by Curry, Edna
Patti gasped and looked at me, then back at Millie. “Didn’t you hear that Agnes is dead?”
Millie nodded. “Yeah, I heard. But what I didn’t hear was anyone tell me my job was done. So I came to work as usual. The house is still here and it looks like those police guys left a mess, so it sure needs cleaning. I figure whoever Agnes left the house to will still need me, don’t you think?”
I shrugged and glanced at Patti.
“Uh, I don’t know who Agnes left the house to, yet. We have to wait for the lawyers to sort it out,” Patti said. “I suppose it’s okay for you to clean if you want to take a chance on getting paid.”
Millie eyed her. “The way I look at it, Miss Patti, you’re the most likely one Agnes would leave the house to. So, if that’s right, will you keep me on the same as Agnes did?”
Patti chewed her lip and pushed back her now messy blonde hair. “Sure, at least until we decide what to do with the house. But I don’t know if Agnes did leave it to me. She might have ordered that it be sold to pay for her mother’s nursing home bills. And she has a brother, Arnold, and nephew, Corey.”
Millie nodded. “I know. Even if it’s to be sold, it’ll still need to be clean for showing it to buyers, don’t you think?”
Patti gave a reluctant nod. “I suppose.”
“Then I’ll take my chances on getting paid for my work, if you don’t object.”
“Fine,” Patti said with a shrug. She turned back to the bedroom and I followed her. The vacuum roared again behind us and Patti closed the door to shut out the noise. “Agnes used to say that Millie had a mind of her own. Now I see what she meant,” she said.
We continued our search for anything unusual.
A while later, I went to the kitchen for a drink of water. Passing the office, I saw Millie taking a picture of the stock market chart on the wall. I stopped and watched in amazement as she took several more pictures, then slipped the camera back into her apron pocket and started dusting.
“Why are you interested in Agnes’ stock market game?” I asked.
She jumped and swung around to me, her face flaming red. “Oh, Miss Summers. You startled me. I didn’t see you there.”
“I guess not.” I waited for her answer to my question.
She raised her chin and stared at me. “I just think it’s interesting, the way they choose companies. Agnes told me about it and I sort of watched them as they played to see who was ahead. Like watching a kid’s basketball game or something like that, you know.”
I knew she wouldn’t tell me any more, so I nodded and went on to the kitchen. Why did she really take those pictures? I remembered I’d seen an open laptop at her apartment. And she’d had a lot of expensive knick-knacks, too. Was she really only a maid? Or a maid in disguise? I’d better look into her as well. The list of computer work waiting for me was growing. Maybe I’d learn more on the internet than searching Agnes’ house.
***
I went back to my house, made copies of everything in that file I’d taken from Agnes’ house. Knowing I’d get in trouble if Ben knew I’d kept anything that important from him, I drove over to Canton to his office. The businesses in the Canton town square weren’t very busy this late in the afternoon, so I found a parking spot almost right in front. Picking up my briefcase, I strode on inside. The dispatcher in the front office just nodded to me and kept talking on her phone.
Luckily, Ben was in and waved me to a chair opposite him. “Want some coffee?”
“Sure,” I said. I filled a Styrofoam cup and sat, sipping the hot brew. It was as bad as it usually was, but I hadn’t had any since lunch, so I drank it anyway.
“What’s new on Agnes’ case, Ben?”
“Nothing much. The coroner has ruled she drowned.”
“I thought you said she was shot?” I stared at Ben, my pulse suddenly racing with tension. Was he planning to deliberately let people think she’d drowned to try to catch someone?
“She was shot, but drowned because she went into the water before the bullet had time to make her bleed to death. Bullet caught her in the chest, but not directly into the heart.”
“So she was still breathing when her car went into the lake?”
The sheriff nodded. “Yeah. That’s entirely possible, you know.”
“I suppose.” I chewed my lip, thinking about that scenario. “So probably a bullet hit her and she blacked out, lost control of the car and went into the water?”
“We think so.”
“So what happened to her purse and cell phone?”
