The Readaholics and the Gothic Gala (10 page)

“Happy to.”

We were about halfway around the lake's three-and-a-half-mile circumference, and I stopped to take a pebble out of my shoe. Once I had retied my sneaker, we walked another twenty-five minutes in companionable near silence, commenting on the beauty of the day and betting on when the first significant snowfall of the
season would happen. We'd already had a couple of dustings, but nothing to call out the snowplows. Brooke and I always made snow angels together the first time we got enough snow. When we got back to the parking lot, I hugged Brooke again, holding her for an extra moment. “Good luck tonight,” I said. “Call me and let me know how it goes.”

“Will do,” she said with a strained smile.

“And don't forget to call Lola and Kerry and Maud,” I added, “and see what you can dig up on the Stewart sibs.”

“I know what you're doing,” she said, giving me a little shove.

“I'm not doing anything,” I said, all innocence.

“Yes, you are, and I appreciate it. I'll try not to worry. Promise. If this mother doesn't choose Troy and me, the next one will.” She got in the Merc, blew me a kiss, and drove off.

W
ednesday morning started early. I had been hired to put together a networking breakfast for professional women in a three-county area, and I'd set it up at an orchard that boasted a large room used for farmers' markets on summer and fall weekends, and other gatherings the rest of the time. When I arrived at six a.m., it smelled strongly of peaches; in fact, the aroma of peaches was heavy in the air before I turned into the long, curving driveway leading to the orchard. As I crested a hill, the orchard lay spread out below me with the Colorado River winding behind it, tinted peach (appropriately enough) by the rising sun. Puffy cumulus clouds glowed pink and coral and red, and I stopped to take a photo with my phone. It was too beautiful to ignore.

Two baker's vans and Al had beaten me to the orchard, and the owner's yawning daughter let all of us into the barnlike space to set up. I had worn jeans and brought work gloves in anticipation of shoving the rustic tables and benches into position, and I was sweating by the time Al and I flapped a vinyl tablecloth onto the last table. I could have hired someone to do it, but that would have cut into my profits, and it's not like I was
doing anything else at this hour of the morning. Bushel baskets of peaches made lovely centerpieces, and the goodies unloaded by the baker and her assistants added a yeasty, sugary smell to the room that made my mouth water.

“Smells delicious,” Al said, swiping the hem of his shirt across his damp forehead.

“Scrumptious.”

“Delectable.”

“I'm having one.” I made for the trays of pastries and chose a still-warm cake donut. Al swiped a peach and soon had juice dribbling down his chin. After we enjoyed our snack, we unloaded a podium from the van, and tested the rudimentary microphone and sound system the orchard supplied. There wasn't going to be much in the way of speeches—just a welcome from Kerry Sanderson, whose brainchild the event was—before the women began schmoozing and eating.

About seventy-five women had signed up for the event and they began arriving in ones and twos. Helping themselves to pastries, juice, and coffee, they chatted in small clumps until Kerry strode in, very mayoral in a cream-colored suit with a colorful scarf, and made a few remarks. She was witty and welcoming and soon had the women chuckling and nodding their heads as she talked about the importance of making connections across communities. When she finished to genial applause, she headed toward me, where I stood catching up with a couple of women I knew from Grand Junction. As a small-business owner, I was as much a participant in this event as its organizer.

“Have you heard from Brooke this morning?” she asked when the other women drifted away. She patted a stray hair into place on her short do. “How'd it go for her and Troy last night?”

“I haven't heard from her yet. You know Brooke—she's no early bird. I'll call her on my way back to town.”

Kerry nodded. “Let me know. When she called yesterday to say you thought it would be a good idea to find out more about our suspects, she mentioned the appointment. Good thinking, by the way. I spent an hour last night looking into the life and times of Francesca Bugle.”

“And?”

“And it was an unrewarding task, because as far as I can tell, there was no Francesca Bugle before her first book came out eight years ago.” Kerry gave me a meaningful look.

I wasn't sure there was anything very meaningful to that. “It's a pen name.”

