Gourdfellas (16 page)

Swigging the last of what appeared to be a warm Coke, Scooter picked up his backpack and stuck his hand into one of the side pockets, then rummaged in the main compartment. “Sure, I’m fine to drive home, not like some
old
person who has to go to sleep at ten o’clock. Hey, you see where I put my car keys?”

“I thought they were in your pack,” Armel said, frowning.

I glanced at the obvious places in the living room. “Put them in your jacket?”

Scooter shook his head. “No jacket. I know I didn’t leave them in the car. Maybe they’re in the kitchen.”

Neil smiled as Scooter bounded out of the room. “He’s right. Only us old folks could be tired so early. Or us old folks on medication, anyway. I’m gonna try to do without that little pink pill tomorrow night. I hate the idea of getting addicted to sleeping pills.”

I didn’t say that maybe I’d try to do
with
a couple of the pills that Joseph Trent had given me. When I took one two nights earlier, I’d fallen asleep within fifteen minutes, but I still awoke with a million thoughts racing through my head four hours later. It was wearing me down, and nothing anyone else suggested seemed to do the trick.

“Hey, what’s this?” Scooter’s voice, loud and clear all the way from the kitchen, sounded half amused and just a little frightened.

Armel frowned and then bounded out of the room.

I glanced at Neil, whose raised eyebrows told me that he was fixed on the frightened part, and followed Armel. A dime store address book lay on the center island, its cover worn and the pages crinkled, as though they had been left out in the rain.

I’d never seen it before.

Pressed against the counter, a puzzled expression scrunching up his face, Scooter eyed me warily. “It was under the stove,” he said in a small voice.

Pale and wide-eyed, Armel hung back in the doorway as I reached for the book and then dropped it back on the butcher block as though it was on fire. Across the top of the cover, the name Marjorie Mellon was written in a cramped hand. When I started breathing again, my brain went into overdrive, scrambling around the questions of how that book had gotten into my kitchen and what I needed to do about it, now that Scooter’s, and more important,
my
fingerprints were all over the thing.

“I don’t know how this got here, Scooter. I have to make some phone calls. You find your keys?”

“They were in my pants pocket. I guess I didn’t feel them until I bent down to look on the floor and under stuff.” The wary look on his face softened to concern. “Whatever it is, I hope it’s not more bad news for you, Lili. You’re in trouble, right?”

I shook my head. “No, it’s just that I don’t understand what’s going on yet. It’s like people who say they’re lost. They just haven’t figured out how to get where they need to go. It may take a while for things to get straightened out. You go home, Scooter, Armel. And thanks for staying with Neil.”

Awkwardly, Scooter reached over and gave me a one-armed hug, then both boys disappeared in the direction of the living room. I barely heard the low male voices as I stared at the book on the counter. Someone could have come in while Neil, Armel, and Scooter slept, or even during a night when I hadn’t paid attention to bedtime routines.

So much for not locking doors in the country.

After I heard the front door slam—Scooter and Armel were still teens after all, boys whose movements were as large as their hearts—I went back into the living room.

“So what now?” Neil’s eyes were already a little droopy, and he blinked as he waited for my answer.

“Now I call my lawyer. And then I do whatever he tells me. Which is, I’m sure, to call the cops and tell them the truth. You didn’t hear anything tonight, no cars, no doors creaking open, no footsteps?”

My mind raced to catalog the people who were at the anti-casino meeting, and to remember what Susan had said about who’d been at the pro group. The swirl of names immediately got mixed up with the meeting two weeks earlier. I saw Jonathan Kirschbaum sitting in one of the back rows and yet I didn’t remember talking to him tonight. I couldn’t picture him in the barn, but given his wife’s strong feelings I couldn’t imagine that he’d miss a chance to oppose the casino. Nathaniel Bartle, Ira Jackson, Joseph Trent, Trisha Stern—was I remembering their names from this week or last?

Besides, there was no way to know whether Marjorie’s address book had been put under my stove tonight. It might have been there for days.

