Clause & Effect Page 12

  His head jerked up, a look of surprise on his face. He started to sputter a denial, until he got a good look at my implacable expression. “How did you find out?”

  “It was someone way back in my family who promiscuously scattered those apple seeds.”

  “She said it made good theater. And you can’t deny that Joshua Baxter was one of the founders of Lenape Hollow. I didn’t see the harm in embellishing the story a little.”

  “This is the historical society, Gilbert.” Although Shirley’s lips were pursed in a stock expression of disapproval, her eyes glittered with barely suppressed amusement. “We’re supposed to be able to separate fact from fiction. How would it look if this perversion of the truth became public knowledge? That the director of this institution colluded to spread fake history would create a terrible scandal.”

  “Now just a minute! You can’t tell anyone. It wouldn’t just ruin my reputation, it would damage the entire organization. The organization that pays your salary,” he added, in case she’d missed his point.

  “No one wants to discredit either you or the society,” I said, “but you see the problem. The longer the police investigation drags on, the more irrelevant information will come to light. What else can you tell us about Grace?”

  “I didn’t kill her. You have to believe that. I had nothing against Grace. I had no reason to wish her ill.”

  “Who did?”

  He hesitated, but only for a moment. “Ronnie North for one. She couldn’t stand Grace. And there was a woman on the board back then who accused Grace of trying to seduce her husband.”

  Taken aback, I stared at him. “Which board member?”

  He lifted his thin shoulders in a shrug. “Who remembers after all this time?”

  “Sunny Feldman?” I asked. “Elise Sanders? Judy Brohaugh? No. Sorry. Twenty-five years ago she was Judy Kenner.”

  “I don’t remember.” He spoke firmly but the way he avoided meeting my eyes made me suspect he remembered perfectly well. For some reason, he didn’t want to share the name.

  I tried asking for the same information in a different way. “Do you know if Grace was involved with anyone?”

  “I don’t know anything, but it wouldn’t surprise me. She was . . . free with her favors. The way I heard it, the board had serious doubts about approving her to work on the project. Her . . . reputation had preceded her.”

  Sure, blame the victim. Baxter’s claim made me question everything he’d told us so far. Ronnie had called Grace a twit, not a tramp, and my old nemesis was not one to mince words. Then again, if Baxter was telling the truth, he’d just put a woman near the top of my list of suspects. Could Ronnie have been the one who accused Grace of trying to steal her man? I didn’t know if she’d still been married to husband number two at that point, or if she’d been a widow already working on acquiring husband number three. Either way, she’d certainly have taken exception to another woman’s attempt at poaching.

  “Do you remember any of the names of men who . . . associated with her?” Shirley asked.

  “It was a long time ago. I barely remember her.” Abruptly, face brightening, he sat up a little straighter. “Wait a minute. Think about it. There’s no reason her killer had to be someone connected to the historical society at all. Some discarded lover probably murdered her.”

  “You say you barely remember her, and yet you were the one who told me she left Lenape Hollow because she had a job offer. Why did you think so?”

  A new storm brewed in his gray eyes. I began to see a pattern. The more direct the question, the more irritated he became. And every time he offered information, it was to deflect our attention from the specific to the general.

  “It was just an impression I had,” he said through clenched teeth. “She was always talking about how she was sure her big break was just around the corner. Look, I don’t know what more you think I can tell you. I’m not the one who killed her. I had no reason to.”

  “Who were her friends? What about her family?” I asked.

  “She was a local girl,” Baxter said, “but as far as I know, she didn’t have any family left in the area. I suppose she had friends from high school, but I don’t know any of their names. Tony Welby might recall. He was one of her teachers and worked part-time as a guidance counselor back then. When we needed someone to write the pageant script and she applied for the job, he wrote her a recommendation.”

  “Was his honor the mayor a member of the historical society back then?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes.” Baxter’s lips twisted into a sneer. “That was shortly before he ran for state office the first time. He joined every civic, fraternal, and charitable group in the area—anything to make a good impression on potential voters.”

