Sketch a Falling Star (15 page)

The moment they crossed from the open kitchen into the family room, Eloise popped up from the couch where she’d been sitting. She wobbled and swayed on her feet for several seconds until she got her balance. Jean was at her side instantly to help steady her.

“Mom, you’ve got to get up more slowly. Remember what the doctor said?”

Eloise pulled away from her daughter-in-law like a rebellious child and turned her attention to Rory. “Where have you been?” she admonished. “I’ve been waiting all day for you.”

“I rushed right over here as soon as I heard you wanted to see me,” Rory said. “Is there a problem?”

“Not exactly, but I can’t be expected to remember things for too long at my age. You know I’m not sixteen anymore.”

Jean rolled her eyes for Rory’s benefit and said she’d be in the laundry room if she was needed.

“Why don’t we sit down together, and you can tell me all about it,” Rory suggested, trying to gently maneuver Eloise back to the couch. But as frail as she looked, she resisted as if she were rooted to the spot.

“You’re going to need paper and a pencil,” Eloise said as if that should have been self-evident.

“Excuse me?”

“How are you going to draw her without paper and a pencil?” she asked impatiently.

“I don’t know what I was thinking,” Rory said, having no clue at all what they were talking about. She’d never even told Eloise that she was an artist, although she might have heard it from Jean or Doug. But more to the point, who could she possibly want Rory to draw? “One minute, I’ll see if Jean has some paper and—”

“No, no, she doesn’t have that kind of paper,” Eloise interrupted, her voice heavy with exasperation. “You need your sketch pad!”

“Of course. How silly of me. I’ll be back in a flash,” Rory promised. “But I think you should wait for me on the couch, okay?”

“I suppose.” Eloise sighed, shuffling off in that direction. “But hurry up; I’m not getting any younger.”

Rory stopped into the laundry room, where Jean was folding towels, and explained where she was going. Jean wagged her head as if to say, “Welcome to my world.”

At home Rory grabbed her pad and pencil and made it out the door again in under twenty seconds. Thankfully, Zeke hadn’t chosen one of those seconds to drop in for a chat. The last thing she needed right then was another confrontation about her seeing Eloise. As for Hobo the watchdog, he’d opened one sleepy eye to confirm that Rory wasn’t an intruder before promptly falling back to sleep.

She called out, “I’m back,” as she let herself into the Bowmans’ house again.

Eloise was on the couch, but the television was off, and she was staring at the kitchen, clearly waiting for Rory’s return. Her blue eyes brightened when Rory appeared, sketch pad in hand.

Rory sat down beside her, opening her pad to a clean sheet of paper. “So who is this person you’ll be describing to me?”

“I don’t know her name,” Eloise said, brushing off the question as if it were of no importance. “Things just sort of come to me—people mostly, sometimes places. They pop right into my head with no rhyme or reason.” She shrugged her shoulders. “A lot of them are hard to see, like when the TV used to get all snowy. But some of them, like this lady, look as real as you do sitting there next to me. And if they ask for my help, I try to accommodate.” Eloise smiled and nodded, clearly pleased with the service she provided.

“Okay, I guess we should get started then,” Rory said, feeling far from enlightened. She still had a basketful of questions, but she suspected Eloise had used up her entire stock of answers. “How old would you say this woman is?”

“She’s young, like you, but not as pretty,” Eloise said touching Rory’s cheek.

Rory felt the color rise in her face. She’d been taught to accept compliments graciously, but somehow the lesson never stuck. Compliments made her so uncomfortable that if she sensed one coming, she’d jump in and spin the conversation in another direction. But Eloise had caught her by surprise.

“Can you tell me the shape of this lady’s face?” Rory asked, eager to move on.

“Round…no.” Eloise closed her eyes for a moment as if to reboot the picture in her mind. “More…oval. Yes, that’s it, oval.” Her eyelids fluttered open again. “And her hair is long and dark, but she mostly wears it away from her face.”

“That’s good. Very good. Can you describe the shape of her eyes?” Rory prompted as she began sketching.

“Almond-shaped. I remember reading that in a book once, and when she appeared in my head, I said to myself, ‘Look at that, Eloise. She has almond-shaped eyes.’ ”

“Deep set or shallow?” Rory could tell from Eloise’s frown that she didn’t know what that meant. Rory explained the difference, after which Eloise settled on “shallow.”

