Morning Glory Circle (27 page)

“I know I shouldn’t have looked at it, but I couldn’t resist,” Maggie said. “It had to be one of the letters Margie sent.”

“Connie refused to show it to me or tell me what it said. You’re sure about the date?”

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

“I swear I have more leads than I can follow up on. I need a dozen deputies. Thanks for telling me about the letter.”

“I’m just relieved you aren’t throwing me in jail for snooping in Connie’s purse.”

“Here’s a crazy idea. Do you think Newton and Connie could have been having an affair?”

“You think Connie killed him because he wouldn’t leave his wife?”

“I don’t know. She was hysterical when I got to the inn, but she’s kind of kooky anyway, and she did find his body.”

“But why else would she have drugged him and smothered him?”

“That’s what I want to know. I’m going over to his office next, to see what I can find out there.”

After Scott left Maggie found she couldn’t concentrate on paperwork. She had a store full of staff, so she went over to work in the bakery kitchen with Delia so Mandy could have some time off.

“You know,” Maggie told her aunt while they worked side by side in the hot kitchen. “Hannah and Drew walked in on an argument between Newton and Connie last week. You think he could have been having an affair with her?”

“I have no idea.”

“You wouldn’t tell me if you did know,” Maggie said. “You are one secret-keeping high security vault when it comes to your friends, you are.”

“I’m no friend of Connie Fenton’s,” Delia said, and Maggie was surprised by the sharpness of her aunt’s tone.

“Tell that story,” Maggie demanded. “Tell it right now.”

“No, I won’t,” Delia said. “Because nothing was ever proved, and even if I don’t like the woman, I won’t have vicious gossip about her on my conscience.”

Maggie was like a bird dog on a turkey’s trail now, but no amount of badgering would pull the story out of her aunt.

“Did this take place in March of 1984?” Maggie prodded.

“Not another word,” Delia said, and turned a stern look on Maggie. “I mean it.”

“Who else knows this story?”

“You are persistent, I’ll give you that,” Delia said. “But no. Change the subject.”

Maggie knew there was more than one way to crack a nut. She tackled her Aunt Alice, who, although she was Hannah’s mother, was not too bright and never knew when to keep her mouth shut.

The first opportunity she got, she cornered Alice behind the register.

“Did Delia and Connie have some kind of falling out?” she asked her.

“No,” Alice shook her head, “not that I know of.”

“Did they ever work together, back when they were both nurses?”

“Delia worked at the old folk’s home in Fleurmania for awhile after Liam died, to help pay the medical bills. Connie worked there too.”

When Ian and Delia’s son Liam died of leukemia at nine years of age, it had devastated the whole Fitzpatrick family. To compound their grief, his parents were stuck with a mountain of medical bills afterward. Small business owners in Rose Hill couldn’t often afford the luxury of good health insurance. Liam had died just before Christmas in 1983.

When Maggie left the bakery that afternoon, she went back to the bookstore to get her VW bug, intending to drive out to Fleurmania. Instead, she got caught up in some work related responsibilities and the opportunity passed.

When Scott passed under the stone archway that separated the grounds of Eldridge College from Rose Hill, he felt as if he had entered another world. A generous endowment from the Eldridge family paid for the manicured grounds and meticulous upkeep of the century old red brick buildings, built in the Gothic architectural style. The college was an expensive private school, known to accept wealthy progeny both kept out of or kicked out of other expensive schools.

Scott stopped to have a word with the security guard on duty, a local man he knew well. Lots of Rose Hill citizens were employed by the school, and with good benefits and decent wages being the norm, there was very little job turnover.

Everyone already knew about the president’s death. His secretary Darlene, with red eyes and nose, started crying again as soon as Scott entered the office.

“I just can’t believe it,” she said, pulling a fresh tissue out of the box on her desk.

“It’s awful, I know,” Scott said. “Did you have any idea he was upset about anything?”

“Nothing that bad,” she said. “I mean other than Gwyneth kicking them out of their home, and having to live at the inn with Connie, and all her nuttiness.”

“What was Connie doing?”

“You know, Scott, Newton’s wife Delores is the sweetest woman I’ve ever known, and she never has a bad thing to say about anyone, but she had to go to her daughter’s house in Florida because Connie was driving her so crazy.”

“In what way?”

“Connie’s a germ freak, everyone knows that. Delores said she followed them around sterilizing everything they touched. That would be enough to make me nuts, but she was also nosy. Delores said she caught Connie snooping in Newton’s room, and they had a fight about it. Also, I guess Connie has some old cat she lets roam around everywhere, and Delores has a phobia about cats.”

“Wait a minute. Delores and Newton had separate rooms?”

“Oops, I shouldn’t have let that slip. When you work for someone as long as I’ve worked for Newton, you get to know personal things. Newton had a bad snoring problem so they slept in separate bedrooms. She was always after him to get tested, you know, for that sleep apnea, but he refused.”

“Did Newton ever say anything about Connie?”

“Said she was mad as a March hare, and he didn’t know how long he would be able to stand living at the inn. There are no big houses available in Rose Hill, you see, and it wouldn’t look right for the college president to live just anywhere. They were considering buying something in Glencora, and commuting from there.”

“Did Margie Estep ever come to see Newton here?”

“Margie? No, why would she?”

“I just wondered. What was on his schedule last Monday night?”

“You’re certainly piquing my curiosity now, Scott. Let me look. Last Monday was the board meeting, so we were here until 7:00 pm, and the board dinner that followed lasted until 10:00 or so. I went home after the meeting, but I know he stayed the whole time at the dinner. Lucille, who works in food service, said he had a long talk with one of the board members after everyone else left. It kept her staff from cleaning up and going home and they were kind of mad about it. You know those executives, they never think about the lives of the service personnel who wait on them hand and foot.”

