Fool's Puzzle (18 page)

My hand froze as I reached for another page of the album. I tried to keep my voice even and bland.

“What was she working on?”

Mrs. Chenier pushed at her stiff tan curls. “She was always working on something. But she said this time she wasn’t selling out for peanuts. That we’d been on the bottom long enough.”

“Did it have anything to do with her pottery?”

“I’m sure it must have. What else could it be?” She looked at me oddly. I decided to change tactics.

“Who were Marla’s friends, Mrs. Chenier?”

“The police asked me that. I told them the people at that artists’ place. That girl she lived with. She talked about you some. She liked you real well. But Marla always liked being by herself. Even as a little girl. She didn’t need people much.”

I lowered my head in embarrassment. I never thought much about my friendship with Marla, if indeed there was one. Apparently, it had been a friendship to her, and I felt bad that she had so few people who would really miss her.

“Mrs. Chenier—” I decided I might as well just plunge in with the truth. “I liked Marla too, and the reason I’m asking so many questions is that I wonder whether the police are doing a thorough job of looking for her killer. I’m just trying to see if there’s anything I can do to help catch the person who did this to her.”

“Oh.” She touched a ringless hand to her flat chest. “Well, I don’t know what I could tell you that I didn’t tell the police. I just assumed it was a crazy person who broke in and killed her. She shouldn’t have been up at that place alone so late at night.”

“Someone was supposed to be with her,” I said, sotnewhat defensively. “But right now, the important thing is to catch the person who took your daughter from you.”

She nodded, reclaimed the tissue out of her sleeve and dabbed at her thin nose. “I’ll try and help, but I’ve told the police everything they asked.”

“That’s just it,” I said eagerly. “Maybe there’s something you know that they didn’t think to ask.” I closed the album and set it on the wagon-wheel-style coffee table. “You know, when I moved to town, the place I rented wasn’t big enough for all my stuff. I stored a lot of it at my dad’s house. I bet you have a lot of Marla’s things here.”

“I do,” she said. “I’ve kept her room just how it was. She sometimes spent the night here with me. We’d make hot fudge sundaes just like when she was a little girl.” She shredded the tissue in her hands.

“Did you show the police her room?”

“I surely didn’t,” she said. “That’s Marla’s private things. They didn’t have nothing to do with her, her ...” She swallowed convulsively.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, laying a hand on her arm and feeling a bit disgusted with myself for putting her through this. Her arm felt cold and papery through the thin rayon material. “Maybe I should come back later.”

“No, I’d like you to see her room. It would make me feel better. Maybe there is something there that could help you.” She stood up and started walking down the short hall.

Marla’s bedroom reminded me of my own—twenty years ago—though her taste in rock stars had been a bit wilder than mine. As I would have predicted, posters of the Rolling Stones, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison papered the walls. A variety of faded stuffed animals and a well-hugged Raggedy Ann doll nestled on the pillow of her lavender gingham bedspread. Though I was sure Mrs. Chenier would never recognize it, the air smelled faintly sweet of marijuana.

“I don’t know how it will help, but go ahead and look around,” Mrs. Chenier said. She reached over and stroked the dark stiff hair of a three-foot-high doll standing in the corner next to a tall chest of drawers. “Thank you for being concerned. It didn’t seem as if anyone else cared that my Marla died. I’ll be in the kitchen.”

That made me feel, as Dove would say, knee-high to an ant. It’s not that I didn’t care about Marla’s death, but our friendship wasn’t my compelling reason for looking deeper into her murder. I sighed and looked around the room, not really knowing where to start. The only experience I’d ever had in investigative work was seventeen years ago on my high-school newspaper when Elvia and I tried to discover just exactly what ingredients were in the Rainbow Harvest Casserole the lunchroom served on Fridays.

Her desk seemed the obvious place to start. That’s what they did on television cop shows. Her mother really did believe in keeping everything. I found book reports dating back to 1967 and an old diary of her first year in high school. I didn’t even bother reading it, figuring whatever Marla was involved in was more recent. Standing back and surveying the room, I tried to think where she would hide something that she didn’t want anyone, including her mother, to find. The furniture was shiny clean and the pillows on the bed plumped, so it had to be someplace that did not receive regular ministrations from Mrs. Chenier’s can of spray wax.

