Paper-Thin Alibi (20 page)
“Russ had a son?” Jo’s mouth had suddenly gone dry, and she had trouble getting the words out.
“You didn’t know? Well, I’m afraid it’s something he doesn’t like to talk about. The baby lived only a few hours after his birth. It was really tough. Tough on both Russ and Laura. It probably was what led to their split, even though they hung in there for another year. That kind of thing can put a lot of stress on a couple. You did know about Laura, didn’t you? I mean, I’m sorry if I’m dropping too much on you.”
“No, I knew Russ had been married.”
Though I never heard her name before
. Jo thought back to the woman she had seen meeting Russ for lunch at the Abbotsville Country Club the day Jo had set up a craft show there. Had that been Laura? Or someone else?
Though I never heard her name before
. Jo thought back to the woman she had seen meeting Russ for lunch at the Abbotsville Country Club the day Jo had set up a craft show there. Had that been Laura? Or someone else?
“So, when will he be out of surgery?” Scott asked.
“The nurse said not too much longer. I can call as soon as I hear anything.”
“Would you? That’d be great.” Scott gave his number, then added details about where he might be, which went over Jo’s head for the most part as her thoughts went back to that one, stunning fact:
Russ had a son
.
Russ had a son
.
She was closing up her phone as Ina Mae rejoined her. Knowing she must have a dazed look on her face, Jo explained about Russ’s brother having called, though not what he had shared with her. That she needed to absorb for a while.
Ina Mae nodded, then said, “I just spoke to Dulcie.”
“Oh?” Jo said, not having any idea why Ina Mae would call Loralee’s daughter.
“Dulcie,” Ina Mae said, “is, as they say, computer literate.”
It took a moment for Jo to pull her focus completely away from Scott’s call and understand Ina Mae’s point. “Oh!”
Ina Mae nodded. “She’s going to see what she can find about Bill Ewing on the Internet. Her husband, of course, uses their computer for his work. But since he works from home, she’ll be able to hop on as soon as it’s free.”
“Good idea! Ina Mae, I’m glad at least one of us has her head screwed on straight.”
Ina Mae flapped a hand. “I’m not the one getting hit from all sides at the moment.”
That’s the truth, Jo thought, Scott’s information immediately flying back into her head. When was Russ going to tell her about that? she wondered. How painful must it continue to be for him if he still avoided talking about it?
Ina Mae sat down, bringing up lighter topics meant to be distracting for Jo, and Jo did her best to pay attention. She couldn’t, however, keep her thoughts from wandering back to Russ, and though Ina Mae probably assumed she was dwelling on his surgery,
that
had suddenly taken second place. Russ’s hidden emotional pain—his baggage—had taken center stage.
that
had suddenly taken second place. Russ’s hidden emotional pain—his baggage—had taken center stage.
Sometime later, as Jo sat groggily flipping through magazines whose stories and pictures she barely saw, a smiling nurse stepped into the waiting area. “The lieutenant is awake,” she said.
“How did it go?” Jo asked, instantly alert.
“Very well. The area was cleaned out and he has a new drainage tube inserted. He’s not fully out of the anesthesia, but you can see him for a few minutes.”
“Excellent,” Ina Mae said. Jo hopped up to follow the woman back through the double doors into the ICU.
Struggling to ignore the bandages, tubing, and beeping monitors, Jo concentrated on the fact that Russ’s eyes were blinking but open, and were looking at her. She stood at his bedside once more and murmured soft nothings, and he mumbled mostly indecipherable responses. Their main connection came through the touch of his hand in hers, warm, but not feverishly hot, and firm, which told her he was glad she was there. They held on until the nurse said their time was up, then reluctantly released, sliding palm to fingertip, then a final good-bye with promises of return.
“He’s doing fine,” the nurse assured her back in the hallway. “He’ll sleep for several hours now.”
Jo nodded and thanked her. She pulled her emotions together and called Scott. “Russ is back from surgery,” she reported. “Everything went perfectly.”
“Fantastic!” Jo heard the relief and joy in the younger brother’s voice, which echoed her own. They chatted for a minute on minor details, then ended with the probability that Scott would talk to Russ himself the next morning.
Jo returned to Ina Mae. “All is well,” she said.
“Of course,” Ina Mae said briskly, but her eyes were bright. She turned away to start tidying up magazines and gathering her things. “Feel up to a stop at the Tylers’ before you head on home?”
Jo had to think a moment before the name clicked. “Oh! Dulcie’s place?”
