Never Preach Past Noon

by Edie Claire

  "I asked if you'd like a lift to a gas station," Shannon repeated. "I have an empty gas can in the back of the Suburban." She smiled pleasantly, almost pleasantly enough to erase the worry lines etched in her pale face.

  Leigh smiled back. "That would be great," she said thankfully, "but are you sure you don't need to be somewhere else right now?"

  Shannon shook her head. "I came here to pick up some papers that Ted's lawyer wanted, and I do need to get them to her, but this won't take long. Besides, I've been hoping to get a chance to talk with you."

  Leigh saw no point in resisting. They said goodbye to the other staffers, climbed into the Suburban (Ted's toy, she was sure), and buckled up. Shannon started the engine, checked every available mirror, looked over her shoulder, and headed out.

  "This is a nice car," Leigh began, making chit chat. The truth was, she hated SUVs—mainly because she couldn't afford one.

  "It's Ted's," Shannon said tonelessly. "I don't like driving it, but when we left this morning, we didn’t know—."

  Her voice cracked, and Leigh felt terrible. Why did she always have to ask questions that upset people? A recovery was needed. "Katharine Bower will have Ted out in no time—and I'm not just saying that," she stated firmly. "I ought to know. She got me out."

  Shannon smiled, and her voice steadied. "Warren told us about that. I'm so sorry—it must have been awful for you. But I do trust Katharine. She seems very competent. I still can't help worrying, though. I guess it's just my nature."

  Leigh would have to agree. The Suburban was trolling along Nicholson road at five miles an hour below the posted speed limit, and she was starting to fidget in her seat.

  "I don't think Katharine is very good for Warren, however. I'm hoping he moves along soon."

  Leigh looked up with wide eyes. Where had that come from?

  Shannon caught her expression and smiled. "I'm sorry. I don't mean to be nebby. But I think you and Warren would make a lovely couple. Katharine's a nice woman, but she's too career driven, and I know Warren wants a family." She cleared her throat. "There, I've said it. Now I can sleep with a clear conscience." She smiled at Leigh again.

  Leigh smiled back, but didn’t say anything. For once, she couldn't think of anything to say. She turned her head to look out the window, and wondered if she could run faster than the trees seemed to be going by. The morning's snow was long gone now, the salty road slush already having dried to a dull white sheen on the asphalt. She fidgeted some more. "Do you like working at the church?" she managed finally.

  "Very much," Shannon answered. "I've always liked office work. I was a medical receptionist for years—that's how I met Ted. I was working for a dermatologist, and he had this nasty rash—" She stopped, her cheeks reddening a little. "Well, never mind about that. Anyway, he encouraged me to go back and get my accounting degree. It's come in very handy."

  Leigh saw the opening, and jumped. "So—do you do all the bookkeeping for the church?"

  Shannon smiled a little. "No. Only a little here and there. I offered to do more, but Humphrey was very involved in every aspect of the church, and he liked to do most of the financial management himself. He didn't have any formal training, but he seemed to know what he was doing."

  I bet. "Did the church support Noel's mission?" Leigh asked innocently.

  "Of course," Shannon answered. "We support a variety of mission projects, but hers is naturally the pet." She approached a green light and slowed down cautiously. The light turned yellow, and the Suburban halted in its tracks. Leigh squeezed her door handle to avoid screaming.

  "Do you work part-time or full-time?" she asked, trying to distract herself.

  "I'm a volunteer, actually," Shannon answered cheerfully. "We don't really need the money, and I like working for a worthy cause. It is only part time, though. I also do some bookkeeping for the Open Door shelter on the North Side."

  Leigh nodded. It sounded like Shannon and Bess had the volunteer bug in common. But the similarity ended there. Bess was flamboyant and vivacious—Shannon was like an obsequious little mouse, dressed up in a larger rodent's clothes. Leigh surveyed her critically—the pretty face hidden behind the poor haircut and cheap glasses, the clothes that hid any trace of a figure. Perhaps she had some sort of self esteem problem?

