To Helen Back (12 page)

Chapter 24

“W
HY,
S
HERIFF, YOU
know good and well where we were on Thursday night,” Ida Bell scoffed. “We were at the town meeting, as Art Beaner can attest.”

“Yes, that’s exactly where we were,” Dot Feeny piped up, bobbing her head.

The sheriff eyed the women from behind the safety of his desk. “And you said you arrived when exactly?”

“We were practically the first there,” the tiny and round Dot told him, glancing sideways at Ida as if seeking approval. “Sat right in front, we did.”

Ida tapped a mud-splattered boot against the floor. “Everyone in town hall saw us,” she stated, adding gruffly, “I reminded them all of what a horrid thing this water park deal is, and I didn’t mince words.”

“No, she didn’t mince anything, Sheriff, I promise,” Dot remarked.

“Oh, I don’t doubt that,” Biddle told her, and pretended to scribble while surreptitiously studying the pair perched on chairs across from him. Ida looked remarkably like a long-legged crane, and Dot a more compact hoot owl, each of them taking turns squawking at him.

“Do you honestly think I murdered Milton Grone?” Ida asked with a sniff. “I’m not afraid to confess that I didn’t like him, Sheriff. No, I didn’t like him at all.” Her angular features settled in an impatient frown. “Hell’s bells, but he had zero concern for the environment. His idea of recycling was tossing soda pop cans to the side of the road, so that someone else could come along and pick them up.” She clamped her teeth together and ground out, “He was a greedy, unconscionable son of a—”

“Gun,” Dot said, before Ida could spit out another word.

Ida ignored her. “I can’t tell you in good conscience that I’ve shed a single tear over his passing,” she went on. “Though I doubt the grocer’s had a run on tissues since he’s gone.” She tossed her head with its cropped brown hair and declared, “The world’s a far better place without him.”

“Just because she despised him doesn’t mean anything,” Dot said, and hunched her already round shoulders. “Ida can’t stand to see any animal slaughtered.”

“Oh?” Biddle lifted his pen from the page—and his eyebrows as well—at that one.

“What I meant, of course, is that Ida’s a protector of all species,” Dot clarified, her cheeks flushed. “She’s not a killer.”

Ida slapped a skinny thigh. “Dadgummit, Biddle! If I’d wanted to knock off Milton Grone, I would have done it long ago, before he finalized that deal with the lowlifes at Wet ’n’ Woolly!”

“Yes, she would have done it long ago,” Dot chimed in, causing Ida to roll her eyes.

“Look, you two . . .” Biddle set down his pen and rubbed his jaw. “ . . . I’m not accusing anyone of anything. I’m just trying to put together the pieces.”

“Surely you have a lead in the case?” Ida pressed him, bemusement on her flinty face. “You’ve found fingerprints certainly? Foot tracks in the dirt?”

“I’m working on it,” Biddle brusquely replied, and glanced down at his pathetic scribbles. He felt his neck grow warm, and he shuffled papers on his desk, feeling more irritated by the moment.

He had found fingerprints on the shovel, yes, but they didn’t tell him anything he didn’t know.

As for tracks in the dirt . . . hell, he hadn’t even realized a crime had been committed until they’d already held the funeral service for Milton. By then, several days had passed and the crime scene was a mess, the ground trampled, the body moved, and any evidence destroyed. But Doc had assumed that Grone died of natural causes at first. They’d had no reason to treat the case as murder, not then.

Once evidence had shown otherwise, there wasn’t much of anything left to find. So the sheriff had little to go on except Felicity Timmons’s shovel and the fact that she and Milton Grone had argued the morning of the murder.

Frank pressed at his temples, feeling a headache coming on.

“Do you have a prime suspect?” Ida barked, and he glanced up. “Other than Felicity, of course, as everyone knows she didn’t do it.”

“I’m pursuing leads.” The sheriff closed his eyes, willing the headache—and the two women—to go away.

Ida Bell harrumphed, and Biddle opened his eyes to see her sitting with bony elbows braced upon turned-in knees. Her long neck was stretched forward in a manner reminiscent of Canadian geese. “You don’t have squat yet, do you?” she said.

Frank squirmed, thinking he was the one who was supposed to be doing the questioning. “I haven’t uncovered enough to put anyone under arrest.”

“I see.” Ida looked sideways at Dotty, and her thin lips curved enigmatically. “If you don’t find who did it,” she began, “don’t beat yourself up over it, Sheriff. Whoever axed Milton Grone deserves a medal, not jail time, in my humble opinion.”

