(1T) Real murders Page 6

  “Just wondered,” I said neutrally.

  “That Sergeant Burns, he’s a grim kind of man,” Robin said thoughtfully. “And Detective Smith is no lightweight.”

  “You didn’t even know Mamie, it’s out of the question you could be suspected.”

  “Well, I guess I could have known her before. But I didn’t, and I think Smith believes that. But I bet he’ll check. That’s a guy I wouldn’t like to have on my trail.”

  “Mamie wouldn’t have gotten there before 7:00,” I said thoughtfully. “And I have no alibi for 7:00 to 7:30. She had to meet the VFW president at the VFW Hall to get the key. And I think after every meeting she had to run by his house to return the key.”

  “Nope. Yesterday she dropped by the president’s house and picked up the key. She told them she needed to get in early, she had some kind of appointment to meet someone there before the meeting.”

  “How’d you know that?” I was agog and indignant.

  “The detective asked to use the phone to call the station and I pieced that together from listening to his end of the conversation,” he said frankly. Aha, another person who was curious by nature.

  “Oh. So,” I said slowly, thinking as I went, “whoever killed her actually had plenty of time to fix everything up. He got her to come early somehow, so he’d have buckets of time to kill her and arrange her and go home to clean up.” I drained my glass and shuddered.

  Robin said hastily, “Tell me about the other club members.”

  I decided that question was the real purpose of his visit. I felt disappointed, but philosophical.

  “Jane Engle, the white-haired older lady,” I began. “She’s retired but works from time to time substitute teaching or substituting at the library. She’s an expert on Victorian murders.” And then I ran down the list on my fingers: Gifford Doakes, Melanie Clark, Bankston Waites, John Queensland, LeMaster Cane, Arthur Smith, Mamie and Gerald Wright, Perry Allison, Sally Allison, Benjamin Greer. “But Perry’s only just started coming,” I explained. “I guess he’s not really a member.”

  Robin nodded, and his red hair fell across his eyes. He brushed it back absently.

  That absorption in his face and the small gesture did something to me.

  “What about you?” he asked. “Give me a little biography.”

  “Not much to tell. I went to high school here, went to a small private college, did some graduate work at the university in library science and came home and got a job at the local library.”

  Robin looked disconcerted.

  “All right, it never occurred to me not to come back,” I said after a moment. “What about you?”

  “Oh, I’m going to teach a course at the university. The writer they had lined up had a heart attack…Do you ever do impulsive things?” Robin asked suddenly.

  One of the strongest impulses I’d ever felt urged me to put down my wineglass, walk over to Robin Crusoe, a writer I’d known only a few hours, sit on his lap, and kiss him until he fainted.

  “Almost never,” I said with real regret. “Why?”

  “Have you ever experienced…”

  My doorbell chimed twice.

  “Excuse me,” I said with even deeper regret, and answered the front door.

  Mr. Windham, my mail carrier, handed me a brown-wrapped package. “I couldn’t fit this in your box,” he explained.

  I glanced at the mailing label. “Oh, it’s not to me, it’s to Mother,” I said, puzzled.

  “Well, we have to deliver by addresses, so I had to bring it here,” Mr. Windham said righteously.

  Of course, he was right; my address was on the package. The return address was my father’s home in the city. The label itself was typed, as usual for Father. He’s gotten a new typewriter, I thought, surprised. His old Smith-Corona had been the only typewriter he’d ever used. Maybe he’d mailed it to Mother from his office and used a typewriter there? Then I noticed the date.

  “Six days?” I said incredulously. “It took six days for this to travel thirty miles?”

  Mr. Windham shrugged defensively.

  My father hadn’t said a word about mailing us anything. As I shut the front door, I reflected that Father hadn’t sent Mother a package in my memory, certainly never since the divorce. I was eaten up with curiosity. I stopped at the kitchen phone on my way back to the living room. She was in her office, and said she’d stop by on her way to show a house. She was as puzzled as I was, and I hated to hear that little thread of excitement in her voice.