  Leigh wondered briefly if Shannon could be the victim of spousal abuse, but she dismissed the thought. Warren was adamant that Ted wasn't a violent man, and she herself had noticed the tenderness in Ted's eyes whenever he looked at his wife or daughter.

  Shannon was probably just another nonconformist. She had, after all, married a neurotic widower with a rash.

  When the Suburban rolled gently back into the church parking lot a few hundred years later, Leigh thanked Shannon profusely, emptied the gas can into her tank, and returned the vessel as quickly as possible. Her mother's Taurus was also in the church lot, which meant Bess must be visiting again. What was her aunt up to now—and how had she conned Frances into driving her?

  Shannon's SUV departed—slowly and cautiously—and Leigh headed back inside the church. She was starving. Promising herself that a Baja chicken gordita would soon be hers, she scouted out the building for her aunt. She needn't have bothered—Bess was waiting for her just inside the door.

  "Quickly," Bess said in a hushed voice. "Take this. I don't want Frances to see."

  Leigh looked down at the familiar-looking key Bess had pressed into her hand and got a bad feeling. "Aunt Bess—"

  An emphatic shooshing gesture cut her off. "I want you to go back there and check it out again," she whispered. "I'd go myself, but I can't get away from Atilla the Hun. I don't know why we didn't think of it earlier, but when Barbara called, it occurred to me that the mini-storage—"

  "Aunt Bess," Leigh said again, quietly but firmly, "you should be handing this over to the detectives, not me. Or at the very least—to Noel. His stuff is rightfully hers now."

  Bess looked at her niece as if she had lost her mind. "Noel is the last person who needs to see this stuff! Heaven knows what she would do with it. What you need to do with it is check to see if there's anything that might indicate what Humphrey died of. Doctor's visit receipts, old prescription bottles, that sort of thing. If you find any, we can turn them in and say he left them at the church."

  Leigh's appetite departed—temporarily. "Aunt Bess," she began once more, trying to stay calm, "I can’t do that. We already broke into the place once. Let's just say that we found the key in the church somewhere. If there's evidence that's relevant, the detectives can find it themselves. I'll call Maura—"

  "No!" Bess shot back fiercely, then lowered her voice again. "If the detectives even hear that that place exists, they're sure to figure out that he set the fire himself. I bet there are even things in there that he told people had burned! There's no way that mini-storage can become public knowledge without everyone knowing Humphrey was a fraud."

  "Maybe they should," Leigh said seriously, looking her aunt squarely in the eyes.

  Bess returned her gaze, her determination edged with sadness again. "I thought you understood, Leigh. I just can't let that happen. Not unless I have no choice. If the coroner's report comes back homicide, then I'll march right straight to the detectives and tell them everything. I swear. But if Humphrey died on his own, nobody else has to lose, here. I can get rid of Noel—I'll buy her off myself if I have to—Ted will be out of danger, and the church can go on with a new pastor. It's the best thing for everyone." Her eyes turned pleading. "Please, Leigh. Go back to the mini-storage. No one will ever know you were there."

  "Bess!" Frances screeched from somewhere down the hall. "I thought you were resting in the parlor! What are you doing back on your feet? Come sit down, or I'm taking you right back home again."

  Bess's hands closed Leigh's firmly over the key, and after one last, beseeching gaze, she turned back to Frances. "Coming, Master!"

  Leigh offered her mother a cursory wave and quickly retreated. She wanted
to drop the key down a storm drain right then and there, but somehow that didn't happen. It burned a hole in the palm of her hand as she walked to the Cavalier, and when she recognized Detective Hollandsworth's car pulling into the lot, she dropped it guiltily into her pocket.

  She hopped into the Cavalier and started the engine. Sure. Now he shows up. It was his sluggishness that was the problem, she reasoned. If he had been a little quicker responding to her report of Noel being at the church, she wouldn't have to go where she was going now.

  And that would make everybody happier.

  ***

  The door of S.P.E. Mini Storage unit #47 slid up easily. Leigh had watched her own gloved hands opening it, wishing desperately that they were someone else's. Maura would kill her if she knew. There was no question about that. It was only a matter of how. And although the detective's behavior on the job was strictly by the book, Leigh feared her friend had a creative streak.

