Toni L.P. Kelner - Laura Fleming 02 - Dead Ringer

by Toni L. P. Kelner

  I didn’t like that idea, not at all, because it made Aunt Daphine a prime suspect for the murder. Of course I knew that she wouldn’t kill anybody, not even a blackmailer, but would Junior believe that? Even if she did, she’d still have to investigate. In a town like Byerly, how long would it take for the blackmailer to find out, and how long before he sent the newspaper a letter about Aunt Daphine? Even if Hank Parker didn’t print the story, word would get out.

  I needed to talk to talk to Aunt Daphine, to find out if she knew anything about Leonard Cooper. I checked the clock. She would be at the beauty parlor, which was not the place for a private phone conversation. I’d be better off going to see her in person, so I scribbled a note for Richard and headed for La Dauphin.

  Chapter 16

  I guessed that Dorinda was on coffee break again, because there was no one at the reception desk when I walked into La Dauphin, but Aunt Daphine herself came out in answer to the bell.

  “Hey there,” she said. “How are you doing?”

  “Pretty good. Have you got time to talk?”

  She nodded. “My ten–thirty appointment cancelled on me. Do you want to come into the back?”

  “Actually, maybe we should take a walk or something.”

  “All right.” She peered through the curtain into the main room and called out, “I’m going to walk over to Woolworth’s for a minute. Does anybody want anything?” She took a few orders for soft drinks, got her purse, and said, “Let’s go.”

  Aunt Daphine waited until we were a few feet away from the shop before she asked, “So what’s going on, Laurie Anne? Have you found out anything yet?”

  “I’m not sure. Junior Norton came to visit me a little while ago.”

  “What did she want?”

  “Don’t worry—she doesn’t know anything about your problem.” It was probably silly, but I just couldn’t say blackmail while walking outside on a pretty fall day. “She knows that Richard and I are up to something, but she thought that it was the murder at the mill.”

  “Why would you care about that? You didn’t even know that man.”

  “I didn’t,” I said, “but Uncle John Ward did. Leonard Cooper was in Vietnam with him.” I waited a minute for that to sink in. “Did Uncle John Ward mention him in any of his letters to you?”

  “He might have, now that you mention it. I thought that his name sounded familiar, but Cooper is a pretty common name.” She shook her head. “I’d have to check the letters to be certain.”

  “I told Junior that I don’t have any interest in her murder investigation, but now I’m not so sure.”

  “I don’t think I follow you.”

  “Suppose Uncle John Ward told Leonard Cooper about him and you. He wouldn’t have known you were pregnant, of course, but he might have told Cooper about your …” I searched for a polite way to put it. “About your time together.”

  Aunt Daphine shook her head emphatically. “No, he wouldn’t have, not in a million years. John Ward promised me that he’d never tell another living soul, and I promised him the same thing. I broke my word with Maw and Paw because of Vasti, and then with you because of those letters, but I know that nothing less than that would have made him break his.”

  “But he was young, and you know how young men are. What if he got drunk? Maybe bragging a little?”

  She kept shaking her head. “I’m sorry, Laurie Anne, but I knew John Ward Marston and you didn’t. He knew how to hold his liquor, and he didn’t show off, and he wouldn’t have broken his word come hell or high water. And besides, he could only have known this Cooper fellow a few weeks at the most. John Ward was a private man—he wouldn’t have told something like that to a man he barely knew. No, if he was going to tell anyone, it would have been Small Bill Walters because they were such good friends. And Small Bill died not long after him.”

  We got to Woolworth’s about then, so neither of us spoke about the matter at hand until we had received our order and were carrying it back to La Dauphin. That gave me time to come up with another idea.

  “What about Small Bill?” I said. “What if John Ward told him, and then Small Bill told Cooper. Couldn’t that be the answer?”

