Crime & Punctuation Read online

  “There she is—my favorite rabble rouser.” The greeting was ambiguous, but Ada’s wide grin reassured me that she wasn’t planning to ban me from the premises. As soon as I was settled at a table, she brought me coffee. It was already doctored the way I like it with two Splendas and a dash of half-and-half.

  “Why do I suddenly feel as if I’m living in an old sitcom?” I asked of no one in particular.

  “Friends?” Ada’s smile widened. “I always liked the atmosphere in Central Perk.”

  “I was thinking of Cheers,” I told her, “where everybody knows your name.”

  “And your business.”

  “That, too.”

  As I sipped my coffee and nibbled a blueberry muffin, I checked out the other “regulars” at Harriet’s and realized with a mild sense of surprise that I did know most of their their names. Somehow, in the last few weeks, I had become part of the community again. So much for all those warnings about making myself unpopular by meddling. Everybody loves a good gossip!

  I nodded to Sonya Adler, Mike’s ex, and her friend Betsy, avoided making eye contact with Clarice Cameron, the minister’s wife, and tried to figure out why the young man in blue jeans and a faded “Feel the Bern” T-shirt looked so familiar. I had a sneaking suspicion it was because I had known his father when he was that same age. Or maybe his grandfather. Sometimes I forget how long ago some of my contemporaries started their families.

  “Well, will you look at that,” Sonya exclaimed.

  Everyone turned to stare through Harriet’s plate glass window at the police station. A woman was being helped out of the backseat of a cruiser. She wasn’t handcuffed, but there was something about the alertness of the uniformed officers on each side of her and the way Detective Hazlett was keeping a close eye on the proceedings that suggested she hadn’t volunteered to come with them.

  The prisoner kept her head down and had the collar of her jacket turned up, but it only took a glimpse of her face in profile to identify her.

  Clarice gasped. “My goodness—they’ve arrested Ronnie North!”

  “Who says she’s under arrest?” Ada asked.

  “Why else would she be taken to the station in a police car?”

  The words were barely out of her mouth when Mike Doran pulled in behind the cruiser, flung himself out of his vehicle, and raced inside.

  Sonya gave a snort of laughter. “The charge can’t be too serious if she called a divorce lawyer to get her off.”

  “Murder is about as serious as you can get,” Clarice murmured.

  Everyone turned to look at her.

  “Do you know something the rest of us don’t?” I asked. “Maybe Ronnie just got pulled over for speeding.”

  “Ronnie attends my husband’s church,” she reminded me, “and so does her housekeeper. Poor Ann. She’s been in a terrible quandary, uncertain whether or not she should speak to the police. Naturally, she went to her pastor for guidance.”

  “Does he share confidences with you, or did you eavesdrop?” Sonya asked.

  There was no love lost there, a story I promised myself I’d pursue some other time. For the moment, I awaited an answer as eagerly as everyone else in the café.

  Clarice Cameron ignored Sonya’s question, but she was only too eager to share what she knew. There was an undercurrent of glee in her voice, making me wonder what Ronnie had done to make an enemy of the minister’s wife.

  “Ann heard grandmother and granddaughter quarreling the morning of the day Tiffany died.”

  I looked at her askance. “That’s it? Hardly grounds to accuse someone of murder.”

  “I heard Tiffany Scott drowned,” the young man said. “An accident.”

  Sonya looked thoughtful as she toyed with a spoon. “She was a very good swimmer. She was in the water almost every day. Back before her husband announced his big plans for the property, people thought he might have bought Chestnut Park just so she could have the lake all to herself.”

  Clarice was nodding like a bobble-head. “She’d never have drowned by accident. I’ll bet you anything that the tests they did on Tiffany’s body came back to say she was drugged before she went into the water, and who would have been in a better position to doctor her food? She had lunch with Grandma almost every day.”

  While the other patrons at Harriet’s continued to speculate, I kept my thoughts to myself. Foremost among them was denial. I could think of no reason why Ronnie would to do away with her own granddaughter. Despite the fact that we’d all seen her taken into police headquarters, I couldn’t believe it was because Detective Hazlett thought she’d killed Tiffany.

