Authors: Mary Ellen Hughes

Tags: #Mystery

Paper-Thin Alibi (15 page)

BOOK: Paper-Thin Alibi

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If this were Carrie, Jo might have jokingly asked if a well-timed pinch hadn’t possibly occurred, but she doubted Dulcie would consider that funny. She also wondered why Dulcie so readily agreed to let her child play with strange toys, but that was soon answered by Dulcie herself.

“It’s a good thing I had my disinfectant wipes with me. I gave those blocks a good rub down before I let Andrew near them.”

They stopped at Jo’s car to pick up Andrew’s sippy cup from the cooler, then continued on down the street toward the café Abby had pointed out.

Shirley’s Café turned out to be a small, family-style place with blue-checked curtains trimming its windows and cozy wooden booths and tables welcoming its patrons. The menu displayed near the door featured home-style foods such as meatloaf and chicken with dumplings, and Jo could understand why Patrick Weeks took his daughter there often.

The sole waitress, full figured and friendly, quickly produced a high chair for Andrew, exclaiming over his big blue eyes and generally clucking in a grandmotherly way. When she brought their order of coffee, she asked chattily where Jo and Dulcie were from and what had brought them to Marlsburg—the perfect lead-in, Jo thought, for bringing up Patrick Weeks.

Dulcie explained about their visit to the furniture shop, adding that she wasn’t sure she could afford the prices. She righted Andrew’s sippy cup, which was filled with apple juice and had rolled over on his high-chair tray, a tray she’d, of course, quickly wiped down before settling Andrew behind it.

“Yes, Pat’s prices can be high,” agreed the woman, who Jo had decided from her general air of ownership must be Shirley. “It’s all high-quality stuff, though. You buy something from him, it’ll last long enough to pass on to this little guy here someday.”

Jo smiled, trying to imagine Andrew grown-up enough to have a place to furnish. “Mr. Weeks’s little girl was there,” she said. “She was awfully sweet, eager to help with the baby.”

“Oh, Abby’s a doll! I just love her to death.” Shirley winked and said, “I’m her honorary grandmother, you know. Have the certificate she drew for me, with my name on it and all.” Her smile faded. “Poor thing. Abby really
needs
a grandmother. Pat is great with her, but a little girl needs the feminine touch sometimes.”

“What about her mother?” Dulcie asked, and Jo waited to hear just what Shirley knew.

“Took off,” Shirley said, her eyebrows arching and mouth thinning in disapproval. “Cared more about chasing her own concerns and left that dear little thing behind. Can you believe it? Barely sees her daughter at all, from what I understand.”

Dulcie automatically reached out to Andrew, patting his hand as though needing to reassure him of her loving dependability.

“So she hasn’t been back here for a long time?” Jo asked.

“Well, no, she was here, actually, just last week.”

“Oh,” Jo said, muffling her interest. Her eyes flicked toward Dulcie’s then back to Shirley. “I guess Abby was happy to see her, huh?”

Shirley sighed, then pulled a chair from an adjoining table and sat down. “I can’t imagine what that poor little thing was feeling. This out-of-the-blue visit from her mother must have confused her to pieces. She has asthma, you know, and it’s been acting up pretty bad lately, and I blame it all on that mother, what with her suddenly claiming she wanted to have custody again.”

“Custody!”

Shirley nodded. “Can you believe it? The girl barely knows her, and now the woman thinks she can swoop down and be a mother again, just like that.” She shook her head disgustedly.

“Can she?” Jo asked. “Legally, I mean? Did she ever give up custody?”

“Patrick says they had agreed to joint custody from the first, but she never claimed it before. Said her life was too unsettled, or something. So what’s changed? I don’t know. All I know is it’s going to break my heart if Abby ends up going off with her. And Patrick’s too. Not to mention what it’ll probably do to Abby.” Shirley shook her head sadly. “I just hope he can do something to stop her.”

A customer came into the café, and Shirley pulled herself together, calling out as she stood up, “Afternoon, Harvey! How’re you doing today?”