“Of course, but usually you can find out the author's true identity by checking copyrights, or reading through the bio to get hints, or via Web sites that make a practice of matching authors' real names with their pseudonyms. But not in this case. Her bio is carefully written to not even mention a state by name, and although it talks about her mother's early death, farming, and living a hand-to-mouth existence, the photos of a decrepit barn and cornfields are stock photos, straight off the Internet. I suspect the photo of the
pigtailed girl with her overalled brother is, too. And her Facebook page is the same. All her posts are related to her books. The recent ones are focused on details of the movie deal, the production process, et cetera, et cetera. Nothing even as personal as ‘My cat ralphed up a hair ball today,' or ‘Happy birthday to my great-gran, Mildred Fluffernutter, who is a hundred and three today.'”

I chuckled. “She's creating a brand,” I said, well aware of the necessity for that as an entrepreneur myself.

Kerry snorted. “I'm a politician, for heaven's sake—I understand about staying on message. But this goes beyond that, it seems to me.”

“Maybe she's just a private person.”

Kerry looked skeptical. “Could be, but—”

A trio of women interrupted us then to try to get Kerry's support on a measure they wanted to bring before the Heaven town council. I circulated, meeting new people and possibly drumming up business. A couple of women referred to Flavia's article in this morning's edition of the newspaper, and mentioned they'd seen my name. They all had theories about the murder. I got a chance to talk to Kerry only briefly as she was leaving.

“Let's meet tomorrow night to discuss what we've come up with,” she suggested. “I'll let the others know. Your place. Seven. I'll bring some zucchini bread—my plants are still producing, if you can believe that.”

She was gone before I could respond. I shook my head. Kerry's efficiency—some might say bossiness—was occasionally annoying, but I couldn't deny that she made things happen and got things done. I had an
event tomorrow night, but it was small and Al could handle it. I went in search of him to let him know, and to get started on the cleanup process.

*   *   *

Back in the office before noon, after a stop at home to shower and change out of my jeans, I called Brooke. No answer. Hm, not good. If she'd had a positive response from the prospective mother, she'd be shouting it from the rooftops, wouldn't she? I left a message for her to call, and listened to the messages on the office answering machine. The first two were for Al, nothing urgent, and I wrote them down. He wouldn't be back today—he had classes at the university. Preoccupied with a pen that was running out of ink, I almost missed the last message.

“This is for the Amy-Faye Johnson mentioned in the
Gabbler
,” a New Jersey–accented woman's voice said. “If you want to know more about Trent Van Allen, meet me at the high school stadium at twelve today. If you don't show up, I'm outta here. Come alone.”

I looked at my watch. Eleven fifty-six. I pulled out my keys and raced to the door.

*   *   *

I slid into the stadium parking lot six minutes later, hoping the anonymous caller would allow a couple minutes' leeway. Although there was moderate traffic around the high school across the street as classes broke for lunch, the stadium appeared deserted. The lot, where my dad had brought me to teach me to drive, had weeds growing between cracks in the asphalt and needed painting; the lines had faded to near
invisibility. I scanned the stadium as I trotted across the lot, and thought I spotted someone standing in the top row of the bleachers on the home team side. If so, she ducked out of sight when I shaded my eyes and looked up. The stadium made a lot of sense as a rendezvous, I realized, passing the closed ticket booths, since someone could stand up there and have a 360-degree view of the surrounding terrain. If I hadn't come alone, for instance, the watcher would know.

I wasn't nervous as I made my way down the sloping concrete ramp to the field area. Maybe I should have been, but it was broad daylight, and I could hear kids shouting to one another as they peeled out for Subway or Arby's. A quarter-mile track, in good shape, surrounded the field area, where the grass showed scruffy patches from last Friday night's game against a Grand Junction high school team. Leaning back against the metal rail that ringed the field, I scanned the upper rows of seating. Two sections to my left, a woman waved at me from the topmost row.

I began the climb, wishing I were wearing my tennies instead of my tan pumps. Two rows below the woman, I stopped to assess her and saw that she was doing the same to me. She was fortyish, give or take, with multilayered dark hair streaked with meant-to-be-obvious blond highlights. Deep-set eyes under arched and penciled brows had crow's-feet at the corners. I saw why as she squinched her eyes against the smoke rising from her cigarette when she drew on it. Poppy-colored lipstick outlined thin lips and stained the cigarette. Her nails were long, clearly acrylic, and
painted a deep mulberry with sparkly stick-ons that competed with the rings she wore on seven of ten fingers. Tight jeans, black leather booties, and a gray hoodie completed her look.

“You that Amy-Faye?” she asked, stubbing out her cigarette on the metal bleacher and letting it fall in a cascade of sparks.

I nodded. “Who are you?”