“Axed?” Frank stared at her.

“She meant shoveled,” Dot corrected. “Ida sometimes goes for hyperbole.”

Oh, really?
Frank wanted to stab himself in both eyes with his pen.

“May we go now?” Ida scuffed her boots against the floor, looking bored. “I’ve a rally to plan.”

Biddle tugged open his right-hand drawer to scrounge for aspirin.

“Sheriff, did you hear me?”

“Yes, loud and clear,” he said, still buried in his desk. He waved at them. “Go, ladies, please, go. But if you think of anything else, give me a call.”

“Good day, then,” Ida said briskly, and rose with a clack of booted heels. “Come along, Dot,” she instructed. With a shuffle of feet and the slap of the door, they were gone.

Frank fished two white pills from his drawer. He blew some fuzz from them before he put them on his tongue and forced them down, grimacing at the powdery taste. But he guessed that swallowing aspirin dry wasn’t half as unpleasant as putting up with Ida and Dot the better part of the morning.

He rubbed at his brow as he glanced at the yellow tablet between his elbows. Barely half the page was filled.

Good grief.

He’d talked with a handful of townsfolk this morning, and no one told him any more than Dot and Ida.

Someone had to have seen or heard something. This town was filled with nosy neighbors who knew more about each other than some spouses. Whoever had iced Milton Grone could not have done it without some kind of slip. No murder—or murderer—was perfect. Not outside the movies anyway.

Frank felt somewhat uneasy being at the helm of such a case. That’s why he’d left the city for River Bend all those years ago. He liked packing a gun, but he didn’t like using one. Here, he mostly mediated arguments, found lost pets, and kept the juvenile delinquents from stirring up trouble beyond stealing a boat for a joyride up the river. Those things, he did well. But solving a murder?

He sighed. That was a bird of a different feather. Kind of like Ida and Dot.

“Sheriff? I’m on time, aren’t I?”

He looked up to see Art Beaner standing across his desk, wiping a palm across his crown to smooth down the sparse tufts of hair.

“I’m not late?” he asked again, rubbing his hands on his plaid Bermudas. Beaner shuffled over to the chair vacated by Ida and sat stiffly. “I played a quick round at the club over in Jerseyville, but I turned down drinks at the nineteenth hole. I told ’em I had a business meeting. They would have gotten a big a kick hearing the sheriff wanted to grill me about Grone’s murder. They would have ribbed me to no end.” He cocked his egg-shaped head and fiddled with his glasses. “So? Can we get it over with as soon as possible? Bertha’s got lunch waiting at home.”

Frank picked up his pencil. If he wanted direct, he’d get it. “Where were you between seven and eight o’clock last Thursday night?”

Beaner leaned forward, his expression incredulous. “You know damned well where I was, Sheriff. Everyone in town knows where I am every Thursday p.m.” He yanked a limp handkerchief from his shorts and blew his nose. Then he stuffed the cloth back in his back pocket. “I’m the chairman of the town board, remember? Heck, I’m more the mayor of this town than Barney Plunkett. Dear God, the man’s barely mobile on a good day.” He went on in a mutter, “Has a cigar with his prune juice before
Wheel of Fortune
after dinner and then he’s out like a light.”

The ache behind Biddle’s forehead thumped, and he wished the aspirin would start kicking in. “We’re discussing Milton Grone not Mayor Plunkett.”

“Sorry.”

Frank tried again. “As I recall it, you and Milt didn’t get along any better than the Hatfields and McCoys. You had a running feud over community dues that he owed.”

“It wasn’t a feud, Frank.” Beaner shook a finger at him. “Merely a loud disagreement.”

Frank didn’t believe a word. “The man shot at you, Art.”

“Maybe so,” Beaner said, settling his sunburned forearms over the alligator on his chest. “But that doesn’t mean I’d go and murder him, does it?”

“Well, it gives you a motive.”

“What motive?” Art guffawed. “I had a better chance getting those back dues paid if Grone were alive and kicking, right?”

Biddle leaned forward. “I’d say you had a much better shot with Grone out of the way. You could hire Stanley Horn to work the legal system and collect all those overdue fees from his estate.”

“Oh, right.” Beaner looked down at his nails.

“You’re a real estate broker, Art. You’ve probably got your eye on Grone’s house, too. Had nerve enough to chat with his widow about her putting the place up for sale? You could probably get it for a song. It’d make one nice flip, as close to the river as it is.”

