PW02 - Bidding on Death (15 page)

“And there was no bookend?”

“Exactly. I put the books back, but there was no bookend.”

“A bookend could be anything,” he mused. “One of those wire things made to be a bookend wouldn’t be heavy enough, but if she used something else, like you do…”

“Precisely.”

“Do you know what Rose used as a bookend?”

“No, but I know who does.”

I strode decisively to the wall phone and called Bethany.
When she answered, I went right to the point, no shillyshallying, no explanations. “Bethany? This is Cissy Rayburn. Listen, I need to know what Rose Jackson used as a bookend for her cookbooks.”

The voice on the other end was puzzled, but she responded promptly. “Bookend? Oh, you mean that ugly old sad iron. She got it at an auction, said it was too heavy to sell online,
nobody would want to pay for shipping,
so she painted it green, made it uglier if you ask me.
She called it ‘John Deere green’.
”

“That’s it! Thanks, Bethany. See you Friday.”

I hung up the phone and turned to Jack, giving him a triumphant thumbs up. “An antique iron. And it wasn’t there.”

I turned back to the phone and called Washington House.
I asked for Agent Maguire, but Bev Washington told me the agent had just started her dinner. “Just ask her to call Cissy Rayburn when she’s free,” I told her.

Two minutes later, the phone rang. It was Maguire. “You wanted me to call?”

“I didn’t mean to interrupt your dinner,” I said.

“Never mind that, what do you want to tell me?”

“The murder weapon,” I blurted. “It was the iron.”

“No,” Maguire said. “Forensics checked the iron. It had Jackson’s fingerprints all over it, no blurs, and a lot of dust. They tell me it probably hadn’t been touched since she retired.”

“Not that iron,” I replied. “The other one. The one that wasn’t there.”

“She had two irons? Why would anyone want two irons?”

“The other one wasn’t an iron-iron, not an appliance, I mean. It was for show, an old antique sad iron.”

“If it wasn’t there, how do you know about it?” Maguire asked. She sounded skeptical.

I went through my thought processes with my row of books and Rose’s row of books. “And I realized that nobody would have half a shelf of books without a bookend, so I called Rose’s cleaning lady and she told me about the sad iron.
Those are plenty heavy, it’s the weight and heat that presses out the wrinkles.
”

“I suppose it’s possible…” Maguire mused. I still hadn’t convinced her.

“Oh,” I just remembered. “And it was green. Bethany said that Rose painted it. Called it John Deere green. You know, like the tractors.”

A grunt of surprise. I think that was the clincher. “That’s it, isn’t it?” I asked.

“It appears likely,” she admitted. “Thank you for the information.”

I got off the phone and whirled back to Jack, pumping a victory fist. “The kid’s still got it.”

“Way to go, slugger. But does it get us any further along?”

I sighed. “Probably not. Not unless they find it. But it makes the murder sounds unpremeditated, doesn’t it?”

“Which means there’s someone around here capable of a killing rage,” Jack told me soberly. “And now he’s got something to hide. Hon, I wish you’d go easy on the curiosity for a while. It could get you into trouble.”

I tried to picture someone grabbing an iron and braining a person with it. Someone maybe I knew. It was a creepy thought.

Jack gave me a hug. It was soothing. Then he said into my hair, “As I was saying – what’s for dinner?”

TEN

The next day, I called Julia and asked her to come over with Beau. Paco needed to learn company manners.
Beau was an obedience champ and a certified therapy dog; he was mellow. It made him a great training foil for the excitable little brat.
We set to work in the backyard.
Craig was at the picnic table with a sandwich and a bag of chips. He was reading a Zane Grey, but soon put it down to watch our endeavors.

I got
Paco
and put him in his harness and
leash and we went out to the backyard, where Julia was waiting with Beau.
As I expected, Paco went ballistic.
It took a few minutes to get his attention, but it gradually dawned on him that I was the lady with the treat bag. (I brought a boatload of treats for this occasion.) His clever little doggy brain recalled that he could get treats by doing what I wanted and he just had to figure out what it was.

It was a gradual process. I had Paco walk at my side while Beau and Julia were on the other side of the yard.
I kept a treat in my hand and kept him focused on that, giving him frequent treats for behaving.
Pretty soon, he got so he could walk nicely within sight of Beau. We brought the dogs closer as we walked them around.

“You know,” Julia said as we walked, “Rose could have done this any time. Paco didn’t have to be such a menace.”

“You see that a lot,” I said. “People get dogs and then they just have dogs, and they figure that the dogs are just that way and there’s nothing to be done about it.
”

I put Paco on a sit-stay while Julia walked around us with Beau. Then we traded places. Paco had several eruptions of fury, but each one was shorter, and I got his attention back to Treat Lady faster.

Then we put both dogs on a down stay. They were side by side about ten feet apart. I stayed close to Paco, watching for the tell-tale signs that he was about to break his stay, but he was good.  We both returned to our dogs and I gave Paco treats and praise.

“Let’s end on a high note,” Julia suggested.

“Yeah, I think we’re wearing out the little guy,” I agreed.

Craig got up from the picnic table and gathered up his trash. “I oughta get back,” he said slowly. He nodded toward Paco. “Really something how much he’s learned just while I was sitting here. Ladies. Little hombre.”

He nodded again and limped off toward the barn.

Julia turned to me, eyes wide. “Hey, do you think – “

I elbowed her and made shushing motions. “Yeah, I think,” I said softly. “Already working on it.”

We headed back into the house, Julia chuckling. “You’re such a matchmaker.”

“Is that a bad thing?”
I settled down at the kitchen table, prepared for a good gab.

