A Draw of Death (Helen Binney Mysteries Book 3) (17 page)

"I don't know," Geoff said. "You got him killed before I did my interview."

"I didn't do anything."

"You don't have to." Geoff rubbed his right arm where it had been broken earlier in the year. "You just exist, and people around you get themselves killed."

"That's ridiculous." Helen did feel a tiny, irrational bit of guilt over her first nurse's death, but that was the only one she'd had any real involvement with. "I'd never even heard of Angie Decker before I started looking for her, and I'd barely met Vic Rezendes."

"All I know is that any time I'm working on a story and you get involved, someone dies." Geoff headed for the exit. "I'm not risking it."

Helen followed him out of the room. "Wait, I had another question to ask you." Except she couldn't think of what it was. Stupid lupus fog. Geoff kept going, but she caught up with him at the desk. There was a line at the guest log, so he had to wait to sign out. He pointedly kept his back to her.

"It's nothing to do with Vic's death." Helen remembered that much. Something to do with the library. No, not the library, the woman outside the library. That was it. "It's about Marianne. The homeless woman who hangs out near the library."

Geoff turned cautiously. "What about Marianne?"

"That's what I want to know. I'd like to help her, but I don't know if there's anything I can do. I didn't understand much of what she said to me."

He relaxed finally. "That's Marianne for you. She's really smart—used to be a reporter, in fact, and did some award-winning investigative pieces, the type of work I definitely do
not
do. Scary, dangerous, life-threatening work. But then she developed some sort of mental illness, probably from spending too much time around people like you. And the next thing I knew she was homeless. Reporting isn't exactly a stable career these days, so no one's got any savings, and we're always living on the financial edge. When her problems first manifested, she could still work, but she handed in a few pieces that weren't quite up to scratch, so she didn't get paid, and then it snowballed from there. No money, so she couldn't get treatment, so she couldn't do the work that would generate some money to get the treatment that would enable her to work."

"And now she's living on the streets."

"Not entirely," Geoff said. "She goes to a halfway place to sleep and shower, but she doesn't trust anyone, so she spends as much time as possible outdoors."

"Just being outside during the day is bad enough in this weather."

Geoff nodded. "The librarians encourage her to come inside when they can. I think Marianne remembers her days doing background research there. She thinks of going to the library as going to work, like it's her job. She compiles whatever she reads into her little newsletters. It's so sad, really. You can see some of her intelligence still, but she can't quite get the various bits and pieces inside her to line up right. Her writings are full of conspiracy theories, but the facts don't add up to her conclusions."

"Have you read her newsletter?" Helen said. "I couldn't make any sense out of it. She's afraid of some people she calls Lennias, but I couldn't figure out who they were. She said they were targeting me too."

"Oh, don't worry about that," Geoff said. "Marianne can understand what she's reading, but only while she's actually looking at the page. Even a few seconds later, she only remembers bits and pieces of the article, and not necessarily the important ones. It took me weeks to figure it out, but the Lennias are millennials. What's been called the 'me, me, me' generation. If you look at her citations, they're all about millennials. Like the
Time
article that started by calling them lazy, entitled, selfish, and shallow."

"Older generations always say that sort of thing about the next group to come along," Helen said. "I'm part of Generation X, and we've been called cynical, alienated, and skeptical of authority. I'll admit to the last one, but not the others."

"You and I understand that the labels are just generalizations, not at all helpful when dealing with individuals," Geoff said. "But Marianne gets it all confused. You never know which bits of which articles she's actually remembering, and then it's like she plays Mad Libs with them, and connects them in some completely illogical way. My best guess for why she thinks the millennials will end the world is that she started with the idea that millennials, as a group, are less interested in environmental issues than prior generations. Then, she added in the various apocalyptic warnings about climate change, and somehow concluded that millennials, by not addressing these environmental issues, were going to cause the end of the world."

"I can sort of see how she'd get there," Helen said. "But why would she think millennials were trying to kill her specifically? Not just end the world, which would incidentally involve her death, but actually focusing on her personally and assaulting her?"

"That I can't explain," Geoff said. "I've never seen her afraid for herself. More like she's always anxious like the mythic Cassandra. Marianne believes she's warning about some impending disaster, and no one will listen to her."

"She's definitely afraid now," Helen said. "And she's not just imagining the escalating threat either. She had some nasty bruises that looked like someone had hit her."

"That
is
odd," Geoff said, absently rubbing his right arm. "If it were almost any other homeless person, I'd be inclined to suggest she'd been involved in some sort of altercation, but Marianne isn't like that. She's always cheerful, and she tries to help people. I've seen her pick up a twenty-dollar bill and go running to give it to the person who dropped it, without a moment's hesitation. Of course, I've also seen her pick up a discarded napkin and return it to the person who dropped it, which wasn't as well-received as the lost cash."

"She said she'd reported the assault to the police, but I doubt they believed her. Besides, she couldn't—or wouldn't—say who did it, except the usual suspect: a Lennia. I suppose that would at least give the police an approximate age for her attacker."

"Not really," Geoff said. "Somewhere along the way she forgot that millennials are people born in the 1980s or 1990s. Now anyone can be a Lennia if Marianne thinks they fit any part of the profile: lazy, entitled, selfish, or shallow."

"I guess I should be flattered. She told me I wasn't a Lennia."

*   *   *

Geoff hadn't been able to tell Helen anything else useful about Marianne, and he'd reached the front of the line to sign out before she could dig any deeper into what he might have known about Vic Rezendes.

When she returned home, Tate's car was parked in its usual spot. Jack pulled in beside it. "I assume you're going to want to talk to him before you go inside."

