by Maggie King
“Suicide?” I said, surprised. “Maisie didn’t say anything about suicide. She just said he died.”
“As far as the public was concerned, he died of a heart attack,” Lucy explained. “But Foster told me his father overdosed on sleeping pills. And he told me the same account of the funeral that Maisie told Hazel.”
Lucy went on. “After the funeral, Rox faded from the scene—”.
“—and moved on to other prospects to torment,” Sarah snorted.
Lucy ignored the interruption. “Foster’s mother and brother went to live in Atlanta. The rest of his family eventually followed and Foster’s the only one left in Richmond. He goes to Atlanta a lot and is trying to get a job there.”
“Well, that’s his alibi, visiting his sick mother in Atlanta,” I said. “So Foster said Rox was gone from the scene after his dad’s funeral?”
“Pretty much, at least from his life. She showed up in the paper on a regular basis, what with the DUIs and all. And with some good reports concerning her work at the Hamlin Group.”
“But one day Foster saw Rox and an older woman in the parking lot of the office building where he works.”
“What was that all about?” I asked.
“He doesn’t know. He was leaving to go to lunch, and Rox and the older woman had just arrived. There are a lot of lawyers in the building. Foster works for a group specializing in employment law.”
“Maybe one of Rox’s employees was suing her,” Trudy suggested.
“Evangeline was,” I said.
“Foster said they didn’t go to the firm he’s with,” Lucy said. “But there are other lawyers in the building who practice employment law.”
“Interesting,” Sarah said. “But without canvassing all the lawyers in the building, how would we find out what Rox and the woman were doing there?”
“And the lawyers wouldn’t tell you anyway,” Trudy reminded Sarah about client confidentiality.
“And I don’t think the whole building is lawyers, just a lot of them,” Lucy said. “Besides, it may not even matter. Okay, that takes us to last New Year’s Day when Rox once again showed up at Foster’s place.”
“What happened?”
“He says he didn’t open the door and she eventually left.”
“Hmm. What was she doing there?” I asked. “Why wouldn’t she leave the poor guy alone? She’d just married Brad.”
I heard the shrug in Lucy’s voice. “Foster couldn’t say.”
“Or wouldn’t,” Sarah said with a wry tone. “Did she show up again after that?”
“No. Foster claims that’s the last time he saw her. I asked him if he had any idea who killed Rox. He didn’t, but suggested that she had probably tormented others besides him—maybe someone at that redneck bar.”
“So,” I said. “Rox wreaked a lot of havoc in Foster’s life. He lost his father and his family moved away—motives galore.”
“We’ve certainly covered a lot of territory,” Eileen said.
“Yes,” I said, “But so far it’s all puzzle pieces. We’re hearing Rox’s story in layers. Maybe we should find out who this PI is that Foster’s mother hired and recommend him to Nina.”
“We’re sure not getting anywhere,” Sarah sounded as rueful as I felt.
“Maybe the lunatic will turn up,” Lucy tried to inject a note of optimism. “Or the parking lot guy.”
Maybe.
•••
“Vince, if Foster killed Rox, why did he wait all this time? All that drama happened way back in 2007. Did it have something to do with her visit on New Year’s Day?” I’d just summed up my book group’s meeting for Vince.
“You keep forgetting that Foster had an alibi. As did his brother. They were at their mother’s bedside in an Atlanta hospital.” Morris jumped in Vince’s lap and circled a few times before settling on the perfect spot.
“Couldn’t they fake alibis and have someone cover for them?”
“Unlikely.”
“We’re at a standstill, aren’t we?”
As it turned out, we weren’t standing still for long.
SIXTEEN
“HAZEL, I HAVE really bad news.” Trudy’s voice sounded ragged. “It’s Nina. She was murdered last night.”
“Murdered? You’re joking. Please tell me you’re joking.”
“Someone stabbed her multiple times, right in her own house . . . Can you come over?”
“Absolutely.”
“I’ll be at Mrs. Ellbee’s house, that’s right across the street from Nina’s. The neighbors are gathering there.” She sighed. “We’ve been up all night being questioned by the police.”
