“It is,” I said. “I wouldn’t want to be the person to use that term to Melba’s face, I can tell you that.”
“I will try to get her to open up with me about him, though,” Helen Louise said. “I hope it’s only the age gap that’s troubling her.”
“Me, too. Speaking of age gaps, wouldn’t you say Arthur Hindman is about twenty-two?” I waited for her nod to continue. “And Zac Ryan is about thirty.” Again she nodded. “I heard them having what sounded like a mild argument when I was on my way upstairs.”
“Explain, please,” Helen Louise said.
Diesel butted his head against my side to let me know that he was tired of waiting for attention. He sprawled on his side on the bed near me to allow me to stroke him while I continued my conversation with Helen Louise.
I shared with her what I had observed, and Helen Louise’s expression turned thoughtful. “Arthur is quite a handsome young man, you know, a bit more mature looking than Benjy,” she said. “Zac could be interested in him.”
“Do you think Denis’s murder has anything to do with his past relationships with both men and women?” I asked.
“Either that, or related to his business dealings,” Helen Louise said. “I’m inclined to think it’s more the latter myself. Money is an awfully powerful motive for murder.”
“Yes, it is. Or maybe it’s a combination of the two somehow,” I said. “That reminds me. I thought about asking Miss An’gel what she and Miss Dickce know about Paul Bowen. They do business with his bank.”
“I think Paul and Stewart are about the same age,” Helen Louise said. “You could try asking Stewart as well.”
Stewart Delacorte and I had become close, and I thought of him like a younger brother. He was in his mid-forties, though perhaps a couple of years younger than Paul. If they had gone to school together, Stewart might have known him.
“Good idea,” I said. “I’ll text Stewart to ask him, but if he knows anything, he’ll want to talk, and that means at least an hour on the phone.”
Helen Louise grinned. “Yes, but you’ll enjoy it.”
“True.” I pulled out my phone, opened the texting app, and found Stewart. I did not have the deftness with texting that my children did, being mostly a one-finger texter. I managed to compose a message with no errors, but only by going slowly. I asked Stewart if he knew Paul Bowen, and if he did, to call me at his convenience.
I laid the phone aside, and barely had it left my hand before it started ringing. I looked at the caller ID.
“Stewart.”
Helen Louise grinned.
I picked up the phone and answered the call. Before I could say anything, Stewart said, “Okay, who’s dead?”
TWENTY-THREE
“Hello to you, too,” I said. “And how are you?”
“I’m fine, Charlie,” Stewart said. “Hello. Now tell me, who’s dead? Is it Paul Bowen? Whom I don’t know, by the way.”
“Why do you assume that someone is dead simply because I texted you?”
“This is Charlie Harris, isn’t it?” Stewart’s tone had a sarcastic bite. “Why else would you be texting me and asking me to call you if you hadn’t stumbled into another murder?”
Through my laughter, I managed to say, “All right. I give. There have been two murders.”
“Two?” Stewart almost shrieked into my ear. “You haven’t been in Asheville more than a couple of days. What’s going on?”
“Give me a chance, and I’ll explain, okay?”
“Go ahead,” Stewart replied.
I gave him a quick summary of the two deaths and a list of the group members who were involved.
“Denis Kilbride,” Stewart said. “I’ve been wondering for years when his antics would finally get him in big trouble. He tried to be discreet, but he managed to hurt a number of people.”
“You didn’t like him,” I said.
“No, I didn’t,” Stewart replied. “I never got involved with anyone who was married, unlike Kilbride. I think he preferred that, actually, because he never had to make a commitment.”
“Helen Louise and I have been discussing motives for his murder,” I said. “Ellie Arnold is perhaps the chief suspect, since Denis was apparently pursuing her to the point of stalking. But she caught him with Zac Ryan, in flagrante delicto, and that was that.”
