Darned if You Do (22 page)

“And you agreed to do that.”

“Yes.”

“So how are you doing?”

“Not very well. I have interviewed a man named Chester Teesdale, who stole a rifle—more actually
took back
a rifle Mr. Riordan had stolen from him some years back, which theft caused a very serious rift between Teesdale and his father. I am also taking another look at a report that appeared in our local weekly about other pieces of mail delivered from that bag. I'm hoping to find something of interest there.”

“Send me a copy, okay?”

“All right, but I can tell you from their account of my receiving the handkerchief, their attention to accuracy is somewhat lacking.”

O
VER
supper that evening, Betsy said to Connor, “Valentina is going to be arrested and charged with murder.”

“Is there anything you can do?”

“Other than find out who really murdered Tom Riordan? No.”

Connor cut a bite off his ham steak—he ate the British way, by using his fork in his left hand to hold the meat down while he cut it with the knife in his right hand, then putting the bite in his mouth without changing hands. Betsy remembered her father eating the same way. Her mother had thought it uncivilized. But there was something inefficient, even silly, about cutting meat on one's plate, putting the knife down, transferring the fork to the right hand, and then putting the meat into one's mouth. So lately she'd been doing it Connor's way.

Then he put down knife and fork and said, “Maybe we're missing something. Maybe we're not seeing someone else as a suspect.”

“Someone like who? Or whom?”

“Well, me, for one. I was alone in the house, remember? I came down the front stairs while the others came down the back and out into the backyard.”

“What about Georgie?”

“Well, yes. She must have come down the front stairs ahead of me. But she went on through the dining room and, I assume, through the kitchen and out the back door.”

“You're sure she was the only one to come down the front stairs?”

“Well, I heard the others go down the back, sounding like a herd of horses.”

“Why would she come down a different way?”

“Does it matter? Or maybe she did come down the back with the others. And, for some reason she walked around the outside of the house and back in the front door.”

“Why would she do that?”

Connor shrugged. “I have no idea. In fact, maybe she came down the back stairs, then, instead of going outside, she came into the living room to pick up something.”

“Like what?”

The two fell silent while they tried to think of something that needed picking up.

Betsy said, “You're absolutely sure it was Georgie Pickering you saw.”

“It was a woman wearing loose-fitting khaki trousers, a blue sweatshirt, and a yellow headscarf tied that clever way women have so the ends go to the back of their heads and tie under their hair. Look, she came upstairs along with everyone else to see the mailbag I had found, and she looked at the jewelry Phil had found and knocked us all over by declaring it genuine. I think I would have noticed if she and one of the other women were wearing the same clothing—and they weren't.”

“She couldn't have come back in to take the box, though,” Betsy said, “because she didn't know about the box until Emily told her about it over lunch.”

Connor said, “That's right. I remember Emily started to tell us about it and Georgie said, ‘Show it to me,' or words to that effect, as we were going back in.”

“So it appears that nobody but Emily knew about it before lunch.”

“That's right.”

Betsy sighed and pushed the fingers of one hand into her hair. “As Goddy says, it's too many for me.”

That night she dreamed that every man in town looked like Connor. She wasn't surprised at this—dreams are like that—but in her dream, she was anxious to find the real Connor. Her test was to ask for a hug, because she would know the real one by his strong, warm arms around her. But all the hugs were so frail she could barely feel them.

*   *   *

S
HE
told Connor about her dream the next morning. “What do you suppose it means?” she asked.

“Maybe you just need a hug,” he said, and gave her a long, pleasant one.

“Ummmm,” she said, comforted.

Down in the shop she told the story of the dream and Connor's terrific recommended treatment for the anxiety it produced in her.

Godwin said, “I think a hug is better than a kiss probably seventy or eighty percent of the time.”

Then after a while, he came back to the topic of the dream. “Maybe your unconscious is trying to tell you something. When I remember a dream, a lot of the time it means something is bothering me.”

“What's bothering me is that Valentina is going to be arrested. I don't see how dreaming about a hug is related to that.”

“Maybe it's not the hug,” Godwin suggested. “Maybe it's everyone looking like Connor, like his mother had a litter instead of just one baby.”

Betsy smiled. “The only creature I know of who has a litter of identical babies is the armadillo.”

“The armadillo has identical babies? Who told you that?”

“Connor. He says they're used in studies of leprosy.”

“I'm not going to ask why, because I'm afraid you might tell me.”

For some reason, Betsy's memory of the dream lingered. She often had a dream in which her unconscious mind tried to tell her something. Sometimes it was relevant, more rarely it was useful. She had a persistent feeling that this one wasn't about a scarcity of hugs from Connor.

She was nearly asleep that night when it came to her and she sat bolt upright in bed.

“What?” said Connor, who was a light sleeper.

“Twins, that's what it was about, twins!”

“What about twins?” He was still trying to get his bearings after being awakened from a sound sleep.

“The dream, it was about twins—I think you might be right, and I was wrong. Georgine and Grace are twins, maybe even identical twins. Georgine came into the shop the other day with the hood of her raincoat pulled up and I thought she was Grace.” She smiled down at him. “But you came close, didn't you? You told me weeks ago that you thought there was only one of them, because they looked so much alike. And when I said no, then you said they might be twins.

“What I'm still thinking about is, why? Why would identical twins dress so that they look two sizes apart and tell people they are years apart in age?”

“Okay, why?”

