Dark Tort (35 page)

She immediately told me to call her Grace. She heard the chaos in the background and told me laughingly that she had already been to church. Yes, she would be glad to see me that afternoon when I was coming over anyway. She might be out for her afternoon walk, or her

P.M. constitutional, as she called it, but I could wait for her on her porch.

Tom agreed to take care of the boys, who wanted to do homework together at Gus’s place. Arch asked if he could drive Tom’s sedan to the Vikarioses’ house. I could have married Tom all over again when he immediately said, “Of course.”

Once Julian and I made it over to Boulder, I dropped him off at his apartment, as promised, so that he could gather some clothes and odds and ends. I promised to pick him up in an hour, and took off to meet the departed Althea’s cousin.

Grace Mannheim lived in a creamy-lilac Victorian on the north side of Pine Street in the old Mapleton area of Boulder. Bordered on either side by lovely old homes, Pine Street sweeps upward in a graceful arc to the west, where it is bordered by a particularly spectacular section of the Front Range. As per my phone instructions from Grace, I waited on the house’s front porch while she was out having her afternoon constitutional.

After about ten minutes, I was almost enjoying a warm autumn breeze that was showering golden sycamore leaves onto Grace’s thickly green lawn, a lawn that bore only a trace of the previous day’s snow. I couldn’t completely enjoy the wind and the leaves, though, because I’d had another disheartening, and ultimately puzzling, encounter with Sally Routt on my way out of the house.

As I’d been backing out of my driveway, she’d appeared at my driver’s-side mirror, her face gaunt, her eyes wild. She’d asked if I’d found out anything new about her daughter. I said no, which was technically the truth. She looked questioningly at Julian, who shook his head.

“I had a very strange visit from Richard Chenault,” she said, her voice lowered almost to a whisper.

I’d turned off the van engine. “Should we go inside?” I asked.

“No, no,” she replied, glancing from side to side. But there were only kids outside, calling to one another as they kicked balls back and forth in the street, which was almost dry.

“You know, he’s the brother of my ex, who skipped out when I was pregnant with Colin.”

She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Richard gave me a check for eleven thousand dollars. He said it was the most he could give me without incurring the gift tax.”

My voice wobbled when I said, “Eleven thousand bucks, huh?”

Sally hooked her hair behind her ear, then made her face into an agonizing mass of wrinkles. “He wanted to know”—her voice cracked—“if Dusty had left anything for him. I said, ‘Yeah, Richard, she left her secondhand clothes, what do you think?’ ” Sally shook her head. “I should have been nicer, I guess.” She began to weep.

I eased out of the van and embraced Sally. “Don’t worry, everything is going to work out.” I didn’t know what else to say.

“He wanted to know,” she sobbed, “if she’d left any artwork. ‘Anything at all,’ he said. What a prick! I said, ‘Yeah, Richard, check out the Picassos on the walls of my Habitat for Humanity house. You want to buy one?’ Oh, I should have been nicer, I should have been grateful. I’m such a bitch. That’s what my exes always used to say, and I’m sure that’s what Richard was thinking.”

“No, no, no.” I patted her back.

Sally had raised her fatigued eyes to me. “Should I have told him about the paintings you took out of my father’s room?”

“Absolutely not. No way. Not now, not ever. Don’t talk about them with anybody except the cops.”

“Have you made any more progress in your investigation?” When I shook my head, she said, “Was he accusing Dusty of stealing? Is that why she was killed?”

“I don’t know,” I said truthfully.

“The police called and said they’ve arrested the woman who manages the H&J office.”

“I know they have.”

“Do you think this woman strangled my Dusty?”

“Actually, I’m not sure. But listen, Sally, I want to warn you about Richard, or anybody else, who comes over to your house. Would you consider staying with us for a while?”

“No! I’m not being forced out of my home, not after everything else we’ve been through.”

“Would you please, please keep your doors and windows locked, then? And if anything strange or suspicious occurs, you need to call the sheriff’s department right away.”