“Not at all. And as far as matches go, this one looks ideal. Why didn’t we think of it sooner?”

“Craig is easy to overlook,” I admitted. “He just sort of blends in.”

Julia sighed romantically. “A boy and his dog. It’s a classic.” Suddenly she laughed.

“What?”

She helped herself to the coffeepot. “Oh, I was just remembering your most notable matchmaking fumble.”

I put my head down on the table. “Don’t remind me. How embarrassing.”

Julia brought us both coffee and settle down, still chuckling.

“Come on,” I said, “It made sense at the time. Rob Witloof was single and Doc Harding was single, and they seemed compatible. At least it seemed that way to me. I thought she and Delores were just roomies! You know, pals sharing living expenses.”

“The matching rings should have given you a clue,” Julia told me.

“I’ve paid a lot more attention since then,” I admitted. “Anyway. Paco needs a home, and Craig has a home. I thought that ‘little hombre’ was very encouraging, didn’t you?”

“Very,” Julia agreed.

We heard the crunch of gravel and the dog alarm went off, as Polly raced to the back door. I looked out the window. “It’s Luther,” I said.

“Ladies,” he greeted us as I opened the door and let him in. Polly squirmed around and Paco
raced to confront Luther, barking
hysterically.

“Another training opportunity,” Julia reminde
d me
.
Fortunately, Luther is a dog owner (he and his Jack Russell were in obedience class with Polly and me) and an easy-going kind of guy. He agreeably went out and reentered the door a number of times while I distracted Paco with treats and praised him for not being a
pest.

When things settled down, Luther accepted coffee and joined us at the table. “I’m back on the case,” he told us. “The VBI has lead, but I’m assisting.”

“Great!” I told him sincerely.

“That tip you gave Agent Maguire convinced her she needed more local knowledge,” he explained. “You hit the nail on the head with that one; green paint chips in the wound. Now we’ve just got to find that old iron.”

“I’m sure having you back will help the case,” I assured him.

“I’m not so sure about that,” he confessed. “I’m back on the case because Maguire thinks the murder had nothing to do with Granny’s auction. From what she’s learned about Rose and now identifying the weapon
as coming from the crime scene
, she’s come to the conclusion that Rose just got on somebody’s last nerve and they snapped.”

“If she’s going to investigate everyone that Rose aggravated over the past thirty and more years, she’ll be here forever,” Julia exclaimed.

“Well, I haven’t let go of the auction theory,” Luther told us. “It’s the only way to explain the other break-ins. I’m going to go visit Gran tomorrow, see if she can remember something that someone might want. She said there was nothing in that bunch of stuff she didn’t mind seeing the last of, but I just want to double-check.”

I drummed my fingers on the table. “She might just not know something was valuable,” I suggested. I described the
glasses at the auction that I considered valueless because they’d been worth a nickel apiece thirty years ago.

“That’s sort of why I wondered if you’d like to come visit Gran with me,” Luther admitted.

“Me?! Sure!” I so wanted to meet the golfing granny. But I wondered. “Luther, does Agent Maguire know about this?”

“No,” he said shortly.

“Would you get in trouble if she did?”

An uncomfortable pause. “Maybe,” he admitted.

“Tell you what,” Julia said briskly. “We’ll meet you there.”

“We?” I asked her.

“I’m older than you are,” she reminded me. “I could very well be exploring the possibility of assisted living. You’re coming along to keep me company, and we happen to run into Luther there and visit with his Granny.”

It was lame, but Maguire couldn’t prove it wasn’t true. So we agreed to meet the next day.

I told Jack about the upcoming road trip as we were getting ready for bed. He
wasn’t ple
ased
. “You’re sticking your neck out again, Cis. You really want to get this guy’s attention?”

“How would he even find out about it?” I pointed out.

“We don’t know, because we don’t know who it is, right?”

“You don’t think it’s Luther, do you?!”

“Of course not. But you know this place, word gets around.”

“I’ll call Julia and tell her not to tell anyone. Luther won’t mention it, because it’s kind of an end run around the VBI.”

“And another thing,”
he unfairly went on
, “when you’re running around, who’s minding the shop?”

“Well… you are.”

“Right!” he said, as if I was proving his point. “Last time you went haring around with Luther, I got pulled out of the lab three times by the shop bell. I’m trying to blend the cabernet, still haven’t got it right.”

“We are getting more traffic in the shop, aren’t we?”
That was a good thing. We made most of our sales on-site, from tourists and locals.

“We sure are. The county is growing and so is wine tourism. But someone needs to be here to sell them the wine!”

“Well, when I’m here, you think I’m not getting pulled away from my own work to run the shop? I bring in an income here too, you know!”

“I never said you didn’t, hon,” Jack said, bringing down the emotional temperature. “And before you say it, no I do not think your work is less important.
But we need to keep the shop covered. Maybe we should make up a schedule, work out who’s got shop duty when. We’ve just left it ad hoc up to now, and we’re really getting too busy for that.”

The schedule
suggestion
reminded me of our past failed attempts to maintain a chores schedule. And that reminded me of my recent solution. “Orrrrr – maybe it’s time we hired a shop manager.”

Jack had been about to make another point, but closed his mouth. Finally he said, “That’s something to think about. We’re really not a little hobby winery anymore, are we?”

“Let’s sleep on it,” I suggested. And so we did. Eventually.

It felt like old times to be off with Julia to ask total strangers a bunch of nosy questions. Julia drove and I rode shotgun. She obviously felt the same way, treating me to a cracked and off-key rendition of On The Road Again until I begged her to stop.