2 Knot What It Seams (19 page)

“That young mayor,” growled Miss Sissy. “Have something to tell him.”

Now, this was an errand she’d be happy to take Miss Sissy to. And sit in on. They piled into Beatrice’s car. And naturally, the car alarm went off. Miss Sissy made a hissing noise and jumped right back out of the car while Beatrice muttered under her breath and hit various buttons on the key remote. The blaring alarm finally went off when she stuck the key in the ignition and turned it.

“Miss Sissy, you can come back now,” called Beatrice to the old woman, who was suspiciously watching her from behind a tree.

“Is it your car?” asked the old woman, peering distrustfully at both Beatrice and the vehicle.

“It is. You might not recognize it because it’s new. I wanted four-wheel drive and better gas mileage. But the stupid alarm keeps going off and I don’t know why.”

Finally, she managed to talk Miss Sissy into the car. The short drive to downtown Dappled Hills took only a few minutes, and Beatrice’s mood was somewhat improved by the sight of Miss Sissy shaking her fist at everyone they passed on the way there. It was nice not to be on the receiving end of it for once.

The mayor’s office was in the town hall building, which also housed the tiny police department. Beatrice parked and helped Miss Sissy up the stairs to the second-floor office.

Clearly, their visit wasn’t expected. Miss Sissy walked right into the small sitting area outside the mayor’s office and straight into the room where Booth Grayson sat at his desk. His dark eyebrows shot up in surprise when he saw her there.

“Ah . . . Miss Sissy, isn’t it? And Beatrice. Did we have an appointment today?” He frowned at his computer screen.

“We didn’t,” said Beatrice. “At least, I didn’t, and I don’t think Miss Sissy did, either. But she has something on her mind, her car is in the shop, and she asked me to drive her over to talk with you.”

Miss Sissy had already settled into one of the wooden chairs in the office and was reading the papers on his desk with interest. Suddenly realizing that Beatrice had given her a cue, she frowned ferociously at the mayor and said, “Wickedness!”

Oh no. And Miss Sissy had been doing so well, too. She’d thought she was going to at least give some sort of coherent accusation against the mayor.

The mayor stiffened. “I beg your pardon?”

The old woman leaned forward as if getting closer so that Booth Grayson could hear her better. “Wickedness! With that young girl. I know her mama. Know her grandmama! You’re too old to be with her. Leave her alone.”

Booth reddened and made a
pish
sound and picked up a file on his desk, then made a point of looking at his watch. “With respect, Miss Sissy, you haven’t got the slightest idea what you’re talking about. I’m a married man and very fond of my wife. I’m certainly not spending any time with young girls. If you saw me with someone, then you misinterpreted what you saw—it’s as simple as that. After all, as mayor I speak in the schools. Perhaps you saw a young person coming up to ask me questions.”

Miss Sissy said sternly, “The young person wasn’t asking questions. Wasn’t talking. You weren’t, either. Nothing wrong with my eyes!”

“You couldn’t have. . . .”

“I did! Saw you in Lenoir. Jo took me for a quilt show since I don’t drive out of town now.” Miss Sissy folded her arms against her thin chest and sat back in her chair in satisfaction.

Booth’s face was grim as he stared directly in Miss Sissy’s rheumy eyes, then turned his gaze to Beatrice, looping her in, too. “You misunderstood what you saw,” he said firmly. “And Jo was more than happy to let you. All she cared about was having something to hold over my head, in case she ever needed it. That was the kind of person she was.”

“Saw you!” crowed Miss Sissy.

Booth’s lips were a thin line now and Beatrice was beginning to think they weren’t going to get anything out of him, especially with Miss Sissy in her current mood. “Miss Sissy, do you think you can make it down the stairs to the car? I’ll join you in a minute.”

“I can do stairs!” said Miss Sissy scornfully. “Going down, ’specially.”

The old woman left and Booth tapped at his desk, staring down at the dark wood as if searching there for words to say. Finally, he said, “Beatrice, I don’t know you, but you seem like a sensible woman.”

“I like to think so.”

“Miss Sissy is . . . well, for one thing, she’s so elderly that anyone under thirty looks like a child to her,” said Booth, making a scoffing sweep of his hand.

Beatrice clicked her tongue. “I wouldn’t say that her guesses at age are that far off. Would you?”