“I’m not sure. Someone could have gone in after her and taken them.”
I frowned at Ben. “If her phone had been in the lake it wouldn’t work any more.”
“That’s true.” Ben rubbed the side of his crooked nose.
I suggested, “Or someone could have shot her tire so she stopped and talked to that person beside the road? Then that person shot her, robbed her and rolled her car into the lake?”
Ben looked away, shrugging. “Yeah, I thought of that, too. Anything’s possible, Lacey.”
“Seems more likely than someone going into the lake after her just to rob her. Too much chance of being seen. Did you find any evidence of others at the scene?”
He sighed. “There were too many other people tramping around after it got reported to us. The guy that spotted her car in the lake was fishing there. He waved down others and some even went into the water and tried to get her out of her car. I guess they were thinking maybe it just happened or something. So by the time we got there, we couldn’t tell whose footprints were whose.”
“I see.” I sipped more coffee, thinking. ““Have you found the gun? Will you be able to get ballistics info from the bullet?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Did you ask the cell phone company where her last phone calls were made from?”
“I’m working on it. They wanted a subpoena first.”
“And do you know where Agnes ate her last meal? That Chef’s salad?”
“Doc told you about that?”
“Yes. Well, he just listed the food. I’m assuming it was a Chef’s Salad at a restaurant.”
Ben nodded. “Yeah, it sounds like one. That’s a pretty common item on a lot of restaurants’ menus. Could have been anywhere.”
“Yes. But she was coming from the west, right? So most likely from the Cities. And her mother said she’d been to see them on Friday.”
Ben frowned at me. “Their nursing home said they didn’t keep records of visitors. And Patti says their memory is very unreliable.”
I sighed. “True. I suppose that’s not very good evidence.”
He leaned back in his chair and regarded me through narrowed eyes. “What really brought you here, Lacey girl?”
I glanced at him and laughed nervously. “You know me too well, Ben.”
“Yeah, I do. What do you have?”
I rubbed my chin. “What do you know about the death of Agnes’ dad, Roscoe Simms?”
The sheriff tipped his head curiously. “He hung himself in his garage about ten years ago,” Ben said. “That was before I came here, but I heard about it and read the file. Pretty cut and dried case. Why do you ask?”
I sighed. “Patti and I were out at Agnes’ house this afternoon, hoping to find some info on where she’d been that last day or why she hadn’t let Patti know she wouldn’t meet her.”
“Yeah? Maybe she planned to and got killed before she could meet her. Or maybe Patti is lying to you and she shot Agnes herself.”
“Now, does that make any sense? If she had, why would she call attention to herself by coming to you to report her missing? Why hire me? Why wouldn’t she just have hightailed it back to Chicago and waited to be notified when someone found the body? Then maybe no one would have even suspected she was anywhere near here at the time, don’t you think?”
“Hm. I guess that’s true.”
“Damn right, it’s true.”
He sco
wled at me. “Get back to why you want to know about Roscoe’s death.”
I chewed my lip and finally opened my briefcase and pulled out the file. I slid it across the desk to him. He slapped his chair back into place, sent me a curious look, and opened the file, paging through it. “You got this from Agnes’ house.” He sent me a scowl.
I nodded. “Patti found it in Agnes’ file cabinet and showed it to me.”
“I don’t see anything new here. So, Agnes’ saved clippings about her dad’s death. What’s unusual about that?”
“The financial reports, Ben.”
“So? Her dad was a lawyer. They all make a lot of money. What about it?”
“Patti said Roscoe’s partner, Harold Billings, inherited the firm. Each had agreed to leave the other their share if either died.”
“That’s not unusual, is it?”
“But Harold told everyone Roscoe was depressed over money problems. Do those financial reports say they had problems?”
“Nope, look healthy to me.”
“Right. Yet Harold closed that prosperous office and came out here to start a small town office with Rolly, telling everyone he had to downsize.”
“What are you saying, Lacey?”
