A Draw of Death (Helen Binney Mysteries Book 3) (22 page)

"I don't have that much time. There must be something that could help temporarily. What about caffeine? That helps with alertness, doesn't it?"

She glanced at her laptop. "You don't normally drink coffee or anything else with caffeine. I suppose a single cup of coffee or tea wouldn't hurt, but don't start with the concentrated stuff like energy drinks. Just keep in mind that caffeine could actually make the fog worse if it interferes with your sleeping."

"There's nothing for it to interfere with," Helen said. "I'm already not sleeping much."

"Perhaps I should schedule an extra visit or two. Just to be sure you're okay."

"I won't have any time to actually have a life if my days are all spent checking in with you and my nieces." Helen finally remembered what else she'd wanted to ask Rebecca. "Speaking of my nieces, have they told you what they're up to? They've been hovering even worse than usual lately."

Rebecca suddenly turned to her computer screen and studied it as if there were detailed notes there about Lily and Laura that might explain their odd behavior lately. "They just worry about you. They've probably picked up on the fact that you're not yourself at the moment. Or you could be imagining their hovering. You can't trust your brain until the fog lifts."

Rebecca was lying. Helen was certain of it. Lily and Laura must have told Rebecca what they were up to and enlisted her help in asking all those questions last week. Helen had a sudden, panicked thought that the nieces had needed that information to enroll her in a matchmaking service. She had no intention of dating anyone. She was perfectly happy being on her own with just a few friends to call on. Friends were good. Husbands, not so much. Wannabe husbands even less so.

Surely her nieces knew she wouldn't go along with them interfering in her love life. She hoped. Whatever they were doing, they must have convinced Rebecca it would contribute to Helen's well-being. Rebecca was a sucker for anything that would help her patients. That didn't make her collusion with her nieces right, and Helen refused to let Rebecca off the hook too easily.

"I'm not imagining their strange behavior. They're different somehow. I know it. The fog could become a blizzard whiteout, and I'd still be able to tell when they're up to something. The only difference is that usually I can figure out what it is, and now I can't. There
must
be something I can do to get back to normal."

Rebecca finally looked away from her computer, a forced smile doing nothing to soften the worry lines in her forehead. "Forcing a solution will only make it worse. From what I've read, it's sort of like quicksand: the more you struggle, the deeper you get sucked into the muck. Just relax—try some meditation and gentle exercise. Give it a few more days, and I'm sure you'll be back to your usual self."

"Cranky and opinionated?"

"Exactly." This time the smile was genuine. "See? You're starting to get better already."

After Rebecca left, Helen prowled around the cottage, as if she might find something there that would help Tate to protect Stevie. It struck her that her nieces would claim she was meddling in other people's lives worse than they ever did. But what she did was different. She hadn't asked for any help, and Tate had. Admittedly, he'd worded his request like a lawyer, burying it in a warning, so he could claim he hadn't meant to encourage her if things didn't work out the way he'd hoped. But he had asked her to figure out who the killer was.

The phone rang, another call from Lily. Probably looking for the schedule Helen had promised her and promptly forgotten about.

She knew she was too tired and too sluggish to keep up with her quick-witted niece right now. Helen would be bound to say something she regretted, either because she lost her temper or simply because she couldn't express her thoughts properly. 

Helen let the call go to voicemail and went over to her computer to prepare the schedule her nieces wanted. There still wasn't much to put on it. Tomorrow morning, she planned to return to the mansion to look for the cat, on Monday there was a Friends of the Library meeting, and after that she didn't have anything specific scheduled until Thursday's Charity Cap Day.

Helen stared at the list. That couldn't be all she did in a week. She had to be forgetting something. Lots of somethings. She used to do more than that in a single hour in the governor's mansion. She still did more than the list reflected, but most of her activities these days just sort of happened without any advance planning. Wasn't that supposed to be the joy of being retired, after all? She didn't have to follow a schedule. And she certainly didn't have to account to her nieces for any spur-of-the-moment activities she chose to do. They were lucky she even bothered to send them anything at all.

Before she could change her mind, Helen emailed her schedule to Lily. Then, anticipating that the nieces would want even more details, Helen turned off her phone. Rebecca said she needed to relax, and that was exactly what she was going to do for the rest of the day. Sit and crochet and think about Vic's murder. After that, she'd go to bed early and hope that a good night's sleep would help.

Unfortunately, she couldn't will herself to relax or to sleep deeply. After another restless night, Helen awoke with the nagging feeling that if Vic's killer wasn't identified in the next day or two, he never would be.

