Dirty Tricks: A Kate Lawrence Mystery (20 page)

“Then what?”
Strutter
and I demanded on top of each other.

“Then
nothin
’.
 
All
the noise stopped. I have to tell you, I was a little worried there for a
minute,
thinkin
’ Auntie May might have gone off the
deep end and done
Izzy
physical harm. So I tippy-toed
over and put my ear up against the office door and listened real hard. It was tough
to hear with people
goin
’ by on their way to the
dining room, though.”

“Oh my god, there were residents
and staff in the lobby, and they saw you blatantly eavesdropping on Isabelle
Marchand
?” I massaged my temples.

“Never mind that now,”
Strutter
hissed. “What did you hear?”

“For a while I couldn’t hear a
thing with all those people
yakkin
’ and
laughin
’, so I pressed my ear harder against the door and
held my breath. That really helps, did you know?”

“Margo, don’t make me come over
there,”
Strutter
warned her.

Margo laughed and took her out of
her misery. “I heard the sound of genteel conversation between two civilized
women. I couldn’t make out what they were
sayin
’, but
I recognized both of their voices, so I knew Auntie May’s homicidal tendencies
were back under control. She blows up now and then, but then she’s done, you
know? She never was one to hold a grudge.” She took a sip of her tea and looked
pleased with herself.

Strutter
and I exchanged worried glances. “What time did all of this take place?” I
asked.

Margo considered. “Let’s see. May
blew past the sales desk on her way in at about ten o’clock. The loud part
started right up, but it didn’t last too long. Things settled down, and I
reassured myself they were both alive shortly after eleven. After that I had
some
looky-loos
come by and demand the ninety-nine
cent tour, so I had to drive them all over the complex. That takes a good bit
of time, and they had a ton of questions, so it was around twelve-thirty when I
finally got back to the administration building.
Whew, what a
mornin
’.”
She blew her bangs off her forehead
and slugged back more tea.

“Had May left
Izzy’s
office by that time?”
Strutter
wanted to know.

“They both had,” Margo stated
flatly. “Her door was open, and the lights were off. I went over and stuck my
head in, but there was nobody home. So I went back out to the
parkin
’ lot and looked around, but May’s car was gone. I
don’t know what
Izzy
drives, so I can’t tell about
that. I just figured the two of them had hashed things out, and May had come
back to the Law Barn. I didn’t see
Izzy
at all, and
at three o’clock, I packed up and left.
No sign of May, huh?”

Strutter
and I shook our heads. “Should we be concerned, do you think?” I asked.

“Doubtful. Auntie May’s probably
just tuckered out from all the
fussin
’ and
fightin
’ and gone home to take a nap. I know she’s feisty,
but she’s not a young woman anymore. I’ll give her a call when I get home.
Now,” she plunked down her mug and grinned at the two of us. “What have you two
been up to today?”

Eighteen

Margo’s report on the meeting
between May and Isabelle had been somewhat reassuring, but it raised more
questions in my mind than it answered. May was clearly convinced that Isabelle
and
Desirée
L’Amour
were
one and the same person, but I still had my doubts. It
seemed too pat, somehow, and if they were not connected, the accusations May
had leveled at
Izzy
would be beyond insulting. They
might even make it impossible for Mack Realty and Vista View to maintain our
business relationship.

Even if May’s assumptions were
correct, I reasoned
muzzily
as sleep eluded me in the
wee hours of Saturday morning, how could confronting Isabelle improve anything?
Surely she would be even more humiliated by being out-
ed
for her cowardly act of revenge than she had been by May’s original rejection.

I turned over my hot pillow and
punched it after squinting at the clock on my bedside table.
A
few minutes after one.
Thank goodness I didn’t have to pull myself
together and go into the office today, but I knew Margo had an open house this
afternoon, and
Strutter’s
son was playing in a
regional tournament. I hoped for their sakes they were getting more sleep than
I was.

Inevitably, my thoughts turned to
Emma, who would be rising in a few hours to finish packing and hurry to Bradley
International for her early morning flight to Las Vegas, then on to Oregon. She
had declined my offer of a ride, preferring to leave her ancient Saturn in one
of the parking facilities that surround the airport and provide passenger
shuttle bus service. I knew I was thinking like an old fogey, but the prospect
of my daughter entering into a bi-coastal romance filled me with dread.
Relationships were difficult enough to sustain when both parties lived in the
same state. How could this possibly work?

I thrashed for the better part of
another hour, my mind whirling with dire possibilities and unanswered
questions, until Gracie, ever alert to the possibility of an early breakfast or
perhaps a snack, leaped onto the bed.

“
Mraow
?”
she said hopefully and purred loudly. She reached over with one paw and patted
my nose in case I hadn’t gotten the message. As if. I threw off the covers with
resignation and peered at the clock again. It was after two a.m. now, a totally
crazy hour to be brewing tea, but if I stuck to an herbal variety, it might
lull me to sleep. I padded, barefoot, down the hall to the kitchen behind
Gracie, who was obviously delighted that her tactics had worked.