“Which board member was it?”

“Lucille didn’t say, but I could ask her.”

“Would you? It’s probably not important, but I have to follow up with anyone he talked to last week.”

Darlene made the call and then gave Scott the name and phone number of the board member.

“Anything else going on that would have been upsetting to him?” Scott asked her.

“Not really,” she said. “Newton’s a really easy going guy. I mean was.”

Tears began to flow again, and Scott apologized for having to ask her so many questions.

“I just can’t imagine why he would kill himself,” Darlene said. “He wasn’t depressed about anything that I could tell.”

“If you think of anything else you’ll let me know?” Scott said.

“Of course,” she said.

“Okay if I look through his desk?” he asked. “I can get a search warrant if you want.”

“No, you go ahead,” Darlene said. “If I ask someone higher up they’ll probably require it, so let’s just not ask anyone.”

Scott looked through the president’s office, but didn’t find anything out of the ordinary. He copied down the man’s schedule for the past week, but nothing appeared suspicious about it. He used the president’s phone to call the board member, who had already heard about his death.

“The board has scheduled an emergency conference call this evening, so we can appoint an interim administrator,” she informed him.

Scott guessed the board’s bureaucratic concerns must outweigh their emotional ones. The man’s body was barely cold and the woman seemed heartlessly business-like. She also didn’t remember anything odd about their conversation, which she said concerned an amendment they were considering making to the bylaws to increase the number of board members. Scott knew there was nothing a bunch of rich, powerful people liked more than multiplying the number of people in a room who liked to hear themselves talk, so he wasn’t surprised the board was expanding.

When Scott asked what her personal relationship was with the president, the woman laughed.

“Newton?” she said. “Sorry to laugh. God rest his soul, I know, but he may well have been the dullest man I ever met.”

Scott thanked her for her time and hung up. Darlene was on the phone as he walked through the outer office, so he waved and went on.

Scott didn’t know Newton very well. He knew Delores better, she being a pharmacist at Machalvie’s drug store and on several town committees. She was a soft-spoken, kind woman who seemed to have a lot of common sense, and she was always friendly to Scott when they met. The scandal of her husband killing someone and then committing suicide would be devastating enough to any wife. If there was some hanky panky going on with Connie as well, plus the blackmail, and maybe a murder dressed up to look like suicide, Scott wondered how Delores would handle it. Scott wished he could question Connie, who Sarah would no doubt tackle as soon as she woke up. Instead he went back to his office, and wrote up his notes on what he’d just done for Sarah to review.

Later in the day a call came saying the search warrant for Phyllis’s post office box was ready to be picked up at the county courthouse, and Scott rushed it down to the post office. Sadie solemnly handed over Phyllis’s mail and Scott took it back to the station. He couldn’t believe what he read in Margie’s letter to Phyllis. He made a photocopy of the letter and then drove up to Morning Glory Circle, where he parked in front of Mamie Rodefeffer’s house. Her maid let Scott in and directed him to Mamie’s sitting room, where the old woman was reading a paperback book through a page-sized magnifier.

“What is it?” she demanded. “What do you want?”

“I have something very private to discuss with you,” Scott said. “Can we be excused?”

He glanced at the maid, who looked very interested.

“Get out,” Mamie told the woman, “and shut the door behind you. I’m going to open it every five seconds just to see if you’re listening.”

The maid looked insulted but did as she was told.

“They spy on me and make fun of me,” Mamie said. “They don’t know I can hear everything they say. I may be legally blind and old as the hills but I’m not senile and I have excellent hearing. Sit down, sit down. What’s so important?”

Scott explained to her about the letters Margie had sent, and showed her what was mailed to Phyllis Davis. Mamie placed it under her page magnifier and held both up to her nose as she read.

“Hmph,” she said as she read. “Ha!”

When she finished she used her cane to stand up, walk to the fireplace, and before Scott could stop her, she threw the letter on the fire. He wasn’t too upset, as the one he’d shown Mamie was the photocopy of the real letter, which was in the station safe.

“Is it true?” he asked her.

“That dreary little mouse turned out to be a dirty rat, didn’t she?” Mamie said. “Hah!”

“She’s also a dead rat.”

“Do you think I killed her?” Mamie asked him as she resettled herself in her arm chair. She peered at him through magnified lenses that made her eyes look twice their size.

“Did you?”

“No, of course not,” Mamie said. “But think how exciting it would be to stand up in court and confess to a murder. ‘I did it!’ I could say. My father would roll over in his grave, of course, but my mother might have approved. Homicidal tendencies flow in our bloodline, apparently.”

“Tell me about it,” Scott said. “How did you find out?”

“My father told me on his deathbed. What an old fool he was. He practically gave the glass factory to Theo Eldridge so the truth wouldn’t come out, but then he was worried Theo would try to blackmail me with the same information. My mother could not have children and our family needed heirs. Her maid was a young, willing idiot and my father was very generous. She gave him me and my younger brother. My father set her up in business afterward. She had another child out of wedlock after she left our employment, a daughter who was not my father’s, and when the maid died her daughter took over her business.”

“Davis’s Diner.”

“Yes, Gladys Davis is my half sister; Pauline is my niece, and so on.”

“Phyllis is your great niece and Billy was your great, great nephew.”

“And Billy murdered Theo, the man who blackmailed my father. That vicious circle is complete, I should say.”