A Draw of Death (Helen Binney Mysteries Book 3) (21 page)

"I told you I'd work out a time for you to speak at the library," she said, placing her cane on the table with a thump. "But it takes time to do it right. Vic's speech was planned a couple of months in advance so we could advertise it and make sure everyone knew about it. I'll do the same thing for you, if you give me the chance."

"There's no time to waste," Donald said, his determination plain on his face. "Every day we wait, more people get addicted."

"I'm not suggesting you stop your other activities. I just want to make sure we get you the biggest possible audience. I know it's hard to accept that you can't save everyone, but rushing isn't going to help. Better to do it right, get the word out properly, and reach as many people as you can."

"I could come back a second time. And a third. As many times as you want."

Donald's desire to save people from themselves appeared well-intentioned, but that didn't do anything to lessen Helen's irritation with him. She was tired of people trying to save her from herself, and she imagined that people who enjoyed going to casinos felt the same way about anti-gambling crusaders.

"It's generous of you to consider doing more than one speech." Helen forced herself to maintain a pleasant tone, since snapping at him wouldn't deter him, and she had promised Terri she'd take it easy on him. Her tone wouldn't have fooled Terri, but Donald was so wrapped up in his cause that he didn't seem to notice he was only being humored. "For now, though, let's make sure you get the best possible audience and everything is lined up for you to make a good impression. With the inheritance the Compulsive Gambling Recovery Group is getting, there might even be new services and resources for you to tell people about in a little while. You should have that information before you do your speech."

"What inheritance?" Donald looked genuinely puzzled.

"From Vic's estate," Helen said. "At least, that's what I've heard. He left the bulk of his estate to the Compulsive Gambling Recovery Group."

"Seriously?" He jumped to his feet. "I need to check it out, see what the group's plans are. I bet they're going to issue a press release, and they'll probably have new responsibilities for me to carry out."

"Slow down." She picked up her cane in case she needed to hobble after him if he bolted before they came to an agreement about scheduling his speech after enough time had passed for emotions to settle down. Preferably after she'd gotten Tate or someone equally interesting to repair the damage Vic had done to the library's reputation for offering worthwhile lectures. "It's likely to be months before you see the money or even know how much it will be. It's too soon to go public with anything yet. You'll get better mileage out of it if you at least wait until the investigation into Vic's murder is resolved. You don't want anyone thinking that someone affiliated with the Compulsive Gambling Recovery Group might have killed him for the bequest."

Apparently she hadn't been as non-blunt as she'd intended to be, because Donald laughed and sat back down. "You mean, someone like me? That's just ridiculous. No one would believe I killed Rezendes for the money. If I'd done it, it would have been for what he did to my mother and to keep him from doing it to other people just like her."

"Either way, it's probably best if everyone affiliated with the Compulsive Gambling Recovery Group stays out of the public eye until the killer is caught. You wouldn't be doing the group any favors by reminding the public that one of their more outspoken members had a reason to kill Vic."

"I'll have to check to see what the group wants me to do, but no one can really believe I killed Vic," Donald said. "I hated him, sure, and I wanted him to take back everything he's ever said about the joy of gambling, but he couldn't do that if he was dead. Besides, I'm probably the only person in town who actually has an alibi at what I've read was the time of death. I'm the early-morning on-air personality at the local radio station WHTN-AM on the weekends. My shift is every Saturday and Sunday from 4:00 to 8:00. I get there around 3:30, and the newspaper said he was killed at 4:00."

Helen vaguely recalled some TV show, maybe an old
Columbo
episode, where a disc jockey had been the killer. He'd faked an alibi by queuing up a bunch of songs, adding something pre-recorded to run in between the music, and then sneaking out to kill the victim with just enough time to get back to the station before the music ran out. That might have been tricky back in the 1970s, but these days, a pre-school kid could probably rig something up.

"Aren't radio stations highly automated these days? You could have pre-recorded the beginning of your shift."

