Murder at the Book Group

by Maggie King

  I remembered talking to Sam the day before at Annabel’s, how he sounded so off on Helen. It looked like this time poor Annabel had escaped being thrown over for another woman.

  “The police searched our purses and pockets. How did you conceal the vial from them?” I hoped she wouldn’t say she hid it in a bodily orifice.

  Art looked smug as he answered my question. “I slipped out the side door while we were waiting for the paramedics and put the vial in Mom’s trunk. I didn’t think anyone would miss me.” He was right, we didn’t notice. At least I didn’t.

  Helen sprang up and, brimming over with hospitality, proclaimed, “Time for refreshments! I for one need comfort food. Sarah brought some scrumptious-looking éclairs. I’ll add a dollop of whipped cream. And don’t worry, the coffee’s decaf. Wouldn’t want to keep you ladies up.”

  Did that mean we could go? After, of course, partaking of so-called comfort food.

  As Helen moved toward the kitchen, she told Art to keep the gun on us. “Don’t let them move.” The woman put a unique spin on hospitality.

  Suddenly it hit me. Helen told the truth earlier when she said she wouldn’t shoot us—because she meant to kill us via poisoned éclairs. She’d probably doctor up the whipped cream. Or the decaf that wouldn’t keep us up—ever. Then she’d force us at gunpoint to eat and drink. And she’d pin the whole thing on poor Sarah.

  Lucy and I exchanged uneasy looks. Then I realized that Art wasn’t watching us because he was watching his mother. I quickly took advantage of his inattention and found my speed-dial button, firmly pressing on it. I glanced over the counter that divided the dinette from the kitchen and saw Helen bustling around the kitchen. When she opened the refrigerator door and reached inside, Art tossed the gun down the hall. Judging from the clunk it stopped at Helen’s bedroom door.

  Art opened the front door that he’d been guarding. “Run,” he ordered.

  We ran.

  Once outside we didn’t waste time planning strategy or bemoaning the loss of our purses. I had my phone and recorder and it turned out that Lucy had her keys in her pocket, so we were better off than we might have been. Most important, we were out of that apartment. Helen wasn’t happy, evidenced by her shrieking, “You idiot! You moron!”

  To get to Lucy’s car we needed to walk directly away from Helen’s apartment, making us targets in case she came charging out, determined to gun us down. In tacit agreement, we ran to the left of the apartment, cutting through lawns, running past windows and bushes.

  That’s when we saw Vince, climbing a grassy knoll from the parking lot that served the next grouping of apartment units. Our silver-haired guardian angel had never looked so good.

  I wanted to ask him if he had backup and if he had a gun, but when a shot rang out I put my questions on hold. Lucy and I dived under a large bush. Vince kept low to the ground as he moved toward Helen’s apartment. The walkway to her door was well lit and we had no trouble seeing what was going on. The woman herself appeared, brandishing her gun, looking frantic as she looked in all directions, no doubt hoping to spot our fleeing figures.

  “Put the gun down, Helen.”

  Who was that? Vince? I didn’t recognize the commanding tone of a voice used to stop criminals in their tracks. It brought me up short.

  “Put the gun down,” the voice repeated. “Now!”

  Maybe Vince startled Helen into dropping the gun, or maybe it was the years she spent holding male authority figures in awe. At any rate, we heard a satisfying clunk on the grass. Helen fell to the ground in a heap and started wailing, keening, and generally making god-awful sounds.

  Vince and the backup team, moving slowly and carefully toward Helen, grabbed the gun.

  Then the work started.

  CHAPTER 27

  IT WAS 2 A.M. by the time the police let us go. They agreed to give us time to let Evan know about the breaking events of the last few hours before going public with the news. We had no trouble retrieving our purses and Lucy’s knitting bag as the police found the items under a large bush by Helen’s door. Whether Helen or Art had tossed them outside before or after our confrontation was anyone’s guess.

  The two of them were taken into custody. Art, unhurt, was found standing in the doorway watching his mother like she was performing on stage. The shot we heard had wounded the fish with the evil eye. The bullet was likely embedded in the brick wall behind the painting.

