“Ivy! You’re in Colorado? Where? That’s hardly out of our way at all!”
I hesitated, but a desire to see my old friends won out over worries about Braxtons. “It’s this little town called Hello, up in the mountains.”
I gave her instructions about how to find the McLeod house once they got here. “And it’s possible Mac MacPherson may show up too.”
“Mac,” she marveled. “We haven’t seen him in months. Is he still traveling the country in his motor home?”
“Still writing articles about odd events and places. Footloose and fancy-free.”
Magnolia muttered something unintelligible but grumpy sounding, then added, “If that man had any sense, he’d grab you before someone else does.”
Bless Magnolia. She’s always had an exaggerated idea of my effect on elderly males and how eager they are to rush into wedded bliss with me.
We chatted a few more minutes, and then she ended with, “So we may see you before long.”
“Come any time. I’m looking forward to it.”
Kelli stopped by the library at the end of the week. I think she did that because she thought if she came to the house too often we’d feel she was snooping on us and how we were taking care of her house. I was at the computer installing the new software and figuring out how it worked. Someone had rounded up an old desk, and we’d moved the computer into the library section for my use. Victoria Halburton and Myra Fighorn were manning the reception desk today. Earlier, Victoria had made a sly remark about the Café Russo, to which I’d responded that Norman and I had greatly enjoyed our dinner there.
“You didn’t find him just a little, oh, odd?”
“No odder than many people in Hello.” I made a meaningful perusal of her overdyed black hair, which had a strong resemblance to dismembered crow wings.
Kelli ignored the main desk and strode through to my area. “Looking good,” she said approvingly. “I just wanted to let you know that I called Kansas. I don’t know if it will do any good, but I asked them to put a rush on the birth certificate.”
“Thanks. We appreciate that.”
“And I asked Chris if he knew anything about Hiram having money in a Bahamas bank, but he said he didn’t. Actually, Hiram didn’t necessarily involve either Chris or me in his financial affairs unless some legality was involved. And, as you said, it may have been a long time ago.”
True. Although the whole Bahamas thing struck me as peculiar. “What about the divorce?”
“I have a lawyer friend in Texas checking for me. We may have to publish a legal ad in a newspaper down there when Abilene files for divorce, but we can do it using my friend’s name and office address, and Boone will never find out anything about Abilene’s whereabouts from her. I should know more in a day or two.”
“Good.”
Kelli smiled and gave a little wave as she left.
A big storm blew in on Saturday, and the ladies at the Historical Society decided to close at noon. Heavy white flakes were coming down like an overturned bucket of snow cones by then, but in spite of the weather I was surprised when Doris Hammerstone offered me a ride home. She’d never shown any sign of helpfulness before.
“Why, thank you. I’d appreciate that very much.”
I helped Doris with her coat and steadied her going down the front steps, where three inches of snow had already accumulated. But once we were in her car, the situation changed. Doris might be tiny and bent over, and the streets might be slippery with snow, but she wheeled that big old Lincoln around as if we were in tryouts for the Indy 500. I gulped and clutched the seat belt as we squirreled around corners, barreled up the hill, and finally skidded into the driveway at the McLeod house.
Doris seemed unruffled by the fact that we’d barely missed the hedge around the yard. “I do like a car with power,” she said, her tone complacent.
I hastily gathered my gloves and purse and wits, relieved to be home in one piece. I put my hand on the door handle, but she seemed in no hurry to rush off. She leaned forward and peered up at the third floor of the tower, where the raw blotch of plywood was faintly visible through the wind-driven blur of snow.
“That’s where Hiram fell?”
“Yes. He landed on the brick walkway below. No one seems to know why he and whoever killed him were up there.” I wanted to hear her thoughts on this, but I didn’t want to let on that I knew she and Hiram had once been married, in case that was a touchy subject. So, in what I hoped was a discreet way, I added, “Have you ever been up there?” as if I thought she may have been a guest there sometime.
