by Gail Oust
Krystal popped her head into the study/library/den. “Janine said to tell you you’re fined ten demerits for skipping out early.”
I glanced at her over my shoulder. “And you can tell Janine . . . Never mind. I’ll tell her myself next time I see her.”
“I’m beat. Think I’ll turn in.”
“’Night,” I called after her. Poor girl; she looked ready to drop. I needed to remind Janine to lighten up on her rehearsal schedule. It wouldn’t do to have the pregnant star miscarry on opening night.
Just as I was about to return to the computer, I caught a glimpse of a bushy orange tail disappearing down the hall leading to the guest room. If I ever had a pet, I vowed, it would be a lot friendlier than the scruffy feline that had attached itself to Krystal. I’d half a notion to switch from albacore to the store brand that came packed in oil. Tang would be sorry he wasn’t nicer to me when he had the chance.
I felt wired. A cup of chamomile tea might be just the ticket to help me relax. Turning off the computer, I went into the kitchen and filled the kettle. While I waited for the water to boil, I stared out the window. Lights still burned in the Brubaker house across the way, the temporary abode of Nadine Peterson. I found myself wondering exactly how much money the woman had won in the lottery. Even though she never came right out with the amount, I had a feeling it was substantial. She drove an expensive car and gave the impression she could settle wherever she wanted, cost no object.
My hand automatically went to my cardigan pocket and the gold hoop. Now was as good a time as any to return it. A glance at the clock told me it was only half past nine; not too late for a quick visit. Before I had a chance to talk myself out of it, I turned off the teakettle, grabbed a jacket, and skedaddled out the door.
Nadine’s porch light switched on, nearly blinding me in its glare. I imagined one spooky green eye heavily rimmed with kohl pressed against the peephole.
“Nadine,” I called out, addressing the closed door. “I have something of yours.”
The door opened, and a plume of cigarette smoke drifted through the crack.
“What’ve you got?” Nadine growled.
I gave the door a gentle nudge and wedged my foot into the sill for good measure. “Mind if I come in?”
“Sure, why not,” she said, stepping aside. “Want a beer?”
Normally I drink tea—chamomile—at this hour. Occasionally coffee—decaf, naturally. But beer? Once or twice a year, I’ll admit that I enjoy a brew, usually in July or August on days when the humidity surpasses the temperature. But, what the hey, there’s no rule against having a cold one in February. “Sure, why not,” I replied.
I followed her toward the kitchen. A heady blend of smoke and nicotine clung to her like cheap perfume. Pulling a couple of frosty bottles from the fridge, she handed me one. Since she didn’t offer a glass, I took my cue from her, twisted off the cap, and downed a swig. Icy cold and slightly bitter, it was a poor substitute for chamomile tea.
Nadine motioned to a chair. “Take a load off.”
I sat. I sipped. I waited.
Nadine pulled out the chair next to me and, stabbing out one cigarette, fired up another. “So,” she said, after inhaling a lungful of carcinogens, “what brings you here at this hour?”
“This.” Reaching into my sweater pocket, I produced the gold hoop earring and set it on the table between us.
“Well, I’ll be damned.” Sticking the cigarette in the corner of her mouth, she picked up the earring and studied it through a haze of smoke. “Never expected to set eyes on this again. Where’d you find it?”
“In the ladies’ room at the rec center.” I watched her reaction closely, my detection skills on red alert. “Actually, I found it the night Lance Ledeaux was killed.”
After taking another deep drag, she took the cigarette from her mouth and knocked ash into a dish on the table. Rosalie Brubaker would literally turn over in her grave at seeing her china so abused. “I thought I lost it then. Matter of fact, came back the next day. Asked at the front desk, but no one’d turned it in.”
I nearly choked on my beer at her easy admission. “S-so,” I sputtered, “you were there that night?”
“Yeah, so what?”
“Did you kill Lance?” Sometimes I amaze myself. This was one of those times. Where was common sense? Had good judgment deserted me? I could very well be seated across a table from a cold-blooded killer—a killer who might have a chain saw in the cellar, a machete tucked under the table, a semiautomatic in a cereal box.