  Exhausted, the three of us piled into Vince’s car, figuring Lucy’s would be safe until later. We pulled up in front of Evan’s house and, in a replay of our earlier visit, Lucy and I pressed on the bell and pounded on the door. Evan answered the door wearing the same scowl and ratty robe as before. I held up a hand like a traffic cop, but that didn’t stop his “What now?”

  “Evan, we have something important to tell you. Let us in.” His frown deepened but he obeyed and ushered us down to the family room.

  Trying for gentleness, I told him about discovering that the Helen he knew in Richmond was the same Helen who had called him long ago in Rochester with the news that she was his birth mother.

  When I mentioned that I’d never known about his adoption, he shrugged. “Didn’t know myself until Helen called one day, out of the blue, claiming to be my mother. Mom and Dad were gone by then, so I couldn’t ask them. But I found the papers.”

  Speechless, I stared. What horrible parents, birth and adopted. How traumatic it must have been to hear such news at middle age, and from a stranger professing to be your mother—a murderous stranger, to boot.

  “So, is this why you’re all here in the middle of the night”—Evan looked angry and bewildered at the same time—“to tell me that Helen’s my mother?”

  “No, um, there’s more.” No more procrastination. When I told Evan that his mother, assisted by his half brother, had poisoned his wife, Evan took it all in with unnerving calm. I spared the details and he didn’t ask for any. Nor did he ask how I came by that information. Likely he assumed that Vince had a hand in tracking down Carlene’s killer.

  Had Evan been so stoic during our long-ago marriage? I decided that he hadn’t been called upon to show stoicism, or lack of it, during our brief union. Although I could be mistaking stoicism for shock. I didn’t want to leave him, but didn’t want to stay either. Lucy and I had been through a harrowing experience—probably were in shock ourselves—and would just as soon not prolong our visit.

  Lucy went up to the kitchen and started opening and closing cabinets. I figured she was scouring the place for shock remedies.

  “Anyone want brandy? Or tea?”

  “Not for me,” I called back, thinking of Carlene’s teas. In fact I may swear off tea forever. Evan and Vince said nothing.

  “It’s my fault.”

  I stared at Evan, wondering how I should respond to this declarative statement. Or if I should respond at all.

  “It’s my fault,” he repeated. “If only I’d been nice to Helen and Art, this wouldn’t have happened.”

  In my view the parking lot sex was Helen’s tipping point. But I didn’t share that with Evan. Instead I softened my voice and, keeping my remarks simple, said, “There’s no way of knowing that, Evan.”

  He leaned forward in his chair, elbows on his knees and head in his hands. Lucy handed him a juice glass. “Brandy,” she explained. “Good for shock.”

  He sipped the fiery spirit and grimaced.

  “Excuse me,” I said. “Be right back.”

  Vince and Lucy stayed downstairs with Evan while I sprinted up to the bedroom, which I guessed was behind the closed door at the end of the hall. Time for Evan’s lover to take over.

  As I expected, Janet responded to my knock, tying a belt around a black satin kimono that I suspected came from Carlene’s closet. She listened wide eyed as I updated her on recent events. Back downstairs, Evan insisted on telling Kat the news himself. I didn’t think it a good idea but, as I was reminded yet again, he and Kat were family. The reminder no long
er rankled—in fact, I counted my lucky stars I wasn’t part of that family—I just doubted that Evan had the finesse to tell her. I suggested that he call right away so she didn’t first hear the news via the media. Kat could get hold of Hal and I’d take care of calling Georgia. Thankfully, Evan offered no argument and we left him in Janet’s care.

  Georgia cried and cried when I woke her at 3:30 a.m. I heard Gary in the background, so I didn’t have to worry about her being alone. We agreed to talk later and I fell into an exhausted sleep.

  The only call I returned later that day was Kat’s. At her request, I detailed the events of the previous night. When I finished, Kat was speechless for a moment. “Too bad I wasn’t there. They wouldn’t have lived to tell it.” She choked back sobs. “Gotta go. Talk to you later.”