  Aunt Daphine shook her head again. “I don’t think so, Laurie Anne. I knew Small Bill pretty well. There were only a dozen in our class at school, you know, and he was John Ward’s best friend. Now I can see where John Ward might have told Small Bill, or even that Small Bill could have figured it out for himself. Small Bill knew that I was there in Norfolk, and John Ward was gone from the barracks for two nights. It wouldn’t take a whole lot of brains to guess the rest. But even if he knew, Small Bill would never have told anybody else about it.

  “Small Bill would have done anything in the world for me because of John Ward. Once when John Ward was out of town, a boy made a pass at me at a football game and wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. Well, Small Bill grabbed that boy by the collar to pull him away and shoved him halfway down the bleachers. No, Small Bill wouldn’t have told anybody something like that.”

  I tried to suggest that Small Bill would have been painfully lonely once Uncle John Ward died, and might not have thought that it was important anymore, but I might as well have been talking to a brick wall. Aunt Daphine just kept telling me that I hadn’t known Uncle John Ward or Small Bill, and that she had.

  I finally gave up, left her at La Dauphin, and drove back to Aunt Maggie’s.

  Chapter 17

  I saw Richard walking down the street as I was driving back to Aunt Maggie’s, and I stopped to pick him up. While we drove, I told him about the suspicions that Junior had roused and that Aunt Daphine refused to believe. I finished by the time we got to the house.

  “I feel funny about not talking to Junior about this,” I concluded as we went inside. “She’s going to be awfully mad if she finds out.”

  Richard nodded. “ ‘Though she be but little, she is fierce.’ A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act III, Scene 2.”

  “Of course we don’t know for sure that Coopers death is connected to the blackmail.” I looked at Richard and he looked at me. “Okay,” I said, “they probably are connected. But what can I do? I promised Aunt Daphine that I wouldn’t tell, and I know that if I do tell Junior, the blackmailer will find out and tell everybody about Aunt Daphine and Uncle John Ward, and Arthur will lose the election, and Vasti will blame me and never speak to me again.”

  “That last part didn’t sound all that bad.”

  “Richard!” I said, and bopped him with a sofa pillow, but I had to grin. “All right, maybe I am taking on more responsibility that I need to. What did you find out from Hank? Maybe you’ve made my angst obsolete.”

  “Sorry, love, but no such luck. All I did was to clear the brothers Parker from suspicion.”

  “Not another dead end?” I said disgustedly.

  He nodded.

  “Go ahead and tell me about it.”

  “I found Hank inspecting the latest edition of the Gazette with some satisfaction. The poor fellow rarely gets to cover a murder, though I couldn’t manufacture much sympathy for that particular problem. Anyway, he read most of the article about the murder out loud, and presented me with a copy of the paper, free of charge.”

  “And then what?”

  “Well, I worked up to it gradually, saying that I had enjoyed reading the papers I photocopied and I wondered where those fellows ended up.”

  “What excuse did you give for making those copies, anyway? I forgot to ask about that the other day.”

  “I told him that a colleague of mine is working on a book about different perceptions of the Vietnam War, especially in the views of the local press across the country.”

  “That’s not bad,” I said.

  “I was rather impressed myself. I’ll have to mention it to some people back at the college and see if anyone wants to give it a try. But back to the tale I’ve been trying to tell …”

  “Sorry,” I said, and then realized that h
ad been yet another interruption. “That’s the last thing I’ll say.”

  He didn’t look convinced, but he went on. “I mentioned Larry Parker by name, and asked if he were related, and of course Hank said that he is. I thought that he displayed a certain lack of enthusiasm, and delicately asked if perhaps they weren’t close. Hank admitted that their relationship has been strained ever since Hank left Chicago to return to Byerly, and that Larry had called Hank’s work on the Gazette a waste of time. Only Larry wasn’t that polite. Apparently they’re civil when they meet at family gatherings, but that’s as far as it goes.”

  I started to point out that this made the idea of their being in collusion pretty unlikely, but I remembered just in time that I had promised not to interrupt. Instead I just nodded.

