Paula K. Perrin - Small Town Deadly (20 page)

Meg’s yellow sweatshirt hung from
her bowed shoulders.  Her brown eyes were enormous, her face pale.

Kirk had his arm around her, but
she stepped away from him to hug me, nearly tripping over Bunny in the process.

“I’m so sorry I wasn’t here for
you,” I said.

“It’s okay, Aunt Liz.”

I led her into the parlor,
switching on the Tiffany lamp as I passed it.  We sank onto the love seat
together.  Kirk perched on the window seat.  Bunny hopped up beside him.  I
knew Mother would not allow the poodle to do that, but at the moment I didn’t
have the energy to deal with it.

“What happened?” I asked.

“We were talking over the music
for Fran’s service and suddenly Kirk asked Grandmother if she was all right. 
She was so pale!”  Her cold hands clutched mine.  “Thank God Kirk was here—he
knew just what to do while I called 9-1-1.”  She took a shuddering breath. 
“I couldn’t even remember our address!”  Big tears rolled down her
cheeks, and she bit her lip.  “I was so afraid she was going to die.  I’d never
seen her so—she was helpless.”  Meg began to sob.

I put my arms around her, and we
rocked back and forth.  When she pulled away and groped in her pocket for a
tissue, I asked, “What did the doctor say?”

“They’re keeping her for
observation, running tests.”

“I should go see her.”

“No!”  Gene’s voice joined Meg’s
and Kirk’s.  Color flooded Meg’s face. 

Kirk said soothingly, “She can’t
have any visitors right now.”

“Especially not me, right?”  I
clutched my elbows.  “I upset her too much.”

Gene walked over to the fireplace
and rested his arm on the mantel.  “She gave as good as she got, Liz.”

“She pretty much pushed you into
it,” Meg said softly.

I looked toward Mother’s empty
chair.  “Well, there’s scant use debating it now.”

Meg hooted with laughter.  “You
sound just like her.”

I got up, crossed to the window
seat and looked out.  “Everything has changed,” I said.  “In just two days.” 
Bunny’s cold nose nudged my hand, and I began stroking his wooly back.

Kirk hurried into the silence, “We
can’t always see God’s plan while it’s in the making.”

I whirled, “You think it’s God’s
will that Fran—”  Gene shifted by the fireplace.  He caught my eye.  I bit
back the angry words.

“The house seems so empty,” Meg
said.

“Claire has a great big
personality,” Kirk answered.

Gene sneezed.

“Bless you,” we said in chorus.

He sneezed again.

“I told you to go home and
change,” I said.

“There wasn’t time.”

“Oh, the call.”  How could I have
forgotten it?  “Did you trace it?”

“Didn’t have to.  It’s the phone
booth out by the Elks.”

“What are you talking about?” Meg
demanded.

“The caller.  I thought he had
you—” my voice guttered out.

“Oh, Aunt Liz, I’m so sorry, but I
just never thought of leaving a note.  I tried to call from the hospital but
you weren’t home, and I didn’t want to leave that kind of message on the
machine, and then later—”

Kirk broke in, “I told Meg it’d be
better to wait till we got home, so if you want to blame anyone, blame me.”

I stared at him, this kid priest
in his red Hawaiian shirt and cut-offs and realized how both Mother and I
appeared to him, always throwing blame around. 
No more,
I promised
myself.

“Anyway,” Gene continued, “before
we had cell phones, and even now sometimes if it’s confidential, if we want to
use a land line, we’ll specify a certain phone booth, and I remembered the
number for that one.”

“But no one was there?” I asked.

“Nope.  No witnesses either,”
three sneezes in a row interrupted him.  He blew his nose and continued, “I’ve
got men asking, but it’s not likely they’ll get anything.”

The doorbell rang, startling us
all.  Gene gestured us to stay put and went to the door.  He returned carrying
a bottle of brandy.  “Anyone need this now?” he asked.

