Maggie Dove (11 page)

She had a clue! It wasn't much, but it was something. She'd actually done something, which was sort of amazing. Now Maggie just had to figure out what to do about it.

It was so easy to get people to do things in books. All you had to do was write a scene and Inspector Benet leapt into action. But in real life, it was not easy to knock on a grieving woman's door and try to interview her. Particularly when you knew that woman hated you, and when you were trying to ask her if she might have killed her husband.

Maggie had no authority. She had no badge. She considered going to Walter Campbell for help, but rejected it instantaneously. She could almost picture the expression on his rock-like face when she told him why she suspected Noelle. No, she had to do something else.

Maggie went home and changed her clothes. Put on a little more makeup and a V-neck shirt. She wasn't sure what vibe she was going for, but thought she should look a little sophisticated. Not that it worked, because the moment Noelle opened the door to her house, she thrust out her hip and said, “What do you want?”

“I brought you a chicken casserole,” Maggie said. She'd defrosted it; always kept one handy for the dinner brigade. You never knew when one of the elderly parishioners would twist an ankle.

“Oh,” Noelle said. “You're the second person to drop off food today.”

There was that same artificial voice, baby-like, and the same languid motion, as though she could hardly be bothered to reach for the casserole dish. Her eyes were large and slightly slanted, like a cat's.

“Really? Who else was here?” Maggie asked automatically, but Noelle didn't seem offended. Not a woman who kept secrets, it seemed. Not a woman who valued her privacy. “That other lady,” she said. “The one who looks like you. Agnes.”

“Agnes Jorgenson does not resemble me in the least,” Maggie snapped. But Noelle just stared back blankly. She had a way of looking all innocent, Maggie realized, when she was about to stab you in the back. Agnes Jorgenson. She of the googly eyes and dour expression. She did not look like Maggie. Not that looks were important. Not that she was vain. Not that she looked as good as she used to, but still…

“Anyway, I wondered if I might talk to you.”

“About what?”

This was not going to be easy, Maggie thought. She could hardly flat-out ask if Noelle used Ecstasy and had poisoned Winifred with it.

“You said you were working on a book. Is there anything I can help you with?”

“You said you didn't want to help me. You said you didn't do that type of work anymore. Anyway, everyone says you hated my husband.”

She looked like a martyr. She looked like she expected Maggie to tie her to a stake and light the wood. Honestly, Maggie didn't think she was that bad. Maggie tried to smile. She tried to look like a normal, friendly person, which she hoped she was.

“I didn't hate him. I hated what he did to my tree.”

Don't hate the person, she always said to her Sunday School students. Hate the act.

“You hated him from the moment he moved in. Hated me too. You don't need to try and hide it. I've been dealing with people like you my whole life.”

She tucked her head back at that. Maggie couldn't figure out if the woman was beautiful or not. Her skin was slightly pockmarked from acne, but the color of it was beautiful. Lightly tanned. Her hair was thick, her eyes a little close together. She had beautiful eyebrows and long lashes. She reminded Maggie a little bit of one of the Romanov princesses, girls who looked beautiful from some angles and homely from others. One thing was clear. She had a very nice figure. Into Maggie's head popped a long-ago memory of her church youth leader telling the girls that a woman's breasts only needed to be as big as a man's hands. Sex ed, in the church.

Maggie wondered how on earth to ask her the question she needed to.

“People like me how?” Maggie asked, feeling her heart beginning to pound, feeling like what she wanted to do was slam the door and leave, but she couldn't do that. She needed information. She needed to help Peter. That was worth a certain amount of humiliation.

Meanwhile, over Noelle's shoulder, Maggie could see the interior of the house was the color of a brothel, insofar as Maggie knew what the inside of a brothel looked like. Where there had once been colonial-blue walls and soft-white wainscoting, the room was now painted a color that reminded Maggie of inflamed tonsils. The walls were pink, plush, pulsating, unnerving. In the corner, where the Levys had kept their piano, where Mr. Levy used to sit and play songs and Mrs. Levy would pull out her banjo and they would all sing “Ramblin' Rose” and “Let Me Call You Sweetheart,” in that corner was a picture of Noelle, in the nude, with a pinecone. It always came back to trees with that man, Maggie thought.

