“No. Just birthday cards and Christmas fruit.” Joyce blinked rapidly, sending a tear down her cheek. “And anniversary gifts. He sent me a gold necklace last time.”
Tony didn’t think normal people still shared anniversary gifts after a divorce, but what did he know. “Phone calls?”
“Sometimes.” Joyce finally sat down on her office chair and rested her hands on the spotless desktop. “I think he was sorry he left me and shacked up with the rich woman.”
“Did he ever tell you he was unhappy in his new marriage?” Tony guessed the answer would be no. This woman would be hard to live with. Theo, like himself, had irritating moments, but Joyce did not appear to have any idea of give and take. In their short conversation, Joyce had experienced just about every emotion he could think of. Mood swings made him uneasy. This woman’s were hurricane-sized.
“Not in so many words, but we were soul mates and so I knew.” Joyce tightened her lips like she’d bitten into something sour. “That rich woman lured him away, but I still get paid.”
“Paid?” The word conjured another word. A silent one: Blackmail.
“I guess it’s not exactly like a salary, but I’m still on the life insurance we bought together years ago. He’s worth a hundred thousand dollars to me now that he’s dead. He always said he wanted me to have something, and so insurance was his gift.” Joyce continued her rapid speech, her eyes narrowed. “If that brazen woman thinks she can steal my inheritance away from me, too, she’s got another think coming.”
Tony noticed moisture gathered in the corners of Joyce’s mouth, conjuring in his mind, the vision of rabies. This woman was seriously scary. He did some mental math about her income. A hundred thousand to Laura Dill Cashdollar was nothing; to Joyce it would be a tidy nest egg. He did think it was pretty crass to be gloating over the insurance payout during a death notification, but there was no standard of behavior in certain circumstances. Was she totally innocent or not too bright? For that matter, he wondered what kind of person bought life insurance as a parting gift for the end of a marriage. It would only pay out if the insured didn’t outlive the heir. Was that the deceased’s plan? Was jumping from the plane a way to give Joyce cash or just coincidence?
“Are you aware of any health issues that might have been expected to shorten Franklin’s life?”
Calmer for the moment, Joyce sighed heavily and considered his question. “No. As far as I know, he was still in his usual perfect physical condition.” Her expression darkened again. “Oh, I see what you’re asking. If he was in such good health, I’d probably die first and I’d never get paid anything.”
Tony thought the troubled expression on her face meant she had never considered the parting gift might not be as delightful as she had supposed.
Leaving her to her thoughts, Tony and Wade excused themselves.
“Maybe we should talk to Mrs. Cashdollar’s staff.” Tony had almost forgotten about them, mostly because he was unaccustomed to the very concept of a butler.
The Cashdollar butler answered the door. “May I help you?”
Tony was somewhat surprised to find the butler was in his mid-thirties, tall, fit, and quite handsome. The butler didn’t possess the same attractiveness as Wade, but who could? Tony glimpsed sparkling white teeth, accentuated by a lingering tan. The butler blocked their way, waiting to see their identification.
The three men trotted out their badges and identification. “I believe you were off duty the first time we came.” Tony smiled. This was the first honest to goodness butler he’d ever met. He felt his smile grow wider as he thought how suddenly life was like being in an old movie—a castle and a butler. What would be next? A dragon? A ghost on the battlement? He wasn’t sure what a battlement looked like.
“Yes, sir, I was.” The butler sounded politely detached. “Madam did inform me of the master’s tragic end. She is expecting you.”
The voice surprised Tony, bringing him back to reality. The accent was decidedly closer to Georgia than Britain.
“If you’ll come this way.” The butler turned and led them back to the unwelcoming room where they had talked previously. Today though, the fireplace was cold, making the room even less appealing than before. “Wait here.” And he vanished through a door partially hidden by a tapestry.
A few minutes passed before Mrs. Cashdollar appeared. Minutes while Tony prowled about the large room, restless and unsettled by the lack of anything he’d call “personal” in this vast room. Maybe because he was so accustomed to seeing living rooms filled with newspapers, televisions, toys, quilt projects, and even a motorcycle in one house he’d visited, that this museum piece seemed unlived in. “There’s not even a book.”
