“Did you try ‘lucy’?”
DeWayne tapped the screen. “Nope.”
“How about ‘diamonds,’” Elinor said, free-associating. “Maybe he was a Beatles fan. His wife or secretary might know.”
“I haven’t given up on the idea that some low-life is behind both killings. We searched that empty building across the street. It’s so damn hot in there, a squatter wouldn’t last five minutes. I just don’t see how these two killings can be connected. Did they even know each other, Wyckham and Childers?”
Elinor realized that Shelby’s new civic responsibilities made him unavailable for the kind of give-and-take DeWayne usually relied on to solve problems. She had been promoted, not quite to best-friend status, but possibly to comrade-in-arms.
“Well, we do know one thing they had in common.”
DeWayne looked up, hopeful.
“They were both in the library last Saturday afternoon.”
His face fell. “Rexie Roberts was there, too. I watched her leave carrying that big black gym bag she hauls around. Maybe she had a laptop in it.”
“She had the bag with her last night, too. DeWayne, if she had just come from killing Patrick, she wouldn’t have told me she had seen him. She wouldn’t turn his phone over to me.”
“Yeah, but if she killed him, she wouldn’t have known she was going to break down.”
“Actually, I expect she did. Sooner or later. When that moment came, she just happened to have a cell phone in her possession.”
“Neither of the victims had defensive wounds, cuts to the hands.”
“It’s someone who could get close enough to inflict a blow like that, which means it’s someone they knew.” While he was feeling down was the best time to ask for something. “Do you mind if I take another look at Eula Wyckham’s appointment book?”
DeWayne reached into a bottom drawer and took out a zip-lock bag of items Elinor recognized from the murder victim’s totebag. “Help yourself.”
*****
Elinor fixed a late lunch of chicken salad for herself and Dot, who laid Eula Wyckham’s white Bible on the table between them.
“So, Kate bought your story,” Elinor said. “I hated to ask you to lie to her, but Shelby would have it out of her in no time if I asked to see that house again.” After a moment, she added: “There’ll be no living with him now he’s mayor.”
“Maybe it wasn’t a lie,” Dot said. “I could buy that house. Wouldn’t be a bad investment property.”
“You become a landlord? I think your talents lie elsewhere, Dot.”
“Okay, you talked me out of it. Be sure to tell Kate it was you who talked me out of it.”
“Did you get a chance to look at it?”
The Bible was old, but not terribly so. Nor was it white, but yellowed over the years to ivory, with gilt-edged leaves, King James Version.
“I was too hungry,” Dot said. “I sent Kate back to the kitchen to make sure that wasn’t gas we smelled, grabbed the Good Book, and fled like the sinner I am. So, what was Rexie Roberts doing here this morning, besides answering your phone?”
“We’ve a lot to catch up on, Dot. Let’s see if I can make it short. On my way home from the Little Rays banquet last night, I spotted Rexie’s car broken down beside the highway. She was trying to call for help on Patrick Allen Childers’ cell phone.”
“She had the murdered man’s cell phone? Don’t you think that’s a little suspicious?”
“She said she staged an intervention and took it away from him, which is so strange it’s probably true. She doesn’t own a cell phone and doesn’t understand how they work. She couldn’t have made a call on that phone—it’s password-protected.”
“A lot of people hate those things,” Dot remarked. “I don’t have one, either.”
“Not because you distrust technology.”
“Nope. It’s ‘cause I don’t want anybody calling me. What I want to know is, does Rexie have anything to gain by telling you she had Patrick’s phone? Was she establishing an alibi? Did she stage the breakdown of her car?”
“Thank you, Brain. You’re cutting through the clutter, as I knew you would. I turned the phone over to DeWayne, and in case you’re wondering, it worked. Lying there on DeWayne’s blotter, it rang, but he couldn’t answer it.”
“I don’t know if I approve of you putting up someone in your guest room who may have just come from killing a man.”