"Not at WHTN," Donald said. "We're not that state-of-the-art. Someone has to be there at the top of the hour to connect to the AP news feed."

"Someone could have covered for you."

"Except no one did. In fact, there are at least two people in town who were awake at four that morning. The guy with the shift before mine and me. He could confirm I was there. Plus, there's a sign-in log for FCC purposes and video cameras for overnight security, since staff are coming and going in the middle of the night."

Any one of those things alone might be suspect, but all of them together added up to what even Tate would have to admit was an airtight alibi, easily as good as Nora's.

Helen was rapidly running out of suspects she wouldn't mind seeing in jail. She had to be missing something important.

Helen had meant to go back to Vic's place to look for the cat again, but she only remembered after she'd gotten out of her car at home and Zee had asked if Helen needed to go anywhere the next day. Tate was outside the garage, unloading some wood blanks from his car's trunk, and she could feel him watching her, waiting for her answer. She'd look like a fool if she turned around and got back into the car.

The cat would have to wait. Not just so Helen wouldn't have to appear foolish, but also because Tate looked terrible, or at least as terrible as his handsome face would allow. Deep lines were forming on his forehead and around his mouth from the frown that had replaced his usual, neutral expression. Stevie had been right to be concerned about the stress she was causing her uncle. He was demonstrating why lawyers were advised not to represent family members in serious cases. If Stevie was wrongly convicted of a crime, Tate would feel the emotional consequences just as much as if the miscarriage of justice had happened to him.

Helen owed it to him to do whatever she could to keep Stevie out of jail. She wondered if it was just as bad for an investigator to work on a case where she had a personal stake in the outcome. She didn't know Stevie herself, but Helen was starting to think that her relationship with Tate might well impair her judgment.

Tate came over to her car. "Trying to decide whether I'm worth your time or if there's someone else you'd rather bother instead?"

"You're too easy a target while you're distracted by Stevie's situation." Helen ignored him while she arranged for Jay and Zee to pick her up in the morning to go back to Vic's mansion. "It's too cold to stay out here and squabble. Let's go inside."

"My place or yours?"

The cold of the garage helped to keep her alert. "Yours."

Tate grabbed another armful of blanks and led the way into the garage.

While he stacked the wood on a shelf on the back wall, Helen brushed the most recent accumulation of sawdust off her usual director's chair and climbed into it. "What's the latest on Stevie's situation?"

Tate turned and leaned against the shelf he'd just filled. "Not good. They definitely want to pin the murder on her. They found the murder weapon, and it's one of Stevie's tools."

So the rust patches on Marty's wrecking bar really were rust and not Vic's blood. Good news for Marty, but not so good for Stevie.

"That doesn't necessarily mean she was the one who used it to kill Vic," Helen said.

"It's covered with her fingerprints."

"Of course it is. It belonged to her. It would be more suspicious if she'd wiped her prints off. The killer probably wore gloves so he wouldn't leave any of his own prints."

Tate pushed away from the shelving and dropped into his own director's chair with a grunt of frustration. "So how come you haven't figured it out who the killer is yet? I'd owe you big-time if you identified him before Hank tosses Stevie into jail."

"Enough to come speak at the library about legal issues?"

He sighed. "Yeah."

He had to be even more worried than he appeared. That wasn't good for him or for Stevie. All that worry was probably making his brain as sluggish as Helen's. He needed a break from the stress, and the woodworking that usually relaxed him wasn't enough of a distraction today.

Fortunately, she had a foolproof way to get Tate's mind off of Stevie's situation. All Helen had to do was tell him she was going to do something risky, so he'd feel the need to save her from herself. "So now you want me to get involved? I thought you didn't want me interfering with police investigations."

"I'm all in favor of you gathering useful information. It's getting caught that I advise against." He leaned forward. "You really need to be careful with this one. Whoever killed Vic was really into violence. I got a look at the preliminary autopsy notes, and apparently Vic was tied to his chair for several hours before he died."

"Why would someone do that?"

"Trying to get some information from him, I assume."

