Piles of snow from the industrious snowplows rose like miniature mountain ranges along the streets, but the storm was over. I took an invigorating walk all the way out to Safeway and picked up a few groceries. I’d have liked to have gotten a sack of bird seed too, to feed all the birds fluttering around, but it was too heavy to carry all that way. After dinner that evening, Kelli showed up.
“Good news!” she said while I was pouring her a cup of coffee in the kitchen. “At least I think you’ll find it good. My friend Linda down in Texas called to tell me she’s learned Boone has filed for divorce.”
Abilene, doing dishes at the sink, whirled so quickly that dishwater suds flew. “Really?” She sounded hopeful but not quite believing, as if this was too good to be true.
“Can he do that, without Abilene being notified?” I asked. I was as hopeful as Abilene, but I didn’t want some fine-print detail to sabotage everything at the last minute.
“It’s a little more complicated, and takes longer than a regular divorce, but it can be done. Linda says that in Texas, after a ‘diligent effort’ is made to locate a missing spouse, notification can be made by newspaper ad. Then, if there’s no response to the ad, the divorce can proceed without the missing spouse. She located a copy of the ad Boone’s lawyer published.”
“So all I have to do is wait?”
“That’s all you have to do. I’m not sure how long it will take, but Linda will let us know when the divorce decree is issued.”
Abilene looked so stunned that I had to ask, “This is what you wanted, isn’t it?”
She blinked, as if coming out from under a trance. “Yes, oh yes! I-I just thought it would be a lot harder than this. Thank you!”
“No thanks to me,” Kelli said. “Actually, I guess it’s Boone you have to thank.”
I doubted Boone Morrison deserved any thanks. He hadn’t been trying to do Abilene any favors. I suspected his main motive in divorce was so he could drag some other poor woman into marriage to do his cleaning and cooking and take his abuse. But for whatever reason, hooray! The end of a marriage probably shouldn’t be occasion for a happy dance, but I felt a little twinkly toed anyway.
“Hey, you’ve really been working in here.” Kelli leaned over to peer at the kitchen floor. “I always thought this linoleum was yellow, and it’s almost white!” Then she spotted the vase of daffodils on the table.
She touched a petal. “From Suzy’s flower shop?”
“Why, yes, they are. I believe it’s the only flower shop in town.” Before we could get into messy details about what I was doing in there, and even more messy details about whether the Kelli-Chris-Suzy triangle had been discussed, I headed toward the shoe box of utility bills I’d set aside for her.
“I found something I think you should have.” I thrust the box at her. “Hiram’s old electric and phone and trash collection bills. He had them stuck away in one of the kitchen cabinets. I tried to call you over the weekend, but you were never home.”
“I was home, but I had the phone shut off. I thought of this great twist for the story I’m working on, so I worked straight through on it.”
She took the box and flipped through the old envelopes, although I had the feeling she was more interested in the fact that I’d been in Chris’s ex-girlfriend’s flower shop. “I don’t think they’re anything I need, but I suppose I’d better hang on to them for a while anyway.”
“There are some phone calls that might interest you.” I picked out one of the bills I’d marked with a paper clip and opened it for her.
She looked at it, then at me. “Phone calls to the Bahamas!” She looked at the bill again. “And made only a couple of months ago.”
“I know it’s probably none of my business, but I called, and the number is to a bank down there. The woman didn’t exactly say Hiram had an account there, but I think he did and it’s closed now. But that’s all they’d tell me.”
“I’ll contact them. I’ve been thinking all along that there’s money missing, and this may explain it. Thank you!”
It wasn’t until after Kelli was gone that another happy thought occurred to me. I mentioned it to Abilene.
“Hey, since Boone filed for divorce, maybe that means he’s given up on revenge and chasing us down!”
“You think so?” She sounded doubtful.
“Even a guy like Boone has to go on with life.”
“But Boone doesn’t give up easy. I remember there was some guy who beat him in a drag race way back in high school, and he got even with him years later when he was a mechanic and worked on the guy’s car.”
