Morning Cup of Murder (21 page)

“I find it interesting that you think longevity would be the deciding factor,” she said.

“If not longevity, then what?” he asked.

In answer, she gave him an enigmatic smile before standing to clear the dishes.

Chapter 17

Two hours later, Lacy found herself sitting on Gladys Smith’s sofa, shifting uncomfortably every time the plastic covering stuck to a new area.

The entire group of friends was there: Rose, Gladys, Janice, and Maya. Lacy felt awkward without her grandmother as a buffer. She had never spent much time alone with the other women, instead always seeing them at some church function, usually a funeral. Now they faced her in a semicircle of silence, as if she were the teacher and they were awaiting her lecture.

“Thank you for meeting me today on such short notice,” she began. “As you know, Grandma is still in jail. I tried talking to the detective about her alibi, but he wouldn’t listen.”

“What’s her alibi?” Maya asked.

“She baked me a prune cake during the time of the murder.”

They nodded together. Only a group of like-minded baking grandmothers would understand how much time and effort went into baking a scratch cake.

“I’m sure things will work out,” Janice said weakly.

“Frankly, I’m beginning to have my doubts,” Lacy said. “The detective in charge doesn’t want to listen to reason. He wants to blame Grandma, and he won’t investigate any other possibility.”

“That’s preposterous,” Rose said, dabbing at her lip with her ever-present hankie. “Everyone knows Lucy is the kindest, gentlest soul on the planet. She’s never done one regrettable thing in her life.”

The three other women shifted nervously in their seats. Lacy thought if they had been close enough, they might have jabbed their friend in the ribs with their elbows. Instead they darted her quelling glares until she relaxed into her chair, subdued and silent.

“I agree with you,” Lacy said. “But I also feel like it’s up to me to make Grandma’s case and prove her innocence. That’s why I called you here this morning. I need your help.” She pulled the three journals from her bag. Was it her imagination, or did the tension in the room heighten a few notches as the four women leaned forward and focused their gazes on the books.

“I found these in the course of my investigation,” Lacy said. When no one commented, she continued. “They seem to be some sort of record of things people gave her, but the names are in code. Here, for instance.” She opened the oldest book, flipping to the back, and began reading.

“‘The Flakes- house.’ Obviously they were her parents because I know they left her the house, but these other entries are a mystery. Do they mean anything to you?” She passed the journal into the group and watched while they huddled together over the book. After a minute of silent perusal, Janice slammed shut the book and handed it back.

“No, not a thing. We have no idea. There’s nothing in those books that’s familiar to us. I have no idea what any of it means. It’s a mystery. There’s no telling with Barbara. She was an odd bird. Could be anything. We have no idea. She probably became mixed up in something bad in
New York
.”

Lacy blinked at her. “Okay,” she drawled. “It’s just that everything started and ended here. I can’t help but feel like this town is connected with her death, and I think something in these journals might hold the key.”

The four women remained silent, staring frozenly at Lacy as if she were holding a gun on them.

“Maybe if you took another look,” she began, but Maya cut her off.

“We don’t know anything,” she said.

“Do any of the names ring a bell with you? Are there any clues that might help me figure out who these are talking about?”

“She did like to give people nicknames,” Rose squeaked.

“Rose!” The other three women hissed her name and turned to look at her.

Lacy’s mind was beginning to fill in the missing pieces of the puzzle. “Did she have nicknames for you four?” she asked, focusing all her attention on Rose.

Rose nodded. A tear trickled down one cheek.

Lacy glanced at the book, skipping to the section she knew by heart. “Prim--that’s you, isn’t it, Rose?” Rose didn’t answer, but from her baleful look Lacy knew she had guessed correctly. “President, is that you, Maya?” Her maiden name had been Grant.

Maya nodded, her lips pressed tightly together in mute defiance.

“And Strings, that must be Janice.” Janice’s maiden name was Harpest. “I guess that means Gladys is Radish. Why, though?”

“She said it rhymed,” Gladys snapped, the anger in her tone revealing just how much she had hated the nickname.

“I don’t understand. Why did you keep this from me? From what I’ve been able to learn, lots of people gave her things.”

Rose’s tears increased, and now the other three women looked in danger of joining her. “We didn’t give her those things from our own houses,” Rose said. The other women tried to shush her again, but she hurried on as if, now that she started, she had to get it out. “We stole them.”

Lacy tried and failed to hide her shock. Besides her grandmother, these four were the most upstanding and law-abiding people she knew. “What happened? Tell me the whole story,” she commanded, and for some reason they complied. Piece by piece, person by person, they began to tell their tale.

“We were friends all the way through school, and Barbara was always our leader. None of us really liked her, but we were all too afraid of her to leave the group. For a long time she controlled us through verbal abuse. Anyone who crossed her became such an outcast that school was unbearable. It wasn’t until her parents died that she really flew off her rocker.

“It started small--the hints for things she wanted from the store. None of us can figure out exactly why we started giving in to her demands, but eventually we did. And then it became a weird game of one-upmanship. Who could steal the biggest and the best item for her? We were all out of our heads.

“I don’t know how it would have ended if Barbara hadn’t suddenly packed up and moved away. When she left, it was as if a spell had been broken and we all returned to our senses. You have no idea how ashamed and afraid we were. We knew if anyone found out what we did, our reputations would be ruined forever and we would go to jail. We vowed to keep it a secret and never tell anyone. We promised never to break the law or do anything bad again. We went on with our lives and pretended nothing had ever happened. We all got married and became respectable women again.

“And then Barbara returned,” Rose finished bitterly. “She sent us notes saying she had proof that would send us to jail.”