“I feel sorry for her, Dot. Like Eula Wyckham—like you, like me—we’re alone in the world. We need each other’s help. Rexie Roberts is further lumbered by ideals she hasn’t learned yet will ultimately crush her. Did you know she’s building her own straw bale house on land she’s buying from Buck Weathers?”
“Don’t let that fact make you soft in the head, Elinor. She was present at both murder scenes.”
“Patrick’s secretary had already gone for the day. Rexie was on her way home, too, and as anyone driving through the intersection of Main and High could see, his office was lit up. She was angry at him for having Guy arrested, so she went in to give him a piece of her mind.”
“I’m beginning to warm to the girl.”
“Guy has been released, Dot. You can schedule your next oil change.”
“And don’t think I won’t,” she retorted with a grin. “Unless he gets sent up the river for the ‘Calender girl.’ Assuming Patrick was alive when Rexie left him, he must’ve gone to his car in the alley—”
“Taking a bag of barbecued ribs with him.”
“Well, that’ll put me off smoked meat for a while.”
“Apparently, he started the engine and rolled down his window to speak to somebody—”
“Wonder why they didn’t take the ribs?”
“Tuh, Dot. Focus. If our theory is correct that Eula Wyckham was murdered for her laptop, or the information on it—”
Dot was quick to see where she was going. “—then Patrick’s cell phone might’ve been the target this time. Maybe it has something incriminating on it.”
“His secretary said he kept his appointments on it. She thought he might’ve stayed late for a client, but he didn’t mention who.”
“I guess you tried ‘1234’ and ‘password’?”
“Also ‘lucy’ and ‘diamonds.’”
“Ho! Good one, Elinor. His wife might know his password.”
“DeWayne didn’t get very far with Mrs. Childers. Oddly, she did not report her husband missing last night.”
“What, is she used to him not coming home?”
“There’s something not quite right there, and I think Rexie knows what it is. But we’ll have to get her over the notion that gossip is to be avoided at all costs.”
“Be careful, Elinor. This may not be some gallant girl who deserves your sympathy. She could be a psychopath who wouldn’t hesitate to use the breadknife on you.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. Are you finished?”
“I am if you don’t have pie.”
“Pass me that Bible.” Elinor opened the volume’s cover. “‘Baptismal Presentation to Eula May Wyckham in the year of our Lord 1962.’ Good, it is her Bible. There’s only one entry, the marriage of Lawrence Michael Kern to Evelyn Geraldine Miller, 1971, the birth of a child, Abigail something—can’t read it. And the date is smudged, but it might be 1974. Her family tree seems a little stunted.”
“Or Eula May, after she was baptized, fell away from the church, became estranged from her family, and never bothered to enter anything else.”
“An alternate hypothesis.” Elinor flipped through the pages, then held the Bible by the spine and thoroughly shook it to see if anything fell out. And something did, a newspaper clipping yellowed with age. “Look at this, Dot. She was a midwife. Someone did a story about her delivering a baby in a snowbank.”
“We don’t have snowbanks around here. At least, not very often.”
“Too bad we can’t tell what newspaper it’s from. Why are people so poor at documentation
?”
“Does it say the name of the mother in the snowbank?”
“Somebody named Myrtle Ferris. Can you make out the license plate on that car, Dot?”
“Too small and grainy. Libby might be able to scan it and blow it up big enough to read. I’ll see if I can find a Myrtle Ferris, too, while I’m at it.”
“I so regret that I didn’t spend more time talking to that woman, Dot. She nursed people her whole life, early in her career, birthing babies it seems, and after coming here, driving country roads to tend to the home-bound.”
“Kate said all the neighbors have trooped through her house. Guess they never got the chance while she was alive.”
“If she was that unsociable, why invite a teenaged girl to come live with her? A girl, by the way, who got in the same kind of trouble her daughter did.”
“Wasn’t such a stink about it when Janie did it. We even gave her a baby shower that fall. I thought going into teaching was a surprising career choice for Mathew Calender. He’s one of the shyest people I ever met.”
