“Can I help?’
“I’m fine.”
“Are you sure?” I pressed. “I guess I need a distraction from everything that’s going on. It must be especially hard for you.”
“Why especially?” She took a step back.
“You’re friends with the Olnhausens. You and Frank.”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “We knew them as well as anyone in town I suppose.”
I leaned in and quietly said, “Rita seems so brave. I’ve hardly seen her cry, but, then, I don’t really know her. She must be more expressive with her grief around you.”
Helen’s eyes darted in the direction of door, then back to me. “She hasn’t said anything to me. She hasn’t even thanked me for the Bundt cake I brought this morning. Not that I expect thanks.”
I smiled. This was going to be easier than I thought. “Rita seems, well, I don’t know how to say it but she’s . . .” I hesitated.
“A bit hard?” Just as I expected, Helen finished my sentence. Now it was her turn to lean in and whisper. “She had George wrapped around her little finger, and I have no idea why. He did all the work for this place. He roped everyone into taking this class.” She stopped. “Not that it hasn’t turned out to be quite fun.”
“Of course. But you had no way of knowing that when George asked you—”
“Asked!” Her voice rose an octave, then quickly lowered. “He insisted. Made it seem life-or-death. But that was George about everything concerning Rita. If she wanted something, he would move heaven and earth to get it for her.”
“I guess that’s true love.”
“I guess. Seems to me that she could have done more for him. Marriage is a two-way street, but, of course, everyone has to find their own balance. If it worked for them, then I say fine. I just worried that he would end up with a heart attack, that’s all.” She shook her head. “Poor man.”
“I wish I’d known George as well as you,” I offered. “You seem like a good judge of character and you obviously felt a great deal of affection for him.”
Her eyes filled with tears. “You’ll have to excuse me,” she said. Then she turned her back to me and walked slowly out of the room.
CHAPTER 24
I finished the dishes and left the kitchen to look for Jesse, in the hopes of finding out about his conversation with Frank and telling him about mine with Helen. I didn’t find him. Instead I ran into Rita, who looked tired and pale. She was sitting alone in the half-finished living room, staring into space, car keys in her hand.
“Are you okay? Can I get you anything?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“They’ve painted the living room,” she said quietly.
“It’s a nice color.” I stood for a moment, unsure of what to say.
“I need a ride into town.” She handed me the keys to her car without waiting for a reply. She seemed to be struggling to get up, so I bent over to try to help her, but she waved her hand at me. “I’m not an invalid,” she snapped. “I’m a widow. I can get off the couch by myself.”
“If you would rather drive yourself,” I found myself snapping back.
Rita immediately weakened. She seemed ready to cry, and she took a slow breath to calm herself. “I’m not up to it. Maybe I could drive there, but not back. George used to . . .”
I felt like a jerk. “It’s fine. Of course I’ll take you wherever you need to go.”
We walked to her car, a late-model BMW, and headed toward town without talking.
As much as I preferred the silence, eventually I had to speak up. “I don’t know where I’m going.”
Whatever weakness she had expressed back at the inn was gone. “Just drop me off at the police station,” she said dismissively.
“But I think McIntyre is at the inn. I saw him earlier, talking to Frank.”
“I don’t want to talk to McIntyre.”
“Then why do you want to go to the police station?”
“I can’t imagine why that would matter to you.”
“Man, you are an unpleasant person,” I wanted to say. But instead I said, “Helen seemed pretty upset about George.”
Rita shrugged. “People liked him. They liked him more than me.”
“I’m sure that’s not the case. George just seems to have gotten out more.”
Rita stared at me. “Have you been asking around?”
I could feel my cheeks turning a little red but I ignored it. “When someone dies, people like to talk about him.”
She turned away from me and slouched in her chair. “I suppose. Not that any of them knew him, especially that Helen woman.”
“I don’t know her very well but I think she’s quite nice.”
“As you say, you don’t know her very well.”
Okay. New subject. “Which church do you go to?”
“I don’t attend church. I’m not religious.”
“But George’s burial . . .”
“George won’t be buried. He’ll be cremated.” She glared at me. “This is hardly a topic I wish to discuss at the moment.”
As she spoke we pulled up in front of the police station.
“Would you like me to wait for you?”
“No.” The answer was firm. “You can come back for me in an hour. Just drop me off and go to the bakery for some coffee. Everyone goes there. Then come back in an hour to pick me up.”
In Rita’s world, it seemed, I wasn’t someone helping her. I was the help. I changed the subject.
“I know I’ve said this before, but I’m so sorry about George. He seemed like a man without an enemy in the world.”
“That is clearly not the case.”
“So you have some ideas about who might have done it?”
“I do not. All I know is that George is dead. Shot through the heart.” She took a deep breath and said the words again. “Shot through the heart. Nothing changes that.”
“But you want to find his killer?”
“I want peace. That’s why we came here. To finally have peace in our lives. Maybe George is at peace. I hope so. I envy him in a way.” She pointed out the window. “Drop me here. Come back in an hour.”
