Dead In Bed

by Curry, Edna

  “Yes. It looked to me like she died in her sleep. Oh, it’s so awful!”

  “I’m sorry.” I reached across the table, patting her hand. I gave her what I hoped was a sympathetic little smile.

  “My Clara was a wonderful woman. She did so much good in the community. Why would someone want to kill her?”

  Surprise sent a chill up my spine. Something felt off to me. One minute, Helen was sure Sam did it, the next, she sounded like she didn’t have any idea who would do it. Which was it?

  “We’ll try to find that out. Did you see anyone else around Clara’s house when you arrived? Anyone on the street? Any other cars?”

  Helen shook her head. “No. The neighborhood was quiet. Most of the younger people go to work early and the older people stay indoors.”

  I sensed she was getting restless and was about to throw me out, but I decided to try to fish for more info. “John, the young man who let me in, is your son?”

  “Yes,” she nodded, visibly relaxing now that the subject had veered away from Clara’s death.

  “He lives here with you?”

  “Yes. He’s on disability. He has an apartment in the basement, but has been helping me out today by answering the door. People keep stopping by, offering food and sympathy.”

  “Of course. I’m sorry to bother you at such a time. Your husband died several years ago, I believe?”

  “Yes. We had only the two children, John and Clara. If there’s nothing else,” Helen said, rising. “I have an appointment with my pastor to make funeral arrangements.”

  She stood several inches taller than my five-foot-five inches.

  I rose too, then remembered what Paul had said.

  “Just one more thing. Do you happen to know who Clara met in White Bear Lake last Wednesday?”

  Helen frowned.

  “Wednesday? No, I have no idea. Clara usually works at the office that day. I have quilting group at my church on Wednesday mornings, and then attend a lunch with my Red Hat group.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “Are you sure she was in White Bear that day?”

  “Quite sure. Thanks for your help.”

  John appeared with a tall, stout man in tow.

  “Hello, Pastor Thomas.”

  I murmured a greeting at the man and a goodbye to Helen and escaped. John must have been faster, because I saw no one on my way back to the front door. But as I backed out of the driveway, I glanced back at the house, and saw a curtain move in the basement window.

  Apparently, John was making sure I left.

  Chapter 5

  I drove home. The wintry looking, dark clouds overhead began to release big drops of rain as I pulled up to my house. Cold water ran down my neck as I ducked inside.

  I made some coffee and carried a cup of the fresh, fragrant brew down to my office where I sat at my desk, savoring the hot liquid. I need my caffeine.

  I checked my messages and email. No promised list of fired employees from Sandra, Sam’s assistant. I added my notes on Helen to my file. When I finished going over the information, I looked at the clock and saw it was time for the lunch appointment at the Flame I’d made with Sandra at the Chamber dinner.

  As I opened my door, the cold rain sent shivers through my entire body, so I grabbed an umbrella. I drove into Landers with the windshield wipers going full speed. Luckily, I found a parking spot in front of the restaurant. The Flame was a large, square building on the corner of a busy intersection. I hurried inside and looked around. Only a few men sat at the counter in the coffee shop area so I moved on past the bathrooms to the dining room.

  Sandra was waiting for me at a back corner table in the large, nearly empty room. She wore a royal blue business suit with a tailored white blouse. Matching blue pumps with medium heels peeked out from beneath the table. Her outfit could have been a twin to the one she’d worn the night before at the Chamber dinner, except that one had been green. I wondered if her life was as neat and orderly as her outfits.

  “You don’t smoke, do you?” she demanded as we said hello.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Good. I can’t stand eating with someone who has to go out for a cigarette before we can even have our coffee or dessert. Besides, smoking is bad for you.”

  Hmm. Maybe that athletic look was genuine. Was she an exercise and health nut? “Did you order?” I asked, picking up my menu.

  “Not yet. I assume you’re buying?” she asked bluntly.

  “Of course,” I agreed.

