Deadly Greetings (Book 2 in the Cardmaking Mysteries) (28 page)

“
How can you say that?” I
asked as I walked her to the door. “He could be with a client; he
could be in court; the man might not even be in his
office.”

Lillian smiled. “His secretary will be able
to find him, believe me, and once she passes my message on, he’ll
see me, no matter what.”

“
Come straight back here,” I
said reluctantly as I watched her leave.

“
I will,” she said, and then
Lillian was gone. She had a point about getting Patrick to open up
to her in private, but I didn’t like missing out on the
conversation. There was nothing I could do about it but take her
advice, but it was going to be one of the longest waits of my
life.

I waited on a few
customers, but even selling a nice set of alphabet stamps with a
hefty price tag didn’t help my general disposition. Despite
Lillian’s pledge, she was taking much longer than she’d promised,
and I was going crazy pacing the aisles of my shop. Finally I put
the
back in fifteen
sign on the door and locked it behind me. If nothing else, I
needed more room to pace. My steps led me naturally to Greg’s
pottery shop, and I nearly went inside when I noticed that he was
with a customer. I might have gone inside and waited anyway, but
she was a good five years younger than I was, and, if I was being
honest with myself, quite a bit prettier. It was no time to talk to
Greg about our failed relationship. He nodded as he saw me through
the window, but I just waved and kept walking past.

Ten seconds later he was out on the sidewalk
with me. “Jennifer, are you all right? I heard what happened last
night, and I couldn’t believe it.”

Before I could avoid it, he wrapped his arms
around me in a bear hug. I could swear I felt my spine crack under
the pressure. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy it.

“
I’m fine,” I muttered. “If
I could just breathe. You shouldn’t leave your customers alone in
your shop.”

He released me from his embrace, but didn’t
step back much at all. “She’ll be all right. I’m worried about
you.”

“
Believe me, Wayne’s the one
feeling the pain this morning.” I gestured to Greg’s shop. “So you
trust her that much?” I asked. “How well do you know
her?”

“
She’s signing up for
lessons, so I doubt she’d try to steal from me on her first day,”
he said.

“
You don’t give private
lessons,” I said.

“
Yeah, well, I make
exceptions sometimes.”

“
Still, you shouldn’t just
abandon her.” Greg had taught me to throw pots once, and I knew it
was part of his technique to reenact scenes from Ghost with his
more attractive female customers.

“
I need to talk to you,” he
said.

“
We can do it some other
time. Go on.”

He nodded reluctantly, but before he went
back inside, he said, “We’ll finish this later, okay?”

“
Okay,” I agreed, willing to
say just about anything to get him to go. So what did he want to
talk about? I had a friend who used to say, “The horse is dead;
dismount.” Maybe it was time to do what Greg was obviously trying
to do, to look forward and not back.

Lillian was waiting for me inside the card
shop. “How’d you get past me?” I asked.

“
Are you kidding me? When I
saw you standing there wrapped up in Greg’s arms, I doubted an
elephant would have gotten your attention.”

I blurted out, “He’s giving private lessons.
To a woman. She’s young and she’s pretty and from the look of her
clothes, I’m guessing she’s rich, too.”

“
Jennifer, don’t read more
into it than is there,” she said calmly.

“
I’m not, but if he can move
on, so can I. So what did Patrick say? Did you even find
him?”

Lillian flashed a brief smile. “Oh, I found
him all right, though it was obvious he was ducking me. Jennifer, I
was wrong.”

“
Does that mean I was right?
I surely hope so. I could use an ego boost about now.”

“
Very well, I’ll say it. You
were right and I was wrong. It appears that greed might be the
motive driving this after all.”

“
Don’t leave me hanging,” I
said. “What did he say?”

“
After no small amount of
persuasion,” Lillian said, “Patrick finally confessed that there
were four women involved in an odd will structure.”

I felt the hair on my neck stand up. “What
happens? Does the last one standing get everything?”

