Paper-Thin Alibi

by Mary Ellen Hughes

  “Yes, Pat’s prices can be high,” agreed the woman, who Jo had decided from her general air of ownership, must be Shirley. “It’s all high-quality stuff, though. You buy something from him, it’ll last long enough to pass onto this little guy here someday.”

  Jo smiled, trying to imagine Andrew grown-up enough to have a place to furnish. “Mr. Weeks’s little girl was there,” she said. “She was awfully sweet, eager to help with the baby.”

  “Oh, Abby’s a doll! I just love her to death.” Shirley winked and said, “I’m her honorary grandmother, you know. Have the certificate she drew for me, with my name on it and all.” Her smile faded. “Poor thing. Abby really needs a grandmother. Pat is great with her, but a little girl needs the feminine touch sometimes.”

  “What about her mother?” Dulcie asked, and Jo waited to hear just what Shirley knew.

  “Took off,” Shirley said, her eyebrows arching and mouth thinning in disapproval. “Cared more about chasing her own concerns and left that dear little thing behind. Can you believe it? Barely sees her daughter at all, from what I understand.”

  Dulcie automatically reached out to Andrew, patting his hand as though needing to reassure him of her loving dependability.

  “So she hasn’t been back here for a long time?” Jo asked.

  “Well, no, she was here, actually, just last week.”

  “Oh,” Jo said, muffling her interest. Her eyes flicked toward Dulcie’s then back to Shirley. “I guess Abby was happy to see her, huh?”

  Shirley sighed, then pulled a chair from an adjoining table and sat down. “I can’t imagine what that poor little thing was feeling. This out-of-the-blue visit from her mother must have confused her to pieces. She has asthma, you know, and it started acting up pretty bad lately, and I blame it all on that mother, what with her suddenly claiming she wanted to have custody again.”

  “Custody!”

  Shirley nodded. “Can you believe it? The girl barely knows her and now the woman thinks she can swoop down and be a mother again, just like that?” She shook her head disgustedly.

  “Can she?” Jo asked. “Legally, I mean? Did she ever give up custody?”

  “Patrick says they had agreed to joint custody from the first, but she never claimed it before. Said her life was too unsettled, or something. So what’s changed? I don’t know. All I know is it’s going to break my heart if Abby ends up going off with her. And Patrick’s too. Not to mention what it’ll probably do to Abby.” Shirley shook her head sadly. “I just hope he can do something to stop her.”

  A customer came into the café, and Shirley pulled herself together, calling out as she stood up, “Afternoon, Harvey! How’re you doing today?”

  Jo looked at Dulcie, sure she was thinking the same thing as she was. Had Patrick done something to stop Linda?

  Dulcie leaned closer to whisper, “She doesn’t know Linda Weeks is dead.”

  Jo nodded.

  “How’s your sister doin’, Shirl?” Jo heard Harvey ask as he settled into a booth nearby.

  “Doing wonderful! Her and Joe’s big anniversary party up in Philly went great! We all had a fine time.”

  “Missed you around here. Nobody makes chili like you do.”

  Shirley laughed. “That’s why I take off once in a while. So people don’t take me so much for granted.”

  So, Shirley had been out of town and hadn’t yet caught up with the latest happenings. Jo expected Harvey would fix that and she was right. Before long Jo heard Harvey lower his voice confidentially. Shirley’s hand flew to her mouth as she listened.

  “Oh! Oh, that poor little girl!” Shirley looked toward Patrick Weeks’ custom furniture shop. I don’t know how she’s going to handle this,” adding grimly, “Pat, though, won’t be feeling too bad.”

  Jo exchanged another glance with Dulcie. That, they both seemed to agree, was probably an understatement.

  CHAPTER 15

  “So Patrick Weeks looks like a good possibility, huh?” Javonne asked. She carefully made the first fold in her square of paper, following Jo’s directions. Javonne, Ina Mae, Loralee, and Dulcie had gathered for the “Beginning Origami” workshop, though Jo suspected their interests leaned more toward murder that night, than origami. Jo had earlier gathered beautiful origami papers for a project that tied in with their previous class on paper flower creations - making an origami tulip – and had demonstrated the various steps toward that creation.