"About what? His secret to winning at poker? Vic offered online classes on exactly that subject. The fees weren't cheap, but they certainly weren't as extreme as a life sentence for murder."

"You're assuming the killer was rational. They usually aren't." Tate flopped against the back of the director's chair. "Perhaps someone with a gambling problem thought Vic had some secret for his success other than the skills discussed in the classes. The killer could have spent several hours trying to get the secret from Vic and then killed him in frustration or disappointment when he realized there really wasn't a secret."

"If that's what happened, we'll never find the culprit," Helen said. "I read Donald's brochure last night, and it claimed there were somewhere between forty and eighty thousand compulsive gamblers in Massachusetts. That's an awful lot of suspects to question."

"I told you it didn't look good for Stevie. There's no obviously better suspect, and Hank is trying to build a murder-one case, claiming that the length of time Vic was tied up is evidence of intent to murder. At least we don't have the death penalty here, but the facts make it hard to present any sort of self-defense or accidental death defense. I need a credible alternative suspect to establish reasonable doubt." He stared across the room at the shelves of wood, but he didn't seem to be focused on anything there. "Actually, Stevie's official counsel needs that. I've got a call in to a colleague to take over the case."

If Tate was preparing to bring in a paid attorney, things really were getting serious.

Tate stood and paced between the workbench and Helen. He didn't seem to notice her silence and kept on talking, perhaps as much for his own benefit as for hers. "I just can't see a way out for Stevie. Everything really does point to her. She doesn't have an alibi, and the alarm system was sabotaged with brute force, not any technical knowledge, so it wasn't beyond her skills. The police can point to a credible motive, since she was heard arguing with Vic about something he'd said to one of her crew, and she's known to be very protective of her employees. Add in her prints on the murder weapon, and they've got a decent chance at a conviction."

"When you put it that way, it does make it sound like Stevie is guilty."

"What about Vic's competition in the poker world, or on the reality shows?" Tate said. "You talked to some of his fans, didn't you? Did they tell you anything about his competitors? Could one of them have wanted him dead?"

Helen shook her head. "I'd like to blame someone from outside Wharton, but Vic's fans are pretty convincing when they say he didn't have any real enemies. Apparently his arguments were all an act. Art thinks his boss had some real enemies. He wasn't specific about who they were, though, which makes me think it wasn't that big a deal. It's more likely that any problems seemed worse to Art than they really were, since he was the one who had to resolve them. If there had been actual death threats or physical violence, the fans would have known about it, and Art could have named some names."

"What about Freddie?" Tate said. "Any luck getting her list of license plate numbers?"

"She wasn't home," Helen said. "We'll have to wait until she comes back from wherever she's disappeared to."

"Freddie's missing?"

Helen resisted the urge to smack herself on the forehead. She'd forgotten another important detail. She'd meant to tell him about Freddie's disappearance as soon as she saw him.

She couldn't let him see just how rattled she was, so she went on the attack. "What? You didn't already know? What's wrong with your sources? Freddie packed up the kids and left this afternoon."

"Sounds like an admission of guilt to me. She skipped town and went underground because she'd killed Vic and didn't want to risk being separated from her kids." He nodded thoughtfully. "I could work with that."

"And if she comes home and it turns out that she was just visiting the boys' grandparents or something? Then what?"

Tate slumped. "I don't know. What else have you got?"

"Nothing yet. Vic's estate is all going to the Compulsive Gambling Recovery Group and the
Betting with the Pros
fans. Donald has an alibi, and I don't think either group knew about the will before Vic died."

"So you're just giving up and throwing Stevie to Hank Peterson's mercy?"

She wouldn't throw anyone, not even Nora Manning, to Peterson's mercy. "Of course not."

"It looks to me like you're completely stumped," Tate said. "The killer must be a real mastermind this time, not someone who simply made a bad decision and then made it worse for themselves."

"I'm not stumped." More like lost in the fog. "I'll figure it out before Peterson does."