  Richard looked gratified at my self–restraint. “Next I asked about Small Bill Walters, and what kind of fellow he had been. Hank, still thinking of his older brother, chuckled because he remembered a time that Small Bill and Larry had been in a fight, and Larry came out the worse for the experience. They were still on unfriendly terms when Small Bill shipped out for Vietnam, and Hank says that Larry later regretted that Small Bill died before they had a chance to bury the hatchet.”

  So much for the idea of Small Bill telling Larry about Uncle John Ward and Aunt Daphine. He certainly wouldn’t have told something like that to a man he was on the outs with.

  “Then I asked about Uncle John Ward, using the fact that he had been Small Bill’s best friend as a transition. I wondered if he was involved in the feud. The answer was a positive ‘yes.’ The reason Small Bill and Larry fought was that Larry had tried, as Hank put it, to ‘make time’ with Aunt Daphine while Uncle John Ward was away, and Small Bill stepped in to defend her honor.”

  I couldn’t stand it anymore. “Aunt Daphine told me about that, but she didn’t mention that it was Larry Parker that Small Bill pushed down the bleachers.” I realized that I had spoken, and contritely said, “Sorry.”

  “That’s all right,” Richard said magnanimously. “I had come pretty much to the end of my tale. The way I see it, Larry and Hank wouldn’t have worked together because they weren’t getting along. Moreover, neither Uncle John Ward nor Small Bill would have been likely to confide in Larry under the circumstances. That means Larry is eliminated, and so is Hank, since Larry couldn’t have told Hank something he didn’t know.”

  “Rats, I thought we were getting somewhere,” I said. “Now we’re back where we started, only with fewer people to suspect.”

  “One of my scientist friends once told me that negative data is at least as valuable as positive data.”

  I snapped, “Then maybe your scientist friend can find out who’s blackmailing Aunt Daphine!”

  Most people would have taken offense, but Richard just put an arm around me and squeezed gently. I squeezed back, and he added his other arm. We kissed a few times, and after that it didn’t seem so bad.

  Then I noticed something: it was after noon and my stomach was growling. Feeling that I needed something more substantial than a hamburger to cheer me up, I enticed Richard into going to the Fork–in–the–Road Barbeque Lodge, so named because it was located at a fork in the road to Hickory.

  The pulled–pork barbeque and hush puppies I ate were wonderful, but I still wasn’t very cheerful when we got back to the house. Richard, who knows my moods well, got a book to read while I pulled out my laptop computer and pushed buttons angrily, ostentatiously to record our latest negative findings but really so I could brood.

  The phone rang after a while, and Richard answered it. “Hi, Aunt Daphine. Yes, she is. Really? She’ll be glad to hear that.” He held his hand over the mouthpiece of the phone. “It’s Aunt Daphine. She says she has an idea for our investigation.”

  I winced, but then told myself that I wasn’t being fair. Considering how well I had done with this mess so far, Aunt Daphine’s suggestion would likely do as much good as anything I had come up with. I took the phone from Richard and said, “Hey Aunt Daphine. What’s your idea?”

  “I have to talk quietly because I’m at the shop,” Aunt Daphine whispered. “Have you found anything out?”

  “Not yet,” I had to answer, “but we’re still looking.”

  “I hear you were over at Nora’s asking about Byerly gossip, and I got to thinking that the best place for gossip is right here at the shop.”

  “You’ve got a point there,” I said. “The only thing is, what kind of excuse would I have for hanging around?”

  “Well, I figured you’d want to get your hair fixed for Vasti’s garden party,” Aunt Daphine said. “You were planning to, weren’t you?”

  Actually the thought hadn’t occurred to me, but I said, “That’s right. I do have to get that taken care of.”

  “Why don’t you come over tomorrow morning? If I act like I’m not expecting you and then squeeze you in between appointments and maybe pretend like your hair isn’t drying right, we could stretch it out for a good part of the day.”

  It was worth a try. “All right, I’ll be there in the morning.”

  Richard and I tried to come up with something to investigate for the rest of the afternoon and evening, but we couldn’t. Instead we drove to Valley Hills Mall in Hickory to buy me a dress for Vasti’s garden party.

