“I don’t understand. Lauren worked at St. John’s, and the church wants to buy the property. The pastor she worked for is hoping the deal goes through. He’s very happy about it. Why wouldn’t she support that?”
“Lauren was hard to figure out. Did she even like the pastor? I don’t know.”
“Have you met him?”
“Yeah, years ago when he showed me the bell tower. He seems like a nice guy, and my parents like him enough.” Tyra fell silent as a customer slipped between us, making her way to the cowboy hats on one wall. Then in a low voice she said, “Maybe Lauren didn’t like the idea of Sophie’s land being turned into a parking lot. She wanted us to hold all of our book meetings at the cottage. She loved how green and peaceful it was.”
“But you alternated houses?”
“Except the past two months. April’s book meeting was at the cottage, but we decided to have our May meeting there too since it would be for the last time.”
“Did you ever meet at Lauren’s house?”
“Once, and we weren’t planning to go back. She’d only been in the book club for five months.”
“Does she own her house or rent it?”
Tyra squinted at me. “She talked about her mortgage once, so I guess . . . Why are you asking?”
I answered her question with one of my own. “Didn’t Lauren want to hold more meetings at her house?”
Tyra considered. “She had the smallest house. I, of course, live in an apartment, so we never stayed at my place. But after we stayed at Lauren’s house in March, Mariette suggested we stick to the cottage, her house, or Alison’s house.”
“Did Lauren know that?”
“Mariette and Alison are not shy about sharing their opinions.” Tyra focused again on the clothing rack, swiping back hangers, holding out a shirt, swiping hangers again. “Look, I know you think it’s weird I’m shopping today, but I have my reasons.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You didn’t have to,” she said with a faint smirk.
Fair enough. I suppose my attitude had been clear.
“By the way, I’m not the only one downtown. I saw Alison at Grove Coffee three minutes ago. She escaped the cottage before I did. Why don’t you track her down?” Tyra stopped swiping. “Listen, I didn’t like Lauren. None of us liked Lauren. I don’t really like Alison or Mariette, either, but they’re tolerable once a month. They can even be fun. So I’m sorry for what happened to Lauren, but I can’t pretend I’m devastated.”
“Who invited her to join the book club?”
“Sophie did. But I think Lauren asked her if she could join, and Sophie is so nice she would never say no.”
“Can I ask why you didn’t like Lauren?”
“The same reason none of us did. She had a dark soul.”
When Tyra fastened her eyes on the hangers, I knew our conversation was at an end. I’d have to explore her last comment later. One thing I knew: Lauren Hughes was developing into quite an enigma.
“Are you going back to the house for dinner?” I asked.
“I’m not staying alone in my apartment, so yes,” she said without looking up.
“Do you really think you’re in danger? From everything I’ve heard, Lauren was the only target. You said it yourself.”
“I’m not taking a chance, that’s for sure. See you later.”
On the sidewalk outside the store, I lingered for a moment, pondering Tyra’s assessment of Lauren. She had a dark soul. It was a stunning thing to say about anyone, let alone a substitute schoolteacher and church worker. Did Sophie, Mariette, and Alison dislike Lauren that much? Alison seemed to have a beef with everyone, but Sophie was tenderhearted. Though maybe she had come to regret inviting Lauren to join the book club, or maybe she thought Lauren was trying to throw a monkey wrench into the sale of her cottage. If the church didn’t buy her land with the intent of building a parking lot, what was it really worth? No smart homeowner would pay nearly a million dollars for it.
Holly didn’t share Tyra’s opinion of Lauren. She had raved about the woman’s encouragement of Caleb at school. I looked back through the shop window to see Tyra hooking her bag back on her arm, strolling happily to another clothing rack, and I wondered what Sophie and Mariette were up to. Playing cards? Drinking wine on the freshly washed patio?
Aside from Holly and Pastor Ackley, was anyone mourning Lauren’s passing? I was determined to find out.
