File M for Murder (22 page)

“That’s true.” Helen Louise laughed. “Throw in the beauty parlor and church, and that pretty much covers everything. Magda goes to the same beauty parlor I do, and what those beauticians and their customers don’t know about what’s going on in Athena isn’t worth knowing.
Same with the altar and flower guilds and the senior women’s Bible study class.”

I had never really thought about the sources of Helen Louise’s information. I’d simply come to rely on her knowing who was who and what was what in Athena. “I’ll take your word for it.” A stray memory surfaced. “I thought I heard somewhere that Ralph and Magda were divorced, or were getting divorced.”

Helen Louise rolled her eyes. “They’re always on the brink of divorce. They’ve actually been divorced twice. They’re on their third marriage.”

“That’s nuts.” My mind boggled at the idea.

“Tell me about it. They have their lawyers on speed dial, I’m sure.”

I had to laugh at that. The situation sounded truly bizarre. Then I sobered. “If they’re that crazy, then do you think one of them might be willing to kill? If they thought someone else posed a serious threat to their warped relationship?”

Helen Louise shrugged. “Anything is possible. Ralph does have a temper. He tried to beat up one of Magda’s boyfriends once. Didn’t work out too well for him, though, because the guy was a jock and hurt Ralph enough to put him in the hospital.”

“If they have a history like that, then I reckon Kanesha must know all about it.” That thought cheered me. With two loons like that to consider, the deputy ought to look at Laura as a much less serious suspect.

“They’re well known to both the police and the sheriff’s departments,” Helen Louise said. “Not to mention their neighbors. I’d sure hate to live next door to them.”

“Why do people involve themselves with such obviously toxic relationships?” I was still puzzling over that. I just couldn’t understand it.

“Beats me.” Helen Louise massaged the sides of her neck with both hands. “Sorry, neck and shoulders are a bit tired.”

“No wonder, with all the baking you do.” She worked very hard, six days a week, plus long hours that started at five
A.M.
and didn’t end until seven in the evening when the bakery closed. “You need more help.”

“I know.” She sighed. “I keep meaning to advertise for someone, but there never seems to be enough time to get to it.”

“Plus finding someone who can meet your exacting standards.” I smiled at her.

“Some people do.” She smiled, a distinct twinkle in her eyes.

“The added benefit of having more help here and more time off means you could spend more time with friends, you know.”

Helen Louise nodded. “I do know. That’s certainly a powerful inducement.” She paused for a moment. “It sure would be nice to have something remotely resembling a personal life for the first time in years.”

I leaned forward and grasped her right hand. The strong, capable fingers rested lightly in my palm. “I couldn’t agree more.”

A faint flush appeared in Helen Louise’s cheeks, and she squeezed my hand. She started to speak, but the voice of her part-time helper interrupted. “Miz Brady, there’s something wrong with the cappuccino machine.”

I glanced to my left to see Debbie, an adenoidal high school senior, staring avidly at her boss’s hand, still in mine.

Helen Louise flashed me a wry grin and pulled her hand away as she stood. “All right, Debbie, I’ll come take a look at it.”

I stood also. “I’d better pick out dessert for tonight and head back home. They’ll all be wondering where I am.”

“Debbie, help Mr. Harris.”

The girl nodded at Helen Louise’s command. “Yes, ma’am. What would you like?” She headed behind the counter to the display case.

I walked over and stared at the contents for a moment, then pointed out one of the two remaining chocolate cakes. “I’ll take that one.”

While Debbie extracted the cake and prepared it for me to carry home, I watched Helen Louise fiddle with her cappuccino maker. “I’ll see you soon, I hope,” I said.

She turned to smile at me. “Definitely. And before I go to bed tonight, I’m going to have an ad ready to run in the paper.”

“Good.” We grinned at each other until Debbie called out to me that my cake was ready to go. I went to the cash register to pay and was soon on my way out the door, with one last glance back at Helen Louise. She was once again absorbed in her task while Debbie lounged at the cash register and stared into space.

On the brief drive home, I thought mostly about Helen Louise. We had known each other since childhood, and through high school and college she had been a good friend to both my late wife, Jackie, and me. We gradually lost touch when Helen Louise moved east to attend law school and Jackie and I married and moved to Texas for me to enter library school. The letters and cards dwindled to a trickle over the years, and on the increasingly infrequent occasions when I brought my family home to visit we never seemed to have the time to connect with many of our classmates. Helen Louise spent some of those years in Paris, and, with few family members of her own still in Athena, she’d rarely visited either.

She came back permanently and opened her bakery about three years before Jackie and my aunt Dottie died and I decided to move back myself. Getting to know her again after so many years helped ease some of the pains of transition into my new life, but I never expected our friendship to develop into something more. Sean and Laura appeared to be happy that I was seeing Helen Louise, and somehow I thought Jackie would be happy for me, too.

I woke from my happy daze as the car turned into my driveway. I blinked. I had driven home on autopilot, I supposed. My stomach did a little flip at the thought of what I might have done in my distracted state, but fortunately the traffic in Athena was never heavy in the late afternoon. I resolved to be more careful as I parked in the garage.

In the kitchen I stowed the cake in the fridge, and when I shut the door I felt pressure against my legs. I glanced down to see Diesel looking up at me. He chirped a couple of times, and I scratched his head. “Hello, boy. Are you glad to see me? I sure am glad to see you.” He chirped again, his way of saying yes, I supposed.

“How is Laura doing? Did you take good care of her?” I realized how foolish it was to ask the cat questions like that, but that never stopped me. Besides, he almost always responded when I did ask him something. Like now, when he meowed several times, almost as if he were giving me a report.

“You and that cat.” Sean chuckled.

Startled, I whirled around to see him in the doorway. My response was a little tart. “You should be used to it by now.”