To my surprise—and relief—Nadine didn’t take offense. Instead, she tossed back her dyed-black hair and laughed. It was a phlegmy smoker’s laugh that ended in a paroxysm of coughing. “Believe me, hon, I’ve been tempted to kill the bastard a time or two. Always managed to restrain myself for the kid’s sake.”
At this revelation, I sat up straighter in my chair. “You two have a child together?”
“Yeah, Julie’s a single mom studying to be a nurse. She’s a good kid. Never gave me a minute’s worry.”
I was trying to process all this. “B-but,” I stammered, “I saw the two of you arguing behind the Piggly Wiggly. You’re getting mail from Down with Deadbeats. According to the Internet, one of their specialties is finding fathers who weasel out of child support.”
“Lance repented.” Nadine tipped back her beer, then swiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “In fact, he insisted on giving me ten grand and ordered me to leave town. He was royally pissed when I told him I’d send it to our daughter instead. He was even more pissed when I told him I decided to stick around awhile.” A complacent smile played over her lips.
“Ten grand?”
Ten thousand for a Super Bowl bet, ten to bribe Nadine, another ten found on his person the night he was killed. There you have it, folks, Claudia’s thirty-thousand-dollar withdrawal. But still the question remained: What did Lance intend to do with all that pocket change? Trade in his Ralph Lauren for Armani? I took the only option open to me. I took another swig of beer.
“Didn’t need the bastard’s money. Not no more. Not after winning big in the Tennessee lottery. Besides, Lance didn’t owe it to me; he owed it to our daughter. I’m used to taking care of myself, but she’s struggling to raise a kid on her own and finish school. I feel sorry for the girl. When it comes to men, Julie doesn’t have any better sense picking men than her old lady.”
Since Nadine was in a chatty mood, I decided to milk it for all it was worth. I took another swallow of beer, which, by the way, tasted better as the night wore on, and asked, “Just how did you meet Lance?”
“Day after graduating high school, I left Chicago for good. Made it as far as Gatlinburg, Tennessee, on the money I’d saved. Found a job waiting tables in a barbecue joint. That’s where I met Lance.” She absently flicked ash into Rosalie’s dish. “Gatlinburg is a big tourist trap. He had a song-and-dance act at Smokey the Bear Jamboree. We hit it off right from the get-go. We planned on heading for Hollywood, making a fresh start. Once he heard I was pregnant, though, the no-good bum cleaned out our savings and took off without me.”
“How awful,” I commiserated. Lance apparently was a scumbag long before Claudia met up with him.
“Don’t go feelin’ sorry for me, hon. I managed fine without him, and I’m still doing okay. Like I told you before, I hit it big in the lottery. Enough to find a shrink and hire Tennessee’s premier detective agency to track the bastard down.” She rose and went to the fridge. “Ready for another?”
I shook my head, wanting to save the second of my two annual brews for a steamy day in August. “What were you going to do to Lance once you found him?”
She returned, beer in hand, and shook another cigarette from the pack on the table. “If you think I planned to kill him, you’re dead wrong.” She let out a harsh bark of laughter at her own joke. “Dead wrong, get it?”
I polished off the last of my beer and got to my feet. “Better be going.”
&nb
sp; “Sure you don’t want to stay, have another?”
“Thanks, Nadine, but it’s getting late, and I have a busy day tomorrow.”
Nadine walked me to the door. “You know what, Kate? Down with Deadbeats was worth every cent I paid ’em. Wish you could have seen the look on the bastard’s face first time he saw me. He was so afraid I’d screw things up with that new wife of his, he practically peed his pants. What he didn’t know is that I’ve probably got ten times her money. Isn’t that a kicker?”
And it was.
I replayed our conversation as I slowly walked home. Something about her story didn’t quite hold water. Why stick around after her confrontation with Lance? It just didn’t make sense. What was the old saying? Something like, Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Had Nadine just pulled the wool over my eyes? Had she been out for revenge all along, but was now trying to cover it up?
And where did that leave Claudia?
Facing a minimum of thirty years to life is where.