  A cold wind had started blowing, and she pulled the door almost closed behind her. After pulling the cord on the single light bulb in the ceiling, she could see well enough to look around. Everything looked the same as the last time she had been there, and no wonder. By then Humphrey had been dead a day already—who else was going to mess with it?

  She thumbed through the contents of the open boxes, looking for one that might house old medication containers. She and Bess had looked through many of them, but they weren't really looking for medical stuff then, and there were other, sealed boxes they hadn't gotten to at all before Leigh had panicked.

  In retrospect, she wished they'd finished the job the first time. At least then they hadn't been interfering with a possible murder investigation. She walked around and surveyed the rest of the sealed boxes, her eyes settling on one whose packing tape had long since yellowed. As she picked it up, her heart jumped. The letters "M.H." were scrawled across its top with a black marker.

  She settled the box into position under the light and began working at the tape. M.H. could mean anything, of course—from "move here" to "Mom's hairdryer." But as far as she was concerned, it meant "Money Humphrey."

  The packing tape seemed to have morphed over time into superhumanly strong strips coated with goo, and she was pretty sure the keys she was using to split the tape would never be the same. But eventually her persistence was rewarded. She opened the box and looked down into an unlikely jumble of dusty books, clothes, and games.

  She pulled out the clothes first, and noticed quickly that they were not typical clothes, but uniforms. One seemed to be an old policeman's uniform, the other was vintage Salvation Army. Decks of cards were everywhere, some pornographic. And aside from an early edition of Swiss Family Robinson, the books had a definite theme. How to Pick Pockets for Fun and Profit, Gambling Scams, Sleight of Hand, and a half-dozen books on billiards were all well worn. One book protected by a plastic case was undoubtedly the pride of the collection: Expert at the Card table, A Treatise on the Science and Art of Manipulating Cards. It was a first edition, dated 1902.

  Leigh replaced the clothes and the books and closed the lid. Let no one ever accuse "Money" Humphrey of not being serious about his craft, she thought grimly.

  There were two other boxes labeled "M.H.," but Leigh ignored them. The last thing she needed now was to find even more evidence to feel guilty about withholding from the police. She was supposed to be proving Humphrey wasn't murdered, and on that score, she was striking out miserably.

  Thinking that perhaps she should concentrate on the boxes that looked more recent, she sat down on the cold concrete and pulled a small lidded one into her lap. As the lid slid up and out of the way, she smiled.

  Personal items. Eureka. She fingered her way through a plastic container of shoelaces, a half-dozen eyeglass cases, a sewing kit, SPF 40+ sunscreen, and an electric razor before her eyes settled on a small, oblong leather carrying case. She fumbled with the zipper, determined not to remove her gloves. When the contents came into view, she sucked in a breath.

  Paydirt. She had seen such a gadget only once before, when she was in a restaurant in Station Square, and a man fell out of his seat and onto the floor. She had jumped up instinctively, trying to remember the Heimlich maneuver, but by the time she reached the table the man's wife had things firmly under control. He had a peanut allergy, she had explained later. And he might very well have died if she hadn't injected him with the device she had taken out of her purse. The same device Humphrey had stashed away in his travel kit, along with a few clean insulin syringes and some bandages.

  It was an epinephrine dispenser. The kind carried by people who have allergies so severe that if a reaction isn't treated immediately, they can go into anaphylactic shock. And die.

  "Oh, look. It's already open. That's a bit odd, isn't it?"

  The squeaky voice wafting under the garage door made Leigh's body stiffen, and the man's voice that followed did nothing to reassure her.

  "I'm, uh—not sure how that could be, Mrs. Humphrey. It was shut tight this morning. We always check, you know. Are you sure he didn't give somebody else his key?"

  Noel. She knew about Humphrey's storage unit—and she was coming to get his stuff. Leigh dropped the travel kit back into the box, shoved on the lid, and kicked the whole business as far into the back of the unit as she could. "Noel?" she called out, as cheerfully as she could manage, "is that you?"