  Answering Javonne, Jo said, “He certainly had a good reason for wanting Linda dead.”

  “From what the woman at the café told us,” Dulcie said, looking up from studying the folding diagram Jo had passed out, “Linda was ready to claim her joint custody rights to their little girl.”

  “And Patrick felt quite strongly that Linda was not someone he wanted in his daughter’s life anymore,” Jo added.

  “Strongly enough to murder his ex-wife?” Ina Mae asked. She frowned at her still uncreased, rose-colored paper, seeming unwilling to make that first crucial fold until she had each of the multi-stepped folds memorized and understood.

  “I don’t know.” Jo picked up the tulip she had folded for the group and turned it about thoughtfully. “He didn’t strike me as a violent man, but then Linda wasn’t bludgeoned to death. Whoever sent her that doctored-up candy didn’t have to be there and watch her die.”

  “Which isn’t to say they weren’t,” Loralee put in. She was going great guns, Jo noticed, with her folds. A few more steps and she would have her tulip completed.

  “No, that’s true,” Jo agreed. “For all I know the murderer could have been standing right there in the crowd.”

  “And you didn’t know Patrick Weeks at the time,” Loralee said, “so you wouldn’t have recognized him.”

  “But was he there?” Dulcie asked. “Or did he send the candy at all? That’s still the big question.”

  “Indeed,” Ina Mae agreed, still frowning, whether over the puzzle of the murder or the puzzle of the origami diagram was unclear. “The death of Linda Weeks,” she said, “has a two-fold effect. It removes her custody threat, but it also leaves the daughter motherless, which could be devastating to a little girl, even for a mother she seldom saw. I think we all understand how children can idealize an absent parent. Would this man be willing to put his daughter through that kind of pain?”

  “I’d say so,” said Javonne. “He’d probably justify the pain as being short term, whereas her mother taking custody would be life altering, and in a very negative way. Don’t you think, Jo?”

  Jo shook her head, unsure. “He hadn’t told Abby yet about Linda. He was clearly very concerned about the effect it would have on her.”

  “He’ll have to tell her soon,” Dulcie said. “Word was spreading. We saw that at the café.”

  “Yes,” Jo said. “Maybe he was waiting for Shirley, the ‘honorary grandmother’, to be around to help. If so, it would suggest he’s a loving, caring father.”

  “People have killed in the name of love,” Loralee pointed out sadly, and the rest of the women nodded.

  But did Patrick Weeks? Jo wondered. She took a stroll around the workshop table, looking over the progress of each woman’s tulip. Loralee’s was nearly finished. It would soon be ready for the leaf and stem. Javonne and Dulcie were about halfway through, but Ina Mae had just made her first fold. She glanced up at Jo.

  “I think I finally appreciate the work that went into those paper airplanes Jimmy Kraus was so fond of sending around my classroom.”

  Jo grinned. “It’ll click,” she said. “Everyone approaches origami in their own way. You seem to want to analyze it, like geometry.”

  “I do. And I see it’s bogging me down. The idea that one can make something like that,” she nodded toward Loralee’s tulip, “from a single square of paper, without any scissor cuts or glue just boggles my mind.”

  “Forget the analyzing,” Javonne said. She closed her eyes and assumed a Zen-like expression. “Just let the energy flow.”


  Ina Mae raised an eyebrow, but Jo saw a sliver of a smile as she turned back to her paper.

  “What about that photographer, Jo?” Javonne asked. “Was Carrie able to find out where he’ll be taking pictures?”

  “Yes, she was.” Jo told the group about Carrie’s family excursion to the diner that was run by Bill Ewing’s friend. “Ewing wrote down Dan’s directions and said if the rain held off he’d run over Wednesday morning.”

  “That’s tomorrow,” Loralee said.

  “And the weather predicted is partly cloudy but dry,” Dulcie added helpfully.

  “So do you want Harry to meet up with you?” Javonne asked. “I asked him about it and you should have seen his eyes light up! He went and dug out his cameras and fiddled with them the rest of the night.”