She skidded around my tactfulness the same way she’d skidded around street corners. “You mean up there to push Hiram out the window?” she snapped.
“Well, uh …”
“Or up there back when he and I were married? Because someone told you we were married, didn’t they? Who was it? Lucinda?”
I dodged the question, not about to admit she was correct about Lucinda. “I’m sure no one thinks that you—”
“You don’t have to murder someone personally, you know. You can hire a killer. I could have done that.”
I had to make an effort to keep my mouth from dropping open at this surprise suggestion. But I managed to say, “Did you?”
“No, I didn’t kill him, either personally or hired.” She sounded a little cross about it. “Though, if I’d thought of it, I might have back when Hiram and I were married. I certainly had reason enough.” She leaned back, her momentary flash of spirit seeming to fizzle. The car was cooling rapidly, our breaths already clouding the windows.
I waited, hoping she’d elaborate, but what she said when she went on was, “But that was a long time ago, and it all turned out for the best. Dan and I had many happy years and four children together.”
“I’m glad to hear that.”
“So, to answer your question, yes, I’ve been in the ballroom, but no, not for many years. Hiram and I threw some rather lively parties up there. Hired a band and everything. Hiram was quite a fancy dancer back in those days.”
“Something tells me you were probably a rather ‘fancy dancer’ yourself.”
Doris’s sly pixie smile confirmed that, although what she said was, “But I heard the ballroom had been closed off in recent years.”
“Which makes it all the more puzzling why he was up there.”
“Ask Kelli Keifer. She should know.” The statement wasn’t venomous, but it was certainly on the sour side. Doris lifted her elbow and swiped at the condensation on the window.
“You think Kelli killed him?”
“I don’t see how it could be anyone else. She certainly had the means and motive, far more motive than anyone else, and isn’t that what’s important?”
“Motive meaning she wanted his assets? Or motive because she opposed him on the matter of reopening the mine?”
“Both. A win-win situation for Kelli.”
“Isn’t it possible Hiram made enemies in his business dealings over the years? Or he did seem to have … difficulties in his personal relationships.”
Doris unexpectedly laughed at my delicate reference to Hiram’s many wives and marital problems.
“Perhaps some other of his former wives was bitter enough to take drastic action even if you weren’t,” I suggested.
“That’s possible, I suppose, but I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“On a practical basis, I’m the only former wife left around here. Except for Damaris, of course, but she’s in the McLeod plot in Low Cemetery. And I don’t believe in ghosts, so I don’t think she came back to do him in.”
I had to agree with Doris there.
“It’s hard to explain,” she went on, wrinkles multiplying on her brow. “Given Hiram’s shortcomings as a husband, particularly his cavalier attitude toward faithfulness, you’d think we’d all have been delighted to do him in. Most of us probably felt that way at the time. But in the long run I don’t think there were any big
grudges against him. He was always generous in the divorces, even, in his own way, rather gallant. He never actually dumped any of us. He always let us divorce him and took all the blame.” She smiled reminiscently, as if some private but pleasant memory had occurred to her.
“That’s a very generous attitude on the part of the wives.”
“As my husband used to say, life’s too short to hold grudges. He and Hiram were friends. Although I’m not sure I could have as generous an attitude as Lucinda.”
“In regard to marrying him, you mean, after he’d already been married so many times?”
“I mean in taking a second chance on him. I’d certainly never have married him again under any circumstances. I’d have thought Lucinda had learned her lesson too.”
“But Lucinda was never actually married to him.”
“No, but they were steadies all through their last year in high school and within a kiss of being married. And, even though he didn’t dump any of the wives, he certainly did dump Lucinda.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Did he ever! Practically left her at the altar. The wedding was all set, but about a week before the date he ran off to somewhere, Reno, I guess it was, with a waitress he’d known only a month or so. So on the day that was supposed to be his and Lucinda’s wedding day, here he was, cruising around town with his new bride in his new convertible, happy as a lark. Lucinda took off and went to visit some relatives back East for almost a year, then married Bill O’Mallory when she came back. Although that was a happy enough marriage, from everything I’ve heard, better and certainly more lasting than any of Hiram’s.”