“I wouldn’t mind,” Kirk said.

“I’ll get glasses.”  Meg leaped
up.  Bunny raced down the hall ahead of her, his toenails clicking.

Gene handed the bottle to Kirk and
said, “I’m going to go change, then I’ll come back.  I’ll sleep on the couch.”

Kirk said, “I’ll stay.”

“No offense, but I can’t let you
do that.”

Kirk glared first at Gene, then at
me.  “I’m losing patience with this!”

“I don’t want either of you here,”
I said.

Gene slumped onto the window
seat.  “Do you have a gun?”

“No, Gene, I don’t believe in
them.”

“I bet the killer does.”

“So far, it seems, the killer has
not needed firearms.”

“Do me a favor, Liz.  For once in
your life, don’t argue, just go along with a plan that makes sense, will you?” 
He rubbed at his eyes.

“If you insist on someone staying
all night, how about Lofty?”

“No.”

“You think I’m stubborn?”

He looked up at me, pain in his
eyes.  “I can’t stand to lose anyone else.”

I turned to Kirk, “Do you have
clothes you could lend Gene so he doesn’t have to go out again?”

“Sure.”  He set the brandy bottle
next to the lamp and hurried into the hall where I heard him talking with Meg.

The glasses she was carrying
chimed against each other as she set them next to the brandy bottle.

I said, “Meg, would you put some
honey and lemon juice in hot water for Gene?”

“And a couple of aspirin?” he
added.

She nodded and went back to the
kitchen.

I looked down at Gene who had
slumped, eyes closed, into the corner formed by the wall and the window.  I
hesitated.  Perhaps it was my own weariness and confusion as much as trust that
finally made me say, “We have to talk.”

One eye opened far enough to
reveal a wedge of blue.

“I found—” I felt my own face
heat up.  “Did you know someone took pictures of you and Sibyl together?”

He jerked upright, both eyes wide
open.  “What?”  He stood up.  “When?  Who?”

I giggled.

He glared at me.  “What are you
talking about?”

“Photographs that were taken of
you and Sibyl outside her neighbor’s house last summer.”

His face flushed a deeper red. 
One hand rubbed his moustache.  He cleared his throat.  “No, I wasn’t aware of
that.  Who took them?  Where are they?”  There was no threat in his manner,
only embarrassment.

“Somewhere safe,” I said.

“How did you see them?”

I sighed.  “Fran left them in my
desk drawer.”

“Is that what you were so
mysterious about?”

“Yes.”

He sank back onto the cushions. 
“You must think I’m a real fool.”

“Yes.”

He laughed, a short, sharp bark. 
He sighed.  “So why are you telling me now?”  His tone was dull.

“I guess because—” I skidded to a
stop.  “Because—”

He shoved himself to his feet,
interrupting roughly, “It doesn’t matter.  Show me the pictures.”

“I can’t.  I’ve put them away for
safekeeping.”

He turned a sad smile on me.  “So
you’re not really trusting me.  Why did Fran give them to you?”

Meg came in with a mug that
streamed honey-scented steam. Grateful for the respite, I offered him the
brandy bottle.

“Better not,” he said.  “Let’s go
upstairs—”

The front door opened, and Kirk
came in with an armload of clothes held under his water-beaded coat.  He’d
taken the opportunity to change, too, into jeans and a faded sweatshirt.

Gene went off with the clothing. 
Meg poured three brandies, and we listened to the rain gurgling through the
gutter at the side of the house.  Kirk crossed to the fireplace, crumpled up
some newspaper and laid kindling for a fire.  Bunny stood beside him, tail
wagging.

Gene padded in barefoot, the hems
of his borrowed jeans a couple of inches shy of his ankles.

As Kirk struck a match to light
the fire, his stomach growled.

“Oh, the stew,” I said, starting
to get up.

“Alisz is expecting us for dinner,
so I turned it off,” Meg said.

