Death in Reel Time (15 page)

I'm normally a compassionate person, or at least I like to think so, and this woman was clearly in pain, but I was angry on Beth's behalf—and on Mike Gibson's. Mike was the ultimate nice guy. So, since she'd asked the question, I answered. “Truly pathetic,” I said.

I instantly regretted it. Tina dissolved again into a heap of blubbering and Coco gave me a scolding look, which I had to admit I richly deserved.

“Look, Tina,” I said, reaching over to touch her knee.
“I'm sorry you're in this situation and I hope it doesn't blow up your marriage but you've got to come forward with this information on Blaine's whereabouts that day. It could help the police solve the case. You need to talk to either Jennifer Jeffers or Denton Carlson.”

“Denny, please, I'll talk to Denny,” Tina said, sniffling. “Jennifer doesn't like me. That's my own stupid fault, too. I wasn't very nice to her in high school.”

I thought of telling her Jennifer didn't like Esme and me much, either, but I didn't want to give aid and comfort at that point.

“Could you ask Denny to keep this to himself?” Tina asked now. “Will Mike have to find out?”

“This is a murder investigation, Tina. Denny will have to tell the other detectives anything that has a bearing on the case, but he might be able to spin it to make it look less—” I searched for a word, but could only come up with
sleazy,
which didn't seem a wise choice, so I just let it hang.

Tina nodded. “Okay,” she said, drawing in a shuddering breath.

“Would you mind me asking you a couple of questions? Maybe you could think of it as practice for talking with Denny.”

“Okay, I guess,” she said, digging around in her purse for a tissue. I glanced over at her tote and my eyes bugged.

“Are you carrying a gun?” I asked.

“Oh that, yes,” Tina said. “Mike got it for me for protection last year when I was having so many night meetings. I've got a license and I'm qualified with it. I go to the range and everything.”

“I didn't realize Mike was such a gun guy,” I said.

“He is,” Tina said, nodding vigorously. “I mean he doesn't hunt, but he shoots for sport. He and Blaine are even on the same team at the gun club.
Were
on the same team. I don't really like having it. I'm always afraid if it came down to it a bad guy could take the gun away and use it on me. But I don't have the heart to tell Mike I don't want to carry it.”

It seemed there were a great many things she didn't want to tell Mike. I bit my tongue and held in my opinions about toting lethal weapons around in pink designer handbags and moved on to my questions. “You say you picked up Blaine in the store parking lot, right?”

“Yes, he texted me the night before and told me what time to be there.”

“Do you know how he got to the store? His car was in the shop.”

“Yes, he said his brother and a friend were picking him up,” Tina said, calming now that we were getting down to cold facts.

“That was nice of Peyton,” I said absently as I was mulling the timeline.

“Not according to Blaine,” Tina said with a sniffle. “He was hacked off three ways from Sunday when he got into my car. Apparently he and Peyton and whoever this other guy was had a bad fight about something. Blaine was madder than I've ever seen him.” Her face twisted, threatening waterworks again. “Which may have saved me from myself. I think he would have made his play that day but he was too mad to even bother with me. He was in a terrible foul mood, which really put me off.” She looked up, hope shining in her
bloodshot eyes. “I mean that, it
really
put me off. Maybe I wouldn't have gone through with it. If Blaine hadn't gotten killed I mean. Maybe I would have stopped it right there. I was
that
put out.”

“I'm sure you would have come to your senses,” Coco said.

I wasn't so ready to let Tina off the hook, but I thought of Esme's many admonitions about how sarcasm doesn't become me and moved on with my questions. “Did he say what the fight was about or who the other person was?”

“No, but he asked me if I'd ever had a friend betray me, so it must have been somebody he knew well.”

I suppressed a scornful laugh. That was a fine question coming from a married man who was sneaking around to meet up with a married woman, but I didn't think Tina was in a place to see the irony. “Where were you for the hours you were with him?” I asked.

