Gilt by Association

by Karen Rose Smith

  Rodriguez opened a drawer under his computer, and Caprice wondered if he was going for a gun.

  But instead of a weapon, he pulled out a pair of glasses and settled the black-framed spectacles on his nose. “I thought you looked familiar. Your picture was in the paper. You solved that murder last summer.”

  “I did. But I had lots of help along the way. People answering questions and giving me clues. So that’s why I’m here. I need leads.”

  He cocked his head and studied her speculatively. “Just who gave you my name?”

  “I’d rather not say.”

  “Then maybe I’d rather not talk.”

  Lady whined a little and Caprice glanced down at her. She pointed to the rubber mat that lay in front of the desk.

  “Down,” she said firmly with a hand signal.

  Lady obeyed and Caprice quickly took a treat from her pocket and gave it to her pup. “Good girl. You’re smart!”

  Then she returned her focus back to Rodriguez. “Someone told me you and Louise were friendly. If you were friends, then you’ll want to help me. I intend to get to the bottom of this whether you do help or not. But if you don’t want to help, then I have to wonder why.”

  He looked away for a moment and grimaced. “There are lots of reasons why I don’t want to say anything, and none of them have anything to do with my guilt or innocence.”

  “Anybody can be a suspect. Give me a reason not to make you one.”

  He crossed his arms in front of him on the counter and glared at her. “What do you want to know?”

  “Let’s start with something easy. When did you meet Louise?”

  Now he took off his glasses and fiddled with the side piece. “About twelve years ago.”

  “Did you meet her here?”

  “Where else would I meet her? Do I look like I’m anywhere in her league?”

  Caprice ignored that. “Did she come in to get her car fixed?”

  “Not in the way you mean. She came in one winter day, something like this, all upset. She was so shaken up she was almost crying, all because she’d sideswiped a mailbox, scraped some paint off her fancy car, and didn’t want to tell her husband. I honestly don’t know what brought her here to this shop. I do believe serendipity plays a part in some of our lives.”

  He stared out the window of the door as if remembering that particular day. “She promised she’d pay cash. I needed cash, so I told her I could fix it right away. When I was trying to give her an estimate, she kept me talking. I finally realized why. She asked where I was from. When I told her Austin, she was interested in the goings-ons there, like she missed it. She said she’d grown up around there. After that, when I listened to her talk, I could hear that little bit of Texas in her voice. So I fixed her car good as new.”

  “But you continued to see her after that? She stopped in again?” Caprice guessed.

  “Now and then. She came to visit because we seemed to connect on some level. Or maybe she missed Texas. After a year of visiting every few months, I met her at a coffee place on the way to Harrisburg. She sometimes went there to meet with a financial advisor.”

  More and more questions were popping up about Louise’s insecurity about money. What was that about? “These meetings with you. Were they ever overnight?” That was the most subtle way she knew to ask if they were sleeping together.

  “No,” he said loudly and firmly.

  That resounding no told Caprice it had more than information behind it. It had Don Rodriguez’s integrity behind it. She’d better step back from that one.

  When Don gazed at Caprice, she saw a man who’d lost someone important to him. She saw a man who was grieving in his own way.

  “How often would you see Louise?”

  “She was always so busy. And we didn’t like to be seen around town. That’s why we went up to Harrisburg. She’d have a meeting and then we’d meet at the coffee place. Sometimes we were there two or three hours. It didn’t matter much. Her husband worked long hours, never called her in between, which I didn’t get. They’d been married a long time. He couldn’t phone or text her and ask her how her day was going?”

  “You would do that?”

  “Sure, now and then. But not so much anyone would notice.”

  “There’s one all-important question here. Did Chet Downing know about your friendship with Louise?”

  Rodriguez thought about it. “Louise didn’t tell him when she came in here. She certainly didn’t tell him about our meetings near Harrisburg.”

  “But did Chet know about them, even if she didn’t tell him?”

  “That’s possible,” Rodriguez readily admitted. “If her husband checked her phone, he’d see my number during times when the body shop wasn’t open. Louise and I called each other sometimes when she was lonely in the evenings. It was a simple friendship.”

  Simple or not, that friendship could have gotten Louise killed if Chet had known and been jealous enough.

  She and Rodriguez were doing a defensive dance. He was trying not to tell her any more than he had to, and maybe there wasn’t any more to tell. But on the other hand, all those years of friendship had to have resulted in something.

  “It sounds as if you knew Louise pretty well. You said you talked about Texas. Did she confide anything to you about her life there before she moved to Kismet?”

  He quickly shook his head. “Louise was funny about that. She talked about places she knew in Austin and even Houston, but she always skirted around personal stuff. I didn’t want to poke because that wasn’t what we were about. We kept everything easy . . . kind . . . and just plain friendly.”

  Caprice didn’t want to leave with Rodriguez regretting anything he’d told her. After all, she might need him again for further information. If he felt involved, he’d want to solve the crime, too. She found the Texas aspect intrigued her.

  So she stopped the questions for now. “I might want to talk to you again. Is it okay if I stop back?”

