I couldn’t imagine where this was going. “Speaking of catering, could you wash your hands and help me get these goodies ready?”
Marla growled. She hated to have her elaborate tales interrupted. As she was drying her hands, she said, “You know I don’t get good cell service at my house?”
“Welcome to the mountains.”
“Yes. Well. That means Grace had to use my phone. And that’s no bother, either, of course.”
“Don’t tell me you listened in on one of her calls.”
“Stop interrupting me, and I’ll tell what I did do.” She raised her eyebrows and took a deep breath. “I was checking my calls-received thingy, the way Arch taught me. And as I was beeping through them, up popped this number from ‘Ingersoll.’”
“Patricia called you? Or she called Grace at your place?” I started rummaging through the cupboards, looking for china plates on which to put the coffee cakes.
“Are you going to let me finish this story?”
I slapped the dishes down on the island and shot her a look. “Please let me get ready for the coffee hour. I really, really need to talk to somebody this morning. That’s why I came early, in case he did.”
“In case who did?”
“Marla!”
“Okay, pay attention. This Ingersoll number on my phone wasn’t an Aspen Meadow exchange. I thought that was weird, because as far as I know, Patricia still lives over in that house she and Frank built in Flicker Ridge, before he got so sick. Did they have another house I didn’t know about? I wondered. To find out, I pressed the button to redial. A woman answered. I said, ‘Patricia?’ And this woman replied, all hostile, ‘This is not Patricia.’ And so I said, ‘Oh, sorry, my telephone indicates you called my number. I live in Aspen Meadow, and Patricia Ingersoll is my friend.’ And this woman came back with, ‘Too bad for you, then.’”
“What?” I stopped searching for a pie server in the jumble of the silverware drawer.
Marla leaned over the island and made mm-mm noises as she unwrapped one of Tom’s coffee cakes. “Yes, that was my reaction, exactly. Just give me a piece of this, would you? I’m ravenous. I didn’t have time to eat this morning, I was in such a rush to get over here and talk to you.”
I finally nabbed a dull butter knife, cut the cake, and levered a large slab of it onto a paper plate. Marla didn’t wait for a fork.
“You’ll be proud of me, Goldy, I managed not to lose my temper talking to this woman.” She chewed a bite of cake. “Yum-my! Did you make this?”
“Tom did. Did this lady you called say who she was?”
“No, so I asked her. She said she was Whitney Ingersoll, and that Frank Ingersoll had been her father before her mother died and that bitch, as she called Patricia, married her father. So why did she call me? I asked. She said she wasn’t calling me, she was calling Grace Mannheim, to see if she’d made any progress. And that’s where I screwed up, because I said, ‘Made any progress on what?’ At that point, Whitney Ingersoll sort of pretend-gasped and said, ‘Oops, oops, I have to go.’ Before I could protest, she hung up on me.”
“That’s it?”
“Isn’t that enough?”
I glanced at my watch. It was twenty to eight, and I had no idea if Neil Tharp was here, or even if he was going to show up at all. “Listen, I remember Whitney Ingersoll. She came to Frank and Patricia’s wedding. Now please, I have to check on whether my guy’s arrived.”
Marla shoveled in more cake. “What guy?”
“All right, all right, it’s Neil Tharp. He was at a party at the MacArthurs’ party last night, and said some things that made me want to talk to him some more.”
“Oooh! The MacArthurs’ party! Is that the one where somebody shot a hole through their French doors?”
I sighed. Honestly, this town could take a cap-gun incident and make it into a nuclear showdown. “It was a snowball, and it broke a kitchen window.”
“Some snowball.”
“There was a knife inside.”
Marla cut herself another piece of cake. “Oh, dear, how inhospitable. Do you want me to talk to Grace about Whitney Ingersoll? Or do you want me to snoop surreptitiously?”
Since surreptitious was not a word that could effectively be applied to anything Marla did, I said, “You could just ask her and see what she decides to say. Actually, Grace did seem awfully curious about the whole Drew Wellington situation yesterday.” When Marla nodded, I glanced ruefully at the center island. “Would you be willing to root around for a sharp knife to cut the pie? And then put the pieces on these paper plates along with slices of coffee cake? I need to go look for Neil Tharp.”