She got out of the car and walked toward the police station. I waited for her to enter, and after a moment’s hesitation, she did. As I started to pull away, I glanced in my rearview mirror and saw her walk out and head in the opposite direction. As quickly as I could, I drove around the block, but Rita was gone. If she ducked into a building, it could have been any one of several small shops, restaurants, or offices. I drove slowly down the street. I considered for a moment going door-to-door to look for her but I didn’t want Rita to know that I was investigating. Instead I took her suggestion and drove the one block to the bakery.
When I parked the car, I did my best to go through it, looking for evidence. I wasn’t sure what cops did when they searched vehicles, but I looked under the seats, in the trunk, and in every compartment I could find, including the cup holders. I didn’t find any guns or blood. There was nothing in the glove compartment except a car manual, a flashlight, and a gas receipt for a station in Saratoga Springs.
But the trip wasn’t a waste, I told myself. Even though I didn’t know which building Rita had entered, I knew something for sure. Her husband had been dead for less than twenty-four hours and she was using the cover of a grieving widow to hide something.
And I was going to figure out what it was.
CHAPTER 24
“Why did she ask you to drive her?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
I had gone back to the pay phone in front of the bakery to call Carrie and find out what she’d learned about the Olnhausens. Instead she kept asking me questions about the murder.
“If she was really trying to hide something, she would have driven herself,” Carrie said. “Maybe she wanted you to see her.”
“Then why go to all the trouble of walking into the police station? Why not just ask me to drop her off in front
of whatever building she went into?”
I could hear Carrie sigh. “No idea,” she said. “Boy, I wish I were up there. Natalie is going crazy without her mom’s help, and I’m swamped at the shop. I had no idea one town could drink so much coffee. Plus I promised my daughter I’d make her a new quilt, and I’ll never have time.”
“We’ll be back in a few days. We’ll all help. But in the meantime . . .”
“I’m just saying that you guys are having all the fun.”
“Dead guy, Carrie, remember? Plus I was drugged.”
“Does the police chief know about that?”
“No,” I said. “If I tell him that George drugged me, it just gives me a motive to kill him. And we want him to focus where he should, on Rita.”
“Right. But I don’t think Rita had a motive. At least not a financial one. I found out that they have assets of over two million dollars and low life-insurance policies, only about twenty thousand dollars each—nothing that would make Rita kill him over money. In fact, they seem like really good people.”
“You can tell that from a few financial records?”
“I also found that they’ve made substantial donations to several charities, most of them over a hundred thousand dollars.”
“What charities? Could you find out?”
“Already know. An organization that sponsors free art classes, a heart-disease research center, a group that helps families displaced by foreclosure, and a support organization for Alzheimer’s patients and families,” she said. “See what I mean? Rita’s a good person.”
“I’m not sure you would feel that way if you met her,” I said. “Is that all you have?”
“No. You would be very proud of Natalie. She tracked down a name and address you’re going to want. Their daughter. She lives in Saratoga Springs.”
After she gave me the information on Rita’s daughter, Carrie filled me in on some of the gossip in Archers Rest. Apparently Jesse had left town so fast that he’d only called his deputies when he was already on the road, and his mother had to cancel a dentist appointment to pick up Jesse’s daughter from school.
“He must be crazy about you,” she said.
“I guess.” It had just started to occur to me that maybe Jesse overreacted in rushing up to Winston, and Jesse wasn’t really the type to overreact. When he arrived in town, nothing had happened yet, at least nothing he knew about. I guess I’d been so glad he’d come that I didn’t want to ask why.
“Have you asked him about the redhead?”
“No,” I told her. “I’m not going to. I have to focus on me, not on him, and on getting Bernie out of this mess. I don’t care about any redheads.”
As I hung up, I wondered if that was true.
Inside Maria’s Bakery I bought a coffee and an apple-cider doughnut. Maria was a large woman, the sort who clearly enjoys her own baking and life in general. She already knew about the quilt classes, the murder, and the sudden arrival of a good-looking police officer from Archers Rest. She knew so much that I was hoping she’d be able to tell me the name of the killer, but no luck.
“You know the Olnhausens?” I asked her, as I sipped the last of my coffee.
“Know them? I bake organic bread and scones for the B-and-B every week. Lovely people,” she said. “So in love.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Just the way they looked at each other. I could tell.”
Could you? I thought. “Did they come into the bakery together?”
She shook her head. “I drop the bread off at the inn. George came in on his own a few times, but mostly I’ve seen them at the inn. I go by there on my way home and visit for a few minutes.”
“I haven’t seen you since we’ve been there,” I said. I was wondering why Rita hadn’t been sharing the baked goods with us.
“George came by and picked up his order the day before yesterday. And he got two oatmeal cookies. Said they were Rita’s favorites.” Her voice choked with emotion. “She must be beside herself without him.”
I nodded. “She must be.” I couldn’t figure out who the Rita and George were that she was talking about, because they bore no resemblance to the people I knew. “No rumors about other people?” I asked.