  Over the course of the next few days Lucy and I, either singly or together, told and retold the all-over-the-place story of how Carlene’s supposed suicide turned out to be murder. We started with her death and ended with the showdown with Helen and Art. We covered the man in the car; the love fugitive; Hal’s rundown of the pool incident; conversations with Susie and Jeanette and the photos that Jeanette sent; my confrontation with the nude Linda—gales of laughter met that description—as well as the one with a clothed B.J.; the conversation with Sam; the dramatic visits from Annabel; finding that Helen and Evan had once been coworkers and then neighbors; how I wound up in Helen’s bedroom, sneaking photos with my cell phone, finding the brass container, and that unforgettable experience of having a gun pointed at me. Art and Helen’s confession, including the adoption bombshell. We tried for a chronological account, but found ourselves hard-pressed to keep on track. Something got left out with each telling.

  Helen and Art fully confessed to their various crimes. According to Vince, they offered no resistance—in fact, their attitudes could only be described as fatalistic. My recording, which had lasted to the end, helped. As did the cyanide stash in Helen’s lingerie drawer. I didn’t think Art would fare well in prison, but I didn’t dwell on his prospects. At their arraignment their combined charges included first-degree murder, aiding and abetting, assault, kidnapping, and forgery. The trial date was set for sometime in January.

  Each person listened to our story with rapt attention, interrupting only with an occasional clarifying question and exclamations like “Amazing!” “Whew!” “Wow!” “You’re kidding!”

  When I went to the Richmond Women’s Resource Center and saw Georgia she cried and hugged me many times. Little work got done that day.

  Georgia, looking rueful, said, “Funny, after all that, it wasn’t over a man. Well, it was, but not in the romantic sense.”

  “Some women are just obsessed with their sons.” I considered my own mother’s attachment to my brother, her only son. I thought of Rachel, my unmarried niece who had two sons. In Helen’s day, Rachel would have waited out her confinement in a maternity home and been pressured to sign away her child. What most people didn’t know was the lifelong suffering those young mothers endured. And in Helen’s case, the suffering morphed into killing.

  When I told Sarah she shook her head and said, “I can’t believe Helen put the cyanide in Carlene’s tea right there in the dining room . . . in front of our eyes. We really knew nothing about the woman. And Carlene—who knew she was such a wild one?” Sarah was as pleased as Kat and Lucy had been upon learning of Carlene’s wild ways. Middle-aged women admiring their sexually adventurous contemporaries boded well for the future of my series.

  “But I’m enraged at Helen for claiming that I’d supplied the éclairs meant to be your last food on earth.”

  Sarah and Den were sitting in our living room, drinking coffee. In addition to admiring Lucy and me because we were women, Den now had a second reason—our recent adventures qualified us as superwomen. Sarah noted his appreciative looks, shot daggers at him, made hasty good-byes, and wheeled him off, reminding me of their previous visit that had prompted my suspecting her of killing Carlene. Why the woman just didn’t leave her flirtatious husband at home was beyond me.

  Annabel’s italicized exclamations dripped with insincerity. “Hazel, what an experience! I’m so sorry you had to go through that.” From the way she pumped me for the details I suspected she was gathering material for her next best-seller.

  She went on. “By the way, I saw Trudy Zimmerman the other day. The wedding didn’t come off. No surprise there—the woman looks like she’s a hundred. If anyone needs a good plastic surgeon, it’s Trudy. Her face sags so much that one good hot flash could result in a meltdown not seen since the Wicked Witch of the West met her fate in the Wizard of Oz.”

  Trudy had those pesky furrows that extended from the mouth to the chin, affectionately called marionette lines. Those of us afflicted with Howdy Doody syndrome didn’t feel especially affectionate about it, but we smiled a lot to counter the effects of gravity. One of the great paradoxes of middle age was a woman who, while cranky as all get-out, maintained a huge smile. Rest assured, a bargain face-lift was the likely motivation.

  I forced back a laugh. Annabel’s take on Trudy’s aging face was funny, but unkind. I didn’t want to encourage her. “She’s not vain, not concerned with stuff like that.”

  “I’ll say.”