If they hadn’t been so upset, afraid, and downright pathetic, Lacy would have laughed. “But surely you know the statute of limitations on theft is very low. Even with concrete proof there’s no way you could be prosecuted after fifty years. And who do you think people would believe? A notoriously bad woman or four upstanding women of the community who are pillars of their church?”

They looked at her, considering. “I guess we never thought of it that way,” Gladys said. “Oh. Oh, dear. We’ve acted very rashly.” She pressed her hand to her mouth and looked away, tears slowly leaking down her cheek.

Lacy wanted to tear her hair out in frustration. “What? What else aren’t you telling me?” Surely they weren’t about to confess to Barbara’s murder, too, were they? Was protecting their reputation so important that they would kill to keep the journals covered up? And then with that question she had her answer. “Oh. You hired Bryce to come to my house and steal the journals.”

Rose nodded. She looked miserable; they all did.

“We’re sorry, Lacy. We tried to get a criminal we knew wasn’t the violent kind. We just wanted the journals. If he had gotten them the first time when he broke into her house, then you wouldn’t have ever even known about those blasted things.”

A new horror began to dawn on Lacy. “So you mean you didn’t just hire him to break into my house, you hired him to break into Barbara’s house, too.”

Janice nodded. “But only after her death, and we had nothing to do with that.”

“No, you don’t understand. Bryce and I were in Barbara’s house at the same time. He hit me in the head and knocked me out. He could go to jail for assault. I could go to jail for breaking and entering. You could go to jail for hiring him in the first place.”

“But we hired him on the internet,” Maya said. “He never saw us.”

“Those internet sites are easy to trace,” Lacy said. Bryce wouldn’t confess his part in the first attack, but Jason knew. Once they ran the internet trace, the entire story would be in the open. Detective Brenner would learn her part in breaking into Barbara’s house. He would love nothing better than to throw the book at her. Everything was about to hit the fan in a big way.

The four women blanched. Rose moaned and Gladys swayed. “What are we going to do?” Janice asked, sounding small and helpless.

“Stay calm,” Lacy said, trying to take her own advice. “Things might still work out.” The key to everything was Jason. If she could convince him to drop the charges and let Bryce go, then no one would ever be the wiser about her break-in or the four elderly friends’ hiring of him in the first place. “I’ll work on a solution. Just stay silent and, for goodness sake, don’t do anything else.”

“Never again,” Rose vowed. “We promise never to break the law again.”

The vow lost some meaning when Lacy realized it was probably the second time in her life she had taken it. But, statistically speaking, she only had a few years left. That alone might guarantee that she would actually stick to her promise this time.

There was one final thing she had to know before she left. Taking a deep breath, she forced herself to ask the dreaded question. “Was my grandmother in on it with you?”

The other women looked at each other in surprise. “Why, no, of course not,” Gladys said. “She was two years older than us and not in our group until much later. And, knowing Lucy, if she had heard about what we were up to she probably would have had us in church confessing before the entire congregation.”

“Could she have found out what was going on?” If her grandmother had gone to Barbara’s to try and plead her friends’ case that might explain the connection.

“No. None of us would ever have told her; we would have been too ashamed,” Rose said.

After reassuring them and swearing them to silence and inactivity a few more times, Lacy left feeling exhausted and dismayed. Was no one trustworthy anymore? No one besides her grandmother, that is. Lacy hated to admit it, but there was a large part of her that felt proud her grandmother hadn’t been involved in such licentious activity, even if it had happened some fifty years ago.

Her stomach rumbled, reminding her it was lunchtime. She drove through a fast food restaurant and, on a whim, ordered enough for two. Crossing her fingers that she would find Tosh at his church, she let herself in and knocked on his office door.

“Come in,” he called and looked up with a welcoming smile when she opened the door. “Lacy, this is a great surprise. But I thought we were on for tonight.”

“I can’t make tonight,” she said. “I have something else to do.” Wearily, she sank into the chair across from him and resisted the urge to put her feet up.

He leaned forward with a concerned frown. “Is everything okay?”

“Can I ask you a pastor question?”

“Yes. Do you want me to put my collar on?” He reached for the drawer beside him, but she stopped him with a laugh.

“No, that’s okay. I want to talk like friends. I just meant I have an ethical dilemma, and I need your advice.”

“Go ahead.” He crossed his hands on his desk and prepared to listen intently.

“Do you think it’s ever okay to cover up a crime?” she asked.

“Are you talking about your break-in at the Blake house the other night?”

“How did you know?” she asked, astounded by his perception.

He shrugged. “Call it pastor’s intuition. If you’re asking if it’s okay to cover up what you did to avoid getting in trouble, then the answer is no.”

“But I thought you agreed it needed to be done,” she said indignantly.

“I did, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be willing to accept the consequences of your behavior. You had a compelling reason to break into that house, but it was still against the law. If you get caught, then you need to be willing to pay for your crime.”

She digested that and realized she agreed with him. Covering up her actions didn’t feel right. If she was arrested, then so be it. “But what if you’re covering a crime to protect someone you love?”

He froze and quirked an eyebrow. “Jason?”

She frowned. “Of course not.” With a sigh, she unloaded the entire story she had just learned from her grandmother’s four friends. When she was finished, Tosh laughed.

“I know I shouldn’t find it funny, but it’s not every day a pastor learns that four of the oldest and most conservative members of his congregation are actually criminals.”

“Tosh, you can’t tell anyone,” she said, suddenly afraid she had said too much.

“Of course not,” he said. “What happens in this office is confidential.” He sat back and laced his hands behind his head. “You’ve raised a difficult question, Lacy. Is it ever right to commit or cover a crime in order to protect the person you love? My first inclination is to say no, but life is full of gray areas. I honestly don’t know.”