A Most Curious Murder (14 page)

They weren’t allowed to see Zoe. It seemed, the stout woman behind the front desk said, that Zoe was being interrogated at that moment. “If you want to, you can wait,” she said to Jenny, who’d done the asking.

“It’s part of the processing,” the brassy blonde went on. “Could be out soon.” She hesitated. “Or not.”

Tony began to argue with her, but Jenny pulled him off to one side.

“Please take Christopher to Zoe’s house. He’s driving us crazy,” she begged. “One minute he’s worried sick about her and the next minute he’s worried sick about catching his plane.”

“Take it easy, Jen. I imagine you’d be nervous, too, if you had to explain to the board of your publishing house why one of your best-selling authors is in jail.”

“He’s a wreck and making me into the same thing. Take him to Zoe’s. The police will be gone by now. Let him look at her work. That’s what he came for. Maybe later . . .”

Christopher, pacing the floor, walked over, his face one long scowl. “Just where is this attorney you spoke of? They can’t do this to our Zoe.” He’d skewed himself into a high-pitched snit.

“An attorney’s on her way,” Jenny assured him, fingers crossed behind her back. “But Tony can show you what’s she’s working on. It’s magnificent, from what I’ve heard. You’ll be amazed.”

“Really?” At first he was pleased, then muddled. “Have those men left her house? But I shouldn’t care about that now, should I? The poor dear . . .” He looked at his watch again. “Maybe if we go for a little while.”

Tony put his hand on the thin man’s bent back, directing him toward the door. Tony talked as fast as he could about Zoe’s house and how he’d worked on it and knew it well enough to show him into her office. His voice faded as the door closed behind them, leaving Jenny with a last impatient sigh from Christopher and the nervous words, “Poor Zoe. Oh dear, poor, poor Zoe. I hope this doesn’t take too long.”

Heads turned when Jenny and Lisa walked into Myrtle’s Restaurant that afternoon. Delaware Hopkins, daughter to Demeter, the head waitress, wore a short, brown uniform covered with a somewhat white, frilly apron. She was excited to see the Weston sisters again.

“Thought that was you two.” Delaware hurried toward them, soles of her thick shoes sucking at the linoleum floor. “Heard you was both back. Things sure getting wild around here.”

“Don’t blame me.” Lisa made a face at her. “I just got here.”

“Wasn’t me.” Jenny shook her head at the woman.

“Well, Myrtle was just saying how she’d never seen the town so worked up.”

“Say hi for me,” Lisa said.

Jenny leaned close to her sister. “You know Myrtle? I’ve never seen her. She doesn’t come out of her kitchen.”

Lisa scoffed. “Of course she does, silly. She wears a green hat. That’s how you know her.”

“That lady waiting for you?” Delaware pointed to a booth where a thin woman sat. “Guess what she ordered? Hot water
and lemon. Can you beat that? Neither one cost a penny. Some people!”

“Is that Penny?” Lisa asked.

Jenny took a hard look and nodded.

Penelope Farnum looked exactly as she had eighteen years before, when they graduated from Bear Falls High together: same hairdo—straight brown hair lopped off around her ears and straight bangs over her eyes—same blue-framed glasses, and the same wrinkling nose and pursed mouth instead of a smile.
Amazing
, Jenny thought when she slid into the booth across from her.
Like time stopping—but only for Penelope
.

Lisa started to apologize for being a couple of minutes late. Penelope waved the excuse away.

“Who do I bill?” She cut right to the chase, skipping over routine small talk.

There was no “What have you been doing these last eighteen years?” The kind of thing most people said to fill awkward spaces.

“Me.” Jenny raised her hand. “Or Zoe. She’s a pretty well-known writer. She’s good for it.”

Penelope nodded. “I checked her out.”

She gave them both a stern look. “I want you to know, when I’m in, I’m all in. I’ll stay with this to the bitter end, no matter which end is bitterest: I get her off or she swings.”

“You’ll do fine with Zoe.” Jenny had to laugh at what a great pair the two would make.

Penelope finally smiled, though it wasn’t an improvement on the severe face. “I haven’t seen you since high school. You’re not still living here, are you? I thought you’d turn out to do something big. Especially after what that awful Arlen boy did to you.”

Smack! Right in the face. Jenny swallowed words she felt like spewing.

“I did.” Jenny smiled a smile so tight, her cheeks might’ve cracked. “I’m just visiting from Chicago.”

“What are you in?”

“In?”

“What do you do? What profession?” Penelope was impatient.

“Legal aid.” Jenny said, which was a bit of a stretch, since she’d been a paralegal in her husband’s office and never worked with the poor. Charity wasn’t Ronald’s idea of the way to run his office.

“Married?” Penelope demanded.