Jo looked at Dulcie, sure they were thinking the same thing.
Had
Patrick done something to stop Linda?

Dulcie leaned closer to whisper, “She doesn’t know Linda Weeks is dead.”

Jo nodded.

“How’s your sister doin’, Shirl?” Jo heard Harvey ask as he settled into a booth nearby.

“Doing wonderful! Her and Joe’s big anniversary party up in Philly went great! We all had a fine time.”

“Missed you around here. Nobody makes chili like you do.”

Shirley laughed. “That’s why I take off once in a while. So people don’t take me so much for granted.”

So, Shirley had been out of town and hadn’t yet caught up with the latest happenings. Jo expected Harvey would fix that, and she was right. Before long Jo heard Harvey lower his voice confidentially. Shirley’s hand flew to her mouth as she listened.

“Oh! Oh, that poor little girl!” Shirley looked toward Patrick Weeks’s custom furniture shop. “I don’t know how she’s going to handle this,” she said adding grimly, “Pat, though, won’t be feeling too bad.”

Jo exchanged another glance with Dulcie. That, they both seemed to agree, was probably an understatement.

Chapter 15

“So Patrick Weeks looks like a good possibility, huh?” Javonne asked. She carefully made the first fold in her square of paper, following Jo’s directions. Javonne, Ina Mae, Loralee, and Dulcie had gathered for the “Beginning Origami” workshop, though Jo suspected their interests leaned more toward murder than origami. Jo had earlier gathered beautiful origami papers for a project that tied in with their previous class on paper flower creations—making an origami tulip—and had demonstrated the various steps involved.

Answering Javonne, Jo said, “He certainly had a good reason for wanting Linda dead.”

“From what the woman at the café told us,” Dulcie said, looking up from studying the folding diagram Jo had passed out, “Linda was ready to claim her joint custody rights to their little girl.”

“And Patrick felt quite strongly that Linda was not someone he wanted in his daughter’s life anymore,” Jo added.

“Strongly enough to murder his ex-wife?” Ina Mae asked. She frowned at her still uncreased, rose-colored paper. She seemed unwilling to make that first crucial fold until she had each of the multistepped folds memorized and understood.

“I don’t know.” Jo picked up the tulip she had folded for the group and turned it about thoughtfully. “He didn’t strike me as a violent man, but then Linda wasn’t bludgeoned to death. Whoever sent her that doctored-up candy didn’t have to be there and watch her die.”

“Which isn’t to say they weren’t,” Loralee put in. She was going great guns, Jo noticed, with her folds. A few more steps and she would have her tulip completed.

“No, that’s true,” Jo agreed. “For all I know the murderer could have been standing right there in the crowd.”

“And you didn’t know Patrick Weeks at the time,” Loralee said, “so you wouldn’t have recognized him.”

“But was he there?” Dulcie asked. “Or did he send the candy at all? That’s still the big question.”

“Indeed,” Ina Mae agreed, still frowning, whether over the puzzle of the murder or the puzzle of the origami diagram was unclear. “The death of Linda Weeks,” she said, “has a twofold effect. It removes her custody threat, but it also leaves the daughter motherless, which could be devastating to a little girl, even for a mother she seldom saw. I think we all understand how children can idealize an absent parent. Would this man be willing to put his daughter through that kind of pain?”

“I’d say so,” said Javonne. “He’d probably justify the pain as being short term, whereas her mother taking custody would be life altering, and in a very negative way. Don’t you think, Jo?”

Jo shook her head, unsure. “He hadn’t told Abby yet about Linda. He was clearly very concerned about the effect it would have on her.”

“He’ll have to tell her soon,” Dulcie said. “Word is spreading. We saw that at the café.”

“Yes,” Jo said. “Maybe he was waiting for Shirley, the ‘honorary grandmother,’ to be around to help. If so, it would suggest he’s a loving, caring father.”

“People have killed in the name of love,” Loralee pointed out sadly, and the rest of the women nodded.

