Drip Dead (9 page)

I looked up at the vintage cat clock on Sue’s wall. “And now I had better get going. Even if the sheriff is taking responsibility for talking to her, I think it would be better if I was there.

“Just in case.”

The Escalade took up two-thirds of the driveway, and there was a strange car in front of my house when I arrived. I carefully maneuvered the Beetle into the remaining sliver of driveway and locked the doors.

I opened the front door and stepped into chaos.

It appeared to radiate from my mother who stood in the middle of the living room, her hands on her hips, a frown drawing her perfectly arched brows down over her nose.

“No, no, no, Penny. I think the sofa should go over
there
.” She waved a gloved hand toward the front wall. “Then we can move the lamp table to the corner—” She stopped when she caught sight of me.

“You remember Penny, don’t you, Georgie?” She indicated the young woman who was struggling with the overstuffed sofa that was my temporary bed. She looked vaguely familiar, like the younger sister of someone I’d gone to school with. Mom didn’t bother to fill in the blanks.

“We use her at the agency to clean and stage houses. Since we couldn’t meet at the office today”—her tone implied I was somehow to blame for her inconvenience—“I asked her to come here. We finished our business, and then we just sort of . . .” She spread her arms wide, taking in the entire living room. “We won’t be long,” she said, oblivious to my frozen smile.

Penny caught the look, and there was a flicker of sympathy in her eyes.

“Hi, Penny,” I said in what I hoped was a friendly manner. It wasn’t her fault my mother was unable to leave my things alone.

Daisy and Buddha appeared in the kitchen doorway, identical expressions of doggy panic on their faces. These strange women were moving furniture in their house while I wasn’t there, and they were distressed.

“Mother,” I managed to get out through clenched teeth, “can I talk to you for a minute?”

Without waiting for an answer, I walked into the kitchen.

I leaned my back against the counter and crossed my arms over my chest. While I waited for her to join me, I looked around my kitchen.

It wasn’t my kitchen anymore. The formerly bare counters now held an assortment of my small appliances that had been stowed in the pantry closet. Each one had been scrubbed and polished, and several dish towels hung from strategic points around the room.

The table, a space usually kept clear, had been covered with a cloth, placemats, a decorative bowl, and a vase of fresh flowers I suspected came from the supermarket.

Which meant Mom had gone grocery shopping, too.

I was still taking in the changes when Mom strode in. Her usual mile-high stilettos had been replaced with a pair of expensive espadrilles, and I was shocked at the realization she was actually several inches shorter than I was.

Even doing housework she had on full makeup, her hair was carefully tied into a loose knot, and she wore a casually stylish outfit of Capri pants and a matching long-sleeved top.

With an expertise born of necessity—dressing for success had taken practice—I could assess her clothes at a glance and I knew her casual outfit was worth more than my entire stock of jeans and T-shirts.

Not that it mattered to me, but I knew it did to her.

“Mom, the sheriff wants to talk to you. He’s agreed to come here rather than make you go to the station, but he’ll be here any minute.”

“Okay,” she said. She looked around the kitchen and glanced back through the door into the living room. Her eyes lit on the dogs, and they moved away from her, as though afraid she was going to banish them from the house.

“I’ll just have Penny finish up in the living room while I clean up and change,” she went on.

“I doubt there will be time for that,” I countered. “You will have to leave the furniture moving for another day.” My voice was low, a too-calm tone that most people around me had learned was a warning of the possible release of my tightly controlled anger.

Mom either didn’t hear or didn’t heed the warning. “It won’t take long.”

“Mother.”

“Yes, dear? What is it?” A note of annoyance crept in, and she looked impatient. “I have to go change.”

“Forget changing your clothes and listen to me!” I swallowed the flash of anger and went on. “There isn’t time. We need to put the living room back together as best we can and let Penny go home.

“Besides, do you realize you just put my bed directly under the living room window?”

“Don’t worry about that, dear. I’m sure the sheriff will get this all straightened out, and I’ll be going home in another day or so.” She cocked her head to one side in a coquettish gesture meant to indicate she was thinking. “In fact, I’ll bet that’s why he’s coming over.”

She sailed back toward the living room, confident that everything would work out.

I admit I took the coward’s way out and let her go.

Sure, I could have stopped her and explained that the sheriff was most definitely not coming over to tell her she could go back to her house. But that would have led to questions about why and how I could be so sure. Questions I didn’t want to answer.

I followed her into the living room and volunteered to move furniture.

Penny left a few minutes later. Mom followed her to the door, assuring her they would be “back to normal” in a day or two.

She had no idea how wrong she was, nor how fervently I wished she was right. But as Penny pulled away, the sheriff glided into the empty space at the curb. She would know soon.

Fred Mitchell parked his personal pickup and made his way up the walk to the front door. I didn’t know why he wasn’t driving an official car, but I was just as glad not to have a sheriff’s squad car in front of my house.

The sheriff looked exhausted. There were dark circles under his eyes, his usual ramrod-straight posture was sagging slightly, and his uniform was wrinkled, as though he’d slept in it.

Which he probably had.

He had the murder of a prominent local businessman on his hands. I doubted he’d been home since the initial call came in yesterday morning.

I felt sorry for him. After everything else, the next several minutes with my mother would be grueling. And unless he had personally killed Gregory Whitlock—a ludicrous thought—none of it was his fault.

