I pulled out the chair next to her and set my cookies on the table beside a packing box labeled Kitchen.
Trent sat across from her and laid his notebook on the table. Surely he wasn’t going to question Grace like a suspect. I kicked him under the table.
He ignored me.
“Grace, can you tell me about any previous illnesses your husband had?”
She eased into a chair. “I don’t know. He had a cold last winter.”
“What kind of work did he do? Anything where he was exposed to chemicals?”
“He sold farm equipment to retail stores.” She managed a weak smile. “He was so good, he had five states—Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, and Iowa.”
“So he traveled?”
She wiped her eyes with a crumpled tissue. “He traveled a lot. Crappie Creek was too small to have a store, so he was always gone. He was going to find a job in Kansas City where he could stay home more.”
“How long have you known Chuck?”
“Almost a year.”
Almost a year?
“You got married in August,” I said. “That’s seven months ago.”
Again the weak smile appeared. “He asked me to marry him on our second date. I said yes on our third. He told me he knew the minute he met me that I was the one, that he was going to marry me and spend the rest of his life with me.”
No wonder the only illness she knew about was a cold last winter.
“Did he have any enemies?” Trent asked.
Enemies? Like somebody who might murder him?
I tried to read Trent’s face to see what he was thinking. Stoic. He was entrenched in his cop persona.
“No!” Grace said. “Everybody liked Chuck.”
“How about business rivals, other salesmen who might have resented his success?”
“Chuck didn’t talk about his work. Why are you asking me all these questions?”
“Standard procedure,” Trent replied.
If he asked whether she had an alibi for the time of death, I was going to hit him.
“Excuse me.” Donna, the lab tech, stood in the kitchen doorway holding a vibrating cell phone. “This was in the deceased’s pocket. Someone is calling him.” She handed the phone to Trent.
Grace looked at the display. “Lutrell Tractor Supply. It’s one of his stores. I can’t talk to them right now. Lindsay, can you tell them?”
I shook my head but Trent handed me the phone anyway.
“Chuck Mayfield’s office,” I said.
A woman giggled. “Are you his new secretary? Honey, would you tell Chuck his wife wants to talk to him?”
Chapter Three
His wife?
It was a joke.
A very bad joke.
Thank goodness Grace hadn’t taken the call.
I couldn’t look at her.
The woman on the phone didn’t know about Chuck’s death. She didn’t know her attempt at humor was inappropriate. I shouldn’t feel so angry at her.
I dragged all my manners out of the closet and cleared my throat. “I regret to inform you that Chuck Mayfield cannot come to the phone. He died today in the arms of his wife.” I couldn’t stop myself from adding that last to let this idiot know how bad her behavior was.
Silence.
Had the woman hung up?
“That’s not funny,” she said.
“What do they want?” Grace asked.
“Nothing. Robo caller.” I flinched as the stupid lie came out of my mouth.
“Let me talk to Chuck.” The crazy woman’s tone had turned belligerent.
“Do you have short term memory loss or bad hearing? I just told you why Chuck can’t come to the phone.”
Grace took the phone from me. “This is Chuck Mayfield’s widow. Who is this?” Grace’s eyes widened then narrowed. “You are one sick bitch, talking like that at a time like this.” She disconnected the call. “Some people are just mean.”
The phone vibrated.
Grace looked at the display. “It’s her again.”
Trent grabbed it. “This is Detective Adam Trent with the Pleasant Grove Police Department. Can I help you?—Ma’am—Ma’am, please calm down.—Ma’am, I assure you this is no joke.” He listened a moment then gave the caller his badge number. “Feel free to report me. Would you like me to give you the number to call?—Chuck Mayfield cannot come to the phone. I personally heard the doctor pronounce him dead.—I am at Mr. Mayfield’s home with his widow.—No, ma’am, I will not give you the address.” He laid the phone on the table. “She hung up. If she calls again, Grace, don’t answer.”
