by Maggie King
“Nope.”
“Hmm. Well, that’s different from Rox’s stabbing.”
After ending the call I told Trudy what Vince said. “Was Nina going to sell her house? Is that why Brad was getting it all spruced up for her?”
“I think so. She talked about downsizing. She’d been in that house for about ten years. When she split with her husband he moved to Arizona.”
“Were they in touch?”
“Not as far as I know. But that’s not very far.”
Hmm. An ex made a good suspect. But I told myself to concentrate on the suspects close at hand. At least for the time being.
“Maybe Nina and Brad were going to set up house together,” I said.
“Maybe.”
“So, Trudy—what about those women in the green car?”
Trudy repeated Vince’s statement that there was nothing to go on yet. “Besides, the couple didn’t necessarily have anything to do with the murder. They could have arrived before the killer did. Maybe the woman was dropping off something. Or she was a real estate agent.”
“Or, how’s this?” I spun a different scenario. “The couple gets there after the murder. The woman sees Nina lying on the floor, dead. Does Nina have those little windows on the side of her front door?”
“Probably. I do.”
“So the woman looks through the windows and panics at what she sees. I know I would. And that could explain her stumbling on the driveway. She wanted to get away from the scene as soon as possible.”
“Maybe she wanted to get away because she—or he—just killed Nina.”
I nodded. “Either way could get a person fleeing.”
“If the woman saw Nina dead and ran, wouldn’t she have called the police?”
“You’d think so. Unless she didn’t want to get involved. Possibly she’ll hear about it on the news and come forward then.”
“Remember that Nina went to Florida for a while after Rox’s funeral. The two women could have been people she knew from there.”
“You’re right.” I chided myself for not thinking of that. “Maybe one was the friend she stayed with.”
We fell silent for a moment, considering the possibilities. I asked. “How reliable is Mrs. Ellbee?”
“Oh, probably reliable enough. Granted, she’s nosy as all get out and revels in being the center of attention. That’s why the neighbors didn’t stick around. Get the story, get some free food, get out. But I don’t think she makes up stuff.”
“Could she be in danger if whoever killed Nina saw her watching?”
“She probably turned out the lights. She’s been known to do just that.”
When the phone rang Trudy got up to answer it. “Phyllis,” she mouthed, unnecessarily. I could hear Phyllis ranting from across the room.
“Phyllis, I didn’t ‘out’ you, as you put it. But your behavior at Panera that day was outrageous. I felt an obligation to tell the police.” Phyllis carried on some more until Trudy said, “Phyllis, if you didn’t kill Nina you have nothing to worry about.”
Obviously Phyllis was using a land line because I definitely heard the phone slam down.
Trudy grimaced. “That Phyllis sure knows how to ratchet up the drama.”
Trudy and I continued considering suspects until she had to leave for work. As we parted, I laughed and said, “If we don’t watch out, we’ll find ourselves drowning in speculation.”
SEVENTEEN
VINCE ACCOMPANIED ME downtown to police headquarters where I gave a statement to the detective in charge of Nina’s murder, Thomas Fischella. Despite the detective’s goofy manner, I knew from Vince that he was as sharp as they came. Many a suspect had learned that too late. I provided all the Nina-related information I had. Whether any of it could nail her killer was anyone’s guess.
“Leave the investigating to us,” Detective Fischella advised me in parting.
Vince chatted with some of his former colleagues, hoping to pick up more information. Not much yet. Apparently Nina’s laptop was missing and presumed stolen. There was an APB out for a green car with Florida plates and “IT” in the plate number. That sounded like the kind of grunt work they’d assign to a rookie cop.
Back at home, I said to Vince, “I wonder if I could have prevented Nina’s murder if I’d taken the investigation more seriously. Maybe the book group has been treating this whole thing like a game.”
“Hazel, that’s a slippery slope. Besides, it’s looked to me like you’ve all been taking this very seriously.”
