Carolyn G. Hart_Henrie O_02 (21 page)

“Come in.”

I stepped into a tiny office. It was one of a pair tucked between the rest rooms and the elevator on the first floor at the back of the bookstore.

The young woman slowly looked up from the catalogue on her desk. She forced a smile. It didn’t reach blue eyes loaded with distress. “Yes?”

Stevie Costello, the manager of Books, Books, Books, was trying for a business-as-usual demeanor. I could have told her she wasn’t making it. She looked like she hadn’t slept, and her orange cardigan didn’t go with her burgundy skirt. She was in her early thirties, slender, with masses of soft curly brown hair. Stevie Costello had that kind of fragile, china-shepherdess prettiness that age or hardship can so easily destroy.

“Miss Costello, I’m Craig Matthews’s aunt. Henrietta Collins.” I shut the door behind me.

“Craig’s aunt?” One hand touched the coral beads
around her slender throat. “Did Craig send you?” Her eyes remained uneasy, but eagerness lifted her voice.

A purist might contend my answer should have been
no
.

In my view, Craig’s acceptance of my aid gave me carte blanche to claim Craig did send me.

“Yes.” I took the single straight chair facing the cluttered desk.

“In the paper it said he’d been arrested—I can’t believe it. He’s such a gentle person. To think he—I can’t believe it.”

“Arrest is no proof of guilt.”

Her fingers tightened on the beads at her throat. I feared she would snap the necklace. But she didn’t answer.

“Craig should be out on bail later today.”

“On bail? That means the police still think he shot her. He didn’t do it. I know he didn’t. Craig would never hurt anyone.” She said the last so forcefully, I knew she was battling a lingering wisp of fear that Craig, gentle though he might be, had indeed shot his wife.

“You’re preaching to the choir, Stevie. I’ve good reason to believe Craig had nothing to do with his wife’s death.”

But qualifications buzzed in my mind: Craig lied about the time he left the bookstore—if I believed the clerk’s stubborn assertion. And I couldn’t forget the maid’s enigmatic remarks about Craig’s visits to the Sandalwood apartments.

I was still confident.

But not positive.

“But the police arrested him.”

“Craig’s lawyer and I hope to persuade the police that they’ve made a mistake.” I told her how I figured the crime had occurred. “And you can help us.”

“I can? How?” She stared at me, her face eager and dubious and a little bit frightened.

“Tell me about Craig. How he acted this past week. What you know about Mrs. Matthews. If you know of anyone who’d quarreled with her.”

The necklace broke in her hand. Beads scattered. She ignored them. “Craig was just as usual. Just as usual.” She spoke with utter surety. I wished Captain Walsh were hearing this.

“Everything was fine. And the idea that he’d get mad enough to throw things around—why, that’s silly. He’s not like that. Ask anyone who knows him.”

“Stevie, how well do you know Craig?”

The comfort zone swiftly eroded. She was abruptly wary, her pretty, wan face taut. “I’ve worked here for two and a half years.” She picked the words carefully, like a cat seeking dry grass. “I’ve always found him to be an extremely considerate and thoughtful employer.”

“How about Patty Kay?”

“I’ve dealt mostly with Craig. Patty Kay was here a lot, but she was busy with ordering. She was really into carrying a wonderful stock. And she had a lot of charity commitments. He was the person you always went to with problems or questions.”

“When you did work with Patty Kay, did you like her?”

“She was very nice.”

Four bland words. Damningly bland.

“Come now. Obviously somebody didn’t like her.”

The manager shivered. “It’s so awful. So awful. She was—she had a very strong personality. She laughed a lot. You always felt excitement when she was in the room, like something grand could happen at any time….” Her voice faltered.

“What do you suppose it would be like to live with someone like that?”

“I suppose it would be exciting. ” Stevie’s tone was noncommittal.

“Do you know of anyone who didn’t like her?”

“It seems ugly to talk about people.”

“We’re going to have to talk about a lot of people if Craig is to go free.”

She moved uncomfortably in her chair. “Mrs. Guthrie works here one day a week. She always had something snide to say about her sister. It made us—the staff—uncomfortable. I mean, Mrs. Matthews is the owner and here’s her sister bad-mouthing her. What were we supposed to say?”

“What kind of things did Mrs. Guthrie say?”

“Oh. Like Patty Kay was so politically correct it was nauseating. That she was selfish. Impossible. A showoff.”