Grace dabbed her swollen eyes with the damp tissue. “Why would that woman say she’s Chuck’s wife?”
“There are a lot of strange people out there,” Trent said.
“She’s calling from Lutrell Tractor Supply,” Grace said. “She’s using their phone. Do you think she broke into the store?”
I looked at Trent.
He looked at me.
“Was Chuck married before?” I asked.
“No! I’m the only woman he ever loved.”
If they were both sixteen years old, I might have believed that. However, I wasn’t going to upset Grace further by questioning Chuck’s avowal of love. “It’s Saturday evening. Maybe there was an office party and that woman had too much to drink.”
Trent gave a curt half-nod. As close as he could come to lying.
I reached for the phone.
Trent covered it with his hand. His eyes had that cop look.
“May I see that?” I used my most polite tone.
The only sound in the room was Grace sniffing.
“Why?” Trent asked.
“Why not?” I kept my gaze focused on Trent. “Grace, may I see Chuck’s phone?”
“Yeah, sure.”
Trent tried to stare me down. I could read his mind. Chuck’s death was suspicious. The phone call from a woman claiming to be his wife was suspicious. He wanted to hang onto that phone.
But suspicious isn’t the same thing as having a crime scene with bullet casings and blood spatter. He had no more right to that cell phone than I did.
“Missouri’s a community property state,” I said. “Grace owns half that phone, and she said I can look at her half.”
Trent compressed his lips but slowly lifted his hand.
I took it, looked at the list of recent calls, memorized the number for Lutrell Tractor, then gave it to Grace.
Donna appeared in the kitchen doorway again. “I’m finished, Adam. Do you want to check anything before I call someone to take the body in for autopsy?”
Grace flinched at the clinical words.
“I’m done,” Trent said. “Go ahead and call them.”
We followed her to the living room and waited for someone to arrive and take away Chuck’s body.
Grace sobbed.
Trent stood by stoically.
Rickie remained upstairs in his room.
Finally the body snatchers came and took Chuck away.
The sofa was empty. The house, crammed with boxes, felt empty. Grace’s swollen eyes looked empty.
The evening had begun with a promise of disaster and had fulfilled that promise in a big way.
I wanted to be gone, to be safe in my house with Trent warm and alive beside me.
That desire felt selfish.
“Grace, is there anything we can do for you?” I asked. “Somebody you can call? Family? Your mother?”
“She’s dead.”
“How about your father?” Trent asked.
“Don’t know who he is. I don’t think Mama knew.”
I was not friends with Grace. We got off to a bad start the first time she and Rickie showed up at the door of Death by Chocolate and conned me into letting them eat my food and spend the night at my house.
Nevertheless, my heart broke for her.
“Are you going to be okay?” I asked. “Do you and Rickie want to come over to my house?” Please say no!
/>
Trent tensed. He wanted her to say no too. Saturday night was our night. He was wondering if I’d lost my mind. So was I.
“We’ll be okay,” Grace said. “Thank you for everything.”
Trent edged toward the door.
I went to Grace and hugged her. She held on a bit convulsively for a moment.
“Well, okay,” I said, “you have my phone number and you know where I live. Let me know if you need anything.”
Trent took my hand as we walked away from Grace’s house. The evening had turned to darkness and the spring warmth to a damp chill.
When we were safely inside my home, I grabbed Trent and held on tightly, probably a bit convulsively. I’d seen how easy it was to lose someone you love.
He returned my embrace. “I’m not going away. I’ll be around for a very long time.”
Having reassured myself he was still alive and breathing, I stopped trying to squeeze him like a boa constrictor. “Want me to warm up some burgers? Chocolate chip cookies only go so far.”
“Good idea. I haven’t eaten anything since breakfast.”
He started into the kitchen with me, but I stopped him. “You cooked earlier. I’ll bring you a beer. Sit. Relax. I’ve got this.”
