Carolyn G. Hart_Henrie O_02 (30 page)

I stepped inside. The first floor of the Matthews house was swathed in darkness except for the feeble glow from a single golden-globed torchère all the way down the hall in the dungeonlike entryway. Too little light to illumine the saucy moosehead. Clearly this was a night light indicating the householder had retired.

Craig’s car was in the drive. I assumed that meant he was there. I doubted that he customarily went to bed at nine-thirty. But I didn’t doubt at all that he was eager to avoid talking with me.

In fact, I wondered how soon he would try again to send me on my way.

And what would he do when he found out I’d nudged the police toward Stevie in their investigations? I was sure the assistant D.A. had picked right up on the information I’d given her about the sweater.

Well, it didn’t matter that he would want me gone. I had no intention of leaving.

Amy’s death settled that.

He would continue to afford me his hospitality. He was in no position to disclaim me as his aunt. That was his story, and he was stuck with it.

At this point I doubted his veracity on almost all counts, but my commitment to find out who shot Patty Kay remained strong.

For Patty Kay herself.

And now Amy.

Especially Amy.

I flipped on lights as I went. The kitchen, though sparkling clean, thanks to me, was not a cheerful place to be. Memory held another, darker picture. The faint acrid smell of burned chocolate lingered. But I was hungry, and I had much to do this night. I fixed a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, thankful for pantry staples. I checked the date on the milk carton. It was still good. I poured a tall, frothy glassful.

All the while, I puzzled over my unsuccessful quest— so far—to discover the reason Patty Kay had abruptly summoned the Walden School trustees and its headmaster to dinner.

Was my basic assumption wrong? Could Patty Kay have merely been indulging her fancy for last-minute entertainments?

No. That didn’t fit with the unconcealed anger that had consumed the last two days of her life. Still, the dinner might have had nothing to do with that distress. I had no proof that Patty Kay was upset about her Walden School files even though that connection once seemed clear.

But I’d found nothing out of order or provocative in those files.

Of course,
caveat emptor:
the linkage of Patty Kay’s distress to her late-night jaunt to the campus was provided courtesy of Craig Matthews.

Craig lied a lot.

Maybe I needed to rethink the matter entirely. Could the dinner be a smoke screen for some other agenda? Could it be a way of bringing one particular trustee to her home?

Why?

Patty Kay could see the headmaster anytime she was on the campus.

She’d played tennis with Brooke on Thursday, no doubt planned to play with her the next week. She was certainly on close enough terms to give Brooke a call at any time.

According to Stuart Pierce, he and Patty Kay were together on Thursday afternoon.

I finished half the sandwich, gulped some milk.

Okay, what if Stuart lied? Oh, not about their tryst, but maybe that Thursday parting was—as far as he was concerned—final. Would Patty Kay, desperate to see him, have used the trustee meeting as a pretext?

It would be, in my judgment, an ineffective way to attempt to talk intimately with a reluctant lover.

So, not to see Stuart.

Cheryl Kraft? I needed to probe more deeply there. Was there a hidden disagreement between Patty Kay and Cheryl? If so, I’d not heard a whisper of it. And this was such a small town. In any event, they lived next door to each other. It would be absurd to go to the effort of a dinner party if Patty Kay’s objective was to speak with Cheryl.

I licked an escaping dollop of blackberry jelly from the sandwich edge.

That left Patty Kay’s brother-in-law Willis and Desmond.

She could pick up the phone anytime and call Willis
Guthrie. As for Desmond, she’d known him for years. She could easily arrange to see him.

I was left once again with the assumption—surely the natural assumption—that the dinner was exactly as billed, a gathering of the school trustees. So there had to be a purpose, a purpose linked to Walden School.

Yet the argument against that conclusion was strong. No one knew better than Patty Kay that you don’t broach important matters cold. Not if you want a group to vote your way.

I wiped a trickle of jelly from my chin, finished the milk, and shelved my obsession with the board of trustees. I have a reputation for stubbornness, but I also face reality. My pursuit of the dinner party may have been off track from the start.

Because there was another focal point in this murder case.

Books, Books, Books.

I jabbed the bell to Stevie’s apartment. Fingers of light splayed around the edges of the drawn drapes.

The peephole opened.

“Stevie, I need to talk to you. About Amy.”

The disembodied voice was high and slightly shrill. “It’s late and—”

“Captain Walsh is looking for the owner of a beige Lands’ End cardigan. Would you know anything about that? It’s the sweater with Patty Kay’s blood on it.”

No answer.

“Did you know cloth can hold fingerprints?”

A chain rattled. The door opened.

In a gold-striped T-shirt and jeans, she looked younger. Younger and scared.

I stepped inside.

She closed the door behind her, leaned back on it as if for support. “What sweater are you talking about?”

“The one Craig found bunched up by his wife’s body Saturday afternoon. Bunched up against her and drenched with her blood.”

“Oh, my God!” It was a thin, anguished whisper. “Oh, no. No.”

I felt sorry for her, but not sorry enough to ease up. Not as long as I remembered the dumpster and those upturned pink flats. And not sorry enough to tell her that it wouldn’t be long before Walsh, prodded by the young assistant D.A., had some very brutal questions for her.

“Yes. Craig wrapped the gun in the sweater, threw the gun away, then got rid of the sweater. But the police found it. They have it now. They’re looking for its owner.”