Chapter 32
As a soporific, beer won hands down over chamomile tea. I was sound asleep the second my head hit the pillow. Way off in the distance, I heard ringing. I turned onto my side, burrowed into the pillow, and tried to ignore the racket. Go away, urged my dead-to-the-world, sleep-numbed brain. Go away, leave me be.
The ringing persisted. I emerged from sleep as languidly as a scuba diver at the bottom of the ocean floating to the surface. Prying one eye open, I squinted at the glowing red numerals of the clock on the bedside stand.
3:00 a.m.?
Who could be calling at this hour? I willed my second eye open. The clock’s numerals hadn’t changed. And neither had the blasted ringing of the phone.
Phone . . . ?
My body reacted to the three a.m. call with a blast of adrenaline. A phone call at this time of night is every mother’s worst nightmare. The question Do you know where your children are? immediately flashes through your mind. Had something happened to Jennifer? Or to one of my granddaughters? Then there was Steven. New York City is a dangerous place; one only has to watch Law & Order to know this.
I groped for the phone, fighting the panic that threatened to engulf me. “Hello . . .”
“Don’t stick your nose where it don’t belong,” a deep voice rasped.
“Who is this?”
“Consider yourself warned.”
I was left clutching the phone while a dial tone buzzed in my ear. My hands shook as I replaced the handset. Wide-awake now, I pressed an imaginary rewind button and mentally replayed the conversation. The voice had been obviously disguised to the point where I couldn’t be certain if it’d been male or female. At first I thought it belonged to a man, but now I wasn’t so sure. Nadine Peterson had a deep, husky voice such as the caller’s. Had I asked too many questions? Been too nosy?
I was getting closer to the truth—and someone was worried.
At this time of night—or morning—the house was so still, so quiet, you could hear the whir of the heat pump as it cycled on, and the ka-chunk of cubes dropping from the ice maker. I wasn’t afraid—not exactly—but I was glad I wasn’t alone. I had Krystal nearby; Krystal and that darn cat.
For a long while, I lay staring at the ceiling, wishing I had a nice cold beer to lull me back to sleep.
• • •
Ticket sales were scheduled to begin at ten o’clock sharp. After last night’s—I mean this morning’s—phone call, I felt bleary-eyed and sluggish. Over coffee and a bagel, I pondered what to do. I thought about reporting the call to Sheriff Wiggins, but changed my mind. What could he do except tell me to mind my own business? No, thank you. I’d already heard that sermon one time too many. And what if the call had been a wrong number? Surely I wasn’t the only busybody in town.
I loaded my breakfast dishes into the dishwasher and went to get showered and dressed. Not even my hair cooperated; one side wanted to curl and the other mutinied. I finally gave up. That’s when I noticed there was a spot on my blouse. I hurried to find another, but the one I picked didn’t match my slacks, so I had to change them, too. About this time, I realized I’d have to exchange black loafers for a pair of brown. This meant my purse didn’t match my shoes—a big fashion faux pas. With all the changing and switching, there was no time left to excavate my favorite necklace from the morass of costume jewelry in a drawer, so I clipped on a bracelet instead and—whew!—was good to go.
Diane and Connie Sue were waiting for me in one of the meeting rooms adjacent to the auditorium, which had been designated for ticket sales. I arrived ten minutes late, disheveled and out of sorts. Parking had been practically impossible. I had to content myself with a spot at the far end of the lot in a space reserved for staff. Next, I had to weave my way through a throng of people sporting travel mugs of coffee and morning newspapers. Thankfully no one paid much attention to a frazzled, frumpy blonde having a bad hair day.
Connie Sue, not a single strand of hair awry and looking like a model from a Talbots ad, eyed me up and down. “Honey lamb,” she drawled, “who put you through the wringer?”
“Don’t even go there.” I knew I sounded churlish but didn’t care. I plunked myself down behind the table in the only remaining chair and shoved my purse under the table where no one could see that it didn’t match my shoes. “As soon as the last dad-blamed ticket’s sold, I’m heading out for the Piggly Wiggly and stocking up on Bud Light.”
Connie Sue raised a perfectly shaped brow but wisely kept silent.
Diane slid a stack of preprinted yellow tickets over to me. “Your job is easy. All you have to do is ask how many tickets each person wants, mark it on this sheet, then turn them over to Connie Sue for seat assignments. I’ll collect the money. Think you can handle that?”
“Piece of cake,” I replied sourly.
“This oughta perk you up.” Diane leaned closer, her hazel eyes alight with anticipation. “Wait’ll you hear what I found out.”
I felt my crankiness begin to dissipate. “Out with it, girlfriend. We don’t have all day. The hordes are about to descend.”
“Well,” she said, her mouth curving into a wicked smile as she lowered her voice, “I’ve been surfing the Net, trying to find out more about Lance Ledeaux.”
I glanced at the closed door, expecting it to burst open any second and be inundated with eager ticket buyers.
“Hurry up, Diane,” Connie Sue wailed. “I’ve got news, too.”
“Okay, okay,” Diane said. “Remember Krystal’s telling us she’d played Marty Maraschino in a revival of Grease in Atlanta? What she failed to mention is that Lance Ledeaux was in that very same production.” Diane dropped her voice even lower. “Lance was—get ready—the Teen Angel.” Arms crossed, she leaned back, obviously relishing the effect of her little bombshell.
Recovering first, Connie Sue splayed a hand over her heart. “Teen Angel?” she squealed. “No way! Surely you’re joshin’!”
“Krystal and Lance in the same play? Are you sure?”
Diane smiled smugly. “Positive.”
I looked from Diane to Connie Sue, then back again. “You know what this means, don’t you? That means they knew each other, were friends.”
Grinning widely, Connie Sue gave me a playful nudge. “Maybe more than friends.”
It took a second for the full import of her insinuation to sink in. I’m also a little slow on occasion getting punch lines to certain jokes, but that doesn’t make me a bad person, does it? “You aren’t suggesting . . .”
“Don’t be naive, sugar,” Connie Sue chided. “Think about it. Lance could very well be the daddy of Krystal’s baby. That would explain why she tracked him down. Maybe when he refused to fess up, she decided to teach him a lesson. Hormones do crazy things when you’re preggers.”
A rap on the door abruptly halted conversation. Nancy Walker poked her head in the door. “You ladies going to sell tickets or not? The natives are getting restless. Much longer and I’m going to have to send for crow
d control.”
“Sorry, Nancy,” I apologized. “Can you fend ’em off another couple minutes?”
“Tell ’em we’re in the middle of an important meetin’. We’ll be finished shortly,” Connie Sue added.
“Five minutes,” Nancy agreed with a grin. “More’n that, I’m not responsible.”
“Now for my news.” Connie Sue wore a sly, cat-with-a-canary expression on her beauty queen face. “Y’all will never guess what I found out when I ran into Marietta Perkins at the nail salon.”
“C’mon, Connie Sue,” Diane wheedled. “The suspense is killing us.”
“Oh, all right, y’all talked me into it,” Connie Sue acquiesced prettily. “The two of us got to talkin’ about the night Lance was killed. Marietta, as y’all know, might be short on personality, but she’s long on memory. She remembers a couple newcomers at the rec center that night askin’ about the facilities. One happened to be none other than Nadine Peterson. The second person she swears was Krystal Gold. Afterward she got real busy at the desk. Claims she doesn’t recall seein’ either one leave. Couldn’t swear if it was before or after the shootin’.”
Wow! This wasn’t just big. It was huge. Gigantic. Marietta with her fabulous memory placed not one but two persons of interest at the scene of the crime.
A banging on the door warned us our fortress was about to be stormed by a mob of irate customers. A chorus of angry voices added to the din.
“Open up. I’ve been waiting almost two hours.”
“Yeah,” another voice chimed. “I drove all the way from Augusta.”
“Big deal! I came from Aiken.”
• • •
“That’s a wrap,” I announced an hour later.
Forever, My Darling was a sellout. From all appearances, we had a surefire hit on our hands. There had been a few disgruntled customers, but for the most part people seemed excited at the prospect of viewing a play where a man was actually killed. There was nothing like bloodshed to get the juices flowing. Nero probably observed that same human foible the first time he fed Christians to a bunch of hungry lions.