Accessory to Murder (25 page)

“We're all sorry,” the hawk-nosed guard said. “He's a nice man. Does a lot for the community.” He indicated a display of photos on the far wall. “You can see some of his good works over there. They're for real, too. He's a fine person. Is there any message you'd like to leave for him?”

“No, thanks,” Josie said. “Our business can wait.”

She and Alyce strolled over to the photos. They saw Cliff hugging bald children in a hospital ward. Cliff holding a squirming puppy at an animal shelter. Cliff presenting a check to the American Red Cross. And Cliff shaking the hand of a huge, tattooed man under a banner that said,
CON READ—SOLID, EDUCATIONAL READING FOR PRISONS AND PENITENTIARIES
. The big man's T-shirt said,
KNOWLEDGE IS THE ULTIMATE DEADLY FORCE
.

“My, my,” Josie said. “You really can help yourself when you help others.”

“What do you mean?” Alyce said.

“I know where Cliff could find a hit man to kill his wandering wife.”

The large woman lumbered out of Alyce's guest bedroom and smiled at Josie. “I can't thank you enough,” she said.

Josie blinked. That was Alyce's voice. She could hardly believe the old woman in the nanny's uniform was her friend.

The baggy brown uniform added twenty pounds and twenty years. The lumpy polyester thickened her waist and flattened her breasts. The heavy rubber-soled shoes made her feet seem large and graceless. Her floaty walk was now a down-to-earth stomp.

Too bad the tired lines and shadows on her face were real. Combined with the short, frizzy gray wig, they made Alyce look like her own grandmother.

“It's important to go to Halley's memorial service,” Josie said. “I'm glad we found you a good disguise.”

“No, I want to thank you for making me wear this uniform,” Alyce said.

“You do?”

“It's been ages since anything was too big on me,” Alyce said. “This outfit hangs like an old sack.”

Josie helped Alyce pin the skirt at the waist so it didn't slide off.

“I've never looked worse,” Alyce said with undisguised satisfaction.

“Your own mother wouldn't recognize you,” Josie said.

“Of course not. I look worse than she does, and she's dead.”

“Alyce!” Josie said.

They dissolved into a fit of giggles that lasted all the way to the church. That was the last laughter they would hear for a long time. The day suddenly grew dark and cold. The gilded sun disappeared behind glowering clouds. The rain started as they ran for the church, but this wasn't a romantic funeral mist. The cold shower soaked their clothes.

Josie and Alyce arrived half an hour early, expecting a crowd. Already, the Episcopal chapel was half-full. On a sunny day, the church must seem simple and beautiful. Today, its stark white walls had the warmth of a refrigerator. The blue stained-glass windows looked like shards of ice.

Alyce and Josie slid into the second-last pew, where they were least likely to be noticed. They pulled out prayer books and breathed in the scent of damp wool, candle wax, and hothouse flowers.

The altar was a cloud of white lilies tied with Halley-blue ribbons. An easel held a photomontage of Halley: golden, glowing, and lucky—until the last moment of her life.

“It seems so empty up there without a coffin,” Josie said. “Why was she cremated?”

“It was Cliff's idea,” Alyce said. “He told Linda that Halley didn't want to be buried.”

How convenient, Josie thought. There would be no body to exhume if the police asked awkward questions later. Josie would give a lot to know if Halley's last wishes were in writing.

“That's her in the blue jar?” Josie asked.

Alyce nodded. “Horrible, isn't it? It looks like a candy jar.”

Halley's ashes were in a blue glass urn surrounded by white candles. A ring of fire, Josie thought. The woman was trapped for all eternity in that tiny jar. Cliff had won. He'd kept Halley in St. Louis.

Josie shivered, but not because her clothes were soaked in cold water. The blue glass urn seemed to pulse in the dancing candlelight. Josie wondered if Halley were inside, beating against the hard glass, like a genie trapped in a bottle. No magic could free her. No friend could save her.

Friend. Something nagged at Josie. She'd seen something today at the mall, or maybe at Cliff's office. Something about a friend. The thought niggled and nagged, darting around her mind like an irritating fly. Cliff's friend? Halley's friend? Alyce's friend?

She tried to concentrate on the service. She and Alyce were here to observe the principal players in this drama.

Alyce kept her face shielded by her prayer book. Josie studied the Wood Winds neighbors parading down the aisle. Amy the Slut flounced in first, wearing a black dress as tight as a pressure bandage. Her boobs bulged like forbidden fruit. The mourners looked deliciously scandalized. Amy always gave people what they wanted.

Joanie bustled in next, a small brown bundle of energy. She looked incomplete without a deli tray. Amy gave her a wicked grin. Joanie managed a tentative smile, hesitated, then scurried into the pew behind Amy.