After the usual hiding places like drawers and under the bed, I tried the “clever” places I’d hid things as a teenager: the center of the bed between the box springs and mattress, inside the shanks of boots, behind picture frames. After ten minutes of fruitless searching, I pulled out her desk chair and sat down. Why was it always so easy on television?

I scanned the room again, marveling at the time warp I was in. The Troll doll collection, arranged according to size on the dresser, was priceless in terms of memories rather than money. I stood up and grabbed the two stiff hands of her walker doll and attempted to make it perform in the way the TV commercials promised thirty years ago. Its stiff-legged gait was just as unwieldy and unnatural now as it was then. I remembered the Christmas I got one like it and how disappointed I’d been when the doll didn’t perform as I’d anticipated. I smiled thinking about that Christmas, how my Uncle Arnie, fourteen then, and only six years older than me, teased me by kidnapping my doll, pulling her head off and putting gravel inside the hollow body so that she rattled like a castanet whenever I picked her up.

I twisted the head and wondered if Marla ever discovered how easy it was to pop off. The hollow space inside a doll that size could hide a lot of things. I glanced down the hallway to make sure Mrs. Chenier wasn’t coming. I was sure she wouldn’t take kindly to me decapitating Marla’s doll. I popped the head off and peered down into the depths. Well, I knew where her marijuana stash was now. But that told me nothing about blackmail.

I scanned the bookshelves. She had the typical assortment of childhood and adolescent books, mostly mysteries. Her Nancy Drew collection looked as if it didn’t miss one numbered book. I pulled one out and flipped through it. I had been more of a
National Velvet
and Black Beauty sort of girl, but I had a lot of friends who were addicted to Carolyn Keene. I put it back and pulled out another. I flipped through it and was surprised by a hundred-dollar bill stuck in the pages. I turned the book over and three more fell out. I kept going through the books and finally quit counting at one thousand. I quickly flipped through the others; almost every book contained some bills. Marla obviously didn’t believe in banks. In one book, there was no money, only a white legal-sized envelope. It was sealed, but at this point, I figured, in for a penny. I tore it open and surveyed the contents.

It contained two money-order receipts for five hundred dollars each, made out to a Suzanne Hart, and a small newspaper article. The heading of the article caused me to stop breathing for a second.

LOCAL MAN KILLED IN AUTO ACCIDENT.

When I heard the clump of heels echoing down the oakwood hallway, without thinking, I shoved the receipts and article back into the envelope and stuck it in the band of my skirt behind my sweater.

“Did you find anything?” Mrs. Chenier asked.

“Everything’s so neat. Did you ever see anything when you were cleaning that looked suspicious?” Answering a question with a question seemed like the best way to avoid actually lying.

Her features squeezed together in a helpless look as she shook her head silently.

“I’ve bothered you long enough,” I said, wanting suddenly to just get out of this sad place. The envelope tucked in my skirtband felt as large as a backpack; the significance of its contents made me queasy. “I’ll keep asking around and if I find out anything, I’ll let you know.”

“Thank you for trying.” She walked with me to the living room where I retrieved my purse. Her sisters, embroidered tea towels in hand, watched us from the kitchen doorway. It was probably my imagination, but I felt like they could see through my sweater to the envelope stuck there like an illegal pistol.

“I’m so sorry.” I touched her arm, not really certain just exactly what I meant.

“Thank you,” she said and closed the door behind me.

I resisted pulling the envelope out when I climbed into the Chevy. When I was safely out of her neighborhood, I pulled into a McDonald’s, ordered a coffee and picked a quiet corner to wrestle with the contents.

I studied it a long time, uncertain of exactly what I’d discovered. I still couldn’t believe I took it. Any scruples I’d developed in the last thirty-four years seemed to have disappeared in the last few days. If the money I found in the upstairs of the museum was blackmail money belonging to Eric and the money Marla had was too, then these money order receipts to this Suzanne Hart led me to believe she was profiting as well. And that she, hopefully, was still alive.