  I had tried to talk myself into wearing the same outfit that I had worn to the reunion. Who would notice, or even if they did, who would care? Of course I knew the answer to both of those questions. Vasti would, and I didn’t want to hear about it from her for the next year. Or maybe I was just glad for an excuse to do anything other than think about blackmail.

  Chapter 18

  The next morning, Richard dropped me off at La Dauphin so I could spend the day absorbing Byerly atmosphere and gossip. I wasn’t sure it would do any good, but I didn’t have any better ideas. If nothing else, I’d get a haircut out of the deal.

  “Well, good morning,” Aunt Daphine said brightly when I came in. She was standing next to the reception desk with Dorinda, who grunted something or another.

  “Good morning,” I said back.

  “What can I do for you on this pretty day?”

  “I was hoping you could squeeze me in for a haircut,” I said, as per our agreed–upon script. I hoped that it didn’t sound as fake to everybody else as it did to me. “I don’t want Vasti to throw me out of her party.”

  “Don’t you worry about that,” Aunt Daphine said. “Dorinda, do I have time to fix my niece’s hair?”

  Dorinda looked over the appointment book. “I suppose so. You’ve got your appointments spaced out way more than they need to be. If you’d let me schedule them closer together, you could get half again as many people in.”

  “Now Dorinda, you know I don’t want to have to rush through anyone’s hair, and I don’t want anyone to have to wait for their appointment,” Aunt Daphine said firmly.

  “But—”

  “Besides, this way I’ll be able to fit in Laurie Anne.” She turned back to me. “Laurie Anne, why don’t you sit here by the hair dryers until I’m ready for you.”

  I took the seat, picked up a magazine, and used the mirrors to check around the room. Apparently no one thought that it was odd for me to be here; everyone was minding her own business.

  Now, I thought, bring on the gossip. The first half-hour’s conversation consisted of speculation about someone who was never actually named and the men she was seeing. I was pretty sure that that they were talking about Joleen, because they changed the subject when Dorinda walked in.

  From the number of men’s names bandied about, I didn’t think that Joleen had time for blackmail. Interestingly, while Thaddeous had said that he was trying to defend Joleen from Burt Walters, local gossip had it that Burt Walters and Joleen had been an item since day one. Of course, Byerly gossip isn’t always right, so I wasn’t taking it for gospel.

  The next topic to keep the ladies busy was Vasti’s garden party. It was apparently going
to be quite a shindig, complete with a live band and tons of food and waiters and waitresses to serve hors d’oeuvres. I was glad I had bought that new dress. Mrs. Walters had volunteered her house, which was the closest thing to a mansion in Byerly, and a lot of folks were going more for the chance to see inside than to support the charity. Come to think of it, I was pretty curious about that house myself.

  I thought I caught a reference or two to Vasti putting on airs and specifying just what people should wear, but of course people weren’t going to be rude with Aunt Daphine standing right there.

  I was still waiting for Aunt Daphine to squeeze me in when Gladys bustled in. “Hey Dorinda. I’m not late, am I?” she asked, looking around the waiting area.

  “Late for what?” Dorinda asked.

  “For my appointment with Mrs. Abbott,” Gladys said as she stowed her purse in the back of the shop and reached into the closet for her smock.

  “Is Mrs. Abbott coming in today?” Dorinda asked with malicious innocence, making a big show of flipping though the appointment book.

  Gladys said, “Don’t you remember, Dorinda? You took the call yourself. She called the day before yesterday and made an appointment for today at eleven–thirty.”

  Dorinda looked surprised. “Now I remember. She called back yesterday and cancelled. Did I not tell you?”

  “No, you didn’t tell me. Did she reschedule?”

  Dorinda smiled. “I forgot to ask if she wanted to. Sorry. Excuse me for a minute.” She clattered away to the back room before Gladys could say anything.

  “Tarnation!” Gladys said. “I don’t have another appointment until two, so I came all the way over here for nothing.” She started to pull the smock off again.

  “As long as you’re here,” I said hurriedly, “why don’t you do my nails so they’ll look good for Vasti’s party.”