  Maybe Ronnie and Tiffany had quarreled that morning, but that didn’t mean much. Clarice didn’t appear to know what they’d argued about. Her interpretation of what Ann had told her husband was obviously colored by her personal dislike of a woman who enjoyed lording it over others. I sympathized. I didn’t care for Ronnie either, but that didn’t mean I would blithely sling accusations her way.

  Revolted by the increasingly wild guesses Ada’s patrons were voicing about Ronnie’s relationship with her granddaughter, I gathered up my laptop, paid my bill, and headed for my car. I did not go home. Instead I drove to Ronnie’s house. I wanted to hear the story of her quarrel with Tiffany from the horse’s mouth.

  Chapter 25

  When Ann opened the door at the North house, I could tell she’d been crying. Suddenly, I felt awkward. I was intruding at an emotional time, and when you got right down to it, Ronnie’s removal to the police station was none of my business. Despite my reservations, and before I could talk myself out of asking, I blurted out my question.

  “Has Ronnie been arrested for murder?”

  “They took her in for questioning.” Ann swiped at her damp cheeks. “It’s all my fault. I should have kept my big mouth shut.”

  My mind was whirling. Had the police, contrary to what they’d led everyone to believe, continued to investigate Tiffany’s death as a possible homicide? They did tricky things like that all the time in the movies, but I always assumed that the screenwriters made them up.

  Ann turned away from the door, leaving it open, and headed down the hall toward the back of the house. I took that as an invitation to follow her and caught up with her in a spacious, gleaming kitchen that smelled more strongly of Clorox than it did of cooking.

  “It’s not your fault, Ann. You had to tell the police what you knew.”

  Abruptly, the floodgates opened. I slung a comforting arm around Ann’s shoulders and guided her to a kitchen chair. The least I could do was offer tea and sympathy while she cried. I bustled about, finding everything I needed in logical places, and in short order had placed two steaming cups of Earl Grey on the table in front of us. Ann sniffled and sipped and looked grateful for the pampering.

  “I hear you overheard a quarrel,” I said when I’d taken a few swallows from my own cup. I’m not a big tea drinker, but anything hot is soothing when you need to calm down.

  “Hard not to,” Ann said with a shrug of her bony shoulders.

  “Loud, huh?”

  “They always were.” A tiny smile curved the corners of her mouth upward. “Tiffany inherited her grandmother’s temper.”

  “Were they often at odds?”

  “Often enough.” She ran a finger around the rim of her cup.

  “What were they arguing about this time?”

  Ann shook her head. “I stopped paying attention years ago.”

  I gave her a sharp look.

  She took offense. “I’m an employee in this house. I don’t get paid to listen in on conversations.”

  “So you didn’t hear anything unusual? No threats?”

  “The boss lady was always threatening to cut Tiffany out of her will.”

  So much for not listening.

  “If you didn’t hear anything incriminating, why are the police questioning Ronnie?”

  “Mostly because I didn’t tell them about the quarrel until yesterday.
That detective got pretty huffy about me withholding evidence, but I told him I wasn’t sure it was important. Besides, if they’d asked me the right questions at the beginning, I’d have told them sooner. It’s not like Mike Doran mentioned it, either.”

  I felt myself tense. “Mike was here that morning? While they were shouting at each other?”

  “Sure was.”

  I had no idea what to make of that revelation, nor could I figure out why the police had taken Ronnie down to their headquarters instead of just questioning her at home. It didn’t sound as if they had much to go on . . . unless Clarice’s theory about the autopsy results was right on the money. I was trying to think of a subtle way to ask Ann if she knew what medications Ronnie had in the house when the back door slammed open with a crash and, preceded by a whiff of Emeraude, Ronnie stalked into the kitchen.

  She was breathing fire even before she spotted me. My presence sent her right over the edge. “What the hell are you doing in my house?”

  I stood up in a rush, prepared to make a run for it. Even though I didn’t believe Ronnie had killed anyone, I was suddenly very much aware that there were a number of dangerous weapons in the room, everything from carving knives to cast iron skillets.

  “Now you just settle down, Ronnie North,” Ann said.