  “Do you have any idea where Grace lived? Maybe one of her neighbors still remembers her.” And who visited her, I added to myself.

  “I think she rented one of the small upstairs apartments on South Main Street. Above where the Woolworths used to be.”

  “Across from Ivy’s Beauty Shop?”

  Baxter looked uncertain, but I had a clear picture in my mind of a nondescript door located between the five-and-dime and a store that sold ladies’ dresses. At the top of the steep flight of stairs behind it, off a landing, were two more doors that faced each other. One opened into an apartment. The other was Ivy’s.

  I spent a lot of time in that beauty parlor as a child. Customers entering found themselves in a hallway. A tiny kitchen was straight ahead. Turning left took them past the bathroom and on into the two rooms devoted to doing hair and nails. To the right of the entrance was Ivy’s bedroom, and on its far side there was a living room. Its big front windows overlooked Main Street. On the days when Ivy did my mother’s hair, a once-a-week ritual, she used to stash me in there, out of the way. I’d play quietly with my dolls until Mom was ready to go home.

  That Baxter was able to recall where Grace lived seemed suspicious to me, and I was about to ask him if he had ever visited her at home when the sound of the front door opening and closing reached us. A moment later, someone rapped on the frosted glass that bore the director’s name.

  “Just a minute,” Baxter called. Lowering his voice to a warning whisper, he glared at the two of us. “It would not be good for the society’s reputation, or for the forthcoming festivities, if you were to speculate about any of this in public. Are we agreed on that point?”

  “Certainly.” Shirley’s reply was brisk and unequivocal, if not necessarily truthful.

  My answer came out sounding more than a little sarcastic. “I wasn’t planning on talking to the media,” I drawled.

  Let him make of that statement what he would! It was as much of a promise as he was going to get. In just a few hours, when the pageant-writing committee met at my house for a previously scheduled final work session, the murder of Grace Yarrow would inevitably come up in conversation. I intended to take full advantage of the opportunity to speculate about who might have killed her, while at the same time picking the brains of the two women who had been on the board of directors twenty-five years ago. A good old-fashioned gossip session might go a long way toward revealing who had known what back in the day.

  As soon as Shirley admitted Baxter’s visitor, we left the room. I nodded to Detective Jonathan Hazlett on my way out, not at all surprised that he wanted another word with the director. My only regret was that I had no excuse to linger and eavesdrop on their conversation.

  Chapter 20

  The meeting at my house that evening was our last chance to work out problems with the script before we handed it over to Diego. I’d invited Darlene, Sunny, and Stacy. Ronnie had simply announced that she intended to show up, too. Her excuse was that she’d appointed herself head of publicity for the pageant.

  Initially I wasn’t happy about the prospect of having her there. Who needs unsolicited input at such a late date? As things turned out, though, I was glad she was coming. It would save me the trouble of seeking her
out to ask questions about Grace Yarrow.

  “I always admired your mother’s flair for decorating,” Ronnie said when she walked into the dining room.

  “A compliment, Ronnie?”

  If it was, it was a backhanded dig at the clutter currently surrounding us. I’d had to put the extra leaves in the table to make room for all our notes and reference books, not to mention the various versions of the script.

  “What I remember is that she put plastic runners over the carpet in the hall so we wouldn’t get it dirty by walking on it.” Darlene’s comment proved she had known Mom a lot better than Ronnie had.

  “She had her quirks,” I agreed. At least she hadn’t also covered the chairs and sofa in plastic as some housewives did in the 1950s.

  Darlene stopped what she was doing to look around. “We all slept in here, on the floor, rolled up in blankets, at those pajama parties you used to throw.”

  “So childish.”

  Ronnie’s remark stung, the more so because I’d invited her to all those parties and she’d never once returned the favor. Of course, her parties tended to be a bit wilder than mine when we were in high school. Since she was a cheerleader, all the jocks showed up, usually bringing their own supply of enjoyment enhancer.