“Which house is Nina’s?”
“Two doors down from mine. You can’t miss it with all the crime scene tape.”
“Are they still processing the scene?”
“No, they’re done. For now, anyway.”
“I’m be there in about thirty minutes. Don’t say anything to your neighbors about our investigation.”
“I won’t.”
While I dashed around to make myself presentable, I told Vince the news.
“I’ll find out what’s going on,” he said.
“Let me know when you do.” I grabbed a banana. “Oh, I’d better call Patty and cancel our lunch.”
When I told Patty about Nina, she exclaimed, “Oh, no. How awful. What happened?”
“I don’t know any details yet. I’m going over to Trudy’s now. I’ll call you later.”
If not for the swamp-like weather, I’d have walked the short distance. I parked in Trudy’s driveway and made my way to Nina’s house. Trudy was right—the crime scene tape made Nina’s house easy to spot. I stood by her gravel driveway and took in the Colonial-style house, white, with black shutters. A magnolia tree provided shade. Tall azalea bushes bordered the front of her property.
Across the street, Mrs. Ellbee’s yard blazed with color due to a variety of annuals and crape myrtle trees. Monkey grass, its spidery tendrils bordering the flagstone walkway, promised more color in a few weeks.
As I started up the steps of Mrs. Ellbee’s Cape Cod-style house, a middle-aged couple with matching scowls came out the door. The man’s beach ball-sized belly strained the buttons of his Hawaiian shirt. The woman’s identical shirt didn’t fare much better. They ignored my nod of greeting.
Trudy held the door open. Her face looked drawn, and dark shadows under her eyes told of her sleepless night. A brown and white dog of indeterminate breed leaped on me, causing me to trip over a hole in the worn carpet. I caught myself on the arm of a chair. A man sitting on the sofa assured me that Elmer wouldn’t bite.
“Dear me. Carl, you have to do something about that carpet. And do something about Elmer. I’ve told you a hundred times.” The woman I presumed to be Mrs. Ellbee spoke with a birdlike quality. Her high-pitched voice was not unlike a tweet—and I didn’t refer to the one hundred and forty character kind that characterized the social media titan, Twitter.
“Okay, Mom.” Carl sounded like a long-suffering teenager.
“You don’t want this nice lady to fall and hurt herself, not at her age. Why, she could sue us for everything we have. She could—”
Mrs. Ellbee might have gone on predicting what an aged, infirm, and litigious person like myself might do, but Trudy broke off the dire speculations to introduce me to the woman and her son, Carl Ellbee, adding, “Hazel is a good friend of mine and she recently met Nina.”
Mrs. Ellbee presided over the room from a recliner in front of a picture window. She not only sounded like a bird, but she resembled one as well. A tiny woman whose small eyes darted here and there, she accessorized her pink sweats with a chiffon scarf and pearls. She wore slippers that looked like ballet shoes and matched the pink of the sweats.
The end table next to her held an assortment of prescription medication bottles, a pile of mail, and two TV remotes. A pair of reading glasses sat atop a stack of books. A copy of Gone Girl, the bestseller thriller
by Gillian Flynn, topped the stack.
Carl Ellbee appeared to be in his early fifties. He sported a Moody Blues T-shirt, shorts, and athletic shoes. A wad of adhesive tape over the bridge of his nose held his glasses together.
Mrs. Ellbee waved a hand towards the dining room. “Help yourself to those things, tell me again what you call them?”
“Bagels, Mom,” Carl answered in a tone that suggested his mother had asked the same question several times. To me, he added, “My sister and brother-in-law brought this stuff over. They just left.” I figured they were the scowling couple in the Hawaiian shirts.
“They made some coffee as well,” Trudy said. “The neighbors have been in and out of here all morning. Most left to go to work. Can I get you something, Hazel?”
“I’d love some coffee.” My coffee ritual had been interrupted by the unwelcome news of Nina’s death. The few bagels remaining didn’t look too appealing.