It
was
just his job—a job I didn’t envy. I didn’t much like talking to him in an official capacity. Would anyone? But when I wasn’t the one butting heads with him I realized what a tough position he was in. He had to deal with people at their worst. And my mother’s worst? Like I said, I felt sorry for him.

I took the sheriff’s jacket and hung it on the coat rack by the front door. “I’d offer you a beer,” I said, “but there’s that whole ‘on duty’ thing. How about a cup of coffee?”

He shook his head. “I’ve had too much already.” He winced and instinctively put a hand against his stomach.

“Water?” I suggested.

He nodded.

I went to the kitchen and filled a pitcher. I brought it back to the living room with a couple glasses of ice, just as my mother emerged from the hallway that led to the bedrooms. Somehow in the few intervening minutes she had managed to ditch her casual outfit and replace it with a pair of tailored slacks and a creamy yellow sweater set.

And stilettos.

I managed to keep a straight face. “If you don’t need me?” I asked the sheriff, glancing toward the kitchen.

He shook his head. I would be close enough if he wanted me, but I’d leave the two of them alone.

I retreated to the kitchen.

I opened the refrigerator, intending to make dinner. I confronted full shelves, a novelty in my kitchen, and a couple plates already filled and covered with plastic wrap, ready to microwave and serve.

My mother needed a hobby. Or at least to get back to work.

I set my laptop on the kitchen table and flipped it open. Maybe I could distract myself by checking my e-mail or cruising the Web. Anything to take my mind off the interview taking place a few feet away.

There was an open doorway between the two rooms, so I could hear them talking. I couldn’t make out all the words at first, but as I grew accustomed to the sound of their voices I could make out most of the conversation.

It wasn’t eavesdropping as much as hearing a conversation I couldn’t avoid.

“I hope you don’t mind,” the sheriff said.

I felt a smile curl my mouth. I could picture him taking out the little recorder and putting it on the table next to the water pitcher.

“It’s just for my own use. Make sure I remember everything correctly.”

“Of course,” Mom answered.

The sheriff went through his ritual, a process that had become all too familiar to me over the last couple years. It was all new to my mother.

I logged in to the laptop and brought up the mail program. I didn’t need to listen; I knew what was coming.

I deleted several messages from my junk folder offering to check my credit score, enlarge body parts, or find long-lost schoolmates, and reset my spam filters. It was the kind of work I could do without much thought, a good idea since I couldn’t completely tune out the voices in the living room.

I managed pretty well though, until my mother’s voice rose. “Sheriff. You must be mistaken! That simply isn’t possible.”

Mom didn’t sound upset so much as she sounded offended. It was the same tone she had taken with Sheriff Mitchell when he questioned me as a possible suspect in the murder of Blake Weston, an implication that her boyfriend—or her daughter—simply couldn’t be involved with something as unseemly as murder.

While I didn’t share her absolute belief in Gregory, I did share her desire not to be involved. Not that it mattered what we wanted. Blake Weston’s death had made that clear. When someone you’re close to—or someone you used to be close to—is murdered, you’re involved whether you want to be or not.

The sheriff spoke softly, offering his apologies for the questions he had to ask, while pressing ahead with his interview.

He asked about her relationship with Gregory, which she insisted was happy. She told him there was no problem with the wedding plans, and that she was already moving into the new house Gregory had purchased.

“This house—” I heard him riffle through the pages of the small notebook he carried as a backup to the recorder. “You say Mr. Whitlock
built
it?”

“He had a mortgage, of course,” Mom answered. “But yes, he built it.”

“And did you have a financial interest in the property?”

Mom didn’t answer immediately. The sudden silence drew my full attention, and I sat still, listening.

She laughed, as though trying to dismiss the question. “I did cover part of the down payment and closing costs,” she admitted. “And I certainly expected to pay my share of the expenses. I hardly expected Gregory to support me. I’m perfectly capable of supporting myself.”

That was a change that had come about in the five years since my father’s death, and Mom had become fiercely proud of it.

“And the incident at Dee’s?”

“Incident? You mean that little disagreement?” I heard the pitcher clink against the table and the sound of pouring water. “It was just a misunderstanding, Sheriff. More embarrassing than anything. I would have preferred we have the discussion in private, but Gregory was insistent we resolve the issue while we ate breakfast.

“It was over in a few minutes. The rather public nature of the conversation made me lose my appetite.”

Ah, yes. Never argue in public. One of Mother’s rules.

The conversation continued on that track for several minutes and I went back to my computer. I hadn’t heard anything I didn’t already know.

Even the part about the down payment on the house had been spelled out in the prenuptial agreement, and Mom had insisted I read every word.

“I don’t know anything about boxes!” Mom raised her voice, and my attention was drawn back to the living room. “I didn’t know they were there. I don’t know what was in them, and I don’t know when or why they were put there. And I only have your word that they belonged to Gregory. For all I know, they could have been anyone’s.”

“They were addressed to Mr. Whitlock at his home,” the sheriff said. His voice was patient, but I could hear the strain. Talking to my mother was often difficult under the best of circumstances. Which this definitely wasn’t.

“Do you know what was in them?” Mom challenged.

“The way this works, Mrs. Neverall, is that
I
ask the questions and
you
answer them. Not the other way around.”

“If they were under my house, Sheriff, no one told me.”

“Who has access to your house, Mrs. Neverall?”