“That was exactly the right thing to do,” Jo assured him, which drew an appreciative smile. “Do you know Kevin well? I mean, are you friends beyond the ‘nod and wave’ level?”
“Friends? I don’t know.” McKendry shook his head. “We never saw much of him, with him traveling so much and all. I can’t say I knew him very well, no. Why, you planning some kind of ‘Welcome Home’ party for when he gets out? We’ll be glad to come, of course, but – ”
“No, nothing like that. I’ve never actually met Kevin. But I needed to know something about his time in the army, and hated to bother Meg at a time like this. So I guess you never got into conversation with him about his time spent at Fort Leonard Wood?”
“Afraid not. Rick Gurney, across the street there,” McKendry said, pointing out a beige two-story, “might be able to help you. I saw them talking together a few times. But I never even knew Kevin was in the army. Wouldn’t have guessed it, to tell the truth, a guy like him.”
“Oh?”
“Well, you know,” McKendry said, then shook his head. “That’s right, you said you never met him. And maybe I’ve just got an old-fashioned, outdated idea of what army material is. They probably need all types now-a-days.”
“What type would you say Kevin was?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” McKendry said, beginning to look sorry he’d got himself onto the subject. He obviously wasn’t someone who was comfortable analyzing casual acquaintances. “Bookish, maybe? Quiet, anyway, and not real athletic. But as I say, they probably have a use for all types.” He started fiddling with the tools stacked in his wheelbarrow.
“Well, thanks,” Jo said, taking the hint. “I’ll run over and give Rick Gurney a try and let you get to work.” She noticed that a pick-up sat in the driveway of the house McKendry had indicated, which looked hopeful for finding somebody at home.
“Yeah, Rick should be able to help you.” McKendry gave her a big smile then, and whether he was wishing her luck or just happy to be rid of her Jo couldn’t tell. But she thanked him again and crossed the street to knock on the door of the beige house.
As she waited, a light blue sedan came down Asher Court and pulled into the drive behind the pick-up. A slim, red-haired woman of about forty, wearing jeans and a yellow pullover climbed out holding a plastic grocery bag. She looked at Jo curiously, and Jo stepped off of the house’s stoop, ready with her explanation. But Jack McKendry beat her to it, calling out helpfully from his yard, “Susan, that there’s Jo. She’s a friend of Meg’s and wants to talk to Rick.”
Susan Gurney immediately smiled and Jo waved gratefully to Jack McKendry. She was happy not have had her full name mentioned, which avoided the possibility of Susan Gurney recognizing her as that woman who’s under suspicion of murder.
“Rick’s probably in the basement,” Susan said, closing her car door, “which is why he’s not answering the door. You’re a friend of Meg’s? How is Kevin? I heard about what happened yesterday.”
Jo told her what she had told Jack McKendry, and Susan reacted much the same, shaking her head in sympathy as she crossed in front of Jo to open her front door. “C’mon in,” she invited. “I’ll get Rick for you.”
As Jo followed Susan into the house she picked up the aroma of cooked bacon. The scent grew stronger as they made their way down the short hall to the kitchen, which sported dirty breakfast dishes on the table and a greasy frying pan on the stove.
“That man,” Susan said with good-natured exasperation. “Can’t pick up a thing for himself.” She set her bag on the counter, then took the few steps over to a door at the other end of the kitchen and pulled it open. “Rick! You down there? Someone here to see you.”
Jo heard a muffled response that sounded close to, ‘Be right up,’ and said to Susan, “I hope I’m not interrupting him from anything important.”
Susan flapped a hand. “Don’t worry about it. Saturday mornings he likes to putter down there. He claims he’s working on a project, but it’s mostly just puttering. I don’t mind. It’s his way of relaxing. I just wish,” she said with an eye roll, “he’d put a few things in the dishwasher first.”
She unloaded her grocery bag, chatting in a friendly way as she did. “We’re going to a potluck dinner tonight, so I picked up a few things after I dropped the kids off at soccer practice. Want some coffee? There’s some here I can heat up.”