But Sally didn’t want to talk anymore. She let out another sob and covered her mouth. Then she turned and dashed back across the street, overcome with tears.

“Dammit to hell, anyway,” I said in a low voice.

“Damn what to hell?” a woman’s voice demanded, startling me. I turned to the sidewalk, where a tall, tan, slender woman, her short white hair fluffing out all around her head, her white eyebrows raised expectantly, approached me.

“You could hear me out there?” I asked, stunned.

Her arms pumped enthusiastically as she made short shrift of her sidewalk. “I work with the deaf,” she explained. “I read lips.”

“You could see my lips from out there?”

“Just call me Superwoman.” She took off a glove and grasped my hand. “Grace Mannheim. You must be Goldy.” Her cheeks were pink, her eyes a very dark blue. She wore a no-nonsense gray sweatshirt and the athletic type of walking shoes I’m always telling myself to get. “How about some spiced tea?” When I said yes, thanks, the smile in her elfin face brightened even more.

“How ’bout you put some of that super-lipreading powder in my tea,” I said, as she held the white painted door open for me. I walked down an immaculately clean wood-floored hallway almost bare of furniture. Was Grace Mannheim poor, or did she just like the spare look? Once I was in her sunny yellow kitchen, with its high ceilings and yellow painted cabinets, I decided on the latter. She was still laughing at my superpowder comment.

“My neighbors claim I work for the CIA, my lipreading is that good.” She dropped tea bags into a pair of mugs, picked up an electric kettle, and filled them with steaming water. “That’s just Boulder paranoia. The garbage people moved to smaller trucks, and everyone insisted the trucks were really police vans with advanced listening devices. No matter how many times the waste folks said it was because everyone was recycling, and there wasn’t as much trash as before, it did no good. But don’t try to tell left-wingers the government isn’t keeping track of them, or it’ll destroy their reason for living.” She placed the mugs on a tray that already held a plate of what looked like homemade chocolate-chip cookies.

“You shouldn’t have gone to so much trouble,” I said, feeling apologetic.

“Let’s go back to the porch,” she said, lifting the tray and indicating the front of the house with her chin.

Once we were settled on wicker rocking chairs on the porch, I thanked her again for the tea and cookies, and got to the matter at hand. “As I told you on the phone, I’m wondering if you could tell me more about your cousin Althea.”

Grace Mannheim’s face turned solemn. “You’re not really wondering about her, are you? I mean, since you’re from Aspen Meadow, I’m assuming you want to know about the accident.”

I frowned. “Yes. I could read the police report, of course, but I pretty much know what that’s going to say, since the accident was covered in our local paper. Hit-and-run, right?”

“Yes.”

“And they never found the driver.”

Grace Mannheim fiddled with her teaspoon. “No.” Her voice had turned soft. “No, they didn’t.”

“Did she tell you why she came to visit Aspen Meadow?”

“She was going to an art show. Which I thought was odd, since my cousin did not collect art.”

“Do you know why she was going to the art show?”

Grace sighed. “All she would tell me was that she wanted, and I’m quoting here, ‘to make sure right was done.’ ”

I said, “She didn’t give you any hint as to what that meant?”

Grace shook her head. “Althea was not the gossiping type.”

“I’m not meaning to gossip,” I replied, then reminded myself to keep the heat out of my voice. “A young friend of mine was killed. A neighbor. A member of the church,” I added, in the event that would help my case. I could hear Tom’s voice inside my head: You have no shame. As delicately as possible, I said, “It’s possible that the person who mowed down your cousin killed my young friend.”

Grace’s voice turned mildly sarcastic. “Then surely the police should be coming to visit me.”

Don’t call me Shirley, my brain mocked, but I said only, “It’s more a hunch of mine. The cops in Furman County are very shorthanded— well, not really—”

“So they’ve asked a young married caterer to help them with their case? What does your son say?”

“My son?” I asked, bewildered. Maybe this woman didn’t work for the CIA, but who was she, Daughter of Sherlock Holmes? “You know I’m a caterer? Married? With a kid? How?”

