Getting directions to the Williams’ house, she called Deer Hollow to see if Andy was up yet. They had talked late into the night, and Andy had reluctantly agreed to at least hear out A.J.’s proposal on taking over her client list.
Andy answered on the first ring. A.J. explained her mission of mercy and said she would be back after lunch.
“Okay, but will you do me a favor and bring me back some fast food. I don’t care what, just…something.”
“You never eat fast food. Why don’t you just fix something?”
“Like what? A bowl of Cocoa Puffs? Compared to your larder, McDonald’s qualifies as health food.”
“Hey, I have been eating a lot more healthily lately.”
“Yeah, well I’m hoping for something that falls in between Gardenburgers and Ding Dongs.”
“Okay, okay,” A.J. agreed. “I’ll bring you something back.”
She poked her head into Denise’s office before she left. Simon and Lily were both in there. They instinctively cut off their conversation, but only Lily looked unfriendly.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” A.J. said. She offered what she hoped was a confident smile. “I’m really looking forward to working with all of you.”
Denise returned the smile with a practiced one of her own. Simon said, “We all want what’s best for Sacred Balance.” Lily said nothing, her face stony.
A.J. sighed inwardly and went out to her car.
The Williamses lived in a tidy little house on a quiet street in one of the newer developments in Stillbrook. A.J. parked under the spreading trees, nonplussed to see Elysia’s familiar blue and white Land Rover on the other side of the street. She got out of her car and walked slowly up to the front door.
Chloe herself answered the doorbell, looking as peaked and melancholy as she had the night before.
“Hi, Chloe. Your mom said it would be all right if I stopped by to visit with you for a little while.”
Chloe studied A.J. and then shrugged. Turning, she led the way through chilly but immaculate rooms to what was apparently a family room—although it was hard to picture a family actually relaxing in that magazine perfection.
A very fat beagle lay under the coffee table. Elysia sat on the pristine sofa eating microwave popcorn and drinking a diet soda.
“Two minds with but a single thought,” she said by way of greeting.
“Sounds like a shortage of good ideas,” A.J. returned. She wasn’t exactly annoyed to find her mother there, but she hoped Elysia was not planning on “grilling” Chloe a la 221B Baker Street. The kid already looked one step from locking herself in the bathroom with a razor blade.
“Would you like a Diet Coke?” Chloe inquired dutifully.
“Oh, that’s o—”
“Yes, she would,” Elysia broke in. “Thank you, pet.”
Chloe vanished down the hallway, and Elysia said in a low voice, “Let me do the talking, pumpkin. I think I’ve managed to establish a rapport with the poor tyke.”
“Tyke? She’s got to be seventeen or eighteen, right? And either way, the last thing she needs is to be interrogated.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. That child is desperate to talk to someone.” She straightened up as Chloe reappeared apparition-like with a glass of soda and a small bowl of popcorn, which she handed to A.J.
A.J. sat down across from Elysia, giving her mother a warning look, which Elysia ignored.
“Now, pet.” Elysia patted the sofa next to her, and to A.J.’s astonishment Chloe sat down next to the older woman. “You were telling me about Steve.”
“Steve?” It popped out before A.J. knew it.
“Steve Cussler, captain of the basketball team and the cutest boy at Reading College,” Elysia informed her. “Steve has asked Chloe to the Midwinter Ball.”
Chloe nodded. “But I don’t see how I can go,” she said, glancing from Elysia to A.J., “even if I could afford my own dress…. Steve used to go with Jennifer.”
“And Jennifer and Chloe are best friends,” Elysia said in response to A.J.’s perplexed expression.
“We used to be,” Chloe said. She swallowed hard. “She’s in college now. I got held back a semester because I missed so many classes when I…got sick.”
“Well, that’ll change next spring when you’re in college, too,” A.J. pointed out.
Chloe shook her head. “We don’t even speak to each other since…since Steve asked me out.”
“Oh.”