That wasn’t encouraging, but then Abilene added, “But even if he’d still like to get even, he has to keep his job to make payments on the farm. And it would probably cost him something too, to look for us.”
I could see she was trying to talk herself into believing Boone was no longer after us, because then we might be able to stay here in Hello. And I thought it was a reasonable enough belief. Boone might have a vicious heart and a thirst for revenge, but he didn’t have the resources the Braxtons did to run us down, particularly if his sheriff cousin tired of the chase. Yes, this looked good.
Now if I could only figure out a way to divorce the Braxtons, we’d be home free.
Charlotte Sterling came by the library Thursday afternoon. One thing about not having a phone: if someone wants to talk to you they have to make a real effort to do so. What she’d come for, she said, was to invite Abilene and me to dinner at her house Saturday night. Chris and Kelli would be there too. She said she knew we didn’t have transportation, and Chris would be happy to pick us up. He’d come at seven o’clock.
On Saturday evening Abilene and I were in the living room, watching through the window for Chris’s red Mustang, but it was Kelli who showed up. She was getting out of the Bronco when we went down the front steps. She looked at her watch.
“I need to talk to you for a minute, so I told Chris I’d pick you up. But I guess we can do it on the way.”
I was relieved to see she was wearing slacks and sheepskin-lined boots. I hadn’t known how dressy an evening Charlotte intended, and I’d gone for warmth with wool slacks and sweater. Abilene was in similar garb.
Once in the Bronco, Kelli sat there without starting the engine before finally saying, “This is awkward, but I want to ask you not to mention anything about Uncle Hiram’s bank account in the Bahamas tonight.”
I was mildly flabbergasted. “Why would I do that?”
“I don’t suppose you would. I just want to make sure. You see …” She hesitated again, and I suspected she’d rather not tell us more but felt she had to. “The thing is, I talked to Chris again about an account down there, and this time he admitted he knew Hiram had put money in a bank there because it was offering such huge interest rates. But it turned out to be a fly-by-night outfit that completely scammed him. He lost almost everything he put in.”
My first thought was, So why didn’t Chris say that to begin with? but what I said aloud was, “But on the phone it sounded like a big international bank.”
“Right. The bank you talked to is a big, legitimate bank. They took over the other outfit, the shysters, but not before Hiram’s money was down the drain.”
“So why did Chris earlier pretend he didn’t know anything about this?” I asked bluntly.
“Because he was too ashamed and embarrassed.” Kelli sounded distressed and embarrassed too. “Chris said Hiram had come to him for advice about putting money in this bank in the Bahamas. Chris checked them out, thought they were okay, and told Hiram that. So when it all went bust, Chris felt miserable, as if it were all his fault.”
My thought was, Maybe it was his fault, but what I said was, “But how did Chris decide the first bank was okay if it wasn’t?”
“They simply put a lot of careful time and effort into setting everything up so it would look legitimate. It was a very sophisticated scam. And Chris is really embarrassed that it fooled even him.”
“I see.”
“Hiram apparently tucked the records on all this away somewhere, maybe even threw them out, which is why I’ve never seen anything. He was probably embarrassed about it too, since he considered himself such a smart investor.”
“That sounds reasonable.”
“Anyway, this explains the money I was sure was missing but which I could never find any records on. Just don’t bring it up, okay? Chris says his mother doesn’t know anything about this, and she’d be horrified. He handles most of her investments and doesn’t want to send her into a tailspin worrying he doesn’t know what he’s doing. His investments for her are, in fact, doing very nicely. Chris says he really learned his lesson on the Bahamas thing.”
“That’s good.”
Kelli started the engine, and we headed for a newer area of town out beyond Safeway. I could see Kelli felt defensive and protective about Chris in this. She didn’t want to believe he’d done anything wrong, and, I had to admit, he probably hadn’t. Anyone, even an astute advisor, can make a financial mistake, and well-done scams have fooled even hotshot accountants in big corporations. But not being up-front with Kelli about what he’d done hadn’t won Chris any points with me. Not a person from whom I’d ask financial advice. Not that I needed any, unless he had a hot tip on how to invest the coins in the special piggy bank I kept for found pennies.
