by Maggie King
“Is it an open meeting?”
“What does that mean?”
“That anyone can go. Some meetings are closed to anyone but alcoholics.”
“We’ll be lucky if the meeting is still going on by the time we get there.” I saw Vince’s appreciative look as I unbuttoned my nightgown. “Don’t get any ideas,” I warned with a mock stern look. In record time I assembled an outfit, slapped on some makeup, and ran a brush through my hair.
“I’m ready,” I announced.
•••
Kat was waiting outside the church fellowship hall. “The meeting’s just about over,” she whispered. Vince and I joined her in a circle, holding hands, while the group recited the Lord’s Prayer. When the circle broke, Kat said, “There he is, in the red shirt and denim shorts.”
“Yes, I recognize him,” Vince said. “He was at the service yesterday, sitting in the front row.”
Andy stood, hands in pockets, talking to another man. As Vince and I approached I recognized my cousin’s voice from the phone, seductive and intimate. A con man voice. It was hard to imagine someone with such a voice in lunatic mode. His fine dark hair clung to his head in half-inch lengths. I noted the German shepherd inked on his arm. I could understand Kat’s mistaking a German shepherd for a wolf, but a Great Dane?
Before I lost my nerve I held out my hand. “Andy, Hazel Rose. I recognized your voice from the phone.”
Andy looked at me, then did a double-take. “Hazel! At last we meet. Just didn’t happen yesterday, somehow.” His eyes sparkled behind his tinted glasses and an earring gleamed from his left earlobe. “Do you come to this meeting?”
“Not usually,” I said vaguely. “What a surprise to see you here.” I introduced Vince and they shook hands.
“Do you have time for coffee?” Andy asked. “My treat.”
I glanced at Vince, who nodded his agreement.
“How about the Starbucks next to the gym? Do you know where it is?”
“We do. I’ll just say goodbye to Kat.”
When I told Kat about our Starbucks date, she said, “Let me know what happens.”
“I will,” I said as I rushed off.
In the Starbucks parking lot, we saw Andy taking off his helmet and attaching it to his red Harley. The bike lent further credence to his being the lunatic. At his request, we waited while he smoked a cigarette before going into the café. Once inside, we ordered coffee drinks and oatmeal cookies and chose a table by the window that afforded a view of the Harley.
Andy started. “Again, I’m sorry about Brad and the way he acted yesterday. It’s no wonder he’s a top suspect.”
“It’s been a tough time for him.” My attempt to express compassion sounded flat to my ears. “Weren’t he and Nina planning to get married?”
“Beats me. I can’t keep up with Dad’s women.”
“I’m sorry about Nina. I just met her recently.” I explained how I met her at Panera, omitting the coffee incident.
“So are you investigating her death as well?”
“I haven’t been investigating anyone’s death.”
Noting Andy’s skeptical look, I said, “It’s true. Okay, I’ve discussed Rox’s death with a few people. But with a murder like that of a prominent woman, everyone discusses it. As for investigating, I told Nina no dice. She’d have to hire a PI for that. A licensed one.”
“That’s right,” Vince said. “Hazel has more sense than to get involved with a murder investigation.” I almost laughed at my husband’s untrue assertion, but held myself in check.
“Well, you sure got Brad in a state,” Andy said.
“Apparently so.”
“That’s not hard to do.”
“What’s his issue with me anyway?”
“Besides his thinking that you got Nina killed?”
When I winced, Andy said, “Sorry. I don’t know what his problem is. He said once that he suspected you wanted money. He didn’t understand why else you’d suddenly pop up, long lost relative and all. He’s touchy about money.”
“So,” I tried for a confused expression, “Weren’t Nina and Brad together before? How did Brad come to marry Rox?”
“I have no idea. I know that Rox and Brad were together when my mom died.” At the mention of his mother, Andy’s face clouded. “Do you know about that?”
“Yes,” Vince and I both nodded. “We’re so sorry.”