But I wasn’t convinced. I resolved to double my efforts and rev up the rest of the group. How I’d do that was another matter—Brad still looked like the culprit and I couldn’t come up with a way of finagling a meeting with him.
Did Brad kill Nina? Why would he? Because Nina knew that he killed Rox? Perhaps going in for some blackmail? Romantic blackmail—intriguing concept and a possible story premise.
Leaving Brad aside, what could we do to nail the killer or killers? I considered the lunatic—but why would he kill Nina? Because he might have killed Rox and her death was intertwined with Nina’s? Not unless we were looking at a killer who specialized in sisters. Niche killers. The latest trend in killing? Another twist on the Cain and Abel story.
Using my fingers, I ticked off suspects: Brad, Andy, Evangeline, Foster, and possibly the still-unnamed lunatic. All connected with Rox. And Nina might have killed Rox—but who killed Nina? The police had given no indication that her wounds were self-inflicted. As things stood, Brad and money looked like the common denominators in the sister killings. If Nina was selling her house and moving in with Brad, she might have been pressing him for marriage with his bounty from Rox as a nice fringe benefit. Did Nina have a will? I wondered what its terms were.
I e-mailed the book group, summarizing what I knew of Nina’s death. When Patty called she said that on the news they mentioned a car that had Florida plates with an “IT” in the number.
“I heard that as well. One of the neighbors was out walking his dog but he didn’t get the license number. Not much to go on.”
“I wish Brad wasn’t involved in all of this.” I pictured Patty wringing her hands in consternation. “First he finds Rox’s body and now Nina’s.”
“Have you talked to him?”
“No, I left a message on his voice mail. The poor man must be devastated.” I murmured my agreement as to Brad’s possible emotional state and kept my suspicions to myself. Patty said, “Between you and me I always thought Nina was Brad’s true love.”
Did Patty know that Brad and Nina were back together? It sounded like she didn’t.
“Patty, let’s reschedule our lunch. I have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow. Do you want to go to Frank’s on Saturday?” I didn’t feel up to going into the details of the follow-up mammogram.
She agreed and I said I’d pick her up. “I’ll bring those titles with me, the cozies set in the ancient world.”
“Okay, thanks. And let me know about the funeral arrangements. I don’t know if Brad will get back to me.”
“Will do.”
I saw that Kat had left a voice mail asking about Nina.
“This has to be connected with Rox,” Kat said once I recounted my morning with the Ellbees and the Richmond Police Department.
“You’re right. It’s way too coincidental otherwise.”
That was the prevailing sentiment of the book group once the responses to my e-mail trickled in. “It just has to be connected,” Sarah said. “Let’s all go to Nina’s funeral. No one has to know that we didn’t know her. Not all of us, anyway.”
“Yes,” Lucy put in. “If anyone asks, we’ll say we’re there to support Nina’s dear friends, Trudy and Eileen.”
I wrote, “Let’s be on the lookout for anyone from Florida fitting the vague descriptions of the two women. And check the parking lot for Florida plates.” It occurred to me that if the women were real estate agents, they might attend the funeral with cards in hand, ho
ping to find someone to buy Nina’s house.
“I’d think that if the women hear about this they’ll contact the police,” Eileen wrote.
“That’s if they hear about it,” I said. “Maybe they don’t keep up with local news.”
The e-mails fizzled out. I felt at loose ends and needed to busy myself. Hoping to put mindless activity to good use, I decided to look for Brad’s son, Andy, on Facebook. Andy Jones—nothing like an easy task. This was a project better suited to Eileen or Trudy, but I needed the diversion. I didn’t know if I should start with Andy’s home state of Virginia or his adopted one of Kentucky, but I tossed a mental coin, called tails, and Kentucky came up.