“Did you contact the Bahamas bank?” Abilene asked, surprising all of us since she so seldom spoke up.
“No, I don’t see any point in going through the hassle of documenting my status as executor of the estate just to confirm that the money’s gone. If it’s gone, it’s gone.”
I doubted documenting her status would be all that complicated, so I was momentarily puzzled. But then I realized what was going on here. Kelli was in love with Chris. She believed, as I do, that love includes trust. So she didn’t want to be sneaking around behind his back checking up on his mistakes.
An admirable attitude. Yet I, who wasn’t in love with Chris, didn’t feel nearly as trusting. It all felt very … slippery. Yet what other version could there be? Chris had admitted he gave Hiram bad advice, and he felt properly guilty and responsible.
Dinner was lively and pleasant. Charlotte might give a good sales pitch on old Victorian houses, but her own home was modern, gleaming, and elegant. Lots of glass and pale peach carpet and white leather furniture. Charlotte exclaimed enthusiastically over our hostess gift. We couldn’t finance wine or flowers, but I’d wrapped up a good mystery (bought new, read only once) by a new author. Conversation centered around the upcoming Roaring ’20s Revue, my work at the library, and the real estate business.
I could see why Kelli was attracted to Chris. He was attentive to her, affectionate, well-mannered, nice to his mother, which is something I feel is always a point in a man’s favor. He was nice to me and Abilene too, but not in a way that suggested he saw Abilene as anything other than a pleasant young lady. He made us laugh with funny stories about his lawyer experiences and even told one tear-jerker about a little girl injured in a car accident.
We did get into a brief discussion of Hiram’s murder, although it could hardly be called “brainstorming.” Again the conclusion was that some outsider must have come in with a deliberate plan of getting even because of something unscrupulous Hiram had done to him in the past. I supposed I should be relieved with this consensus of opinion, at least among those not already convinced Kelli was guilty, but instead I found it mildly annoying. Why was everyone so willing to pass the killer off as some unknown outsider and apparently not be all that anxious about whether he was identified and caught?
After dinner, we moved into the living room for coffee and a fresh fruit compote for dessert. It was good, apparently meant to satisfy Chris’s only-fruit-for-dessert requirements, but I’d been hoping for something rich and chocolaty. Charlotte had flyers about various local houses for sale sitting on the coffee table. I browsed through them when I finished my compote.
“Char, have you ever run into any old house here in Hello with a secret room or passageway?” Kelli asked.
Charlotte looked interested, but she shook her head. “No, not really. Although when they tore down that old place on Cooper Street they found an actual mine shaft underneath. But no secret rooms that I know of. Why?”
“Someone mentioned to Ivy that there might be one in Uncle Hiram’s place, and she’s been looking for it.”
Chris dropped his fork and leaned over to pick it up.
“A secret room. Really?” Charlotte said. “How exciting! Any luck in finding it?”
“Not so far. I haven’t actually covered much of the floor space yet, but I’m working on it,” I said.
“Need any help looking?” Charlotte sounded eager to come over and start shoving furniture around.
“Be careful, or Mom will be over there tearing down walls and ripping up floors. She reads all these murder mysteries, you know, and they’re big on secret rooms, hidden passageways, conspiracies, long-lost heirs, dusty skeletons, etcetera.” Chris sounded affectionately exasperated by his mother’s reading preferences.
“Some of them do get a little far out,” Charlotte admitted. “But they’re certainly more entertaining than those boring legal things you are always reading.”
“It’s like beauty, Mother. All in the eye of the beholder,” Chris said loftily, and we all laughed.
“I did go down to the basement—”
“You investigated the basement?” Kelli broke in, sounding horrified. “I wouldn’t go down there with anything less than an assault rifle and a chemical bomb for protection. I saw a spider crawling up out of there that looked big enough to star in one of those monster-arachnid movies.”
“It was kind of creepy,” I had to admit. “But Koop enjoyed it. He caught three mice.”
“Koop is Ivy’s cat,” Kelli said by way of explanation to Chris and his mother.
