Murder in the Dog Days (Maggie Ryan) (14 page)

“I didn’t say I wanted to know anything.” Today Felicia’s blouse was a vibrant turquoise. She fumbled in her bag and drew out a fresh cigarette.

“No. But you came along instead of throwing us out. And you’re in an odd position, just like us. We found the body, so the cops are interested in us. You turn up, same day, mad at Dale. So the cops will at least be interested in your alibi.”

“I wasn’t even here! I was on the road three hours.”

“And in Harrisburg before that?” asked Olivia.

“Yeah, where else?” Felicia looked at them narrowly. “It happened earlier? Is that it?”

Maggie shrugged. “It’s possible. I’m no expert, though. So you were in Harrisburg until six or seven?”

“Yeah. I left after work.”

“And people saw you up until five or so?”

Felicia blew out a cloud of smoke. “God, you’re as bad as that policewoman last night! No, yesterday afternoon I had to check inventory. Guy that usually does it for me was on vacation. So after lunch I was mostly alone in the supply room. Nan saw me in the ladies’ once, and that’s it.”

“Okay. And the detective probably also asked you why you drove down yesterday. Why not call or write? You often did, right?”

“No more often than I had to.” Felicia tipped her head back, smoke streaming from her nose.

Olivia leaned forward. “Well, why did you come then?”

Mark broke in. “It’s just that I have to mail in deposits for college. It’s not so amazing to get worried about college fees in August!”

“No, it’s sensible,” Maggie agreed soothingly. “But it’s a bad coincidence that you turned up here on that particular day. The detectives are probably looking askance at you.”

“Askance,” said Felicia. “Good word. That’s what that policewoman does, all right. Looks askance.”

“At us too,” agreed Olivia. “We know it happened while we were gone. But she has to be suspicious of all of us.”

“How did he die, anyway?” Felicia tapped her cigarette into the thick glass ashtray.

Olivia hesitated and said, “They don’t seem to know.” It was all very well to learn things from Felicia and her son, but Olivia’s instinct was to protect information not yet published.

Maggie seemed to have no such qualms. “Best guess is that he got hit with a brass lamp base,’’ she said. Her eyes were on Mark and she ignored Olivia’s warning kick under the table.

“Who would do that? Why?” Mark asked urgently. He had that intense, quizzical Dale look again. But the waiter arrived with eggs and pancakes, and there was a flurry of sorting out juice and toast, and getting Sarah’s French toast properly syruped.

When things settled down Olivia said, “There are a whole lot of questions. The police have to do tests, fingerprints and so forth, and find out if it really was the brass lamp. Nobody seems to know why it happened either. I’m wondering—well, he was working on a story about an unsolved crime. Maybe he got too close to an answer.”

“Oh, he always said that!” Felicia exclaimed. “He always said, ‘They’re really going to be gunning for me now!’ Every time he had a story more exciting than a zoning meeting.” She snorted. “Sometimes even then.”

“Yeah, we all feel like that,” Olivia admitted, wondering uneasily if Kunstler would sue about anything in her Joanne Little story.

“But it never happens, does it?” Felicia demanded.

“Hardly ever. But there was this reporter in—”

Maggie broke in. “Well, who did you think did it?”

“That woman!” said Felicia. Mark shot her an exasperated glance.

Maggie nodded. “Donna. Well, it’s true a lot of murders are domestic.”

“Yeah, it’s not so unusual, is it? Wife wants his money but not him. Especially if—” Felicia stopped, poked at her egg with a fork. “But of course, maybe it really was a story. Anything’s possible. What was he working on?”

“Plane crash story,” said Maggie. “Olivia’s going to check into it, find out about what Dale might have discovered. Did he mention it to you?”

“Are you kidding? I was lucky to get anything more than hello-goodbye. That man’s cold shoulder was a full-fledged iceberg.”

“Mm. Maybe he felt guilty about owing you money.”