But did Patrick Weeks? Jo wondered. She took a stroll around the workshop table, looking over the progress of each woman’s tulip. Loralee’s was nearly finished. It would soon be ready for the leaf and stem. Javonne and Dulcie were about halfway through, but Ina Mae had just made her first fold. She glanced up at Jo.

“I think I finally appreciate the work that went into those paper airplanes Jimmy Kraus was so fond of sending around my classroom.”

Jo grinned. “It’ll click,” she said. “Everyone approaches origami in their own way. You seem to want to analyze it, like geometry.”

“I do. And I see it’s bogging me down. The idea that one can make something like that”—she nodded toward Loralee’s tulip—“from a single square of paper, without any scissor cuts or glue just boggles my mind.”

“Forget the analyzing,” Javonne said. She closed her eyes and assumed a Zen-like expression. “Just let the energy flow.”

Ina Mae raised an eyebrow, but Jo saw a sliver of a smile as she turned back to her paper.

“What about that photographer, Jo?” Javonne asked. “Was Carrie able to find out where he’ll be taking pictures?”

“Yes, she was.” Jo told the group about Carrie’s family excursion to the diner that was run by Bill Ewing’s friend. “Ewing wrote down Dan’s directions and said if the rain held off he’d run over Wednesday morning.”

“That’s tomorrow,” Loralee said.

“And the weather predicted is partly cloudy but dry,” Dulcie added helpfully.

“So do you want Harry to meet up with you?” Javonne asked. “I asked him about it and you should have seen his eyes light up! He went and dug out his cameras and fiddled with them the rest of the night.”

“He wouldn’t mind spending his day off tramping through fields?” Jo asked.

“Mind? He hasn’t had the chance to do something like that for ages. He’ll think he died and went to heaven!”

The others tittered, but Jo knew Harry’s major free-time passion was golf. However, having a man along who was loaded up with cameras could make all the difference in getting the taciturn Ewing to talk, not to mention the safety factor should she find herself in a remote area with a killer. So if Harry was willing to forego the golf greens for the day, Jo decided she was happy to let him.

“Tell Harry nine o’clock, and I’ll pay for the film.”

“What I’ll tell him is not to keep you waiting. That man has no concept of time. I can’t tell you how many times . . .” Javonne launched into tales of her only exasperation with the man she dearly loved as the ladies nodded and smiled and turned back to finishing up their origami project.

As they proudly wrapped their flower creation in protective paper for the trip home, one by one the women wished Jo the best of luck for her encounter with Bill Ewing. “Though,” Loralee said, “I have a strong feeling you’ve already met your murderer in Patrick Weeks.”

“She’ll need to cover all the bases,” Ina Mae said.

The group ambled out the door, and Jo, expecting no further business that evening, began preparations for closing up. She was surprised, then, when the door opened and Meg Boyer walked in, carrying a small plastic grocery bag.

“Hi, Meg,” Jo said. “Need something last minute for a craft project?”

“No, I was just out picking up a few things and started thinking about your trip to see Linda’s ex. I wondered how it went.”

“Pretty well, if inconclusive.” Jo straightened the small pile of leftover origami papers the group had gathered together for her. “I did learn that Linda had been to see him a few days ago.”

“Oh, really? What for? Looking for some sort of reconciliation?”

“No, at least not with Patrick.” Jo hesitated briefly but decided she had already brought Meg into the middle of things by asking for her help. “She wanted to reclaim her joint custody of their little girl.”

Meg eyes widened. “They have a daughter?”

“Yes. Your friend Emmy didn’t mention that?”

“No. I guess I should have asked, but I never thought of it. How old is she?”

“About eight. She seemed very sweet.”

“Then I suppose she hadn’t been with Linda much.” Meg said it without rancor but as a simple statement of fact, which said a lot about what people who knew Linda thought of her.

“Patrick Weeks,” Jo said, “seemed convinced that any influence from Linda in their daughter’s life would have been very negative.”

“Did he seem upset over what happened to Linda?”

“He seemed mostly concerned about how he was going to tell his little girl.”

BOOK: Paper-Thin Alibi

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