Death in the Cards (18 page)

And on such a gorgeous autumn day, it worked.

“Is everyone here because of the psychic fair?”

“Mostly. Some attendees are staying in motels up in Masonville. We sold out our last few rooms because of the water main break in town.” Luke's joy at a business bonanza turned to a look of concern. “Is your business okay? I haven't heard exactly where the break happened.”

I shook my head. “My laundromat's closed and I'm evacuated from my apartment for the next few days.” I smiled at Luke, wanting to soften the sound of my next statement. I knew he'd be upset if he couldn't help me. “I was hoping to stay here. I saw the no vacancy sign out front, but I was hoping you knew of someone checking out later this evening?”

Sure enough, Luke looked worried for me. “Sorry, Josie. We're booked up through tomorrow night.” Then his face brightened. “But if you don't mind sleeping on a couch, you could stay in our apartment.” The Rhinegolds have a second-story apartment over the motel's lobby and office.

I glanced at all the people milling around, then looked back at Luke and saw the tired lines in his face. I knew I'd see the same lines in Greta's face. And as gracious as they'd be to me, I knew they didn't need a guest that night, when they finally did get to retire to their private quarters.

“That's right sweet of you to offer,” I said. “But I don't
want to put you out.” I held up a hand when Luke started to protest. “How about loaning me a blanket and a pillow and I'll just sleep in my van in the parking lot tonight if—” I was about to say, if I can't get ahold of Owen, “—if I can't think of something else?”

Luke scowled. “Aw, Josie, I'd hate for you to have to—wait!” His face brightened a bit. “There is one room—but I don't know how comfortable you'd be with it if Chief Worthy says it's okay to use again. Ginny Proffitt's room is empty. It still has the yellow police tape over the door.”

I took another sip of cola, and then asked casually, as if I didn't really care but was politely interested, “Did the police officers say what they were looking for? I mean, she died elsewhere.”

“I guess for anything that would give them a clue as to her murderer. But they sure didn't search long.”

“Well, not much to search, right?” I kept my tone casual, fishing an ice cube out of the top of my glass. I popped it in my mouth, and then squirreled it back into my cheek. “I mean, just a suitcase and maybe an overnight bag.”

Luke laughed. “Josie, you never change, do you? Always the curious one.”

I sighed. Was I really that transparent? Yep, I reckoned I was. “I have a personal need to know. This is strictly confidential, what I'm about to tell you.” I knew I could trust Luke. He and Greta, after all, checked in Paradise couples by night who weren't necessarily allied by day, but never gossiped about who'd come with who, who'd left brokenhearted, or who'd come to retrieve who.

I leaned forward, lowered my voice. “Ginny Proffitt dropped off a suitcase at my laundromat just hours before she was murdered. One of those old-fashioned, hard-sided ones, caramel colored, you remember the style?”

Luke nodded. “Sure I do. The kind popular in the fifties and sixties.” He frowned. “Come to think of it, I had Lenny here help her in with her luggage, seeing as how she was the guest of honor and all. The LeFevers had told me to give her extra-special treatment—not that I don't treat all my guests special. But usually at a motel, people carry their own luggage to the room. I thought maybe she was frail. So I arranged for Lenny here to carry in her luggage.” Luke chuckled. “God rest her soul, she was anything but frail. Hale and hearty, from the one time I met her.”

I'd thought so, too. Yet, Chief Worthy had just told me that Ginny had melanoma and a bad prognosis.

“She came screeching up to the entry in a sporty number—had to cost a pretty penny to rent that instead of the usual compact model,” Luke went on. “Stopped at the last minute—I thought she was going to plow the car right into the lobby!

“Then she hopped out of the car, wearing that bright athletic suit and the hot-pink high-tops. Not the image of frailty. But I had Lenny waiting and ready to carry in her luggage. So after I checked her in, he asked her, polite as can be, if he could carry her bags to room 23.

“She looked like she was going to punch him! Hollered at him—what do you think I am, some frail old woman? He stuttered no, ma'am, and she hollered at him not to call her ma'am, so he said, okay, miss.”

I sucked in my breath at that.