  Then Annabel more or less ordered me to remove her from the book group e-mail list, saying she was no longer interested. As there were precious few left in the group, the matter was a moot point. But I shrugged and said, “No problem.”

  “So, Hazel . . . I guess Helen was once your mother-in-law.”

  “She was.”

  “That means . . . it could have been . . .” Annabel trailed off.

  I finished her sentence. “It could have been me with the cyanide cocktail.” I didn’t like to entertain the possibilities, but they loomed large these days. And I’d thought Evan’s adoptive mother had been a pill. At least she hadn’t tried to poison me. Probably considered it, though. If I’d stayed married to Evan . . . then what?

  Even Linda called, wanting the lowdown. “I deserve to know since you were so sure I killed Carlene.” I didn’t know about the deserving part. True, I felt guilty about suspecting Linda—but still and all she was a would-be blackmailer. An obnoxious one to boot. But I told her anyway. Later I wondered how she got my number.

  When Trudy called, she suggested meeting for lunch at Panera. We settled on the next day. “Trudy.” I smiled as I greeted her. “When did you get back?” I didn’t want to let on that I knew about the nonmarriage.

  “Last week. The marriage didn’t happen.”

  When I murmured, “I’m sorry,” she waved a hand in dismissal. “Jerk fell for someone else on the ship. A New Yorker.”

  “Oh.” I struggled for the right words, but could only manage another, “I’m sorry.”

  Trudy shrugged. “Don’t be. I managed a nice tour on my own.” She tucked her hair behind her ears, revealing a large tattoo of a flower on her neck. I cringed—the neck was too vulnerable an area for such artwork.

  I said, “I didn’t know you had a tattoo. Is it new?”

  “No, I’ve had it for years. My hair usually covers it.” Trudy’s hair fell like drapes around her face. “The library director doesn’t approve of tats.”

  I remembered Georgia saying that Carlene had a toucan inked on her ankle. Maybe I’d follow suit—maybe being the operative word.

  Over soup and salad I filled Trudy in on the details of Carlene’s murder—an account I could by then recite in my sleep.

  Once I wound down, Trudy shook her head. “Wow! You’ve just been through a bona fide murder mystery, beginning to end.” Then she asked, “But . . . wouldn’t cyanide lose its potency after, what, sixty years?”

  I shook my head. “Vince says that cyanide is very stable and can remain potent for years. Helen claimed she didn’t know that, but I’m sure she did her research and knew exactly what she was doing.”

  I drained my lemon water and asked, “Did I tell you
about the book group?”

  “Oh, I’m glad you mentioned that. I may be interested in coming back. Not to speak ill of the dead, but the group holds more appeal with my ex’s lover out of the picture.”

  I didn’t even try to feign ignorance as to what she was talking about. “So you knew about Carlene’s affair with him? After all, her name was different.”

  “I did. Eileen told me. She’s friends with Annabel.” Trudy explained that Eileen was one of her coworkers at the library.

  When I told Trudy the group was down to me, Sarah, and maybe Lucy, and that at present we were skittish about murder mysteries, Trudy surprised me by suggesting a film group. I told her I liked the idea and asked her to organize it.

  We fell to speculating about Annabel and her late and murdered husband. Still up in the air was the question of whether or not she had killed him and gotten away with it. Would Ronnie renew her efforts to implicate Annabel? Did her threat to expose Annabel via the alleged fingerprints have substance? Or did she only hope to profit financially by rattling Annabel? According to Vince, Ronnie would have to convince the Charlottesville police to reopen the cold case. Would the fingerprints even exist after all this time? Wouldn’t someone have looked at the books in the past ten years and overlaid Annabel’s prints? There had to be someone planning to murder someone who stood in her or his way. Or a mystery author doing research. Perhaps both—I wouldn’t be surprised if Annabel channeled her craziness, and perhaps her guilt, through her books.

  Trudy had nothing to contribute on Ronnie’s role in the Annabel mystery. “I don’t know what she’s up to. And I don’t want to know. I’m keeping my distance from her.” Of course, nothing was stopping me from visiting the odious Ronnie at UVA and making discreet inquiries. Nothing but my good sense, which I hoped would prevail.