Die, Die Birdie

by J. R. Ripley

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means I know all about you and Randy Vincent.” She opened her mouth to respond, but I held up my hand to stop her. “And I know that you were in town when Matt was killed.”

  Kim looked troubled, frightened.

  “That explains how you’d seen the Cole’s Trucking semi parked outside the Ruby Lake Motor Inn. The motel is nowhere near your place.” Kim didn’t deny it. She didn’t deny anything, and that made me worry all the more. “Talk to me,” I pleaded. “Tell me what’s going on. I want to help you.”

  Kim remained intransigent. “I need a drink.”

  “You need a lawyer!” I barked. I’d reached the end of my patience, friend or no friend. “The police think you might have murdered Matt. And Mrs. Kowalski is convinced of it. You mind explaining to me what makes her so sure?”

  Kim stared at the kitchen floor, old refinished red oak in a rich, dark stain. “I was sort of seen leaving Birds and Bees the evening Matt was killed.”

  My head snapped back as if I’d been hit in the face with a pile driver. I scrubbed my face with my hands as I fought to regain my equilibrium. This whole situation just kept getting worse and worse. I took a swig of water.

  “And for the record,” Kim said, her voice low, “the police don’t think I murdered Matt.”

  I twisted my head to the side. “Oh?” I could feel the beginnings of relief, just a tickle, rising from my toes. But I’d take it. I could use some good news for a change.

  Kim shook her disheveled head slowly, in time with the clock. “They think we’re in on it together.”

  14

  And things just got worse again. I fell into a hard kitchen chair. “What? Why?” This couldn’t be happening. This really, truly, could not be happening. I’d led a good life, been a good girl. Helped my mother. Stopped for suicidal squirrels even if it meant getting a traffic ticket for reckless driving.

  What had I done to deserve this?

  I reached for the bottle of wine. Empty.

  No matter. I knew where Kim kept her supply. Upper cabinet, third door on the right. Bingo!

  “Who saw you?” I pulled down a bottle of sangria and dumped a generous portion into a relatively clean coffee mug.

  “Gertie Hammer.”

  Great. Of all people, Kim had been seen by the Queen of Sour. Moire Leora had mentioned seeing the old woman pass by a couple of times. I drank and wondered what the old biddy had been up to, while Kim pouted.

  “What about me?” she whined.

  “You need coffee.” I wrinkled my nose. “And a shower.”

  Kim thrust her tongue out.

  “And a toothbrush.”

  While Kim steamed, I finished my wine. And had another cookie. “Okay,” I said, laying my hands on the table, “tell me why Kennedy thinks we’re a couple of killers.” Though I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear this.

  “Well,” stuttered Kim, taking a sudden interest in her hands.

  I slapped her hand. “Spill it.”

  Kim nodded once. “It’s no news that you and I both had reason to dislike Matt Kowalski . . .” Her voice trailed off and I listened to the incessant ticking of the clock just for something to do.

  “Disliked doesn’t begin to describe it,” I said finally.

  Kim managed a small laugh. “Jerry thinks we lured him there to Birds and Bees.” She rose and paced the small kitchen. “And while one of us distracted him”—Kim swung her arms—“the other whacked him.”

  “What? And we just left his body there on the floor of my storeroom waiting to be discovered?” I shook my head. “How dumb does Jerry think we are? How dumb is Jerry?!” I realized I was pacing now myself and forced myself to sit back down. “So, what were you doing at Birds and Bees?” I demanded.

  “Well, I—”

  “And why didn’t you tell me you were back in Ruby Lake?” My voice and pulse were rising once more.

  “I only—”

  I was on my feet again and we were standing nose to nose. “And what are you doing seeing Randy Vincent? A married man!”

  “Too many questions, Amy! Give me time to answer one first.” Kim swayed and her legs wobbled. “Oops.” Her eyes glistened. “I don’t feel so good.” She pressed the back of her hand against her forehead.

  “When’s the last time you ate?”

  “That cute lawyer, Derek Harlan, had some Chinese food brought over to the police station last night.”

  I pointed to the stairs. “You go get cleaned up. I’ll fix us some dinner.” While my best friend slowly trudged up the stairs to shower, change into some clean clothes and, hopefully, brush her teeth, I scrounged around for some food.