Kirk sat cross-legged in front of
the fire.

I sank back.  “I can’t face being
polite company tonight,” I said.  “Why don’t you two go?”

Meg and Kirk exchanged questioning
looks.  He shrugged, leaving it up to her.  “Oh, I don’t know,” she said,
putting her glass down on the side table and rummaging through her purse.  She
took out a small round mirror with Snoopy on the back and peered into it as she
pulled the lipstick case apart.

“You could tell a little white lie
and say I hadn’t gotten back,” I said.

Kirk said, “Tell her the truth:
Claire is ill, you’re tired, and we all—”

“Meg!” I shrieked, jumping to my
feet, brandy sloshing onto my jeans.  “Where did you get that lipstick?”

She glared at me.  “You scared me
to death!”  She rubbed off the slash of dark red lipstick she’d smeared beyond
the corner of her mouth, then held up the faux carved-ivory case.  “What do you
mean, where did I get it, you know it’s from that new cosmetics line—”

“You didn’t lose it?” I demanded.

“Yeah, I did at that rehearsal
last week, so I bought another.  I just love this color.”

I got up.  “I’m going to turn the
heat back on under the stew and call Alisz,” I said.  I went down the hall,
poked at the stew and turned on the burner.  Then I punched out Alisz’s number.

Jared answered, voice drowsy.  “I
fell asleep studying,” he said when I apologized for waking him.

“I wanted to talk to your mother
about her invitation to dinner,” I said, “is she around?”

“Just a sec.”  He set the phone
down with a crack.  I heard him calling for her.  When he came back he said, “I
guess she’s made a last-minute trip to the store.”

“How long’s she been gone?” I
asked, thinking of the caller.

“Can’t have been long,” he said,
yawning.

There went that theory.  “I hope
she’s not going to any trouble.  Mother was taken ill this afternoon, and we
need to stay home by the phone.”

He said, “You’re probably
following the wisest course, Mom’s cooking has taken a turn for the worse
lately.”

“You try cooking meals for twenty
years straight and see how inspired you feel,” I said.

“Dull I’m used to, but last week
she made some chicken dish that smelled so bad I became an instant vegetarian.”

“Then I guess you won’t want to come
over for beef stew.”

“I’ll pass, and I’m sure Mom
wouldn’t want to intrude when you’re worried about Ms. Macrae.”

I phoned the hospital and asked
for an update on Mother.  They said she was resting comfortably.  I decided to
believe them and let sleeping mothers lie.

Gene padded in, his feet bare.

I tore open a box of brownie mix.

“You plan on using Jennifer’s
recipe for those?”

I shook my head.  “I don’t
understand marijuana’s attraction.”

“You’re probably too uptight to
let it work its magic.”

I turned to stare at him.  “You
sound like you know what you’re talking about.”

“Distant memories,” he said.

“You do surprise me sometimes.”

He grinned, pulled a chair out
from the table and sat.  He sighed.  “You said Fran left those photos in your
desk?  When?”

“Yesterday morning.”  As I added
the water, oil and eggs to the mix, I told him about finding her in my study. 
I started to tell him about my conversation with Max.

“Jeez, Liz, you’re just now
telling me this?”  He pulled out his cell phone, looked at it, and muttered,
“Damn cheap thing.”  His chair scraped as he jumped up.  He used our
phone to call the station and told them to pick Max up.  He sat back down and
said, “Now finish, and don’t leave anything out.”

I told him about Max and what
Sibyl, Charlie, and Jennifer had said.  I slumped against the counter.  “Why
would Fran do it?”  I bit my lip.  “How could she?”

He shrugged.  “She liked risks and
she liked money.”

“But what was she doing with the
money?”

“I don’t know.”  He settled back
in the chair and crossed his arms.  He looked so tired.

“I’ll get the photos for you as
soon as I can.  Tuesday at the latest,” I said.