Stewart laughed. “Zac Ryan, eh? From what I’ve heard through the campus grapevine, he’s been busy in the short time he’s been at the college. Working his way through a good bit of the local talent, so to speak.”
I repeated this to Helen Louise, who shook her head. “Who has that much energy?”
I laughed and shared this remark with Stewart. He laughed, too. “Oh, to be thirty again,” he said. “Seriously, though, I can’t see Zac as much of a suspect. Unless he was desperately in love with Kilbride—which I seriously doubt—he has no stake in this game.”
“You’re probably right,” I said. “It’s looking more and more like Ellie to me.”
“I know her,” Stewart said. “Not from school, though, because she was several years behind me. Melba knows her. I’ve run across the two of them lunching together, or out at night, a few times. You’d best talk to her.”
“Will do,” I said. “Look, if you manage to find out anything about Paul Bowen or anything about any other of Kilbride’s affairs, let me know, okay?”
“Sure will,” Stewart said.
“Whatever you do,” I said, after we had chatted about family matters for a few minutes, “do not let Sean and Laura know about this. Otherwise Sean will be calling me and fussing at me.” They took rather a dim view of my sleuthing activities, even though Laura had been right in the middle of my most recent adventure in detecting.
“I’ll try,” Stewart said before he ended the call.
Again I laid my phone aside.
“I managed to hear most of what Stewart had to say,” Helen Louise informed me. “I gather he thinks Zac had no motive for killing Denis Kilbride.”
I nodded. “I tend to agree with him. If Zac has as much of a roving eye as Stewart claims, then I can’t see him turning killer over Denis Kilbride.”
“We’ve already noted his interest in Benjy and possibly Arthur,” Helen Louise said. “I think that bears out what Stewart told you.”
“What was it Auntie Mame said?” I asked. “Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death!”
Helen Louise laughed. “That’s it. It doesn’t seem that Zac is starving by any means.”
“So, Ellie remains our number one suspect,” I said. “I think it’s time to have another chat with Melba.”
I texted Melba, but this time there was no quick reply. Helen Louise and I waited in silence for at least two minutes, but Melba didn’t respond.
“Why don’t you try calling her room?” Helen Louise said. “Or call her phone and leave a message?”
I decided on the latter option. She didn’t answer the call, and so I left a brief message, asking her to call me at her earliest opportunity.
I got up from the bed and wandered over to the window. Our view looked out on the hotel garden. The afternoon sun rode high in the sky, and the leaves of the trees moved gently in the breeze. I felt suddenly that I had to get outside, into the sunshine. I turned to Helen Louise to find that she had picked up her book again.
“How would you like to go out into the garden with me?” I asked.
Helen Louise shook her head. “I’m going to read these last few pages, and then I think I’ll nap for a bit, if you don’t mind.”
“Of course not,” I said. “I just feel like going outside for some reason.”
Helen Louise smiled and returned to her book. Diesel chirped at me. He understood the word outside.
“Come on, boy. You can go with me,” I said.
Dies
el jumped off the bed and ran toward the door to the hall. I fetched his leash and harness, and got him fitted into the latter, and we headed for the garden.
We met no one on the way down, and when we walked out into the garden, I couldn’t see anyone out there, though there were several spots obscured from view by trees or shrubs. The sun felt warm on my face, and the breeze provided relief from the heat. We began to stroll. I followed Diesel’s lead, letting him sniff and roam where he chose.
We—the mystery group, that is—had come to Asheville to get to know one another better and have fun discussing mysteries. We had also come to see the sights of Asheville. So far we had seen Biltmore and the hotel, but not much else, other than a couple of restaurants. The irony of the situation was not lost on me. We had planned to discuss Golden Age literary conventions, one of which was the enclosed community beloved by the authors of the time. The stately home in the winter, sealed off by a blizzard. A remote island cut off from the mainland. A house during a terrible storm that left everyone inside vulnerable to a killer.