  And some answers.

  By the time Kim came back down, looking if not like a million bucks, at least a hundred, which was ninety-nine more than she’d looked like earlier, I had a simple yet healthy spread laid out on the kitchen table.

  “Pork chops and apple sauce.” Kim smiled. “Thank you, Alice.” She’d thrown on an ornate black Juicy Couture tracksuit, though I’d never known her to run a day in her life unless it was to beat out another shopper during a store sale. The back of the jacket was lavishly embellished with glittery gems and gold studs. I guess it’s the style that counts. The bottoms were the matching velour-floral-jewel-boot-cut pant.

  “Shut up and eat,” I replied. Okay, so I’m a Brady Bunch fan. Who isn’t? The reruns never end, so it’s learn to love ’em or live without TV. I jabbed at my chop while Kim destroyed hers by drowning it in ketchup.

  Over coffee, Kim told me how she’d been seeing Randy Vincent for a couple of months or more. It seemed they sort of ran in the same circles, she having worked in real estate and he being in property management. Kim had handled a couple of sales for him. “I didn’t want to tell you because I was afraid of what you’d think.”

  “I don’t know what to think,” I said. And I honestly didn’t.

  “Randy’s been separated from his wife for more than a year, you know.”

  “So why don’t they get divorced?”

  She shrugged and bent at the waist, touching her fingers to the floor. “He says they haven’t gotten around to it. You know they share the business.”

  I knew. Like I said, Vincent Properties owned a number of rentals around Ruby Lake. I’d seen several of their signs around town. “And his wife is okay with you seeing her husband? Maybe she finally got mad and decided to kill Matt Kowalski and frame you—us—for it.”

  Kim shook her head. “No. She’s fine with it. Lynda’s been seeing some guy for nearly a year now.”

  Lynda is Randy’s wife. I didn’t know what was going on with them, but at least there were no children involved. “So I ask again, what were you doing at Birds and Bees the night Matt got killed?”

  She let out a low moan. “Randy had some work to do. Taxes. It’s crunch time, you know. I went to the store to get my tablet so I could read.” I knew Kim liked to read novels on the electronic device. Me, I prefer paper. “I’d inadvertently left it there when I went to Florida. It was under the front counter.”

  Now that she’d mentioned it, I realized that it had been there before the murder and not after. “What time did you get to Birds and Bees?”

  “Around seven, seven thirty, I’d say.”

  That was well after I’d gone. “So did you see or hear anything?”

  “No, not really.” Kim hesitated. I rose and refilled our coffee. “I mean, I thought I heard noises. But in that old house, we’re always hearing noises, right?”

  I nodded. Old houses make old noises, old spooky noises. Squirrels and nocturnal critters make noises. And rain seeping into your walls and crumbling your foundation, no doubt, made noises. “Wait a minute,” I asked. “Was the door locked when you arrived?”

  “Sure.”

  “And you went in the front?”

  Kim nodded. “Yeah, why?”

  I shrugged helplessly. “I’m still trying to figure o
ut how it got unlocked. Like I said, it was unlocked when I got back from Aaron Maddley’s farm.”

  “Matt must have done it.”

  “I suppose he might have picked the lock.” But I didn’t think he’d had the brains for it. His motor skills seemed more in line with popping open beer cans. I couldn’t quite picture Matt as a cat burglar. Then again, there was a lot I apparently didn’t know about Matt Kowalski. I hadn’t seen him in years. People change. I’d changed. Maybe Matt had too.

  I pulled a notepad from Kim’s junk drawer and fished out a half-chewed pencil.

  “What are you doing?”

  “We need to learn more about Matt.” I drew his name in big block letters at the top of the sheet. “And then we need to come up with a list of names.”

  “Names?”

  I nodded. “Of people who might have wanted him dead.”

  A small smile passed her lips. “Besides us?”

  “Definitely besides us.” I tapped the stubby eraser end of the pencil against the lined paper. “So, who have we got?”

  Kim shrugged helplessly. Her mouth opened and closed. “Sorry, I don’t have a clue, Amy.”

