I gave her a hard look. “Forgive me for prying, but have you been drinking?”
“Only a teeny, tiny cocktail. Or two.” She aimed a crooked smile my way. “A habit I picked up from my ex before he went on the wagon. That was after it finally dawned on him that he talks too much when he drinks. Some of his clients didn’t appreciate the loose lips.”
At her words, an appalling thought shoved its way into my head and refused to be dislodged. “To whom did he talk?”
“What?”
“Did he regret sharing something specific?”
I could tell by her blank stare that I wasn’t getting through to her, and I hesitated to elaborate. Surely I was wrong.
“It’s been nice chatting with you,” I said, “but I really have to get home to my cat.”
Cautiously, I eased my cart past the second Mrs. Doran, who was now staring in a bemused way at the many varieties of Cheerios on display.
She came back to life as I fled, calling after me in a loud voice, “You watch out for that Mike Doran. He’s a dyed-in-the-wool louse.”
The louse and the souse, I thought. Or maybe the louse and the lush. What a charming couple they must have made.
Chapter 41
Since I already had the basic necessities in my cart—milk, eggs, toilet paper, and cat food—I paid for my groceries and headed home before Gloria could accost me a second time, but although I escaped her presence, I wasn’t able to erase what she’d said from my mind.
I should have asked her, I thought. I should have come right out and demanded to know if Mike regretted telling certain stories to the young Tiffany Scott.
As much as I wanted to attribute everything Gloria said to the drink, I couldn’t quite convince myself that was the case. The upshot was that I had to consider the unthinkable—that if Mike was as protective of his family’s reputation as his ex-wife claimed, he was a viable suspect in Tiffany’s murder.
He’d made a joke of the possibility when we’d had lunch together, even going so far as to assure me that he had an alibi, but he hadn’t been happy that I’d figured out what his father had done.
On autopilot, I carried the groceries into the house and put them away.
Think it through, I told myself. Mike hasn’t tried to harm me. He knows I won’t tell anyone. Why would he be afraid that Tiffany would betray his secret?
What at first seemed an outrageous idea slowly coalesced into an all-too-likely scenario. Maybe I was trying too hard to make the pieces fit, but fit they did, especially when I recalled something Officer Blume had told me. Tiffany hadn’t had money of her own. She’d been dependent upon her husband’s good will. Mike, on the other hand, if wife number two was to be believed, had told his ex that he was strapped for cash. I hated to think ill of the dead, and I’d liked Tiffany on short acquaintance, but what if that file she’d named “blackmail.doc” wasn’t just an innocent part of the story bible for her novel?
I closed my eyes against a sudden urge to cry. Was I right? If I was, then Mike, in the guise of Ronnie’s defense attorney, must also be planning to railroad his own client to protect himself. Would he really let her be convicted of a crime he’d committed? The Mike I’d known long ago would never have done such a thing, let alone add insult to injury by charging Ronnie for his services, but that was the point, wasn’t it?
“I don’t know him anymore,” I said aloud. “People change in fifty years.”
Although I hadn’t asked a question, Calpurnia answered me with a short burst of cat-speak designed to remind me that I had more important responsibilities than solving Tiffany’s murder. First among them was refilling her food dish. Still struggling to put all the pieces of the puzzle together, I obliged her by rote, opening a can and scooping the contents into a clean cat-food bowl. I refreshed her water, too, slopping a little as I returned it to the placemat that kept my kitchen floor marginally cleaner. Like many cats, Calpurnia liked to take her food out of its bowl and eat it off the tile.
I no longer had any appetite for supper. I left Cal to her meal and headed for the dining room. I’d already moved the file cabinets and a number of boxes upstairs, but I had yet to transfer the mess on my dining room table to the desk that had pride of place in my office. I glanced at the ceiling, visualizing the space directly over my head and wishing I could just forget all these newly hatched suspicions and spend the evening settling into the freshly renovated space.
Instead, I sat down at the table and fired up my laptop to take another look at the blackmail file. I’m no math genius, and I know even less about accounting, but in light of what I now suspected it seemed to me that the amounts listed were in line with what a young woman short on funds might reasonably think she could demand from a retired lawyer already burdened with alimony payments. The payments started small, but each one was a little larger than the one before. That would have made it harder for him to come up with the money. To keep Tiffany quiet, he’d been willing to risk the wrath of his ex-wife, but what if she’d asked for even more, and he didn’t have it? Would that have given him incentive to get rid of his blackmailer?
I wondered if Detective Hazlett had looked at this file. He hadn’t said right out that he’d made a copy of Tiffany’s thumb drive, but I was certain he had, and if he had duplicate files, surely he’d read them.
But he’d arrested Ronnie.
I frowned at the columns of numbers on the screen. In crime novels, the police never seem to have any trouble gaining access to people’s finances, but “blackmail.doc” didn’t list any names, just dates and amounts. If Tiffany had been trying to hide a nest egg from her controlling husband, she’d probably have set up an account at a different bank than the one he used. The police might not have found it.