I filled the kettle, searched out
a tea bag and was struggling with the pull ring on a can of Gracie’s favorite
food when the phone rang, never a welcome sound in the wee hours. Immediately I
thought of Emma and snatched the receiver off the wall phone’s base before the
ringing roused
Amando
.

“Kate!” Margo’s voice vibrated
with fear. I dropped the cat food can onto the counter and gripped the phone
with both hands.

“What is it? Tell me.”

“It’s Auntie May,” she wailed, and
I could hear a thrum of hysteria in my usually unflappable friend’s voice.
“She’s gone, just disappeared. I tried and tried to reach her all
evenin
’, but she didn’t answer her cell phone or her house
line. When it got to be past midnight, John and I drove over to her house.
When we got here … oh, Kate.”

Margo’s fragile self-control was
rapidly unraveling, and my heart sank.

“Just spit it out. Whatever it is,
we’ll deal with it.”

Sniffling audibly, Margo choked,
“The garage door was open. Her car was parked inside, but we couldn’t raise her
when we rang and knocked, so we went around to the door
leadin
’
in from the garage to see if maybe it was unlocked.” She gulped and blew her
nose. “It was, but May wasn’t in the house. We searched it from top to bottom.
She wasn’t anywhere, but her purse was
lyin
’ right
there on the stair landing in the garage. Her wallet and keys and her cell
phone with about a dozen messages from Judy Holloway on it were there, too. Oh
my god, Kate, Auntie May has disappeared.”

After scribbling a hasty note to
Armando and anchoring it to the counter with his coffee mug, I scrambled into
jeans and a sweater, plopped Gracie’s breakfast dish unceremoniously on the
kitchen floor and raced to join Margo and John at the
 
Wheeler Road house.
 
I parked my car on the street to avoid
blocking their car and a police cruiser, already in the driveway, and hustled
to the house. Lights were on in the Peterson house, as well as several others
around the cul-de-sac, despite the early hour.

In the kitchen Margo and John both
spoke urgently into their cell phones, so I busied myself brewing coffee and
putting out mugs and spoons for whatever sleep-deprived visitors might appear.

Margo ended her call first, and I
went to give her a quick hug.

“Thanks for
comin
’,
Sugar.”

“Where else would I be? If
Strutter
didn’t have kids to get organized, she’d be here,
too. Even so, you know she’ll be over as soon as
it’s
daylight, and she can get J.D. up to speed.”

John, having trouble hearing,
clamped a hand over his free ear, so I pulled Margo into the living room. “What
do we know so far?”

Margo sank into the sofa cushions
and kicked off her leather flats. She, too, was in jeans and a sweater, but
hers were well cut and color coordinated. Leave it to Margo to be stylishly
turned out even in these circumstances.

“Mostly, we’re just
tryin
’ to eliminate possibilities. The last person I saw
with May was Isabelle
Marchand
, so that’s who I was
on the phone with. I’m pretty sure she’s as clueless as the rest of us, even
though she and May were together until nearly eleven o’clock.
Izzy
admitted May had correctly figured out that she and
Desirée
are the same person, and when May barged into her
office and called her on it, they had a real old-fashioned cat fight. I don’t
believe they got around to the hair
pullin
’ stage,
but it was nip and tuck there for a while.”

I made get-on-with-it circles with
my index finger.
“And?”

“And they settled their
differences and kissed and made up,” said Margo tersely, “at least, that’s how
it went
accordin
’ to
Izzy
.
She says when they left Vista
View,
they wound up
drivin
’ down to the beach and
walkin
’
for miles up and down the boardwalk. By then they were
starvin
’,
so they treated themselves to dinner at Abby’s Place in Essex, complete with
coffee and dessert. That’s easy enough to check on, and John will get
Joahansson
and
MacNamara
on it as
soon as he gets off the phone, and I can tell him.” She closed her eyes in
exhaustion.

I looked out the window at the
lighted windows of the Peterson house.
“The same two officers
who were here the other night?”

Margo nodded. “They’re on nights
this week, and since they have background on Auntie May’s situation, they came
right over when John called the station. They’re
talkin
’
to Carla Peterson and her kids right now.”

I looked out the window again.
“Really?
I can’t believe those two adorable kids could be
connected to this.”

“Probably not,” Margo agreed, “but
don’t forget the Myron
Lifschitz
connection. He’s old
enough to have some bad-ass buddies, and if he got mad enough about
bein
’ caught … well, even though Auntie May didn’t press
charges, and it looks as if he and T.J. will get off with probation and some
community service work, we don’t know how far off the rails these kids might
really be. Johansson and
MacNamara
will be
wakin
’ both of them up shortly for some conversation.”