“How did Mrs. Guthrie act around Patty Kay?”

“Snippy. But it never seemed to bother Patty Kay. Once I remember she just rolled her eyes. She said, ‘Pamela, you are
so
boring.’”

“No love lost between the sisters.”

“That’s right.” She nodded eagerly.

“Why do you suppose Mrs. Guthrie worked here if she felt that way about her sister?”

“Oh, she didn’t do it to please Mrs. Matthews Mrs. Guthrie didn’t want to miss out on anything. And this is the place to be in Fair Haven. Everybody drops in here for coffee. Businessmen. Lawyers. Everybody.” She spoke with pride, forgetting for a moment the reason for our conversation.

“Do you know of any disagreement Mrs. Matthews had recently with anyone?”

“I don’t know.” Her tone was thoughtful. “But Friday
afternoon she was in her office—it’s right next to this one— and I opened the door and she was on the phone. Actually, she was just finishing a conversation. She said—I think her exact words were—‘That’s the way it’s going to be. Like it or not.’ And she hung up. She sounded absolutely determined. I didn’t think much about it. I mean, Patty Kay could really handle people like suppliers or it could even have had to do with, say, a charity drive. But this time there was something awfully grim in her voice. When she looked up at me, I could tell she wasn’t even seeing me. Her mind was a million miles away. Then she came to and asked me what I wanted. But she didn’t smile the way she usually would when you approached her.”

Friday afternoon—
“That’s the way it’s going to be. Like it or not.”

“You don’t know to whom she was talking?”

“No. I’ve no idea.”

“Is there anything else different or unusual, anything that strikes you now as odd?”

I saw a flash in her eyes.

Her lips opened. She seemed about to speak. Then, abruptly, she shook her head. “No, ma’am.”

I held her gaze for a moment. “Give it some thought. It could be the difference between life and death for Craig.”

That shook her.

I stooped and picked up one of the pretty coral beads.

She shifted again in her chair. “Look, it couldn’t have anything to do with it. Not really. But Patty Kay’d been calling around lately, talking to boarding schools. For her daughter. Brigit wasn’t happy about it. But—”

She didn’t want to say it. She didn’t want to put it into words.

I wasn’t so squeamish.

“Brigit could have shot Patty Kay.”

Stevie drew her breath in sharply.

I stood. “After all, someone did.” I paused in the doorway. “You weren’t at the store that Saturday afternoon.”

“Saturday’s my day off … I was out shopping in the afternoon. In Green Hills.”

“Did you buy anything?”

Many charge card transactions record the time.

“No. No. I was just looking.”

“Alone?”

“Yes. But you can’t think I would have done it. Why would I?” Her voice grew sharp with fear.

“I don’t know,” I said agreeably. “But if you had a reason, Stevie, I’ll find it.”

Handing her the bead, I left.

Twenty minutes later I stood in front of Stevie Costello’s second-floor-apartment door at Sandalwood Courts. After knocking briskly, I gave the surroundings a quick survey. A UPS delivery man was trotting across the newly mown grassy rectangle toward the opposite side of the complex. In a bed of iris, a gardener worked with his back to me. I wondered if he was Jewel’s grandson. He didn’t glance my way.

I used my Frequent Flier card to jiggle the lock loose. There was, fortunately, no deadbolt.

It took about thirty-five seconds. Lock-picking is a skill I picked up over the years.

It didn’t take much longer to examine Stevie’s bedroom closet. More than a dozen items, including skirts and sweaters, were from Lands’ End. I saw what was probably the matching skirt to the beige cotton sweater that was now in police custody.

Interesting that Craig had apparently recognized the sweater.

Even more interesting that it prompted him to run away, taking both the sweater and the murder weapon with him.

I took a few more minutes to check out the apartment.

I didn’t find any photos of Craig. No letters from him. No traces of masculine occupancy.

But what I had found was certainly thought-provoking.

I could imagine Richard’s headshake and a murmured “Careful, sweetheart.”

Every minute might turn out to matter for Craig Matthews. I drove back to the Fair Haven Mall, pulled into the Books, Books, Books parking lot, glanced at my watch, and headed back across town to Hillsboro Pike. Twenty-five minutes later I turned into the parking lot of Finedorff’s, across from Green Hills.