“And maybe,” I said aloud to Cal as she sauntered into the room, “just maybe, I’m letting my imagination run away with me. For all I know, the police collected other evidence from Ronnie’s house, something besides the same pills that were in Tiffany’s system. Maybe she is guilty and Mike’s lack of enthusiasm about defending her is because he has genuine doubts about her innocence.”
The flaw in this logic was too big to ignore. Mike had also had access to Ronnie’s house, and to her pills. And he’d been there on the day she and Tiffany quarreled—the day Tiffany died.
Mike had said he had an alibi for the time of Tiffany’s murder, but he hadn’t told me what it was. I had to wonder if he’d been telling me the truth. After all, if he was guilty of murder, a lie would hardly trouble his conscience.
Speculations whirled around and around in my mind until they triggered a dull headache. I shut down the laptop and returned to the kitchen. I needed to eat something, even if I didn’t feel hungry. Getting at least eight hours of sleep would be an even better idea, but I didn’t see that happening. I opened the refrigerator and stared at the contents, finally pulling out the ingredients for a grilled tomato and cheese sandwich.
I was operating on autopilot until Calpurnia snaked out a paw in an attempt to liberate the cheese I’d just removed from a plastic storage bag. I spoke sharply to her before I lifted her off the counter. She wasn’t supposed to get up there in the first place. Then I nullified any hope of training her not to beg by tossing her a small piece of cheddar.
The problem, I decided as I put together a light supper, was that I had thought about my new theory just enough to make myself crazy. I considered asking Mike straight out about his alibi, but if he was innocent he’d be hurt to think I’d suspected him, however briefly, of murder. That was no way to keep a friend. On the other hand, if he was guilty, asking a question like that would be tantamount to setting myself up to be the next one to be bumped off.
I’d polished off the last of my meal before it occurred to me that if the alibi was real, there was someone else who almost certainly knew the details. Before I could talk myself out of it, I picked up the phone and punched in Detective Hazlett’s number. When my call went to voice mail, I almost hung up.
Only at the last possible moment did I start to speak.
I doubt my message made much sense. I threw a lot in, suggesting that he reevaluate “blackmail.doc” and that he look for a bank account in Tiffany’s name and that if the numbers in the file matched her deposits he should also read the files about the copycat killer. I couldn’t bring myself to mention Mike by name, but right before I disconnected I asked Hazlett to call me back.
I’d just finished washing the few dishes I’d used that day, a ritual I’ve always found soothing, when the doorbell rang. I jumped a foot. It was pitch dark outside and I wasn’t expecting company. What if it was Mike? I didn’t think I was up to facing him. On the other hand, it might be Detective Hazlett, a prospect that was almost as unnerving.
Feet dragging, I made my way to the foyer, flipped on the porch light, and peered through the small window in the front door. I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding when I recognized Darlene.
“Hold on,” I called through the wood. “I have to disarm the security system.”
That done, I wrestled with the chain, the regular lock, and the deadbolt, endeavors that gave me plenty of time to wonder what on earth Darlene was doing on my doorstep. Her arrival was all the more remarkable because my house isn’t exactly handicapped accessible. In all the time since my return to Lenape Hollow, she had never once attempted to visit me at home.
“Give me a hand, will you?” she asked as soon as the door was open. She shoved a large rolling suitcase in my direction. Somehow, she’d managed to schlep it up two sets of steps and onto my front porch. “I need a place to stay. Frank and I have had the mother of all quarrels.”
“Oh, no!”
“He’s pissed off because of that confrontation with Van Heusen in our living room. He says, very unfairly, that it never would have happened if I hadn’t been trying to dig up dirt on Onslow. Like he didn’t think that was a great idea back when we lost our savings!”
I lugged the suitcase as far as the hall and abandoned it. “You’re welcome to stay, but my guest room is tiny, and it’s on the second floor.”
Using her cane for balance, she went past me, heading into the living room. “A sofa will do. I won’t be here long. I’m just giving him time to cool down.”
“All I have is a loveseat.”
She stared at it, then shrugged. “I can do stairs if I have to. I’m just slow. I left my walker and the scooter in the van. Would you mind bringing them in, just in case I need one or the other in the morning?”
I was surprised she hadn’t brought the wheelchair, too. “Give me your keys. I’ll move my car out of the garage and put your van in. Then I can unload directly into the house through the sunroom.”
It didn’t take me long to switch the vehicles around and bring in Darlene’s equipment. The scooter was folded up and relatively lightweight. Its battery was heavy, but it was stored in a carrying bag with a handle. I went back out one last time to remove the garage door opener from my car. I locked the Taurus, but since it was parked in the driveway, it was vulnerable. I was taking no chances.
After I relocked all the doors and reset the security system, I reassembled the scooter and installed the battery. I’d seen Darlene do it often enough and thought I’d spare her the trouble. She was obviously upset. It wasn’t easy to walk out on a man you’d been married to for half a century. I couldn’t imagine anything that would have made me do that to James.
My task complete, I followed the sound of cabinet doors opening and closing to the kitchen. Darlene found what she was looking for in the cupboard where I keep my meager supply of liquor. Holding up a fifth of dark rum, she turned to me with a grin.
“Got any cola?”