“So the girl Hiram ran off with was wife number one?”
She nodded. “And I was wife number two. With the distinction of being the only wife who was older than Hiram.” She smiled and shook her head of wispy white curls. “Do you ever look back on some time in your life and wonder, What was I thinking?”
Blessedly, for me there had been only Harley, and I’d never had a moment’s regret about him.
“Anyway, I don’t see how Lucinda could possibly have decided to marry him now, after what he did to her. It was so crushing, so humiliating, a scandal everyone talked about for weeks. She was totally devastated.”
“As you also said, that was a long time ago. Things change. People change. Kelli seemed to think it was nice that they’d found each other again after all these years. Very romantic.” Although I now had to wonder if Kelli knew the ugly details about that long-ago breakup between Hiram and Lucinda.
Doris snorted, an unlikely sound coming from such a fragile-looking little lady. “Romantic foolishness. Ridiculous at our age.”
I didn’t say anything, but I couldn’t agree with that. I think romance and true love are possible at any age. Not that I’m prepared to take a high dive into that murky pool.
“Well, I’d better be going or I’ll find myself snowed in right here in the driveway,” Doris said briskly. “Sometimes I think about buying myself one of those Hummer things. I think they’ll go anywhere. Oh, if you’re interested, there’ll be another rehearsal next week. I heard you came to the last one.”
“It looked as if everything is coming along nicely.”
“About as usual. Always some crisis lurking in the wings. Ben Simpson is supposed to do a Will Rogers monologue, and he’s been down several times with back trouble. And Lulu Newman’s hip is bothering her. She’s the tallest one in the chorus line, and we really need her, but she took quite a tumble at that last rehearsal.”
“They’re fortunate to have you as a prompter.”
“Why, thank you.” Doris’s wrinkled face bloomed in a smile of pleasure at the compliment. “Well, see you next week.”
I opened the car door and headed toward the house, thinking about what Doris had said, something that hadn’t occurred to me before. A hired killer. Was that possible, here in Hello? It seemed to me that a hands-on killing took a certain ruthlessness and steely guts. But a hands-off killing opened any number of possibilities.
Then I forgot that thought and cringed as tires squealed when Doris took the corner beyond the house. Doris Hammerstone in a Hummer? Run for your lives!
Dr. Sugarman brought Abilene home a few minutes later. He’d also decided to close early. Koop took time off from his job of holding down the imitation bearskin rug to look out the window for a while before going back to the rug.
Abilene and I decided to use the unexpected spare time to fulfill more of our housecleaning duties. We tackled the kitchen, washing woodwork, scrubbing out the refrigerator, and running the vacuum cleaner. Koop, unperturbed, snoozed peacefully even when I carried both him and the rug to a chair so we could strip the old layers of wax on the floor. He did deign to open his one good eye when we moved in a small dining table, one I’d spotted on the second floor, to replace the card table.
While Abilene tackled the oven, unfortunately not the self-cleaning variety, I went through the lower cabinets, scrubbing the shelves and separating items for discard or recycling. Plastic bags, which Hiram apparently never threw away, went in that room stuffed with his other discards. I carried a stack of old mining magazines upstairs and tossed old cleaning supplies, cartons of Ajax cleanser hardened rock solid, dried-up floor polish, and empty spray cans of room deodorant, into the outside garbage can. An old shoe box under the counter held a haphazard collection of monthly utility bills, which Hiram apparently hadn’t considered important enough for filing in his office. I started to throw them out, then decided I should probably give them to Kelli. Maybe she’d have some use for them.