She used her tongue to lift a piece of tobacco from her lip, then peeled it off with her fingers. “Sharla.” It came out like “Shawla.”

“Sharla Van Allen?” I took a stab in the dark.

“Nah. Me and Trent didn't bother. It's only a piece a paper, right? Never mind about my last name. Come sit. I'm getting a crick in my neck looking up at youse.” She patted the bleacher seat beside her and the metal rang hollowly.

I climbed the rest of the way and sat. My feet thanked me. Close-up, she smelled like cigarettes and a sandalwood-heavy perfume. I imagined it was called Oriental Rendezvous or something similar and sold by the bucket at Walmart.

“The paper said you found my Trent. Was he— Did he say—?” Her voice was husky.

“He was already dead,” I said hastily. “I'm sorry for your loss.”

“It sucks,” she said, shaking another cigarette out of a packet but not lighting it. “Sucks big-time. I've been waiting four years for Trent to get out of prison, and then we have only a month together before he—” She broke off and put a forefinger under each eye to keep
moisture from smearing mascara down her cheeks. Tears under control, she gave me a steely look. “I want to catch the bastard who did this to him. Trent never hurt anybody. He didn't deserve this.”

I tried to remember what Hart had told me about Trent's criminal record. I seemed to remember lots of robbery but no rape or murder. “You should go to the police,” I said. “Detective Har—”

“I can't go to the cops.” She gave me a look that said I was dumber than a box of rocks. Her eyes were an unusual amber color, with flecks of lighter gold and caramel. “I got warrants out. You think I'da bothered with you if I could stroll into the local cop shop and tell 'em what I know? And I know plenty.”

“I guess not,” I said. “Why did you call me?”

“I read about you in the paper this morning, and it said you'd solved a coupla other murder cases, and I thought you might be able to figure out who offed Trent.”

The bleacher's metal ridges were biting into my thighs and I shifted. “What do you know?”

“I know who killed him, that's what,” she said triumphantly.

“Who?”

“Well, I don't know his name, but he's the guy Trent came here to see. Or it might be a gal—Trent wasn't too clear on that. Didn't want me knowing enough to get myself in trouble if the deal went south, see?”

Not really, but I nodded.

A reflective look came over Sharla's face. “Trent, he was a good guy—the best—but not much of a planner.
So, when he wrote to me a few weeks before he got out of the joint and said he had something going that would make us rich—well, not rich, but set us up solid, let us buy a garage from a guy Trent knew of—Trent was real good with cars, very handy, you know?—well, I had my doubts. But then he told me about how all he needed to do was get in touch with this person that was gonna be at this Celebration of Gothic Novels—I could never get into those kinda books. Give me a good Western any day—there's nobody can write a Western like Louis L'Amour, God bless him.” She crossed herself. “Well, I began to think that maybe he was onta something. I shoulda known better.” Noticing the still-unlit cigarette in her hand, she crumbled it into tobacco shreds and let them drift down. “Trying to quit,” she said, pulling a key ring with a heavy silver-colored “VW” on it from her purse and jangling it.

I figured it was a substitute for the cigarette.

“So he mails me this package before he gets out, a box, tells me to keep it somewheres safe, and not to say anything about it to no one. So, I put it in this place that I use, not a bank or nothin' like that, but a safe place that not even Mama knew about before she died. God bless her soul.” She crossed herself again. “Who knows what she knows about now?”

Interesting question. “What was in it?”

She looked affronted. “I didn't look. He told me not to. Said it was better if I didn't know, because Frankie the Cockroach would get cheesed off if he knew what we were up to. Besides, it was all wrapped around with
about eight layers of tape and no way could I get it off without Trent seeing that I'd opened it.”

Clearly, the mechanics of it had defeated her, and not her respect for Trent's warning. “How big was it?”

Sharla held her manicured hands about a foot apart and then held one above the other to indicate the package was perhaps three inches deep. “It was heavy, too,” she said. “Not like gold heavy, but weighty. Five pounds, maybe? Trent asked me for it when he got out, and I gave it to him. He took it with him that night.”

“Saturday night? The night he was killed?”

Sharla nodded, her hair-sprayed do swinging stiffly. “Yeah.”

“So where is it now?”

“Well, that's the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, now, isn't it? Either the perp got it or Trent tucked it away somewheres, maybe in the car.”

I perked up at that. “The car? You mean he drove to the Club, but his car is still missing?”