The Chocolate Cupid Killings (13 page)

“Where are they?”

“Pamela didn't tell Sarajane that. But she says she and Myrl are safe.”

My excitement cooled to a simmer. A phone call from Pamela was good, true. But I needed more details before I would be happy.

“I'll run by Sarajane's and get a firsthand account,” I said.

Of course, I had another purpose for talking to Sarajane, one I didn't mention to Aunt Nettie. If Pamela was away safely, it was time for me to tell Hogan and the State Police that she was the woman Derrick Valentine had been looking for. But I felt that I had to warn Sarajane before I did that.

I said good-bye to Lindy, promising to talk to Joe about her problem with Tony. I paid my bill, jumped into the van, and pointed it toward Sarajane's combined home and business, the Peach Street Bed-and-Breakfast Inn.

The one-hundred-twenty-five-year-old Queen Anne Victorian that houses the B&B is located on the outskirts of Warner Pier. As I pulled up I saw that a stuffed fabric snowman left over from a recent tourism promotion still decorated its broad porch. Not that the sprawling structure needed any extra trim. Every eave was already dripping with gingerbread. The sun had come out, and the afternoon had grown warm enough to encourage a few icicles, so the house glittered as if it were trimmed with rhinestone fringe.

I went to the back door, since Sarajane uses that door for everything personal. She had apparently heard me drive up; the door opened as I came up the steps. Behind Sarajane I saw that a chest of drawers that stood in the back hall had been moved away from the wall. Several of the drawers were pulled out.

“Are you moving furniture?” I said.

“No. I was just looking for something I misplaced. Come in.”

“I was so glad to hear that Pamela had called,” I said.

“I was terribly relieved to hear from her,” Sarajane said. “Of course, I knew Myrl can handle anything. But when they didn't arrive . . . it was scary.”

“Aunt Nettie said Pamela didn't tell you where they were.”

“No, she just said they were well away from Warner Pier.”

I realized that while Sarajane might be claiming she was relieved, she still looked worried.

Sarajane always wears rather masculine clothes—jeans, tailored pants suits, slacks, and sweaters—but she has one of those extremely feminine faces, with dimples and round cheeks. Now her dimples were barely visible, and her eyebrows were sloping toward her ears, giving her a woebegone look.

“What's wrong?” I said.

“Nothing! Nothing is wrong.” Sarajane motioned toward the chest of drawers. “I was just looking for something.”

I wasn't concerned about that. “Did you get the phone number Pamela called from?”

Sarajane shook her head. “I don't have caller ID. But Pamela said she was using Myrl's cell phone, so the number wouldn't have helped locate them. They could be calling from anywhere.”

“Yes, if they started driving at four a.m. they've had ten hours to go elsewhere. They could be—way beyond Indianapolis by now. Or past Chicago and nearly into Missouri.”

“They could be in Canada.” Sarajane's voice was quiet.

“Canada! I wouldn't think Myrl would take Pamela out of the country. Even if she had a passport . . .”

“She did.”

“Pamela had a passport?” I was astonished. I knew that the underground railroad had to use faked driver's licenses and other identification papers, though I didn't think Pamela had any of those. If she had a Social Security number, even a false one, why did I have to pay her off the books?

But the idea of a faked passport shocked me. Having a fake passport would be a serious offense. Surely Pamela hadn't had one. “How do you know Pamela had a passport?”

“I saw it once. I took clean sheets up to her room while she was at work. She'd left that duffel bag on the bed. I accidentally knocked it off, and the passport fell out of the side pocket.”

“Was it in her real name? Or her—nom de guerre?”

“I didn't open it. I guess it could have been somebody else's passport.”

“That doesn't seem likely.”

“No, it doesn't.”

“It seems funny that Pamela called you. Instead of Myrl making the call.”

“She said Myrl had gone out to get them something to eat.” Sarajane's eyebrows were still slanting at that worried angle.

“Sarajane,” I said. “What's bothering you?”

“Bothering me?”

“Yes, you don't seem happy.”

She smiled tightly. “Lee, I've just spent the morning worrying so hard that I can't seem to stop. But everything is all right.”

“Are you sure?”

“What could be wrong? Myrl got Pamela away safely. That was my main concern.”

“Okay,” I said. “Now to the next problem. Derrick Valentine.”

Sarajane sniffed. “I don't consider him my problem.”

“But he was killed, Sarajane. Beaten to death. We can't just ignore it.”

“I can.”

“But we don't know who killed him! It might be someone still roaming around town. Someone else might be in danger.”

“I don't think so, Lee. I think he was mugged. That Valentine fellow was just walking around looking for trouble.”

“In Warner Pier? There's rarely any of that kind of trouble here. Plus, why would he look for trouble in our alley?”

“I don't know! But I do know that Myrl does not want any attention from the police.”

“But Valentine was looking for Pamela! And she was actually here. That's a valuable clue.”

“Pamela had nothing to do with Valentine's death. She was here with me all evening.”