Proceeding in that fashion, Rory led her through each of the woman’s features until Eloise declared the drawing to be a perfect likeness.

Unfortunately, the woman looking up at Rory from the page didn’t resemble anyone who’d been on the trip. And if she had nothing to do with the investigation, why on earth was it so urgent for Rory to know about her? Maybe she was only a figment of a stroke-addled brain after all, a composite of people Eloise had known in her life, seen on television or read about in books. Maybe Eloise had simply made a lucky guess about the fatal flood. Life being what it was, a prediction of bad news was bound to come true—and probably sooner than later. She was starting to buy into the stroke theory when she remembered that Eloise had known about Zeke. Logic couldn’t explain that any more than it could explain the lingering spirit of the marshal himself. And after that merry ride aboard the logic carousel, Rory found herself right back at square one.

“Am I supposed to know this person?” she asked, trying to keep the lid on her growing frustration.

“Yes,” Eloise said with a relieved sigh now that her obligation had been satisfied. She reached for the TV remote that was lying on the end table next to her and turned on her movie again.

Rory made a few more attempts to coax information out of her, but Eloise was focused on the TV now, no longer interested in anything else.

“J
essica was awfully hostile for someone who’s innocent; that’s all I’m saying.” Rory poured two big scoops of kibble into Hobo’s dish. The dog was watching intently, but when she put the dish on the floor for him, he sniffed it, then padded away, his big head hanging down. He looked as disappointed as a kid who discovers that the lollipop he’s been coveting is broccoli flavored.

“She didn’t do it,” Zeke said. “I can feel it in my gut.” He’d hunkered down to scratch Hobo’s ears with fingers of energy, an activity that had taken hours of practice on inanimate objects. Hobo gave a low groan of contentment.

“You don’t have a gut anymore,” Rory reminded the marshal with a little “gotcha” smile.

“I don’t have ears anymore either, and yet here I am listenin’ to you jabber. I’m tellin’ you, Jessica’s just worried because she thinks she’s the only one with a motive for murderin’ Brian. I’d bet my boots she doesn’t know any-thin’ about the scam he pulled on Ames, or that Sophia Caspian was hidin’ a broken heart to keep her father in check. Of course, I’m takin’ your word on the last one, since I wasn’t privy to that conversation.”

Rory let the implicit dig go unchallenged. After all, it was true that she hadn’t told him she was going to interview her aunt Helene. And although he didn’t know it yet, that wasn’t her only transgression. Less than an hour ago she’d hidden the sketch of Eloise’s mystery lady behind her headboard so he wouldn’t find it. She’d told herself that she was just trying to avoid another argument over Eloise and that she’d show it to him eventually. But she knew concealing information from her partner in a case they were working together wasn’t right no matter how many ways she tried to spin it.

“For all we know, everyone in that canyon had a reason to kill Brian,” she said, picking up where the marshal had left off.

“It’s surely startin’ to seem that way. How many of the troupe were there that day?”

“Eight, not counting my aunt and Brian.”

“So we’re assumin’ Helene’s not guilty?”

“Don’t even think about going there,” Rory warned him. “I’d suspect myself before I ever suspected her.”

“Well, it wouldn’t be the first time you misjudged a person’s character.”

Rory knew by the sly grin on Zeke’s face that he was referring to her nearly fatal relationship with Vince Conti the previous fall. But she had no intentions of digging up those old bones and going another round in the “who saved Rory” debate. She gave herself an imaginary pat on the back for not latching on to the marshal’s bait.

“The bank statement!” Zeke said, switching tracks so abruptly that he left Rory behind. “I almost forgot about it.”

“What? What bank statement? What are you talking about?”

He vanished from the room only to reappear at the kitchen table so quickly that Rory could swear she briefly saw two of him.

“I found it when I was going through Brian’s files,” he said, setting one of the folders on the table in front of her and flipping through the papers in it without scattering a single one. “I don’t know much about banks and finances these days,” he said, “but take a look at this page here.”

Rory picked up the paper he’d uncovered. It was a statement from Brian’s savings account listing all the deposits and withdrawals for the month of October the previous year. The statement was unremarkable until she reached the middle of the page.