I took him a beer then returned to the kitchen, put a couple of hamburger patties in the microwave, and called Fred.
“How’s Grace doing?” he asked.
“Terrible. Not bad enough her husband’s dead, but he died by himself and they don’t know why, Trent grilled Grace like she’s a suspect, the lab tech came over to look for trace evidence, and Chuck has to be autopsied. It was awful.”
“Are you trying to say there was an unattended death with no obvious cause which occasioned a visit from the forensics people, and Trent asked Grace for details?”
“You left out the part about the autopsy.”
“That’s standard procedure.”
“Yeah, whatever. I didn’t call you to have the oddities of our laws pointed out to me. I called you to find who belongs to a phone number. Some woman called Chuck’s cell phone and said she was his wife. Chuck had the number in his phone as Lutrell Tractor Supply, one of the stores he deals with.” I recited the digits.
“I’ll call you back.”
“Trent’s here. I’ll call you.”
He hung up. I wasn’t sure if he heard the last. Didn’t matter. He’d know. He’s psychic.
I gave Henry some catnip then put together burgers for Trent and me. We ate in the living room. I turned on the TV so we could pretend to watch and wouldn’t have to talk. I didn’t want to think about Grace sitting across the street with no mother, no father, and no husband…only her unpacked boxes and her once again fatherless son.
We finished our food and cuddled on the sofa. Henry strolled in and settled beside me.
Trent nuzzled the top of my head. “I’m sorry about your friend losing her husband.”
“She isn’t my friend.” I thought about it. “I guess she’s not my enemy anymore. Not that she ever really was my enemy. She was just kind of annoying. Her son’s very annoying.”
“I think all kids are at that age. Especially boys.”
“Mmmm hmmm.” I cuddled closer. It had been a long, harsh day. With my cat on one side and my boyfriend on the other, a warm blanket of contentment settled over me.
Trent took my almost empty Coke from my hand. “Your can is tilting dangerously.”
“It’s okay. A Coke stain would only look like another color flower on my sofa.”
“I think my lady is getting sleepy. Want to go upstairs to bed?”
“Mmmm hmmm.”
The three of us stood. Henry darted ahead.
He stopped at the front door.
It was almost midnight. Nobody could be at my door. “He probably wants to go out and look for mice,” I said. I hoped.
Someone knocked.
No, no, no, no, no!
Nothing good could come from a knock at this hour.
“Lindsay?”
I was right.
It was Grace.
Trent opened the door.
Grace and Rickie. Rickie looked as if he’d been dragged from a deep sleep, the kind of sleep I would have been enjoying if they’d waited half an hour longer to knock.
“I saw your light was still on.” Grace sounded timid and apologetic. She thrust a cell phone at Trent. “That woman keeps calling.”
I snatched the phone from his hand before he could go into cop mode and keep it.
“Come in,” I said. Not like I wanted to be upstairs snuggling with my boyfriend and my cat, drifting into peaceful slumber. “Have a seat and I’ll get you something to drink.”
Trent made a choking sound.
When someone comes to the door, it’s polite to offer them something to drink, no matter the hour. Besides, it was an excuse to sneak off to the other room and find out if Fred knew anything about Grace’s mysterious caller.
I darted into the kitchen and called him. “Are you awake?”
“I am now,” he said.
“Did you find that phone number I gave you?”
“Yes.”
“It’s no tractor supply company, is it?”
“No. That phone number belongs to Stella Mayfield.”
“Chuck’s sister?” I knew it was a silly question. I was only delaying the inevitable.
“His wife.”
So he’d lied to Grace about never being married before. “Ex-wife?”
“Wife. He married her three years ago, and I found no evidence they’re divorced.”
“Damn, damn, damn! Not bad enough he lied to Grace about her being his only love, she wasn’t even his only wife!”
“It would appear Chuck was a bigamist.”
“Maybe he had amnesia and didn’t remember Stella. I’ve talked to the woman. I can see why he wouldn’t want to remember her.”