  “Well, I do.” I flipped the pencil over and put tip to paper. I paused. “Damn.” I bit the inside of my cheek. “I don’t.”

  We sat in silence for several minutes. “This is nuts,” I said, finally breaking the silence. “There has to be someone in this town who wanted Matt dead.”

  Kim raised an eyebrow.

  “Otherwise, he’d still be alive!” I slammed my fist against the table and thought about everything that had happened since the murder. “What about Mayor MacDonald?”

  “Mac?”

  “Yeah. Remember how I said that Moire Leora had seen him peeking in the door at the shop?”

  “You mean, maybe he’s the killer, returning to the scene of the crime?”

  I nodded. “That’s what they do in the movies.” Just because it was a stereotype didn’t make it any less true. “We’ll have to poke around, see if the good mayor might have had reason to want Matt dead.”

  “I suppose . . .” Kim sounded unconvinced.

  “Speaking of Mac. You used to work with him. Ask him if there have been any recent house sales on Sycamore Street.”

  “Why on earth do you want to know that?” Kim’s brow shot up. “Are you looking for another place?”

  I explained about the woman with the stroller.

  “I don’t know,” Kim said, shaking her head. “That sounds like a stretch to me. Maybe they bought the house but haven’t closed on it yet. Maybe she just figured what she wanted a birdfeeder for was none of your business and told you that story to shut you up.” I made a face.

  “Or maybe they’re only visiting and she did buy a house on Sycamore Street.” Kim crossed her arms over her chest. “In another town.”

  I frowned. “Just ask him.” Everything she’d suggested made sense, but it hadn’t made it any less annoying. Maybe more so.

  “Fine.”

  “Tiffany over at the diner also told me how her ex, Robert, was spying on her from across the street.”

  “The sleaze,” spat Kim.

  “Agreed,” I said. “But what if he wasn’t spying on Tiffany?”

  “Huh?”

  “What if he was breaking into Birds and Bees to meet up with Matt?” I speculated. “And kill him.”

  Kim snorted. “Why, car deal gone bad?”

  I folded my arms and steamed. “Could be.”

  Kim laughed. “Girl, you are going off the deep end. Matt didn’t have a driver’s license, remember? He’s not allowed to drive.”

  I remembered. Surrendering his driver’s license had been part of Matt’s deal with the court after the incident that had resulted in Kim’s boyfriend’s death. Then again, I had no idea whether or not that order still stood.

  “Do you have any motives for all these potential killers you’re inventing?”

  “Somebody killed Matt Kowalski,” I replied firmly. “And I’m getting tired of people around here suspecting you and me!”

  “Okay, okay. Calm down, Miss Marple.”

  I shot daggers at her. Hey, if you can’t shoot daggers at your best friend once in a while, what kind of friend would she be?

  Kim shot daggers back. See? We’re on the same wavelength. “So what do we do now?”

  I scrubbed my face with my hands. “We need to dig around. Figure out who wanted Matt dead and who had the opportunity to do it. The sooner the better.” I wasn’t sure being under suspicion of murder was good for business and said so.

  “At least you have an alibi,” Kim said.

  “The police say there’s a several-hours window of time when Matt could have been killed. So I’m not so sure how tight even my alibi is. Can’t Randy vouch for you?”

  “Sure. Except for the little while I was gone to Birds and Bees.”

  And we both knew that was plenty of time to commit murder.

  “I’m having dinner with Aaron Maddley tomorrow,” I explained. “He went to school with Matt too. Maybe he’ll have some idea who—” I stopped because Kim had a bug-eyed look on her face. “What? What is it?”

  “Aaron Maddley?” Kim gasped. “You’re having dinner with Aaron Maddley?”

  “Yeah, what’s the big deal?” Kim’s mouth hung open. “He isn’t married, you know.” Okay, that was just mean of me.

  “But, Amy, Aaron Maddley could be our killer!”

  15

  “Excuse me?” I wrinkled up my nose at her. “Aaron Maddley? Are you sure we’re talking about the same person?” Kim said yes, but I wasn’t buying it. “Mild, easygoing, laid-back guy, good-looking in an all-American way?”