“Divorced. You?”

“Never married.”

“Didn’t think so,” Jenny said and smiled sweetly.

“So . . .” Penelope smacked both hands on the table, making waves in her lemon water. “. . . I’ll get her out of there as soon as possible. I have to tell you, it won’t be until tomorrow. Your police chief said he’s holding her, at least for twenty-four hours. What a one-track man! Where’s she going to run, after all? Does he think no one could identify her? She owns a house and has a job. She’s pretty well known, from what I see.” She squeezed her last tiny lemon slice into the cooling water.

“Is she okay?” Lisa asked.

“She’s complaining about the food. She said they must have a large mustard mine nearby. Then she said, ‘And the moral to that is the more there is of mine, the less there is of yours.’”

“Welcome to Zoe’s world,” Jenny said.

Penelope shook her head and made a face. “I don’t like playing games with clients.” She pushed her glasses back up her nose. “Still, I thought it was funny.”

“She’s a writer. Working on a book about the two ‘Alices.’”

Penelope nodded. “The mustard mine was from
Alice in Wonderland
, if I remember right. Still one of my favorite books. In law it’s good to know a little nonsense language.”

“I get about half of what she says,” Jenny admitted. “But I’m working on it.”

Penelope shrugged. “That’s to be expected, I suppose.”

Jenny wondered if she’d just been insulted and then got madder because the insult flew over her head.

“She doesn’t like her cut-off, striped outfit. Doesn’t like the cell they put her in. Doesn’t like her cot. She said it will be like sleeping in the middle of a doughnut. I guess the edges folded up around her when she took a nap.”

She gave a sharp laugh without smiling, then went deadpan again.

“What am I looking at? Any way to clear her if this goes any further? And will there be a point where you toss her to the wolves?”

Jenny bristled. Penelope was the same nasty girl she remembered from high school. She wished she’d remembered this person better than she had. “We’re not tossing her anywhere. Me, Lisa, and Tony Ralenti, an ex-cop—we’re working hard to get to the bottom of all this.”

Penelope screwed up her face. “Keystone Kops?”

“We know what we’re doing.” Lisa took over because Jenny was speechless.

“I hope so. You want to let me in on just what that is? What you’re doing? Or am I supposed to be kept in the dark?”

“All we’re asking is that you get Zoe out of jail. You don’t have to worry about anything else,” Jenny said.

“I will worry. I’ll get her out, but then I’m not throwing her to the lions.”

“I thought it was wolves. Got any more clichés?” Jenny puffed up like a setting hen.

“I was always better than you were in English.” Penelope almost smiled. “So here’s what I’m saying. I met Zoe. This is a ridiculous charge. That little woman didn’t murder anyone. I want to help however I can. It’s too easy to go for that ‘stranger from out of town’ stuff. I just want you to know that I’ll be here from now on.”

Jenny and Lisa looked at each other in wonder.

“Well, sure,” Lisa said, drawing out the words. “As long as you mean it.”

Penelope frowned. “I don’t bother saying things I don’t mean. Okay, what’s he got against her?”

Delaware was back beside them with her pad in her hands. Jenny and Lisa, knowing the menu well, ordered Reubens and Diet Cokes. Delaware pranced away with her head high, ignoring Penelope.

“The chief has got a letter they found in Adam Cane’s house. Supposed to be from Zoe, asking Adam to meet her out by her shed early that next morning.”

Penelope frowned. “Signed?”

Jenny shook her head. “The thing’s all typed. No signature.”

“Why early the next morning? Why would he go? It’s not like they were friends, right?”

“The note said Zoe had proof he wasn’t the one who destroyed my mom’s Little Library. Supposed to be a hidden axe with a neighbor’s initials carved into it and bits of the library caught in the handle.”

“I don’t get it.”

Lisa explained the rest of what had been going on in town.

“Anything else?”

Jenny looked at Lisa before answering. “Adam died in Zoe’s backyard. I found the body.”

“I’ve got all of that. What else?”

“Zoe was the one who found his brother’s body.”

“She told me. You were there, too. Maybe you’re the killer. It makes as much sense as Zoe. What else?”

Lisa, frustrated, said, “Adam threatened to kill Zoe’s dog.”

She nodded. “I got that. What else?”

Lisa shrugged. Jennie shook her head.

“Who do you think did all of this?” Penelope asked as Delaware delivered their drinks. Penelope asked for more hot water. Delaware turned away as if she hadn’t heard.

“Who do you think did all of this?” she repeated.

“I found a hatchet buried in Adam’s backyard.”

“What’s that got to do with anything? Neither man was killed with a hatchet.” She consulted papers she’d set on the table. “And anyway, what were you doing in Adam’s backyard?”