“I thought he was merely truculent.” The sound of an approaching vehicle drew her to the kitchen window. “It’s Rexie. And of all things, she’s driving Eula Wyckham’s car.”
“Probably the only vehicle running on that property.”
Elinor opened the door leading out to the carport and Rexie Roberts came rushing in.
“Oh, Mrs. Woodward! I’m so glad you’re home. I just gave my statement to DeWayne, but I left something out. I can’t have it on my conscience that I got another innocent person in trouble. You’ve got to help me.”
“Of course I will, child. Come in and calm yourself.”
The situation called for tea. While Elinor put the kettle on, Rexie went into the living room and folded herself into a lotus position on the floor. Elinor motioned for Dot to put away the white Bible.
With tea tray loaded, Elinor joined the other two in the living room.
“Sorry there’s no pie, Dot. I did manage to find a bit of lemon pound cake. Mind, it’s still frozen in the middle.”
“You can talk in front of me,” Dot said to Rexie. “I’m helping Elinor with the investigation.”
Rexie uncrossed her legs and pushed herself closer to the coffee table, remaining on the floor. “For real?”
“For real,” Elinor said, “though not official. What did you leave out of your statement, Rexie?”
“I didn’t tell DeWayne what I saw on Patrick’s phone.”
“Last night that was gossip. Today it’s a clue in Patrick’s murder,” Elinor said. “What did you see?”
“Buck Weathers. Him and that lady lawyer who’s supposed to be a lesbian.” The room grew still. Rexie looked from one to the other. “Is it important?”
“Buck was in the library the afternoon Eula Wyckham was killed,” Dot said. “I remember because he made me dig out microfiche while ten other people were trying to check out.”
“What were they doing in the photo?” Elinor asked.
“Eating barbecue.”
*****
There may have been mayhem and murder playing out in the central business district, but Betty Blanton did not let that keep her from a date with the judge, her secretary Alice said.
“I’ll wait,” Elinor replied.
“When five o’clock rolls around, I’m locking that door,” Alice warned.
“Fine.”
Elinor sat down in Betty Blanton’s waiting area and took Eula Wyckham’s appointment book out of her purse. Entries began in January of that year and continued on well into the fall, long after the nurse would not be around to keep them. Elinor remembered the stack of telephone books in Nurse Wyckham’s kitchen, directories to neighboring communities she probably worked. Unlike Patrick Allen Childers, Nurse Wyckham was hopelessly old-school and kept her appointments on paper. They had not found a cell phone among her effects.
On the Saturday that she died, her last appointment was listed as: 4:00, Deaver, BB Mtn. Her next appointment wasn’t until after the Fourth. Elinor recognized a few family names here and there, but with Nurse Wyckham working a four-county area, most were unknown to her. If there was a clue or pattern, Elinor couldn’t see it.
She returned the appointment book to her purse. Alice looked up from her keyboard, anticipating that she had managed to squelch hope in the heart of this visitor, who would now leave. But Elinor merely reached for a magazine and settled down to read about someone named Lil Kim. Alice’s eyes returned to her computer screen.
Elinor thought about what Rexie Roberts had told them, that Patrick Allen Childers had snapped a photo of two people eating barbecue, a photo that displayed only long enough for Rexie to identify the two and register what they were eating. The ribs found in Patrick’s car after his death proved she was right. Patrick was surely aware, as they all were, that Buck Weathers was locked in a nasty divorce fight with his wife Judith. He would know, too, that Betty Blanton was her attorney. It was the juiciest kind of gossip if Buck was somehow colluding with his wife’s attorney. Rexie said that Patrick loved a good “chin-wag,” but even she had wondered if Patrick had something sinister in mind. Blackmailers had been known to push otherwise law-abiding people to commit murder. Was Patrick a blackmailer?
But Patrick wasn’t the only victim. Was Eula Wyckham also a blackmailer? She made her living going into people’s homes. Buck Weathers had mentioned that she tended him when his horse fell on him. Did Nurse Wyckham learn something about him that she would later try to use against him? But Eula Wyckham lived as meager a life as one could imagine. If she had profited from a blackmail scheme, where were her ill-gotten goods?