“It turns out that Steve dumped Jennifer,” Elysia said to A.J. “After he caught Jennifer with his best friend Stu behind the gymnasium.”
“Ah. I’m sure the bard has something to say on that subject,” said A.J.
“‘You pays your money and you takes your choice,’” quoted Elysia.
“Now, I know the Bard never said that.”
“Possibly not.” Elysia absently tucked one long lank strand of Chloe’s hair behind the girl’s ear; A.J. bit back a sardonic smile. She didn’t know how much of a backbone Chloe possessed, but she’d need stainless steel vertebrae to withstand Elysia’s…“maternal instinct.”
As Chloe’s eyes filled with tears, Elysia patted her hand absently. “Funds have been rather scarce since Chloe’s dad died,” she said. “Di was arranging with Nicole Manning, who, from what I gather, is someone very popular on the telly these days, to borrow a dress for Chloe from wardrobe.”
“She’s the star of The Family Business.” Chloe wiped her eyes.
“I know Nicole,” A.J. said in surprise. She had been sitting there wondering what the heck any of this had to do with Diantha’s murder, wondering whether Elysia really was there out of simple concern for this girl, when Chloe’s words sank in. “I did some PR for her a couple of years ago, right before she landed the Family Business gig.”
“Well, isn’t that lovely,” Elysia cooed. “Perhaps A.J. could speak to Nicole about the dress.”
A.J. shot her mother a warning look, but Chloe was already gazing at her hopefully. Then the hope died. “But even so…what about Jennifer?”
“What about her?” Elysia said. “Jennifer can easily afford her own dress. Her family has pots of money.”
“But…I mean…”
“There, there, poppet. Jennifer will have to work these things out for herself. You have to do what’s right for you.”
“That’s what Di always said.” Chloe burst into tears.
“Now, now.” Astonished, A.J. watched Elysia pull the girl into her arms. “You just let it all out.”
Chloe did just that. Muffled against Elysia’s bony shoulder she sobbed out how much she missed Diantha, how Diantha was so much more than a fitness instructor, how she was like a friend and a mother and a sister and no one really cared about Chloe anyway, and she was so ugly—Chloe, not Diantha, who was so beautiful—and why would anyone have killed her, and why did everyone have to die, and she missed Di so much, and maybe Steve didn’t really want to go to the Midwinter Ball with her anyway….
And on and on and on.
A.J. watched in disbelief as Elysia sat calmly through the torrent of tears and talk, patting the girl’s thin shoulder and murmuring soothing things.
Finally Chloe regained control of herself.
“Why would anyone want to kill someone as wonderful as Di?” she asked plaintively, for the third time.
Elysia shook her head sadly. “I can’t imagine. I’ve tried to figure it out many times.”
Her mother was going over the top, in A.J.’s opinion, but Chloe seemed to be looking inward and didn’t appear to have heard the answer.
“Maybe Lorraine,” she said.
“Lorraine?” A.J. and Elysia chorused. They each looked at the other.
“Lorraine Batz,” Chloe said. She looked at A.J. and then Elysia. “Because of Michael. Michael and Diantha, I mean. Because they were having an affair.”
Twenty
“I don’t believe it,” Elysia said.
They were sitting at a table
outside a Starbucks; they had the small patio to themselves, as, judging from the low-hanging clouds, rain was imminent.
A.J. stirred her chai latte absently. “He had a key to the studio. I never quite understood that.”
“She wouldn’t meet him in the studio,” Elysia protested. “She wouldn’t meet him at all. He was half her age.”
“And married.”
“And married,” Elysia agreed. She brooded over her black coffee.
“Remember Detective Oberlin saying that the police had locked up after searching Aunt Di’s house? But the guy who knocked me down didn’t break in.”
“You think Michael Batz had a key to Deer Hollow as well as the studio?” Elysia asked, her eyes narrowing. “You think he was searching for something—anything—that might reveal his affair with Di?”