If Craig left the bookstore on Saturday at four o’clock—but Amy insisted it was a quarter to four—he would have arrived at Finedorff’s around four twenty-five. That would have given time for the fruit basket to be discussed and prepared, say by four-forty. Then Craig would have headed home. I’d clock that next.

Finedorff’s smelled like a rich mix of pickles, pastrami, and sauerkraut. The first and the last from barrels near the meat counter, the second from the sandwich I was buying for my lunch. I also bought a Dr Pepper and two Baby Ruths, one for dessert, one for emergency rations.

The small, intense woman behind the cash register, her dyed red hair piled in heavy ringlets atop her head, rapidly checked my purchases, including the latest newspaper.

The headline below Craig’s indistinct photo read:

HUSBAND’S ARREST SHOCKS
FAIR HAVEN NEIGHBORS

I pointed to his picture. “Were you here on Saturday when this man came in?”

The red-haired woman finished sacking my stuff. Then she looked down at the photo. Her glance was shrewd, birdlike. “So why do you ask?”

“He’s my nephew. I’d really appreciate it if I could visit with you for just a moment….”

“Oh, so. You got trouble, bad trouble.” She looked across the rows of foodstuffs. “Eric!”

A weedy young man with acne poked his head around a corner.

She ordered him to take over for a minute. We sat in an oak booth. I unpacked my sandwich, pulled the tab on my Dr. Pepper, I realized I was very hungry and I started eating in earnest. Excellent pastrami.

She pulled out a gold case, selected a long cigarette, and stuck it in a mother-of-pearl holder. “So he made me mad, that young man.” She stabbed the holder at Craig’s picture. “I told him, we don’t miss orders. We don’t lose orders. We don’t throw away orders. Orders, they are our bread and butter. But this one, he was in a real panic. Said his wife told him to pick up this basket. Said there’d be hell to pay if he came home without it. I wanted to tell him a man in the family should wear the pants, but, like I say, orders are our bread and butter. Maybe I’d get an order, so I don’t say it. He tried to call her; there wasn’t any answer. He left a message. ‘Patty Kay, I’m at the store and they don’t have an order, but I’ll get them to fix up a basket anyway and I’ll be there as soon as I can.’ So I fixed him up a basket, real nice. Pineapple, kiwi, golden delicious apples,
everything the best. And I wrapped it in pink cellophane, pretty, with a red velvet bow.”

I finished half the sandwich. And took a bite of the other. “He was here quite a while?”

A shrug. “We got other orders ahead of his. So maybe fifteen minutes. I say fifteen max.” She said this with assurance.

“Do you happen to know when he arrived?”

Another shrug. “Afternoon. My feet hurt by then, I can tell you.”

“He said he left here about twenty to five.”

A swift frown. “Maybe so, maybe no. Me, I can’t say. It was busy, busy. Because we are the best. If you have a party, you come to Finedorff’s. We fix the meats, the cheeses, the vegetables, the dips. Everything. So, he came, he fussed, he got his basket. That’s all I know.” Her shrug was eloquent.

I clocked the drive from Finedorff’s to 1903 King’s Row Road. I drove quickly, but I didn’t speed. I ate my dessert, the Baby Ruth, and thought about Craig Matthews. And time.

If he left the bookstore at a quarter to four, arrived at Finedorff’s at five after four, spent fifteen minutes there, departing at four-twenty, he certainly would have arrived home in plenty of time to have quarreled with Patty Kay, then to have murdered her.

The drive from the deli to the Matthews house took twenty minutes.

And Craig pointedly said he left the deli at twenty to five.

Did he?

I unlocked the door. Inside, I called out Patty Kay’s name, then I walked quickly through the lower part of the house. I came back to the front hall. The fruit basket still sat
on the butlers table. I smelled the sweet scent of too-ripe fruit.

Surely Craig had hesitated, called out again, then started upstairs.

I hurried up the steps.

The bedroom. Patty Kay’s study. The bathroom.

And back downstairs.

Four minutes. It would have been four minutes past five on Saturday.

Out to the kitchen.

Shock would surely have held Craig motionless for a moment.

Out the back door. Skidding on the sticky floor.

The gun on the grass—

Gina’s words echoed in my mind:
Craig hates guns
.

I took time—just an instant—to wonder if that was another lie that Craig had told.

Oh, yes, without question, he had found the gun, taken it, tried to throw it away.