  “He wouldn’t mind spending his day off tramping through fields?” Jo asked.

  “Mind? He hasn’t had the chance to do something like that for ages. He’ll think he died and went to heaven!”

  The others tittered, but Jo knew Harry’s major, free-time passion was golf. However, having a man along who was loaded up with cameras could make all the difference in getting the taciturn Ewing to talk, not to mention the safety factor should she find herself in a remote area with a killer. So if Harry was willing to forego the golf greens for the day, Jo decided she was happy to let him.

  “Tell Harry nine o’clock, and I’ll pay for the film.”

  “What I’ll tell him is not to keep you waiting. That man has no concept of time. I can’t tell you how many times…” Javonne launched into tales of her only exasperation with the man she dearly loved as the ladies nodded and smiled and turned back to finishing up their origami project.

  As they proudly wrapped their flower creation in protective paper for the trip home, one by one the women wished Jo the best of luck for her encounter with Bill Ewing. “Though,” Loralee said, “I have a strong feeling you’ve already met your murderer in Patrick Weeks.”

  “She’ll need to cover all the bases,” Ina Mae said.

  The group ambled out the door, and Jo, expecting no further business that evening, began preparations for closing up. She was surprised, then, when the door opened and Meg Boyer walked in, carrying a small, plastic grocery bag.

  “Hi Meg,” Jo said. “Need something last minute for a craft project?”

  “No, I was just out picking up a few things and started thinking about your trip to see Linda’s ex. I wondered how it went.”

  “Pretty well, if inconclusive.” Jo straightened the small pile of leftover origami papers the group had gathered together for her. “I did learn that Linda had been to see him a few days ago.”

  “Oh, really? What for? Looking for some sort of reconciliation?”

  “No, at least not with Patrick.” Jo hesitated briefly, but decided she had already brought Meg into the middle of things by asking for her help. “She wanted to reclaim her joint custody of their little girl.”

  Meg eyes widened. “They have a daughter?”

  “Yes. Your friend Emmy didn’t mention that?”

  “No. I guess I should have asked, but I never thought of it. How old is she?”

  “About eight. She seemed very sweet.”

  “Then I suppose she hadn’t been with Linda much.” Meg said it without rancor but as a simple statement of fact, which said a lot about what people who knew Linda thought of her.

  “Patrick Weeks,” Jo said, “seemed convinced that any influence from Linda in their daughter’s life would have been very negative.”

  “Did he seem upset over what happened to Linda?”

  “He seemed mostly concerned about how he was going to tell his little girl.”

  Meg nodded. “I barely knew him, but I have the impression he was a pretty decent guy back then. You don’t think he had anything to do with Linda’s death, do you?”

  “I have a lot more to find out, Meg. But I agree that in that first meeting he didn’t come across as someone likely to consider murder.”

  Meg gave a quick nod, apparently satisfied. “I guess I’d better get on home,” she said, shifting the handles of her plastic bag in her hand. “I’ll be working tomorrow.”

  Jo walked her to the door to lock it after her. “How’s the job going?” she asked.

  Meg smiled. “Ruthie and Bert have been great. They get some weird customers once in a while, though.”

  “I can believe that, being in retail myself. But craft customers in general are probably much calmer than a hungry person rushing in for a quick meal.”

  “I had this guy the other day,” Meg said. “Ruthie had me running the front counter for her, something I’ve only done once or twice so far - when he comes in, orders his “usual” without giving me a clue what it was, then acts real rude when I have to ask. It seems he didn’t have time to waste. But I did?” Meg rolled her eyes. “When I turned away for a moment I actually heard him mutter ‘fat re-tard’.”

  “Oh, no!”

  “I was tempted – really tempted – to slip a few hot peppers in that sandwich of his, but I didn’t.”

  “Can’t say I’d blame you. The peppers might have cleaned up his mouth.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t want Ruthie losing customers.”