Wade shook his head, his expression as curious as Tony’s own. “They don’t live in here.”
The lady of the manor, Laura Dill Cashdollar swept through the doorway like a movie star arriving to collect a trophy. She was as immaculately groomed as she had been the first time they’d met. The slacks and sweater she wore looked like they had been made for her, but the obvious strain of the situation had taken a toll on her as evidenced by the red-rimmed eyes. She squeezed her hands together, but a fine tremor continued. Exhaustion and grief. “You have more questions?”
“Yes. Wouldn’t you like to sit?” Tony didn’t like questioning the grieving, but questions had to be answered.
Mrs. Cashdollar lowered herself onto a wing chair. She didn’t invite the three men to sit, but they did, pulling chairs around to form a semicircle at her feet.
“Is there a possibility that your husband might have jumped from the airplane on an impulse?” Tony hadn’t wasted much time with preliminaries. “We keep running into inconsistencies and roadblocks.”
“No way. Impulse was not part of his personality.”
“People can change.” Tony had lost count of the number of times he was told someone wouldn’t do such and such—and yet they had. Cheated, lied, run off with another person.
Laura Dill Cashdollar’s expression changed to something like anger. She clearly didn’t like be contradicted. “I know, but he didn’t change. Several times I even tried to loosen him up a bit. Like one time I suggested we just take our plates into the den and eat in front of the fireplace because I was cold in the dining room. He checked his watch and shook his head and said something about it being too late to switch.” A sigh followed her words. “One beautiful summer day, I suggested we throw a few things in the car and drive over to the Outer Banks. He looked at me like I was proposing we leap from the roof.” She opened her hands, revealing the handkerchief wadded up inside, and wiped her streaming eyes.
Tony thought “leap” was an interesting word, given the situation, but everything Laura said tallied with Carl Lee’s observations about his father. Franklin seemed to have been a solid, dependable, organized man. He was not without a lighter side, but definitely not one to leap from a cliff, or an airplane, without checking the altitude, wind velocity, and angle of the sun.
Dupont gave Mrs. Cashdollar a moment to gather herself together again. “Is there any reason you could suggest to explain his jumping?”
“What are you suggesting?” She managed to sit up even straighter. “I’m telling you for the last time, he would never do something like kill himself. I know that as well as I know myself.”
“Even if he was ill? Very ill?” Tony spoke softly.
“Was he?” Turning to face him, Mrs. Cashdollar looked relieved by the suggestion. “I had no idea.”
“Not as far as we’ve learned.” Tony felt like a cad. “I was just asking.”
“That was cruel.”
“I’m sorry. It wasn’t meant to be cruel. We’re just searching for answers.” Tony didn’t think they would learn anything from this woman. He wanted to chat with the butler. Staff, or so he was told, often know more about their employers than family members. “Thank you Mrs. Cashdollar.”
She stood.
“Would you ask your butler to j
oin us?” Tony studied her face. If her expression meant anything, he might have asked if the wallpaper would talk to them.
“Of course.” She swept out of the room without looking back.
The butler, on the other hand, sidled in like he was preparing to confess to stealing the family silver. “You asked to speak with me?”
“Absolutely.” Tony smiled.
Wade suggested the man be seated.
The butler appeared scandalized by the idea of sitting where the lady of the manor had been seated. He shook his head, took a step back, and stood at attention. Only the military or butler school could produce that posture.
“I presume you have a name.” Tony waved his notebook.
“Yes, sir, it’s Anderson.” His posture did not relax. “The family calls me Anderson.”
“How long have you worked for the family?” Tony thought he might as well dive right in.
“Eight years now.” A faint smile appeared on the butler’s face, but nothing else moved.
“Do you enjoy it?”
The butler’s eyebrows did rise on that question, as if he’d never thought about it. “Of course.”
