by Gin Jones
Nora unlocked the driver's side door. "He's probably right. He saw Vic all the time, and I barely knew him. Art's job was to smooth over all the problems before they hit the press, like I'd have done if Vic were a full-time client for me instead of just a one-time gig. If it weren't against the rules of my profession, I could tell you stories that would make your hair stand on end about celebrities who have a reputation for being sweet, lovable, and generous souls."
"I just can't imagine a celebrity coming to Wharton to kill Vic without anyone noticing. Even Geoff Loring, our not-so-intrepid local journalist, would have been on that story. At least until he realized the newcomer was here with revenge on his mind."
"Not my circus, not my monkeys." Nora climbed into her car, keeping the door open. "I'll leave it to you and the police to figure out who killed Vic. I just wish you'd hurry up and arrest someone so I can leave town."
"I'm doing my best," Helen said. "Actually, there's one thing you might know about that would help me understand what happened. It's about the alarm system. Vic didn't turn it on Saturday night. Was he waiting until you got back before he set it?"
"Vic didn't say anything to me about an alarm." Nora stuck her keys in the ignition. "Probably forgot it existed. His memory really was slipping. I'm probably lucky he did forget to turn it on, or I'd have set it off when I came back here."
"It might have saved Vic's life, though," Helen said. "The rumor is that Vic was drugged around midnight, so the killer was already here when you got back."
"Seriously?" Nora shuddered. "It was bad enough thinking the killer was creeping around the house while I was asleep, but it's worse knowing he was here when I was awake, and I didn't even suspect a thing."
"He must have known to stay out of sight until you were settled in your own room. Probably heard your car coming up the driveway," Helen said, although that raised another question. "How did you get through the locked gates if Vic didn't let you in?"
"I had an electronic key. Art gave it to me before he left for the evening." Nora started the engine. "And now if you're done interrogating me, I'm outta here."
Helen waved her off. She was done with Nora for good now, she hoped. The woman's alibi was even stronger than before if the electronic records could confirm that she'd used her pass to open the gates sometime after 2:00. Marty would know if Nora was telling the truth. With all the trouble he'd been having with those gates, he probably knew every detail from the system's logs for the last several days and wouldn't even have to look up the records.
Normally Helen would have ignored Peterson and gone to get the information she wanted from Marty right now. If she did that today, though, it would reflect badly on Almeida, and the woman had enough to deal with already if she was supposed to learn about detective work from Hank Peterson.
Marty would be easy enough to find later. He should still be here when the detectives were gone and Helen returned to find the cat and possibly a clue or two about the identity of Vic's killer.
* * *
"Where to, Ms. Bee?" Jay asked from the driver's seat.
His sister looked up from whatever she was doing on her smartphone and told him, "It's Thursday. She's going to the nursing home, of course. That's where she goes every Thursday."
"She's right." Helen had almost forgotten about Charity Caps Day. It didn't start for another hour or two, but visiting with Betty and Josie was as good a way as any to pass the time until the coast was clear for Helen to return to snooping around Vic's property.
"She's always right," Jay grumbled, but he put the car in gear and headed down the driveway.
At the gate Zee jumped out and activated the gate's mechanism, which reminded Helen that she and Jay had worked on the wiring there. Maybe she didn't need to question Marty, after all. She needed to be careful not to say anything that might get Jack's niece and nephew into trouble. They were bound to be high on Peterson's list of suspects if he ever accepted that Stevie wasn't guilty, and he wouldn't be pleased if he found out they'd told Helen anything about the night of the murder. She couldn't even warn them to be careful about what they said to Peterson, since they didn't seem to realize that they were under any suspicion, and she didn't want to worry them.
Helen waited until Zee had returned to the Forester and they were heading toward the nursing home. "I was wondering how complicated the security is on the gate. It seems like a waste of effort. It doesn't really protect the property, since anyone who's determined to get inside can either climb the wall or simply go over to Freddie Wade's yard and walk through the woods between the two properties."
"Vic thought it was funny," Zee said. "Like bluffing in a card game. Project a confident image, and people will buy just about anything."
Jay said, "Sorta' like those signs claiming that a house is monitored by a security company, when they're not really."
"A way bigger bluff than that," Zee insisted. "Rezendes had us put in a real system, for thousands of dollars, even though it was as worthless as those fake signs. Marty thought it was crazy, but it was great for us, because we got more experience and more money in our paychecks. We've almost got enough in savings to pay for one-way plane tickets to California."
"How complicated a system was it?" Helen asked. "Did it record who came in and out of the gates?"
Jay deferred to his sister, who said, "The area around the gates was pretty well-covered by the new system. I mean, a professional burglar or someone with electronics expertise could have bypassed it, but not a normal person. There was a motion-activated camera and an electronic record of each time the gate was opened or shut."
"What about the pass keys? Were they coded so you'd know who used which one?"
Jay said, "We might have, if they'd been used properly and the system hadn't crashed and wiped out the entire week's records. Each of the keys had a different code, and it would be recorded along with the time it was used. Vic and Art each had one, and there were about a dozen more keys for visitors. You couldn't be sure who'd used it just from the code, but if the camera was working you could match the time to the video and identify the person that way."