I took the cup Trudy handed to me and sat in the same tattered chair that had broken my fall during my ungainly entrance. The loveliness of the Ellbee yard did not carry through to the inside of the house. Cracks in the wall and peeling woodwork called for a major paint job. The faded and scratched furniture in the dining and living rooms had seen better days. The widescreen television and Mrs. Ellbee’s recliner lent an incongruous note with their newness.
“Mrs. Ellbee has quite a story to tell,” Trudy said. “She might have seen Nina’s killer.”
“I would have seen more if she didn’t have all those bushes and trees in the way.” I looked out the window. The tall bushes and the magnolia tree did a good job of obscuring the view of all but the upper story of Nina’s house. I suspected that Nina, or the previous owner, had planted the foliage to block their curious neighbor’s view.
Mrs. Ellbee went on, “But I do have a good view of the street and that’s where the car was, waiting. Of course, it was dark.”
After a pause, I prompted her, “Waiting for what?”
“The woman. The woman who got out of the car and walked up the driveway. A few minutes later she came back and got back in the car.”
“Could you see what she looked like?”
“Well, like I said, it was dark so I couldn’t see much. She was tall. When she opened the car door, I saw that she had dark hair, down to here.” She put a finger on her shoulder to measure a length of hair. “Close to her scalp, much like yours.” She cast a critical look at my head. “You’d look younger with some lift to your hair, dear.”
I bristled at her repeated references to my age. Did she think I should emulate her and get a once-a-week wash and set? Granted, her hair had “lift” and with all the hair spray I doubted that it could ever collapse. Smiling, I asked, “Anything else you remember about her?”
“She had trouble walking. Either she’d had a bit too much to drink—or she had on those silly high heels that girls teeter around in these days. They’re going to pay a price one day.” Mrs. Ellbee went on to predict grim consequences for the wearers of sky-high heels. As I seldom wore heels anymore and, when I did, they measured a mere three inches, the woman was preaching to the choir. “Oh, and she carried a tote bag.”
Toting a bloody knife, perhaps? Or was the knife left at the scene, like with Rox’s murder?
I asked, “What time was this?”
“Nine-thirty.” Mrs. Ellbee sounded firm on the time. “My show had just ended.”
“Did you see the driver?”
“Yes. It was an older woman. I couldn’t see her well. But she had white hair. Curly.”
“Did you see what kind of car it was?”
“No. But Carl was out walking Elmer and went right past the car,” Mrs. Ellbee twittered. “He says the car was from Florida.”
“Did you get the license number? Or the make of the car?” I asked.
Carl shrugged. “All I remember was that the car was green and there was an ‘IT’ in the license number. I work in IT so that’s why I noticed.”
“But you said it was dark out—were the car lights on?”
“No, but I carry a flashlight.”
Mrs. Ellbee went on with her story. “About eleven, that man who’s always coming around and staying all night arrived at Nina’s. He left a few minutes later and the police arrived soon after. He must have found the poor woman, dead. Can you imagine? The man has no moral fiber, just runs away like a scared little boy.”
She must be talking about Brad. It sounded like he found Nina’s body, made an anonymous call, and split. Or did he kill her before making the call? Was Brad a murderer, or just the victim of bad timing?
“Believe you me, I told that detective about him. I couldn’t see his license plate, though. Maddening.”
“So how—”
“I told the police it was probably Brad Jones,” Trudy said.
Mrs. Ellbee sniffed. “This Brad was around a lot when Nina went down to Florida. There was a lot of activity—house painted, inside and out. Landscaping as well.”
Trudy looked at her iPhone and said, “Well, I have to get going. I said I’d be at the library before noon.”
“Yes, I have to go as well,” I said. I thanked Mrs. Ellbee and Carl for their time and hospitality, such as it was.
Once outside, I stopped to admire the landscaping. “Oh, Trudy, I wish Vince and I had green thumbs. Our fathers were both fabulous gardeners, but they didn’t pass the talent down to us.”
Carl and Elmer bounded out of the house. When I complimented Carl on the yard, he said, “Yes, my dad was a gardener, he designed this. I try to keep it up.” I wondered if Carl’s gardening zeal—and maybe his dad’s as well—came from needing to escape the twittery Mrs. Ellbee.