“I don't know. I mean they sure didn't know it would come in handy at the Riordan house, did they?”

Connor sat up. “How did it come in handy?”

“They both dressed as Georgie to get that cinnabar box out of the house.”

“They did?”

“They must have. Emily says she came down the back stairs with Georgie and out into the backyard and stayed with her the rest of the day. But you said you saw Georgie going into the dining room. No, you didn't; you saw Gracie. Or, maybe you did see Georgie, and they switched off earlier, and Emily spent part of the day with Georgie and the rest of the day with Gracie.”

“Without noticing it? That seems odd.”

“I'll talk to Emily tomorrow and see if I can get something that will let me know if that's what actually happened.”

“But why did they go to all that trouble to steal the cinnabar box?” asked Connor.

“They didn't steal it, they took it back.”

“Then why the hole and corner? Why not just reclaim it?”

Betsy stared at him. She had a history of leaping to unwarranted conclusions. Was this another instance? “I don't know,” she confessed. Yet somehow she was sure she was on the right track.

*   *   *

B
ETSY
called Emily the next morning. She was determined to step carefully because she did not want to plant a false memory or cause Emily to try to guess an answer she thought Betsy wanted.

“I know I'm becoming a bore about this, but I'd like you to talk some more about finding that cinnabar box in Tom's house.”

“Oh, Betsy, it
is
a bore!” Emily replied. “I'm so over that little box! And the etui, too. I looked them up on the Internet and all of them—the box, the needle cases, and the etui—cost hundreds of dollars. I'm sorry I saw any of them in that awful old house!”

“I know, it must be very frustrating to see something interesting mixed in with a lot of trash and then find out the something itself not only isn't trash but costs a lot of money. You kind of wish you'd stuffed it quietly into your purse and said nothing about it.”

“No, I wish I'd never seen it. If I hadn't tripped over it in the first place . . .”

“You said it was under some magazines. Wasn't Georgie sorting those magazines? Why didn't she see it?”

“I don't know,” Emily said crossly. Then she thought about it. “There were four or five stacks of magazines. She was just sorting through the second stack when Connor shouted.”

“And when he did, she dropped the magazines and rushed to see what he found,” said Betsy.

“Yes—wait, no. She asked me who shouted, and from where. I said it sounded like Connor, and that it sounded like he was upstairs, in the back of the house.”

“So she went through the kitchen to the back stairs.”

“Well, sure.”

“And you went up the same way.”

“Well, first I tripped over the box, and looked at it, and put it on the table.”

“Under a magazine.”

Emily abruptly changed the subject. “Wasn't that mailbag an amazing thing? I wonder how Tom got hold of it?”

“The mailman probably put it down over on Lake Street, where there's that big hill with steps going up to the houses. He must have had some packages to deliver to someone at the top and didn't want to carry the heavy bag up with him. He put it down for a minute, and Tom came along and picked it up and kept going.”

“Yes, that sounds like it might have happened that way. Everywhere you went in town, rain or snow or sun, you'd see him out walking. He never took a bus and always said no if you offered to give him a ride in your car.”

“Did you ever offer?” Betsy asked.

“Me? No, he was kind of strange, you know?”

“Poor fellow.”

“Yes, poor fellow.”

“But back to his house,” Betsy said, trying gently to steer the conversation back to its original subject. “You saw Georgie upstairs looking at the mailbag?”

“Sure. You know what was even more amazing than that lost mail? Those pieces of jewelry. Phil took them out of his pocket to show Doris, and Georgie said, ‘Let me see that,' and said they were real gemstones. Phil wrapped them in tissues and put them in his shirt pocket. Then Jill said Connor should take the mailbag over to the post office right away, and while he was about it, he said he'd buy lunch for everyone, so we all went out into the backyard and washed our hands and recited limericks.”

“Who went back into the house?” Betsy asked. “Anyone?”

“Jill went back into the kitchen and brought out a dirty old bottle of Palmolive dish soap for us to use to wash up.”

“How about Godwin, or Georgine?”

“No, only Jill.”

They talked awhile longer, then Betsy called Jill.

“When everyone was in the backyard around noon that first day at Tom's house, you went back into the house to get that bottle of dish soap, right?”

“Yes, why?”

“Was everyone else in the backyard at that point?”

“Everyone but Connor, who went to take the mailbag to the post office and buy lunch for us.”

“Did Georgie go back in the house, too?”

“No.”

“Are you sure? You didn't, for example, see her coming through the dining room on her way into the kitchen?”

“No. What's this about?”

“Connor says he saw Georgie going through the dining room into the kitchen when he was bringing the mailbag down the front stairs.”

“Oh, that's impossible! We were all in the backyard and stayed in the backyard while we ate our lunch—thank you, by the way, for paying for it. I can't believe that Connor is saying it—except it's Connor, and he's not often mistaken. What's the explanation?”

“He saw Gracie.”

“No, Gracie didn't work in the house.”

“Nevertheless, she was there,” Betsy insisted.

“How could he mistake Gracie for Georgie?” Jill asked. “Did Gracie say she was there?”

“No.”

“Well, then, who says she was there?”

“Connor.”

“Come on, Betsy,” Jill said, “they don't look all that much alike.”

“If you take Gracie's wig off, they do.”

“Wig?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Oh,” said Jill. Then, “Oh, for goodness sake! Is that what you're thinking? Have you called Mike about this?”

“No, not yet, but I will.”