“Guilty? Not him. He was just irresponsible!” Felicia’s turquoise-lidded eyes sparked with indignation. “And spiteful. He couldn’t believe I’d really divorce him. Went into his usual stony silence, trying to control things. When it finally sank in that I’d left for good, he skipped town himself. No forwarding address. It took me a year to get the divorce final.”

Maggie was looking thoughtfully at the boy. “He ran out on Mark too?”

“No!” said Mark hotly. “He was avoiding Mother. You know it’s true,” he said, turning to Felicia. “He sent me cards. Christmas, birthday. I was just a little kid but he sent money too.”

“Who told you that?” his mother demanded.

“Nan Evans. She said he sent money back then.”

“Yeah, instead of the child support he owed, he’d send five bucks for your birthday,” snapped Felicia. “But he did send cards. That’s how I tracked him down finally. The postmarks on Mark’s cards were all different. I figured he had to be working somewhere in the middle of the postmarked towns. So I got a map and looked at all the newspapers from places in the area. And sure enough, there he was, writing for the Sun-Dispatch. I knew he’d never give up his byline.”

“God, you know reporters, all right!” Olivia had to respect this bit of investigation.

Maggie nodded approvingly at Felicia. “Must have been especially tough, with a little kid to take care of.”

“Oh, I learned how to cope, all right,” said Felicia proudly. “Raising a kid alone, you have to be a juggler. Breadwinner, nurse, PTA, and still find time to buy an ice cream cone. But Dale didn’t have to pay me a thing. I mean, he was supposed to send child support but he hardly ever did. I went back to work as a secretary and pretty soon noticed that the big employers were using computers. Back to night school, data entry and even programming. I’m in the state finance department now. I supervise a hundred and fifty people.”

Maggie beamed at her.

“But college is expensive,” Olivia pointed out.

“You said it! And damn it, he’s shortchanged Mark all his life. I mean, maybe I could have gone after him earlier, but you pay a lot of legal fees and they get one month’s payment and say case closed. But for college—” She poked at her egg again.

“Who took care of Mark?” Maggie asked. “He was pretty small back then, right?”

Felicia nodded. “Yeah. My mom watched him a couple of years. Pretty soon he was in school, but she kept on helping out while I went to night school. Wasn’t easy, but we made it, Mark and I.” She smiled proudly at her son.

“Did you ever see your father, Mark?” Maggie asked.

“Yeah. Not at first. But he did send those cards. And later he’d send me copies of articles he’d written. About five years ago he took me to the World Series. Mostly to explain about his disease, I think.” Mark cleared his throat. “To tell me it wasn’t hereditary.”

Olivia was touched. Maybe Dale had run out on his financial responsibilities, but it showed some thoughtfulness to try to head off worries in a son he barely knew. But Felicia, lighting a cigarette, muttered, “Too bad he didn’t send us the ticket money instead. Mark doesn’t even like baseball.”

“So how was he supposed to know?” Mark flared at her. “Last thing he’d heard, I was in Little League. He was trying, Mother!”

“Well, he never tried hard enough.”

“Shit.” Mark leaned back in the booth, arms crossed, a frown on his young face.

Maggie said gently. “It’s tough to lose your dad twice.”  Mark’s sullen face crumpled and he looked away.

“Hey, come on,” said Felicia angrily. “We’re not here to fish for sympathy!”

Maggie nodded. “I know. I can see you managed very well without him. But he owed you both, and there’s a lot of questions now that may never get answered. Mark’s right to feel bad about that.” She leaned forward toward Felicia, bony elbows on the plastic tabletop. “But we’re back to the first question, aren’t we? Why are you here? What do you want to know from us?”

Felicia ground out her cigarette and asked without looking at them, “Do you know if Mark inherits anything?”

“Rabbit book!” exclaimed Sarah imperiously.

Mark sputtered with choked laughter. Maggie and Olivia joined in, and even Felicia managed a halfhearted smile at the little girl. Sarah beamed, pleased at the effect of her comment. “Rabbit book,” she repeated proudly.

“Yeah, okay
,
chouchout
e
, just a minute.” Maggie removed Sarah’s sticky plate from in front of her. The original stack of French toast had disappeared. “Do you know anything about his will, Olivia?” she asked, dipping a napkin into a water glass.