DeWayne had released Guy Pettibone on the failure of that logic, that there could not be two throat-slashers operating in their small town. Nor could there be two blackmailers, not unless they were collaborators. Elinor tried that idea on for size. Nurse Wyckham finds out things from the patients she calls on, passes that information to Patrick Allen Childers… It didn’t bear thinking.
But what if this wasn’t about collaboration, but imitation? There was something called copycat killings. Maybe the two murders were related only in that one had inspired the other. Nurse Wyckham’s death, bizarre as it was, could have given Patrick Allen Childers’ murderer the perfect cover, since a logical mind would naturally assume that the person who stabbed Eula Wyckham in the throat would also be responsible for doing the same to Childers. One significant difference was that no murder weapon had been found at the Childers murder scene. Perhaps because it was more difficult to smuggle a bloody knife out of a crowded library than to remove one from a dark alley.
Elinor felt as if she were trying to tame a recalcitrant skein of knitting yarn. Even as she teased out a loose end here, it snarled up elsewhere. Somewhat noisily, Alice Simms began shutting down her computer.
“Do you back up to the cloud?” Elinor asked.
“Absolutely. This place could burn to the ground tonight and I could log on tomorrow and keep right on working.”
“Which means, I suppose, that you have your password memorized?”
Alice paused for a split second. “Of course.”
Which meant that she didn’t, Elinor thought. It was written down somewhere, hopefully not on the same premises that burned to the ground. If it became critical to find out what was on Patrick Allen Childers’ phone, DeWayne would find a similarly analog file somewhere in his home or office.
“Time’s up, I’m afraid,” Alice said. “I have to lock up now.”
“Very well,” Elinor said, standing and smoothing out the wrinkles in her blouse.
“I can fit you in tomorrow, any time after two.”
“No, thank you. Have a good evening.”
It was Betty Blanton’s habit to park in the library’s west lot rather than the more exposed spaces in front of her office. Tonight, Elinor had parked there herself to afford a view of both entrances to the law office. With no assurance that the attorney would be
returning after her day in court, Elinor faced a futile wait in the heat.
I’m on a stakeout, she thought, wishing she had thought to bring along a sandwich and Thermos of tea. Dot would be furious at missing it. Dot was having to run the library on her own these days. Elinor saw her now, walking up High Street toward her car, parked in its usual space across the street from Betty Blanton’s office. She didn’t notice Elinor sitting under the shade of the massive cottonwood that shielded the west wall of the library from the afternoon sun. The remaining cruiser backed into Depot Street and drove away from the police station. The phones would be forwarded now to the officer on duty for the evening. Downtown began to assume the aspect that inspired the phrase “rolling up the sidewalks.”
With an undisturbed view of High Street—named for its long gradual rise toward Water Street, the highest elevation in town—Elinor could see Kate’s sun-gilded roof. She pictured Kate in the big country kitchen preparing dinner for Shelby and the children. Shelby would be getting home about now, full of news and self-importance. A man who had barely campaigned for re-election to city council had vaulted into the mayor’s seat.
Here at the lower end of town, the old red brick storefronts blocked the waning rays of the sun. Still, it was stiflingly hot and Elinor didn’t want to draw attention to herself by running the engine in order to have air-conditioning. Twenty-four hours earlier Patrick Allen Childers had died sitting in a car with his window down. Eula Wyckham had met her death just beyond the wall where Elinor sat. In neither case was the killer deterred by proximity to the police station. Oh, you are a bold one, she thought.
Her mind turned to Betty Blanton. She realized that she didn’t know much about Ms. Blanton, aside from her reputation of being a fierce advocate for her clients. The Calenders had hired her to get their daughter out of custody. Judith Weathers had retained her in the Weathers’ divorce suit. And Eula Wyckham had asked her to draw up a last will and testament. But what about Blanton’s private life?
Death In The Stacks: An Elinor & Dot library mystery Page 14