“So, you live here with your mom?” I asked.
“Oh, God, no! I live at the end of the block, next to Eileen.” He waved his hand in a direction to the left. “My sister lives next door.” Again, the hand waved to the left at a house that mirrored Mrs. Ellbee’s, minus the lush plantings. “We help Mom out,” he added with little enthusiasm.
Apparently Mrs. Ellbee’s children regarded her as an obligation. Carl didn’t offer further insight on his family dynamics. I’d seen enough to judge for myself.
“Speaking of Eileen, was she here earlier?”
“Yes, but she had to leave,” Trudy said. “She had a meeting scheduled with the staff at her mother’s assisted living place.”
“She’s having a really bad time with her mom,” I said.
“Yeah. I have a feeling she’ll wind up living with Eileen. We might be acquiring another neighbor, Carl.”
He snickered. “What’s one more cranky old lady?”
“See you later, Carl,” Trudy said. She and I crossed the street to stand by the crime scene tape barring access to Nina’s driveway.
•••
“So who do you think did it, Trudy?”
“Who knows? Probably Brad.”
“Probably. I have to call Vince. He was going to find out what happened.”
“I told the police about Phyllis, about how she acted that day at Panera. They might ask you about it.”
“So you think Phyllis might have killed Nina?”
Trudy shrugged. “She’s as good a suspect as anyone.”
I thought. “She has all that wild hair. But she could tamp it down somehow, plaster it to her head, so she’d look old, like me.” I still smarted over Mrs. Ellbee’s unsolicited beauty advice.
Trudy grinned. “Yes, Mrs. E. is free with her opinions. She often tells me I’m too old for long hair.” Trudy put a hand up to her long white mane. Mrs. Ellbee had a point, but I didn’t voice my agreement with the woman.
“And Phyllis is fairly tall,” I mused. “At least five eight or nine. I don’t know Mrs. Ellbee’s criteria for describing someone as tall.”
“And if the woman wore heels that could raise her up by several inches.”
I looked at the gravel driveway. Anyone wearing heels would have a hard time walkin
g on this driveway. Especially if she wasn’t used to them.
“The difficulty in walking could point to a man as well,” I said. “A man wearing heels.”
“Yes. We can’t eliminate a man trying to pass as a woman. The driver could have been a man as well. Height and hair length can so easily be altered.”
I wiped away a bead of sweat that ran down my cheek. “At Nina’s funeral, let’s be on the lookout for a tall woman, possibly someone with another woman. And a car with Florida plates. Long shot, I know.”
“We have to e-mail the book group. Hopefully we can all go to the funeral. Whenever it is.”
“I’ll send out the e-mail when I get home.”
“Let’s go to my house. It’s too yucky out here.”
I welcomed the coolness of Trudy’s house. I didn’t see Sammy in the den—perhaps the cat had a favorite morning spot. I cleared copies of the Washington Post from a chair and called Vince. He verified that Nina was stabbed multiple times in the neck, chest, and arm. Brad had found her in the front hall and called 911.
“A neighbor told the police about Brad and he was brought in for questioning. He said—”
“That was Mrs. Ellbee,” I interrupted. “Trudy and I were just at her house.”
“Brad said he arrived at Nina’s house and found her dead. He called the police from Nina’s landline. He’s being questioned now. He has his lawyer with him.”
Vince took a breath and continued. “Phyllis was questioned as well. She was at a fundraiser at the museum.” That must mean the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, referred to locally as “The Museum.” “She was there until ten o’clock.”
“What time did Brad call the police?”
“Eleven.”
“So Phyllis could have hot-footed it over to Nina’s after she left The Museum. And then there are the two women in the green car from Florida—Mrs. Ellbee said they showed up at nine-thirty.”
“Yes, well, there’s not much to go on yet with them. By the way, the police want to question you about Phyllis. When you get home we can go to headquarters.”
“What about the knife? Was it left at the scene?”