The Andy Jones profiles that appeared featured Andrea Joneses, African-American Andy Joneses, and other Andy Joneses who didn’t bear the remotest resemblance to the Andy Jones in the photo that sat atop Patty’s bookcase. No one had long dark hair, glasses, or a mustache. But those styles were all changeable. The Andys didn’t all provide profile pictures of themselves—many chose to hide their mugs behind those of their pets. Others used cars, motorcycles, rifles, and gardens. Extremely shy folks preferred the Facebook-provided silhouette. Besides Andy, I tried Andrew, Anders, and Anderson. I found the Facebook privacy settings to be another hurdle. Some Andys closely guarded their privacy while others revealed all in sometimes shocking detail.
Vince came into my den and kissed the top of my head. “How are you doing?”
“Not too well. You wouldn’t believe how many Andy Joneses there are in Kentucky. I’m about to start on Virginia.”
“Why are you looking for him?”
“I’m hoping to find some indication that he was in Virginia in March. And last night. He might have posted something. If I can see his postings, that is.”
“The police check social media, you know. Besides, he might not even be on Facebook. Not everyone is.”
“Yes, well, almost everyone is.”
Before starting the Andy-in-Virginia search, I looked at Foster Hayden’s Facebook page. I silently thanked him for having a searchable name. A picture of his dinner from the night before in a Richmond eatery proved that he was in the area, but I found no proclamations that he’d killed Nina. Not that I expected any. I couldn’t imagine why he would kill her anyway, unless she’d spotted him in the Moonshine Inn parking lot holding a bloody knife over her sister Rox’s body.
I returned to the Andy hunt. I didn’t fare better in Virginia using the same search terms.
I had to agree with Vince—not everyone was on Facebook.
EIGHTEEN
VINCE AND I arrived at the imaging center on Friday afternoon for my mammogram followup. I checked in and took my clipboard to a seat between Vince and a priest reading his Yahoo e-mail on his tablet. In this digital age, did churchgoers seek counsel for their various life problems and crises of faith via e-mail? I tried, and failed, to resist the urge to peer over his shoulder. He turned and bestowed a beneficent smile on me. Sheepishly, I smiled back and busied myself with my paperwork.
Paperwork completed, I flipped through a People magazine. But the highs and lows of celebrities’ lives failed to grab my attention. I snuck another look at the priest’s tablet. He was firming up plans for a golf outing. So much for the pressing problems of his flock. Vince was involved with his own tablet. In fact, everyone in the waiting area gazed fixedly at their devices so I joined the crowd and pulled out my own phone. I found little to engage me and soon returned to the magazines, looking for articles on turning back the hands of time. I told myself that I looked fine for my age and that Mrs. Ellbee was just jealous. Not surprisingly, that tactic didn’t work and I kept on the trail of the fountain of youth.
After fifteen minutes, a large woman with a voice to match announced my name, making me jump. Vince and I exchanged a quick hug and kiss and I was escorted to a dressing room. The large woman told me her name and that she would be my technician. I promptly forgot her name. In a dressing room I donned a cape that was black and short. The usual mammogram garb was a wrap-around smock-like affair in either pastel colors or white with unappealing designs, much like the ones on men’s boxer shorts. The technician reappeared and led me to a roomful of women wearing identical black capes. I felt like I was being inducted into a science fiction coven. Was this a movie set? All the scene lacked was a film crew and lights.
The anxiety in the room was so palpable I felt like I could reach out and touch it. One woman had been waiting three hours for her biopsy. The staff explained that they were behind schedule and would be with her shortly. Plus, she murmured that she was starving. Figuring that it was cruel to pile starvation on top of anxiety, I rooted through my bag for a snack. I came up with a Balance bar that the woman accepted gratefully.
Conversations swirled around me. Women shared their diagnoses and prognoses. This medical center provided other services besides breast imaging. Every two years, I had a bone density test here: the most recent one had showed me shrinking in height at an alarming rate; and my neighbor recently had a vascular ultrasound at this center. But my present companions, like myself, anticipated breast-related procedures, like mammograms, biopsies, and ultrasounds.