“I don’t really know,” I said carefully. “I just thought it was suspicious and got a bad feeling about it. It doesn’t add up to me. So I thought that you should see these financial reports.”
He shrugged. “I saw them when we searched the house. But I didn’t think it was important, which is why I didn’t take the file then. Still don’t think so, Lacey.”
“Okay, I tried,” I said with a sigh.
Ben scratched his head. “You know Harold has Alzheimer’s, don’t you?”
I sent him a sideways look. Who in town didn’t know that? “Sure.”
“Well, then don’t you think maybe Rolly talked him into coming out here to cover that? To live where he could work close to home and take care of his dad?”
“Maybe,” I acknowledged. But that wasn’t how I saw Rolly at all. Maybe it was only because I didn’t like him much, but I couldn’t give him that much credit. In my opinion, he was not a nice man. “But if so, wouldn’t he have sold the lucrative partnership to someone in Minneapolis instead of closing it down?”
Ben shrugged. “Who knows why people do stuff? I gave up trying to guess years ago. I just accept what they do and let it go at that. Maybe you should try it. It’s less stressful, Lacey girl.”
“If you say so, Ben.” I threw my Styrofoam cup still half full of coffee into his waste basket and strode out, seething with resentment at his lack of appreciation for my effort.
I’d done my duty by showing him the file. If he’d missed that information and I’d neglected to tell him something he should know, he’d never have let me hear the end of it. You couldn’t please the man.
***
Still seething, I went home, fixed myself a quick supper and then spent the evening in my office. I caught up on background checks for my other clients and emailed the results to them.
And then I got an answer to my request for info on Patti’s license plates. She’d been where she’d said she was. Sigh.
Next I checked on Corey and Arnold’s rental cars and put in requests for info on those. I knew it would probably be a couple of days before I got an answer. Earlier, I’d asked a friend, Marta, who works at the PI firm where I used to work and has a lot of useful contacts in the Twin Cities, to check on their flights. Arnold had come in from LAX early this morning. Lulu had come in a week ago. Yikes! She’s been here for a week? Doing what? And why when they didn’t know about Agnes’ death until Tuesday?
But Marta couldn’t find anything on Corey. Odd. “Maybe he drove,” I told her.
I hung up, but kept thinking about it. Something didn’t add up here. Remembering the old beater he’d been driving, I doubted he’d driven here over the mountains. Would that old car even have made it all the way from California?
Suddenly suspicious, I did another search on Corey. Yes! He’d traded in an almost new Camry at a dealer in Maplewood on Monday of this week! So he had been in Minnesota, not in California as he had told Patti when she’d called him. With a cell phone and nationwide calling plans, he could be anywhere and claim to be somewhere else without her knowing. That was one big disadvantage for a PI. nowadays. At least with landlines, you had to be where your phone was to answer it.
Now I knew that he could have driven that newer car here, then traded it for some reason. Money, maybe? Was he broke enough to have had to trade in his vehicle for money to eat and pay his hotel bill? Had he been here on Friday and killed Agnes?
By then it was almost midnight and I let Scamp out to do his job outside, then I went to bed. Scamp curled up on the rug beside my bed, on his usual guard duty.
***
The next morning I had coffee with Marion. Then I stopped at the bakery and grocery store for supplies and spent the rest of the morning in my office, catching up on things I’d been putting off. I wanted to ask Lulu what she’d been doing in Minneapolis for the past week, but doubted I’d get a truthful answer. Maybe I’d hint to Ben and he could find out. I couldn’t find that she’d been registered at any of the large hotels where I had contacts. But there were dozens of small motels where she could have stayed. Or maybe she had family or friends here.
My email had piled up, and I scanned through it for anything important. I’d deal with the rest later. But one email caught my eye. A chill ran over me as I read it. The return address said Agnes Simms. Who was on her computer? The message merely read, “Leave well enough alone if you know what’s good for you.” I shuddered and printed off a couple of copies and stuffed them in my purse. I’d give one to Ben. And since the most likely person to be on Agnes’ computer was Patti, I’d show one to her.