Margo opened her eyes and
straightened up, shaking herself into alertness. “Anyway, after their late
dinner, Auntie May drove
Izzy
back to Vista View. May
told
Izzy
she planned to drive straight home and jump
into bed, which is what
Izzy
herself did. She sounded
as if she’d been sound asleep when I called.”

Something about the story bothered
me. “What on earth could they have been talking about all that time? If what
Isabelle said is true, they were together yesterday for more than twelve hours.
That’s a heck of a lot of conversation over a falling out, even a major one,
don’t you think?”

Margo nodded, acknowledging the
strangeness of the prolonged encounter. “You’re right, and I’m just
speculatin
’ here, but I know Auntie May pretty well. She
was my second mom, my older sister, whatever you want to call it, the whole
time I was
growin
’ up and
actin
’
like a damn fool and
gettin
’ into scrapes. I tested
her with everything I had, but she never once let me down. She’d be furious
with me and yell and stomp, but then it was over, you know? She never laid a
hand on me, although I’m sure she was just
itchin
’ to
clobber me on more than one occasion, and she never held a grudge. She cooled
off and forgave me every time. No matter how angry she was, I always knew she
loved me.”

Margo laughed a little,
remembering. “In fact, she’d tell me that’s why she got so mad. If she didn’t
care about me, she’d say, she wouldn’t give a hoot what kind of terrible person
I grew up to be, and you know what? That made sense to me. I believed her, and
I believe that’s what’s
goin
’ on between her and
Isabelle
Marchand
.”

I arched a skeptical eyebrow. “You
think May cares about Isabelle
Marchand
all that
much? I’m going to require some serious convincing.”

Margo regarded me patiently. “You
were there when the two of them first met. They really hit it off. They talked
their heads off, remember? At first I thought May was just kind of lonely for a
friend closer to her own age. She had lots of them back in Atlanta, but up
here, she hadn’t even met her neighbors. Anyway,
Izzy
isn’t that much older than we are—okay, than I am. She’s maybe in her early
sixties, near as I can figure. Still, May opened right up to her, told her all
about Romantic Nights, even though she’d sworn us to secrecy on that topic, and
Izzy
was
chatterin
’ away
like a magpie. They connected.”

“They connected at first, maybe,
but after they ate lunch together, Isabelle turned off like a lamp,” I reminded
her.

“And now we know why. She was all
hurt and rejected when Romantic Nights declined to publish her romance novel.
When she found out that May is the publisher, she did a mean, spiteful thing
that totally lit May’s fuse, which is a sight to see as you witnessed Thursday
afternoon. May blew up, stormed into
Izzy’s
office on
Friday morning and yelled some. I was there, sort of, and I heard it. Then,
true to form, May got over it. I believe in my heart she never would have been
that angry if she hadn’t been so disappointed in Isabelle.”

“Because she really liked her,” I
finished the thought. “So they made up and spent the rest of the day and
evening together, and that was the end of that.”

Margo nodded. “That’s my best
guess.”

“So where is May?”

“I might be able to answer that.
At least, I have an idea,” said John. He was punching a speed dial number on
his cell phone as he came into the living room to join us. “Listen in while I
make this call.”

We waited for a moment for his
call to go through.
“Johansson?
Harkness
.
I’m still at the
Farnsworth residence. After listening to the messages on Ms. Farnsworth’s
phone, I returned the call of a Mrs. Judith Holloway of Doylestown,
Pennsylvania. My wife informed me that Holloway is under contract to Romantic
Nights Press, which is owned and operated by
Maybelle
Farnsworth.

“Holloway writes erotic romance
novels for Romantic Nights. She told me her husband Bob, who had been unaware
of the explicit sex in her books,
recently
learned the
truth and went off the deep end. He went on a two-day drunk, threatening to put
the fear of God into her smut-mongering publisher, his words,” John clarified
with an apologetic glance at Margo. “Yesterday evening, Holloway and his car
disappeared, and Mrs. Holloway was afraid he might try to confront Ms.
Farnsworth. She’s been trying to reach Ms. Farnsworth to warn her, but she
couldn’t connect. She didn’t want to get the police involved, since she wasn’t
sure he was really headed this way; but when I told her about the
disappearance, she gave it all up.
Says he’s driving a gray
Toyota Camry with Pennsylvania plates, RBH1478.”

He listened for a minute,
then
said, “I agree. Those kids aren’t involved in this
thing. We have a better lead to focus on, so let’s do it. Put out an APB on
Robert Holloway, emphasizing the area between here and Doylestown. It’s hard to
say what he has in mind, but Mrs. Holloway says he doesn’t have a gun. He has
no history of violence of any kind. He’s just stupid drunk and dangerous
because of it. If nothing else, we need to get him off the road. Keep me
informed.”