“Me, too.” Andy sipped his coffee. “I always thought, and still do, that the two of them had something to do with Mom’s death. It wasn’t suicide. But I couldn’t prove anything. They were smart, those two. But then Brad got together with Nina and by the time I came back to visit Marcie when she was in such bad shape, Brad and Rox were back together. The three of them went around in circles. Maybe even together,” Andy suggested with a wicked grin. “I guess Brad didn’t know there were more than just those two women in the world.
“I wanted to avoid Rox as much as possible so I visited Marcie at the assisted living place in the mornings when Brad and Rox were at work. Nina came by sometimes on her way to work; she and Marcie had always been good friends. I think Nina also wanted to avoid Rox and Brad. They might have had sibling rivalry issues to begin with, and losing out to her sister probably didn’t help. And Paul and Patty visited in the mornings as well.”
“Were Patty and Paul trying to avoid Rox and Brad?” Vince asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe. Brad told me there were conflicts. Patty and Paul never said. Patty’s too sweet to say anything against anyone.”
I nodded. “That’s true. Did Brad tell you what the conflicts were about?”
Andy seemed to be scanning his memory. “They’d asked Rox why Marcie wasn’t at one of the cancer centers, like Duke or Sloan-Kettering.”
I thought back to a few days before and Patty’s flash of anger when I asked about the cancer centers. “Why wasn’t she at one of those centers?”
“It probably had to do with money. Having money wasn’t a problem, Marcie was loaded but she didn’t like to spend money. And my guess is that Rox didn’t want Marcie to spend her money, either. Rox was her POA and wielded a lot of influence over her. Marcie said the care she was getting was good enough. She’d made a ton of money and held management jobs, but she let Rox make all the decisions about her care. And Rox got Marcie’s estate when she died.”
“She did?” I looked at Vince. “All of it?”
“Well, maybe not all of it. Brad exaggerates sometimes. But most of it. A lot, anyway.”
Interesting. Very interesting. Money trumped medical care not only in Rox’s eyes but in Marcie’s as well. I was about to ask more about the will, but Andy started talking before I did.
“Marcie hated the assisted living place, so Rox tried to strong-arm Patty and Paul into taking Marcie to live with them, along with a caregiver.”
“You’re kidding. Their place is the size of a shoebox.”
“That’s what they said, but Rox didn’t seem to believe them. I guess she thought they lived in a palace. Brad said Rox wouldn’t speak to them for a while.”
I asked, “What about Marcie’s own place?”
Andy feigned horror. “Oh, my God. You never saw her place? No,” he answered his own question, “you wouldn’t have. It was a disaster, piled to the rafters with newspapers, magazines, books, clothes, you name it.” That accorded with Evangeline’s description.
Andy continued. “Every surface was covered with stacks of paper. The place wasn’t too clean either. No way they could’ve brought a caregiver in there.
“And Marcie wouldn’t let anyone in to clean. She was embarrassed, but not enough to do anything about it.”
“What about Rox? Or Brad? Couldn’t she stay with them?”
“Ah, good question. Rox lived in a house that had enough space and was clean enough. But there was some reason that now escapes me why she couldn’t do it. Probably would put a crimp in her love life. As for Brad, can you see him as a caregive
r?”
Neither Vince nor I responded to Andy’s rhetorical question.
“So what happened?” Vince asked.
“Marcie finally agreed to move back to her own place but stipulated that nothing be removed, only rearranged. Rox, Brad, and yours truly were to do the cleaning and rearranging in preparation for the caregiver.”
“What about Patty and Paul?”
“Don’t know. They weren’t in on the cleaning. Maybe that was their punishment for not going along with Rox’s idea of caring for Marcie.”
“Some punishment.” I snickered.
“Yeah, really. We straightened up somewhat, meaning we moved everything into some unused rooms. There were still stacks of papers everywhere. When we visited Marcie we sat on her deck. Only place where there weren’t papers.”
“Did you still visit in the morning?”
“Still in the morning.”
“Patty and Paul as well?”
When Andy nodded, I asked, “Who was the caregiver? Probably there was more than one?”