  I hadn’t really planned to pick up the tab, but what the hell, Sam was footing my expenses and she was his assistant, so why not?

  The waitress appeared, poured our coffee and took our orders. I chose the grilled chicken salad with French dressing and Sandra ordered a large Chef’s salad with Blue Cheese dressing.

  I shuddered at her choice of eating moldy cheese. Blue cheese was worse than cigarette smoke in my mind, but not everyone likes what I do, either, I reminded myself.

  As soon as the waitress retreated, Sandra spoke.

  “Sam told me to answer your questions. So what do you want to know about Carter Manufacturing?”

  All right, she wanted to get right down to business. That was okay with me.

  “You were Clara’s assistant as well as Sam’s, weren’t you? Or do you prefer to be called a secretary?”

  She frowned. “I suppose my job could be called either one, but I prefer assistant. I don’t take dictation.”

  I gave her a reassuring smile and nodded. “I see. Did you bring the list of people Clara had recently fired? You said you’d e-mail it, but I never received it.”

  She crossed her arms, rubbing herself as if she were cold, though the restaurant was warm.

  “I really don’t trust e-mail.”

  “Oh? Why not?”

  “We’ve had some problems with missing info,” she said vaguely, not meeting my gaze.

  She opened a navy leather purse, pulled out a printed list and handed it to me. There were about a dozen names on it. Thank goodness, she’d included addresses and phone numbers. I laid the list on the table beside me so I could see it as we talked.

  I sipped my coffee as I read the list. Several of the names were of people I knew while the rest were strangers.

  “What can you tell me about these people?”

  “I don’t gossip,” she said primly.

  “Just the facts will do. Sam said you would be helpful.”

  I figured it wouldn’t hurt to remind her of her boss’s request. Or did she have reasons of her own not to cooperate?

  The waitress appeared with our salads, arranging them in front of us. She plopped down a basket of rolls and butter and asked if we wanted anything else. We declined.

  Sandra ate several bites of her salad, then began buttering a roll.

  I waited her out, enjoying my own salad.

  “The first two women on that list were basically incompetent. So were all of the men on the list. When you don’t do your job, you can’t expect to keep it. Clara was pretty fair. Anyone who carried their weight kept their job unless they gave her some other reason to let them go.”

  “A reason like being too friendly with her husband?”

  Sandra flushed, then glared at me, her cold blue eyes sending me daggers. Was she feeling guilty? Or protecting Sam, maybe?

  “Sam is very friendly with a lot of people. That doesn’t mean he did anything immoral.”

  I nodded in agreement.

  “But Clara thought he did?”

  She sighed and sipped her coffee. “Yeah, Clara thought he did.”

  “With a couple of the women on this list?”

  She nodded. “I don’t think there was any other reason to fire Janet, Cassie or Theresa. Maybe Louise, too, though she was late a few times, so she could have been fired for that. Clara didn’t tolerate tardiness.”

  I ate my roll, wondering how much she really knew or would tell me if she did. Was she in love with Sam herself? Was she one of the women h
e played around with? Since she still had her job, Clara must not have thought so. Sandra seemed too uptight to do something like that, but you never know. Sometimes, it’s the prim ones who turn out to be the hottest or least uptight in private.

  “Did you ever see Sam do anything you would consider inappropriate?”

  She glared at me. “No! Never. He was very nice to everyone, but not in a sexual way. He knew the sexual harassment laws and followed them carefully.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “How do you know that? Did he discuss those laws with you?”

  She flushed again. Obviously, discussing sex was embarrassing for her.

  “No, he didn’t discuss that with me,” she stated primly. “We never discussed anything of a personal or sexual nature. I’m not that kind of woman.”

  “I’m sure you’re not,” I agreed encouragingly. “Because if you were, Clara wouldn’t have let you stay, right?”

  She nodded, but frowned at me as though wondering if I was pulling her leg, then continued on. “I knew his feelings about those sexual harassment laws because after Clara made a scene in the office one day, I heard him telling her how careful he was to observe them, that’s all.”

