A Pour Way to Dye (Book 2 in the Soapmaking Mysteries) (24 page)

“
Yes, ma’am. Hold on one
second.” He cradled the telephone between his cheek and his
shoulder and asked, “May I help you?”

“
I need to see
Kelly.”

He rolled his eyes. “Haven’t we gone over
this before? Without an appointment, you can’t get in. Sorry.” He
didn’t seem to be sorry at all.

We were both surprised when Kelly walked out
of her office. “Ben? I thought I heard your voice. Come on
back.”

The receptionist looked at me as if he wanted
to set fire to me. It was all I could do not to smile at him as I
walked past him into the inner sanctum.

There were a thousand things I wanted to say
to Kelly, and none of them had to do with Earnest Joy’s murder. She
looked absolutely lovely in her business suit with her blonde hair
pulled back, though I still preferred her in blue jeans.

“
Ben, I’m not sure why
you’re here,” she said.

“
I need to ask you
something. Is Linda Mae still in town?” I asked.

“
What? Is that why you came
here?” She looked startled by my question, as if she’d expected
something completely different.

“
I saw her going into your
office yesterday, and I need to know if you’re her
attorney.”

“
I can’t tell you that,” she
said.

“
Don’t give me some guff
about attorney-client privilege,” I said. “This is
important.”

“
And my principles aren’t?”
Kelly asked.

“
Is she gone?” I
asked.

Kelly looked as if she wanted to cry. It was
hard seeing. the saddened expression on her face. She was normally
a strong, vibrant woman. Had my presence done this to her? No,
there had to be something else going on in her life.

She sighed, then admitted, “I don’t know why
I’m sparring with you. She’s not a client.”

“
I saw her here,” I
said.

“
She came by,” Kelly
admitted. “But after we talked, she decided to drop her case. The
woman has absolutely no proof that she and Earnest Joy were ever
married. All it took was one call to the Bureau of Records in Clark
County to prove that.” Kelly’s voice softened as she added, “How
are you, Ben?”

“
I’ve been better,” I said.
“How about you?”

She shrugged as her receptionist came in,
handing her a briefcase.

“
Sorry to interrupt,” he
said, “but you’re late.”

She glanced at the clock, then said, “Ben,
I’ve got to go. Sorry to make this so short.”

“
I got what I came for,” I
said. “Thanks for the information.”

We walked out of the office together, but
didn’t share another word until she said good-bye in a muted voice.
It had been pretty painful for me to be around her, but she’d
dumped me. So why was she acting that way? Maybe it was guilt from
the way she’d handled it. I couldn’t be mad at her anymore, though.
Kelly was trying to put her family back together, and I knew it
couldn’t be easy for her. The best thing I could do was to stay
away from her.

I drove toward the soap shop, but I couldn’t
take the grilling I was going to get from the family, at least not
yet. I decided to circle the block a few times to clear my head. As
I approached the jewelry store—a natural part of my route—I looked
toward the front door and saw a woman coming out. She looked
familiar, but with a scarf covering most of her face and large,
dark sunglasses over her eyes, it was hard to say who she was. Then
I saw her beige raincoat open and underneath it, I caught a glimpse
of leopard Capri pants. It had to be Linda Mae. But she was
supposed to be out of town, according to Molly. I tried to find a
place to pull over, but by the time I’d realized it was her, I was
past the store, and there was no place else to park on the street.
When I finally managed to find a spot to pull the Miata into, I
raced back to the shop on foot, but she was gone. I hesitated
before going into the jewelry store. If there was another body in
there waiting to be found, I didn’t want to be the one to stumble
over it. I peeked in through the front window, and saw Terri
working on one of the displays with jewelry made from gold
coins.

At least she was safe. As quietly as I could,
I slipped away and walked back to my car.

I was nearly there when I heard an ambulance
racing down the street. My stomach did a flip as it neared. I had a
feeling that I knew exactly where it was going.