  Where was I on those weekends? Usually at the movies with a group of dateless girls who hung out together throughout our teenage years.

  “Your mom must have baked for days beforehand to produce all the goodies she served,” Darlene said, still reminiscing.

  “I hate to shatter your illusions, but she picked up the cold cuts at the deli, the one that used to be just down the street from where O’Day Antiques is now, and she drove to Liberty to buy all those wonderful cookies, cakes, hard rolls, and bagels.”

  “From Katz’s,” said Sunny, and heaved a longing sigh.

  “Best bakery ever.” For once, Ronnie, Darlene, and I were in complete agreement.

  Although glimpses of our high school days weren’t what I’d hoped to encounter in a stroll down memory lane, I went with the flow. At some point, I’d find an opportunity to fast-forward this nostalgia-fest and focus on the period just before the bicentennial.

  “Remember how we all got charm bracelets for our sixteenth birthdays?” Darlene asked. “Do you still have yours?”

  “Of course,” Ronnie said. “I treasure it.”

  I shrugged. “Mine is around somewhere, probably in one of the boxes in the attic.”

  “Excuse me,” Stacy interrupted, “but aren’t we supposed to be putting the finishing touches on the pageant?”

  The puzzled and slightly bored expression on her face suggested she’d spent the last few minutes trying to translate a conversation carried on in Klingon. For once, there was no sign of her cell phone. She was serious about getting some work done.

  “Quite right,” Ronnie agreed. “Can someone bring me up to speed? If you’ll synopsize what you’ve written, scene by scene, I should be able to pick out what will be most effective in the promotions.”

  “Maybe you could just listen in on our discussion and take notes,” Darlene suggested.

  “I have too much else to do to spend all evening on this.”

  I thought fast. “Darlene, why don’t you and Stacy sit Ronnie down and take her through highlights of the script while Sunny and I go get the snacks and drinks from the kitchen?”

  Obligingly, Sunny eased out of her chair and fumbled for her cane. She was eighty-five years old, a fact emphasized by the bulging veins and creased skin on the backs of her hands. It would have been more reasonable to ask her to work with Ronnie and recruit twenty-four-year-old Stacy to give me a hand, but Stacy wasn’t around twenty-five years ago.

  I’d prepared one platter of cheese and crackers and another with raw veggies—thin carrot and celery sticks, cherry tomatoes, broccoli florets, and zucchini spears. I took them out of the refrigerator along with a container of dip and followed that up by hauling out pitchers of lemonade and iced tea. Everything went onto a wheeled serving cart for the short trip into the adjoining room.

  Sunny watched me without comment until the last of the items had been loaded aboard. “What am I supposed to do? Push it?”

  “You’re supposed to help me with something else entirely.”

  I cocked my head to better hear the murmur of conversation in the dining room. I couldn’t make out words, but all three women were talking. Sunny and I should have a few minutes before anyone wondered what was keeping us.

  “Grace Yarrow,” I said bluntly. “You’ve heard they identified her as our Jane Doe?”

  “Who hasn’t?” Her tone of voice and her facial expression gave nothing away.

  I leaned back against the kitchen counter and folded my arms. “You knew her.”

  “Slightly.”

  “You were on the board back then. You must have voted to approve choosing her to write the bicentennial pageant.”

  “Well, I certainly didn’t want to do it myself. Get to the point, Mikki. I’m old. I could croak waiting for you to stop beating around the bush.”

  “You’ll probably outlive us all. But my point, and I do have one, is that it was probably someone connected with the historical society who murdered Grace and hid her body in the chimney. Suspicion will haunt everyone in the organization and cling to our celebration of the founding of Lenape Hollow until that person is identified.”

  I didn’t think it was possible for someone so much shorter than I am to look down her nose at me. Sunny managed it. “What, exactly, do you think I’ll remember after a quarter of a century?”

