Murder on Old Main Street (Kate Lawrence Mysteries) (16 page)

“So where’s the toy?” Rick wanted to know.

“Yeah, where’s the toy?” Emma chimed in viciously, but I was up to the challenge. Because I’d put Rhett into his pen yesterday, I knew which toys stayed there. “Gee, thanks for reminding me. In all the confusion about the squirrel, I forgot all about it. It’s a rubber bone that squeaks. Be a dear and get it for us, would you, Rick?”

But Rick was not to be deflected so easily. “Be glad to in a minute. Would you be good enough to give me Miz Farnsworth’s phone number? I’ll need to have her corroborate your story. It’s just routine for the report.” He smiled blandly, his pencil poised above his notebook.
Gotcha
.

Looking as if she were watching a tennis match, Emma swiveled her attention back to me and raised an eyebrow.

Oh, no, you don’t,
I smiled back at Rick. Did this kid really think he could outmaneuver a woman who had survived raising two teenagers? “Her cell phone number is 209-1515, but I doubt that you’ll be able to reach her right now. I believe she’s at dinner with Lieutenant Harkness again this evening, isn’t she, Em?”

Emma turned to Rick with interest. He didn’t change expression, but he finished writing and snapped the notebook shut. “I’ll try her later then.” He tromped off to the dog pen to collect Rhett’s squeaky toy.

Check and mate.

I arrived home more than two hours later than I had told Armando I’d be there, and he was nowhere to be seen. All that was waiting for me in my totally dark house were two hungry, huffy cats. I imagined that Armando was in much the same condition, since I had turned off my cell phone during dinner and never turned it back on again. I’ve tried time and again to explain that I consider cell phones major contributors to noise pollution, not to mention the dangers of driving. I carry mine for emergencies only, but he insists on getting his feelings hurt when I don’t answer it.

At the moment I was too weary to worry about it. Armando was a big boy. He’d get over it. I did feel bad about the cats missing their dinner, though, and hurried to make amends. Jasmine accepted a scratch and a bowl of her favorite chicken and herring, served on the pass-through between the kitchen and dining room, and Simon wove annoyingly between my ankles as I struggled to place his dish of wet food sprinkled liberally with crunchies next to his water bowl.

That done, I headed for the bathtub but checked the house phone for messages first. Sure enough, the light was blinking, and the indicator showed two messages had been left. I felt sure that at least one of them was a blistering Latino rant. Well, Armando might be mad as hell, but at least he was speaking to me. I braced myself and pressed Play.

“Hope you’re havin’ a lovely evenin’ with that good-lookin’ man of yours, Sugar, but I simply could not wait to tell you the news. I found the diaries, can you believe it? I got to thinkin’ about where I’d hide somethin’ in that little place of Prudy’s, if I had to, and I kept comin’ back to the idea of hidin’ in plain sight. You know, if you want to hide a file folder, you stick it in a drawer with a hundred other file folders and label it somethin’ totally unrelated to what’s really in there. So where would I hide a book? Why, in a big bunch of other books, naturally. So I ran back up the stairs to Prudy’s apartment and started openin’ the covers of all those mystery novels on her bookshelves, and
voila
! You know, my mama was so right, you should never judge a book by its cover. The one I’m holdin’ in my hand right this minute might say Agatha Christie on the outside, but it is pure Harriett Wheeler on the inside.”

I shook my head in disgust. Didn’t that just figure? We had wasted an entire day looking for something that wasn’t even hidden. Well, at least we hadn’t compounded our error by spending the evening poking around that creepy basement. Sighing, I pushed Play to hear my second message.

“It’s Abby, Kate. I’m so sorry to have to intrude on your evening, but I just don’t know where else to turn. I’ve been arrested for the murder of Prudy Crane.”

My heart skipped at least one beat, and I clutched the phone to my ear. Poor Abby.

“I need your help once again.”

Not that I’ve been much help so far
, I thought, chagrined at this new development.

“Because I’m the sole caretaker for my mother, and I have a business in town and all, they’re willing to release me if I can post bail. It’s five hundred thousand dollars. I’ll have to put up the diner and my house as collateral. Please, Kate …” Abby paused again to try to pull herself together, “… do what you can to find a bail bondsman. I tried your cell phone, but you didn’t answer there either. My neighbor is in the house with Mom, but I can’t impose on her much longer. I really need your help. I don’t know how much longer I can keep silent.”

Nine

On Sunday morning I went to meet Margo for late breakfast at the Town Line Diner, so named because it was located in a shopping plaza on the line between Wethersfield and Rocky Hill. Armando and I often lingered over a big diner breakfast at the counter most Sunday mornings, served ably and cheerfully by Janice or Angie or Sherri, because the coffee was good enough to please even a particular Colombian.

This morning I particularly enjoyed the familiar bustle and chatter as I followed the hostess to a booth in the large back room.

I wasn’t in a good mood. It had taken me half the night to arrange for Abby’s bail and get her released. Her bond had been set by the arraigning judge at $500,000, as she had told me, and she had to put up her house and the diner as collateral. If this thing went wrong, Abby would lose everything and spend many years in prison. Who would look after her ailing mother then?

While driving Abby back to her house, I attempted to bolster her spirits with an abbreviated account of my activities since she and I had first talked. It was hard to gauge her frame of mind. She sat stiffly in the seat beside me, hands gripping each other, staring straight before her. She had aged ten years in the last week. By the time I got her home to her mother, it was well after 2:00 a.m.

In addition to being sleep deprived and worried sick that Emma’s name would soon be given to the police as an alternative suspect, I was tired of avoiding Ephraim Marsh and Mavis Griswold, both of whom had good reason to be full of anxious questions. I was tired of the no-smoking ban protestors who continued to pace and shout and clutter the sidewalks. And I was tired of quarreling with Armando, who was still pouting about last night. We had plans to take his
Tia
Estella to a late afternoon performance at Hartford Stage today, and I wasn’t looking forward to hearing more from him on the subject of silly women who have, but refuse to use, cell phones.