As I suspected, it was headed toward the
nearby neighborhood where Earnest Joy and Ralph Haller lived. I’d
pictured Ralph as the killer, but what if there had been a third
partner in the operation? Could he have taken drastic action to get
the whole pie? It sounded far-fetched even to me, and I wouldn’t
dare try it out on Molly. Okay, forgetting the phantom third
partner for a second, maybe someone knew what Ralph and Earnest
were up to. Could they have tried to move in on the scam, whatever
it was that had afforded Earnest Joy’s expensive getaway?
Possibilities were flying through my mind as I neared their street.
I was surprised to see the ambulance in front of the Joy house, not
the Haller place, though. As I got there, they were wheeling
someone out on a gurney.

Chapter 11

I pulled up just as Molly got on the scene.
She shook her head when she saw me. “You’re making a habit of this,
aren’t you?”

“
I thought you were in
court,” I said.

“
After he saw me waiting to
testify, Frank Jordan decided to take the plea bargain he’d been
offered before. It was a smart move. I was getting ready to nail
him.”

Molly approached one of the attendants as
they loaded the stretcher into the back of the ambulance. “What
happened?”

“
It looks like a suicide
attempt,” he said as he worked to secure the gurney in the
vehicle.

I looked in and saw Andrew Joy’s face
partially obscured by an oxygen mask.

Molly asked, “What did he try to do? There’s
no blood.”

“
This one went with pills.
There are enough empty bottles in there to stock a pharmacy. We’ve
got to roll.”

After they sped away, Molly turned to me.
Before she could say anything, I said, “Hey, I had nothing to do
with this, either.”

“
I know that,” she said.
“You don’t have any business being here, though.”

“
Can I come in with you,
anyway?” I asked. “It’s not like it’s a crime scene or
anything.”

Molly shook her head. “I’m not willing to say
that until I’ve had a look around. Go home, Ben.”

“
I think I’ll stick around,”
I said. “I want to see what you find out.”

“
What makes you think I’ll
tell you anything, even if I do find something out?”

“
I can hope, can’t
I?”

She didn’t say anything as she headed into
the house. I waited outside, half expecting Ralph Haller to come
out and accuse me of attempted murder.

Where was Ralph? The ambulance’s sirens and
flashing lights should have brought him out like a shot. If he was
home.

I decided to walk over there and nose around.
Maybe he’d left something in plain sight that he shouldn’t
have.

I walked to the front door, rang it twice,
then pounded on the frame. “Ralph. It’s Ben Perkins. I need to talk
to you.”

Nothing. I peered in through the side window,
but though the curtain was still askew, I couldn’t see anything out
of the ordinary. The place was still a mess, and it made looking
for clues even harder. I decided to get a better view, so I walked
around to the side of the house and tried to look in one of the
windows. From next door, I heard Molly shout from the porch, “Get
away from there. Do I have to arrest you for trespassing to keep
you out of trouble?”

“
I’m just looking for
Ralph,” I said.

“
Well stop peeping in
through his windows, will you?”

She walked back into the house, and I started
toward my oar when Ralph’s trash can caught my eye. He’d already
wheeled it to the curb, and I found myself wondering if he’d thrown
anything incriminating away. I flipped the lid off the can and
grabbed the top bag. If he’d done anything lately, it would be in
that bag. At least it didn’t reek. I drove off before Molly could
arrest me for stealing garbage and leaded back to the soap shop. I
would have liked the privacy of my apartment to sort through
Ralph’s trash— especially if it turned out to be a dead end—but
there was no way I was going to spread his refuse out on my coffee
table.

I parked on the fresh asphalt in back and
took a cardboard box out of the recycling bin. Cindy was a nut for
saving the environment every chance she could, and I’d found that
she’d actually started to convert me to her side. I cut the
cardboard until I had a large, flat surface and tore the bag
open.

