by Jane Tesh
“You knew the job was dangerous when you took it.”
***
By the time I got back to the Wayfarer Motel pool, Donna had gone. Davis gave me a self-satisfied smile as if he thought I just couldn’t resist returning to him. Not many guys can wear a Speedo successfully. Lounging in the pool chair, Davis resembled a long stretch of road with a speed bump in the middle.
“Glad you came back, Madeline.”
He patted the chair where Donna had been sunning herself, inviting me to take her place. I pulled up another chair.
“I need to ask you a few questions.”
“Good lord, give it a rest,” he said. “This inspector business doesn’t suit you at all. You’re much too beautiful.”
“When you and Donna Sanchez were talking in Deely’s, why did you say once Gaskins is out of the way, you could get her into a better movie?”
His reaction wasn’t what I expected. He looked amused. “I might have known.”
“Might have known?”
“That you’d be wondering why I offered her a better deal. Don’t worry, Madeline. I’m just stringing her along. Stick with me, and I can open all kinds of doors for you.”
Davis’ parents must have made a deal with the Ego Fairy. “This isn’t about the movies,” I said. “This is about you wanting Gaskins out of the way, as in dead.”
He pulled himself up and jerked off his sunglasses to stare at me. “For the last time, I did not kill Gaskins. If I said something about getting him out of the way, I meant when the distributors see the incredible mess he made of this movie, they’d yank him from Voltage Films and put him on some nature documentary.” His eyes narrowed. “Were you spying on me in that diner? That’s a pretty amateur trick.”
“The waitress overheard you talking to Donna.”
Davis was annoyed, but he tried one last play. “Yeah, well, why don’t you leave the detective work to the police and go where you can be appreciated? You’re wasting your talent and your looks in this stupid little town where you can’t fart without making the front page of the paper.”
“The only thing I’m wasting right now is my time.”
Davis lay back and put on his sunglasses. “Fine. Stay here and rot. The sooner I can leave Palookaville, the better.”
Amen to that.
As I went back to my car, I checked my watch. It was almost two. I thought about finding Donna and telling her she was on the endangered species list. Then I remembered I needed to finish my conversation with Stephanie. I also remembered her room number from seeing the key on the table, so I went to room twenty-three and knocked.
“Stephanie? It’s Madeline.”
Muffled voices and thumps sounded from inside. Thanks to the Wayfarer’s thin walls, I heard Stephanie say, “Oh, no!” and a man’s voice cursing.
“Stephanie, are you okay?” I called. I banged on the door. “Do you need help?” More thumps and a crash. I started to run for assistance when I heard her say, “Wait a minute. I’m coming.”
She opened the door a little way and made an attempt to straighten her hair. Her clothes were askew and her face was flushed.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
“Yes, fine. What do you want?”
Behind her, I caught a glimpse of a man struggling to his feet, his lower half tangled in a sheet. “Oh, sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to interrupt—” As the man turned to pick up the phone from the floor, I blinked to clear my vision. It was Lance Henderson.
I knew my amazement was obvious, for Stephanie blushed even darker. In the long silence that followed, Henderson looked up, saw me in the doorway, and, as usual, made a production out of the situation.
“Two friends comforting each other in their hour of sadness, my dear Madeline. Two souls longing to purge the memory of another friend’s passing.”
Two souls longing for something, all right. “I apologize for interrupting.”
He waved my apology away. “Not a problem, my dear.”
Stephanie said, “Lance, make some coffee, will you? Madeline and I are going to talk out here for a minute.” She came out and pulled the door shut. “I know I made some mean comments about Lance, but he saw how upset I was about Flynn, and—”
“Hold on,” I said. “You don’t owe me an explanation. I’m sorry I reacted like that, but hearing all the noises, it sounded like you might be in trouble.”
“No, I’m all right.” She sat down in one of the white plastic chairs the Wayfarer provided in front of each room. “Lance and I had a long talk. I feel a lot better. You wanted to know about the people in the grocery store.”
“Did a woman approach you in the drink section?”
“Like I said, there were a lot of women, all wanting to know about Lance.”
And you can give them the inside story now, I thought, but this was way too rude to say out loud.
“I told them if they came out to where we were filming, he’d be glad to sign autographs and take pictures and whatever. It was quite a crowd of them.”
“Around your grocery cart?”
“Mainly around me. After I answered their questions, they went away. Oh, no, wait.” She frowned as if trying to remember.
I didn’t expect Stephanie to recall anything I could use, so her next words gave me a chill.
“There was a woman by my cart. I’d forgotten. In all the confusion, her cart had bumped into mine. She apologized for knocking over my bottles of soda. She straightened them all back up. I told her not to worry about it.”
“Do you remember what she looked like?”
“Sure. She looked like all the other gray-haired ladies. I wouldn’t be able to pick her out in a crowd.”
But I would.
***
When I arrived at the library, Joan was locking the front door. “Sorry, Madeline. We closed early today, remember?”
“Did Bernice ever come in?” I asked.
“Yes, she’s in there now, setting up the refreshments table.”
“I really need to speak with her.”
