Elizabeth C. Main - Jane Serrano 01 - Murder of the Month (12 page)

Unfortunately, I was practically vibrating from the effort to keep myself from calling Bianca immediately to tell her what I thought of
Prove It, Puppy!
but I knew it was better not to say anything until tonight’s meeting, when I’d have Minnie and Alix to back me up. I was reasonably sure that the lovestruck Tyler wouldn’t be able to bring himself to criticize Bianca’s choice of a book.

As I approached Thornton’s at noon, the window display—“beach candy” books for summer reading—caught my eye. My garden wasn’t the only thing that had been neglected recently. The window display hadn’t been touched since July, and August was already half gone. Laurence wouldn’t ever think to work on the window, even though he hadn’t much cared for my choices for this one. If left to him, the window would contain only dusty, rare books, which didn’t make the most electrifying visual presentation. I’d have to come up with something soon because a place called simply Thornton’s Books needed all the marketing help it could get. If only we could get Bianca down to earth, maybe I’d be able to get back to the routine work entailed in running the bookstore.

In anticipation of finding grandfather and grandson working together at the store for the first time, I smiled as I opened the door. Laurence and Tyler confronted each other across the counter, their strained faces telling me everything I needed to know about the day.

“
I wasn’t even driving,” Tyler protested.

“
That’s beside the point,” Laurence said.

“
Well, it is a point.”

“
Don’t get smart with me, young man.”

“
Look, we didn’t hurt your stupid car. It’s no big deal—”

“
Not to you, apparently.” Laurence noticed me standing frozen in the doorway. “Jane, maybe you can explain to this … this punk just why it’s wrong to steal cars.”

“
Oh, that’s good,” Tyler said. “Steal? Your car’s fine.”

“
My car,” Laurence shot back. “So you acknowledge that the car does indeed belong to me. I wasn’t sure you understood that elementary fact.”

Tyler muttered, “I needed it.”

“You don’t even have a license,” I said.

“
I wasn’t driving.” Tyler looked at the floor, saying nothing more, and my heart sank. I knew who must have been at the wheel of Laurence’s car.

Infuriated at Tyler’s attitude, Laurence burst out, “Never thought I’d have to lock the car keys away from my own grandson. Maybe I’d better check the cash register—”

“
If you think that …” Tyler went first white, then fiery red, “… then you can just go …” He pushed past me and out the door, banging it closed behind him.

“
Oh, Laurence, you don’t think he’d steal from you … ”

“
Don’t tell me what I think. That kid’s just like his parents—no sense of responsibility.”

“
You don’t mean that,” I said. The thunderous look on his face caused me to hedge. “Okay, maybe you do mean it right this minute, but I don’t think he was lying about driving the car. It was probably Bianca.”

“Bianca? What the—” The telephone shrilled at his elbow, but he only glared at it. “Doesn’t matter anyway. I’m going home.” He ostentatiously pulled a crumpled pack of Camels from his breast pocket as he passed me on the way out.

The caller was Marian McKee, with her usual incoherent book order. Unsure of the title, author, or publisher of the book she sought, she was nevertheless sure I’d be able to find it. “It was a beautiful book about birds of prey, and the author was from Australia—or maybe New Zealand. I saw it at the gift shop in the Honolulu Airport about five years ago. It had lots of pictures, and the cover was red.”

“Well, Marian,” I began, “it’s like this … ”

With Laurence and Tyler at each other’s throats, Marian on the phone, and the Murder of the Month Book Club meeting tonight, it was likely to be a long time before I got around to thinking up a scintillating new display for the front window.

* * * * *

Bianca was the first of the book club members to arrive that evening for the meeting. I made a conscious decision not to mention Laurence’s car or the presence of the ever-faithful Wendell. Things would get unpleasant soon enough.

While I was on the phone taking an order a few minutes later, Minnie and Alix arrived simultaneously. At the look on Minnie’s face, I clapped one hand over the mouthpiece and said, “Please don’t start ‘til I get up there.”

“
Were you able to get all the way through that dreadful book?” Minnie asked.