“Oh, I am, I am.” He grinned at me and arched one eyebrow as he continued. “I’m keeping the butterfly net handy, just in case.”

I had to laugh at that. Then I noticed a sheaf of papers in his hand. “What have you got there?”

“Stuff from Lawton’s thumb drive.” Sean stepped forward into the room and pulled out a chair at the table. “Laura’s still resting, far as I know. So I decided to go ahead and have a look at the contents. I picked a few things to print.”

I took a seat to Sean’s left, and Diesel came to sit by me. “What kinds of things?”

“Mostly letters and e-mails.” Sean fanned the pages out on the table between us. “There’s more upstairs in my room, including the play he was working on. But I thought starting with his more recent correspondence might be a good plan.”

“Have you found anything of interest yet?” I glanced down at the pages in front of me. Ralph Johnston’s name leapt out at me from the page on top.

“Read that one.” Sean indicated the page I had noticed. His smug tone as he continued piqued my interest. “Wait till you see what’s in that letter.”

I scanned it quickly, and my eyes widened as the contents of the letter sank in. “If Ralph knew about this…” My voice trailed off.

Sean nodded. “He’d want to kill Lawton for sure.”

I read the letter again, this time more slowly, to absorb every detail. Addressed to the director of the American Academy of Drama, it offered Connor Lawton’s review of a play submitted in consideration for the Laurette Taylor Fellowship in Dramaturgy. Lawton was apparently a member of the judging panel for the fellowship.

The author of the play in question was Montana (aka Ralph) Johnston. Lawton’s comments savaged the man and his work. Phrases like
tediously derivative
and
staggeringly boring
made me wince on Ralph’s behalf. Lawton closed the letter with the complaint that he couldn’t understand why he was expected to waste his time on work that was so
manifestly substandard
.

I set the letter down and looked at Sean. “Connor made it plain he didn’t like Ralph’s play. But if he knew Lawton had written
that
, he would certainly be furious. I know I would.”

“A simple
no
would have been enough, I’d think.” Sean
shook his head. “Looks to me like Lawton went out of his way to be a jerk about it. Even if the play was as bad as he says, he didn’t have to say it like that.”

“No, he didn’t, but in my experience some critics can’t resist the temptation to be as nasty as possible. I suppose it feeds their egos somehow to tear other people down so viciously.”

“Lawton had a colossal ego, from everything I’ve observed and things Laura told me.” Sean tapped the letter with his forefinger. “Deputy Berry will look into this, I’m sure, whenever she gets around to reading the letter. You think maybe you should talk to her, make sure she gets to it right away?”

“I doubt she’d thank me if I did.” I rubbed my forehead to ease the tension that was threatening to bring on a headache. “No, it’s better to let her assess this on her own. She already has enough on Ralph and Magda Johnston to consider them prime suspects.”

“Like what?” Sean leaned back in his chair and stretched his long legs farther under the table.

Diesel chose that moment to let me know he needed attention. I felt a large paw on my thigh and heard a couple of insistent meows. He stood on his hind legs, now with both front paws braced on my thigh, and his head was about level with mine. I put my hand on the back of his head and drew it nose to nose with mine.

“You are incorrigible and shameless, and you know it,” I told him. His response was to lick my chin, and I laughed and pulled away. I kept my hand on his head as he sat on his haunches and stared up at me. A few good rubs between his ears, and he was content to let me resume my conversation with my smirking son.

“Now I know what I have to do to get your attention.” Sean chuckled.

I chose to ignore that little sally. “Back to your question. I had an interesting chat with Helen Louise when I went to pick up some dessert for tonight.” I gave Sean a rundown of what I’d learned about Magda and Ralph, their marriage, and her propensity for having affairs.

Sean rolled his eyes three times while I talked, but he waited to comment until I finished. “Some advertisement for marriage, those two. They’re totally whacked.”

“Agreed,” I said. “If they’re that unstable, I can easily see one of them deciding to kill Lawton and take him out of the picture.”

“You think Magda Johnston attacked Laura?”

I pondered that for a moment. “It’s certainly possible, especially if she considered Laura a rival. But that would have made more sense before Lawton was killed. I can’t see her doing it after he was dead. Plus, there was the odd smell.”

“What are you talking about?” Sean looked puzzled. “What smell?”

“Sorry, I forgot you weren’t in the room when Laura told Kanesha about that.” I explained briefly. “I didn’t notice any smell like that with Magda in the room, so it must have been some other person. And before Magda found Laura. I think that probably clears her.”

“Maybe so.” Sean didn’t look convinced. “But she’s obviously a nutcase. I wouldn’t count her out just yet.”

“I’m not. She and Ralph are at the top of my list.” I glanced down at the papers on the table. “But I can’t stare at the forest and not look at the individual trees, so to speak. What more is there? Anything that might point a finger at someone else?”

Sean straightened in his chair and leaned forward, elbows on the table. “Heck, yeah. Damitra Vane. There are
some e-mails that will make you blush.” He chuckled. “I know I did when I read them.”

I frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Exchanges between Lawton and different Hollywood guys, all about what Damitra Vane will do to get a part, and how good she is at certain activities.” He waggled his eyebrows.

“Sexual activities?”

Sean nodded. “Pretty disgusting, too. If she knows he talked about her like this—basically saying she’s nothing more than a prostitute and too dumb to realize it—I don’t think she’d be too happy with him.”

My head began to ache in earnest. Connor Lawton defiled everything he touched, or so I was beginning to feel. It made me sick to my stomach to think of my daughter involved with such a man. What was she thinking? Did she not know what he was really like?

If I found out she was aware of all this and still associated with Lawton despite it, I’d be hugely disappointed in her. She had been reared better than this.