“If I have to choose between the possibility of Chuck having amnesia and Chuck lying, I’m afraid I’ll have to opt for the latter.”
I held the phone away from my ear and tried to melt it with my gaze. It didn’t work. Fred was probably right. I put the phone back to my ear. “Grace is here. You need to come over and tell her about this.”
“You have the information. Feel free to share it with her.”
“No! I don’t have any credibility. You need to talk to her. She’ll have questions. You’ve seen the documents. You can answer her questions. I can’t.”
“You don’t want to be the one to tell her.”
Fred read my mind. I didn’t want to cause Grace any more pain. “Please?”
“Do you have cookies?”
“Yes.”
“All right.”
He hung up.
Chuck had another wife. If she found out about Grace, would she have been angry enough to murder Chuck?
Not that I had any reason to think Chuck had been murdered.
Except having two wives put him in a potential-murder-victim category.
I set cookies on a plate, poured wine into glasses for Grace and me, then grabbed another beer for Trent and a Coke for Rickie. A hyperactive eleven-year-old boy did not need sugar and caffeine at midnight, but an eleven-year-old boy who’d just lost his bigamist step-father needed Coke and chocolate.
I returned to the living room.
Trent was in the recliner while Grace and Rickie occupied the sofa. Grace held Rickie close. He sat stiffly in her embrace, his expression obstinate as if he was too old for that sort of thing. But he wasn’t pulling away.
She accepted a glass of wine with a shaky hand. Rickie brightened considerably at the Coke. I think he’s an addict. I don’t see that as a problem.
I put the cookies on the coffee table, handed the beer to Trent and perched beside him on the arm of the recliner.
He popped the top on his beer. “I showed Grace how to block that number. The police department will look into it on Monday.”
“That’s a gr
eat idea,” I said. “But if we knew who the caller was, we might be able to stop her sooner.”
“We’ve blocked the number,” Trent said. “The woman’s calls won’t go through no matter who she is.”
“I just meant—”
Saved by the knock on the door.
I stood.
“Wait...” Trent was right behind me.
I beat him to the door and flung it open. “Fred! What a nice surprise! Come in and have some cookies.”
He hesitated.
I winked to let him know that I hadn’t really forgotten he was coming. A conspiratorial wink.
“Do you have something in your eye?” he asked.
Men! “Come in.” I turned and bumped into Trent.
“Hey, Fred.”
“Good evening, Detective Trent.”
I turned to Grace. “I think Fred has some information we may need to discuss.”
Trent leveled his gaze on me. “How do you know he has information if his arrival was a surprise?”
Cops weren’t supposed to use their detective skills on their girlfriends.
I took a seat next to Grace. She was going to need support and I needed some distance from Trent for a few minutes, enough time for him to forget my slight subterfuge about Fred’s arrival. I hoped Fred’s astonishing news would displace all else in Trent’s mind.
Trent returned to the recliner, and Fred stood just inside the door. All eyes focused on him. He clasped his hands. He clenched his jaw. I’d never seen Fred uncomfortable before. “Grace,” he finally said, “I have some details about the woman who’s been calling you.” He paused, unclasped his hands and moved them behind his back. “That number does not belong to Lutrell Tractor Supply. It belongs to a woman who lives in Moberly, Missouri.”
“Lutrell Tractor Supply’s in Moberly,” Grace said.
“Yes, but their number is different. This woman’s name is Stella Mayfield. She and Charles Dean Mayfield were married three years ago.”
Grace gasped. “Chuck was divorced?”
“They never divorced,” Fred continued. “Your husband was a bigamist.”
Silence.
Lots of dark, oppressive silence.
Rickie shot up, burst past Fred, and ran out the door. He took his Coke with him. He’d be okay.
“No. That’s not true.” Grace spoke so quietly I barely heard her words.
“It is true,” Fred assured her.
Guns, Wives and Chocolate Page 3