“We drove over to Chapel Hill to eat lunch. Or I ate mine; he mostly drank his. And I did ask him about the scholarship fund,” Tina said, turning to Coco, who was clearly more sympathetic than me. “He said I should talk to Bonnie Foster about it since she seemed to think she was the brains of the operation. He said it real bitter. He was so surly. He was usually smooth and charming. But not that day.”

“And where did you drop him off?” I asked.

“Two blocks from his house,” Tina said, “so Beth wouldn't see him getting out of my car.”

“And that's the last time you saw him?” I asked.

“Yes, that was the last time. He said he'd call me and I hoped he would and hoped he wouldn't. You know what I mean?”

I nodded. “How many times did you have these little meet-ups with Blaine?” I asked, trying, and failing, to be delicate.

Tina winced and I made a silent vow to put a cap on the snarky while she searched her memory. “Four times within the last two months,” she said finally.

“And you're sure Mike didn't know about this? Or at least suspect?” I asked. Though I couldn't imagine mild-mannered Mike as a murderer, Denny was right: Who knew what people were capable of given the right motivation.

“I'm sure,” Tina said flatly. “Mike trusts me completely.”

And the wailing began in earnest.

*  *  *

Once in my car I called Denny and gave him the quick-and-dirty on my talk with Tina—so to speak. I'd left her with the warning that she should contact Denny immediately and that I'd be giving him a heads-up. I also advised her to talk to Mike before the rumors got to him, but I wasn't sure she'd do that.

She'd looked up beseechingly as I got ready to leave, her lip quivering, green eyes round and vulnerable. “Haven't you ever made a mistake, Sophreena?”

I had. Many. Though I hoped none that had the potential to cause so much hurt. But Tina's obvious pain and genuine remorse got to me and I really hoped she and Mike could survive the fallout if this came out.

I started the car, then remembered Marydale had more papers we'd ordered for Olivia's scrapbooks and decided I might as well pick them up since I was here.

As I opened the shop door I reached up to touch the bell
to keep it from announcing me. Marydale wasn't up front so I figured she was in the workroom, and I didn't want her to stop what she was doing to rush out for a nonexistent customer. As I walked toward the back I could hear muffled voices. I couldn't hear the words but the tone was contentious. The doorway to the workroom has only a curtain and I pulled it aside to see Marydale and Winston sitting at the worktable. Marydale had her little Westie, Sprocket, cuddled up on her chest and Winston had the other dog, Gadget, asleep on his lap. Both people and canines looked up, startled.

“Winston came by to help me rearrange these shelves,” Marydale said, her words coming quick. She gestured to the hodgepodge shelving units that had grown up willy-nilly over every inch of wall space.

“They're not efficient,” Winston said. “We're trying to figure out what configuration works best.”

I looked from one to the other. Were they acting weird or was it just me? I pulled a chair over and out of the corner of my eye caught them exchanging a meaningful glance—meaningful to them, anyway.

Normally we share everything in our little club and I considered telling them about what I'd learned from Tina, but I knew Coco would probably tell Marydale at some point today and it was so sad and tawdry, I didn't have the heart to rehash it at that moment.

“The order for Olivia is over here,” Marydale said, setting Sprocket down on the floor. He sniffed and went to curl up in his bed in the corner as Marydale pulled the package from a bin. “That's one downside of rearranging. I know where things are now. I'll have to learn a new system.”

“Change is good,” Winston said. “It's just hard sometimes.”

I wasn't sure the conversation was about shelves anymore. I took the package and stood to go.

“Hang on a minute, Sophreena,” Marydale said. “Something happened this morning and I've been debating what to do about it. Let me run it by you.” She motioned for me to sit back down. “You know Arlene Overton, right?”

I nodded, feeling a shiver of dread at the name. Arlene Overton was the poster woman for cranky, prudish, mean-spirited town gossips.

“I know, I know,” Marydale said, reading my face. “She came in this morning with her sister, Susan. Honestly those two should be in some kind of genetic study. Susan takes after their mother, who was the sweetest woman you'd ever want to know. Never had a bad word to say about anyone. But Susan must have sucked all that water right out of the gene pool, because Arlene didn't get a drop of it. Anyhow, you know Arlene lives right next door to Beth and she was going on about why have the police not arrested that juvenile delinquent because she knows good and well that's who killed Blaine Branch. How she has a mind to tell Sterling Branch or make a call to the State Bureau of Investigation to tell them the local police are botching things, or maybe contact a reporter or whatever.”