Luke chuckled. “Oh, he said it all polite, not at all sassy. All of a sudden she laughed and said sure, he could carry in her luggage if he'd let her give him a big tip. Then they went outside to her car.”

Luke shook his head. “Bizarre, how her moods changed on the snap like that.”

Maybe she'd always enjoyed great health, I thought.
Maybe knowing that not only was she sick, but might die soon, had made her act so bizarrely. Could it also have something to do with why she'd met with Dru?

Luke was motioning to Lenny to come over to our end of the bar. As Lenny moved over to us, Luke told me he'd go give Chief Worthy a call to see if Ginny's room could be released. I suggested he might not want to mention he needed the room for me. Luke just smiled at that as he went over to the phone behind the bar.

“Luke tells me you carried Ginny Proffitt's luggage to her room?” I said to Lenny.

“Yes, ma'am.”

I cringed at Lenny's politeness, understanding how Ginny felt—although she was old enough to be his grandma. At twenty-nine, I was just old enough to be his big sis, only twelve years older than him. Sheesh.

“She didn't like me helping her at first,” Lenny said. “But then she somehow found the whole thing funny and let me carry in her luggage.”

“You remember anything about what her luggage looked like?”

Lenny lifted his eyebrows at the question, no doubt wondering why a dead woman's luggage would be of any interest to me. But he didn't question my interest. He'd been raised to respect his elders, after all. I cringed again at the thought, and then refocused on the issue at hand.

“I'm not likely to forget anytime soon,” Lenny said. “She tipped me fifty dollars—a real fifty dollar bill! Just to carry two bags to her room. One was just a regular black suitcase—you know, one of the wheeled kind that has a pop-up handle. But she'd tied a hot-pink bandanna to the handle, I guess so she could pick it out from all the other black suitcases at the Columbus airport.”

Lenny said this with an air of worldly knowledge meant to
show he'd been places besides Paradise, Ohio. And I knew he had. To Columbus, for the state basketball championship a year before.

“The other one was this weird kind of small square case, with this little handle. It was hard and brown.”

Like Aunt Clara's makeup case, I reckoned.

“She told me to take care not to drop it, that it had a mirrored inside.”

“My Aunt Clara always said that kind of thing about her makeup case,” I muttered.

“What?” Lenny looked confused.

“Never mind. What else did she have you carry in?”

I expected him to name the matching large caramel suitcase, but he just shrugged. “Just the two bags. She had a large tote purse thing she carried herself,” he said. You gotta love how males describe women's purses. “And there was a big brown suitcase that matched the little boxy suitcase—”

“The makeup case.”

“Yeah, that. Anyway, the big brown suitcase was in the trunk, too, but she kind of snapped at me when I went to get it out—told me just to leave it there. And then she got out the fifty and gave it to me. And that was the last I saw of her.” Lenny shook his head. “Sad and creepy how she died at the corn maze. She seemed kind of nice, in a nutty sort of way. You know, like someone's lovably crazy grandma.”

I didn't know. My own nutty grandma, on my daddy's side, my Mamaw Toadfern, wasn't exactly lovable. She hadn't talked to me since my childhood, blaming my mama as she did on my daddy's disappearance from town when I was just three. I still fail to see why I should share the blame for that, but there you have it. Nutty grandma.

“Are you sure you didn't see Ginny Proffitt after that—maybe at the corn maze? You were working there when she was found.”

Lenny shook his head. “No ma'am. I left here, went home for dinner, got my Dracula outfit, went straight to the Crowleys' to meet with Mr. Crowley and Pastor Micah and the others in the barn. We met there to get organized. Then I got on my costume and went out to my spot at the corn maze.”

“You never saw Ginny Proffitt come through?”

Lenny shook his head again, started again with the “no, ma'am,” but I held a hand up to cut him off on the first mmmm.

“Lenny, I am old enough to be your big sister. Or an older cousin. Maybe even, possibly, in a large family in which I would have a much—and I mean a
much
—older sibling, your aunt. I am not enough older than you for you to call me ma'am. So stop it.”

Lenny grinned. “Yes, m—I mean, Josie.”