“
Actually, it’s something
like that,” Lillian said. “There’s a stipulation that each woman
write down her preference of beneficiaries to be included in each
will. If any of the people named are already dead, they’re dropped
until one woman gets everything.”

“
So who are these two women
left?”

“
That’s what Patrick was so
fussy about. They’re both clients, and he was worried he was
breaching their trust. He demanded full deniability, and I promised
I wouldn’t tell a soul.”

“
And yet you’re going to
tell me,” I said. “Aren’t you?”

“
Of course I am,” Lillian
said. “But you have to give me your word that no one knows where we
got our information, and that includes your brother and sister. You
have to promise me, Jennifer, or we’re going to drop this right
here and now.”

I hated keeping anything from Sara Lynn or
Bradford, but there was no way I was going to miss out on Lillian’s
information.

“
I promise,” I
said.

“
That easily? You’re making
no demands, asking for no stipulations or loopholes? I’m deadly
serious about this.”

“
I know you are. So am I,” I
said. “They won’t hear it from me. So who are they?”

“
If your theory is correct,
either Hilda is the murderer, or Hester Taylor.”

“
So let’s go pressure them
both,” I said. I couldn’t see either woman as a murderer, but it
was the only thing that made sense. If one of the dead women owned
something that was valuable—perhaps without having realized it—then
killing off the remaining members of the pact was the only way to
have sole possession of it, whatever it was. I said, “You take
Hester and I’ll talk to Hilda.”

Lillian said, “No, we’ll question them
together.”

“
We don’t have time to do
this as a team,” I said. “One of their lives could be at stake
right now.”

“
And if we split up, it
could be one of us. We’re doing this together, Jennifer, or I’ll
call your brother with some feeble excuse to lock them both up
until we can figure it out, if we ever manage to.”

“
You’re serious, aren’t
you?” She nodded. “You’d better believe it. I’ve lost too many
people I love in this world, and I’m not about to lose any more, or
risk my own neck if I don’t have to. Are you ready?”

“
Okay, we’ll do it your way.
Who do we talk to first?” I asked, knowing from Lillian’s tone that
she to wasn’t about to budge. Truly, I was happy she was so
resolute. With the odds right at fifty-fifty, I hadn’t been
thrilled about confronting a possible double murderer by myself,
either.

I was still waiting for an answer when I
glanced over at Lillian. She’d gone as white as I’d ever seen her,
and for a second I thought she was having a heart attack.

“
What is it?” I asked her as
I grabbed her shoulder. “Are you all right?”

“
Jennifer, I think I know
who did it.”

“
Don’t keep me in suspense,”
I said. “Talk to me.”

“
It had to be Hester. I
never would have believed it.”

I led Lillian to a chair. “Sit down and I’ll
get you some water.”

“
I don’t need a drink,” she
protested, “at least not one of water.”

“
Sit,” I commanded, and to
my great surprise, she obeyed. I came back a few seconds later with
a bottle of water from the refrigerator in back.

“
You know I don’t like it so
cold,” she said.

“
Just drink it.” I swear,
sometimes dealing with her was like having a
three-year-old.

She took a few sips, then sighed heavily.
While she was composing herself, I said, “You know, I think you’re
right about Hester.”

“
Why do you say that?” The
color was coming back to her cheeks, and I forgot about calling 911
for the moment.

“
When we searched Maggie’s
house, I thought I saw someone in the bushes outside,
remember?”

“
Of course I do. I’m not
senile.”

That was Lillian’s next stage of recovery.
Snapping at me was a good sign. At least that’s what I told
myself.

“
Well, I didn’t say anything
at the time because I thought I was probably imagining it, but I
could have sworn I spotted Hester in the bushes watching
us.”

“
That makes sense, if what
I’m thinking is correct. We had a conversation at the funeral that
I thought was a little odd, but it’s making a lot more sense now
under this context.”

I remembered their talk, and how I’d
eavesdropped. “She said before long it would just be her, and she
didn’t sound all that broken up about it, did she?”