But, of course, nothing about the system had been working properly, so Nora's alibi wasn't as solid as it appeared.
"Marty didn't want to make that many spares," Zee added. "Makes it too easy to lose one and too hard to notice if one's missing. A security system is only as good as its user, and most users aren't very good at following protocol."
Helen tried to think of the last time she'd activated her own security system, and couldn't. Surely it hadn't been that long; it was just that she couldn't remember anything for more than a few minutes. At least she definitely knew the code to deactivate it, since she'd used her birthdate, despite Marty's recommendation to use a more random number.
"The human element is the bane of Marty's existence," Jay said. "If he could design a completely self-contained system, he'd be ecstatic."
That level of security might well have saved Vic's life. Getting past the gates was easy, but if the house alarm had been able to set itself every night, the killer would have had a far more difficult time getting inside the house undetected. Instead, Vic's failing memory had gotten him killed.
No, not his failing memory, Helen corrected herself. It was more his being in denial that left him vulnerable. If he'd admitted he needed help, he could have worked around the memory lapses. Marty might not have been able to create a system that knew when to activate itself, but she was confident Marty could have programmed some sort of remote access, so Art could activate and deactivate the system using a smartphone app. Given how dedicated Art was to his work, he would have been happy to take care of the security system. In fact, he probably already was turning it on and off, considering how consistent the system's use had been. He might not have been able to set it when he left the mansion on Saturday if he knew Nora was likely to go out. Still, there were ways that Art could have helped, if only by giving Nora a temporary password to use the
system. All Vic would have had to do was ask.
That was the rub, Helen knew. Admitting to weakness and asking for help wasn't easy.
* * *
Betty and Josie were having a little lunchtime nap in their chairs by the fireplace. Jay and Zee wouldn't be back to pick her up for an hour, and Helen didn't have anything else she needed to do in the meantime. She might as well indulge in a little crochet therapy. Now that she'd conquered at least the basics of crochet, she did find it relaxing.
Helen quietly settled into a chair across from her friends, as far away from the too-hot fire as she could get, and pulled out her current project. She'd completed a few rows and was growing sleepy herself before Betty's eyes blinked open.
Betty tapped Josie on the arm. "Look who's here."
Josie stretched and then held out one hand, wiggling her fingers in a demand for a closer look at Helen's current project.
Helen handed it over and held her breath, waiting for the judgment.
Josie nodded. "You're really getting the hang of it. We'll have to look for a more advanced pattern for you soon."
It was all Helen could do to remember this simple pattern these days. "Maybe in a few months. I'm appreciating something simple in my life for the moment."
"It won't take you that long to solve Vic's murder." Josie handed back Helen's cap and took out her own hot pink one. "I'm surprised you haven't figured it out already. It had to have been Donald Glennon. He's the only one who hated Vic enough to want him dead. At least locally. There must be other suspects in Hollywood."
Helen picked up where she'd left off with the cap. "You know, I'm having trouble understanding Vic's reputation. Did the other people in the reality shows really hate him, or was that just a role they all played?"
"It looked real," Betty said, "but that's the whole idea of 'reality' TV, isn't it?"
"It just doesn't fit with what I've observed," Helen said. "He left most of his estate to charity, and his fans thought he was a decent person, not the character he played for the cameras."
"Some of his fans are bigger jerks than he was," Josie said. "I tried to join the Betting with the Pros fan club after we watched the episodes that Vic was in. They had an admission test with ten questions about celebrity poker players. I only knew the answers to the four questions about Vic, and I got them right, but I had no idea about the rest, so they wouldn't let me join."
"Most of the club members wanted to let Josie in on a provisional basis," Betty said. "They were willing to give her a chance to get caught up on the other players, but a few were really rigid about it. Seemed silly to me, all that fuss over a grown man who played games for a living, but some of the fans took it seriously."
"What did Vic think of his fans?" Helen said. "Did he ever play his little fake-aggressive games with them?"
"You think one of his fans might have taken offense and wanted him dead?" Betty said. "I suppose it's possible."
"Nah," Josie said. "Not Vic's fans. Even if they were kinda mean to me, I had to admire how devoted they were to the players. Especially to Vic. He never made fun of them, not even when he was being a jerk in televised events. He was also really good about coming to their conventions, even the really little ones, and signing memorabilia for them. He never complained about doing it either."
"I hadn't thought of the memorabilia," Betty said. "I once kept the books for a small collectibles store. I had to change the valuation on the inventory once when a previously obscure artist died in a spectacular stunt. The value of collectibles, like the Betting with the Pros merchandise that Vic signed, can skyrocket in value once the celebrity dies, since it's impossible to create any more autographed versions. Anyone who had a lot of Vic's stuff had a financial motive to kill him."
"And the most likely candidates to have a lot of those collectibles are the fans camping out across from Vic's front gates this week," Helen said. "I wonder if Detective Peterson talked to any of them."
