1 Death Pays the Rose Rent (13 page)

CHAPTER 12 

No one was around when I climbed the steps to the terrace, so I walked the length of it, checking the flagstones for bloodstains. Not surprisingly, I didn’t find any, but I did find an area to the right of the door that looked cleaner than the rest.

It was Rose, not LaVonna, who opened the castle door for me in answer to my ring. She looked flustered, certainly understandable under the circumstances.

She stared at my
SURRENDER
,
DOROTHY
T-shirt for a few seconds, then looked at my face. At first, I wasn’t sure she knew who I was, but she finally said, “Oh, Victoria. Come in.”

“Where’s LaVonna?” I asked her, as she swung the front door closed.

Rose heaved a deep sigh of exasperation. “Can you believe she left last night? And me with this whole castle to clean up, and Michael and his crew making a mess with building scenery in the ballroom, and—”

“She left? Why?”

“Something about her sister being sick. I don’t really know. She left a note on the kitchen table and just upped and left in the middle of the night. You can’t depend on anyone these days.”

Hardly a fair thing to say about someone who had been a faithful employee for more than thirty years.

“I thought she didn’t have any family,” I commented, remembering that yesterday she had said her family was “all.”

“Oh, maybe it wasn’t her sister … I don’t know. Sylvia threw the note away. What difference does it make? She’s not here. That’s what matters.”

The chiming of a bell filled the great center hall where we stood.

“There’s that damn doorbell again. I could just wring her neck,” Rose said between clenched false teeth. She threw open the front door. “Oh, hello, Luscious. All finished destroying my flower beds? You’ll find your boss ensconced in the large drawing room, interrogating innocent bystanders as if we were a bunch of criminals or something.”

The sergeant stepped inside and she banged the door shut behind him. I said to her, “I have something I promised to give to LaVonna. Do you mind if I just put it in her room?” I was counting on Rose’s irritation distracting her from what I was really saying. It worked.

“Whatever, I don’t really care. Her room is the first one down there.” She flapped a hand in the general direction of a hall that led into a wing I hadn’t been in before.

I ducked out before she decided she did care and

quickly found LaVonna’s room was the first door on the right facing the front of the building. More accurately, I should say rooms, since there was a small sitting room as well as a bedroom and bath. Everything looked in order in the sitting room. Comfortable chintz-covered chairs and a couch faced a marble fireplace, over which hung a hologram of a blond, blue-eyed Jesus. The only personal touch was a silver-framed, black-and-white photograph of a young man, wearing an old-fashioned black suit and a serious expression on his angular face.

The bedroom was also in order. Too much so, it seemed to me, for someone who’d had to rush out on a family emergency in the middle of the night. Even the bed was neatly made up. The only other furniture in the room was an ugly “waterfall” dresser, a small chair, and an enormous walnut wardrobe with mirrors on the fronts of the double doors.

What had prompted her flight? Had she murdered Richard MacKinstrie, then run off after his body was found? I remembered the little smile on her face when Garnet announced that Richard was dead. Though what her motive might have been was something I couldn’t even imagine.

I pulled open one dresser drawer after another. All full of neatly folded clothes. What had she taken with her?

The wardrobe seemed to loom larger. Too many late-night horror movies, Tori. You’re afraid you’ll open it and a body will topple out. I took a deep breath, pulled the doors open, and jumped back. Nothing there but clothes. I breathed again.

Six cotton dresses hung from the rod. On a shelf above them was a soft-sided suitcase. On the floor was a row of shoes: three pairs of sneakers and one pair of sensible black dress shoes with two-inch heels. Next to the dress shoes, in the corner, was a black purse. It could have been a spare, but somehow LaVonna didn’t strike me as someone who would have an extra pocketbook.

I took it out of the closet and emptied its contents on the neat white chenille bedspread. It held the typical mess found in most women’s purses—crumpled tissues, loose coins, two toothpicks in paper wrapping from the Cross Keys Dinette, a package of artificial sweetener, breath mints, comb, mirror, paper clips, safety pins, a white button, a miniature sewing kit, colorless lip gloss, and a wallet.

The wallet contained about twenty dollars in bills and change, a Visa card, and LaVonna Hockenberry’s driver’s license. Wouldn’t a person “on the lam” take that with her?

“What the hell do you think you’re doing, young woman?” Rose stood in the door like an avenging fury.

I was so startled I dropped the wallet and watched the coins scatter on the rug. I tried to stammer out an excuse, but she wouldn’t listen.

“Get out. Now. How dare you snoop around my house like this?”

She stood to one side as I scuttled past her. Before I left LaVonna’s sitting room I looked back and saw Rose replacing the contents of the purse. From the

back, with her red curls flouncing, she looked like an irate Raggedy Ann.

Since she was occupied for the present, I followed the sound of carpenters at work and found the ballroom, where Michael and six others were involved in a major construction project.

He saw me at once and waved me in. “Great, you did come. Briana, come meet Tori—she’s the wonderful writer I told you about.”

Briana Evans immediately put down her saw and came over to Michael’s side. She was even lovelier in person than on TV. Her face was makeup free, and her blond hair was pulled back in a shiny, bouncy ponytail. She wore a fuchsia outfit, shorts and matching top, and her long, tanned legs didn’t even have a single cellulite dimple. Who said life was fair? We chatted for a bit about her TV show, the play she was in at the Whispering Pines, and her role in the upcoming Mystery Dinner. Not a word about my book, but still, I couldn’t help liking her, despite her self-centeredness.