“A couple. Nice enough people, but they had no medical training, they just cooked and cleaned. Eventually they had to bring in hospice care.”
“Very sad,” I said. “I wish I’d gotten to know Marcie.”
Andy said, “So tell me how you found out that you had a passel of cousins you never knew about?” I told him the story of my sister Ruth and her genealogical pursuits.
“You know, Andy, I’ve enjoyed having lunch with Patty a number of times. But I still feel like I don’t know much about her. And even less about Paul, but I haven’t been around him much at all.”
Andy nodded. “They’re hard to get to know. I do know about Paul’s financial problems, only because I’m in debt up to my eyeballs as well. So we often commiserated. He owed a lot of money to the racetrack. And the IRS.”
“Really? But Patty should have had a good income from her years of teaching. What did Paul do for a living? He told me once but I forgot.”
“He taught as well. What was it? Speech? Philosophy? Something like that.”
Philosophy made me think of Greece. I remembered seeing some Greek books in their bookcase. Epics, dramas, and the like. So Paul could very well have a background in philosophy or some associated subject. Heavy stuff.
I asked, “Why didn’t Patty and Paul move in with Marcie and take care of her?”
“I have no idea.”
“Did Patty and Paul ever resolve their differences with Rox?”
“Oh sure. They were all pretty lovey-dovey at Marcie’s funeral. Maybe just for show, I don’t know, but there weren’t any funeral fights or scenes.” I thought of the scene Nina told me that an angry Andy had staged when his mother died.
“You said that Rox was Marcie’s POA and that Marcie left everything to her? Why was that? She wasn’t even a family member. I could see her leaving her something, being generous, but the whole shebang?” Rox sure benefitted from her moonlighting job as a POA. And my mind lit on Foster’s report of Rox and an elderly woman outside an office building that housed a number of lawyers.
“I didn’t say she got the whole shebang, Brad said that. Marcie had her pet charities, so she might have left something to them. But Rox likely got the bulk of it and sure as I’m sitting here talking to you, Brad married her for her hard-earned bucks. But probably the true explanation is in Marcie and Rox’s long history. At one time they were lovers.” Andy stopped to gauge my reaction.
“Marcie and Rox were lovers? I didn’t know that. Did you know that, Vince?” Vince shrugged, going along with my feigning surprise at Andy’s revelation.
“Oh yeah. Marcie was in the closet, but hell, you’re family. We all knew. Suspected, anyway. She and Rox lived together for years.”
“That doesn’t mean—”
“I know, they could live together without being lovers. But Marcie told me all about it a few days before she died. She’d always loved Rox, but she knew Rox enjoyed men as well, and there wasn’t much she could do about that. They parted ways and had other relationships but remained good friends. Marcie never really got over Rox and would do anything for her.”
“Anything” apparently included bequeathing her vast estate to her former lover.
Vince asked, “Why do you call your father Brad?”
Andy smirked. “To piss him off.” Andy had more charm than Brad—but not a lot.
I thought of the erotic books Evangeline had found. “Did Patty and Paul know about Rox and Marcie’s relationship?”
Andy shrugged. “Not to my knowledge. Maybe Marcie told them the same thing she told me.”
“So,” I took a deep breath and took the proverbial nosedive, “Did you and Rox ever have a relationship?”
Andy gave me a long look before responding. “Yes, a brief one. Very brief. And chaotic.”
“From what I’ve heard, chaotic is putting it mildly. Didn’t you storm her place of employment and smash her windshield?” Who did I think I was, this daring me? Of course, I had the law by my side. Retired law, but law all the same.
Andy smirked. “I thought you weren’t an investigator.”
“Actually, I’m just guessing it was you. I’ve heard about someone who did what I described but didn’t know who it was. So it was you?”
“Guilty, as charged.”
“How did this start? And it wasn’t long ago, was it?”
“Last year. We ran into each other at some dive. Moonshine Inn. Do you know it?”
“We know of it.” I smiled at Vince.
Andy grinned. “I don’t peg you as the sorts who’d spend time there.”