Marla twirled and reached deftly for the butcher block containing the kitchen’s cutting utensils. Now why hadn’t I thought of that? It took her less than five seconds to pry out the first piece of pie. When she cried, “Oh, goody, cherry! My favorite!” I skedaddled out of there.
The snow was still falling relentlessly, and after three seconds out in the cold, I raced back inside and asked Marla if I could borrow her mink. Since I caught her red-handed and red-mouthed as she forked in mouthfuls of pie, she merely nodded. I slipped into the luxuriant fur and was immediately amazed at how heavy the doggone thing was. No wonder it took ermine-sporting royals forever to march up to their altars to be crowned.
Maybe it was the mink that made Neil Tharp pause as he made his slow way across the parking lot. I must have looked like a wealthy mark, because he immediately began limping straight toward me. Had he been limping at the library? I had only seen him for a few moments at the MacArthurs’ party, while I’d been making the rounds with the dumpling soup. But as he came closer, I noticed that he also had a black eye and a very puffy left cheek. He hadn’t had those the previous night. His thin black hair looked wet, as if he’d just showered. But he hadn’t shaved, probably because it would have been too painful to run a blade over his swollen face. If I hadn’t known he’d been in a fight, I would have thought he’d been in a bar brawl.
“Excuse me,” he said, trying to sound bright and cheerful. He blinked at me through the snow. “Are we acquainted? I’m Neil Tharp.” And then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a card. “Neil Tharp, Independent Dealer in Rare and Antique Maps,” it said, with a phone number and local post office box.
I hated to disappoint him, or myself, for that matter, because wearing a full-length mink was giving me all kinds of power. I took the card and nodded at him. “We are acquainted, Neil.”
“Goldy?” he inquired, his tone still bright and optimistic. He shuffled a bit closer. “Why are you wearing a mink?”
“Because I’m cold. But not as cold as I was last night, when I saw you getting into it with Larry Craddock outside the MacArthurs’ house.”
“Oh, Christ,” he muttered.
I wagged my finger at him. “Sorry that fight last night makes you limp today, Neil. But that doesn’t mean you can take the Lord’s name in vain outside His house.”
“I need to get inside. There might be people I should talk to in there.”
“Neil, I am someone you should talk to. Last night, did you throw a snowball with a knife inside it at the MacArthurs’ kitchen windows?”
His chin sagged. “No, of course not.”
“Did you see who did?”
He shuffled from foot to foot. “I’m…I’m not sure.”
“What did you see, then? That you’re sure of?”
He looked at the snow-covered ground, then back up at me. The muscles along his jaw bunched. “Maybe there was someone over in the neighbor’s yard. I couldn’t be certain. It was dark.”
“And maybe the person who threw the snowball was Larry Craddock?”
Neil’s expression darkened further. “It could have been, I don’t know. That son of a bitch was moving all over the place, going in and out of dark places, then jumping out to hit me and shout some new…thing.”
“Neil, what is going on? On Friday I was trying to cater a party at t
he library, and your boss was murdered, maybe while he was doing a map deal. Then last night you and Larry Craddock had a meltdown. I thought you fellows in the map world were distinguished, pipe-smoking types.”
Neil’s shoulders sagged. “We used to be.”
“Before what?”
He shrugged and avoided my eyes. “I don’t know. Listen, could we go inside? I’m freezing out here.”
I replied that of course we could, but I asked if we could go into the kitchen so we wouldn’t be interrupted. Once there, Marla drew her eyebrows into a tent of worry when she saw Neil’s beat-up face and watched his slow, painful limp. She showed remarkable restraint, I thought, by not giving him the third degree. She did, however, shoot me a meaningful look before silently exiting the kitchen. I want every detail of this conversation. I handed her her mink, and she sashayed out.
Neil leaned against the island. “Why are you so interested in Drew Wellington?”