A block west of me and across the street I spotted Alison coming out of Grove Coffee, a large paper cup in her hand. Even at that distance, those choppy blonde bangs of hers were distinctive. She headed east down the sidewalk, and I hurried back across the street, catching up with her near the police station. I thought if anyone would open up about Lauren, especially in a negative way, it would be her.
“Alison, hi.”
“I just realized the bakery isn’t open on Sunday,” she said, walking and talking as though we’d been conversing side by side for several minutes. “Why isn’t it?”
“The Kavanaghs take Sundays off.”
She stopped in her tracks, brought to a grinding halt by my simple, commonsense statement. “But, I mean, why? People eat donuts on Sundays.”
“The Kavanaghs work six days a week.”
Alison rolled her eyes and rapidly shook her head. More like vibrated it. “Well, they missed a sale. I was in the mood for sugar. I’ll have to go back to Grove Coffee, and I hate going back over old ground. My car’s down that way.” She pointed straight ahead.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Am I correct in thinking that’s why you ran across the street to meet me?”
There were quite a few things I wanted to say in answer to her question, but I swallowed my mounting irritation and said, “You are correct.”
“Let’s sit up there,” she said, striding off.
I followed and sat beside her on a green bench framed by two barrel pots full of geraniums, impatiens, and petunias in shades of pink and white. Downtown Juniper Grove came alive with flowers this time of year. Store owners vied for the showiest displays, including, I firmly believed, who could grow the grandest hanging baskets.
“Aren’t the flowers beautiful?” I said. “I could sit here forever.”
“I’d be bored to tears.” She took a sip of coffee and glanced about, wrinkling her nose at the beauty around her. “I like Sophie’s roses better. Though they’re not in the best shape since she decided to sell the cottage. I think she gave up on tending them.”
I’d known women like Alison before. Never satisfied, never pleased, and most certainly never impressed. “Are you going back to the cottage for dinner?”
“Sadly, yes. I’m not going to be the only one who goes home, and Tyra isn’t going to take her chances in her apartment tonight.”
Preliminaries over, I dove right in. “I’d like to ask you about Lauren.”
“You’re wondering why I’m shopping instead of grieving her death? Well, I’m not the only one. Tyra’s off clothes shopping, which is awfully strange, if you ask me. All I wanted was decent coffee and donuts. And to get out of that cottage for a while. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“Why didn’t any of you like Lauren?”
Alison pulled in her chin, scowling at my sudden impertinence.
“Am I wrong?” I asked.
She gave a humorless snort. “No, no. To be fair, you’re not. I’m just surprised at your frankness. I thought that was my territory.”
“Tyra said Lauren had a dark soul.”
“For heaven’s sake.”
“Do you disagree?”
She snorted again. “You’re fishing for a motive. One of us thought the dark-souled Lauren needed to be killed, and you want to know why.”
“I’m trying to find out why some people think Lauren was an amazing teacher and others think she was the devil’s apprentice.”
“Maybe her school personality was different. A middle school is a
different environment, and she only worked there a few hours a week. That makes it easier to put up a front.”
“You saw a different Lauren at your book club meetings?”
She paused to sip her coffee again. Very slowly. She was choosing her words carefully. “I didn’t dislike her, but I didn’t like her. I was neutral about her. She was an okay person at night, when we sat around telling jokes, drinking wine. Anything more and I didn’t care to be around her. You know how it is, don’t you?”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“She was an acquaintance, Rachel. Haven’t you known people who never become more than acquaintances? Lauren was never a friend, and she was never going to be a friend, even if I sometimes called her that. I could have known her for twenty years and still not thought of her as a friend. She was someone Sophie let into the book club for some unknown reason, and someone I send a card to at Christmas because, well, we did that, and once you start doing that, it’s hard to stop. No one wants to be the first to stop sending Christmas cards.”
“Did she have any friends?”
“You might be able to dig up some if you look really hard. Our pastor got along with her, but she worked like a horse for him, so what’s not to like there?”
“Sophie seemed to like her.”