Michael introduced me to the others, all Equity membership candidates, then explained, “We’re building a screen to hide the doorway into the next room, since we have to use it as a combination pantry and dressing room.”

One young man wiped the sweat from his forehead with a red bandanna and laughed. “And I chose
acting because
I thought it was a glamorous profession.” He picked up something that looked like an oversize black gun and touched it to the half-built wooden structure.

Zing! Zing! Zing! In one second it shot three nails into the wood.

“What is that? It looks deadly,” I remarked to Michael.

“It’s a cordless, power framing nailer. Pretty safe to use—it has to be in contact with the wood when the trigger is pulled. Imagine how long it would take to put all these three-and-a-quarter-inch nails in by hand.”

I decided to be open with him and tell him the real reason why I was there this morning. After I explained about Alice-Ann’s fear that she was Garnet’s only suspect, he told me he’d do anything he could to help.

“Did you hear Richard return Tuesday night? Or hear anything suspicious?” I asked.

“Sorry. I left as soon as everyone went home. Met Briana at the theatre and we spent the night at the former caretaker’s cottage which we’ve converted to a rather cozy home.”

“Were you here last night when the women got back from the clinic? Did you notice anything strange about LaVonna’s behavior? Did you hear the phone ring anytime during the night?”

He laughed. “Yes. No. No.”

Rose walked in and stopped dead when she saw me. “I thought I told you to get out.”

“Come on, Mom. Tori’s my friend. I know you’re having a bad day. Let’s go get a nice cup of tea. Then maybe you can have a nap. Briana will take care of things.” Michael put his arm around her shoulder and led her out of the room.

I said my good-byes to the set-building crew and went down the hall to see whom else I could question. So far, I hadn’t learned much.

I turned a corner and came upon Sylvia standing just outside the entrance to the large drawing room. She jumped when she saw me, so I figured she’d been eavesdropping. Since her hands were heavily bandaged, I inquired about her scratches.

She shrugged off my concern. “They’re not nearly as bad as they look.”

“I was surprised to see Michael’s crew working in the ballroom. I thought for sure you’d cancel Rose Rent Day since the guest of honor is …deceased. “

She clutched her throat in shock. “Cancel Rose Rent Day? Whatever gave you that idea? It’s our town’s most important celebration. People depend on tradition for stability. For continuity—one generation following another—all with the same values. Mark can take his father’s place.”

It was my turn to look shocked. “That’s putting quite a burden on a child who just lost his father.”

Sylvia again shrugged. All heart, this woman!

“Is anybody in there?” I asked, nodding toward the drawing room. I knew damn well there was, or she wouldn’t have been lurking outside, listening.

“Twanya Tweedy is being interviewed by the chief,” she told me.

“Twanya! What’s she doing here?”

“I invited her to spend last night here. She was much too upset to go home. No matter what you think of her, she was very much in love with Richard.”

“Speaking of last night, did you hear the phone ring for LaVonna?”

“No, my sister and I always take a sleeping pill before retiring. I wouldn’t have heard the attack on Pearl Harbor.”

“She didn’t take her purse with her. Don’t you think that’s odd?”

Another shrug.

“How about Tuesday night? Did you notice anything strange about Richard? Maybe overhear him making plans to meet someone? Hear his motorcycle when he came back to the castle?”

She pursed her lips in annoyance. “Really, young lady, you are wearing out your welcome rapidly.”

“Did you know what his research project was? Were you helping him with it?” I was trying to get as many questions in as possible. One thing I’d learned as a reporter was that an obnoxious barrage of questions sometimes got one or two unintended answers.

“Was it something to do with Edison?” I pressed on.

“Listen to me, Victoria. Yes, Richard was helping me with a research project, the subject of which is none of your damn business. I will continue to work on it, alone, until it is complete. You will learn what it is about when I present it at the annual meeting of the Lickin Creek Historical Society and not before. And that is quite all I intend to tell you. I’m going to go lie down. The past two days have been very distressing.”

I was pretty sure that it was my question about Edison that triggered her response. And now I was

more positive than ever that Alice-Ann’s and my suspicions about Richard’s stealing something of Edison’s were right. Although I had no idea at all what a research project about Edison had to do with Richard’s death or LaVonna’s disappearance—if anything.

Twanya appeared in the doorway, tears streaming down swollen cheeks. If she hadn’t been my best friend’s worst enemy I would have felt real pity for her.

She grabbed Sylvia’s arm, and the older woman grimaced with pain. “Oh, Mrs. Thorne, I’m sorry …like, I forgot your scratches. I’m going home now, you know. like, thanks a lot for letting me stay last night.”

Twanya turned to me. “I know you must hate me, but Richard and I were really in love, you know, and we were going to get married as soon as he could get a divorce. She was only interested in his money, not him, you know.”

I couldn’t help laughing. “He didn’t have any money, Twanya. He was going to declare bankruptcy any day.”

“That may be what she told you, but I worked for him. I’d certainly know if he was bankrupt, you know. like, we spent every minute together that he could get away from Alice-Ann and her brat. He told me everything, you know.”

“Did he visit you on the night he died?”

“I only wish he had. He’d still be alive.” She started to cry again and ran down the hall, high heels clickety-clacking on the cold, stone floor.

As I watched her retreat, I became aware of the spicy scent of carnations. “Praxythea’s coming,” I said to Sylvia.