as I saw that Olivia wasn’t in the front seat, but the back.
“Oh, Jeez,” Jim muttered.
As I turned off the engine I looked into the backseat and caught sight of her. Jim was backing away, not removing her.
I couldn’t continue to hold my breath. I staggered out of the garage and collapsed against the side of the house, struggling to regain my composure, to rid myself of the hideous vision of Olivia and the blood. And the gun in her hand.
Chapter 13
Help!
Needing to collect himself as well, Jim stood on Olivia’s driveway, bent over with his hands on his knees. He straightened and said, “We shouldn’t go back in there. Did you bring your cellphone?”
I nodded. “It’s in my purse. You call. I need a minute.”
While Jim got into the car and used my phone, I sat down on a cement step, hoping that the feel of the cold, hard ground could keep me upright and lucid. “Poor Jenny,” I said to myself.
Somebody was going to have to break the news to her. Probably me.
She would still be at Stephanie’s house, awaiting my word on why her mother was late.
Corinne’s memorial service took place the following day. Though still hideously shaken by Olivia Garrett’s death, Jim and I decided to go. It was well-attended, but I couldn’t focus on the service itself. Two women I knew had died violently within a week of each other, and I couldn’t fathom why.
After the service itself, there was a small reception in the church hall below. The furnishings were composed of folding chairs and six or seven round tables, augmented with flower arrangements and paper tablecloths. Set up on long tables against one wall was a buffet, which Jim went over to sample. I had no appetite, so I stood alone in a corner, numbly watching the sedate gathering of mourners.
Dave approached me. He looked horrible, his eyes red-rimmed and bloodshot, his features haggard. His dark suit looked rumpled, as though it had been hanging unused and cramped in a closet for a long time. “Rumor has it that you found Olivia’s body last night,” he said.
I nodded, tight-lipped, still desperately wanting to rid my brain of that hideous image.
“Olivia would never kill herself. She had to have been murdered.” He ran a hand down the length of his face as if to relax his features, but it did no good. “My former girlfriend murdered. Now the gallery owner who sells my work. Everybody suspects me. I hear the murmurings in class. My own students think …” His voice faded.
“Try not to let all of this get to you,” I muttered stupidly, wishing I could think of something better to say.
Dave didn’t respond, but was swallowing hard, trying to keep his emotions at bay. “How’s Jenny doing? I tried to call her this morning at the Saunders house, but was told she was sleeping.”
“She’s under sedation, from what I understand.”
He nodded, his eyes vacant. “I keep thinking this can’t possibly be happening, that things can’t possibly have become this horrific. Then I think about poor Jenny, and I realize my pain is just a fraction of hers.”
“Yes. This is hardest on her.”
“I’m worried about her. She’s such a sensitive girl. I was hoping to see her here, or at least Stephanie or Tiffany, to tell her how bad I feel.”
“Next time I talk to them, I’ll pass along your condolences.”
“Thanks.” He looked past my shoulder, but the vacant look in his eyes remained. “Well. Guess I’ll go home. Thanks for talking to me. Not many people are willing to give me the time of day.”
“Take care, Dave.”
“You, too.”
I watched him walk away. Some faces quickly turned away or averted eyes as he passed. Dave was under a cloud of suspicion, all right. Danielle, Chester, Nadine, and, lately, Elsbeth were equally deserving of suspicion in my opinion. Dave was either innocent or an excellent actor.
“Hey, Moll.”
The words jarred me from my thoughts. I forced a smile: “Hi, Tommy.”
He was in full uniform, but carrying his cap under one arm. His cap always left a band-sized dent in his thick red hair. “You’ll read about this soon enough,” Tommy said, “so I may as well tell you. The body was moved.”
“Olivia’s? “
He nodded. “The killer made a clumsy attempt at makin’ it look like suicide.”
I tried to decide if this made me feel any better for Jenny’s sake. Was it more or less painful to lose one’s parent to murder, as opposed to suicide? “Where was she killed?”
“Her kitchen. Near the door to the garage.”
“Whoever did it knows her personal history, about how her husband killed himself.” I searched Tommy’s eyes, wondering if he’d answer my next question. “You must have looked into the records about his death. Was it definitely suicide?”
“Yep. And ‘fore you ask, we checked into all the backgrounds, and none of the suspects in Corinne’s murder knew the Garretts before Olivia and Jenny moved to Carlton, so far as we can tell.”
“Did you trace the gun Olivia …that was used on Olivia?”
“Knew you’d ask me that. You missed your calling, Molly. Should’ve entered the academy back when I did, ‘stead of cartooning.”
“One of us might have been the superior officer of the other.” Odds were that we disagreed about which one o
f us that would be. He hadn’t answered my previous question, so I tried again. “Was this gun also from the collector who supposedly died of natural causes?”
“From cancer. Yeah. Both guns were from the same collection.”
“Weren’t the missing guns ever reported?”
“Yeah, along with two more. Lot of good it does us.”
“So the killer probably still has two more guns?” My voice had risen into something of a shriek.
Tommy didn’t answer, but he didn’t have to.
“Jeez, Tommy. There were only five other clowns who could have done this. Can’t you get search warrants and go through their homes?”
He raised an eyebrow, and I clenched my teeth in frustration. “I know, I know,” I said, answering my own question. “You’d be trampling on the rights of four innocent people. Never mind the fact that identifying the killer quickly could keep any of them from becoming the next victim.”
Tommy laid a heavy hand on my shoulder. “Do us all a favor, Molly. I told you this info about Olivia because some reporter from the Times Union already ferreted it out. I got a hunch Olivia died because she got too close to the killer. Stay out of this. Don’t make me have to look into a third murder. Please.”
“Okay.”
Tommy rolled his eyes, knowing I didn’t mean it, then moved off. I joined Jim and Lauren for a while, then spotted Brian Underwood, grim-faced as he stood beside his mother. Though it seemed inappropriate to notice such things at a funeral, Danielle looked especially attractive. Her black shift flattered her well-proportioned body, and her straight brown hair, recently cut short, emphasized her pretty features.
Now that Olivia, too, had been murdered, those contraband keys that Brian possessed last Friday seemed all the more important. Brian could have gotten those keys directly from Corinne Buldock, or indirectly from Olivia Garrett through her daughter Jenny. Both of those women had been murdered.
Hoping that Danielle meant what she said about realizing that not all of us “mature” women lusted for her son, I said hello to them. She greeted me pleasantly for a change, so I took a chance and asked, “Could I speak to you in private for just a minute, Brian?”
Death at a Talent Show (Book 6 Molly Masters Mysteries) Page 15