  Robin seemed to be dozing in his chair, so I quietly picked up our wineglasses and washed them so I could put them away before Mother got there. I didn’t need her arching her eyebrows at me. Actually, I was glad to have a breather. I’d almost done something radical earlier, and it was almost as much fun to think about nearly having done it as it would have been (maybe) to do it.

  When Mother came through the gate, Robin woke up—if he’d really been asleep—and I introduced them.

  Robin stood courteously, shook hands properly, and admired Mother as she was used to being admired, from her perfectly frosted hair to her slim elegant legs. Mother was wearing one of her very expensive suits, this one in a champagne color, and she looked like a million-dollar saleswoman. Which she was, several times over.

  “So nice to see you again, Mr. Crusoe,” she said in her husky voice. “I’m sorry you had such a bad experience your first evening in our little town. Really, Lawrenceton is a lovely place, and I’m sure you won’t regret living here and commuting to the city.”

  I handed her the box. She looked at the return address sharply, then began ripping open the wrapping while she kept up an idle conversation with Robin.

  “Mrs. See’s!” we exclaimed simultaneously when we saw the white and black box.

  “Candy?” Robin said uncertainly. He sat back down when I did.

  “Very good candy,” Mother said happily. “They sell it out west, and in the midwest too, but you can’t get it down here. I used to have a cousin in St. Louis who’d send me a box every Christmas, but she passed away last year. So Roe and I were thinking we’d never get a box of Mrs. See’s again!”

  “I want the chocolate-almond clusters!” I reminded her.

  “They’re yours,” Mother assured me. “You know I only like the creams…hum. No note. That’s odd.”

  “I guess Dad just remembered how much you liked them,” I offered, but it was a weak offering. Somehow the gesture just wasn’t like my father; it was an impulse gift, since Mother’s birthday was months away, and he hadn’t been giving her a birthday present since they divorced, anyway. So, a nice impulse. But my father never did impulsive things; I came by my caution honestly.

  Mother had offered the box to Robin, who shook his head. She settled down to the delightful task of choosing her first piece of Mrs. See’s. It was one of our favorite little Christmas rituals, and the spring weather felt all wrong suddenly.

  “It’s been so long,” she mused. She finally sighed and lifted a piece. “Aurora, isn’t this the one with caramel filling?”

  I peered at the chocolate in question. I was sitting down, Mother was standing up, so I could see what she hadn’t. There was a hole in the bottom of the chocolate.

  It had gotten banged around in shipment?

  Abruptly I leaned forward and pulled another chocolate out of its paper frill. It was a nut cluster and it was pristine. I breathed out a sigh of relief. Just in case, I picked up another cream. It had a hole in the bottom, too.

  “Mom. Put the candy down.”

  “Is this a piece you wanted?” she asked, eyebrows raised at my tone.

  “Put it down.”

  She did, and looked at me angrily.

  “There’s something wrong with it, Mom. Robin, look.” I poked at the piece she’d relinquished with my finger.

  Robin lifted the chocolate delicately with his long fingers and peered at the bottom. He put it down and looked at several more. My mother looked cross and fright
ened.

  “Surely this is ridiculous,” she said.

  “I don’t think so, Mrs. Teagarden,” Robin answered finally. “I think someone’s tried to poison you, and maybe Roe, too.”

  Chapter Six

  So Arthur came to my apartment on official business twice in one day, and he brought another detective with him this time, or maybe she brought him. Lynn Liggett was a homicide detective, and she was as tall as Arthur, which made her tall for a woman.

  I can’t say I was afraid right then. I was confused at the label apparently addressed by my father, I was indignant that someone had tried to trick us into eating something unhealthy, but I was sure that with poisons being so hard to obtain, whatever was in the candy would prove to be something that might have caused us to have a few bad hours, but simply couldn’t have killed Mother or me.

  Arthur seemed pretty grim about the whole thing, and Lynn Liggett asked us questions. And more questions. I could see the lapel pin on Mother’s jacket heave. When Detective Liggett bagged the candy and carried it out to Arthur’s car, Mother said to me in a furious whisper, “She acts like we are people who don’t live decent lives!”