  She thought he might say “no.” But then he peered over the counter at Lady. “If you bring her, you’re welcome.”

  As she safely put Lady in her crate in the van and gave her praise and a treat for being so cooperative, Caprice could understand why Louise had liked Don Rodriguez. There was a gentlemanly courtliness about him. Before she climbed in her vehicle, she pulled her phone from her pocket and scrolled down her contact list for Rachel. She had some questions.

  Once she was behind the wheel, she dialed. The housekeeper answered quickly.

  “Hi, it’s Caprice,” she said. “Do you mind if I ask you another question?

  “No, go ahead.”

  “Did Louise have any friends who visited with Texas accents?”

  “Texas accents? I don’t know if I’d really know a Texas accent, me being from here and all. But I can’t remember anybody with any accents, except . . .”

  “Except who?”

  “Except there was this man who would call every once in a while. The call always came in to Louise’s cell phone, but now and then if she was busy or her hands were full of dirt, she’d ask me to pick up the cell and answer. So I did. That man did talk differently, and after Louise spoke with him for a while, this little thing would happen to her voice.”

  Voices mirroring each other, especially if it was natural for them to do so. “That’s the only one?” Caprice asked.

  “I can’t remember anybody else.”

  The other thing that was really bothering Caprice was Louise’s sudden visit to the hospital the week before she was killed. What had really sent her there?

  “I’m looking at some other avenues, too,” Caprice told Rachel. “I know this might seem a little odd, but what did Louise have to eat the day she got sick?”

  Rachel easily gave her the rundown. “Louise had her usual breakfast of yogurt and granola. Then I went out shopping, and I didn’t get home until midafternoon. But she’d had lunch with someone who brought organic chicken wraps, a favorite of Louise’s.
I know that because Louise had left half of one in the refrigerator. It was still in the deli wrap.”

  Just who had Louise had lunch with that day? Had something she’d eaten made her sick?

  “Of course you threw that half of chicken wrap away, right?”

  “Oh, yes, down the garbage disposal.”

  A dead end.

  The social hall adjacent to the fire company was a bevy of activity on Saturday morning. Caprice had taken Lady home, settled her with her Kong toy, her kibble ball, and her favorite chewing ring in the kitchen, then texted Nikki she was on her way.

  As she walked into the social hall and greeted people she knew, she saw Nikki on a stepladder, adding yet one more glittering heart mobile to a ceiling light. But then Caprice’s attention focused elsewhere. At a long table, Grant was sorting canned goods and loading the food into boxes.

  Descending the stepladder, Nikki said, “He’s been at it since seven A.M. He knows how to work for a cause. Do you think he left Patches alone?”

  “His divorced neighbor’s probably watching him,” Caprice muttered.

  Nikki gave her an odd look. “You said you didn’t care.”

  “Yes, I did, didn’t I?” Caprice sighed, not knowing exactly what she felt for Grant or what he felt for her. She certainly wasn’t going to hold him up in conversation, not when there was work to be done.

  “You know, Mom wasn’t sure she wanted to come to the dance tonight,” Nikki informed Caprice.

  “She didn’t tell me that. Because of Louise?”

  “They were such good friends, she doesn’t feel like she should go out and have a good time so soon after her death, I guess.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “I told her to go sort clothes this morning with Nana at the church, and she’d feel a lot better when she knew those clothes were going to needy families. Then she should think about her and Dad and how much they love each other, and they should come together tonight. No guilt. But I don’t know if she’s going to listen to me. You could call her and reinforce the idea.”

  “I will. After lunch. I imagine she and Nana should be done by around two.”

  “That all depends on how many people donated clothing. But for right now—” Nikki nodded to one of the tables where their dad was standing with a laptop computer. He was motioning to Caprice.

  “Uh oh, Dad and the computer aren’t getting along again,” Nikki guessed.

  Caprice smiled. Now that her dad was in his masonry company’s office rather than in the field, he had to deal with his own computer more than he intended to. However, he wasn’t tech savvy. He knew the programs he had to use for his business and he didn’t want to learn more than that. Today he was dealing with lists on one of the volunteer’s computers, and apparently there was a problem.

  “I’m going to work on table decorations next,” Nikki said, “but then I’ve got to scoot. Drew and I have a lot to get ready for tonight.”

  “So Drew’s helping?”

  “We’ll see how it goes. You’d better get to Dad before he crashes the whole computer.”

  Caprice tried not to smile as she crossed to her father and asked helpfully, “A problem?”

  “Computers are the problem,” he growled. “I would have been happier if all this stuff was on a legal pad. I can’t find the right screen.” He leaned a little closer to her. “But you’re the only one I’ll tell that to.”

  She laughed. “There’s no shame in asking for help.”

  “If that isn’t the pot calling the kettle black. If you weren’t so independent, you’d be engaged by now.”

  Usually she got this kind of advice from her mother, not from her father. Maybe Valentine’s Day had put him in a think-about-your-kids-and-their-happiness kind of mood.

  “And what makes you think I want to be engaged?”

  “You avoided Grant when you came in. That tells me something.”

  “Yes, I avoided him. He’s busy.”