“She’s completely mistaken that I would ever consider being with anyone who is underage,” said Booth. He sat stiffly in his chair and stared out his small office window, a red flush rising over his shirt collar.

“But you would consider being with a woman who was very young. Just not criminally young,” guessed Beatrice.

Booth didn’t answer for a few moments. Then he said, “The woman in question is over eighteen. I suspect that she’s looking for a little excitement in life, and I’m the closest thing she’ll get to it until she leaves town for college.”

Beatrice arched her eyebrows, studying him. Dark hair, receding hairline. A stomach that was softening a bit with middle age. His glasses were slightly crooked. He just didn’t
seem
to fit the role of the passionate lover type. He was more like the type of man who was overly obsessed with 21-DRV forms.

He noticed her appraisal and said ruefully, “Maybe excitement is the wrong word. Actually, no. It’s an exciting
situation
, but I’m not an exciting man.”

Beatrice said, “Is it an exciting situation? It sounds like a sad one to me. A middle-aged man cheating on his wife of many years with a woman young enough to be his daughter? A young woman with nothing better to do?” She shook her head.

At the word
wife
, Booth Grayson’s eyes narrowed a bit. “It doesn’t have to be sad, though. It only becomes sad if my wife finds out about it. And there’s absolutely no reason for her to learn anything about this. It would only hurt her. The young woman in question will be leaving town in only a couple of months. I’ve already ended our involvement. It’s pointless for Mrs. Grayson to find out.”

“If that’s the way you want to think about it. I’m glad that my marriage didn’t have such a tremendous lie at its core. I haven’t met Mrs. Grayson, but I feel very badly for her,” said Beatrice.

Booth said briskly, opening his desk drawer. “As I said before, you’re a reasonable woman. I’m a man with a secret that I would like to keep from hurting someone close to me. What can I offer to you to forget that this conversation ever happened?”

Chapter 13

Beatrice stared at him. “Excuse me? Are you trying to buy me off, Mayor Grayson?”

“I’m simply offering to make a business arrangement with you that will benefit us both,” said Booth.

“An offer that I find completely insulting. And have you forgotten that Miss Sissy is apparently an eyewitness to your shenanigans?”

Booth gave a harsh laugh. “Eyewitness she may be, but no one could call her a reliable one. Why hasn’t she spoken of this alleged sighting until now? Why now?”

“Her memory comes in spurts. She’s obviously either just remembered or suddenly made the connection that what she saw was important. You’re not the only one who would find it important, either, Mayor. . . . I’m sure the police would be interested to hear about this, too. After all, the other eyewitness to this impropriety has been murdered. Covering up a relationship to ensure reelection and to avoid having a spouse find out . . . well, that sure sounds like a solid motive for murder to me,” said Beatrice.

Booth’s mouth pulled downward, highlighting unhappy grooves in his face.

“What I am interested in is some information. But that’s not going to prevent me from talking to the police. The police need all the clues they can get to eliminate the killer,” said Beatrice.

“You’re going to send them off on a wild-goose chase,” said Booth smoothly. “Because I’m not a murderer.”

“That may be true,” said Beatrice, holding up her hand to stop him from interrupting again, “but it would still be irresponsible of me to withhold information from the investigating officers. What I’d like for you to tell me, though, is exactly what you were bringing out of Jo Paxton’s house the day I spotted you there. And where you were the morning of Jo’s death?”

Booth heaved an impatient sigh. “I’ve already told you that I was retrieving some books that Jo had borrowed from me. I tried to get them back the morning Jo died. Then I returned the day after her funeral. That’s all there was. I didn’t want to worry Glen about them after her death. And the morning of Jo’s death, I ended up deciding to come back for them another time because I saw Opal there and I didn’t want to get tied up in some sort of visit. She was acting really oddly, anyway.”

“I believe there was more to it than that,” said Beatrice. “And when I talked to you about it before, you said it was equipment you were there for, not books.”

Booth studied Beatrice again, summing her up. Finally, he said, “All right. Yes, Jo Paxton confronted me about what she and Miss Sissy had seen that day in Lenoir. She caught me off guard and I admitted to the relationship and offered to pay her something to ensure her silence. Unfortunately for me, she was more interested in having something she could hold over my head indefinitely. She’d taped our conversation with a voice recording device.”