"Not likely," Josie said. "His uncle told us he's so convinced he knows who the culprit is that he considers the case pretty much closed. Hank's just waiting for some forensic evidence reports to come in before he makes an arrest. He's not really doing anything on the case. He's even had enough free time to work on getting your homeless friend Marianne into some sort of program that will keep her safe and off the streets for a while. Apparently she's really scared about something."
Betty nodded. "Scared enough that she let herself be put into an observation ward at the hospital. Hank's uncle said her social worker's been trying for months to get her somewhere she could be examined, but Marianne always refused. She only agreed now because she's more afraid of what's outside the hospital than what's inside. She's calling it protective custody. Of course, Hank thinks she just fell down, and that's where her injuries came from, but at least she's being taken care of."
"Poor Marianne," Josie said. "I didn't recognize her name when you asked before, but Geoff explained this morning. She was in my class one year, and I totally thought she was going to be the first journalist from Wharton to win a Pulitzer. I didn't realize she'd gotten sick and ended up on the streets."
"She didn't look very good yesterday," Helen said. "Black eyes and bruises on her chin. Her hands were scratched up too, but that could have just been from living outdoors."
"I don't think so," Josie said. "According to Geoff, Marianne spends a lot of time inside the library, and she wouldn't be allowed in there if she were too much of a mess. He said she takes pretty good care of herself, at least physically. The skin on her hands might be rough, but it's usually clean, and she never has any cuts or scrapes."
"I hope they can help her while she's in the hospital," Helen said. "It's shaping up to be a brutal winter."
"It sounds like Marianne is as worried about you as you are about her," Betty said. "Hank's uncle told us she kept warning the police that you were next. At first they thought she meant she wanted to hurt you, which seemed really odd, because she's never been violent. Eventually they figured out she meant the Lennias wanted to kill you, just like she claims they'd tried to kill her."
"Did she mention anyone else on their hit list?" Helen asked.
"Not that we've heard," Betty said. "Just you."
"You must have made a big impression on her," Josie said. "Or else your name is the only one she can remember."
For once, Helen was just as glad that Detective Peterson didn't take her seriously. Otherwise, he'd be trying to lock her up in protective custody too. She had enough people hovering over her already. She didn't need anyone trying to save her from imaginary dangers.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
At the end of the hour, Helen's car was waiting for her with Jay and Zee in the front seat. She had them drop her off at the bottom of Freddie Wade's driveway and then sent them on ahead to check whether the coast was clear at the mansion.
The van that had been parked in front of the garage at Freddie's was gone, and the absolute silence suggested the house was empty. Surely with four adolescent boys around, there'd be some amount of noise if they were at home, no matter how well soundproofed the building was.
Helen knocked on the front door but wasn't surprised when there was no answer. Freddie and the boys were probably at some school-related activity.
Jay and Zee honked to get her attention and then gave her a thumbs-up signal, confirming that the detectives were gone from Vic's house. Helen waved them off to park and wait for her.
Helen made a quick circuit around Freddie's house in case there was anyone out back who might not have heard her knocking. As long as she was here, she might as well check for the cat too, in case it was on another one of its scavenger hunts.
Helen passed beneath the second-floor deck where she'd first seen Freddie watching Vic's mansion and continued all the way around the house to the side that faced Vic's property. The whole time, she hadn't seen or heard a living creature. She hadn't really expected to, but it never hurt to be thorough. If the cat was
, as she suspected, acting out to get attention like its deceased owner had done, it wouldn't bother to spend any time outside an unoccupied house.
As Helen rounded the last corner at the back of the garage, she thought she heard something behind her. She looked over her shoulder at the backyard, and her foot hit something, causing her to stumble. Her cane slid on a damp patch of grass, and the next thing she knew she was on the frozen grass with the breath knocked out of her.
She lay there for a moment to recover, grateful that she was alone and unobserved, and then rolled over to see what had attacked her.
It was a bright yellow hand cart that, if she'd been paying any attention whatsoever to where she was going, she couldn't possibly have missed it. It looked like it had been abandoned in a hurry, simply tossed aside to fall over, instead of neatly propped up on its wheels.
Helen pushed herself to her feet. She picked up the useless cane and headed for the trees that offered the two property owners a bit of privacy, at least from everyone except nosy neighbors standing on an upper story deck and using binoculars.
Helen peered into the woods that separated the two properties in case the cat was lurking there. She noticed a few narrow paths where it was obvious that some sort of traffic passed on a regular basis. They weren't wide, level paths, but narrower and more natural, as if they simply marked the passing of a variety of wildlife, like Vic's cat and whatever prey it might be hunting. Since the brambles and vines were cleared, the paths could also have been used by Freddie's sons exploring their surroundings.
If Helen hadn't just fallen on the much more level lawn, she might have cut through the side property to Vic's mansion, but she didn't want to tempt fate. She'd managed not to injure herself beyond a slightly sore wrist, but she probably wouldn't be so lucky if she tripped over a tree root or some other hazard.