Good for her, Josie thought. Brave little Joanie would not be bullied into sitting next to someone she despised.

Renata Upton Livermore sailed in with her coterie of Alyce cutters. The old woman made a dramatic sight in lavender trimmed with black jet. Betty and Liz trailed behind her, perfectly turned out but somehow diminished in Mrs. Livermore's magnificent wake. Old Lady Liverspot selected a pew two rows from the front, and glared at a black-clad couple until they scooted to the other end. Then she sat down with her attendants.

Last came Linda Dattilo in somber navy. Once again, Josie was startled by the striking combination of green eyes and red-gold hair. How did this rare beauty wind up driving a minivan in Wood Winds?

Linda spotted Joanie, lightly touched her shoulder, and slipped in beside her. As the dead woman's best friend, Linda was entitled to sit closer to the front, but she didn't presume on the family's grief. Josie liked that.

The church was nearly full now. A late arrival pushed into the pew and Josie slid over. Now she had a better view of Cliff Hardwicke in the front row. Halley's husband was tall, bland, and blond. Josie had seen men like him in a hundred annual stockholders' reports.

How could the wildly creative Halley have lived so long with Cliff? At last, Josie thought she understood Halley's affair with skinny little Evelyn. The artist was ridiculous, but at least he was alive. Cliff looked like a robot.

I'm being unfair, she thought. Halley's husband is probably paralyzed by grief. She tried to take the charitable view in church, but Josie disliked Cliff on sight. Besides, she suspected he'd murdered his wife.

Brittney, Cliff and Halley's daughter, sat between her father and a white-haired couple. Judging by their long, bland faces, Josie guessed they were Cliff's parents. There was no sign of Halley's parents. Were they dead? Or too infirm to attend their daughter's funeral?

Five-year-old Brittney was a perfect miniature of her mother, with the same pale blond hair and dark blue eyes, set off by her blue velvet dress. This child was Halley's real masterpiece.

Josie wondered if Brittney's mother had chosen the dress for a special occasion—something besides her own funeral.

“Where's Mommy?” the little girl asked, bunching her blue velvet skirt in her hands.

“Shhh,” her grandfather said, and patted her shoulder. Her grandmother smoothed the child's crumpled skirt.

How could Halley abandon her daughter in St. Louis? Josie prayed the little girl never heard her mother's plans to go to New York alone.

“In the midst of life we are in death,” the minister intoned.

“I want my mommy,” Brittney said. “Where's Mommy?”

Her grandmother tried to comfort the girl, but she shook off the old woman. “I want my mommy.” Now her voice was louder and her face redder.

Her father frowned.

“I want my mommy!”
the child shrieked. The anguished cry seemed to rattle the windows.
“What did you do with her?”

She's in a jar, poor child, Josie thought, and felt a tear slip down her cheek.

Brittney's grandfather gathered the struggling child into his arms and carried her out of the cold church. The little girl kicked and screamed, “Mommy! Mommy, where are you?”

The child's cries wrung Josie's heart. Alyce was weeping softly, and so were many of the men and women nearby.

Dear God, let this miserable service be over, Josie thought. She didn't know if that counted as a prayer, but it was answered. Eventually. Josie couldn't remember a word of the eulogies. But the child's cries were burned in her mind.

The mourners filed out of the ice-blue church, shocked and silent. Alyce and Josie ran through the pounding rain to Josie's car.

“That was a horror show,” Alyce said. “Don't even think about going to the reception at Halley's house.”

Josie started the car. The Honda's steamed-over windows provided Alyce some privacy. She pulled off the wet gray wig and ran her fingers through her own hair. It was flat and oily.

“Of course not,” Josie said. “In close quarters, someone might recognize you.”

“Even if they didn't, I couldn't take it,” Alyce said. “That poor child cried for her mother, and Cliff didn't try to comfort her. He wouldn't hold her. He didn't even take her out of the church. Her grandfather had to do that. Could you imagine living with a man that cold?”

“No,” Josie said.

She wondered if Andy, the man she'd been engaged to when she met Amelia's father, would have been like Cliff if she'd married him. Andy was all business. He even said her engagement ring was an “investment diamond.” Once again, she was glad she'd ruined her life with Nate. There were worse fates than a wild fling and an out-of-wedlock child.

“All Halley's talent was reduced to a handful of crushed bone in that dreadful urn,” Alyce said.

“Do you think Cliff will keep it on the mantel?” Josie asked.

“It won't matter where he keeps it,” Alyce said. “Halley will never get away from him. My Jake is just as trapped. Cliff constructed the perfect frame and put my husband in it. And Jake helped him. Josie, how are we going to get out of this?”

“I don't know,” Josie said.