Then I remembered it couldn’t be Patti because Ben had taken Agnes’ computer, so it was probably still at the sheriff’s office. Was this another of Deputy Tom’s jokes? I knew he didn’t like me, but he usually confined his jokes to snide comments to my face. He’d never done stuff behind my back before. So was it a real threat or not?
Chapter 9
By then it was time to change into my one black dress and heels, brush my hair and put on some makeup. I don’t usually wear much, but felt I should today.
I headed to the First Christian Church for Agnes’ funeral. Learning anything new there was a long shot, but I needed to go anyway. But, as Marion had pointed out, if her killer was a family member, it wouldn’t be unusual for them to attend. So how would I know who it was?
The parking lot was already jammed with cars. People dressed in their Sunday best streamed along the walkway to the front entrance of the old brick structure. Mournful organ music poured from the open doors as I made my way up the worn concrete steps. I nodded to various townspeople I knew and kept my eyes open for anything suspicious or unusual.
The scents of many mingled perfumes and burning candles met my nose and made me sneeze. Yikes, this was no time for my allergies to kick in. I breathed in slowly, trying to relax my throat muscles.
I squeezed into a spare spot midway down the crowded pews. Sunlight sparkled through the gorgeously colored, stained glass windows that lined both sides of the narthex. A large cross graced the front. Some pews ahead of me had been roped off for the family who had yet to appear. I assumed they were in the small chapel, having a private family service before joining the rest of us for the public one. Digging in my purse, I found a cough drop and popped it into my mouth.
The organ music grew louder and everyone stood. Pastor Jim appeared from the front side and led the family in. I glimpsed a cleaned up Arnold and Corey in suits and Patti in a plain black dress, her blonde hair shining brightly in contrast. She’d braided it, and put it in a coil that made her look older than her twenty six years. Her face was devoid of makeup and very pale as they took their place in the front row. Various others who resembled them somewhat, and who I a
ssumed were more distant family members, filled a couple of pews behind them.
Sprays of red tulips, roses and other flowers lined the front of the church on both sides of the casket, as well as various green plants. The organ began with the familiar hymn, Amazing Grace and the service continued with Pastor Jim giving Agnes’ life history.
The service was obviously well attended because Agnes had been involved in so many charity functions, as were many members of this congregation. Half the town seemed to be there. I glanced around and saw many people I knew, but no one who didn’t have a legitimate reason to know Agnes.
Millie Manders, her maid, and Jack Kent, her gardener, were there. As expected, Joyce Baxter, our local reporter, was there. But that was her job, as she often did society articles as well as news. Small town reporters wore several hats. Even Rolly Billings was there. Was he still Agnes’ lawyer? Or there because he was dating Patti?
I spied Ben and Deputy Tom in their brown uniforms near the back, and decided to try to talk to Ben later. Tom would probably get the job of escorting the hearse and mourners to the cemetery and controlling traffic, leaving Ben at the church.
Various people got up to talk about the many hours Agnes had spent doing charity work in our town. Pastor Jim praised her work and also said she’d done a lot more that most people didn’t know about, because she did it anonymously. A murmur of appreciation echoed through the crowd.
I was sitting several pews behind Corey and Arnold and saw them look at each other. Both of their faces were red with fury. Obviously, they’d wanted some of that money she’d given to others.
At the end of the service the pastor invited everyone back to the church for lunch after the graveside service and people began filing out.
The sun had disappeared and clouds had moved in, as is typical spring weather in Minnesota. A cold rain fell as I joined the caravan of cars and we made their way to the cemetery. The graveled road into the cemetery was narrow and I couldn’t get anywhere near the gravesite, so I parked, grabbed my umbrella and made my way across the wet grass to the tent. The family crowded close and sat on chairs under the tent, trying to stay dry. The rest of us had to stand in the cold rain. I wasn’t quite close enough to be under the canvas. I shivered and hugged my coat closer around my neck to keep out the cold, wet wind and held tight to my umbrella.