  “She doesn’t know us, Mother,” I said soothingly, though to tell the truth I was a little peeved with Detective Liggett myself. Questions like, “Have you recently finished a relationship that left someone bitter with you, Mrs. Teagarden?” and “Miss Teagarden, how long have you known Mr. Crusoe?” had not left a good taste in my mouth either. I’d never before been able to understand why good citizens didn’t cooperate with the police—after all, they had their job to do, they didn’t know you personally, to them all citizens should be treated alike, blah blah blah, right?

  Now I could understand. Jack Burns looking at me like I was a day-old catfish corpse had been one thing, an isolated incident maybe. I wanted to say, Liggett, romantic relationships don’t figure in this, some maniac mailed this candy to Mother and dragged me into it by addressing it to me! But I knew Lynn Liggett was obliged to ask us these questions and I was bound to answer them. And still I resented it.

  Maybe it wouldn’t have bothered me if Lynn Liggett hadn’t been a woman.

  Not that I didn’t think women should be detectives. I certainly did think women should be detectives, and I thought many women I knew would be great detectives—you should see some of my fellow librarians tracking down an overdue book, and I’m not being facetious.

  But Lynn Liggett seemed to be evaluating me as a fellow woman, and she found me wanting. She looked down at me and found me smaller than her “every whichaways,” as I remembered my grandmother saying. I conjectured that since being tall must have given Detective Liggett problems, she automatically assumed I felt superior to her as a woman, since I was so short and therefore more “feminine.” Since she couldn’t compete with me on that level, Liggett figured she’d be tougher, more suspicious, coldly professional. A strong frontier woman as opposed to me, the namby-pamby, useless stay-back-in-the-effete-east toy woman.

  I know a lot about role-playing, and she couldn’t pull that bull on me. I was tempted to burst into tears, pull out a lace handkerchief—if I had possessed such a useless thing—and say, “Ar-thur! Little ole me is just so scared!” Because I could see that this had little to do with me, but much to do with Arthur.

  Getting right down to the nitty-gritty, Homicide Detective Liggett had the hots for Burglary Detective Smith, and as Detective Liggett saw it, Detective Smith had the hots for me.

  It’s taken me a long time to spell out what I sensed in a matter of minutes. I was disappointed in Lynn Liggett, because I would have liked to be her friend and listen to her stories about her job. I hoped she was a more subtle detective than she was a woman. And I had to answer the damn questions anyway, even though I knew, Mother knew, and I believe Arthur knew, that they were a waste of time.

  Robin stayed the whole time, though his presence was not absolutely necessary once he’d told his simple story to the detectives. “I ran into Roe Teagarden in the grocery, and asked her if I could come over here to relax a little since my place is such a mess. When the candy came, she seemed quite surprised, yes. I also saw the hole in the bottom of the piece of candy when Mrs. Teagarden held it up. No, I didn’t know either Roe or Mrs. Teagarden until the last two days. I met Mrs. Teagarden briefly when I went by her real estate office to rendezvous with the lady who was going to show me the apartment next door, and I didn’t meet Roe until the Real Murders meeting last night.”

  “And you’ve been here since when?” Arthur asked quietly. He was standing in the kitchen talking to Robin, while Detective Liggett questioned Mother and me as we sat on the couch and she crouched on the love seat.

  “Oh, I’ve been here about an hour and a half,” Robin said with a slight edge.

  Arthur’s voice had had absolutely no overtone whatsoever (Liggett was not quite that good), but I had the distinct feeling that everyone here was following his or her own agenda, except possibly my mother. She was certainly no dummy when a sexual element entered the air, however, and in fact she suddenly gave me one of her dazzling smiles of approval, which I could have done without since Detective Liggett seemed to intercept it and interpret it as some kind of reflection on her.