"Of course you will," he said, but the worry lines on his face deepened. "You like meddling. And proving that other people are wrong. I just wish you'd stop dawdling on this particular case."

"I'm working as fast as I can." Helen couldn't put into words just how frustrated she was herself at how little progress she was making. "I want the matter resolved quickly too so I can go back to enjoying my retirement."

The skepticism on his face displaced some of the worry lines. "Doing what?"

"I'm still working on that." Helen was used to him doubting her and was actually glad to see him focused on something other than Stevie's problems.

"No one tells you how important a hobby is until you're already retired, and then it's too late. Plus, everyone always denigrates the idea of a hobby saying, 'isn't that cute?' But it's not cute, it's absolutely necessary for any sort of meaningful life. I mean, what's a person supposed to do during her so-called Golden Years? Veg out in front of the TV?" Helen had done that for a couple of months after moving to Wharton, catching up with some of the pop-culture she'd missed during her career. But it hadn't taken her long to get bored and start thinking,
Forty years of this? No way.
"I was too busy running the governor's mansion to have a hobby before. But I'm sure I can find one now if people will just stop dying long enough for me to learn a new skill or two."

"Finding a hobby you're really passionate about doesn't work like that," Tate said. "You can't force it, and it's not necessarily logical."

"I can't just sit around and wait for inspiration." She knew that wouldn't work to unmask a killer, and she didn't think it would work for finding a hobby either. "I'm thinking about starting a vegetable garden in the spring. Working in the soil is supposed to be soothing, as well as good for keeping my joints flexible."

"It's not terribly exciting, though. Certainly not compared to a murder investigation."

But at least it wouldn't leave Helen feeling as helpless as she did right now. No matter how hard she concentrated, she couldn't see even a glimmer of a solution to Vic's murder.

What had Tate said about the killer being a mastermind? Helen thought he was wrong about that. She'd dealt with masterminds, and in her experience anyone with that kind of intelligence had better things to do than kill people. No, whoever had killed Vic had been an ordinary person—she was sure of it. The only reason he'd escaped detection so far was because Hank Peterson was incompetent and Helen's brain wasn't working properly.

She couldn't afford to sit back and do nothing until the lupus fog went away on its own. Not with Stevie's freedom and Tate's peace of mind on the line. She needed a cure, and she needed it now.

*   *   *

While she waited for Rebecca to arrive for the regular Thursday visit, Helen checked her phone for messages. There were three voicemails from Lily, all amounting to the same thing: where was the detailed schedule Helen had promised to send? She'd better send it right now before she forgot again.

Helen was on her way to the desk to check her calendar when she heard Rebecca's car in the driveway. Sending her nieces the schedule could wait a few more minutes.

Once inside, Rebecca went straight to setting up her laptop and retrieving her blood pressure cuff, stethoscope, and thermometer. Helen had learned it was futile to fight the basic monitoring, but she was afraid she'd forget what she wanted to ask if she waited too long. Fortunately, Rebecca stuck to her usual obsession with blood pressure and body temperature, instead of last week's seemingly endless questions about things like Helen's favorite food and what kind of music she preferred.

It only took a few minutes before Rebecca was satisfied that her patient's signs were still vital. While she put away her equipment, Helen said, "So what did you find out about lupus fog? What can I do to get rid of it?"

"Nothing that's scientifically proven," Rebecca said. "It's all just speculation at this point. The way lupus symptoms wax and wane makes it extra hard to tell whether any improvement is due to the treatment or just part of a natural cycle."

"What good is medical science if it can't fix something as simple as memory lapses?"

"It's
not
simple. Scientists are just beginning to have a clue about how the brain functions. Replacing an organ—any organ except the brain, that is—is child's play compared to fiddling with the brain's function." Rebecca made a note in her laptop. "All I can suggest is some gentle exercise like Tai Chi or Yoga. There's some anecdotal evidence that it could help. Or perhaps you could experiment with biofeedback. Neither of those things would hurt, and they might help over the long run."