If he only knew, I thought. “So you said you and Rox met up at the Moonshine Inn. That’s where she was killed, isn’t it?”
“Right.” Andy drained his coffee before going on. “She was all decked out in her business suit like she was at a board meeting. I couldn’t believe I would even speak to her. But one thing led to another and—” Andy trailed off but I had no trouble finishing his sentence.
“But why would you have a relationship with her when you thought she’d had a hand in your mother’s death?”
He shrugged. “I decided that she didn’t do it, that I overreacted.”
I gave him a measuring look. Probably a case where his brain, and perhaps heart, disconnected from other body parts. “Weren’t she and Brad together at that point?”
“No, they were on the outs so I got to take up the slack. We fought a lot and had a lot of great sex. Make-up sex mostly. I smashed her windshield when she wouldn’t open her door. I don’t know if anyone was in the house with her. I didn’t see a car.”
“How did you happen to have a hammer? Do you carry one on your cycle?”
“I took a rock from her garden.”
“And she didn’t press charges?”
“Nope.”
“And what about the incident at the Hamlin Group? What brought that on?”
“She was seeing some other dude. I followed her one time.”
Foster? For all I knew, the woman had lovers stashed all over Richmond.
“But I didn’t kill her. I was cleared.”
“How so?”
“The great city of Owensboro, Kentucky gave me a DUI that night. Can’t ask for a better alibi than that.” That much was true as he was on record for having an airtight alibi.
I leaned forward in a gesture of sharing confidences. “Any ideas about who did kill Rox?”
“I sure wanted to enough times,” he snorted. “The woman was mean. Laughed at me a lot. Taunted me. But I would have strangled her in the heat of the moment, not stab her in a parking lot.” Andy probably had something there.
“But any number of folks besides me could’ve done it. There’s Nina—but she’s dead, so maybe, maybe not. And then, who killed Nina? Things look bad for dear old dad. First Mom, then Rox, now Nina. Rox didn’t treat him very well, but he probably deserved it.”
“Why would Brad kill her? For the money
she got from Marcie?” It seemed shocking that a child would seriously consider his or her parent a killer.
“Sure, the money. Plus she hung out at redneck bars, besmirching his reputation.”
I tried and failed to hold back a laugh at the idea of Brad being concerned about “besmirching” his reputation. He sure must have forgotten about protecting his standing in the community the day of Nina’s funeral.
“Yes, dear cousin, laugh. That’s all we can do.”
“What about Nina? Why would Brad kill her?” Vince asked.
“Maybe Nina knew something damaging about him and let on to him what she knew. Maybe she wanted to marry him and was trying to blackmail him.”
I reflected on Andy’s speculations. “Perhaps Nina either knew, or surmised, that Brad killed her sister.”
“That’s my guess.”
That wasn’t the first time the idea had been entertained. I paused for a beat before redirecting the subject. “So you live in Owensboro now?”
“Yeah, my son and his mother live there. Della doesn’t want to come here, she can’t stand Brad. Occasionally I bring Elliott for a visit. Unlike Della, he likes Brad.”
“You bring Elliott on your Harley?”
“No, I take the car.”
“That’s quite a drive,” Vince noted.
Andy agreed. “Ten to eleven hours.”
“Did you go to Rox’s funeral?”
“Hell, yes. Had to make sure she was dead.”
“How did you know about Nina being killed?”
“Brad told me.”
“So you two are in touch.”
“Oh, yeah.” Andy looked surprised. “We get along okay when we’re apart. Right now things are dicey, us being in the same house and all.” Did Brad support him? It occurred to me that, with Brad getting a windfall via Rox, it would benefit Andy. As if Andy read my mind, he said, “My goal in life is to stay sober long enough and hold down a job long enough to repay Brad and not have to rely on him.”
Vince asked, “Do you have a job now in Owensboro?”
Andy managed a sheepish grin. “No, not really.” He went on to say that he had two masters’ degrees, and was himself an aspiring writer. “Sometimes I work as a telemarketer.” Ah, put that con man voice to good use.