I picked up the magazine I’d brought in from the waiting room and turned to an article on antioxidants, only to find that someone had ripped out the pages. Nothing else in the periodical piqued my interest, so I took my Kindle out of my bag and tried to engross myself in a mystery for the next book group—assuming we’d even talk about books. We now had two murders to deal with. But I couldn’t shut out all the chat, and couldn’t concentrate on the story. I suspected it wouldn’t hold my interest under any circumstances. I knew I should feel a sisterly bond with these women, but sadly I didn’t. I was accustomed to the mammogram process being a quick and solitary experience.
In one corner of the room, a couple of women, well-endowed in the breast department, railed against the unwelcome attention they had received from men over the years. While they’d enjoyed having men ogle their assets when they were young, over the years they’d come to be repelled by it. One was considering reduction surgery, but her husband was trying to talk her out of it. Having nothing to contribute to that conversation I turned back to my Kindle.
I overheard someone else say that every woman on her family tree had had breast cancer. She was considering following the actress Angelina Jolie’s example and having a double mastectomy to significantly lower her chances of becoming a victim of the dreaded disease. Some in the room said it was all well and good for Angelina to choose that option, as she had the resources. But what about middle- and lower-income women? Would the insurance companies cover the procedure for them?
Their conversation gave me an idea, but not related to breast cancer or to Angelina. It was the thing about the family tree. Why hadn’t I thought to look up Andy on the chart my sister had sent? That way, I’d have his full legal name. Maybe it wasn’t even Andy. I remembered learning during the Carlene Arness investigation that many people used their middle names. Or they renamed themselves, possibly not liking their own names. Or they were running from something—like the law.
Eventually I heard the sweet sound of “Ms. Rose.” I stood, relieved to be leaving this hotbed of anxiety. In five minutes I was back in the waiting room, this time fully dressed.
In fifteen minutes a young woman escorted me to the desk of a doctor with a round, beaming face. Like with the technician, I instantly forgot his name. He informed me about the two sites on my left breast that required further investigation. “Investigation” translated to biopsy. They could schedule the procedure in three weeks.
“Three weeks!” I exclaimed in dismay.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Rose, but we’re very backed up.”
“But three weeks?”
He assured me that chances were the biopsy would show no problems. It was simply a precautionary measure. I sighed and made the appointment for exactly three weeks into what looked like an eternity.
Vince was sitting in the same chair, finger swiping at his tablet screen. The priest was gone.
Was that an omen?
NINETEEN
TO CHEER ME up, Vince treated me to gelato at Deluca Gelato. Picking a flavor was hard, but the bubbly woman who served us was generous with the samples. I settled on coconut and Vince couldn’t choose between pistachio and espresso so he compromised and ended up with both flavors.
“I talked to Dennis earlier,” Vince said. “Nina’s laptop was stolen—I think I told you that—along with her purse and probably cell phone. The police checked her Verizon e-mail account. Just messages to Brad and people at the Hamlin Group. And you. She didn’t pay bills online. Didn’t shop online.”
“One of those careful people,” I noted.
“She also didn’t make or receive many calls. They found a few bills, utility and such. She had a MasterCard that was paid off. Plane fare to Florida and restaurants. Nothing unusual.”
When I told Vince my insight that Angelina Jolie had unknowingly given me about the family tree, he looked thoughtful for a moment. “Andy’s name’s in his mother’s obit. And I don’t think it’s Andrew, it’s something else.”
“Oh, that’s right. I forgot about the obit.”
Two heads were indeed better than one—depending on the heads, of course.
Back at home, I lost no time fretting about my upcoming biopsy and turned to the Internet for the latest statistics. Nothing had changed in the past four days, there was still that 80 to 90 percent chance that the biopsy would prove benign. But what about the other 10 to 20 percent? I reminded myself that I was an optimist.
Trudy informed the book group by e-mail that Nina’s funeral was scheduled for Monday at eleven o’clock at the Lamalle Chapel. She gave us an address in the West End. Sarah almost immediately replied that she had a doctor’s appointment scheduled for Monday morning and wouldn’t be at the funeral. But she knew we’d be hyper observant.