At first glance, there was nothing there
worth seeing. I look a stick and sorted through take-out bags from
every fast-food joint in town, and I wondered if the man ever ate a
meal he’d prepared himself. I was one of the world’s worst cooks,
but I still managed to feed myself better than that. The problem
was that all of the takeout refuse obscured the rest of the trash.
I ducked inside the shop, grabbed a pair of work gloves and a trash
bag, then started back outside.

Jeff was there working by himself, and I
thought he was going to ignore me completely when he asked,
“Cleaning up the landscaping, Ben?”

“
Something like that,” I
said, without explaining myself any further. I wasn’t quite ready
to apologize for my earlier behavior yet.

Back outside, I started tossing the wrappings
from Ralph’s meals in the fresh bag, and by the time I’d gotten rid
of everything in that category, I had nearly cleaned off the
cardboard. There were a few wadded up paper towels that I almost
chucked as well when I saw that one of them was coated with some
kind of grayish black material. After pulling that aside, I went
through the rest of the trash, but didn’t find anything else.

As I chucked the trash bag into the Dumpster,
Jeff finally came out. “Okay, I give up. What are you up to?”

Instead of answering his question directly, I
handed him the paper towel. “Does that look familiar to you?”

Jeff grabbed it, studied the stains for a
second, then held it up to his nose. “It’s got some kind of
chemical base,” he said, “but I can’t say more than that. You know
who you should ask?” I’d expected him to say Bob, but he said, “Jim
would probably know what it is.”

“
Not Bob?”

“
He might know,” Jeff
admitted, “but he’s in Charlotte trying to find a new main burner.
The old one’s just about shot.” We melted a great deal of soap
aggregate on our production line, and I knew the burner was crucial
to our operation.

“
So where’s Jim?” I
asked.

“
He’s in Charlotte with
Bob,” Jeff said, trying to hide a growing smile.

“
You nit,” I said, happy for
a taste of the old relationship I’d had with my brother before he’d
started dating Molly.

“
Listen, we need to talk,” I
said.

“
Do we have to?”

“
I do if I’m going to
apologize. I don’t know what’s gotten into me lately, but I’m sorry
for the way I’ve been behaving, okay?”

He looked at me as if he was waiting for the
punch line.

“
I’m serious,” I said. “You
should be able to date whoever you want without worrying about me.
Do you forgive me?”

“
There’s nothing to
forgive,” he said. “I understand where you’re coming
from.”

I nodded, then said, “Now, are you ready to
apologize to me?”

He looked at me cryptically, so I explained.
“You’ve been walking around here like the head rooster in the
henhouse. Maybe you should take it down a notch or two, okay?”

“
Has it been that obvious?”
he asked.

“
Not unless you’re blind,” I
answered.

“
Sorry about that,” he
said.

I put an arm around his neck, gave it an
affectionate hug, then released him and said, “You’re
forgiven.”

I started inside, and he followed me.
Grabbing a plastic baggie, I stuffed the paper towel into it and
sealed it. I wasn’t sure what it meant, but I wanted to ask one of
my other brothers before I threw it away. I hadn’t been wrong about
digging through Ralph’s trash. Maybe I’d just got the wrong
bag.

I headed back out the rear exit when Jeff
asked, “Where are you going?”

“
Trash can diving,” I said.
“Want to come along?”

“
No, thanks.”

This time I was going to get every bag out of
his can, but just as I got there, the garbage truck was pulling
away from Ralph’s house. I’d just missed them.

I was going to give up when I heard Molly
hail me from the front porch of the Joy house. “Are you still
here?”

Instead of telling her about my trash
scavenging, I said, “Did you honestly think I’d give up that
easily?”

She looked around, saw that no one was
watching us, then said, “You might as well come on in. I know
you’ll never stop bugging me until I let you see what’s
inside.”

I raced up the sidewalk toward her. Before
she’d let me inside, she said, “First things first. You are not to
touch anything, do you understand? If I catch you so much as
breathing on something in this house, I’m going to lock you up for
the fun of it. Are we clear?”

“
Yes, ma’am,” I
said.