  I said nothing.

  “I wasn’t eavesdropping,” she said defensively. “They’d left the door to his office open and they were talking loud enough to be heard all over the office.”

  “Oh. So, others in your office heard this, too?”

  “Yes. Sam and Clara have offices in small rooms at one end of the office area. My desk is outside Sam and Clara’s office. Wade Burcell, the controller, has another small office, and then the accounting and sales people have desks out in the main room.”

  “I see. Did Sam and Clara argue often?”

  She chewed her lip. “No, not often.”

  “Did Clara have any disagreements with anyone else lately?”

  Sandra hesitated for a minute; I didn’t think she was going to answer. Then she rubbed the back of her neck.

  “I suppose anyone in the office could tell you anyway, they all heard some of it. She had a big argument with Wade a couple of days before she died.”

  “Oh? What about?”

  “I’m not sure. Clara said she wanted to talk to him about some report that Wade had done. She wasn’t happy with it at all. That’s all I heard before they went into her office and shut the door.”

  “Did Wade say anything later, after he came back out?”

  “No, he didn’t say anything, but he was pretty upset, I could see that. He went back to his office, shut the door, then left for lunch a few minutes later. Clara left too. So I didn’t hear anything more about it.”

  “Sam didn’t say anything about it?”

  Sandra shook her head.

  “Did you keep track of Clara’s appointments as well as Sam’s?”

  “Sometimes,” she said reluctantly. “If someone called the office when she wasn’t there, I’d make a tentative appointment and leave her a note so she could confirm it or reschedule it.”

  “Did you happen to schedule anything for her in the last few days? Last Wednesday afternoon, maybe?”

  Sandra eyed me suspiciously. “No, nothing. Clara came and went on her own schedule. She liked to do things her own way. I think she liked to keep her schedule flexible to fit in all of the charity work she did with her mother.”

  I grinned. “And maybe so Sam would never know when she would drop by the office and when she wouldn’t?”

  She evidently didn’t like that observation and glared at me. “Look, I really have to get back to work. Thanks for lunch.” She stood, then picked up her purse.

  “Thank you for meeting me today,” I said. “I appreciate your help. I know Sam does, too.”

  She nodded doubtfully, then scurried off.

  I finished my coffee, deciding to indulge myself in a hot fudge sundae. Digging around in other people’s dirt always made me hungry.

  * * * *

  The rain had stopped by the time I left the restaurant. I love the way the air feels after rain. Everything smells fresh and clean.

  I stopped at the bank, deposited Sam’s check, then went back to my office to deal with the mail, phone messages and email. I wrote checks for my bills, my checkbook still holding a nice positive balance for a change. Hurrah!

  I did some searching on the women Clara had fired. Janet lived in the country about twenty-miles away. She wasn’t home, but her son, who sounded about ten, told me she was working in another factory and would be home around six-thirty. I left her a message to call me, hoping the kid would give it to her.

  No one answered at Cassie’s house in Canton, so I left a similar voicemail for her. Louise answered and agreed to meet me for coffee at the bakery there in an hour. The bakery was fairly large and busy, but had a separate eating area with tables far enough from the sales counter to give us some privacy. The delicious odor of fresh bread and donuts filled the air.

  Cassie turned out to be tall, middle-aged and loud. We ordered glazed donuts and coffee, then made small talk for a bit. I finally asked her about having been fired.

  She scrunched up her face. “I shouldn’t talk bad about the dead, I suppose, but Clara was a bitch about tardiness. She wanted you to punch that time clock on the minute, or better yet, early. Get every second of work out of people she could, you know?”

  “So that was the only reason she fired you?”

  “I guess. It’s what she told me anyway. Though some say Clara doesn’t keep any women around long that Sam likes.”

  She drank her coffee, eyeing me suspiciously as though I might be someone dangerous.

  “Did he like you?”