We were not involved in one of those scenarios, precisely, but we might have been. Two people in the hotel had been murdered, and the police wanted us to stay put to make their task of solving the crimes easier. I wasn’t particularly frightened, I had to admit after I considered the notion for a moment. I couldn’t see myself as a target for the killer. I hadn’t been running around pestering everyone with questions, nor had Helen Louise.
The group did know about my penchant for solving mysteries, however, so perhaps it behooved me to be more careful about what I did and said. I could easily imagine what my son, Sean, the lawyer, would say to me, if he found out about the situation.
Dad, you need to keep out of this, he would say. You don’t have Kanesha here to keep you out of harm’s way. If the killer thinks you’re getting too close, he or she could attack you. Or even Helen Louise or Diesel. You shouldn’t put yourself or them at risk.
Yes, son, I would say, and I would mean it. But I wouldn’t be able to help myself if I managed to stumble over any information that could be pertinent to the case. It would be my civic duty to share it with the authorities, right?
Of course it would be, I reassured myself. I had to resist the temptation to go too far in carrying out my so-called duty, however.
Diesel soon tired of wandering and sniffing, and I followed him to the bench where we had sat in the shade and dozed. Was that only yesterday? I wondered.
I made myself comfortable, and Diesel stretched out beside me. I leaned back and closed my eyes, taking in the scents and the solitude, finding them soothing.
I probably drifted off within minutes of getting settled on the bench, but I woke abruptly to a hand shaking my arm and a voice calling my name. I blinked and saw Melba bent over me.
“You were snoring,” she said, standing back. Diesel stood against her legs, softly chirping.
“Sorry,” I muttered. “I didn’t know there was anyone around to hear me.” I covered a yawn, then sat up straighter on the bench. “What’s going on?”
“Helen Louise said you wanted to talk to me.” Melba took the space on the bench vacated by Diesel, and the cat sat with his head on her knee, gazing up at her while she stroked his head.
“That’s right, I do,” I said, trying to pull my scattered thoughts together.
“About Ellie,” Melba said in a helpful tone.
“Yes,” I said. “You’ve known her since she was a child, right?”
“Yes, they lived a couple of streets over. My mother knew her mother, but I was several years older than Ellie. I used to babysit her when I was about fifteen,” Melba said.
“Ellie said her mother was an alcoholic,” I said.
Melba nodded. “Yeah, and a bad one. Started because her husband was a rat, ran around after anything in a skirt, according to my mother. She said he was a handsome devil. Some men are too good-looking for their own good.”
“I’m sorry for Ellie. Sounds like a miserable childhood.”
“It was,” Melba said, “but her aunt in Mobile took her in when her mother died. Her father had disappeared by then.”
“Why did Ellie come back to Athena?” I asked. “There couldn’t have been much for her there after her mother died. Unless she had other family in Athena.”
“She had her grandmother, her dad’s mother,” Melba said. “Sweet old lady, and she loved Ellie, who was her only grandchild. She got to where she couldn’t do for herself, and by then Ellie had finished college. She came back to look after her grandmother. Got a job at the bank and has been there ever since.”
“What about her grandmother?” I asked.
“Mrs. Arnold died about six years ago,” Melba replied. “Her aunt, her mother’s sister, is still living in Mobile. I think she was quite a bit younger than Ellie’s mother.”
“I’m glad to hear she still has some family left,” I said. “I don’t suppose she ever hears from her father, if he’s still living.”
“He died about fifteen years ago,” Melba said. “At least, that’s what I heard.” She looked me straight in the eye. “Okay, enough of the background stuff. I don’t imagine that’s what you really wanted to know.”
“The background is important,” I said. “Sounds like Ellie had a hard time with her parents, but thankfully her grandmother and her aunt were there for her.”
“They were,” Melba said. “Get to the point.”
I could tell that Melba’s temper was frayed, and I didn’t want to set her off. I needed to be careful about how I got to the point.