I took a deep breath. “Well, there’s the fact that Larry Craddock attacked me over those maps of yours, and your insistence that I tell you what papers were with Drew Friday night, because you were looking for those maps. But the main reason is that when I was at the library, I saw a woman who used to live in Aspen Meadow. She looked as if she were lurking in the stacks…and then I saw her at the windows, near where Drew was.” I paused while Neil gave me a look indicating he didn’t know what I was talking about. I inhaled again. “Well, this is going to sound silly. She seemed to be watching Drew, who was sitting in the corner of the library, beside the emergency exit. I have reason to believe that this woman was the person who had sent Drew threatening e-mails for the last month. Did he tell you about that? And I know who she is.”
Neil’s mouth opened in awe. “What? Some strange woman? Watching Drew? Do you know who she was? Do you have a picture of her or something?”
“No, sorry, I don’t have a picture of her.” I pressed my lips together, then plunged ahead. “I might be wrong, but think I do know who it was. Her name is Sandee Brisbane. Six months ago, she confessed to killing my ex-husband.”
“Jesus H. Christ.”
“Neil, not again.” I watched his face carefully, but he didn’t register any familiarity with Sandee’s name. “Sandee…knew the Aspen Meadow Wildlife Preserve really well. She disappeared in there during the big forest fire last summer. The sheriff’s department assumed she’d died. But they never found her corpse or her skeleton. So, I was wondering.” I felt silly, as if I were grasping at a microscopic straw. “Could it be possible she was one of your customers? She belonged to the Aspen Meadow Explorers when she was in high school here. Could she have purchased one of your maps? Have known Drew?”
When Neil shook his head, his face suddenly looked like a marshmallow that had fallen into the fire. “How old is she?”
I thought back. “She’d be about twenty-two or twenty-three. She’s a former stripper, and very pretty.”
“A stripper? Named Sandee? Her name’s not setting off a carillon in my head. And anyway, we don’t—didn’t sell maps that would help you get from point A to point B. No modern maps, in other words. Now, if we had a map of the wildlife-preserve area that Lewis and Clark had used, that would be another story.”
I sighed. Then very casually I asked, “So…what was the big fight between you and Larry about last night? I mean, I’m catering another party for the MacArthurs tomorrow, and I’d rather not have it wrecked, if you don’t mind.”
Neil gave me the kind of look you might see from someone who’d just swallowed a tablespoon of vinegar. “Nobody’s going to disrupt your party. Simply put, Drew Wellington had some maps with him when he died. They were very valuable. I know that Drew was going to offer them to Larry at a good price Friday afternoon at the library. But then Drew was killed, and I had to move heaven and earth to get the sheriff’s department to tell me what they found on Drew. That’s why I tried to ask you about it first, the night of the murder. Elizabeth—Mrs. Wellington, Drew’s ex-wife—happened to be with me then—we ran into each other in the parking lot. I had been at the library, as I told the police, although I hadn’t spoken to Drew there. I was about to get into my car when the commotion broke out.” He looked dejected. “All the sheriff’s department found was the less expensive of the two maps Drew had hoped to sell to Larry. And so I strongly suspect that that bald-headed bowling-ball brain, Larry Craddock, killed Drew, and stole the other two maps he had with him, one worth a few thousand, the other worth a fortune.”
“You know the cops initially arrested Patricia Ingersoll for the murder?”
“Oh, yeah?” Neil’s eyebrows climbed his wide, pale forehead. “Why didn’t they keep her?” When I shrugged, he said, “Do you know, last year she pretended to be interested in maps? She said she needed one of the trans–Mississippi West for her living room. I should have said, ‘Yeah? What, you read about it in a catalog?’ But I didn’t. Instead, when she wanted to be introduced to Drew, I did it. And then pretty soon they were an item, and she wasn’t interested in buying squat. Look, don’t talk to me about that bitch.”
“So, you don’t like Patricia either?”
Muffled organ music began to thread through the closed kitchen door. Neil gathered up his briefcase and headed toward the exit. “I have potential clients to meet after church.”
“Father Pete won’t like you trying to do commerce during the coffee hour.”