  “How about the name of the person on the board of directors who accused Grace of seducing her husband.”

  A faint smile hovered around Sunny’s mouth. “I trust you don’t suspect me. I’ve never been married, and contrary to popular belief, I don’t eat my lovers after we have sex.”

  I was searching in vain for a clever comeback to that remark when Calpurnia rescued me. She appeared out of nowhere to glide over to the cart, go up on her hind legs, and snag a piece of cheese.

  Sunny’s smile blossomed into a grin. “What’s his name?”

  “Her. It’s Calpurnia.”

  “After Caesar’s wife?”

  “Because she’s a calico and she purrs.”

  When Cal rubbed her head against Sunny’s legs, the Feldman heir chuckled and reached down to stroke the cat’s soft fur. Then she plucked another small slice of cheese off the serving cart and fed it to her.

  “Don’t encourage the little beggar.”

  “Why not? We girls have to stick together.”

  That sounded promising. “About the board members—”

  “All right, already. Ronnie was one of them, as was Darlene’s sister, Judy, and Elise Sanders. Elise died several years ago. She was five-foot-nothing and skinny as a rail. There’s no way she could have stuffed anybody up a chimney, let alone a woman of Grace’s full-bodied proportions. I doubt I would have been able to heft her either, especially if she was dead weight.”

  Ronnie and Judy on the other hand, were both sturdily built. Twenty-five years ago they’d been in their early forties, older than Grace but still capable of bashing her over the head. That either one of them could have disposed of the body without help was harder to imagine, but not impossible.

  Tucking her cane under her arm, Sunny grabbed hold of the serving cart with both hands and used it like a walker. Pushing it ahead of her, she headed for the dining room. “Food’s ready!” she called out as she went.

  Calpurnia was right on her heels.

  I was about to follow them when the landline rang and my sister-in-law’s name popped up on the caller ID on the kitchen extension. Since Allie usually preferred email to talking on the telephone, I picked up, worried there might be some sort of family emergency.

  “Allie? Is everything okay?”

  “I just wanted to hear your voice. It’s been too long.”

  “I’m sorry. I know I haven’t bee
n good about keeping in touch. Things have just been a little hectic around here. I’ve been helping out with a pageant to celebrate the founding of Lenape Hollow.”

  I didn’t tell her I’d discovered a body. My sister-in-law is a worrier. There was no sense in giving her any more cause than she already had to fuss about my moving so far away from the rest of the family. After a few more minutes of back and forth, I told her I had people in the house, working on the pageant script, and needed to get back to them.

  I’d just said good-bye when Ronnie poked her head into the kitchen from the hall. I took one look at her face and braced myself for trouble. Just the fact that she’d taken the long way around, through the living room and hall instead of the door that went directly from the dining room into the kitchen, told me she wanted to ream me out in private.

  “Do you really think I could have killed that Yarrow woman?” Ronnie demanded.

  “I don’t know. Did you?”

  “If I had, I’d have found a much more efficient way to dispose of her body.”

  “Now, that I do believe. I take it Sunny shared the gist of my conversation with you. Did she also tell you I was asking about husband-poaching? According to Gilbert Baxter, someone on the board at the time of the bicentennial made that accusation against Grace Yarrow. Was it you?”

  “Certainly not. Twenty-five years ago, I was in my second widowhood and hadn’t yet met my third husband. I had no interest in what Grace got up to.”

  “Did you know she had a reputation for being fast?”

  Ronnie shrugged. “It was none of my business who she slept with.”

  “What about Elise and Judy? Did they care?”

  Looking thoughtful, she came down off her high horse. “To tell you the truth, I don’t even remember hearing that Grace was involved with any married man. Then again, since I didn’t think much of her, we had very little direct contact. I wasn’t close to Elise or Judy, either. Neither of them would have chosen me as a confidante.”

  “Would they have confided in Gilbert Baxter?”