This time Frank saw Beaner flinch and knew he’d struck a nerve, so he pushed on. “I’ll bet you’ve already been chatting with your golf buddies about it, huh? Would it be nice having one of your pals from the country club living there instead of Shotsie Grone?”

Art finally gave up studying his manicure. “So maybe I did bring up the subject with Milt’s widow, but you can’t blame me for that. Life goes on.” His skin beamed red above his collar. “But I didn’t kill him, I tell you!” His nasal voice soared, enough to double the throbbing in Biddle’s temples. “I was at the meeting when Milton was snuffed. There are at least thirty people who’ll attest to it! My God, Frank,” he went on, retrieving his kerchief for the second time to dab at his forehead. “I was right there alongside Mrs. Evans when we left the town hall. I was the one who found the shotgun, remember? I didn’t even know the man was dead until then, same as everyone else.”

“Maybe you were late to the meeting.”

“I was not!” Beaner stiffened. “I’m always there fifteen minutes early, and I didn’t leave the podium until that loony-tune Ida led that lynch mob toward the Grones’ place.”

“Did you notice anything odd about that particular meeting?” Frank asked, taking a different tack this time, wishing now he’d gone to the meeting himself, rather than staying at home watching hockey with Sarah. Usually, the meetings bored him to tears, what with all that discussion of sewage pumps and recycling projects. Though this one, it seemed, would’ve been worth missing a Blues shootout win against the Blackhawks.

Art tapped a finger to his recessed chin. “Well, here’s how it went. Clara Foley read the minutes, as she always does. Then Ida started her song and dance about the riverfront land being sold, and Shotsie Grone started asking questions about how much money Milton got from Wet ’n’ Woolly.”

“Whoa.” Frank stopped taking notes. “Was Shotsie being there unusual?”

“I’ll say,” Art told him, and sniffed. “If you came every now and again yourself, you’d know why it’s strange. She hasn’t attended before, not even once. But that night she did. She stood up in the back and asked some very direct questions about the property upriver, what it was worth and why River Bend didn’t buy it from Milton.”

Biddle leaned forward. “She didn’t know?”

Art shrugged. “I guess for her, ignorance is bliss. Although I’m not sure as how Milt could’ve kept her in the dark, since the newspaper’s been full of stories about the deal for months.”

“Maybe Shotsie doesn’t read much,” Frank said, thinking of the curvy blonde. She was full of moxie, all right, but he wouldn’t exactly classify her as bright. She was more like a low-watt bulb than a floodlight. Biddle cleared his throat. “So what happened after Shotsie spoke up?”

Beaner shrugged. “First, Shotsie and Ida started arguing, and then Ida struck up the mutiny and town hall emptied out. I tried to make everyone come back, but no one paid much attention.”

Frank figured that happened to Art fairly often.

“I was one of the last to leave. Helen Evans and Dr. Fister can vouch for me. I tagged along with them. And if you can’t trust a grandmother and a minister”—Beaner waggled a finger at him—“then you can’t believe anyone, can you?”

“Right.” Biddle sighed.

Art picked at invisible lint on his plaid shorts. “Are you done with me now, Sheriff? Bertha made pot roast in the crock pot for lunch, and it’s the one thing she cooks that doesn’t taste like shoe leather. I’d hate for her to start eating without me.”

Seeing as how Bertha Beaner weighed at least twice what Art did, Biddle could understand the man’s fear about being late for a meal.

He set down his pen and nodded. “Go right along. I’ll let you know if I need you again.”

“Anytime, Sheriff,” Beaner chirped; but from the speed with which he hopped up from the chair and was gone, Biddle doubted he meant it.

Frank scratched the stubble on his jaw and pondered what he’d just heard.

Art Beaner might be a pompous jerk, but Frank wasn’t sure he had it in him to kill. No, Beaner was too concerned with what people thought of him. Murdering Milton wouldn’t be good for his image at the Jerseyville Country Club.

He pushed away from his desk, setting aside the yellow pad, the topmost page now filled with his chicken scratches.

A few names remained on his interview list. He’d hoped to get to them today.

But at the moment, his stomach growled. Art’s mention of pot roast had him feeling mighty hungry. Surely the investigation could wait until he’d had his lunch.

He went to the door and pulled it wide, only to come face-to-face with Earnest Fister.

The minister looked grim, not that Frank had seen him smile any too often. Still, he always had a kind word or warm greeting.