Tony wasn’t sure why, but he believed the man was lying. Maybe it was his interpretation of a butler’s duties—work twenty hours a day and remain invisible. “Go to butler school?”
“No sir, reform school.” Anderson relaxed an inch. “Mrs. Dill, that is, Mrs. Cashdollar now, maintains many charitable organizations. Rehabilitation put me in her path.”
“You couldn’t have been very old,” said Wade.
“As they say, it’s not the years but the miles.” Anderson straightened back into position. “My choices were to either change my way of life or spend the rest of it behind bars.” He smiled but his eyes were intensely serious. “I did not want prison.”
“Fair enough.” Tony smiled. “Did the Cashdollars get along well?”
“Sir?” Anderson appeared scandalized by the question.
“I’m not looking for gossip.” Tony tapped his notebook. “It’s none of my business if they threw crystal at each other every night after dinner, but I believe anyone who lives in the same building will be aware if there was friction. Were they merely polite to one another? Affectionate? Raging arguments?”
“If those are my choices, I’d say somewhere between polite and affectionate.” Anderson almost smiled. “The household is very civilized.”
“That’s fine.” Tony didn’t feel like there was more to learn. “Would you ask the housekeeper to join us?”
Anderson nodded and left the room without another word.
The middle-aged woman who had opened the door to them the previous evening joined them. Today’s dress was identical and her demeanor was only slightly friendlier. “I’m Betsy.”
Tony waved to the chair. Betsy perched on the edge. Her features were nondescript and her dull blond hair was streaked with gray. “Do you live in?”
“Yes, like Anderson, I have an apartment over the garage.”
“And how long have you worked for the Cashdollars?”
“I’ve attended to Mrs. C. for ten years now.”
“Do you enjoy your work?” Tony would have stood on his head if he thought she would change expressions.
“Enjoy?” The question seemed to have no meaning to the woman and the word came back to him like an undissolved piece of hard candy.
“Did you like Mr. Cashdollar?”
“He liked things done just so.” Betsy finally displayed some emotion. Irritation.
“Specifically?”
Blank blue eyes stared back at him.
“What had to be ‘just so’?”
“Oh, well everything. The pillows on the bed. The towels on the rack. The fold on them had to be away from the shower. And ferns. If Mrs. C. received fresh flowers, he always pulled out any ferns and threw them away.”
“Did he say why?”
Betsy shook her head. “And I didn’t ask.”
“Did he yell or threaten you in any way?”
“Oh, no sir. He’d just stare like he couldn’t believe you was so stupid.” Betsy’s eyes narrowed. “Made me feel like dirt.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
After Betsy was excused, Tony and Wade went to the kitchen in search of the cook. When Tony visualized “cook” his brain said, “Blossom or Pinkie,” probably because of their affiliation with Ruby’s Café. Mrs. Jenkins, the Cashdollar cook, did not fit the mold. She looked barely old enough to buy wine.
Dressed in tight black Capri pants and a spotless white “chef’s jacket,” the girl had copper skin and hair and brilliant green eyes. Maybe Mrs. Jenkins wasn’t quite beautiful, but she was strikingly attractive.
“How long have you worked for the Cashdollars?” The phrase was getting easier.
Mrs. Jenkins narrowed her eyes, thinking, and Tony noticed a line where her artificial lashes were glued to her eyelids.
“Almost a year now.”
“Do you like working here?” Wade’s turn to ask the question.
“It’s all right.” She moved a stack of plates closer to the stove. “It’s a short-time gig for me.”
“Why is that?” Tony guessed it would be dull work.
“When my husband is done working on his master’s degree, we will probably move some place bigger and I would like to open my own restaurant.”
“Did you interact much with Mr. Cashdollar?”
“Lots of coffee!” Mrs. Jenkins smiled. “He never seemed to care what the menu was as long as I made lots of coffee.”
“Yesterday morning,” Tony said. “Did you fill his thermos?”
“Of course.”
Leaving the Cashdollar mansion, Tony looked at Wade. He could practically hear the paperwork stacking up on his desk from the other side of the mountains. “Let’s go home. We can come back to North Carolina later. Maybe something in that thermos will solve the entire case.”