“I don’t care,” Neil called over his shoulder, and limped slowly out of the kitchen. The next time I saw him, he was pulling a price sheet out of his briefcase and handing it to the Merediths, an elderly couple who lived in Flicker Ridge. Neil then shuffled up to Mildred Stubblefield, a sixtyish woman whose husband had cancer. The Stubblefields were childless, so each week someone from the ten-fifteen service sat with John Stubblefield so that Mildred could attend the eight o’clock. Everyone—including Neil Tharp, I had no doubt—was also aware that Mildred Stubblefield would inherit five million dollars when John passed away. But everyone—except Neil, I now guessed—had managed to keep from talking about the money situation to Mildred. I raced over to try to intercept him, but was too late.
“Mrs. Stubblefield,” he was saying, “a map of New England from the eighteenth century would be just the thing your husband would want for his sickroom, I am quite sure—”
“Mr. Tharp!” I cried once I was at his side. “There’s something of great import that I need to talk to you about!”
His face dropped when he saw it was only the caterer. Mildred Stubblefield graced me with a thankful smile and walked toward the table holding the bulletins.
“I know you haven’t suddenly remembered that you want a rare map,” Neil said sourly.
“You’re right.” I put my finger on my chin, as if in deliberation. “But I was wondering if you had a book for the civility-challenged. Civility is not so rare, as it happens.”
“What are you talking about?”
But I was saved from elucidating by the opening strains of the organist playing Bach’s Prelude. I nabbed a bulletin and scooted into a pew. A moment later, Marla slid in beside me.
“What was that about?” she asked under her breath.
“Neil has no manners,” I whispered.
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
“He doesn’t like Patricia Ingersoll any more than her stepdaughter, Whitney, seems to.”
Marla grunted. Across the nave, the slithery sound of ski jackets was suddenly distracting. I nearly fainted as Tom marshaled Arch and his slumber-party pals into a pew. The boys all looked as if they were still half asleep. Much eye rubbing and yawning accompanied our progress through the Scripture lessons. But the boys were there, so I had to hand it to Tom. He was not above shooting me a look of triumph.
“Today,” Father Pete intoned at the beginning of the sermon, “I want to continue acting as your somewhat unorthodox shepherd, by carrying on with our discussion of the Seven Deadly Sins.” Beside me, Marla perked up
. “On this, the next to last Sunday of Advent, we come to Greed,” Father Pete went on. Marla groaned.
“For God’s sake!” she whispered. “This is the sixth week of this! Are we going to get to Lust by Christmas?”
“We are all lost souls,” Father Pete went on while cocking his head and casting a half grin in Marla’s direction.
Beside me, Marla tugged her mink around her shoulders and closed her eyes. She was a generous woman, and I had no doubt that she’d donated an amount equivalent to the cost of the Lexus to the rector’s discretionary fund. But I also was aware that she wouldn’t enjoy being lectured to—not this early in the morning. And of course, a bellyful of carbohydrates would now be having a soporific effect.
Father Pete talked for a while about materialism. Then he asked, “Now, why do you all think Jesus overturned the tables of the money changers inside the temple? Because he was angry? Because he was having a bad day?”
Everyone waited. Sometimes Father Pete’s questions weren’t merely rhetorical, and he expected an answer. As the silence lengthened, there was a rustling and heaving behind Marla and me.
“Or do you think, perhaps, that he thought folks should just be foresighted enough to bring the right kind of coins for the collection box? Or do you think he was distressed that people were motivated by greed?”
The bumping noise in the pew in back of us was accompanied by someone crashing about. Marla awoke with a start. A woman cleared her throat, as in, Stop it!
“Brauggghhh!” a male voice cried from behind us. A nimbus of musk floated forward. I turned around in time to see Neil Tharp struggling to push his briefcase past the plump knees of the matron beside him. She cast an angry glance up at him as Father Pete stopped midsentence to allow the interruption to finish. Neil Tharp ignored both the matron and Father Pete as he crashed out of the pew.
Apparently he’d had enough.
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Sweet Revenge Page 23