I nodded and gestured toward the phone, my hand covering the receiver. “Be right up,” I whispered.

“
Don’t be long,” said Alix. “This ought to be some discussion.”

I soon locked the store and made my way upstairs, pausing outside the meeting room to gauge the tone of the conversation in progress. Bianca’s voice floated out to me. She seemed to be talking about cooking, so I dared to enter.

“Strawberry-zucchini quiche—with a whole wheat crust, and extra wheat germ added, of course. I had it on the counter, but …” Bianca’s sideways glance at Wendell completed the thought. “I didn’t know he could reach that high. But then I realized we shouldn’t be sitting here eating snacks when there’s work to do anyway.”

Alix asked, “Since when has any snack ever made it past Wendell? I haven’t seen any, have you, Minnie?”

Minnie seemed preoccupied. “Strawberry-zucchini quiche?”
“The green of the zucchini provided a nice contrast to the red of the strawberries,” Bianca explained.

“
Of course it did,” Alix murmured. “Christmas in August. Red and green.”

“
I didn’t think of that, but it did look festive,” Bianca responded.

Minnie was still having trouble with the concept. “And Wendell ate all of this … whole wheat strawberry-zucchini … thing?”

“
Every scrap. I hope Ty won’t be too disappointed. He’s always hungry, and he probably doesn’t think to add extra fruits and vegetables to his diet.”

“
Tyler probably won’t be here tonight,” I answered. “He’s got something going on … with Laurence.”

“
Too bad,” Bianca said. “He was a big help today. Wasn’t that nice of Laurence? I thought he might be grumpy about letting us use his car. I didn’t think we had time to bike all the way to the Crooked River Gorge. Borrowing the car was Ty’s idea, but taking the pictures was mine.”

“
Pictures of what?” Minnie asked. “Rocks?”

“
Don’t be silly. Pictures of Vanessa’s murder. You’ve all read
Prove it Puppy!
by now so you can guess what I did.”

Alix said, “I’ll take a crack at it. After those brilliant corgis tipped her off, Miss Pittimore sent Bernard an anonymous message.”

Minnie said, “That’s silly. No one would do that.”

“Well, of course not.” Bianca sounded so indignant that I thought maybe she recognized how foolish the plot was. Then she blasted my hope with her next words. “Not at first anyway. I had to lay the groundwork, to make Gil sweat.”

“So you invited him to speak to our book club next week,” I said, holding out the letter to her.

“Right.” She passed the letter to Minnie. “How’d you get it, Mom?”

“Harley asked me to talk to you about it.”

“Aha! Gil’s worried. It’s already working.”

Minnie looked up from her reading. “The Murder of the Month Book Club. I do like that name. It sounds so official.”

Alix took the letter from Minnie and pretended to read: “‘Please come and tell us in vivid detail how you killed your wife. Snacks provided, if Wendell doesn’t get them first.’ You did offer snacks, I hope?”

“
Very funny, Alix,” Bianca said. “Yes, I mentioned refreshments, which you’ll see if you read to the bottom of the note. After all, I had to make the meeting sound normal.”

“When has anything been normal about our meetings?” Alix asked. “But thanks for clarifying the proper etiquette for entertaining a murder suspect. A book club is supposed to read about murders, not discover them.”

“And after this case is closed, we will,” Bianca agreed, “but we can’t ignore a murder right in our midst.”

“There was no murder,” I said, for what felt like the hundredth time. I spoke slowly and distinctly. “We are sorry that Vanessa fell, and we are sorry she is dead. However, according to the official investigation, as well as the pure weight of common sense, she was not murdered.”

Bianca lifted her chin and challenged me, just as she had done when she was two years old and didn’t want to wear her coat outside to play in the snow. “Then why is Gil nervous about my letter? Tell me that!”

“He’s not nervous,” I said. “He’s upset because his wife has died. He doesn’t need extra problems right now.”

“Then he shouldn’t have killed her,” Bianca said calmly.