“
You heard that?” Lillian
asked pointedly. “Jennifer, you know that listening to other
people’s conversations is rude.”

I smiled at my aunt. “Hello Pot, my name’s
Kettle.”

She didn’t think I was all that amusing, but
my aunt was a great eavesdropper from way back. If she didn’t like
the fact that I’d turned the tables on her, that was just too
bad.

“
If you’re quite finished,
we need to go,” Lillian said.

“
I’m ready if you are.
Should we have Bradford meet us there?”

Lillian scowled. “On what pretext? Let’s
hold off for now. After all, she can’t suspect we know what she’s
been doing.”

I flipped the sign
to
closed
and we
headed for Lillian’s Mustang. When she started driving away from
town and Hester’s shop, I asked, “Where are you going?”

“
Before we talk to Hester,
we have to warn Hilda.

If there’s one person on earth Hilda trusts,
it’s her, and I won’t have it on my conscience if anything happens
to her.”

“
Okay, I’ll buy that,” I
said. “Hey, how do you I know where Hilda lives? I’ve known her
longer than you have, and I don’t have a clue.”

“
She invited me over for
coffee the other day,” Lillian admitted. “She even drew me a map.
Since we had Maggie’s memorial, that woman’s been doing her utmost
to be my new best friend. You didn’t have anything to do with that,
did you?” When I didn’t answer right away, she pushed. “Jennifer,
what did you say?”

“
Your name came up in
conversation,” I admitted. “She asked, so I told her a little about
Uncle Roger. That’s it, I swear.”

“
Yes, I got the feeling she
was going to invite me into their Widows Club. Good thing I didn’t
get to know her sooner, or my name might have been on that list as
well.”

I touched her shoulder lightly as she drove.
“You didn’t qualify,” I said.

“
I most certainly am a
widow, even if I did have a husband or two after Roger.”

“
I’m not disputing that,” I
said, “but none of the other women had any family they’re close to.
That was kind of the whole point.”

Lillian shared a warm smile, lacking any
hint of the acidity she could usually muster at will. “We are an
odd group ourselves, aren’t we? But it’s nice belonging to
someone.”

“
I agree,” I said as we
pulled up to a modest house on the outskirts of town. The lawn was
well kept, and the bungalow had been freshly painted a charming
shade of pale blue, with royal blue shutters and a white front
door. It looked perfect for one person.

“
How are we going to break
the news to her?” I asked.

“
The same way we do
everything else,” Lillian replied. “Direct and without
doubt.”

I touched Lillian’s arm before we got out.
“What if we’re wrong?”

“
Jennifer, warning her
doesn’t hurt anything but our pride if we’re off base, but on the
positive side, we may just save her life. Isn’t that worth the
risk?”

“
It is,” I said.

We walked to the door, but our repeated
summons went unanswered. “Either she’s not home or she’s ducking
us,” I said.

“
Let me leave her a note,
and we’ll find Hester. I just hope we’re not too late.”

Chapter 17

“
Are you sure we shouldn’t
call Bradford first?” I asked Lillian as we pulled up in front of
Hester’s shop had started to rain, coming down in sheets, and the
darkness of the day matched my view of the world. “We can make it a
casual request.”

“
Call him if you’d like,”
Lillian said, “but I can tell you what he’s going to
say.”

“
You’re right,” I agreed as
I got out of the Mustang. “I’m just not sure what we’re going to
say to Hester.”

“
Let me do the talking,” she
said. “I’ve known her forever, and if someone’s going to accuse her
of murder, it should be me.”

We dodged as much of the rain as we could
and walked into the combination copy store apartment rental agency
ice cream shop. Hester was alone behind the counter, no doubt
because of the onslaught of rain. Part of the place had seats and
tables near the freezers, while the other half was devoted to
copiers and printers and one lone computer. I didn’t know where she
handled the real estate end of her business: out of the back room
no doubt.