Joan unlocked the door. “Okay. Just pull the door shut when you leave.”
The door closed behind me with a soft hiss.
I made my way to the back, stepping around the boxes of used books.
“Bernice? It’s Madeline Maclin. I have a message for you from Kirby Willet.”
The used books had been arranged on the tables. Bernice placed signs on each table with category and price information. She gave me a suspicious glance. “What sort of message?”
“He wanted you to know he’d won the Blue Ribbon peanut contest.”
She paused for a moment. “Oh, I know all about that.”
“So you knew he’d won ten thousand dollars?”
“Oh, yes.”
Since Bernice’s natural expression was one of bitterness, it was hard for me to tell what she was feeling, but she seemed more bitter than usual.
“Did you know the money was in one of the boxes he stored at Frannie’s?”
“No.” The signs in her hand trembled. “If I’d known, I would’ve taken my rightful share. Half of that money was to come to me.”
Jerry was right. Someone was angry about the money. “Half?”
“I told him about the contest. I urged him to enter. He said if he won, he’d give me half.”
Didn’t she know how absent-minded Willet was? “Did you remind him of this?”
She slapped the signs down. “Remind him! I can’t find him. I thought he’d run off with the money, and now I find out it was at Frannie’s where I could’ve gotten it myself.”
“I know where he is,” I said. “You can go talk to him and get this straightened out.”
“He has no intention of giving me my share.”
“Are you sure? You need to talk to him—”
Her voice shook. “He was going to give it to Gaskins for that idiotic film! After all I did for him! We had a deal! We had a bargain!”
“After
all you did for him?”
She started toward me. Something in her manner made me keep a table between us. “I took care of him. I found him jobs. I covered for him when he was off somewhere making some sort of machine. I washed his clothes, cooked his meals.”
As she came around the corner of the table, I went the other way. “You were living together?”
“Don’t you dare judge me! You have no cause to talk.”
“I’m just trying to understand your relationship with Willet. You said you had a deal with him.”
Light glinted off her glasses as she shook her head. “Oh, you wouldn’t understand. You don’t know what it’s like. You’ve never had to work to get a man to notice you. All you have to do is smile that pearly pageant smile, and here they come like pigs to a trough.”
“Hold on a minute.”
She sneered. “You think I don’t know what goes on up at that house? Strange men coming and going at all hours. You and that rich Fairweather fellow lording over the rest of us.”
“Bernice, you’ve got it all wrong.”
“Oh, no. I’m the only one in this town who sees things very clearly.”
You could’ve bottled Bernice’s look and sold it to exterminate rats. If she was this delusional, then maybe she was also desperate enough to kill.
“Did you put something in Gaskins’ drink?”
For the first time, she smiled, and I wished she hadn’t. “Me? Oh, my, no. It was that crazy inventor, the one who decided to finance a stupid monster movie. Everyone knows Willet is still angry about losing the scholarship to Gaskins. Everyone knows he’s insane.”
“Willet has an alibi. He videotaped himself inventing that night.”
This stopped her for only a few moments. “That doesn’t matter. When the police search his hotel room, they’ll find proof.”
“I’m afraid not,” I said. “That little packet of poison won’t be there.”
“What?”
“Jerry and I already found it.”
She lunged over the table for me. I tumbled backward, tripped, and fell over a box. Books scattered. Before I could get up, Bernice was on top of me, pounding with her fists, her face distorted with rage. I tried to push her off. She was too heavy. I tried to dislodge her by rocking from side to side, but boxes of books limited my actions. As her hands closed around my neck, my flailing hand searched for a weapon and closed on something that felt like a stick. I brought it around and down on Bernice’s wooly head and heard a satisfying whack. Bernice fell back. I gave her a couple more whacks and staggered to my feet. Bernice lay crumpled next to a pile of old encyclopedias. What had saved the day? An umbrella with a sturdy duck’s head.
Oh, good, I thought as I rubbed my sore neck. Mystery solved.
I sagged back and steadied myself on a table, umbrella ready, but Bernice didn’t move. During the struggle, my cell phone had fallen out of my pocket. Using the tables as support, I leaned down, picked up my phone, and called the police. By the time Chief Brenner arrived, Bernice was conscious and curled in a corner, sobbing. Between sobs, she told him Willet had promised her half the prize money, and when she realized he planned to give it to Gaskins, she felt so betrayed she put the digitalis in Gaskins’ drink and then switched bottles with Stephanie in the grocery store.
“But I didn’t mean to kill him! I just wanted him to get sick and go away. He’d have to return the money, and then I’d get what was rightfully mine.”
“Willet never gave Gaskins any money,” Brenner said. “We still have it at the station.”
“It’s mine! I insist on having it.”
Brenner took her by the arm and pulled her up. “We’ll talk about this.”
As he took her out, she was still sobbing, “But I loved him. I did everything for him.”
I stayed for a few minutes to pick up the spilled books. Then I sat down and took a few more deep breaths. Bernice’s rage had been terrifying, but her sorrow choked me even worse. Bernice had been broken-hearted, but how could anyone have known? If only she’d been able to talk to someone, she would’ve realized that practically everyone experiences some heartbreak in life. But Bernice kept her emotions inside until they exploded, taking Josh Gaskins with her. Kirby Willet remained free and oblivious.