“And this juvenile delinquent is?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

“Tony,” Marydale confirmed. “Poor Susan kept trying to tell her she shouldn't be accusing people without knowing all the facts, but Arlene went blathering right on. She swears
she heard Tony's motorcycle backfire that afternoon. She was grumbling that she's been hearing it for weeks every time he rode up Blaine and Beth's driveway and that it unnerved her because it sounded like a gunshot. So she knows Tony was at Blaine's house the day he died. She said there was some kind of ruckus going on over there in broad open daylight and that it must have been Tony causing it, never mind that she can't see a thing through the hedgerow between their houses. Anyhow, she claims she's told the police and still they haven't brought Tony in for questioning. Then she said—right out loud in front of a store full of customers—that she wouldn't be surprised if Beth and the
hoodlum
were in on it together.”

“She's nuts,” I said.

Marydale nodded. “Poor Susan was so mortified she hustled her out of the shop before I had a chance to throw her out, which I would gladly have done. The problem is, we know she's a hateful old fishwife but not everybody does. So should I say anything about this to Denny? Would that make it better or worse for Tony?”

“I'll talk to Denny about it if you want,” I said. “Arlene Overton may be a whack-a-doodle but if she's got any useful info I'm sure Denny would want to know.”

“What about Tony?” Winston asked.

“Oh, I'll
definitely
be talking to Tony,” I said.

T
ONY WAS FILMING WITH
E
SME
and Olivia when I arrived. Esme hadn't warmed to the idea of the video scrapbook and had fussed about our having to arrange our schedule to match Tony's. I was expecting her to be relieved I was there to take over. But it seemed somewhere along the way she'd discovered her inner ham.

“If we're going to do these video scrapbooks with our clients I need to learn about it, too, Sophreena,” she said, patting her hair, which she'd done up in a complicated braid. She leaned in close to me as if she wanted to tell me something secret, but then I realized she was checking her makeup in the reflection of my glasses. “Do you know about this Ken Burns effect thingy?” she asked, slicking her pinky over her lips to freshen her gloss. She pointed to the scrapbook pages open on the table. “Tony sets it up so the camera pans over the pages while we're talking about them and it gives the finished product movement and vitality,” she said, her hands indicating an undulating motion.

I turned to Tony. “What have you created?” I asked.

“A prima donna. But the camera loves her.”

“Okay, then,” I said. “I'll just sit in the corner over here out of the way.”

“No, you'll make me nervous, Sophreena,” Esme said, flashing me a silent message with her eyes. “Beth's out on the porch. Why don't you go visit with her while we finish up here.”

As I passed through the family room I saw a bouquet of beautiful roses on the side table. I tiptoed over to take in a whiff of their fragrance. Then I noticed the card and the snoop in me couldn't resist. They were to Beth from Alan Corrigan. The card read
Everything will be okay if we stick together.
It seemed an odd condolence message, but who was I to judge? I never know what to say on those occasions.

Beth was sitting in a wicker chair with a quilt wrapped tightly around her, though the day was balmy for October. She was mesmerized by something in the yard but I didn't see anything of interest. I spoke her name softly so as not to startle her and she turned, the movement in slow motion.

“Oh, hi, Sophreena,” she said. “I'm trying to remember. Why can't I remember that day? I get little bursts,” she flayed out her fingers, “but then it's gone and I can't call it back. It's so frustrating.”

“Would you like some company for a few minutes or am I disturbing you?”

“No, please,” Beth said, pointing to a twin wicker chair. “Will you be warm enough?”

“Yes, fine,” I said, looking down at my sweater and jeans, which were actually a little too toasty with the afternoon sun warming the space. I brushed at my black jeans. “I was
holding Sprocket,” I said. “Normally he doesn't shed so much; he must be overdue for a grooming.”