Every rule that Raymond Morris ever devised wasn’t going to help me tonight. I opened my mouth to say something I’d probably regret later, and only Minnie’s timid comment prevented it.

“He might not be interested in coming, but I don’t think he’d be nervous about getting an invitation to talk to our little group. After all, he is the district attorney, so he has a natural interest in crime and the law. I move that we just let him come. It would be less embarrassing than withdrawing the invitation at this point.”

“I second that motion,” Alix said. “This could be fascinating.”

“All in favor?” asked Minnie. I seemed to be the only one in the room who was opposed. Hardly pausing to hear the chorus of ayes, Minnie said, “Oh, good. It’s all settled.”

“Except that Gil doesn’t want to come,” I said.

“Well, that’s up to him. We’ll just move right on to the second part of my plan, the anonymous letter. As I told you, I didn’t send it at first. The letter inviting him to speak to our book club was first, just to soften him up.”

I pursued the question while fearing the answer. “But ‘at first’ seems to imply that at some point … oh, Bianca, you didn’t!”

Bianca said triumphantly, “I did! I even used the exact wording from the note sent to Bernard in
Prove It, Puppy!
The note said: ‘I KNOW WHAT YOU DID!’”

“
Well, that’s it,” Alix said. “After reading that cleverly worded message, Gil will confess immediately. Case closed. End of story. Time for healthful refreshments.”

“
No,” Bianca said. “I’m pretty sure Gil’s smarter than Bernard.”

“
This coffee table is smarter than Bernard,” Alix assured her.

Bianca ignored the dig. “Anyway, that was just the second step. Don’t forget that it took a while for Bernard to believe someone had really seen him murder Caroletta.”

“
Of course,” I said. I was inclined to agree with Alix on the relative intelligence of the coffee table and Bernard. Then there was the question of the ability of an author who named characters “Bernard” and “Caroletta,” but that was a discussion for another day.

Needing to know the worst, I pressed on. “And your third step was …?”

Bianca brightened at this chance to show off her cleverness. “Well, this one wasn’t from the book. As I said, I thought it up myself after Ty offered to borrow Laurence’s car.”

“To gather evidence?” Minnie said nervously.

“Exactly,” Bianca said, “and to manufacture some if necessary. Pictures can be faked, you know. What if I showed him some fuzzy pictures of Vanessa getting pushed?”

Alix rolled her eyes and strolled over to the window, opening it wide before she lit a cigarette. I watched enviously. Though I’d never smoked, I now realized for the first time what a handy activity it provided in times of stress.

“
Oh, dear,” said Minnie. “This is getting serious. The invitation was one thing, but anonymous letters and fake pictures? Oh, dear.”

“
Cheer up, Minnie,” Alix said from across the room. “I’m sure Bianca can make fuzzy pictures, but I doubt she can make fuzzy pictures of a murder than never happened.”

“
What if he connects the anonymous letter with us?” Minnie asked.

“
We’ll pretend we don’t know anything about it, pass it off as somebody’s bad joke,” Alix said.

“
Which it is,” I added.

“
But I want him to connect the two,” Bianca offered. “And as for the fake pictures, I wanted to see for myself how he reacted to the pictures.”

“Speaking of pictures,” Alix said, “I’m sorry I couldn’t be at Vanessa’s funeral. Minnie was just telling me about the useful, surreptitious pictures you took there.”

Bianca defended herself. “The FBI sometimes takes pictures at funerals—”

“
Mob funerals, Bianca. You were taking pictures of people we all know,” I said.

“
There were a few strangers—“

“
Like Vanessa’s parents?” Minnie asked.

“
Well, it was just an idea,” Bianca said. “I’m learning as I go. I found out today that faking pictures is tougher than I thought. I really wanted pictures of Gil pushing Vanessa over the cliff, but it didn’t work out very well.”

I sat down. “How … how …?”

“
Ty was a big help. We were going to rig a dummy to look like Vanessa and then put it on a rope, so we could take pictures without having to climb up and down the canyon wall after every shot … and blur the pictures to make it hard to tell exactly what was going on.”