“It’s possible. I sure as heck wouldn’t want evidence found that I’d been having an affair with someone, if something suspicious happened to that someone.”
Elysia shook her head repudiating this. “I know Di. She wouldn’t have had an affair with a man half her age—especially a married man!”
“She must have been lonely. All those years without Gus. And…neither of us were around much.”
“She didn’t have an affair with that man.”
“Why does the idea bother you so much?” A.J. asked curiously.
“It doesn’t bother me so much; it bothers me the amount one would expect it to bother me.” Elysia drank some coffee. “I suppose this does strengthen his motive.”
“How? I can see it might give his wife a motive.”
“Very likely Di wanted to break it off, and he didn’t.”
“Maybe,” A.J. said doubtfully. “He seems pretty self-absorbed, though. I get the impression the only thing on his mind is getting to the Olympics. I can’t see him committing a crime of passion. And I can’t see Aunt Di threatening to go to his wife.”
Elysia snorted at the idea. “Hardly. His motive remains financial. He had to know Di was bequeathing him money for training; perhaps he thought it was more money than it is.”
A.J. tried to think back to the afternoon when the will had been read. Batz had not been surprised at the legacy, only the codicil. She wondered if she could convince Mr. Meagher to reveal what was in the codicil. Probably not. But what if Elysia were to do the asking?
She said, “Do you think Detective Oberlin knows Aunt Di was having an affair with Batz?”
“There’s no proof that she was.”
“According to Chloe it was pretty much common knowledge.”
Elysia said shortly, “Then I imagine Detective Oberlin knows about it.” She sighed and stubbed her cigarette out in the lid of her coffee cup. “How are things going with Andrew?”
“We talked last night.”
“And?”
“I guess I feel a little better about things,” A.J. said unwillingly. “I know in my heart that he was almost in as much pain over our divorce as I was.”
“Of course he was!” Elysia patted A.J.’s hand. “You just give it some time, pumpkin. You two will work it out.”
A.J. opened her mouth, but Elysia was already on her feet.
“I must dash.” Her eyes glinted. “Why don’t you speak to Detective Oberlin about Michael Batz? Pick his brain. And I’ll have a word with Bradley.”
“Mr. Meagher?”
“That’s right. I want to know more about that codicil,” Elysia said.
A.J. watched her go, slim and long-legged in her tight jeans and stilettos, and she realized she was smiling. Elysia was never going to be cast as the lead in I Remember Mama, that was for sure.
She was finishing her tea when she noticed the hair salon across the street. Impulse read the pink and black window script. A.J. touched her cropped head self-consciously. Her hair was beginning to grow out, giving her a tufted shaggy look. She was starting out on a new phase in her life; it was time for a new haircut. Something a little more subtle than the last new-phase cut she’d treated herself to with her own trusty scissors.
Tossing her cup in the trash, she rose and ran across the street. The salon was slow on a weekday afternoon and A.J. had no problem getting an immediate appointment. She sat down in the chair, reassuring herself that the gum-chewing stylist could hardly do more damage than A.J. already had—even if she did sport a green mohawk and look about Chloe’s age.
The stylist examined A.J.’s hair, touched the ends lightly, blew a giant pink gum bubble, and popped it. “I don’t know if I can match that cut,” she said regretfully.
Lost in her own thoughts, hypnotized by the snip, snip, snip of glinting scissors, A.J. was oblivious to “Edna’s” chatter until a name registered.
“Lorraine Batz?” she said, raising her eyes to Edna’s face. “She’s a client of yours?”
“Mmm-hmm…” Edna squinted at a tuft of A.J.’s hair pulled taut between her fingers, and gave another judicious snip. “She and Michael both.”
“He’s got beautiful hair,” A.J. said, momentarily distracted. “Like one of those Renaissance angels.”
“Thanks.”
A.J. tried again. “I guess it can’t be easy being married to an Olympic hopeful.”
Edna snorted, apparently concurring.