Tony watched as Deputy Sheila Teffeteller fidgeted on the chair across from his desk. Not at all her style. She had asked to talk to him almost as soon as he’d gotten back to Silersville. Now back from North Carolina, he was trying to catch up. Piles of fresh mail and reports covered his already messy desk.
He was tired but not exhausted, and although he’d probably be heading back over the mountains at some point, he hoped not to be doing it in a snowstorm. “What’s bothering you, Sheila?”
“I think you might not know this, but you should.” She paused. “Carl Lee and I are cousins. First cousins. His mom and my dad are siblings.”
“No way.” Tony had cousins, but they all lived in other states. He and his siblings had moved to Silersville with his mom and dad when he was eight years old. After his father’s death, they had stayed, but even so he was variously considered “a foreigner” or, at best, “a newcomer.” Of his forty years, deducting his time in the service, college, and Chicago, only maybe fifteen of his years had been spent in Park County. “Why didn’t I know that?”
Sheila smiled. “If you scratch the old families, we’re all connected at some level. If there hasn’t been a marriage, there’s been a feud, or some combination of one causing the other.”
Tony knew Sheila was younger than Carl Lee, but only by maybe three to five years. “Do you remember Carl Lee’s mother, his birth mother?”
“When she married Franklin Cashdollar and moved away, I wasn’t born yet. They came through the area several times though, when I was a little girl. I remember Calvin’s mom seemed very nice,” Sheila added. “But although I met Uncle Franklin a few times, he wasn’t my favorite uncle.”
Tony believed that instincts are immeasurable and yet sometimes the best guide. “Any particular reason you didn’t like him?” Tony lifted his right hand as if being sworn to silence, but he would take all the insight into the deceased he could get. “I won’t tell anyone.”
“He’s probably the reason I’m your sniper.” Sheila laughed, but there wasn’t much humor in it. �
��Uncle Franklin claimed females were incapable of being quiet and couldn’t be trusted with a gun.”
“I’d say your Uncle Franklin is . . . was an idiot.” Tony guessed her uncle had made other hurtful and stupid comments about one of the poorest branches of the family tree. He himself had often watched, with awe, Sheila training and at work with her rifle. Her patience was legendary and even knowing where she waited, hidden, he often couldn’t spot her. Starting when she was still very young, the Teffeteller children ate a lot of fried rabbit instead of going hungry, thanks to Sheila. Poor man’s chicken. “I’ll bet Carl Lee already knows, but he won’t hear it from me.”
Sheila did smile then. “I like Carl Lee. His dad used to send him to stay with his backwoods cousins every summer. We liked it just fine, he was fun, but I always wondered how he felt about being shipped to us from exotic places.”
A lurid image of a gangly boy emerging from a crate covered with foreign postage stamps flashed through his brain. “Shipped?”
“Oh, yeah, my mom and dad would get a message that Carl Lee was arriving at the airport on such and such a date and time and would someone pick him up.” Sheila studied her feet. “Carl Lee would stay with us and then with his Uncle Calvin and the Queen for part of the time. It had to be quite a contrast in lifestyles.”
Tony couldn’t visualize Queen Doreen interacting with a gangly boy. “I imagine he had more fun with your family.”
“It was good for him to see both families. When I’m not thinking about slapping Doreen just to wipe that snotty expression from her face, she does some nice things; she’s just not warm and cuddly.” Sheila shrugged slightly. “My view of her is a bit tainted by my childhood. Doreen was always polite, but she was so very clean, and when we were young, soap was not our favorite product. Oddly enough, she didn’t want us hugging her.”
As a compliment, Tony thought it was fine. If Sheila had liked the woman enough to want to hug the Queen, she’d seen past the icy surface.
“What’s the status on our stabbing victim?” Tony talked to Doc Nash, ashamed he’d almost forgotten about the woman Theo had rescued at the grocery store.
Murder by Gravity Page 10