“I wore it to work Friday … and somebody took it.”

I waited.

“You’ve got to believe me. When I went back to the storeroom, it was gone. Not on my hook. I haven’t seen it since. You’ve got to believe me!”

It came down to her word, of course.

But that was her problem.

“Captain Walsh will be interested to hear what you have to say. And I suppose he’ll also be curious as to why Craig should have chosen to remove the sweater from the murder scene.”

She licked her lips.

Psychologically, I had her where I needed her to be.

“You have keys to the store.” It was not a question.

“Yes.”

“Let’s go.”

• • •

We turned on all the lights. We had full access to the main floor of the bookstore. Yellow police tape marking a crime scene barred us from the storeroom. And, I was sure, from the portion of the alleyway directly behind Books, Books, Books.

I wasn’t interested in the storeroom. Or the alleyway.

I wanted information.

First, I left a call on Desmond’s home and office answering machines.

Stevie stood rigidly next to the desk, her eyes dark with fear.

I hung up. “Okay. Let’s take a look at Amy’s personnel file.”

She led the way to the main office where Captain Walsh had interviewed us that afternoon. Stevie pulled open the top drawer of the second file cabinet.

The impersonal application form didn’t tell me much.

Amy Alice Foss. Home address, social security number, birth date. I looked at the latter. Nineteen years old. She was a sophomore at Fair Haven Community College, majoring in English. Her previous job had been with a Waldenbooks in Nashville. The manager gave her an excellent recommendation.

Bookstores.

Such lovely, civilized, safe places to work.

Damn, damn, damn.

We went downstairs to the history and politics sections. “Amy was learning these books,” Stevie explained. “Three times a day she checked and straightened the shelves. She was at the information desk from one to three. The rest of the time she unpacked books or worked the floor or was at the front checkout desk, depending upon the customer flow.”

We walked to a semicircular counter in the middle of
the store. “Today she was supposed to double-check next week’s schedule for the daily workers. A lot of Patty Kay’s friends work in the store one day a week. Monday through Friday. They weren’t interested in weekends, of course.”

Stevie pulled open a shallow drawer and lifted out a ring-binder notebook. She put it on the countertop and opened it.

I saw monthly side tabs.

She flipped to April and the second sheet in that month. It was titled
Daily Schedules, April
5-9. The names of the clerks ran horizontally, the days of the week vertically. The resulting grid gave a quick confirmation of who was scheduled to work when.

I checked back a few weeks. The ladies hopscotched around.

Brooke Forrest customarily worked Mondays, but the prior week she switched with Edith Hollis on Thursday.

Pamela Guthrie was down for Fridays, but she’d worked every other day in the week but Friday for the past month.

The other single-day workers were Cheryl Kraft, who’d been at the store today, and Louise Pierce, who worked Tuesdays.

There was a red X by each name for this week.

I pointed.

Stevie tapped an X. “That means Amy checked last week and had definite commitments for this week.”

“So today”— I flipped to the next sheet.
Daily Schedules, April 12–16
.

Crimson
X
s neatly marked each name. Next week Brooke would be in both Monday and Thursday. Louise and Cheryl had switched. Pamela was on schedule for Friday.

Stevie touched the Thursday column. “Next week I’d
better call Mrs. Hollis. She may not want to continue. But we have a waiting list. It’s a prized job in town.”

“I’m sure it is. But it still surprises me that Pamela Guthrie does it.”

Stevie’s eyes glinted. “That woman.”

“If she doesn’t enjoy it, why does she do it?”

“To keep an eye on the bookstore, I suppose. Or maybe she just doesn’t want to be left out of something that
the
women in town do.”

“Does it have such a social cachet?”

“Oh, yes. It’s even harder than getting into Talking Leaves.”

“Talking Leaves?”

“The book club in Fair Haven. Been in existence for more than a hundred years. You practically have to inherit an opening. Simply being rich isn’t enough.”

It’s a small town, for chrissakes
.

Stevie’s voice wasn’t hostile. She was merely reporting a fact.

She fidgeted. “Is this what you wanted to see, Mrs. Collins? Are we finished?”

I didn’t answer at once. I was looking toward the front door. Amy could have seen anyone who came through the front door.

And been seen.

“No. Tell me about the store today—from the time Amy arrived.”

She shivered. “We didn’t open until late, of course. Because of the funeral. I told everyone to come in at one. Amy came in a few minutes early. I was in the employee lunchroom. She got a cappuccino and a big oatmeal cookie from the café and sat with me. I teased her, said she wasn’t eating enough for a growing girl. A cookie for lunch isn’t enough.”
Her eyes flashed. “None of us ate anything at Mrs. Guthrie’s.”

“How did Amy act?”

Stevie closed the notebook, slid it back into a drawer. There was a pause before she replied, as if she were considering her answer. “Just as usual. She never had a lot to say. But she was pleasant. Nice. There was nothing different this afternoon.”

“When did you last see her?”

“Right before I left, about two-forty. I walked by the information desk. She didn’t see me. She was on the phone. That’s all I noticed.”

“So Amy was alive at two-forty.” I got out my notebook, flipped to a fresh page. “You didn’t see her again?”

“No.”

“You weren’t here when we found Amy.” I’d not thought about Stevie’s absence until the policeman ushered her and Craig into the bookstore. Ever since, I’d thought about it quite a bit.