“You mean that woman they knew in high school? There’s nothing there.”
“You know about Bernie?”
“Didn’t know her name. I just knew that they went to high school with her, and she came back up with you folks. Nice chance for a reunion. Turned sad, of course, but I suppose it was good that the woman, Bernie, had a chance to see George before he passed.”
“Do you get your information from McIntyre?” I had to ask. “I know the chief is in here all the time.”
She laughed. “Jimmy? He wouldn’t share a cookie, let alone a piece of juicy gossip. I just hear things.”
“If you hear anything else, let me know,” I said.
She nodded. “Back at ya.” She grabbed a pastry box and started filling it with cookies. “Bring this to your friends at the inn.”
She seemed friendly enough and definitely plugged into the goings-on in town, but she couldn’t be right about Rita and George. I’d hadn’t seen a hint of love pass between them. And since he’d died, Rita certainly hadn’t been acting like a woman who had lost her true love.
I checked my watch. I had just enough time to get into position and maybe find out something Maria didn’t know.
I parked the car in front of the police station and walked down the block. Aside from two restaurants, neither of which opened until dinner, a nail salon, a dry cleaner, a boarded-up children’s store, and a tiny storefront labeled PSYCHIC with a large hand-painted sign, there wasn’t much to Main Street. With one exception. In the middle of the block was a three-story building that seemed to contain a variety of offices—doctors, dentists, lawyers, accountants, a private investigator, and several that were just names without a description. Rita had to be in there somewhere, since the nail salon had only one customer and the psychic didn’t appear to be in. But knowing what building Rita was in didn’t narrow the possibilities much. She could be checking with her lawyer, getting her teeth cleaned, or meeting with any one of the half-dozen people whose nameplates didn’t specify their profession.
It had almost been an hour since I dropped Rita off, so I crossed the street and ducked into the dry cleaner. The large picture window had just enough signage to cover me but enough clear space so I got a good view of the building.
“Can I help you?”
I turned and saw a slight man in a gray vest, standing behind the counter.
“Oh, yes. I’m picking up the dry cleaning for the Olnhausens at the Patchwork Bed-and-Breakfast.” I glanced back at the window, but no Rita.
“You have the ticket?”
“No. I’m just helping the family,” I improvised.
“I heard about George. Sad thing. Didn’t know him well, but he could bring his dry cleaning anywhere and he brought it here, so I liked him.”
“Are there many dry cleaners in town?”
“Just mine. Why?”
I shook my head. “I think it’s great that he supported local businesses.”
“I’ll see what they have here,” he said, and disappeared into the back room.
I looked out the window again and saw Rita walk out of the office building, just as I had expected. But what I hadn’t expected was that she wouldn’t be alone. Next to her was a man about her age, wearing a dress shirt and tie and standing too close to be an acquaintance. She kept leaning into him, not quite touching but close. At one point she started to shake her head, and he took her hand, then reached his arm around her.
“I have three shirts and a skirt.” The dry cleaner was back. “No chemicals, just like they want it.”
“Great,” I turned to him. “Do you know that man standing with Rita?”
“Who is Rita?”
“George’s wife. You’ve never met her?”
“Only G
eorge.”
The dry cleaner walked over to me, but just as he was getting to the window the man ducked back into the building. The dry cleaner stared out the window at Rita as she walked in the direction of the police station. “She’s a pretty woman. Too thin for my taste, but pretty. A lot of the city ladies are too thin. Are you from the city?”
I involuntarily sucked in my stomach. Sad. “No. Archers Rest. It’s south of here, on the Hudson.”
He nodded. “That’ll be $18.50.”
I paid for the dry cleaning and headed back toward the car. Rita was standing at the curb, checking her watch and seeming very put out by having to wait. If I hadn’t known she had been at the car for less than twenty seconds, I’d have almost felt guilty.
“I picked up some things you had left at the cleaners,” I said cheerfully. There was no point in hiding it and no way to explain it.
“Why would you do that?”
I was afraid she would ask that. “I just wanted to help,” I said.
She stared at me. “You are odd. You’re all odd,” she said as she got in the passenger seat.
CHAPTER 25
“Odd?”
I told Eleanor about my trip into town as soon as I returned Rita to the inn. We retreated to our little room, and as Barney napped, I told Eleanor everything—the call to Carrie, Rita’s mysterious trip to the office building, the man Rita was talking to, and the fact that I was out $18.50 so I could be called odd instead of thanked.
“What kind of a woman would call you odd?”
“In all fairness I did pick up her dry cleaning without her asking,” I said. “That is kind of odd.”
“It was sweet of you.”
“I didn’t pick it up to be sweet. I picked it up because I was spying on her and I had no choice.”
“She doesn’t know that. If she had an ounce of humanity in her, she would think it was a kind gesture from a concerned acquaintance.” Eleanor scrunched up her face in disgust.
“Well, she thinks we’re all odd.”
The Double Cross Page 12