  Her dad guffawed. “Yeah, right. Busy. You two have been dancing around each other since Vince was in law school. Too bad Grant married and cut himself out of circulation. Too bad—”

  Her father shook his head. Then he glanced up at the hearts that Nikki had just attached to the ceiling, and all the other mobiles hanging along with the red and silver sparkling decorations.

  “Your mother and I have been coming here to the Valentine’s Day dance for years. It was the one night of the year we would get a babysitter even if we couldn’t afford it. Nana Celia and Gramps used to come, too.”

  “Valentine’s Day always seemed special to you and Mom.”

  “It was. It is. It’s the holiday for lovers. But since you’re already blushing, I won’t go there.”

  Thank goodness! Caprice thought, but didn’t say it.

  Her father chuckled. “Your mom and I always see friends and relatives here. That’s something that cements a relationship—other people seeing your marriage grow and change, witnessing that the vows you made are going to last. You get my drift?”

  “Sort of like Big Brother watching?”

  “Now, Caprice, when did you get so cynical?” her father asked with arched brows.

  “I’m not cynical. I just don’t think we always know what’s inside a marriage, even if we know the people on the outside.” Her father was one person she could talk to about this. “You know, I didn’t want to ask Mom about Louise and Chet’s marriage. Were there any problems there?”

  When her father didn’t speak right away, she saw he looked troubled. “Few couples have a marriage like me and your mom do,” he reminded her. “And kids can really bind a couple together. Chet once told me Louise couldn’t have children. He never said more than that.”

  Caprice wondered if Louise’s heart condition had something to do with that.

  “Besides that, though,” her dad went on, “I know Louise didn’t always come first for Chet. His company and his recreational life did. Spring, summer, and fall he played golf. In the winter he skied. Louise wasn’t particularly fond of trekking over the golf courses more than once a week so he played with colleagues and friends.”

  “And her heart condition could be triggered by cold weather,” Caprice added thoughtfully. “So she didn’t go skiing either.”

  When Caprice envisioned Chet and Malina at the funeral home, she had a good guess about just who he might have gone skiing with. “Are you insinuating that Chet had affairs?”

  “No, I’m not. I know nothing about that, and that’s the truth. Men aren’t often as forthcoming with each other as women are.”

  Grant passed by them as he carried a carton filled with canned goods to the loading dock.

  She asked her dad, “Has Grant ever been forthcoming with you? Has he ever told you details about his marriage, or exactly what happened with his daughter?”

  Her father appeared surprised by her question. “Why would you think he would?”

  “Because I don’t know how close he is to his own parents, and they’re living in Vermont. He comes to our family dinners with Vince, and I thought he might look on you as a second dad. You can get anybody to talk about anything.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment. But no, Grant’s never talked to me about any of that. That doesn’t mean he won’t talk to you.”

  Caprice just pursed her lips.

  “Do you remember the story about how your mom and I fell in love?” her dad asked.

  “Of course, I do. She was home from college for the summer, picking flowers in her mom’s garden. She looked up at the roof and there you were, fixing the flashing around the chimney. You were shirtless, your hair was blowing in the wind, and she said it was love at first sight.”

  This time her dad laughed. “Maybe attraction at first sight,” he admitted. “But the last part . . . Honey, we were as different as night and day. She was college-educated and becoming a teacher. I was just someone who knew how to handle bricks. I’d grown up with two brothers and a sister,
and she’d been an only child. Our interests were as different as football and arranging flowers.”

  “But you fell in love.”

  “We did, in spite of all those other differences. We found that we thought alike. Our values were the same. We even had the same dreams. That’s what mattered. You and Grant . . . You might be in different places now. A man needs time to put the past really behind him. But I don’t think you should count him out.”

  Should she count him out? Maybe that depended on what happened when they attended the dance together tonight . . . well, not really together. Would he even talk to her? Or ignore her then, too?

  She tapped her dad’s computer. “Tell me what screen you need to get back to.”

  “You’re changing the subject.”

  “What screen, Dad?”

  “The one with the list of delivery drop-off points.”

  Caprice checked out the program for a minute, tapped a few keys, and found the screen her dad was looking for.

  Navigating a computer was much easier than navigating a man’s mind.

  Chapter Thirteen

  At eight P.M. Caprice walked into the fire company’s social hall and thought the whole town seemed to have turned out for the Valentine’s Day dance. Maybe that was an exaggeration, but not by much.

  She’d borrowed a black velvet cape from her mother with faux fur around the neck and the sleeves. It was elegant, and beautifully complemented her forties-style dress. All she was missing was a muff. She’d even done something different with her hair tonight. Well, the stylist at Roz’s beauty salon had. He’d wound her hair into a one-sided bun that looked stylishly vintage, even with her fluffed and waved bangs. He’d let a few stray tendrils wisp out for a modern version of the hairstyle.

  Nikki waved to her from the table where the buffet was set up.

  Caprice discarded her cape, hanging it on a coat rack in the reception area. Then she took her faux pearl beaded purse that was barely big enough for her phone, and headed Nikki’s way. Her sister’s slow smile told her she’d made the right fashion choices tonight.