“No, thanks.” Jo handed Rick’s breakfast plate and mug over to Susan who had started tidying up. “Did you know Meg and Kevin well?”
“Well?” Susan paused thoughtfully, Rick’s dishes in hand. “Not as well as you’d think I should, living right across the street from them and all.” She scraped crumbs from the plate into her sink before loading it into her dishwasher. “Of course, we’ve only been here about a year or so, and they don’t have kids to come play with our kids. They kind of keep to themselves anyway, though. Except when Kevin came over sometimes to ask Rick’s advice on his furnace. They seemed to have a lot of trouble with their furnace.”
“Yeah.” Rick suddenly stepped out of the basement, dressed in sweatshirt and jeans. He was a tall, husky man with a receding hairline and friendly face. He wiped his hands on a brown-stained rag. “That furnace of his is on its last legs. I told Kev he’ll need to get a new one before next winter comes around.”
“Jo, this is my dishwashing-challenged husband Rick. Jo is a friend of Meg’s.”
“Yeah? How’s Kev doing?’
Jo told him, and Kevin said to his wife, “We should get over to the hospital. Take him something. Don’t you think?”
“Yeah, we should,” Susan agreed, looking less than eager.
“So, you were good friends with Kevin,” Jo asked, beginning to seriously doubt that.
“Oh, yeah!” Rick insisted. “He’s a great guy.”
“They had a few beers together,” Susan clarified. “After talking furnace-talk.”
“Did he ever tell you about his time in the army? When he was stationed at Fort Leonard Wood?”
“The army? Uh, I don’t remember him ever mentioning that. Why, do they need some records or something at the hospital? Meg probably can tell them whatever they need.”
“Yes, you’re probably right.” Jo sighed inwardly. Rick obviously wasn’t the confidante of Kevin that she hoped he’d be. “I guess I thought I could save her a little trouble. But thanks.” She picked up her pocketbook and turned toward the hall, Rick moving forward to escort her to the door.
“I really only met Meg a short time ago,” Jo said, “so I don’t know much about either of them. I kind of got the impression Kevin was a bit domineering, and that was why she kept to herself a lot, because that was how he wanted it. Was I mistaken?”
“Kevin? Domineering?” Rick gave a quick laugh. He had an incredulous look on his face. “I wouldn’t say that. Would you, honey?”
Susan shook her head. “He seemed like a pretty nice guy to me. In fact, remember?” she asked her husband, “you had to nearly beg him to borrow your chainsaw when he was ready to go out and rent one.”
“Oh, yeah, when that big tree limb came down in their back yard. I even offered to come over and cut it up for him, but he said he’d be okay doing it himself.” Rick grinned. “I could hear him having trouble keeping the saw going at first, but eventually he got the hang of it.”
Jo smiled. “Guess I was mistaken, then. Hey, thanks again for your time.”
“No problem. Tell Meg to let us know if there’s anything we can do, okay?”
Jo said she would. As the door was closing behind her she heard, “We should run over to the hospital this afternoon, Sue, don’t you think?” Jo smiled to herself and shook her head as she stepped off the low stoop, sure that with kids to pick up from soccer practice and a potluck dinner to prepare for, that no, Sue most likely didn’t think.
Jo stopped at the end of the driveway, thinking. Unfortunately, neither Jack McKendry nor Rick Gurney were knowledgeable about what Kevin had hinted to Me
g. She decided she might as well keep trying and crossed back over the street to talk to the neighbors on the other side of Meg. She followed that with knocks on more doors up and down the block. The responses she got from all were, surprisingly, nearly identical in substance: nobody knew Meg or Kevin beyond having exchanged a few words here and there, and nobody seemed to have the impression that Kevin was a difficult man to get along with.
Was that simply because they didn’t know him well? Jo wondered. The darker side of people, she knew, could be easily hidden in casual encounters. But Rick and Susan Gurney, who may have interacted with Kevin the most, had actually scoffed at the idea of Kevin being overbearing. Jo thought back to how she had formed the idea and thought it might have been mostly due to Ruthie’s comments. Jo had already decided to pick up lunch for Carrie and herself on her way back to the shop, and thought she’d ask Ruthie about it.