Desperate for answers, she decided to try the one remedy that might work quickly. She checked her cupboards for something with caffeine but found nothing. Laura had given her several boxes of tea as a housewarming present, but they were all decaf. Helen almost wished she hadn't been so hasty several months ago when she'd poured out her original nurse's stash of diet cola.

When Jay and Zee arrived, Helen was already seated in the back of her car. She didn't wait for them to ask where she wanted to go. "Vic's mansion. But first we need to stop at the nearest convenience store. I need a soda."

"We don't need to go to the store for that," Zee said. "Just tell Jay what you want. I'm sure he can find something in the cooler."

It figured. They'd been trained by Jack, after all, and he considered it part of his duties to make sure there were basic refreshments on board any vehicle he drove. She just hadn't realized they'd managed to keep a stocked cooler in her car.

"I don't care what it is, as long as it's got caffeine." Helen remembered what Rebecca had said about high-energy drinks. "Just not too much caffeine. A regular dose. And not diet." She'd never much liked the taste of artificial sweeteners, and they reminded her of her original visiting nurse, and not in a good way.

"Sure thing, Ms. Bee." Jay jumped out and ran around to the trunk. At least someone did what Helen asked without arguing about it.

After a few seconds, Jay returned with a Pepsi. He opened it for her and passed it over the back of his seat. Zee put the car in gear and headed down the driveway.

Helen took a sip from the can. "How is your California job search coming along?"

"There's a casting call that we'd be perfect for," Jay said. "It isn't a speaking role or anything, but one of us is sure to get it, and then we could sneak the other one onto the set and maybe even swap places so we'd both be in the movie."

"Don't be ridiculous," Zee said. "We're looking for jobs behind the camera, not in front of it."

Jay sighed. "I know. It's too late to get tickets and make it to the call now anyway."

The soda was filling Helen's stomach, but it didn't seem to have reached her brain yet. She was so tired, it was all she could do to form a coherent sentence. What was it that had bothered her about Jay's comments? Oh, right. He did whatever his sister told him to do, even when it wasn't what he wanted to do. That was no way to live. "If you want to be an actor, Jay, why don't you go to the casting call on your own?"

"I can't do that," he said without any apparent rancor. "Zee's the brains of the operation. I'd screw it up if I went alone."

"No, you wouldn't," Zee said. "You'd probably get the job, but it's not the right one for you, so you'd be miserable, and I'd have to come bail you out. We've got a plan, and we just need to stick to it."

"
You
have a plan," Jay said. "I just do what I'm told."

"Same thing," Zee said. "You agreed to the plan when I laid it out."

Jay shrugged. "I know what's good for me. Your plans are always solid."

Helen thought he'd agree to any plan his sister suggested, solid or not. Zee probably didn't even realize how much influence she had over her brother. Jay was a lot more good-natured about being on the receiving end of marching orders than Helen ever would have been. Jay was probably used to it, having been pushed around by Zee all his life. He was lucky that Zee really did have his best interest at heart. She could tell him to jump off the proverbial cliff, and he'd do it.

What if she'd told him to push someone else off a cliff?

If Zee had decided Vic's death would get them their dream job in California, would she have been able to convince her brother to kill him? Or at least to help her to kill him? Zee was a hard worker, willing to do her fair share of the work, after all, so she wouldn't have made her brother do the whole job.

It would break Jack's heart if his niece and nephew turned out to be killers. And, really, Helen couldn't believe it of them. Not just because she liked them but because it didn't fit with Zee's organizational skills. If Zee had planned the murder, she would have done a better job of making sure they both actually had an alibi, one at midnight and the other at 4 a.m., and it would have been something better than "at home, asleep, with no witnesses except each other."

No, Zee and Jay hadn't plotted to kill Vic, but who else might have teamed up to do it? Helen had been assuming that one person acting alone had committed the murder, and therefore an alibi at
either
midnight or 4 a.m. would clear a suspect. But if two people had worked together, one of them could have tied Vic up at midnight and then the second person could have taken over at 4 a.m. to finish Vic off.

Helen needed to reconsider everyone she'd dismissed simply because they had an alibi for one of the two timeframes. To be truly airtight, an alibi had to cover the entire period of midnight to 4 a.m.

Nora had an alibi at midnight, but not at 4 a.m., and Donald had an alibi at 4 a.m., but not at midnight. They both had reasons to want Vic out of the picture, and together they would make a formidable team. Nora's skills made her a natural at manipulating people, far beyond Zee's skill with her brother, and Donald appeared to be a natural follower like Jay, dutifully carrying out the goals of the Compulsive Gambling Recovery Group.

Helen glanced down at the can in her hand and realized it was empty. Her head was spinning a little. Perhaps she'd overdone the caffeine, considering how unused to it she was. But it was working, helping her to see things she'd missed before. The police should definitely be considering the possibility of a pair of killers, not just one person.