Chapter 42
It was nearly midnight by the time I’d heard all of Darlene’s woes and had filled her in on my new and unwelcome suspicions about Mike. We were in the living room, seated side by side on the love seat with our feet up on the coffee table. I was far from drunk, but I was in a state of pleasant, alcohol-induced haziness.
“I feel guilty even thinking such a thing about Mike,” I confided, “and I probably shouldn’t have told you what his father did. You’ve got to promise not to say anything about that to anyone else. Unless the police arrest him, of course.”
“Cross my heart and hope to die.” Darlene made the appropriate hand gestures to go with her slightly slurred words and then, for good measure, mimed zipping her lips.
“You’re not saying I’m wrong.”
“How can I? Your theory makes as much sense as Ronnie drugging Tiffany and tossing her into Chestnut Lake.”
“Wearing all her clothes and with my card in her pocket.”
Darlene shook her head. “Sloppy. Sloppy. Sloppy. Not well thought out. If Ronnie had done it, she’d have been sneakier than that.”
“So you don’t think she’s guilty?”
“Nope. But then, I don’t want to think anyone we know could be a cold-blooded killer. I’m finding it hard to believe that Mike is.” Darlene punctuated this statement with an enormous yawn. “Sorry.” She blinked owlishly at me. “Long day.”
“We could both do with a good night’s sleep. Does the scooter need to be plugged in?”
“No, but I should probably know where you’ve stashed it.”
“Right next door.” I gestured toward the pocket doors.
She hopped up off the loveseat and went to look.
“I remember this room. You used to have all your birthday parties here.”
I nodded. “Just the other day I was looking at some of the pictures my father took. It was interesting to see how my mom’s decorating changed from year to year.”
“And we slept on this floor when you had pajama parties.”
“We were a lot younger and more flexible then.”
Darlene advanced far enough into the dining room to locate her scooter. Where the sunroom, formerly a side porch, joins the house, the outside wall extends to create the window alcove. I’d tucked her motorized transport into that space. “You put it together!” she exclaimed. “You didn’t have to do that.”
I shrugged. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
She climbed aboard, started her up, and amused herself by making vroom-vroom noises.
“You’ve had way too much to drink.” I spoke very carefully, enunciating each word so she wouldn’t suspect that I was none too steady myself.
Still seated on the scooter, Darlene pointed an accusing finger at the dining room table. “That’s got to go. I need maneuvering room.”
“Give me a minute.”
I made short work of stacking papers on a chair and balancing my new laptop on top of them. Then I attacked the table itself. It had been cleverly constructed so that the leaves tucked under and the sides dropped down until it was less than half the size it had been. Once I’d shoved it up against a wall, there was plenty of open space.
“There,” I said. “You’ve got a clear path from the window alcove all the way to the living room.”
I was contemplating whether or not I needed to rearrange some of the furniture in that room when the doorbell rang.
I jumped, and Darlene let out a squeak of surprise. We looked at each other and giggled like a couple of schoolgirls.
“Do you suppose that’s Frank?” she whispered.
“Do you think he’s come to apologize?”
“I hope so.” A faint smile curved her lips.
“Wait here and I’ll go take a look. You don’t want to seem too eager.”
I trotted through the living room and into the hall. A glass-paneled door separates the latter from my tiny foyer. Leaving the security system on, I flicked the switch for the porch light. Then I froze. It wasn’t Frank Uberman on the other side of my front door. It was Mike Doran.
I pressed my palms against the wood and shook my head in an attempt to clear the cobwebs away. I hadn’t had that much to drink, and my recent burst of physical activity had worked mos
t of the alcohol out of my system. Think, Mikki, I ordered myself.
I’d turned on the light, so Mike knew I was home. Well, he’d already known that. He could see my car parked in the driveway and that there were still lights on downstairs. What he didn’t know was that I suspected him of murdering Tiffany.
When he rang the doorbell a second time, I knew I had to acknowledge his presence. That did not mean I had to let him come inside the house.
“It’s late,” I called through the door. “I was about to go to bed.”
“I need to talk to you for a minute,” Mike yelled back, “but I’d just as soon not share our conversation with the neighbors. C’mon, Mik. Open up.”
It was the use of the old nickname that weakened my resolve. I hesitated a moment longer, then shut off the security system and unlocked the door, although I did keep the chain on. I peered around the solid barrier of the door, hoping to give the impression that I was already in my nightgown. I feigned a yawn. “Can’t this wait till morning?”
Chilly night air eddied into the house, but Mike was dressed for even colder temperatures. He had the collar of a navy blue peacoat turned up, and he was wearing a hat pulled down so low that very little of his face showed. He was wearing gloves, too. It was catching sight of those that gave me the willies. It wasn’t that cold out.
I tried to slam the door in his face but I wasn’t quite fast enough. Mike gave it a mighty kick, breaking the chain and sending me reeling backward. Before I could recover my balance, he was inside. He slammed the door shut with one hand and grabbed hold of my right arm with the other. A moment later he had twisted it behind my back. He spoke directly into my ear, his voice low and ominous.
“I’m really sorry about this, Mikki, but I can’t risk having you talk about what you know.”
Crime & Punctuation Page 22