He scratched his ear.  “Fran
involved in blackmail, huh?  I knew something wasn’t right, but, jeez.”

“Would you have paid for the
pictures?”

He laughed.  “Nope, even supposing
I could come up with some cash.  Blackmailers are the lowest form of scum—”

“What about Sibyl?  Would she
pay?”  I beat the dough.

“How would I know?” he snapped.

“I assume you know her better than
I do.”

In the tense silence that
followed, I scraped the brownie dough into a pan and shoved it in the oven.

I began to straighten the junk Meg
had left on the table.

Gene reached out and covered my
hand with his.

My hand grasped his for a moment. 
I pulled away.  “Fran couldn’t have killed Andre.  Maybe she got the pictures
by accident, and she was hiding them until she decided—”

“Don’t lie to yourself—just let
it go until I dig up some facts.”  He went to the sink and got us both glasses
of water.  “And do I need to tell you not to dig any more?  Besides giving
people grounds to sue you for harassment, you could be baiting a killer.”

“It’s hard to sit still when
someone’s killed Fran and threatened my family.”

“Leave it up to the
professionals.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, flipping him a
mock salute.

“Jeez, that was pitiful,” he
said.  “Look, you have to keep your wrist straight, like this.”  He snapped off
a salute, the sleeve of Kirk’s sweater climbing to his elbow.

The phone rang.  “You get it,” I
said.

He answered, listened, then
swore.  “Put out an APB,” he said and hung up.

Turning to me, he said, “Max
skipped.”

“Do you think Max killed Andre and
Fran?”

“Seems to me he had more to gain
with them alive, but then I haven’t had a chance to talk to him.”

“Gene, how do you think Fran was
killed?”

“We won’t know till the autopsy.”

“I bet it was penicillin.  But
she’d never have taken it willingly.  She’d have fought.”

“There was no sign of a struggle. 
Maybe it was disguised.”

“But it has such a distinctive
smell.  How could you disguise that?”

“I don’t know, and it’s a waste of
time to speculate since we won’t know if she was poisoned until—”

“I know.  I just can’t turn off
the questions.  Of course, she was tipsy last night, maybe too drunk to
notice?  And anyone could have penicillin on hand from a prescription they
never finished.  How’ll you ever find the right person?”

He sniffed.  “One thing we know,
anyone could have had access to the building.  That office manager of hers
handed out keys and alarm codes as if they were lollipops.  No security at
all.”  With a disapproving shake of his head, he left.

The refrigerator motor kicked on,
making a pleasant background noise.  I leaned back in my chair and closed my
eyes.

“Aunt Liz?  You asleep?” Meg
hovered by the table holding the brandy bottle in one hand and the glasses by
their rims in the other.

“Just about, I guess.”

“How’s the stew coming?  Kirk’s
starving.”

“Isn’t he always?”

She poked a fork into the pot. 
“The carrots are almost tender.”  She leaned against the counter.  “Aunt Liz,
why were you so weird about my lipstick?”

“Let’s wait until we’re alone.”

She crossed to the kitchen door
and closed it.  “Kirk’s reading, and Gene’s asleep on the window seat.”  She
sat down across from me.  “So what’s wrong?”

I took a deep breath.  “I’ve been
wanting to ask you the same thing.”  I reached for the brandy bottle and
poured, letting just a trickle of the amber liquid escape the round, smooth
neck of the bottle.  I looked up.

She had pulled the rubber band off
her pony tail so her lustrous auburn hair curled on her shoulders.  Her slight
frown emphasized how young and unlined her skin was, but her hands, gracefully
entwined in stillness, reminded me she wasn’t a little girl any more.

I said, “It’s been a dreadful
couple of days, hasn’t it?”

“I feel empty.”

I nodded.  “Sort of afraid to look
around because of what’s missing.”

A sad smile flickered on her
lips.  “You’re so good with words, Aunt Liz.”