  Meg took off, and Jo thought about Ruthie’s early impression of Meg as being meek and listless. Her tale about dealing with the nasty customer sounded like a woman who was growing in confidence. She hadn’t broken into tears or walked off the job altogether, which was a good sign. Jo wondered about Meg’s husband. She’d heard hints about his being overbearing. Maybe Meg was also learning some assertiveness in that direction. Jo hoped that things would work out between them.

  She straightened up the rest of the evening’s workshop supplies, then went around flicking off lights before grabbing her cell phone and calling up its most recently added number. When Russ answered from his hospital room in an encouragingly strong voice, she asked, “Interested in a little company?”

  “Very interested.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  CHAPTER 16

  As Jo stepped off the elevator and looked down the hall toward Russ’s room, the first thing she noticed was that no officer stood guard. That, she thought, was a good sign – that the department apparently felt secure enough in Russ’s progress that they didn’t feel the need to hover any more. She tapped lightly on his door and poked her head in.

  “You awake?” she asked, joking, since she’d just heard a loud protest burst from Russ over a missed shot in the basketball game he was watching overhead.

  “Hey! Yeah!” he said, the pained expression from the game immediately changing to pleasure. “Come on in.” Russ reached for the T.V. remote and over Jo’s cursory protests clicked it off, which pleased her enough to hurry her over for a good, long kiss.

  “Mmm,” Russ said when it ended, “nice to see you too!” He reached out to pull her back but she ducked, laughing.

  “You’re still recuperating, remember?” She pulled the visitor’s chair closer to the bed and sat down.

  “I think I just got a lot better.”

  He did look much better than the day before, which cheered Jo immeasurably. “Appetite better too?” she asked. “I picked up a box of cookies from Schwartz’s.” Jo held up the white box by its string.”

  “Double chocolate chip?”

  ‘Uh-huh. And raspberry butter, and oatmeal raisin, with a few rugalah thrown in.”

  “How did you know?” Russ asked grinning. Jo laughed, aware they were both thinking of their first date which had wound up at Schwartz’s Bakery. They’d bought a similar assortment and ended up sparring over their favorites, an event that rapidly grew into a tradition.

  “I figured I could take you on this time,” she said, “with your one arm out of commission and all.”

  “Don’t count on it.” Russ reached into the box with his good hand as soon as the string was off and grabbed a large chocolate chip, groaning in
moments with pleasure as he took the first bite. “You’re an angel.”

  “I almost didn’t bring them. I was afraid a multitude of other visitors would have overloaded your room with things like this.”

  Russ waved around the room with what was left of his cookie. “Flowers,” he said. “Enough to send more than half off to other parts of the hospital. It was starting to feel like a funeral home.”

  “No edibles?”

  “Nope. Nobody, obviously, was as insightful as you.”

  “Or as hungry, maybe. I’ve been grabbing meals on the run the last couple days.” Realizing she didn’t want to explain exactly what she’d been doing to keep so busy, Jo switched to another subject. “You seem much better than yesterday,” she said. “What are the doctors saying?’

  “That they might release me pretty soon.”

  “Really? Are they sure? That seems so soon!”

  “No use taking up a hospital bed when I can sleep in my own bed just as well. Better, actually. They’ll probably send a visiting nurse for a few days to check on this,” he said, indicating his bandaged shoulder.

  “Well, I should hope so!” Jo sputtered. “After all that’s happened to you! I don’t know about this. It sounds to me like they’re rushing things. I really think they should keep you here, just to be sure.” Russ gave her a grinning, raised-eyebrow look, and Jo realized how fussbudgety she had just sounded. “I’m sorry,” she said, backtracking. “The doctors must know what they’re doing. And you know how you feel. It’s none of my business.”

  “Not at all. I like you worrying about me. I just don’t want you to upset yourself. I’ll be okay.” He reached out to grasp her hand, rubbing it gently. “Especially if I get to see a whole lot of you during my convalescence.”

  Jo smiled, but found herself automatically resisting the feelings that welled up inside her. Thoughts of spending much time with this man whom she’d so recently feared losing were wonderful. She wanted to hover closely and do all she could for him. But at the same time something kept telling her to hold back, while not explaining to her why. That mental roadblock kept popping up inside her whenever she felt inclined to move forward.