I exhaled slowly, feeling better. “Thank you. You're sure you didn't see Ginny in the maze? This is really important.”

He squinched his eyes closed, concentrating. Then he looked at me confidently. “I did not see her come through. Even with all the people passing by, if she'd have come through in that bright warm-up suit, I'd have noticed her.”

I believed that. Lenny had sharp eyes and a good memory.

“And you didn't hear or see anything odd around the maze when you first got there?”

Lenny shook his head. “No. I got there at seven o'clock. By then it was well after dark. Me and all the others who were dressing up to haunt the maze met in the barn, just like Mr. Crowley had asked us to.”

The barn, I recalled from my few visits out to the Crowley place, was a good bit away from the corn maze. Anything could have been happening in that corn maze, and no one would have had to see or hear a thing.

“We got our instructions from Mr. Crowley—he was real particular about us not breaking down any of the corn stalks, because he wants the maze to last another few weeks, and he
was real proud of that maze, I gotta say. We were all dressed in our costumes and in our spots by 7:45.”

“That was fifteen minutes before opening?”

“That's right,” Lenny said.

“Thanks, Lenny.” I held up my glass, shook the ice cubes. “Refill on cola?”

He got the cola for me quickly, and then moved on to help other customers clamoring for hot dogs or burgers and chips and sodas.

I sipped on my cola, waiting for Luke to come back and tell me the verdict on getting Ginny's old room, and thought about what I'd learned.

According to Lenny, no one was out at the maze until 7:45. Darkness would have fallen at about six o'clock and in the countryside, darkness gave a complete cover. And Ginny had been seen leaving the psychic fair at about six o'clock. The corn maze workers arrived at seven but didn't go to the maze until 7:45. It should only have taken her fifteen minutes to get to the maze. So, she had to have been murdered between 6:15 and 7:45. The sound of a shot could be shrugged off as someone hunting in the nearby woods—it was deer season, after all. True, hunting after dark is prohibited, even in season, but hunters don't always follow the rules.

But why would she go to the maze to meet someone? Why would someone kill her there, knowing she'd so easily be found? The murder must have been an unplanned act of passion at the maze.

Killing her elsewhere, say, in the nearby woods, and moving her to the maze would have been difficult and surely left telltale signs on her body. And the way the corn was bent, where we found the body, made it look as if Ginny had fallen there. Then been pushed out by her feet, headfirst through the corn.

I shuddered. Took another drink of cola. Worked through
the most likely murder scenario: Ginny had met someone at the corn maze. They'd gone to the farthest corner to talk. They'd argued. Ginny pulled her gun out, maybe to threaten the other person. The other person had snagged the gun from her, shot her, then shoved her body through the corn, wiping the gun clean of his or her own prints . . . but, no. Ginny's fingerprints, and hers alone, had been found on the gun.

I shook my head. My scenario made a certain amount of sense—but it also left a lot unexplained.

Like the suicide note.

And why the killer would leave Ginny's body at the corn maze, knowing that the corn maze would be open that night.

Maybe the killer had planned to come back later, after the maze closed, to move the body, thinking the remoteness of that particular corner and the dark would be enough of a mask for the body.

Except Dru Purcell had ruined that by creating a ruckus that grabbed Owen's and my attention, enough to make us come through the corn maze. Then Owen had found the body.

Then a horrible idea hit me . . . what if the killer was angry enough at Owen and me for finding the body that he or she would try to hurt us, for revenge? Fearful that Owen or I might remember something that would disprove suicide, despite the cheesy note and the evidence?

I'd been on the go all day and in the company of other people, except while driving to Stillwater, at my laundromat and apartment, then driving to the Red Horse.

But Owen lived out in the countryside.

My heart was pounding as I tried his number again on my cell phone. Still no answer—this time just a busy signal.

I shook my head. No. Surely I was just being paranoid. But as soon as Luke told me whether or not I had a room, I would drive out to Owen's house. Just to be sure, I told myself. Not because I really missed him, or anything like that.

To distract myself, I pulled a pen out of my purse and jotted a few notes and questions on my bar paper napkin: