by Etta Faire
She stopped herself.
I put a hand on her shoulder. She pulled away. “You were hiding the outfit from Bruce, huh? Did he and Myrna come looking for it after the incident?”
She looked around before sitting straighter on the stool, folding her hands in her lap and squeezing her fingers together. “Yes. They were both very angry about it too. I was supposed to be at the roller rink, but I was having a very hard time carrying on without Sylvia. I don’t think Bruce and Myrna knew I was there.”
“They were talking about the outfit?”
“Yes. Myrna said they needed to go to the police about something, but Bruce said they didn’t need to tell them squat. He said, ‘We didn’t know it was going to go this far. They have their killer. It doesn’t matter who gave her the reason to kill. We just need to get that jumpsuit.’”
The reason to kill? What had they done to Rebecca?
Mrs. Darcy went on. “I had already covered that outfit in plastic and put it away in the back of the closet, thank God. And when Bruce asked me about it, I told him I never saw it. Yes, I lied. I said Sylvia never left anything anywhere. I’ve been hiding it away for forty years. I thought you would have answers.”
She looked down at her veiny hands. “Sylvia’s memorial service was later that week, and I told Myrna not to come. It made me sick to see her. Whatever she talked Bruce into doing was what caused Rebecca to snap. I know because Myrna told me, just before she died. She came to me and she said, ‘It wasn’t supposed to happen like that.’ Now what do you suppose that meant?”
She paused. “I guess we’ll never know. I was a fool to show you the outfit.” She got up to leave. “It was a mistake to come here. It was a mistake to think Sylvia really had answers for me. If you’ll excuse me…”
“I’m doing a seance on Saturday by the drive-in. 3:30. A catered late lunch.”
“I heard. Fifty dollars a ticket.”
“I won’t charge you or Bruce. Just come. Sylvia will be there, and we’re going to figure this whole thing out together.”
For a woman who desperately needed money, I was sure handing out free tickets fast.
She fake smiled. “I don’t think I can take too many more empty promises. Fool me once…”
After she left, I tried to think what on earth Myrna and Bruce had been up to forty years ago. I thought Mrs. Darcy had been hiding the outfit away because the yellow paper Sylvia wrote the note to Myrna on was the same yellow paper as the love notes in the locker. Police might have been able to forensically link them, proving Bruce typed the letters out.
But whatever she was talking about was much bigger than that.
Then, it hit me. It must have had something to do with the camera Myrna found by the makeup store, because the Makeup Emporium was right next to the vet clinic.
What if Bruce followed Rebecca the night Sylvia was out of town? The night the rink cop said neither he nor Rebecca were at Darcy’s.
If that camera had scenes from the vet clinic affair, Bruce might have been blackmailing Rebecca with them, which would have given her a reason to kill, so to speak.
Sylvia said she and Myrna had joked about Myrna developing the photos. If they were the kind of pictures I was guessing they were, taking them to the Fotomat where strangers would process them and see every single photo was not a possibility for Bruce. But talking his cousin into developing them by cutting her into your blackmailing scheme might have been, especially a cousin who needed money.
I was sure Bruce had been the one who’d written the love letters in Rebecca’s locker now. He seemed to have an obsession with Rebecca and seeing her with someone else probably hurt him. He would have wanted his sister to know about the affair.
And staging the locker played right into his plans to humiliate the woman who had turned him down time and time again. Who had hurt him and his sister.
But that didn’t exactly make sense. Rebecca couldn’t have been angry enough to kill that night because of the set up. She hadn’t known about the letters and the locker set-up until later.
I grabbed a medium roast coffee pod and shoved it into the slot in the Keurig just as Jackson appeared by my side. “You have your scrunched-up thinking face on again, Carly Doll,” he said. “The one that makes you look like an elderly baby with gas.”
I ignored him and hit the 10 oz button when it lit up and waited as the smell of coffee made my mouth water. “Did you catch all that? Hear Mrs. Darcy talking about the conversation Myrna and Bruce had after Sylvia’s death?”
“Yes. And seeing how Myrna is no longer with us, Bruce is the only one left who really knows what that was about.”
I nodded. “He’s not talking, and would probably charge me per minute for nothing if I asked.” I fished through the little basket by the coffeemaker until I found two packets of raw sugar. “Oooh, the good stuff,” I said.
“Coffee,” Jackson said. “One thing I don’t miss as much as I thought I would.”
“You’d probably miss it if you still had tastebuds and could smell,” I said. I poured the sugar into my cup and stirred it around.
I filled him in on my theory about blackmailing, and Rebecca being angry about it.
“There’s really only one way to find out,” he said.
Even though I promised the old prospector I would never, ever trespass on his property again, I needed to poke at the bear in his closet one more time.
Chapter 29
Nature’s Calling
The farmer’s market was larger than I expected when I made the trip the next morning. Huge sections of the Lake Dodson mall’s parking lot had been converted into a street fair with different booths of vegetables and flowers, along with the yummy smells coming from food trucks that seemed to be screaming at my tastebuds from every angle.
I was definitely going to try something from the Chinese truck on my way out.
I found Rebecca’s booth right away. It was called Nature’s Calling with a colorful sunflower painted sign leaning against one of the awning poles. Four long tables held plants on each of them along with paintings of plants, and plants hanging from the poles. I looked at the price of one of the paintings in case I had to smooth things over and buy something like Jackson suggested.
$150! Things needed to go smoothly because I could not afford for them not to.
There were about ten people meandering around her booth. I blended in and tried to act natural as Rebecca walked by her tables, talking to customers. She was wearing the same blue apron as a strange thin bald man with a flannel shirt and ill-fitting jeans. So I guessed that must have been Leonard.
I pretended to be interested in a hanging plant with red flowers. $15, a little more reasonable than the paintings if things went south. Still, I looked for something cheaper.
Rebecca almost dropped the fern she was helping someone check out with when she finally noticed me. She hurried up the sale then came over.
“I channeled with Sylvia and relived the incident,” I said. “And I still have some questions if you don’t mind.”
“Leonard’s not going to like you being here,” she said, looking all around, probably for her spray.
I didn’t beat around the bush. She knew who she was. “I know why you thought it might have been you, why you’ve been living with severe PTSD all these years.”
“I never thought it was me and you need to go.” She looked desperately at her husband. He didn’t notice.
“It’s normal to have the kind of PTSD that you have,” I said then whispered. “I’m talking about the bear kind.”
Her face went pale and her hands shook.
Justin had given me a small piece of paper to give to Rebecca with a helpline number on it, and I held it out to her.
Who knew there was even such a thing in life?
“Just call it when you’re ready,” I said. “There are others like you. It’s a completely manageable way to live without the oil once you learn how.”
She snatched the p
aper and stuffed it into the pocket of her jeans without looking at it. “This for real?”
I leaned into her and added. “My boyfriend has the same condition.”
“For real?” Her laugh was low and soft at first but got louder until it morphed into a smoker’s cough. Her eyes welled. I could tell she’d been living with this for a while. She looked down at her feet then up at me again. “For real?”
Leonard hurried over to us, wiping his brow with the edge of his shirt.
“You got this, babe?” the man asked, bug-eyed, looking from me to Rebecca and back again.
“Yes,” she said, cupping his face in her hands and kissing his sunken cheek. “I’m doing just fine.”
His eyes never left me, even though he was talking to his wife. “Prob’ly need a smoke break soon.”
“I’ll take one in a minute. Soon as I finish with this customer.”
He moved on.
I picked up the red flower plant even though I didn’t think I needed to at this point. “This will look great on my veranda,” I said like I actually knew. It was going to be the only flower there. “My first plant at my kind-of new home.”
“Well then, there’s a two-for-one special going on for first plants,” she said, picking up another one for me. She smiled, and for the first time, she looked calm. “Plants get lonely when they think they’re the only one of their kind out there in the world.”
She lowered her voice as she grabbed a cardboard box to put my plants into. “Next time you see Sylvia, please tell her I’m sorry. I was a terrible friend. And I did some terrible things…”
“What things,” I asked.
She didn’t answer, but I didn’t expect her too. I was pretty sure I already knew.
“You did have an affair with Jay, didn’t you?” I asked.
She sucked in her bottom lip. I could tell the phone number and the help with the PTSD softened her a little. “I guess it doesn’t matter much anymore,” she said. “Yes, Jay and I had a brief affair. Once when Sylvia was visiting her aunt, another time when she was away at a conference.”
A woman lifted one of the plants sitting on the table next to me, and I waited until she left to continue. “I need to ask you, were you being blackmailed about the affair?”
“Blackmailed? What? No. Who would blackmail me?”
“Someone with pictures of you and Jay. Someone who wanted to hold that over your head. Bruce. His mother overheard him say that he and Myrna were the reason you killed everyone. Myrna wanted to go to the police with something, but he didn’t want to.”
She threw a hand on her hip. “The man sounds pretty guilty, if you ask me. But, I don’t know anything about blackmail.”
I took a deflated breath. What was I expecting? If she really had killed everyone, would she admit her motive after she’d escaped prison? She was actually lucky Bruce hadn’t gone to the police.
I tested her newfound honesty. “One more thing. I know why you changed clothes and were discovered in jeans, but how did you get the key?”
“I remember seeing it that night when I came to. On the path. I thought I’d dropped it in all the chaos somehow. There were so many things I couldn’t admit about that night. So many questions. Nothing made sense. I was really scared. Scared of what I’d become. Scared to see what had happened. This feels good now.”
“You should come to the seance tomorrow,” I said. “Three-thirty. Lunch is catered, free for you. I’m pretty sure I’ll have this case figured out by then. But even if I don’t, I want to introduce you to my boyfriend.”
I wasn’t entirely doing this to be friendly. Killers were easier to bring to a murder-reveal party if they thought no one suspected them.
And I wasn’t sure yet.
I sat in my car, trying to eat my orange chicken with chopsticks for no other reason than reminiscing about the veranda and trying to see if I could do it now. I regretted every dropped piece of rice. I should have grabbed a fork.
It was hard to concentrate on my sticks while thinking about my case. They had to be blackmailing Jay. It was the only thing that made sense.
Sylvia said the list of addresses in the pocket of the outfit had been for Paul to throw a party for Jay on election night. But Myrna probably lied to her about that because she needed those addresses for her and Bruce. Those addresses were Jay’s biggest contributors and his family and friends.
The people he would’ve wanted to keep far away from the photo of him and a porn star reenacting a scene from Vets Do It Doggie Style.
Only one man around to confirm things now. I licked the sticky sauce off my fingers and looked the church’s number up on my cell phone.
It was a longshot. I wasn’t even sure this was the Paul Gelling I needed. I fiddled with the ghost repellant sachets in my pocket while I waited for someone to pick up.
A woman’s voice answered. “First Presbyterian.”
“Is Pastor Paul Gelling available right now?”
“Let me see…” She paused for a second. “Looks like Pastor Paul’s in a meeting. Care to leave a message? He’s real good about gettin’ back to folks.”
“Yes, maybe. I’m actually not even sure I have the right Paul Gelling. Do you know if Pastor Gelling served in Vietnam? Did he live in Landover?”
“He served in Vietnam. I do know that. I think he’s from Wisconsin. You a friend of Pastor Paul’s?”
“A friend of a friend. Tell him a friend of Sylvia Darcy’s called. If that makes sense, then I’d like to talk to him.”
“Okay, let me just write that down. Sylvia Darcy. D-a-r-c-y?”
“Yes.”
“And your name?”
“Carly Taylor.” I spelled out my name and gave her my number.
“What’s this about?”
“Sylvia’s murder.”
She coughed. “I’m sorry. You said this is about Sylvia’s murder?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I finished my orange chicken while I waited, stabbing the chicken pieces with my stick while pouring the rice into my mouth, but I made it work. I’d clean the mess up later. I kicked myself again for not getting a fork, and for mentioning murder on the phone. Who in their right mind was going to call me back now?
I was just about to head back down to Landover when Pastor Paul called. I almost choked on my fortune cookie. That was fast. He was really good about getting back to folks, even the ones who wanted to talk murder.
“Yes, of course I remember Sylvia,” he said when I asked, his tone serious and guarded. “That’s not exactly a time I like to remember too much, though. Why are you asking?”
I tried to picture the scruffy man reading poetry that night in 1978.
I took a deep breath. “I’m investigating Sylvia’s death. I’m a medium, actually. I know that sounds strange. But she wants my help in figuring out what happened in the Dead Forest in 1978. I know you were dating her cousin and were good friends with her boyfriend.”
He didn’t say anything for a while. “Yes. Yes, I was. A medium, you say? I’ll just admit I don’t want anything to do with your line of work. I know that sounds harsh, but mediums and ghosts are the occult and I’m a pastor.”
I heard him talking to someone else in the room. “Yes, Shirley, I’m talking to her now. Yes, same one as the email. I’ll tell you later. You can go.” He went back to me. “Sorry. My secretary’s all in a tizzy about this. I’m very busy, but she made me call you back asap. Something about Sylvia’s murder.”
“Sorry, I’ll be quick. I’d just like to know a few things about that time period. Did you know about the plan to scare Rebecca and Curtis at the drive-in?”
He paused. “I don’t remember. That was a long time ago, and I can’t think of any reason good enough to dredge up those old memories. I lost a lot of friends that day. It was like Vietnam all over again. I’m sorry, but I can’t help you.”
I pretended not to notice the part where he wanted me to hang up. “Do you remember if you were pla
nning a party with Myrna for Jay on election night?”
“These are very specific questions.” After about half a minute, he continued. “One of the tenets of the Executives Club at the time was to live like the outcome you were expecting. Dress the part of success. Project a positive image. So a celebration party wouldn’t have been out of the question, but I don’t remember planning one. Why?”
“Myrna asked Sylvia for a list of addresses of Jay’s family and sponsors. She said it was for a party, but I think it was for blackmail.”
“Perhaps your ghost has her memories mixed up, or maybe Myrna was surprising him on her own without my help,” he said. “Honestly, I don’t know anything about that. After the incident, I didn’t handle things very well. I just kind of left. Never even said good-bye to Myrna. I think that may have… pushed her over the edge. I hope not, but I’ve always felt guilty.”
“I see. That must have been a very difficult time for you.”
“Yes, it was. Part of the reason I decided to take the leap of faith. My life is much different now. So, if you’ll excuse me, I’m very busy.”
“Thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy day. Sounds like you don’t know anything about Myrna and Bruce blackmailing Jay, sending him photos or threatening to.”
“Myrna and Bruce?” he said. “And what makes you think he was being blackmailed, anyway?”
“Blackmail and murder?” I heard someone yell in the background.
“Shirley, go. And close my door on the way out.” As soon as I heard the thud of a door closing, he went back to me. “So what evidence do you have that makes you think there was blackmail?”
“It’s a long story,” I said. “I’m pretty sure Bruce witnessed an affair that Jay had with Rebecca and took pictures of it. I think he may have been using those photos for fun and profit.”
I gulped, hardly believing I’d just said that fun and profit line to a pastor.