She needed to tell Tate. Like everyone else, he was operating under the assumptions that the killer was just one person and that several otherwise credible suspects had solid alibis.

Helen dug her phone out of the yarn bag and was stymied for a moment by the screen's failure to light up. Then she remembered turning it off last night to avoid interrogation by her nieces.

She turned it on and saw several voicemails. One from each of her nieces, which she ignored, and one from Vic's long-haired fan. She tapped the screen to listen to the message.

"Miss Binney. It's Larry Warner. You wanted to know if Freddie Wade came back. It's about 2 a.m., and she just woke us up, slamming her van's doors. I'll try to keep an eye on her and let you know if she's making any preparations to leave again. I may not be able to for long, though, because the cops said we need to move on by the end of today, or they'll figure out some charges to file against us."

So Freddie hadn't fled the jurisdiction. Tate needed to know that too. Helen dialed his number and got his voicemail. He was probably at the police station again. She left him a message explaining that the killer could have been two people and that Freddie had returned, so Helen was going to see if she could get a copy of the license plate log.

"Slight change to our destination," Helen told Zee. "I want to stop at Freddie's house first."

*   *   *

Helen walked up Freddie's driveway, leaving Jay and Zee to park on the street near Vic's mansion. One bay of the two-car garage was open, and the large white van was backed up to the opening.

Freddie emerged from the garage with a scowl, obviously prepared to shoo off another unwanted visitor. "Oh, it's you. I thought it was one of those crazy gamblers again. They've apparently decided it's not enough to occupy the street across from Vic's. They're expanding their operations to staking out my property too."

So much for Larry and his friends being unobtrusive. Apparently they didn't know how to translate their skills with people watching during a poker game to real world applications like surveillance. "They'll be gone soon. The police have asked them to pack up and leave by the end of today."

"You'd think they'd have something better to do," Freddie said. "Don't they have jobs or something?"

Helen suspected that poker was their job, or at least the bulk of their income. "They're just saying goodbye to someone they admired. And speaking of Vic, I was wondering about something. I heard you were keeping a log of his visitors' license plates for your lawsuit. Did you take down any numbers the night Vic was killed?"

"I'd have told the police if I had," Freddie said. "That was about the only night he didn't have any visitors. Art left at his usual time, and that woman, his PR person, came in around 2:30 in the morning."

"Don't you ever sleep?"

"I don't have to be awake or even at home to collect the information." Freddie pointed at the two security cameras on the front of her house. "They're motion-activated and automatically take pictures of any cars that pass my driveway. Vic's is the only house after mine, and it's an otherwise quiet dead-end road, so we don't get many people coming down here who are simply lost and need to turn around, especially since everyone has GPS now. Even if you discount a few of the cars on my list as lost drivers, I've got more than enough evidence that Vic was bringing in customers in violation of the residential zoning."

If that was true, and Helen didn't see any reason to doubt it, Freddie really didn't have any motive to kill Vic. She just needed to wait him out while the case went through the legal system and she got her injunction against Vic's operating a business in his home. Without the ability to teach his poker classes from home, Vic would most likely have lost interest in living here and would have moved away, leaving Freddie and her boys free of his influence. Freddie didn't seem like the emotional, undisciplined sort who might resort to violence except in an extreme situation or as a last resort. As long as she had a reasonable chance to take care of Vic legally, she wouldn't have felt the need to kill him.

While Helen was trying to think of what other useful information Freddie might have about the night of the crime, a movement near the garage door caught her attention. Vic's cat came trotting out, dragging a small red leather handbag. The cat dropped it at Helen's feet. Before she could stoop to grab the cat, it raced back into the garage.

Freddie swooped in and grabbed the bag with an irritated huff. "That stupid cat. Something's got to be done about it. The boys saved for months to buy me this purse."

They must get one heck of an allowance, Helen thought. She recognized the designer. His purses had retailed in the vicinity of five hundred dollars the last she knew. Maybe more now.

"I'll go see if I can catch the cat while it's looking for something else to steal." Helen took a step toward the garage, but Freddie held out a hand to stop her.

"Wait. You'll need something to wrap around the cat so it doesn't hurt you." Freddie opened the van's passenger door and grabbed a canvas bag out of one of the cubbyholes near the front seat. She handed it to Helen. "You wait here by the front of the van, and I'll shoo it in your direction. The cat is pretty slow when it's dragging its ill-gotten gains, so you might actually be able to catch it. You'll have to be fast, though, because it'll drop whatever it steals as soon as it realizes you're going to try to catch it."