  We both stared at her. Given the state she’d been in only minutes earlier, I couldn’t have been more surprised if a garden gnome had spoken.

  “Mikki and me, we were just chatting. Did you know we used to play together when we were kids?”

  “You were gossiping.” Ronnie snapped out the accusation. “I won’t have it.”

  Having cowed her housekeeper, she turned on me. In contrast to her red face and burning gaze, her words were ice cold. She enunciated each one with a precision that left me in no doubt about how serious she was.

  “Get out of my house, Mikki, and this time don’t come back. You’ll never be welcome here.”

  Chapter 26

  There was nothing about reopening the investigation into Tiffany Scott’s death in the next morning’s newspaper, but all that day my mind kept returning to the case. Much as I disliked Ronnie, I disliked even more the idea that an innocent person could be suspected of murder.

  By three o’clock that afternoon, I’d given up trying to accomplish anything to do with editing. The thumb drive weighed heavily on my conscience. That the police had questioned Ronnie suggested that they had changed their minds about Tiffany’s death being an accident. If that was so, any potential evidence belonged in their hands.

  If they were focused on Ronnie as a suspect, they’d be disappointed. There was nothing in the files I’d looked at to indicate that she had any reason to harm her granddaughter. There weren’t even any mature female characters, evil or good, in Tiffany’s novel.

  I had a brief, unworthy moment when I considered delaying just to make Ronnie sweat, but petty vindictiveness is an unattractive trait. I had to do what was right, no matter how she’d behaved toward me. Since I had it in my power to help clear her of suspicion and point the finger in a more likely direction at the same time, I could no longer shirk my civic duty.

  I tried to keep my promise to notify Mike first. I phoned him before I left the house, but my call went straight to voice mail. I didn’t leave a message. Despite his warning, I felt certain I didn’t need a lawyer.

  Detective Hazlett kept me waiting for forty-five minutes and looked harassed and out-of-sorts when I was finally admitted to his inner sanctum. He did not get up. “What can I do for you today, Ms. Lincoln?”

  “It’s what I can do for you, Detective Hazlett.” I placed the thumb drive on the only relatively uncluttered spot on his blotter.

  “What’s this? No.” He held up a hand. “I can see it’s a flash drive. Why are you giving it to me?”

  “It belonged to Tiffany Scott.”

  I lowered myself into the visitor’s chair so that we were at eye level. His eyes narrowed and the rest of his face turned to stone, giving me an uh-oh moment and making me wonder if I should have waited until Mike could come with me after all. Since it was too late to contact my lawyer friend, I sat with my hands primly folded in my lap and waited to hear what Detective Hazlett had to say.

  “Did you have this when I interviewed you after her death?”

  “I did, but I didn’t know it. I discovered it much later, inside the mailer that contained her manuscript. It was buried way down at the bottom, easy to overlook. If I didn’t recycle packing materials, I’d never have found it at all.”

  There, I thought. That didn’t stretch the truth by much. If he asked me directly when I’d found the thumb drive, I’d tell him, but I saw no point in making trouble for myself. Let him assume that I’d just now come across it and had brought it straight to the police station.

  Hazlett picked up my offering and turned it over and over in his fingers. Obviously, he wasn’t planning to dust for prints. I had the uneasy feeling that he didn’t quite believe my story. I wanted to jump in to defend myself, but common sense warned me to keep quiet. I’d do better to wait and see what developed.

  “You were reusing the mailer?” he asked.

  “Not exactly. I had tossed it into a bin with other padded envelopes good enough to reuse. It was because people kept asking me if Tiffany had left anything with me besides her manuscript that I went looking for it.”

  “People?” Only by the slightest shift in position did he indicate that my words had piqued his interest. “What people?”

  “Well, Ronnie North, for one.” It wouldn’t do to let her off the hook entirely. “And Alan Van Heusen, on behalf of Gregory Onslow.” I briefly described the visit from Van Heusen, emphasizing his threatening manner and my discomfort in his presence. “I didn’t think to check the mailer right away, but when I did, I found the thumb drive.”

  Hazlett’s steady stare was starting to make me nervous. “What’s on it?”