If Castro’s deputies had looked under the stove when they’d searched the house, then it would be obvious that someone had planted the book after they left. If they hadn’t and it had been there all along, would they admit to a less than thorough search?

B. H. Hovanian answered his phone on the first ring. He listened as I told him what I’d found and how it had been discovered. “And yes I touched it, before I knew what it was. I’m not used to thinking like a criminal.”

“Well, don’t touch it again. You call Castro and I’ll be right over.”

He clicked off before I could say anything. Michele Castro, too, answered on the first ring, as though she’d been waiting for my call.

“I found an address book that belongs to Marjorie Mellon. It was under my stove. Actually, Scooter Johnson found it,” I told her, sticking to Hovanian’s advice that the information I shared be all that was necessary to tell the truth without going beyond what was sufficient to make my point.

“I’ll be right over,” she said, as though she’d been listening in on my call to my lawyer and was echoing his words.

While I waited for them to arrive, I helped Neil, groggy and unsteady on his feet, into his bed, and then sat at the kitchen counter and stared at the book. Secrets lurked inside, even if I might not understand what they meant. My prints were already on a couple of pages. Would a forensics lab really check every single page? What was the difference between three sets of Lili Marino prints and five?

I jammed my hands against my sides and marched myself into the living room, but the book’s siren call drew me back to the kitchen.

Either Hovanian or Castro would arrive in the next five or six minutes, I judged when I looked at the clock. I reached for a dish towel, covered my hand and then flipped open the book and riffled through the pages. Names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses were neatly printed on the tiny pages. Bartle, Conklin, Evans, Paul, Selinsky, Trent—the names of people I knew jumped out at me, while the others blurred into a parade of syllables, businesses, relatives, maybe even lovers for all I knew.

Many of the names were marked with an asterisk, and when I studied them I realized that they were probably clients. So many asterisks—maybe I should go into the cleaning business instead of scrambling for freelance writing jobs.

The thought of someone taking advantage of Marjorie’s death that way gave me the shivers. Could she have been killed by a potential business rival?

I was about to close the book when I noticed that the back inside cover was filled with doodles and scribbles. Marjorie wasn’t much of an artist, favoring crosshatched shading on irregular shaped boxes and six-petaled flowers that grew in nobody’s garden. Several letters and numbers were sprinkled among the squiggles.

Meaningless? Maybe. Or maybe one of those jottings was a key. Or not. I copied the letters and numbers onto the back of an envelope and stuck it in a drawer, under the flatware divider. When I looked at the page more closely, I realized that some of the doodles were attempts to cover up other words or numbers. I squinted, was about to get my magnifying glass from the gourd studio when a car pulled into the driveway. B.H. stepped into the moonlit night from a tan Honda with its fair share of dents and dings. He looked up at the stars, then headed for the back porch. I answered his knock and let him in.

“That’s it?” he said, staring at the worn red book on the butcher block.

So much for social graces. I nodded, folded my arms across my chest, waited for him to say or do something. He glanced around the kitchen and took the dish towel I’d just replaced on the ring, opened the book and flipped pages. Every few seconds he stopped and cocked his head and shut his eyes, as though he were listening for something and didn’t want his concentration to be affected by his other senses. When he closed the book, he hung the towel back on the hook.

“So, she’s got a lot of clients, and knows a lot of other people. All I’m getting is that it was time for Marjorie Mellon to get a bigger address book.”

“You missed something,” I said. I took the towel, turned to the page filled with doodles and scribbles.

My timing was perfect. Lights flashing, a car pulled up beside Hovanian’s Honda. At least Michele Castro didn’t use the siren to alert all the sleeping inhabitants of Walden Corners that she was on her way to nab a criminal. I let her in and nodded in the direction of the book. B.H. was leaning against the counter, hands thrust in pockets, looking for all the world like a model for Gap chinos.

A very appealing model, I caught myself thinking.

“Scooter Johnson found this under the stove,” I said, “and I called you right away.”

“So you were here on a social visit?” She looked at B.H. and then circled the butcher block island, knelt, and peered under the stove.