Noelle crossed her arms. Maggie stood there like an idiot, hanging on to the casserole, thinking she should have brought a bottle of scotch. “People like you,” Noelle went on. “People who judge. People who lead your safe little lives. People who think they're better than people like me. Hypocrites.”

“I don't think I am a hypocrite,” Maggie said. “I was quite up front about disliking your husband. Whatever else I am, I'm not a liar.”

Noelle stepped backward, brought her fingers to her lips, as though hoping desperately to find herself holding a cigarette. She smelled ripe, Maggie thought. She smelled like she'd been fermenting. She remembered reading once that Steve Jobs had a distinctive and unpleasant aroma because his diet was so strange. She wondered what sorts of food Noelle ate.

“Why did you come live in this village if you feel that way about us?” Maggie asked. “Why not stay in the city?”

“Why shouldn't we live where we want to live? On the river. Bender loved the river. It was his passion. He named his children after river gods. He was committed to the river. He loved it.” Her voice broke. “He said you were a Sunday School teacher,” Noelle said.

“Yes,” Maggie said, straightening up just a little bit. She was proud of her job.

“You!” Noelle said. “Screaming at him, reporting him to the police, being so cruel to him.”

“He was trying to kill my tree.”

“Weren't you supposed to forgive him? Weren't you supposed to try and understand him?”

Maggie sagged slightly. “Yes,” she said. “I should have. I'm not proud of the way I acted with him.”

“Everyone acting high and mighty, but really so judgmental in their hearts.”

“I'm tired of hearing that I'm not supposed to judge,” Maggie snapped. “That people should be whatever they want to be. But tell me this: I know as a Sunday School teacher I'm trying to make my life into something better. I'm trying to help people. I bring food to people who are hungry. I visit people in hospitals. I pray for people. What are you doing? Are there strippers visiting the sick? Are they collecting clothes for disaster relief? I don't think so.”

Noelle stared at her, unblinkingly. Maggie waited for her to throw her out of her house, but instead she turned and began walking toward the staircase. “Take off your shoes,” she said, which Maggie did, reluctantly. Without her shoes she was a good inch shorter, and she felt she needed all the height she could muster to handle this interview.

Now she followed Noelle, barefoot herself, to the staircase.

That at least looked familiar. Maggie could remember sledding down those steps on pillows. Winifred, she thought. Winifred had wanted so much out of life, had been determined to marry a prince, had tried so hard. Always expecting something magical to be inside every man she went out with and always disappointed to find out he was just a man, after all. Yet still hopeful, still looking for that fifth husband. Was it possible this woman could be involved in her death?

Finally they were up in the room that had been Winifred's. They'd torn down the walls between several of the bedrooms, turning them into one giant studio. At one end of the room, near a window, was Bender's easel. On the other side was a desk with a computer on it and several neat shelves containing folders. Noelle walked over to the easel, and gestured to it. There was Bender's painting.

“He'd been working on it for months,” Noelle said. “He loved the river.”

Maggie looked at it. Perhaps not surprisingly, it looked very plush. Very sensual. Lots of brushstrokes. It was the blue of the river on a spring day, when the sun turned a soft yellow, as it did sometimes, and the houses on the river were whitewashed and the river itself was so blue it looked like the Mediterranean. In the lower corner of the painting was the tip of Maggie's house and next to it was a blank spot, where the tree should be. Bender hadn't even been able to bring himself to paint the tree. Her pretty little oak.

She could see how that wouldn't fit in with the tone of his painting, but why not just paint around it? Why not reimagine it as a tulip tree, for that matter? She was surprised at how much lower her house was than his. What had he felt, every day looking down on her like that? Maggie wondered. From this angle, she must have looked so small. From this angle, she realized, he had a clear view right into her house. He would have seen her glaring at him. He would have known, but he didn't care.