CHAPTER 26
“Ruthie,” Jo called out as she entered the shop, glad to see it empty for the moment of other customers, “can I get our regular sandwich and salad to go?”
Ruthie looked up and smiled. “Sure thing. You find Meg’s place all right?”
“No problem.” Jo waited until the older woman gave the order to her husband, Bert, in the back, then asked, “Didn’t you tell me once that Meg’s husband was an over controlling kind of guy?”
Ruthie nodded. “That I did. From things Meg let drop now and then, it was hard to miss.”
“What kind of things?”
“Oh, just little things. Hints, kind of.” Ruthie slipped her pencil into her grey hair. “Let me think.” She scratched a bit, then said, “Meg told me once, when she came in a few minutes late one time, that she was held up because her husband needed his shirt ironed before she left. I remember I asked her why he couldn’t have ironed his own shirt and she got a kind of shocked, scared look on her face. She said something like, ‘Kevin doesn’t do women’s work,’ or something like that.”
Ruthie thought a bit more. “Then there was a time I saw her chopping up onions kind of slow-like and she was rubbing her wrist like it was sore. When I asked her if she’d hurt it, she said, ‘It was my fault, I shouldn’t have said –’ and then she stopped real sudden-like, as though she’d said too much. I got the feeling he maybe got mad at her and twisted it. I asked her was there something she wanted to talk about, but she said no and got that closed-down look on her face, so I let it drop and told Bert he should do the chopping and let Meg do something else.”
Ruthie looked at Jo. “Why do you ask?”
“I just wanted to make sure I hadn’t misunderstood. Talking to some of Meg’s neighbors, I was getting a different impression of Kevin.”
“They wouldn’t see him like she does.”
“I thought of that possibility, too.”
“Working here with us,” Ruthie said, “Meg might have been letting things out about him for the very first time. You couldn’t help feeling sorry for the woman, and I was glad to give her the chance to get out and assert herself some.” Ruthie let out a big sigh. “But I have to tell you, she had a ways to go to learn how to do that, especially dealing with the public like we do here. But I’m sure living in a situation like hers takes its toll on you.”
“I guess it would, but what do you mean as far as dealing with the public? Did she have a problem with it?”
“Well, you know, if you’ve been living under someone’s thumb for a long time, it must make you afraid to stand up for yourself. And unfortunately we run into situations here, once in a while, with certain customers who never learned that you don’t treat service people like they’re something to walk all over. If anyone tries to give me a hard time, though, I just give them my icy stare and let them know they have a choice of cleaning up their act or leaving. I shoulda known that Meg wasn’t up to that when I let her work the front counter for me.”
“What happened?”
“Darryl Feggins – not my favorite customer by any means - came in, and when Meg didn’t wait on him to his satisfaction, he let loose with some nasty stuff. I was taking a break in back, and next thing I know Meg’s stomping in, eyes blazing and muttering all sorts of things under her breath. She was mad as Hades, and she paced around the kitchen back there looking like she wanted to pick up something breakable and throw it against the wall. She didn’t, of course, just paced all mad-like until we calmed her down. But I had to take over out front and have her stay back with Bert, though my legs were killing me that day and I sure could have used a little more sittin-down time.
“Was this the man who called her a fat re-tard?”
“She told you about that? Yeah, that was Darryl. Never one for sweet-talkin’, was Darryl.”
“That’s too bad. I guess she just wasn’t ready to handle that sort of thing.” Jo thought back to Meg mentioning the incident to her when she’d stopped in at the Craft Corner. Her version had ended somewhat differently, putting her in a much better light. Jo wondered if that might be attributed to Meg’s desire for being better able to handle such situations in the future. Kind of a ‘this is how I wished it had ended.’
“So I kept her working in the back after that,” Ruthie said. “But with not being able to get help from her up front, and her being less than reliable sometimes in back, I was beginning to think maybe we should let her go. But I can’t do that now, of course, with her husband in the hospital and all.”