Emma had been unavailable by phone since we had separated the previous evening, so I had no idea what she was up to, and Joey was in town looking for a home-cooked dinner, which I would be unable to provide because I’d be out with my pissed-off man and his auntie. At the moment, Joey was sleeping in my guestroom, so I left him a note about my having breakfast with Margo at the diner.

In the meantime, there was the open house to get through, as well as Harriett Wheeler’s diaries. Arriving only a moment behind me, Margo lugged them to the diner in an elegant leather tote, which she deposited beneath our table. “Whew, these things are heavy. Where’s the coffee?” An obliging waiter appeared with a filled cup, and she busied herself with a packet of sweetener. “What’s wrong, Sugar? You’re wearin’ a mighty long face for a Sunday mornin’.”

I enumerated the events of the previous evening. “On top of everything else, Armando and I aren’t speaking,” I finished up.

She smiled sympathetically. “Nothin’ worse than gettin’ into it with your honey bun to start a day off badly,” she agreed.

I sipped my coffee. “That doesn’t seem to be a problem for you these days,” I noted recklessly. “Ready to talk about the big romance yet, or must I really keep pretending not to have noticed that you and John Harkness have become an item?”

Margo regarded me levelly over the rim of her cup. After assessing me for a moment, she decided not to pick a fight. “Well, since you ask.” She put down her cup. “The situation is this. Yes, John and I are seein’ quite a lot of each other. He is an absolutely darlin’ man, and I enjoy his company tremendously. And no, we are not discussin’ Prudy Crane’s murder investigation. That topic is completely off limits. Except for that first time I went to the police station, we do not ask each other about it, and we do not tell each other about it. Is that what you wanted to know?”

“Basically, thanks. Sorry I’m in such a foul temper. Cheer me up with some juicy details, since I’m getting my romance vicariously these days.” I grinned apologetically, and Margo grinned back. Peace restored, we ordered bodacious omelets and girl-talked all the way through them and two more cups of coffee apiece before reluctantly turning our attention to the tote bag at our feet.

“How many diaries are there?” I asked, prodding the tote with my toe. It felt heavy.

Just four, but they’re heavy going, literally and figuratively. All that spidery longhand to wade through, and it gets wobblier as Harriett ages. Thank goodness she didn’t write in them every day. These go back to the 1960s. I didn’t have time to do more than flip through the earliest one, but the first entry is in 1967. Mavis’s daughter would have been born and given up for adoption long before that.”

“Mmmm,” I agreed, “but we already know about that scandal. If Harriett did write anything about that, which I doubt, it will corroborate what Mavis told me, but that’s really not what we’re looking for. We need to know what other small-town intrigues Harriett might have documented, unintentionally giving Prudy Crane extortion fodder all these years later.”

Margo nodded and sighed deeply. “So how do you want to do this? Should we split them up and each take two?”

I pulled one of the heavy, leather-bound volumes out of the tote.
Murder on the Orient Express
was imprinted on the spine, followed by the name Agatha Christie, but when I lifted the front cover, Harriett’s shaky penmanship was revealed.

“Interesting,” I observed. “I wonder where she came up with the idea of false covers for her journals and why she went to the bother of being so secretive? From what I know of her, she had very few visitors and no close friends or relatives, once Mavis left. Who was she hiding these from?”

“I haven’t a clue, but she may not have had any specific reason. I think it was just her nature to be secretive. It’s a bit extreme, I admit, but some old ladies are just like that, you know. They take their girlish peccadilloes to the grave.”

“If that was her intention, then why write anything down? Or at least you’d think she would have burned these things when she got up there in years so nobody would ever get their hands on her secrets, assuming she had any.”

Margo smiled. “Now that one I can answer. There are very few old people in my experience, especially women, who can bear to think of themselves as really old. Why, everybody is twenty-two years old inside their heads, Sugar, you know that. Harriett Wheeler was simply in denial about her advancin’ years, just like everyone else. She probably thought she had lots of time yet before she had to give any thought to cleanin’ out that old barn, which is why poor Will and Janet had such a job doin’ it when they inherited the place.”

I turned a few more pages, my heart sinking. “How are we ever going to get through these things quickly? And we need to do it quickly. The police are convinced that Abby’s guilty,” I said and paused in case Margo had more information to offer. Apparently, she didn’t. “So we need another suspect to offer them a viable alternative as fast as we can find one. If we can’t find the truth, she’ll have no choice but to give up Mavis and Ephraim and …” I paused for emphasis.
 
“… Emma. She’ll have to in order to buy more time.” I had already told Margo of my suspicion that Millie Haines was actually Mavis Griswold’s long-lost daughter and the contacts Emma and I had photocopied the previous evening by way of researching that possibility. “I’ve got all of those contacts to wade through for any possible connection to Mavis, let alone reading diaries, and there’s the open house and taking Armando’s aunt to the theater tonight.” I heard myself beginning to whine.

“I know, I know. We’ll read as much as we can between visitors at the open house, but frankly, I don’t see there bein’ many lulls. Every curiosity seeker in town will turn out for this one.”

“Hey, Mom, Margo,” boomed a familiar voice. I looked around to see Joey waving at us as he made his way through the crowded tables to our booth. “I found your note. Looks like I’m getting cheated out of my home-cooked dinner tonight, so I thought I’d let you buy me breakfast to make up for it.” He kissed Margo’s cheek and ruffled my hair before sliding into the booth next to me. “Whatcha got there?” He helped himself to the last sausage on my plate and looked from one to the other of us. “Helloooo, anybody home?”