“The point is, Ellie grew up being betrayed by the two most important people in her life, her mother and her father. That has to affect a person pretty deeply. Then she is betrayed, and betrayed badly, by the man she most likely was in love with. That betrayal could have pushed her too far.”
“So she murdered Denis Kilbride for betraying her,” Melba said flatly.
I shrugged.
“I wish I could tell you that you’re wrong about Ellie, but I can’t. I just can’t.”
TWENTY-FOUR
“She was a sweet child,” Melba continued. “Not much self-esteem, would lie sometimes when she didn’t need to, was really hard on herself but anxious to have your approval.” She sighed. “I learned later on that these were typical traits for children of alcoholics, and I think some of these characteristics have caused her problems, particularly with relationships.”
“Parents really can inflict a lot of damage on their children,” I said, thankful as always that my parents had not been drinkers.
“They can,” Melba said. “I think they’re responsible for a lot. Ellie’s parents, I mean. I think maybe that’s why Ellie was drawn to Denis Kilbride. I’m not saying he was an alcoholic, but he did enjoy drinking. Maybe Ellie thought she could fix him. That’s another thing about adult children of alcoholics. They sometimes have a need to fix someone who’s damaged.”
“Would you say that Denis Kilbride was damaged?” I asked. “Do you know anything about his background?”
“No, he didn’t grow up in Athena,” Melba reminded me. “Based on what I observed, though, I’d say his parents weren’t much to brag about either.”
“Getting back to the main point,” I said. “You believe that Ellie could have killed Denis Kilbride.”
Melba looked troubled, but she nodded. “I hate to say it, but I do. The thing I can’t understand, though, is why she would kill that poor maid, Cora.”
“What if Cora had evidence that pointed to Ellie as the killer?” I said. “Could she have panicked and decided she had to get Cora out of the way?”
“That’s the only thing that makes sense,” Melba said. “Maybe Cora tried to blackmail her, I don’t know.” She sighed. “I don’t want it to be her, Charlie, I just don’t. I look at her and see that poor sad little girl who only wante
d to be loved.”
I patted her hand. I understood how she felt, but at the same time I knew Ellie couldn’t be absolved of killing two people simply because of her sad childhood. If Ellie really did kill two people. I didn’t know why, but even after talking to Melba, I wasn’t completely sold on Ellie as a murderer.
“We don’t have any firm evidence that Ellie killed either of them,” I said in an attempt to comfort Melba.
“No, we don’t,” Melba said. “But we don’t have any idea what the police know, do we? They could have evidence that we won’t know about until there’s a trial.”
“True,” I said. “All that forensic stuff that we don’t have any access to. I think, though, if they had found clear evidence, they’d have arrested someone by now. Right?”
Melba brightened at that thought. “You’re right. So maybe I can still hope that Ellie’s innocent after all.” She got up from the bench. “Thank you, Charlie. That makes me feel better. Paul is expecting me, so I’d better get moving. We’re going out for dinner.”
“Enjoy,” I said.
She paused long enough to say goodbye to Diesel; then she hurried off.
I watched her go, hoping that I hadn’t misled her, that Ellie would turn out to be innocent. If Ellie hadn’t killed Denis Kilbride and Cora Apfel, however, someone else had. But who among our number was a murderer?
I remained where I was, Diesel back on the bench stretched out beside me, mulling this over. A male voice called out my name and interrupted my reverie.
“Over here,” I said in a loud voice. I thought I had recognized the voice, but it was not until Zac Ryan came into sight that I knew for sure.
Zac sauntered toward Diesel and me. I smiled. “You’re looking for me?” I said.
Zac stopped about two feet away and regarded me with a serious expression. “Yes, I am. I want to talk to you about these murders.”
“Sure,” I said. “Diesel, get down and let Zac have a seat.” Diesel glared at me and meowed loudly, but after a momentary hesitation, he did as I asked.
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