“She called me too.” His eyes followed her as she stood and faced us again. “This is getting almost comical. Whoever is trying to make it look like Lili Marino is responsible for Marjorie Mellon’s death is only making herself or himself look like a fool.”

Despite my vulnerable position, I couldn’t help smiling at his pronouns. He hadn’t used the masculine default. B. H. Hovanian was more thoughtful than I realized.

Castro pulled on a pair of surgical gloves, slipped the book into a large plastic bag, and zipped it closed. “Nothing about this is funny. You said you never heard anyone come in, but it might have happened while you were asleep. Or it might have happened tonight. While you were at the meeting.”

I shook my head. “Could be. But my brother and Scooter and Armel Noonan were here the whole time. I don’t remember who searched the kitchen when you came with those warrants, but that person didn’t find it. Either time you went through my house. And I didn’t see it the last time I washed the floor.”

Not exactly what I’d meant to say—we all looked down and saw the spot where I’d spilled coffee, another where the rice had overflowed the pot on the stove before I could turn the flame down, and a small brownish blob that might have been congealed gravy or something much less appetizing.

I thought back to that first search—I was sure that one of the deputies had been assigned to the kitchen while Castro worked the bedroom and my studio. I had no doubt that she remembered the same facts. The second time around, they did only a cursory search, concentrating instead on the computer and the printer. But I wasn’t about to gloat, or even point that out to her.

Hovanian broke the silence. “My guess is that it was here one of the times you searched the house. You were meant to find it. Lili or any other sane human being wouldn’t steal a murder victim’s address book and then leave it for someone else to find so she could call the police. It doesn’t make sense. The only thing that works logically is that the person who put it under that stove knew the house would be searched. They didn’t want Lili or Scooter to find it. They wanted the police to discover that book.”

Her cheeks flaming, Castro didn’t argue. Her silence made it clear that it wasn’t her job to convince B.H. that his logic didn’t matter and the fact of that book showing up in my kitchen did. “We’ll check it for prints. I don’t need you to do anything right now, but this time I really don’t want you to leave town, at least not for a couple of days.”

I glanced at B.H., at his raised eyebrow and, strangely, at his hands, which rested on the butcher block. His fingers looked strong, decisive, as though
they
worked out every day, too.

“You can’t restrict her movements, Michele.” His voice, not loud, was nonetheless emphatic. “Unless you’re going to arrest her.”

I’d remember that direct gaze and forthright manner when I played poker—and probably at other times when I’d find myself drifting in thought and seeking comfort. But bluffing wasn’t in my bag of tricks, and I wasn’t sure that it was a good idea that Hovanian had played the challenge card right then. Still, I had to trust him. I gulped back the plea that rose to my lips and clenched my teeth to keep from speaking.

“Not yet,” Castro said as she followed every twitch of my face with her eyes. “I’m not going to arrest her yet.”

Which left a whole lot open to interpretation. But B. H. Hovanian didn’t appear to be interested in the subtleties.

“You’d better have some really solid ground. I can make a better case for police incompetence than you can for Lili Marino’s guilt. It’s late, and unless there’s anything else you want to chat about, I want to go home and I want to let Ms. Marino have the quiet enjoyment of her home returned to her.”

They stared at each other, two cool customers. It struck me that they’d forgotten that I was the reason they were both standing in this kitchen at 11:22 on a Monday night. They were inhabiting a professional space, not a personal one, and it annoyed me that they’d both lost of sight of me. Especially B. H. Hovanian.

The words they’d used, their maneuvers, gave each of them a special pleasure, it was clear. But I didn’t like being the pawn, the girl-in-the-middle. None of what was happening felt like a game to me.

“I’m going to wash my face and brush my teeth,” I said, already moving to the doorway. “If you need anything else, I’ll be out of the bathroom in a few minutes. Otherwise, would you leave the back way and pull the door shut behind you? It should lock if you pull hard.”

It took enormous willpower not to wait and check out their expressions, to see whether they were properly shocked or angry or confused or insulted. But the reward of marching off to the bathroom without looking back was much greater than any satisfaction I might have gotten if I’d lost my nerve and waited for approval.