Grace Mannheim laughed. “I’m a walker, as I told you. You called and asked if you could see me, and I said yes. But I’d already finished my P.M. constitutional, and I just kept walking until you arrived. I came up behind your van. I know every vehicle on this street, and ‘Goldilocks’ Catering, Where Everything Is Just Right’ is not one of them. You wear a wedding ring, and your van has two bumper stickers: ‘My Son Is an Honor Student at CBHS.’ That’s the proud mama’s sticker. The other one? ‘Give Blood, Play Lacrosse!’ I would venture that one is your son’s. How am I doing so far?”

“You should be investigating the death of Dusty Routt, not me.”

“Ah, so your neighbor was Dusty Routt, a member of your church? And you’re an Episcopalian, too?”

“You’re going to have to show me where you keep that crystal ball of yours,” I said, with true admiration.

She smiled, pleased. “I play Colorado Women’s Senior Softball with Meg Blatchford. I also give to Habitat for Humanity, and Meg has told me about the family, the Routts, that St. Luke’s helped support through that program. I don’t know them, though. I am sorry your young friend is the victim in this case.”

“Sounds as if the Furman County Sheriff’s Department could use your help, though.”

“The Boulder Police Department could use my help,” she said, her voice taking on that withering sarcasm again.

Let’s not go there, I thought, and then was thankful that my cell phone started ringing. Grace waved that I should go ahead. It was Julian.

“Are you coming to get me, boss? Or should I take the bus to Aspen Meadow? I might get there sooner.”

“Sorry, sorry, I’ll be there.”

“So did the lady help?”

“Yeah, she’s great. We’re almost done.”

“I’m getting old here.”

“Ten minutes.”

Julian groaned.

“Well, someone wants you,” Grace said. “I’m afraid I haven’t been very helpful.”

“Actually, your cousin might have known that young man who just called. His name is Julian, and he’s an Episcopalian from Utah, too. Sorry, maybe not. I know it’s a big state. A very big state. But not with too many Episcopalians, right? Anyway, Julian was involved in the church there, in Bluff.”

Grace brightened again. “Is he Navajo?”

“No, but he spent a lot of time with them when he was growing up. Much to our son’s amazement, Julian can speak Navajo, too, the way the code talkers did in the Pacific during World War Two.”

“Goodness me.”

Neither one of us moved. Grace seemed to share my disappointment at not being able to give me more substantial information.

Finally I said, “There isn’t anyone up here, or in Utah, who would know more about what your cousin was doing in Boulder, so far away from home?”

Grace’s head made a quick shake. “Believe me, I wanted to know. She hadn’t told me, which was frustrating, and when she was killed, I went down to southern Utah, where she lived. Of course, I had to sell her house and dispose of her effects, but I also wanted to see if there was anyone who could shed light on the purpose of her trip. There was only one woman at St. Stephen’s who seemed to know something, but when I pressed her on it, she said, ‘I’m not allowed to talk about it.’ ”

“Talk about what?”

“That’s what’s so frustrating; I don’t know. There was no journal, no diary, there were no notes, nothing that Althea had left that would indicate why she would think she had to go to an art show to make sure right was done.”

I pulled a pad from my purse. “Could you give me that woman’s name? It’s a long shot, but my husband is a homicide investigator with Furman County, and he might be able to get the cops down there to ask her a few questions.”

“Frederica Tuller.” It was the first time I’d heard any bitterness in Grace’s voice.

I exhaled heavily. “You went through all your cousin’s stuff.” It was more a statement than a question, but I was just making sure.

Grace canted her head to one side. “She’d specified that all of her clothing be donated. I went through every pocket. She gave me her small amount of furniture. I checked every drawer. There was nothing.”

Dammit to hell, indeed.

“When I got back home, her suitcase was still here. That’s the one thing I didn’t donate. I gave the clothes away and threw out most of the odds and ends—you know, tissues, candy.”

Still feeling dispirited, I did manage to say “Most?”