“I don't think she actually struck the blow that killed him, Sarajane. But she has some connection with him or he wouldn't have been looking for her.”

“I don't see how that can be true. I don't think she knew anything about Derrick Valentine.”

“Ye gods, Sarajane! We've got to tell the detectives about this. If we don't we might all be charged as accessories to Valentine's murder.”

“Accessories? That's silly.”

“Well, we could be accused of obstructing justice, then. It's not . . .” Words almost failed me, but I plowed on. “It's not lawful, Sarajane.”

The response I got to that remark was nonverbal, but it said more than a thousand words could have. Sarajane simply looked at me. Her face showed almost no expression. She didn't say a word, but she might as well have yelled her reply out. And that reply was, “So what?”

I stared at her. She stared at me. I was the one who blinked.

“I know, I know,” I said. “You think the law has failed these women. That people like you and Myrl are justified in doing just about anything to help them.”

Sarajane nodded.

“But the law will continue to fail all of us,” I said, “if citizens don't respect it, if they don't support law enforcement.”

I got the stony stare again. But she did speak. “I'm sorry, Lee. I can't do anything to endanger this system of protecting women. It's too valuable. It's needed in so many cases.”

She reached over and touched my arm. “Lee, I'm sorry we had to ask for your help. But you're not part of this. You have to follow your own conscience. If you feel compelled to talk to the police—even though it might wreck our system—then you must do it.”

I felt so frustrated that I wanted to slam my fist into something. Maybe Sarajane's nose. But I resisted. How could Sarajane
always
put me in the wrong? She knew I couldn't tell the police about her underground railroad operation if she thought it would endanger abused women.

Frustrated, I turned toward the door.

“If I decide to talk to the police, I'll let you know.” I gestured toward the chest of drawers she'd been ransacking. “Do you need help with this chest?”

“No! No, I've simply misplaced something. I thought it might have fallen behind the chest, but it's not there. I can move the chest back by myself.”

I didn't press her. I just went out the back door and climbed into the van. I was furious. But I didn't want to go against Sarajane's opinion.

I had resisted bopping Sarajane on the nose, but I did slam my fist onto the steering wheel a few times as I drove along. And I spoke aloud to express my frustration.

“Golly! Gee whiz! Dadgum!” I said. Or something like that.

As I drew near the office I realized that I wasn't just angry with Sarajane. Some memory was trying to jump out of my subconscious. It wasn't anything about the argument Sarajane and I had had. It was something about that chest she'd been searching. I was clear back to the shop before I realized what it was.

I recalled an earlier visit to the Peach Street B&B. I'd come in that same back door, and the top drawer in that chest had been slightly ajar. As I had walked by it, I had seen what was in the drawer.

A pistol.

I didn't gasp or throw my hands up when I remembered the pistol. Actually, I felt relief at identifying my memory, and I shrugged the whole thing off.

I shrugged it off because Sarajane had once told me that because of the lonely situation of the B&B she slept with a pistol in her bedside table. I interpreted this to mean that she didn't usually store it in that chest in the kitchen. At the time I'd seen it, she'd been in a period of stress over a previous underground railroad passenger.

So she wouldn't have been looking for the pistol in the chest of drawers, I told myself. It was some other lost object. And whatever it was, it was none of my business. TenHuis Chocolade, on the other hand, was my business—job-wise. I headed for the office.

Once there, however, I found I could hardly work. I opened my computer, then stared blankly at the screen, trying to deal with my feelings of frustration. I tried to accept the situation. Sarajane had me over the traditional barrel—I could not go to the police and tell them the woman Derrick Valentine had been looking for had been there all the time. And I recognized another part to the problem. I wasn't terribly interested in telling the proper authorities Derrick Valentine had come to Warner Pier looking for Christina-Pamela. Not doing my legal duty didn't disturb me a whole heck of a lot.

No, the main thing I wanted was to find out the answers to three questions: How? Who? Why?

How had Derrick Valentine known Christina was in Warner Pier?

Who had hired him?

Why?

Answering the first question might explain the second question, of course, and answering the first two could answer the third.

The logical person who might be looking for Christina-Pamela was her husband, Harold Belcher. Christina-Pamela believed he wanted to kill her. And he couldn't kill her until he could find her.

But why would he hire private detectives to find her? If they located her and told Belcher the Butcher where she was and she subsequently turned up dead—well, the culprit would be pretty obvious. I would think even a sleazy private eye might see a connection. And unless that private eye was dumber than dirt, he'd see that he had put himself in Belcher's power, and he'd go to the cops. Or else he'd threaten Belcher with what he knew.

Neither scenario made it likely that Harold Belcher would have hired a private eye to find his ex-wife.

But what did seem likely? I'd asked both Derrick Valentine and Tom O'Sullivan why they had thought Christina was at TenHuis Chocolade.

Valentine's answer had been gruff. “Information received.” But O'Sullivan had almost goofed. He'd started to say something that began with “f.” “Fink?” “Fury?”