“Which you wanted to recover the morning of Jo’s death. But you saw Opal there and decided to go back home,” said Beatrice.

He gave a slight nod. “I’d parked my car behind a row of bushes and was already at the house to try to talk sense into Jo that morning. After the way she’d acted at the town hall meeting, I thought she was a loose cannon. She might say anything at the quilt show, simply to put pressure on me . . . or just for her own entertainment.”

“She might have continued holding it over you for many years in the future,” said Beatrice thoughtfully.

“Exactly.”

“So, when you saw Opal, you decided not to talk to Jo about it and you went back home. You were soaking wet, since you’d been outside in the storm.”

“From what I’ve seen,” said Booth, “Opal Woosley is a huge gossip. I didn’t want to have her asking what I was doing there.”

“You mentioned she was acting oddly?” asked Beatrice.

“Odder than usual, you mean?” said Booth drily. “I thought it was odd that she was outside in a rainstorm. But she had a huge raincoat on. She was peering around, acting as though she didn’t want to be seen. And she was carrying a bag with her.”

“Did she see you?”

Booth considered this. “At the time, I didn’t think so. I’m not sure.”

“So you left without the recorder, but returned the day after the funeral, let yourself in, found the device, and took it home with you.”

Booth gave a small shrug. “It was easier than the alternative of approaching Glen about it. I didn’t know if Jo had even told him about the incident. If he wasn’t aware of it, then I sure didn’t want him to find out about it.”

“And you didn’t talk to Opal about seeing her at the Paxtons’ house? You didn’t try to find out what she’d been doing?” asked Beatrice. “Did it occur to you that she might have been tampering with Jo’s car? That she might have had wire cutters in the bag and have slipped under the Jeep and cut into the brake lines?”

“I didn’t dwell on the possibility,” said Booth with a long-suffering sigh.

Probably because that would involve admitting what he’d been doing there himself.

“What were you doing when Opal was murdered at the Patchwork Cottage?” asked Beatrice.

“Certainly not killing Opal Woosley,” said Booth with a cold laugh. “I was at home with my wife, preparing for a day in the office working on next year’s budget. She’ll back me up on that.”

Of course she would. Would she still give him an alibi if she knew the kind of person her husband was, though?

“So, really, the only people who knew anything at all about your indiscretion were Jo, who was murdered, Opal, who was murdered, and an old woman who’s demented most of the time.”

“And now, it appears, you,” said Booth smoothly with an inscrutable stare. “Although, even if you were to say anything, there’s no proof at all. It might appear that you had a bone to pick with me about the regulations I’m considering enforcing on the quilting groups. You have no photographs, no recorded conversations, no camcorder footage.” He held out empty hands. “And, really, you’re only now becoming part of the fabric of our town. You’re a newcomer. Would the town be willing to believe you over me? I’ve been here in a position of authority for years.”

“We could always find out,” said Beatrice softly. “There’s no proof. But in a town like Dappled Hills, the mere suggestion of impropriety will raise eyebrows and generate gossip. Which is exactly the kind of thing you don’t want before an election.”

Booth said in a tight voice, “As I was saying, what can I do for you? I’d like to prevent that particular experiment from moving forward.”

“You can’t do a thing for me, Mayor Grayson,” said Beatrice, pushing her chair back and standing up. “As a matter of conscience, I’ll need to let Chief Downey know about this. Your relationship certainly establishes motive, if nothing else. You tell a fairly convincing story, so I’ll let you repeat it to Ramsay and the state police and see if they find it convincing, too. Thanks for your time.”

Beatrice felt the mayor’s stare boring into back as she walked to the door of the office. She had the strong sensation that she’d made an enemy.

* * *

Miss Sissy, who’d been waiting for quite some time in Beatrice’s car, had fallen sound asleep. Unfortunately, that nap soon ended when Beatrice’s car alarm inexplicably went off again as she tried to quietly insert the key in the ignition. Miss Sissy jumped a mile and gave her a glare that could have fried eggs. A blind in the upstairs window facing the parking lot moved. Maybe she’d bothered Booth Grayson again. Good.

“I’m sorry, Miss Sissy. This is a new car and I either don’t know how to work it or else it’s got some sort of malfunction.” A distraction was clearly in order, since her explanation didn’t appease Miss Sissy. “Did you feel like our meeting with the mayor went well? Did you accomplish what you set out to do?”