  Kim nodded with every descriptive I mentioned. But there had to be some mistake. Some misunderstanding. Aaron Maddley wouldn’t hurt a fly. Heck, he’d probably build it a cute little red cedar fly house. “Builds birdhouses for fun?”

  Kim cocked her head. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of this earlier.”

  “Think of what?”

  “You do know Matt got Aaron’s littler sister pregnant?”

  My jaw fell.

  Kim scratched the side of her head. “Must have been four or five years ago.”

  I confessed that I hadn’t even known Aaron had a little sister. “What’s her name? Where is she now?” I was sorry about what the louse had done to her, but if what Kim said was true, it would give her a good reason to want to knock him upside the head with a piece of wrought iron. There are those who believe one knock deserves another. I’m not one of them, but I know they’re out there. “Could she have killed him after all these years?”

  “Her name is Grace. I believe she’s working down in Atlanta.” Kim cleared the supper dishes and rinsed them in the sink. “At least, that’s the last I heard.”

  “What happened to the baby?”

  “Miscarriage,” explained Kim. “Aaron’s sister is okay, but you can imagine Matt wasn’t high on Aaron’s list of friends.”

  “Or Grace’s.”

  “Or Grace’s,” agreed Kim. She waved a dirty fork in my direction. “But we know Aaron was in town. Grace is in Atlanta.”

  “Maybe yes, maybe no.” I decided I’d mention it to Chief Kennedy and ask him to look into Grace Maddley’s whereabouts on the night in question.

  “Good idea.” She towel-dried the plates and slid them away in an upper cabinet. “I guess I shouldn’t have said what I said about Aaron possibly being a murderer.”

  “Actually . . .”

  Kim faced me. “What is it?”

  I sighed and leaned against the kitchen counter for support. The granite was cold against my fingers. “Aaron wasn’t exactly there—at his farm—when I arrived to pick up the birdhouses.”

  “Oh?” Kim leaned back too.

  I shook my head. “I had an appointment with him around seven. Not a firm time; I’d mentioned I’d be out that evening. He said he’d be around and to stop by whenever.�
��

  “But?”

  “But when I got there”—I shook myself, not wanting to believe what I was going to say, what I was thinking—“but Aaron didn’t answer the door. I waited a bit, looked around the yard.” I paused for a moment, trying to scare up the memories of that evening, not realizing how important those memories might be. “I didn’t see him anywhere. The house was dark. I didn’t spot him in the yard or fields.”

  “So then what?”

  I shrugged. “About fifteen or twenty minutes later he came out of that big barn of his.”

  Kim smiled. “Sounds pretty anticlimactic to me. He was in the barn the whole time.”

  I shook my head no. “We went into the barn to get the birdhouses. His pickup was inside. I remember it was making ticking noises.”

  “Ticking noises?” Kim’s nose wrinkled like a concertina.

  “The kind of noises an engine makes when it’s cooling down.”

  “You don’t think—”

  “There’s a rutted dirt track behind the barn that leads out to the main road and there are big sliding doors on each end of the barn.” I explained how Matt could have driven in from the opposite side and I’d never have seen or heard him. “The barn’s at least a hundred yards from the house. Maybe more.”

  “So he could have driven into town, offed Matt, and driven back home.”

  We both let those words sink in. Aaron Maddley had means, motive, and opportunity.

  Reluctantly, I added Aaron and Grace Maddley to my list of suspects. Admittedly, our suspect list was meager, but that was a good sign. “The fewer suspects, the more our chance of catching him.” A light drizzle was falling outside. I could only imagine what that was doing to my property and hoped that my contractor was on top of things.

  “Or her,” Kim added. I guess she meant Grace Maddley. I’d definitely be asking the police chief about her.

  I left shortly after. Tomorrow was the big day. Our official grand opening. The one we’d advertised in the Ruby Lake Weekender. Kim and I had decided to divide and conquer. She’d find out if any houses had sold on Sycamore—I don’t know why, but I still had a funny feeling about that couple—and I’d try to figure out if Robert LaChance might have had a reason to want Matt Kowalski dead. The way things were going, I wouldn’t be surprised. It was beginning to seem like Matt had harmed a number of people in Ruby Lake at one time or another, either directly or indirectly. But how many of those people might have been upset enough to want him dead?