“Sophie is not discriminating in her tastes.”
“Do you know if Lauren thought of you as a friend?”
“She thought about me in exactly the same way as I thought about her.” Alison reconsidered. “I take that back. She disliked me. I hated her nosy questions—she was very clingy with them—and I told her off once. I kept thinking, What are you after? We’re not friends, lady, so stop.”
“What was she after?”
“My opinion? Anything bad or sad. If something was going wrong in your life, she enjoyed hearing it because she could lord it over you and pretend to be the comforting mama. You know? She liked it even better if I had bad news about someone else’s life. Well, one day I told her to stop pestering me, and she never interfered again. You have to be tough with some people.” Alison smiled broadly, her lips stretching ever thinner, and then took another gulp of coffee.
“Good coffee, isn’t it?” I said.
“Not half bad,” she said, looking down at her cup. “Not great, by any means, but better than Sophie’s.”
CHAPTER 9
I drove home, changed into a less-rumpled sweater, and walked next door to Julia’s house. I had pictured her sitting with Holly in her living room, surveying the landscape from her front window as she often did, so I was surprised when Royce Putnam and not Julia opened the door after a single knock.
He grinned and welcomed me inside, greeting me with a hug, as though he hadn’t seen me in weeks. But that was Royce’s way. Kind and not afraid to show it. Gentle but bristling with energy when a crime needed solving. He had turned sixty-nine in April, and he put the lie to the idea that you should slow down in your sixties. And his personality was the perfect companion to Julia’s. My neighbor was sweet too, but when her hackles were raised, the vinegar in her bubbled to the surface. Royce, on the other hand, was a duck. Obstacles and irritations were water off his back.
“We’ve been discussing the Lauren Hughes case,” Royce said.
“And we were beginning to worry about you,” Holly said. “We thought you might have gone back to the cottage.”
“Rachel is one woman who can take care of herself,” Royce said. “Now, about the case.” He motioned for me to sit, clasped his hands behind his back, and began to pace about the living room. Honestly, he was too cute for words, but I resisted saying so.
“I just had a talk with Tyra and Alison downtown,” I said. “And Gilroy.”
Royce came to a halt and wheeled back. “Can you tell us anything? Gilroy first.”
“This doesn’t leave the living room, right?”
Royce grabbed the armchair closest to Julia’s and pushed his sliding black-framed glasses back to their proper place on his nose. “Our word of honor.”
“Lauren was stabbed in the neck with a fireplace poker.”
Holly winced.
“The theory is that she was holding on to the window sill at the time. The coroner’s report isn’t in yet, but the injury was severe, and when she fell, her head hit the patio. Either way, stab wound or fall, she didn’t have a chance.”
“Someone hated that girl,” Julia said. “It wasn’t enough to push her out the window, they had to do that.” Her hand went to her throat.
“Maybe she wasn’t cooperating in her fall the way she was supposed to,” Holly said. “So whoever pushed her was desperate. She took Lauren by surprise, but Lauren grabbed the sill instead of tumbling out and hitting her head. She couldn’t let Lauren drop to her feet because she probably would have survived the fall. So she grabbed the poker.”
I shook my head. “But the killer took the fireplace poker with her to the room. She had to. It belonged with the other fireplace tools in the living room. I think she grabbed it in the middle of the night, fully expecting to use it later.”
Royce raked his fingers through his thick white hair. “We have a ruthless woman on our hands. Someone who would stop at nothing.”
Holly sat forward and laced her fingers around one knee. “What did Tyra say?”
I recounted what Tyra had told me about the argument between Lauren, Mariette, and Alison over the sale of the cottage and about the group’s decision to bypass Lauren’s small home for further club meetings. I finished by telling them what Tyra and the others thought of Lauren—the reason, according to her, that they all disliked her. “Tyra said she had a dark soul.”
Holly bristled. “A dark soul? What a nasty thing to say. I met Lauren. She helped Caleb immensely in the few times they talked. I would have known if she’d had a dark soul.”