Charlotte wrinkled her nose. “Does he eat them?”
“Heavens, no. He brings them to me. I’m not sure if they’re a gift or if he thinks maybe I’ll make him a nice mouse casserole.”
We all laughed, and Chris made some comment about Kelli’s cat being too accustomed to caviar to be interested in mice, and she gave him a playful punch in the shoulder.
“One time, just once, I give Sandra Day a bare smidgen of caviar, and he’s never going to let me forget it.”
The evening ended with Charlotte saying we’d have to do this again soon. We trooped out to the Bronco, where Charlotte and I exchanged hugs, and Chris kissed Kelli lightly.
To me he said, “Are you going to keep looking for that mysterious secret room?”
“Probably. When I have some extra time.”
“Be careful digging around in that old house. It could be dangerous. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a floor or ceiling collapse in that old place.”
“I’ll be careful,” I assured him.
Now, as earlier, nothing suggested he was anything other than a competent, caring son and lawyer and a fine prospect as a husband.
But I couldn’t help thinking about former girlfriend Suzy’s acid remarks about him, and, reflecting back on the evening, I thought Chris had acted a little odd when the “secret room” was mentioned. He’d dropped that fork as if he’d been jabbed with it. He’d covered what might have been agitation by taking an overlong time to retrieve the fork, and he’d made fun of looking for such a room. But I was almost certain he’d been nervous about the possibility that such a room existed.
Hmmm. Why would that be?
And on the drive home that old, definitely unflattering joke about lawyers unexpectedly dropped into my mind.
How can you tell when a lawyer is lying?
Answer: when his lips are moving.
Chris Sterling’s lips had done a lot of moving. First denying he knew anything about money in a Bahamas bank, then admitting his poor judgment about advising Hiram that it was okay to put big money there.
Although, what I should probably be doing, I told myself, was giving Chris credit for ’fessing up instead of wondering if he was up to something. Admitting to the woman he loved that he’d made such a big mistake couldn’t have been easy. And yet, wasn’t there something a little fishy about a legitimate bank taking over a non-legitimate, shyster outfit? Although the big bank could have been trying to protect the area’s reputation, not let word of a scam get out and scare off investors. But since Hiram hadn’t gotten his money back, the bank’s move really hadn’t done much for the area’s reputation.
17
The snow wasn’t melting, but the streets had been snowplowed down to bare pavement. Abilene managed to get some bird seed, and we set up a feeder outside the kitchen window, which was immediately popular. I went to another Roaring ’20s Revue rehearsal and even had a chance to go with Lucinda up to the third floor, where the costumes and props were kept. It seemed in fairly good shape, although the hallway had a bit of downward slant.
It was an interesting place with clothing and props from various years spread out among several rooms. Movable metal racks were jammed with costumes for both this year’s performance and performances past. For this year one rack was devoted to spangled chorus-line costumes, another to chemise-style dresses with matching feather boas. For previous years there was everything from men’s knickers-style pants in a wild plaid to a somewhat moth-eaten fur coat and a rack of enormous layered petticoats.
“Every year I swear I’m going to come up here and get all this stuff organized,” Lucinda said, sounding frustrated as she searched for a hat for Stella in the street scene. “Someday I’m really going to do it.”
There were shelves of hats for both men and women, a glass case of jewelry, and several racks of shoes. Props ranged from furniture and lamps to parasols and canes, a baseball bat and bowling ball, dishes, knickknacks, and an enormous dictionary. Though I had to wonder what they’d used the stuffed skunk and the lethal-looking Chinese sword for. And why the fire marshal or some other safety official wasn’t raising a ruckus about blocking off the entrance to the nonworking elevator with something more substantial than a piece of cardboard. With the doors frozen in an open position on the third floor, you could shove the cardboard aside and use the open drop to the basement for anything from bungee-jumping to disposal of incompetent actors or unruly patrons. The elevator opening was at the far end of the hall from the stairs, not something anyone would stumble into by accident, but it still looked as if it at least needed some solid barrier nailed over the opening.
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