She issued a low whistle. “I see what you mean.” On October nineteenth, fifty thousand dollars had been deposited into the account. Based on what Brian had told his mother, he’d worked in the financial field. Based on his conviction, not in a legitimate fashion. “Did you find any regular monthly deposits that might have come from a salary?” she asked to cover all bases.

“Not a one.”

“What about any other large deposits?”

“Nothin’ near that amount. Back in my day, if a body suddenly came into a large sum of money, it was from an inheritance, a winnin’ night at the poker table, or the proceeds from a bank robbery.”

“I’d add the lottery and blackmail to that list. But since I haven’t heard of any bank robberies or lottery winners around here, and Clarissa didn’t mention the passing of a rich relative, I’m leaning toward blackmail.”

“Blackmail…huh.”

While the marshal was still busy kicking the tires of this intriguing possibility, Rory was already taking it out for a spin. “The question,” she said, “is which member of the troupe has a secret worth fifty thousand dollars?
And
enough money to keep it a secret?”

Chapter 16

B
B called the next morning to say that Hobo could have his frog back. He asked Rory to meet him in front of the Forensic Sciences Building at one o’clock. When Rory arrived, the medical examiner was waiting outside with a brown paper bag in his hand, looking like an overgrown schoolboy waiting for the bus. She waved to him and motioned that she was going to park the car. It wasn’t always easy to find a spot in the busy complex of government buildings, but since it was still lunch hour, many of the people who worked there were out eating or using the time to run errands.

As soon as she emerged from the car, she was glad she’d thrown the denim jacket over her sweater before leaving the house. Having lived on Long Island all her life, she knew better than to trust the month of April. The day had seemed warm by early spring standards, but when the wind blew, it carried a sharp reminder of winter. She took the shortest route from her car to BB, trotting across the grass that was just beginning to green up.

“I hope I didn’t keep you waiting,” she said when she reached him.

“You’re exactly on time,
a l’heure, a tiempo,
as always,” he said handing her the small bag, which at close range appeared to be adorned with grease stains. “I apologize for the packaging, but I didn’t want to walk through the building holding a mangled, stuffed frog. I already have a reputation as something of an eccentric. So I rummaged around in my desk drawers for an appropriate receptacle and discovered that bag. I have no idea how long it was in there or what it originally carried, but I’m pretty sure it was some type of food. I should probably clean out my desk more often.”

“It’s perfectly fine,” Rory assured him, sidestepping the issue of his cleaning ethic. She was hardly qualified to judge anyone, since last night’s dinner dishes were still in her sink waiting to be washed. “Was Reggie able to make any sense of the writing on the tag?” she asked to nudge him back to the purpose of their meeting.

“As a matter of fact he was. Do you mind walking while we talk?”

“Not at all,” she said stoically. Except that she would have taken her winter coat if she’d known their meeting was going to be al fresco and longer than two minutes. BB and Reggie had done so many favors for her, it seemed petty to complain about the windchill factor. She’d defrost with coffee or hot cocoa on her way home. Bolstered by that thought, she buttoned her jacket and plastered a smile on her face.

“Doctor’s orders, I’m afraid,” BB explained glumly as they set out to make a circuit of the building.

It occurred to Rory that she’d never seen him sad before. It was like seeing a clown without his happy makeup. “Is it something you want to talk about?”

“Ah, if only talking were the solution. I’d filibuster better than any ten senators. It seems that I have to exercise and shed some weight to get my blood pressure and cholesterol under control.”

“Ouch.” She didn’t know anyone who enjoyed food quite as much as BB did.

“To put it mildly,” he said summoning up a bleak smile. “If you don’t mind, I’d actually prefer to talk about your frog. With any luck it will distract me from my stomach’s grumbling over what I can only loosely call lunch.”

As they turned the corner of the building, a cold blast of wind almost knocked Rory off her feet. Deep in his misery, BB didn’t seem to notice it.

Rory leaned into the wind to regain her balance. “Did Reggie tell you what was written on the tag?” she asked in the spirit of distracting him and satisfying her gnawing curiosity. The wind swallowed her words, forcing her to raise her voice and repeat the question.