  My mother rose and swept up her purse and terminated the interview. “My daughter is fine and I am fine, and I cannot imagine that my former husband sent this candy or ever intended to hurt either of us,” she said decisively. “He adores Aurora, and he and I have a civil relationship. Our little family habits are no secret to anyone. I don’t imagine our little Christmas custom of a box of candy has gone unremarked. Probably, I’ve bored people many times by talking about it. We’ll be interested to hear, of course, when you all find out what is actually in the candy—if anything. Maybe the holes in the bottom are just to alarm us, and this is some practical joke. Thanks for coming, and I have to be getting back to the office.” I stood up too, and Lynn Liggett felt forced to walk to the door with us.

  My mother got into her car first, while Arthur and Lynn conferred together on the patio. Robin was clearly undecided about what he should do. Arthur throwing out his male challenge, in however subdued a way, had struck Robin by surprise, and he was squinting thoughtfully at my stove without seeing it. He was probably wondering what he’d gotten into, and if this murder investigation was going to be as much fun as he’d anticipated.

  I was abruptly sick of all of them. Maybe I hadn’t been a big dating success because I was a boring person, but possibly it had been because I had limited tolerance for all this preliminary maneuvering and signal reading. My friend Amina Day loved all this stuff and was practically a professional at it. I missed Amina suddenly and desperately.

  “Come have lunch with me in the city Monday,” Robin suggested, having reached some internal decision.

  I thought a moment. “Okay,” I agreed. “I covered for another librarian when she took her kid to the orthodontist last week, so I don’t have to go in Monday until two o’clock.”

  “Are you familiar with the university campus? Oh, sure, you went there. Well, meet me at Tarkington Hall, the English building. I’ll be finishing up a writer’s workshop at 11:45 on the third floor in Room 36. We’ll just leave from there, if that suits you.”

  “That’ll be fine. See you then.”

  “If you need me for anything, I’ll be at home all day tomorrow getting ready for my classes.”

  “Thanks.”

  The phone rang inside and I turned to get it as Robin sauntered out my gate, waving a casual hand to the two detectives. An excited male voice asked for Arthur, and I called him to the phone. Lynn Liggett had recovered her cool, and when I called, “Arthur! Phone!” her mouth only twitched a little. Oops, silly me. Should have said Detective Smith.

  I watered my rose trees while Arthur talked inside. Lynn regarded me thoughtfully. The silence between us was pretty fragile, and I felt small talk was not a good idea, but I tried anyway.

  �
�How long have you been on the force here?” I asked.

  “About three years. I came here as a patrol officer, then got promoted.”

  Maybe Detective Liggett and I would have become bosom buddies in a few more minutes, but Arthur came out of the apartment then with electricity crackling in every step.

  “The purse has been found,” he said to his co-worker.

  “No shit! Where?”

  “Stuffed under the front seat of a car.”

  Well, say which one! I almost said indignantly.

  But Arthur didn’t, of course, and he and his confrere were out the gate with nary a word for me. And I’ll give this to Lynn Liggett, she was too involved in her work to look back at me in triumph.

  To keep my hands busy while my mind roamed around, I began refinishing an old wooden two-drawer chest that I’d had in my guest bedroom for months waiting for just such a moment. After I wrestled it down the stairs and out onto the patio, the sanding turned out to be just the thing I needed.

  Naturally I thought about the candy incident, and wondered if the police had called my father yet. I couldn’t imagine what he’d think of all this. As I scrubbed my hands under the kitchen sink after finishing, I had a new thought, one I should have had before. Did sending the candy to Mother imitate another crime? I went to my shelves and began searching through all my “true murder” books. I couldn’t find anything, so this incident wasn’t patterned after one of the better-known murders. Jane Engle, my fellow librarian, had a larger personal collection than I, so I called her and told her what had happened.

  “That rings a faint bell…it’s an American murder, I think,” Jane said interestedly. “Isn’t this bizarre, Roe? That such things could happen in Lawrenceton? To us? Because I really begin to think this is happening to us, to the members of our little club. Did you hear that Mamie’s purse has been found under the seat in Melanie Clark’s car?”

  “Melanie! Oh, I can’t believe it!”

  “The police may be taking that seriously, but Roe, you and I know that’s ridiculous. I mean, Melanie Clark. It’s a plant.”