  She pursed her lips. “Yeah, Sam liked me well enough. We talked a bit when he made his rounds through the factory. He always had a friendly word for everyone. Nothing personal, you understand, just friendly. My Ralph wouldn’t stand for me fooling around like some women do, and I feel the same about Ralph. We take our marriage seriously.”

  “I see. Do you know if any of the other factory women were fooling around with Sam?”

  She looked away, hesitating, then shook her head. “I don’t know anything about what others were up to. I mind my own business.”

  I would bet she knew more than she was saying, but she wasn’t talking, so that was a dead end. Though it did suggest there was some truth to Sam’s reputation for straying.

  “How’s the new job going?” I asked, finishing off my glazed donut.

  She smoothed back her salt and pepper hair and smiled. “I like it better than the one I had at Carter. My work is more interesting, and they keep the temperature in the building more comfortable, too.”

  “I’m glad you like it. Thanks for coming to meet me today. If you think of anything that might be helpful, please call me. Here’s my card.”

  She took it reluctantly. “Okay, but I don’t know anything that would help you figure out what happened with Clara. I really didn’t have much to do with anything personal with them.”

  “You never know what little thing might be helpful,” I told her.

  I glanced back as I left the bakery. She had a pleased smile on her face as though she’d put something over on me.

  My stomach fluttered. Had she?

  * * * *

  As I got into my car, my cell phone rang. It was Sam wanting to see me. I told him to meet me at my office and headed back there. Scamp needed a run anyway.

  Clara’s silver Mercedes sat outside my house when I got there. Sam stepped out as I parked. I greeted him, unlocked the door and let Scamp out to go for a run. We exchanged small talk until Scamp returned, then I brought the dog with us as I led Sam downstairs to my office.

  Scamp sniffed him, but didn’t object to his coming inside. She’s okay with anyone coming in as long as I’m there with them. But let anyone try to get in my house when I’m not there, and she’ll bare her teeth, growl and bark up a storm. Not many people will defy her and risk getting bitten. I never
tell anyone she doesn’t bite.

  I fixed some coffee at the machine I keep in the corner of my office. I’m a coffee hound and need my caffeine on a fairly regular basis or my mind goes fuzzy. I didn’t think Sam would appreciate the hazelnut-flavored kind I usually made, so I found the small can of regular coffee I kept for occasions like this one.

  While the coffee ran through, I sat, filling Sam in on what I’d learned so far. He seemed a little more together today than he’d been yesterday, but still had a dazed look about him.

  I decided to dare asking him about the rumors of his affairs, just to see his reaction.

  I wasn’t disappointed. His face turned red as he rubbed the back of his neck and stuttered.

  “People like to gossip. Yes, I see a lot of women, but I’m just a very friendly guy. The other women weren’t important to me. I only loved my Clara. I know she didn’t believe that, but it was true.”

  “She didn’t fire some women employees because she thought you were having an affair with them?”

  Sam squirmed in his chair, looking away. “Yes, she fired them. Clara was jealous and thought that, yes, but I didn’t care about those women like I loved Clara.”

  “I see,” I said, chewing my lip.

  I wasn’t sure he was telling me the truth. It sounded plausible. He hadn’t denied having affairs. He was probably just one of those men who thought they were entitled to a little fun on the side and didn’t believe it hurt anyone. Can a leopard change the color of its spots? Or a zebra change its stripes?

  He crossed his arms, rubbing them, staring at me. “No, I don’t think you do see. Clara had a hard time believing I really loved her. She always felt insecure because she couldn’t have babies, you know? Like she was incomplete or something. Like she thought the sky was falling on her life. No matter how many times I told her she was beautiful and she was the only one I loved, she couldn’t really believe it.”

  He heaved a ragged sounding sigh, his shoulders slumping.

  Was he telling me the truth? It sure sounded like it, but maybe he was a practiced liar. Womanizers usually were good liars. They had to be to get away with all the cheating. Well, it was probably the truth as he saw it anyway.