"Of course. The only real question is whether he wants to talk to me." Helen grabbed her yarn bag. "Meanwhile, don't worry about Jay and Zee. If it looks like they're serious suspects in Vic's murder, I'll make sure they have a good lawyer. Oh, and please let them know I'm going to want a ride tomorrow morning, the usual time."

"Whatever you want, Ms. Binney." Jack locked up her car and waited for her to walk to the garage before he got into his own vehicle and left.

The interior of the garage wasn't much warmer than the outdoors. From the chill in the air, she thought Tate must have just gotten here. It was almost 4:00, close to the time he usually left for the day. If he'd spent all day with Stevie instead of here in his woodworking studio, he had to be really worried. He'd certainly never taken a whole day off to keep Helen out of trouble.

The fact that he was sitting in his director's chair and staring at the back wall instead of fidgeting with his tools only made her more concerned. He always claimed that woodworking, like Betty's and Josie's needlework, helped him to relax, but it didn't seem to be working today.

Helen set her yarn bag down next to the door and climbed into her usual director's chair. She'd been meaning to buy a chair that fit her better and wasn't covered with sawdust, and have it set up out here, but it was one more thing that needed to go on the To Do list app that she couldn't remember to ask Lily about. She'd deal with it after Vic Rezendes's killer was caught.

"How's Stevie doing?"

Tate jumped, and then pretended not to have been startled. "She's fine. A lot better than I am. She's in denial, but I can see how bad things are looking for her."

"Worse than yesterday? Did they find the murder weapon?"

"Not as far as I can tell. They're still working on the assumption that it was a chisel owned by Stevie."

"That doesn't make any sense," Helen said. "Why would she go there at 4 a.m., armed with a chisel?"

"The tools were in the poker room. Stevie and her crew stored their toolboxes in there overnight."

"Then anyone could have grabbed the tool to kill Vic, not just Stevie and her crew."

"Not really. They were in a locked closet, and there were no signs of its being tampered with. According to Stevie, only she and Vic had keys."

"Then Vic could have unlocked the door. Maybe he decided to play carpenter and opened up the closet to rummage around, and then the killer showed up to find all those convenient sharp pointy things right at hand, so he took advantage of one of them." That sounded a bit farfetched even to her slow brain, so Helen tried to come up with another possibility. "Or what if it wasn't a chisel at all, but something that Stevie didn't own?"

"Like what?"

Helen vaguely recalled seeing something recently that fit the description of a wide metal tip, sharp but not pointed like a knife. What was it? Eventually, it came to her: "A wrecking bar."

"Stevie and her crew probably have a dozen wrecking bars, all told."

"But only the one used by the killer would have traces of blood on it." Had the rust she'd seen on Marty's wrecking bar actually been blood? He had sneaked onto the property the day before the murder, after all. And he knew better than most just how easy it was to get around the gates. Maybe he hadn't been interrupted while testing the exterior cameras, but had intentionally failed to connect them. Still, she had trouble imagining Marty as a killer. The obvious way he worried about his clients' security couldn't be faked, and she couldn't see him turning into the very danger that he worked so hard to protect people from.

"They're testing everything they found at the murder scene."

"That's assuming the killer was stupid enough to leave it there, covered with fingerprints and DNA," Helen said. "There must be other possibilities for the murder weapon, who owned it, and where it is now."

"You'd think so, but Peterson doesn't, and I don't have anything particularly convincing to offer. That's why I'm worried. The longer the police focus on their initial theory that it was someone who worked on the renovations, the harder it will be to get them to consider other options. By the time they do, evidence will be lost."

That blindered approach sounded like Detective Peterson all right. Back when Helen's nurse had been killed, he'd been so convinced it was a burglary gone wrong that he didn't even consider any other suspects.

Helen sat and stared at Tate, who, in turn, stared at the back wall. There had to be something they were missing. If the police couldn't find the murder weapon, she and Tate probably couldn't either. That left motive and opportunity. She'd discussed a number of motives with Betty and Josie, but they hadn't reached any definite conclusions, and there was no way to narrow down the suspects based on opportunity. Hardly anyone had an alibi for 4 a.m.

Wait. What was it Hank Peterson's uncle had said about the murder? "I heard a rumor that Vic was drugged, probably around midnight."

"I heard it too." Tate continued staring at the back wall, unimpressed with her news.

"Shouldn't that make it easier for people to establish an alibi? More people are awake at midnight than at 4 a.m."

"Not construction workers," Tate said to the back wall. "Stevie gets her crew together around 6:30 for some prep work before going to the site, and she doesn't tolerate tardiness or sleep-impaired employees. They should have all been in bed by 10:00, like she was, maybe 11:00 at the latest. They'd all volunteered to put in some overtime on Sunday to finally get the project finished, and she doesn't remember anyone looking particularly sleepy that morning."

Helen hated even thinking it, but she had to ask. "What about Marty Reed and his crew?"

"That's just as crazy as suspecting Stevie and her people," Tate said. "Marty never gets upset with anyone, and Jay and Zee are good kids, despite their family's reputation."

"Did you know that Nora Manning, the gaming industry's PR person, has been staying at his mansion? She was there the night he was killed." Helen tried to find a more comfortable position on the chair. "I wish I could say she'd be a reasonable suspect, but I don't know why she'd want him dead, and she claims to have been at an open mic night at a local bar until well after midnight. If that's true, she actually has an alibi."

"I'll check it out, just to be sure." Tate reached for his earplugs but only to fidget with the cords connecting them, much like a nun with her rosary.

"What about Vic's neighbor, Freddie Wade? She really hated him and wanted him gone."