“Poor Halley,” Alyce said. “Cliff crushed her. He burned her body. He had her ground into powder.”

All that was true.

“But did he kill her?” Josie said. “That's the real question.”

Who killed Halley?

Was it her husband, her lover, or her investor?

They all had good reasons. Halley had used and humiliated all three men in her desperate bid for success.

Cliff had fought with his unfaithful wife the night before she died. He knew thugs who could kill her. He had her body cremated. Those were three good reasons to suspect him.

Then there was the late Evelyn, seething with rage over his lost love—or his lost income. Did he shoot her in a blind rage? Did a witness think Evelyn looked dark-skinned in the shadows of the parking lot? Witnesses were notoriously unreliable. Was his murder proof of Evelyn's innocence? Josie wasn't sure anymore.

Finally, there was Jake. The police had powerful forensic reasons for their choice: DNA and fingerprints. Plus the parking-garage video that showed him handing money to two men, one young and skinny like the killer. The murder weapon was tied to him, too.

The police also had sex and money. Josie agreed with them on that. Alyce wanted to believe her husband was faithful. Mike wanted to give Jake the benefit of the doubt. Maybe Mike was right, but Josie didn't have much faith in the faithfulness of a man with a roving eye.

She thought Jake had had an affair with Halley. If the ambitious designer was willing to slip between Evelyn's unsanitary sheets to advance her career, Halley wouldn't hesitate to seal the deal with Jake with more than a handshake.

Sex and money were a volatile and unstable combination. Halley had lured Jake into stealing his baby son's money. When Halley had tried to nail Jake's last dollar, they'd argued. Did Jake opt for a quick profit with the help of a contract killer? With that keyman policy, Jake had a million-dollar motive for murder.

Josie felt disloyal, but she still wondered if the police had arrested the right man.

You're biased, she told herself. You don't like Jake.

Jake's patrician good looks had no fascination for her. Josie saw the softness of someone who'd never had to struggle. She could never love a man like Jake. But Alyce saw him through different eyes. And Jake was charming—Josie would admit that. She'd seen him work his magic. She could understand his attraction. She just couldn't feel it.

Jake was a man's man, which in Josie's experience meant a man without much regard for women. Josie thought Alyce was the real brains of the marriage. She should be working as a corporate lawyer, preparing the kinds of torts that have nothing to do with kitchens.

But nobody asked you, did they, Josie Marcus? Plenty of people have weighed in on how you should use your talents, and they never include mystery-shopping on their list. But that's what you like to do.

Alyce loves her boy, her Williams-Sonoma kitchen, and the snooty son of a bitch she married. So shut up and help your friend.

Friend. Once again, the word triggered something in Josie's mind. What? Why did she feel so uneasy? What was the connection?

Josie had dropped Alyce off at her home at one o'clock, then drove in the cold rain, trying to sort things out, trying to believe that Jake was innocent and someone else killed Halley. Who? No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't make all the pieces fit for anyone.

Josie decided mystery-shopping would concentrate her mind. She still had Harry's nasty little gift, the Chunk-A-Chickens.

She stopped to fill her car with gas and rummaged in the trunk for her bag of disguises. She couldn't go in that place wearing her best black pantsuit. By the end of the day, it would reek of old grease and dead chickens. In the gas station restroom, she slipped into jeans and a sweater. Better, but she was still overdressed for a Chunk-A-Chicken.

Her first stop was the Chunk-A-Chicken on Clarkson Road. The bright yellow building with the bold orange trim should have seemed cheery. But the floors were dark with dirt and the windows were yellow with airborne grease. Grease coated the hair and face of the sad young employee who took her order.

Why didn't you study harder? Josie wanted to say to the kid. You could have had a real job.

She cleared the trash off a table, and used some of her bottled water to wipe off the sticky soda and spilled gravy. She knew what grade she was giving this place for cleanliness.

Josie sat down in the booth, and immediately cursed her boss and whoever left the wet umbrella puddle on her seat. Now her jeans were wet.

Come on, she told herself. Quit whining and get to work.

She poked around in the foam container of chicken chunks, fries, and gravy. She couldn't find any pieces she could positively identify as wings, legs, breasts, or thighs. But she didn't see any feet, heads, or necks, either. She popped a chunk in her mouth. It tasted like chicken-fried fat. The fries were soggy and slick with grease. The brown gravy was like warm glue. She salted a fry, dragged it through the gravy, and ate it. She could practically feel it clogging her arteries.

At the second Chunk-A-Chicken, Josie decided that Cliff was the most likely suspect after Jake. Halley had wanted a divorce, but Cliff didn't. He was bitter and angry. He'd given her the life he'd promised. Halley had lied to him, humiliated him with an affair, then rejected him and their child, all for a career in New York. How about that for a motive?