  “You’re assuming I looked at it?”

  He very nearly cracked a smile. “I can’t imagine that you didn’t, Ms. Lincoln, and you wouldn’t be here handing it over if you didn’t have some reason to think I’d be interested in the contents.”

  “I don’t know if you will be or not. All the files appear to be related to research for Tiffany’s novel, and the novel itself in on there, of course. I just . . . I thought you should have it.”

  Belatedly, I remembered that I’d already given Ronnie a copy of Tiffany’s thumb drive. I wondered why she hadn’t mentioned it to Hazlett. From his reaction to the original, it was clear that this was the first he’d heard of its existence. Of course, considering the way Ronnie felt about me, it wouldn’t have surprised me to learn that she’d tossed her copy in the trash without even looking at it.

  “I see,” said the detective. “Very well, Ms. Lincoln. Thank you. I’ll take charge of it.”

  “You really should read the files. And the novel.”

  He shot me one of those “give me patience” looks. “Why is that?”

  “There are characters in the book that, uh, seem to be based on real people.”

  He waited.

  “On her husband and his flunky, Alan Van Heusen. They’re both portrayed as crooked businessmen. Mobsters. Onslow may be in there twice, as the prototype for two different characters, both of them villains.”

  “Murderers, I suppose?”

  “Well, the novel is set in the heyday of Murder Incorporated.” I couldn’t quite keep the sarcasm out of my voice.

  “I’ll take that into consideration.” When I made no move to leave, he added in a resigned tone of voice, “Is there something else?”

  I tried to think how to ask him if he’d reopened the case. Finally I just blurted it out. I knew before he opened his mouth that he wasn’t going to give me a straight answer. He was too polite to order me to get the hell out of his office, but what he did say amounted to the same thing.

  “I’m afraid that’s a police matter, Ms. Lincol
n.” He stood to encourage me to do the same.

  Accepting that he wasn’t going to tell me anything, I reluctantly eased out of the uncomfortable visitor’s chair and left. I walked through the police station with all the dignity I could muster. Clearly my help was neither wanted nor appreciated. Why, I wondered, did that sting my pride? I should be relieved to be free of the obligation to set the record straight about Tiffany’s death. Hazlett was perfectly correct when he said that some things were better left to the police.

  Chapter 27

  I returned home to find Ann Ellerby sitting on my front porch. It was a sunny day and not too cold, and she was warmly dressed. She also had a cup of coffee in one hand and her feet up on the table in front of one of my two wicker chairs.

  “Hey,” she greeted me.

  “Hey, yourself.” I eyed her drink.

  “That nice George Finkel got it for me when I said I’d wait till you got back. Hope that’s okay.”

  I had told all the workmen they were welcome to put their lunches in my refrigerator, although none of them had taken me up on the offer. I was pretty sure I hadn’t said they could use my Keurig, but I wasn’t inclined to complain. At least George had been sensible enough not to invite anyone to wait inside the house when I wasn’t there.

  “No problem.” I took the other chair. “What’s up?”

  “Well, she didn’t fire me.”

  At once I felt guilty. It hadn’t once occurred to me that Ronnie might let her longtime housekeeper go just because she’d talked to the police . . . or to me. “Did you think she was going to?”

  Ann shrugged. “Not really. Besides, if she did, she’d only hire me back again.” Her sudden grin made her look years younger. “Hard to get rid of somebody when they live right in the same house with you.”

  “An unheated room in the attic?”

  “A two-room suite on the third floor with its own bath.”

  “Nice. How did you end up working for Ronnie in the first place?”

  “She saved my life. Really,” she insisted when she saw the doubtful look on my face. “I was going through a bad divorce. My almost ex didn’t like that I left him. Well, what choice did I have when he came after me with a baseball bat? Anyway, I was staying at the women’s shelter, and Ronnie volunteers there. We got to talking, and the next thing I know, she offered me a job. The next time hubby tried to get to me, all kinds of burglar alarms went off, and that was that. No more bail for him. He’s in prison now and will be for a good long time, and I’m making excellent money just for keeping Ronnie’s place clean and doing a little cooking.”