“Not offhand. But we could check with Donna. Though she didn’t have any idea about insurance so I don’t know if she’ll know about the will.”

Felicia snorted. “That one’s never had to manage for herself.”

Maggie had swabbed off Sarah’s face and hands, and now handed her the book again. “We’ll find out for you,” Maggie promised. “The police will probably let Donna back in the house today, and she can check her papers then. If it’s not there it may take longer to find out.”

“Yeah. It’s just that they want tuition,” Felicia explained. “And I’m afraid if I ask the police, that detective will look askance.”

Maggie grinned. “She probably will. Now, do you mind telling me about—well, about how you happened to marry Dale?”

Felicia looked at her sharply but answered with nonchalance. “What’s to tell? I was nineteen. No crystal ball around to tell me it wouldn’t work. I thought a reporter was real glamorous. Admired his brains. He was smart.”

“Yes,” Olivia agreed.

“And ambitious. And he had everything organized, under control. There was a fire in my building, where I was a secretary. And he came to cover it. And everyone was running around tearing their hair, but Dale was so cool, taking notes. Really impressed me. My golden lad.” She shook her blonde head, bemused by her remembered younger self. “That’s why finally I couldn’t take it. He had to be in control, everything had to be just so. I could never come up to his standards.”

“What were the grounds for divorce?”

Felicia looked at Maggie levelly. “Abandonment,” she said after a moment. “Because he ran off to Virginia. It was easiest, my lawyer said.” She leaned back against the antique-textured plastic. “My turn, okay? Tell me about the brass lamp.”

Maggie complied. “He was in his den, working on the story. The lamp was in his den too. Apparently someone came in and struck him. Liv, I’ve been meaning to ask you. Where was that lamp sitting when you saw him?”

Olivia cringed to hear her dropping facts into Felicia’s lap. But they did owe her something for telling about her soured marriage. At least Maggie had said nothing about the room being locked. Olivia said, “It was at the right end of the desk, near the edge.”

“So it would have been easy for someone to grab.”

“And you found him when you got back from this trip to the beach?” Felicia asked.

“Yes. He talked to Olivia before we left, and was dead by the time we got back.”

“So that woman probably didn’t do it. Well, what the hell. Dale never made things easy. I just hope it doesn’t mess up the settlement of the will. Not that we really expect anything,” she added grimly.

“We’ll find out what we can for you. Um, one other question. Mark didn’t come in last night when you came to Dale’s.”

“No. He waited in the car. I was going to show Dale the papers alone. Then depending on how he reacted, Mark would see him or not.”

“Mark?” Maggie asked. “Did you want to see him?”

“I didn’t want to beg,” the boy said stiffly.

“God, how many times do I have to tell you, it’s not begging! He owes you!”

“Not any more, Mother,” said Mark bitingly. “Maybe his estate owes me. But he’s out of our control now. For good.”

“Yeah.” For the first time Felicia looked regretful. “Poor old Dale. Maybe he’s happy at last.”

They paid the bill and said their farewells.

On the way out Olivia called Detective Schreiner to tell her about Donovan’s Bar. But Schreiner couldn’t come to the phone. Olivia left a message that she’d be at the newspaper and hurried to the car through gusts of rain-laden wind.

“Felicia did pretty well, raising Mark alone,” Olivia observed as she switched on the windshield wipers and lights.

“Yeah. Though it wasn’t exactly alone.” Maggie was arced over the seat back, buckling Sarah into the backseat.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, Dale stuck around for a couple of years. And for a few more years her mom did a lot of babysitting. Twelve hours a day at times, by my calculation. With that kind of free help you’re not raising a kid alone. Still, I think Felicia made the right choices. Got herself and Mark out of the situation as fast as anyone could in those circumstances.”

“That’s what I meant. She’s got a right to feel bitter, too.” The rain intensified as they drove out of the parking lot. “Do you suppose Felicia and Mark could have come down early and then pretended they’d just arrived?”