Two women said he was violent. Joanie heard him throw things. Amy said he'd left her bruised in bed.

Cliff knew people who could kill Halley, thanks to his charity work. Cliff had access to Jake's unlocked car. Cliff knew the artist Evelyn, and had the best reason to kill him.

But if Cliff killed his wife, why didn't he make it seem like an anonymous carjacking? Why set up Jake for the murder? Did Cliff want to make himself look innocent—or was there some long-standing animosity between the two men?

The police usually suspected the husband first. So why did they arrest Jake instead of Cliff? What did they know that cleared Halley's husband?

Josie was so distracted, she ate almost the whole order of chicken, fries, and gravy without thinking. She had to be more careful. Tonight was her date with Mike. She didn't want to be sick.

By the third Chunk-A-Chicken, she wondered if Ramsey, the failed novelist, could have killed Halley.

Not likely, she decided. Ramsey was lazy. This murder took a lot of work. Ramsey preferred to live off the work of others. Besides, how would Halley's death benefit him?

Ramsey wasn't rich enough to invest in Halley's business, and he had no great emotional investment in her.

Josie lifted the lid and looked down at her chicken-fried autopsy. These Chunk-A-Chicken bits were decidedly odd-looking. Did chickens really have that many angles? Josie ladled extra gravy over her order to hide it.

The fourth Chunk-A-Chicken slid down while she considered Granby, the greedy lawyer at Jake's firm. Was “greedy lawyer” an oxymoron?

Granby had plenty of reasons to set up Jake. The man was eaten with ambition. But why would he kill Halley? Was there a personal reason? Did Granby know Evelyn?

Josie had a lot of questions for Granby on their next date. If she could get some answers, maybe she'd be closer to solving Halley's murder. She'd love to tag Granby for the killer. The man was a pin-striped sociopath, lusting for his new Porsche in the wreckage of Jake's career.

The fifth Chunk-A-Chicken left her queasy. Maybe that's because she took another hard look at Jake. She knew why Jake would kill Halley. But why murder Evelyn?

Because Jake knew about the artist's demand for money. Evelyn claimed to know the killer, and wanted money for it.

No, that didn't work. Evelyn said his information would exonerate Jake. Jake had no reason to kill the little artist. This murder investigation had more odd pieces than a carton of Chunk-A-Chicken.

Josie nearly gagged on chicken-fried gristle. That did it. She couldn't face another Chunk-A-Chicken. She didn't have the stomach to look at her so-called investigation anymore, either. It was hopeless. She had no forensic facts. The police knew things they weren't telling outsiders.

The restaurant's yellow walls made her feel bilious. Josie had to get out of there. The cool, rainy air helped. She belched, unlocked her car, and reached for the bottle of Maalox she kept in her glove compartment. Josie chugged a good dose, probably more than she should have, but desperate meals called for desperate measures.

Josie had questions that needed to be answered, and she couldn't ask Alyce. She had to talk to Alyce's friends Linda and Joanie. Friends. Why did that word bother her? Why did she feel so uneasy?

Because you've eaten enough chicken grease to slide to Arkansas, she thought.

She turned the car around and headed for the only people in Wood Winds who would tell her anything. That's when she remembered Amy's strange warning: “Not all your friends are really your friends.”

Now she knew why the word “friend” nagged at her.

Only one person heard Cliff and Halley argue violently. Only one person heard Halley say unforgivable things.

Little Joanie.

No one else heard the shouts, listened to the china shatter, or saw an enraged Cliff drive off in the middle of the night. Most people thought Cliff adored Halley. They were surprised to hear the couple was divorcing. Of course, people divorced all the time. But what if their split was a peaceful separation?

What if those arguments never took place?

Linda said Cliff was deadly dull, not violent.

Amy said he liked rough sex, but that didn't make him a killer. If indeed she'd really been to bed with Halley's husband. Amy embraced everything but the truth.

Only Joanie heard him fling crockery and run out of the house. Only Joanie heard those hard words.

Maybe Joanie made it all up. Did she have some reason to hate Halley? Had Halley given her some deadly insult? Or did she covet Halley's husband? Joanie wouldn't be the first woman to move in on a grieving widower—although it would be a neat twist to court him with roast chickens and deli trays made by her current husband.

No, Josie thought. Actions speak louder than words. Joanie was one of the few women in Wood Winds who didn't abandon Alyce.

Maybe she wasn't Alyce's friend. Maybe she came to the house because she wanted to know what was happening with Josie's investigation. Maybe I've finally found out something useful.

It was time to talk with sweet little Joanie, dispenser of deli trays, and find out if she really was Alyce's friend.