Well, that much she knew, though she felt herself start to get angry all over again. She couldn't even be in the home of this man, now dead, without feeling annoyed. The fact was, if anyone in this area had the disposition of a poisoner, it was Bender. He was manipulative, spoiled, vain. It would be easy to imagine him toying with a victim, pretending to be caring even as he slipped poison into her food. In fact, he had done that exact thing with her tree. Pretending to be concerned for what Maggie wanted even as he slipped drain cleaner onto its roots. But it was Bender who was dead, Bender who had been poisoned.

“This is who he was,” Noelle said. “This was my Bender.”

Maggie was touched by the sincerity in her voice, even though she objected strenuously. What could she say of seeing Bender's work beyond that he was exactly what he seemed? At the same time, it did seem like he loved Noelle and she loved him and that was something honest. She had to respect that.

“What do you want from me?” Noelle asked.

Maggie took a deep breath. She could do this.

“I don't know if you've heard, but there was another death in the village. The woman who used to live in this house, matter of fact. Her name was Winifred Levy.”

Noelle shook her head.

“You probably met her when you bought this house.”

“I wasn't there,” Noelle whispered in her fluty voice. “Bender took care of all that.”

“Did he ever say anything about her?”

“That old lady?”

Maggie sighed. “Yes, the old lady who was my friend. Did he ever say anything about her?”

“Why?”

“Because they both seem to have been murdered in the same way and so there must have been some connection between them and I'm trying to figure out what that was.”

“I thought that good-looking policeman did it,” Noelle said. “Peter Nelson.”

“No,” Maggie said. The room was oppressively hot.

“He poisoned Bender. He hated him because Bender was going to get him fired.”

“He hated your husband, but he didn't kill him, and he didn't kill Winifred either.”

Noelle looked at her blankly.

“Winifred,” Maggie said. “My friend. The lady who used to live in this house.”

Noelle shrugged.

Maggie knew she needed to press on. She might not get another chance.

“I know this is going to sound tactless,” Maggie said, “but I understand there's a lot of Ecstasy in your profession.”

“The drug?” Noelle asked.

“Yes.”

Noelle's eyes narrowed. “There was, but I left that all behind a long time ago.”

She put her hand on her stomach protectively. A woman who was used to having her every action observed, Maggie thought. Not a woman who would make such a motion without knowing what it implied.

“I'm trying to think of why someone might have used Ecstasy to kill Bender and I wonder if it was a way to put suspicion on you.”

“Me!” she cried out.

“Maybe as a way of framing you. Of making the police look into your background.”

“No, I never would have hurt him.”

“It's just that it's an unusual drug to use. It's not the first thing that comes to mind when you think of killing someone. I was reading up on it and it's very difficult to know how much Ecstasy could be lethal. It might be one pill or it might be fifty. There had to be some reason the killer used this particular drug.”

“But the policeman's the killer.”

“Say he's not,” Maggie snapped. “Say Peter Nelson's not the killer. Is there anyone else you can think of that Bender might have known who would use Ecstasy?”

Noelle sank down onto a heart-shaped seat. There was no place for Maggie to sit, but she didn't want to. She crossed her arms. She wondered if Noelle was taking her question seriously, and then the woman spoke.

“His first wife uses Ecstasy,” she said. “She uses it a lot.”

“She's a drug addict?”

“No,” Noelle said. “No, she has Parkinson's. She uses it to treat her Parkinson's. She always has a large supply. She gets it on the Internet.”

Parkinson's, Maggie thought. The same disease Winifred had. She didn't know whether this first Mrs. Bender knew Winifred, much less wanted to kill her, but it was something. Something new she hadn't known before; something she doubted Walter Campbell knew. It was time to go see him, she thought. She'd been putting it off, but finally she had something to tell him. Maybe she could go see the first wife too.

“Did that help?” Noelle asked, and suddenly she looked changed again, from angry to needy, and for a second Maggie saw what Bender had loved about her, the vulnerability that must have touched him, the softness beneath the armor.