We didn’t finish the kitchen cleaning until almost 8:30. By then we were both so tired we decided to splurge and order pizza delivered. While we ate our spicy pepperoni and Italian sausage combo, I idly browsed through the box of old utility bills. Hiram’s electric bills were low. He must not have minded a chilly house. The trash collection bills were boringly similar, a set monthly rate. The phone bills were more interesting, with numerous long-distance calls both in and out of state. He’d often called Denver and Hayward here in Colorado, plus other numbers in Texas. Perhaps the company he’d been dealing with on reopening the mine? And then I came across some long-distance numbers that zapped my mutant curiosity gene into high gear.
16
These numbers definitely meant Kelli should see this box of bills. I tried to call her on the cell phone, but she wasn’t at home. We skipped church the next morning. Snow had stopped falling, and snowplows were clearing the streets, but the wind was still whipping through town as if on a search-and-destroy mission. So I got out my Bible, and Abilene and I had an interesting session in Romans. I still couldn’t get Kelli at home that afternoon on the cell phone. I hoped she hadn’t decided to drive out to the mine and gotten stranded.
As for me, curiosity about the phone bills finally got the better of me. On Monday morning, after Dr. Sugarman came by to pick up Abilene, I gave in and dialed that faraway long-distance number.
A woman with a lovely lilt in her voice said, “Banco de Island Internacional.” With a musical emphasis on the last syllable.
“You’re in the Bahamas?” That was what the phone bill had said, but I wanted to be certain.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Now what? Various ideas bloomed. I could announce that I was handling Hiram McLeod’s estate and needed information about his account. Or claim I was his widow, maybe even his wife, and there was a mix-up in his finances. Or perhaps go authoritative: “This is a representative of the Banking Regulatory Committee and—”
I broke off the fanciful stories that often worked so well for the fictional sleuths in the stories I read. My tongue and my conscience are stuck with the truth.
“My name is Ivy Malone, and I’m connected with Hiram McLeod, a client of yours.” (I was sleeping in his bed. That connected me, right?) “There are some, ummm, irregularities in the records on the account.” I broke off to give that a check. True? Yes, something very
irregular here.
Miss Lilting Voice, unimpressed, broke into my mental checkup. “Do you have an account number?”
“Well, no. But Mr. McLeod has been murdered, you see—”
“Murdered?” I heard a note of alarm. “Here in the Bahamas?”
“No, here in Colorado. But I’m almost certain he has an account with you, and it is imperative that I obtain information about it.” I stomped down heavy on the imperative.
“One moment please.”
A long hold, considerably more than a moment, while I felt the paid-for minutes on the cell phone dribbling away. Dribbling at some rate double or triple the usual speed, I figured, since this was an out-of-U.S. call.
A new woman came on. I repeated my spiel. She sounded wary, but she asked me to spell the name. After another wait she said, “Our records do not presently show an account in the name of Hiram McLeod.”
The careful wording of that made me ask, “But he formerly had an account with you?”
Another delay, although I couldn’t tell whether that meant the woman was looking up something or debating whether to tell me anything. “Any accounts we may have had in the name of Hiram McLeod are not now in existence. That is all I can tell you without authorization from Mr. McLeod.”
“But I told you, he’s dead. Murdered.”
“Then it will be necessary for an authorized representative to contact us with proper documentation before we can release any information. Thank you for calling Banco de Island Internacional.”
End of conversation.
Well, my sleuthing abilities weren’t up there with Kinsey Millhone’s or Jessica Fletcher’s clever talents, but I was almost certain I’d found out one thing. Even though the woman wouldn’t specifically verify it, Hiram had had an account with the bank at one time, something neither Chris or Kelli had known about. Which meant what? Weren’t the Bahamas some kind of tax haven? Didn’t people sometimes try to hide assets in offshore banks? Had Hiram been involved in something shady? I checked the dates on the calls made to the bank. They were all fairly recent, only about a month before his death, a whole flurry of them. Odd. But Kelli could no doubt get to the bottom of it.
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