“I don’t know what to think of it,” I said. “Alison didn’t have anything good to say about Lauren either. She echoed a lot of what Beth Lightfoot had to say—that she was nosy and liked bad news. And apparently, Lauren wasn’t too fond of Alison.”
“I don’t blame Lauren,” Holly said.
“None of them were broken up by Lauren’s murder,” I said. “They all behaved strangely this morning, though Sophie . . . I don’t know, maybe she was in shock, but she wasn’t heartsick over Lauren’s death, even if she was more friendly toward her than the others. I’m not saying Tyra was right about Lauren, but I think she was telling the truth when she said none of them liked her. I guess we’ll learn more at dinner tonight.”
“About dinner,” Holly said. “Caleb broke his thumb at the ballpark this afternoon, and—”
“How did that happen?” I said.
“The ball hit his thumb instead of the bat. Peter feels terrible.”
“Is it a bad break?” Julia asked.
“No, but it’s painful and swollen to the size of a lemon.”
“You need to stay home,” I said. “Caleb needs pampering. Peter too.”
“Caleb is growing up so fast, I sometimes forget how young he still is,” Holly said, rising to her feet. “I’m off. I’ll talk to you tomorrow morning at the bakery. I want to hear every detail of your dinner.”
After Holly left, Royce, Julia, and I sat quietly for a while, each to our own thoughts. I was imagining first Mariette and then Tyra, Alison, and finally Sophie snatching the fireplace poker, sneaking upstairs, and using it on Lauren. I pictured them committing the act, and I wondered how truly capable a killer each of them was.
“Do you think the murderer will kill again?” Julia asked in an unusually timid voice. My news about the poker had gotten to her.
“I don’t know, Julia, but I’m hoping it stops with Lauren. She may have been the killer’s only target.” I sat forward. “But why? Why was she the target? You don’t kill someone just because you don’t like her. You put up with her or go home or quit the book club. Or make her quit the book club. And you don’t rig church bells to ring aft
er her death. No, she wasn’t killed because she was disliked. She was disliked because she did something to one of those women.”
“What you need is more information,” Royce said. “More pieces of the puzzle, as you always say.”
“Many more pieces,” Julia said. She began to gnaw at her lower lip.
“Royce, would you like to come to dinner at Sophie’s?” I asked.
Julia heaved a sigh of relief. “Oh, I thought you’d never ask. Yes, Royce, please do.”
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” he said, a huge grin spreading across his face. “It’s a little past five thirty. When do we go?”
“Now. I need to stop for flowers on the way. We’ll take my car.”
Julia locked up her house, and we all set out for my backyard garage as a light rain began to fall. The garage was more of a shed, really, so I backed the Forester out, allowing Royce to hold the door open for Julia without poking himself on the shovels and spades hanging on the shed’s wall. He held his suit jacket out toward Julia, using it as an umbrella about her shoulders, and helped her into the back seat.
“Where do we buy flowers on Sunday?” I asked, starting for Finch Hill Road. “Anything but roses.”
heading up Sophie’s wet gravel drive, I saw four cars parked near the cottage—the same four I’d seen earlier in the day. I didn’t know which was Sophie’s, but the other three belonged to the Cottage Women. They’d all chosen to stay for dinner.
Before getting out, I turned back to Royce. “Stick together, no matter what. Don’t separate and don’t go off exploring.”
“Julia’s safe with me,” Royce said.
Julia gave her gray curls a pat. “I’m trying to convince myself that this is exciting.”
“It’s better than TV,” I said.
I grabbed my bouquet of spring flowers, we walked to the door, and I gave it a loud rap. Mariette, a glass of wine in one hand, answered.
“Sophie can’t come to the door because we murdered her after she made the salad,” she said with a snicker.
I glared at her.
“Oh, flowers!” she said, snatching the bouquet. “Come on in, I was only joking. Don’t be so serious.” She flashed an inebriated smile at me, but her smile faded when she looked at Royce. “And who are you?”
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