“I wish I were better at other
things.  Meg, I’ve been so worried about you.”

She shook her head, “I don’t want
to talk about that, not now.”

“When?  Meg—”  I couldn’t say it,
I couldn’t tell her I’d suspected her of murder, that only yesterday I’d seriously
considered institutionalizing her.

The scratching at the hall door
was a relief.  Meg got up and let the poodle in.  She picked him up and hugged
him, then sat down with him on her lap.  “Poor orphan,” she said.  “Little
Orphan Bunny, that’s what we should call him.”

“No way!”

She giggled.  “It would be
severely retrograde.”  She nuzzled Bunny’s topknot, then peered up at me, “Gene
wasn’t fooled by your lame cover-up about the lipstick.”

I took a sip of the brandy I’d
poured.  “Andre had one just like it in his hand when I found him.”

“Weird.  What would he be doing
with a lipstick?  Was it the same color as mine?”

“I don’t know, I didn’t take the
cover off.  I assumed it was yours.”

“Why did you think he had my
lip—”  Bunny yipped as her hand jerked.  “You’re going nuts!  How could you
suspect me?”

“I was afraid that you’d gone
nuts.”

“Give me a break!” she said, her
voice harsh.

“Well, look at that trouble you
got into at college and then the way you’ve been acting since.  You fly off the
handle at the slightest provocation.”

Her expression was half resentful,
half gratified.  “Sounds more like PMS than homicidal mania to me,” she said,
her disdainful sniff very like Mother’s.

I rubbed my temples, my fingers
unsteady.  “When I found the lipstick I didn’t sit down and analyze what it
meant, I just took it so no one else could find it.  The next day, Fran found
out the police had discovered sequins from your costume in the closet—”

“Then why didn’t you get the
sequins too?”

“I didn’t see them.  They were
under him.”

“I’ve been framed!”

“Who would do that, Meg?  Isn’t it
more likely that you dropped—”

“I didn’t go near that closet, so
the sequins couldn’t have gotten there from me.”

“Unless they’d caught on his
clothing?”

“I suppose.  But I don’t know how
he got the lipstick.”

“Everyone knew you’d lost it the
week before, you made such a fuss.”

“It was brand-new.”

She was so indignant, I smiled. 
“Maybe Andre had found it, picked it up to return to you, and got hit before—”

“Let’s let Gene figure this out,”
she said, jumping to her feet.

“No!” I yelped.  “Honey, don’t
hand him another reason to suspect you.”

“He’s our cousin, for heaven’s
sake,” she said, setting Bunny on the floor.

“An exceedingly distant cousin,
and a policeman, and he has to follow the evidence no matter where it leads.  I
don’t want you to talk to him about the case until we get you a lawyer.”

“I don’t need a lawyer.  I didn’t
do anything.”  She took the glass with the dark red lipstick on the rim and
poured brandy into it.  She gulped some down.

I wasn’t aware I was frowning
until she said, “I’m not an alcoholic.”

“Good.”

“But you don’t believe me.”

“Well, after the other night—”

“That was one time, Aunt Liz.”

“But you drove—”

“And now you’ll never let me
forget it.”  Her eyes glittered.

“Honey, do you see how quickly
you’re growing angry?  Do you see—”

“And do you see what a pain in the
ass you are?”

Bunny whined in the silence that
fell between us.

“I’m sorry, Aunt Liz.  I didn’t
mean to say that.”

“But if it’s what you’re thinking,
you might as well or some day you and I will end up having the fight Mother and
I had this afternoon.  All that poison.”

She jumped up and went over to the
stove.  She stirred the stew vigorously, then whapped the spoon against the
pot.  When she turned to look at me, her eyes gleamed with tears, a fist
pressed against her lips.

“What is it?”

She shook her head.

I got up and walked over to her
and put my hands on her upper arms, barely touching.  “Meggie, please.  Whatever
it is, please tell me.”