  When the door rolled up she was standing as if waiting for them, an incredibly fake smile plastered on her face. "I'm so glad you're here! You can be so much help, if you're willing. The women at the church thought that we should go through Humphrey's things as soon as possible—in case there was something that might help the investigation. I suggested we ask you to help, but they were afraid it might be too painful for you, this soon." She tried to turn the fake smile into a fake look of concern. "Are you sure you're up to this?"

  Noel's eyes, which had been fixed on Leigh with alternating flashes of surprise, anger, caution, and distrust, floated over to the mini-storage manager. "Evidently my husband did leave his key in the custody of the church. I'm sorry to drag you out here for nothing. Thank you for your trouble."

  The man nodded patiently, and walked away. Noel's eyes turned back on Leigh with a steady, studying look. It seemed like a year before she spoke. "What are you doing here?" she said simply.

  "I told you," Leigh said, her smile muscles fatiguing. "We were hoping to find something that could help the investigation. You know—like medical records."

  The doe-eyes suddenly seemed more black than brown, their expression cold and blank. "My husband was murdered," she said calmly. "How did you get his key?"

  Leigh swallowed. She was doing okay so far, though she already regretted the "women at the church" line. It could too easily be disproven. "Your husband gave it to my Aunt Bess," she answered slowly, the wheels in her brain doing overtime. "He told her he was afraid to leave it at the church, under the circumstances. That if anything happened to him, she was to make sure you got it."

  Noel's brow furrowed, and Leigh kept talking. "She would have given it to you at the house the other day, but she forgot all about it. Her memory isn't what it used to be, I'm afraid." She smiled again. Bess would kill her for that one, but it didn't matter. Maura would pulverize her long before her aunt got a shot.

  She decided to lay it on thicker. "I'm sorry. You look upset. I hope you don't think we were prying. It's just—we all want to see things get cleared up with the investigation, so we can move forward with the funeral service."

  The doe eyes softened, but only a bit. "I appreciate your concern, but I would rather go through my husband's things myself—if you don't mind."

  "Oh, of course!" Leigh said graciously, beginning her retreat. "If you find anything unexpected, anything that might help the detectives, I'm sure you'll let them know."

  That'll be the day. Leigh offered an insincere thanks and goodbye and spun on her heels. She had taken only a step and a half when Noel's falsetto voice
called her back.

  "Um…Leigh? That is your name, isn't it?"

  She nodded.

  "Could I have it, please?"

  She stared blankly for a moment, certain she had carried nothing away with her.

  "The key," Noel said firmly, holding out her hand.

  Fumbling an apology, Leigh pulled the key from her pocket and dutifully placed it in the other woman's palm. Then she murmured another goodbye, collapsed into the Cavalier, and let out a breath.

  Well, fine. Now she could tell Bess both that Humphrey knew how to cheat at cards and that he was deathly allergic to something. Without the key, however, she couldn't prove either one.

  Chapter 18

  Leigh finished off a dinner of instant rice and soy sauce without enthusiasm. It had been well past noon when she had finally gotten the gordita—and then it had lain in her stomach like lead. She wanted desperately to talk to Bess, but explaining the mini-storage adventure with her mother present was not an option. So she had spent the remainder of her last weekday of vacation doing what she probably should have been doing all along—laying on the couch watching TV with a cat on her stomach.

  Warren's familiar knock on the door shook her out of her stupor, and she rushed to answer it. The tie she had watched him put on that morning still hung straight and unrumpled, but other than that, he looked like something Mao Tse might enjoy relocating. Having one relative in the hospital and another in jail was clearly taking its toll. She had a sudden impulse to step up and put her arms around him, but just as she began to follow it, she caught sight of a petite redhead emerging from behind him. Her hands dropped to her sides.

  "Hello, Leigh," Katharine said with her usual formal pleasantness. "We'd like to talk with you a moment, if you have the time."

  Leigh threw a glance at Warren, who looked back at her hopefully. "Sure," she answered, curious. She invited them in as Mao Tse—true to form—hissed and retreated to the bedroom. "'What's up?" she asked, turning off the television and picking her empty rice bowl up off the floor. "Is Ted back home yet?"