Do I sense a lesson here? I asked myself.
I did as Joan had instructed, and when I left, I pulled the library door shut. I arrived at the theater before the box office opened. I went down the aisle and leaned over the edge of the orchestra pit.
“How’d it go?” Jerry asked.
“Bernice did it to get Willet in trouble. She thought they had an understanding.”
“Didn’t she know all Willet loves is peanuts?”
“I think she knows that now.”
Jerry gave me a closer look. “My God, Mac, what happened to your throat?”
“She tried to strangle me.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. I’m more than fine.” I held up my weapon. “I found Patricia’s umbrella.”
CHAPTER NINE
“I can’t imagine where you found it,” Patricia said. She turned the umbrella over and over. “Dear me, the paint’s a bit chipped.”
“Yes, sorry about that,” I said.
She opened the umbrella, dislodging several items off her desk. “Oh, that doesn’t matter. It still works. Where did you find it?”
“Did you donate some books to the library used book sale?”
“Don’t tell me it was in that box!”
“Joan said she found lots of things.”
Patricia closed the umbrella and reached for her pocketbook. “I’m so glad to have it back. I really wish you’d let me pay you something.”
“No, thanks,” I said. “That umbrella saved my life. I’ll tell you the whole story sometime.”
I’d stopped by the Chamber of Commerce first thing the next morning. When I got to my office, Twenty was waiting at the door.
“Madeline, I need to apologize to you for anything I might have said. I know I was overbearing and crazy and just not right.”
I unlocked my door. “You don’t need to apologize. You felt strongly about the movie, and you were entitled to express your opinion.”
“But if you hadn’t solved this mystery, I could’ve been charged with murder. I’m your friend for life.”
“Thanks. Come on in.”
“I can’t stay. I need to disband S.T.O.M.P. and apologize to everybody there, too.”
As she hurried down the hallway, Stephanie and Lance came up.
“Madeline, I’m glad we caught you,” Stephanie said. “We’re all leaving today, and I wanted to thank you for catching Josh’s killer.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I wish I’d paid more attention in the store. Maybe I would’ve seen her switch bottles.”
“I don’t know if this will make you feel any better, but she just wanted him to get sick and stop filming,” I said. “It was her way of crying out for attention. Unfortunately, the person she was trying to attract hadn’t a clue.”
“I’m just happy to be getting out of this town,” Stephanie said. “No offense. Lance and I are going to continue with Voltage Films. Our next project is to go ahead with ‘Pastel Memoirs.’”
“Yes, now I can return to the quality projects my fans expect of me,” Lance said.
“I hope so, Lance. I wish you the best of luck.”
He looked pleased. “You suspected me for a while, didn’t you, my dear?”
“I suspected everyone.”
He took my hand and kissed it. “The role of murderer is one I never played, not on television, not in real life.”
“I’m glad to hear that.”
“Good day.”
As soon as Lance and Stephanie left, Ted walked in. “Was that Lance Henderson?”
“He stopped in to say good-by.”
“Too bad the movie didn’t work out for him.”
“I don’t t
hink he’s too torn up about it. Have a seat, Ted.”
“Just for a moment.” He sat down in the armchair, and I took my place behind my desk. “Congratulations on solving the murder, Madeline. I can’t believe Bernice capable of such a thing.”
“Unfortunately, she did it for love.”
“Love or money. Those are usually the reasons, aren’t they?”
“Actually, this was for love and money, although I think she would’ve been happy with love.”
Ted shifted in his seat and straightened his tie. Plain blue, I noticed. “Um, Madeline, while we’re on the subject.”
Uh-oh.
“We haven’t known each other very long, and I hope I’m not misreading the signals, but is there a chance for us? Can we take our friendship to the next step?”
Is there a chance for us? The very words I wanted to ask Jerry. “Ted, I really don’t know.”
He held up his hand. “Now, I understand. I don’t want to rush things. We’ve both been through rough relationships, and the last thing I want to do is pressure you.”
“It isn’t that.” Ted had been so patient and kind. I needed to be honest with him. “It’s Jerry.”
“Oh,” he said. “I didn’t realize.”
“It’s a little complicated.”
“Oh,” he said again, and this time the “oh” was a long, sympathetic “oh.” “But aren’t he and Olivia—?”
“That’s over.”
“I’m sorry, Madeline. I had no idea.”
“Please don’t apologize.” I couldn’t help but smile. All the women I know had immediately seen my predicament. Ted, bless his heart, was in his own way as clueless as Jerry. “Ted, you’re one of the kindest men I’ve ever met. I’d hate to lose your friendship, but that’s all I can offer you.”
He smiled back. “You’re not going to lose anything. If Jerry’s crazy enough to let you go, I’ll be first in line.”
“Thanks, Ted.”
***
The Miss Celosia Summertime Pageant was at three, so I met Jerry at Deely’s for lunch. Mantis Man burgers were still on the menu. We ordered two.