A.J. racked her brain for something to say that would stimulate the conversation. “Is Lorraine a runner as well?”
“Well, yeah, but not in Michael’s class.”
“Did they grow up around here?”
“Yep.”
“Do they have any children?” Now that was lame, A.J. reflected.
But to her surprise Edna paused in her pruning to meet A.J.’s mirrored eyes. “Not yet.”
Trying to interpret that particular inflection, A.J. ventured, “Not while Michael’s in training?”
“Not until Michael’s made the Olympic team.”
“What if he doesn’t make the team?”
“Girlfriend, do not even go there,” said Edna.
Detective Oberlin was not available when A.J. phoned the police station. Or, if he was available, he was not taking A.J.’s calls. She remembered his scathing comments about amateur sleuthing and decided it had been a bad idea to try to talk to him about Michael Batz anyway.
She wondered if Elysia had been successful in getting Mr. Meagher to reveal the contents of the codicil to Diantha’s will, but Elysia was not picking up her phone either.
For a few moments A.J. sat in her car drumming her fingernails on the steering wheel, trying to decide what to do next.
She didn’t wanted to place undo importance on what she had learned from Edna, but it did seem that Michael Batz had a complicated personal life. Had things become so complicated he had resorted to murder? Of course they had only Chloe’s word that Aunt Di had been romantically linked with Michael Batz. It was possible that Chloe was mistaken. True, she had seemed to take it for granted that they knew about the affair—as though she believed it was common knowledge—but no one else had so much as hinted at such a thing.
Then again…a hundred-thousand-dollar bequest seemed like more than just a show of faith in someone’s Olympic potential.
Lily would know, A.J. reflected. But she couldn’t imagine herself asking Lily. And she couldn’t imagine Lily confiding in her.
A.J. conceded defeat and started the car.
When she arrived home she found Andy in the kitchen cooking herb-roasted chicken, one of her very favorite meals.
She stopped dead in the doorway. “Oh my gosh. I totally forgot I was supposed to bring you something to eat. I decided to get my hair cut.”
Andy grinned. “In that case, I forgive you.” He cocked his head. “And I approve of the new cut.”
He was being so nice; it made her a little uncomfortable. She felt better after their talk last night, but it wasn’t that easy to let go of all her anger and bitterness. She wasn’t sure if she was truly ready to be friends with Andy. She wasn’t sure she would ever be. A.J. sat down at the ta
ble. “Where’s Monster?”
“I put him out when I got back from the market. I think he’s in the back harassing some innocent squirrels.”
She bit back a smile at his expression.
“So how did the sleuthing go?” Andy inquired into the silence that fell between them. He opened the oven door.
“I wasn’t sleuthing,” A.J. said defensively. “I was on a mission of mercy.”
Andy looked amused, and before long A.J. was filling him in on everything Chloe had said, her spike of discomfort forgotten.
“I can see Di having an affair,” he said when she had finished. “Thirty-something years is a lot of loneliness.”
“He was less than half her age. What would they have had to talk about?”
Andy cocked a knowing eyebrow, and A.J. felt her face heat up—which was ludicrous. It wasn’t like she didn’t appreciate the idea of hot sex—although appreciating the idea was about as close as she’d ever come to it.
“He’s married,” she said shortly, and to that, Andy had no answer.
“What about this kid, Chloe?” he suggested after a moment or two. “She sounds pretty unstable.”
“I think she’s just your normal, run-of-the-mill, mixed-up eighteen-year-old.”
“With a serious drug addiction.”
“Which Diantha helped her beat.”
Andy asked, “What if the kid started using again?”
“There’s absolutely no reason to think—”
“I’m just saying—theoretically—what if the kid started using and Di found out?”
“She’d have tried to help her.” A.J. could feel her temper rising. Andy had never liked Aunt Di.
“What if she didn’t want to be helped?”
“Well, of course she’d want to be helped!”
Corpse Pose Page 19