That left the newspaper article. What could Jack’s accident have to do with any of this? He was alone when his jeep turned over out on a desolate stretch of old Highway One. It was the reason no one found him for hours, probably the reason he died, a fact that still tore at my heart. The coroner said he most likely never regained conciousness, but no one could guarantee that. I still lay awake at nights and wondered about his last moments, whether he was in pain, if he thought of me. For the millionth time, I wished Wade had reached Trigger’s before Jack left.

I stuck the papers in my purse and as I drove back to town, tried to decide what my next move should be. Or rather, what it would be. I knew I should head straight for the police station and show them what I found, but I also knew that Ortiz would bite through a metal bit if he knew how I got it. And the thought of Jack’s death being a part of this whole mess was something I needed to ruminate on. Finding this Suzanne Hart looked like the next logical step.

Sitting in the driveway at home, I inspected the contents of the envelope one more time. This was incriminating stuff and I didn’t want anyone finding it until I knew what it was all about. Remembering how easily I found it in Marla’s house didn’t make concealing it inside my house feasible. I looked around the cab of the truck. Not a lot of hiding places there. In the corner, the glove compartment smiled at me. I pulled it open and surveyed the fifteen years of accumulated papers and junk. Taking the contents out of the white envelope, I stuck them inside a faded blue folder containing the outdated warranty information on the Chevy. Hide in plain sight. I mentally patted myself on the back for my cleverness.

So now all I had to do was find Suzanne Hart. I set my mind on the mechanics of it, not wanting to think about what she might have to tell me about Marla, Wade, Jack. A part of me wished I could stop, but I felt somehow as if I were in a spiral going around and around, caught in its twirling center. The question was whether I was spiraling up or down. And that seemed to be an answer that would only come when the spinning stopped.

AS WITH A lot of things in my house, I’d stuck my phone directory in such a safe place, I couldn’t remember where it was. After being informed by the directory assistance operator that three numbers were the limit, the library was my next stop.

San Celina’s new public library, perched on a bluff overlooking San Celina Central Park, was a two-story, gray concrete building that must have been designed by an architect specializing in federal prisons. The latest county phone book showed twenty-five Harts, any of which could have someone named Suzanne living there. I photocopied the page, begged change from the librarian at the reception desk, settled into one of the glass-and-wood phone booths and started dialing.

An hour and six dollars later, I’d reached twenty-three wrong numbers, two numbers no longer in service and one No-Suzanne-here-but-my-name-is-Leon-and-I-can-take-you-to-heaven-baby.

As I folded the photocopied page and stuck it in my purse, I couldn’t help but wonder if Ortiz or any of his men were even remotely close to what I’d discovered. This, of course, would be like cracking pistachio nuts to them—they’d just run the name through the Department of Motor Vehicles and get all the Suzanne Harts who’d ever lived in San Celina County and their current addresses. Unfortunately, I didn’t know anyone who worked for the DMV. But, I reasoned, driving toward the city administration buildings, one government agency was as good as another and it was a well-known fact all bureaucrats knew each other.

“I told the receptionist I didn’t want to see you,” Angie moaned as I plopped down in the black vinyl office chair next to her desk. A red plastic makeup mirror and a small array of Avon cosmetics decorated her gray desk blotter.

“She knew you were kidding.” I laid a candy bar in front of her. “There was a time you’d do anything for a Snickers.”

She checked her thin gold watch. “Those days are long gone. It’s four twenty-five and I’m out of here in five minutes. Whatever it is you want, I won’t do it. You promised I wouldn’t get in trouble for showing you Ortiz’s file.”

“Shoot, did that idiot report you?”

“Oh no, he’s more devious than that. He’s toying with me, like a cougar with a half-dead squirrel.” She looked at me miserably through her large tortoise-shell glasses and started scooping up her makeup.

“What’s he done?” I felt irritation bubble up inside me. Then again, he never actually promised he wasn’t going to report her.