Ruthie’s phone rang, and as she took an order for a take-out, Jo noticed that Meg’s application was still sitting on the counter, anchored down and partially covered by a metal napkin dispenser. Jo went over to pick it up, glancing over the form once again as she did. Meg had clearly filled it out in a hurry, with some letters scribbled over, and at least one misspelling apparent. Jo pictured her nervously trying to write as customers crowded the little shop, possibly distracting her. When Ruthie hung up, Jo handed the sheet to her.
“You might want to file this away,” she said, and Ruthie, seeing what it was, laughed deprecatingly.
“A lot of senior moments seem to be happening to me lately,” she said. Jo’s order slid through the slot on the back counter and Ruthie picked it up. “Did you put an extra dab of sauce on Jo’s?” she asked her husband.
“Sure did,” Bert’s answer floated back, and Jo smiled, feeling her salivary glands kick in. Life could often get bumpy, but Bert’s turkey and bacon smothered in his special sauce always managed to mellow it out for her, at least for a while.
<><><>
“I brought you something to eat,” Jo called out as she walked into the exceedingly quiet Craft Corner. Apparently the curiosity of the non-customers that they’d dealt with yesterday had been satisfied for the time being.
Carrie looked up from the knitting she worked on as she sat behind the counter. “You didn’t have to do that,” she said, smiling. “But thank you. That will save me a little time.”
“Does Amanda have a soccer game this afternoon?” Jo set her bag on the counter and pulled out Carrie’s salad and her own sandwich.
“Yes, and Dan will be there, of course, since he’s coaching. But I’d love to run over and watch it for a few minutes. Unless,” Carrie quickly amended, “you need to go out again?”
“Not at all,” Jo said, which was true. But it was also true that Jo would sooner close up the Craft Corner altogether for the day than keep Carrie from attending one of her child’s activities. Carrie did enough for her as it was, for which Jo was exceedingly grateful.
“Did you have any luck this morning? Find any confidantes of Kevin Boyer?” Carrie carefully tossed her salad, which was chock full of hearty items beyond the usual lettuce and tomatoes, coating all with the spicy, but low-fat, dressing.
“I’m afraid not. And I’d sure like to know what he might have had on Bill Ewing.”
“Why would Kevin had agreed to meet with Bill Ewing,” Carrie asked, “if he knew something about the man that might put himself in danger?”
“That’
s a good question. I don’t know Kevin Boyer at all, and I’ve been getting conflicting opinions of him, so it’s hard to say. He’s either a bully or a decent guy, and if he’s a bully, maybe he hoped to blackmail Ewing?”
“Could be.”
Jo chewed on her sandwich a bit. “Or perhaps he just didn’t think what he knew about Ewing was all that harmful. Maybe he simply thought it was a way to get a conversation going that might lead to more interesting things.”
“It’s frustrating, isn’t it? I mean, to only be able to speculate but not really know.” Carrie had by then picked out most of her favorite things from her salad – egg slices, artichoke pieces - and searched under lettuce leaves for more.
“It’s also frustrating not to hear back from my craft show friend, Gabe. His wife told me he planned to see Bill Ewing on his drive to the Richmond Michicomi. If he did, he might have helpful information.”
Carrie had finished her lunch and started picking her things up. “This Gabe has been getting extra Michicomi shows after Linda died, hasn’t he? From what you told me about Bill Ewing’s frustration at losing spots, how do you suppose that would sit with him to hear about Gabe’s picking up more?”
“I had the impression Gabe and Bill always got along pretty well. But that’s a another good question.”
Carrie glanced at her watch. “I’d better go if I’m going to get over to the park in time. Thanks very much for the salad. Are you sure you’ll be okay here on your own?”
Jo glanced around the empty shop and grinned. “Since not a single customer has come in since I’ve been back, I think I’ll be able to handle things.”
“Oh, Jo. I don’t know what kind of horrible things are going through people’s heads lately about you. But it will clear up. It has to. And all your old customers will be back in droves, full of apologies.”
Paper-Thin Alibi Page 18