“Looking for something, anything I could find.”

“That would be what?” She leaned forward.

“You really want to know?”

“You think I’m sitting here, on the clock, for nothing?”

“I was looking for Fida, Zoe’s dog. Zoe got the idea that Adam killed Fida and buried her in his yard.”

“And that’s how you found a buried hatchet.” Penelope thought a while. “Native Americans buried hatchets. Two hatchets, if I remember correctly from my early American culture class in college. It was to unite the Indians and their enemies: ‘Hurling the hatchet so far into the depths of the earth that it shall never again be seen in the future.’ I liked that idea. If only we could bury nuclear bombs . . .” She sighed, closed her eyes, then opened them and zeroed in on Jenny.

“I understand the brothers weren’t speaking. They had been mad at each other for years. What if, say, Aaron—because he’s the younger man and the nicer one, from what Zoe said—what if he chopped up your mother’s library with a hatchet to get in good with his brother? Then he buried the hatchet?”

“Farfetched,” Jenny said. “So then Adam went out and killed his brother as a thank-you? Pretty tough, especially as Adam was killed first.”

“I don’t need sarcasm,” Penelope said as Delaware went by their booth. Penelope reached out to grab Delaware’s apron, stopping her. “I said I need more hot water, miss. And lemon.”

Delaware smiled a mechanical smile, stood still beside them for a minute, then looked over at Jenny and Lisa. “Your orders will be right out,” she said.

Delaware looked at Penelope from the sides of her eyes and walked off, only to come back immediately with the sandwiches, a pot of hot water, and a whole lemon, which she set in front of Penelope, asking if she needed a knife.

Penelope absent-mindedly shook her head, then turned her focus back to what they’d been talking about.

“Of course Adam didn’t kill his brother. And it’s unlikely Aaron killed Adam. Nothing I’ve heard points to that. So? Do I have anything else to work with?”

Jenny hesitated only a minute, imagining how she was going to trust Penelope.

“Okay.” Jenny leaned in close so people in the booths around them couldn’t hear. “We found some papers that Aaron had hidden in his house.”

“What kind of papers?”

“Two letters. One looks as if it’s from a blackmailer or somebody with something against the brothers or who wanted something from the brothers. And then there’s a letter from an
attorney confirming an appointment with Aaron. That was a week before he died.”

“You’ve got these letters?” Penelope’s voice wasn’t quiet. She narrowed her eyes. “Are you hiding evidence?”

“No!” Jenny’s shock sounded almost real. “Zoe found them. We gave them to Tony, and he took them to Ed Warner.”

Penelope put a hand up to stop her. “I don’t know if I believe you, so I’ll just warn you to be careful, okay?” She rolled the lemon back and forth on the table. “Tell me what’s in the letters and who took the letters from Aaron’s house.”

“As I said, Zoe did. That was the day we found Aaron dead.”

“So? How’d
you
get them?”

“I took them out of Zoe’s house before the police came to search. The ex-cop we’re working with took them to the chief of police.”

“She stole them. Just what I thought,” Penelope said. When she spoke again, her voice was very low. “What’s done is done. So here’s what you’re going to do now. Are you listening?”

Jenny and Lisa nodded.

“Did you make copies of the letters?”

Jenny nodded again. Penelope smiled. “I want a set of the copies. Get it to me as soon as you can, okay?”

Penelope reached out and put a surprisingly soft hand on Jenny’s. “Be careful, Jen. I know you want to help your friend. And I know you were always a tough kid. Almost as tough as I was. And I know what you’ve been through—with Johnny and with your dad. Just don’t screw this up. I don’t want you to be the next one I’m getting out of jail.”

Her smile was genuine as she slid over, got up, and stood beside the table.

Despite having no bill to pay, Penelope laid a twenty-dollar bill down as a tip as Delaware approached.

“I’m full of surprises,” she said to an astounded Delaware. “Remember me next time.”

She headed out the door, leaving Jenny and Lisa scrambling to pay and follow her.

In front of the restaurant, Jenny reached out to hug her old schoolmate but was halted by Penelope.

“I don’t hug.” She tightened her shoulders. She informed them that she was staying at the Woods Motel, out on the highway, for the duration. “It’s cheap,” she added with what passed for a smile. “You’re paying.”

***

In Jenny’s car, Lisa leaned over to laugh. “What a horrible human being. ‘I don’t hug. I don’t smile. I don’t like people. And I’m a terrible witch.’” Lisa sat back. “You know what, Jen? She may be all of that, but she’s just what Zoe needs, And I’m happy to have a witch of her caliber on our side.”

“Lisa! Where did my sweet big sister go? You have now officially shocked me. A real swearword! And said as if you meant it. My, my, what has Montana done to you?”