“Yes. I heard from her while you were otherwise occupied. She’s been surfing, as they say, on the Internet. She found something she’d like to show you.”
Jo pulled up behind Ina Mae’s blue Chevy Malibu in front of Loralee’s—or rather, as she supposed she should now call it, the Tylers’—house. As she turned off her motor, she pulled out her cell phone to call Carrie to quickly tell her about Russ’s surgery.
As expected, Carrie’s first words were: “Why didn’t you call me right away!” which meant, of course, “Why didn’t you tell me to come over?”
“It was nothing to worry anyone about,” Jo said, playing down the potential seriousness of Russ’s infection as well as her own worries. When Carrie protested that she could have quite easily come to the hospital to wait with her, Jo decided not to remind her of Amanda’s choral performance but simply emphasized that Russ’s surgery had been routine and simple.
Easy for me to say
popped into her thoughts.
Easy for me to say
popped into her thoughts.
Carrie groused a bit more but eventually came around to being glad to hear that Russ had come through it well. She began to speculate on what she could bring Russ when she eventually came to visit. “Something edible,” was Jo’s advice, and they ended on a good note, Carrie apparently having forgiven Jo for not having seriously disrupted her own plans for a pleasurable afternoon in order to sit beside her for hours doing nothing much.
Ina Mae tapped at Jo’s passenger window, and Jo climbed out to head up the short walkway with her to the house.
Dulcie opened the door before they reached it and welcomed them in. Five-year-old Caitlin hovered behind her mother’s khaki pants, clutching the edge of her blouse with her fingertips. Blonde Loralee-like curls framed her face as she peeked out curiously.
“Caitlin, you go upstairs with Daddy now,” Dulcie directed her daughter. “Help him get Andrew ready for bed, okay?”
Caitlin dragged herself off reluctantly, throwing many backward glances at her mother’s guests, and Jo smiled as she watched. Remembering Dulcie’s strong impulse to control all things child or house related, the fact of her having actually delegated away a bedtime task to her husband indicated to Jo the high measure of importance she must put on her Internet find.
Dulcie led Jo and Ina Mae through her tidy living room and shiningly clean kitchen to the basement steps. “The computer’s down in Ken’s office,” she said. “Would either of you like something to drink before we go down? Coffee? Soda?”
Both Jo and Ina Mae shook their heads, thanking her. “We’re very interested to see what you found,” Ina Mae said.
“I ran it past Mom earlier,” Dulcie said, leading the way down her basement steps. “She thought it was well worth calling you about. She’s off, by the way, picking up some curtains for her kitchen, or she’d be over to say hello.”
“Things are working out with that new addition to the house?” Ina Mae asked as she trotted downstairs between Dulcie and Jo. The question was rhetorical since all Loralee’s friends knew she was absolutely delighted to have Dulcie and Ken move into the main part of her house while she shifted to the smaller, more manageable addition.
“It’s been perfect,” Dulcie declared. “Mom loves being close to the children. And we both enjoy working on the garden together. We can hardly wait to start picking out annuals as soon as the last frost is over.”
Jo nodded, thinking of her own scraggly yard. Then she thought of her own far-from-scraggly mother who lived in her retirement community in Florida. Would the two of them have teamed up as well in a living situation like this? Knowing her mother’s strong preference for avoiding unpleasant or upsetting situations, Jo doubted it. Having one’s daughter under suspicion of murder definitely qualified as both unpleasant and upsetting and was the reason Jo hadn’t called her lately. Needing to sound cheery and upbeat for forty-five minutes straight seemed like more than she could manage lately.
“Okay,” Dulcie said, plopping into the desk chair and reaching for the computer mouse. “Let me pull this site up.”
As Dulcie clicked and double clicked, Jo glanced around. The basement area had been roughly divided in two using bookcases and a desk. The office part, which Ken used for his accounting business, showed attempts at organization with file cabinets and shelving. But the shelves overflowed with books and papers, cabinet drawers bulged partially open, and the desk was piled high with folders and paper scraps. Since the play area beyond was amazingly tidy with all games and small toys neatly stored off the floor in see-through containers, Jo could only assume that Ken had declared his office off-limits to Dulcie’s cleaning needs. What sort of strains Dulcie might therefore be feeling or urges she was controlling at the moment, Jo could only imagine.
“Here we are,” Dulcie said, looking up at them to explain. “I started off by doing a search on his name, using ‘Bill Ewing’ first, since that’s the name you said he goes by for his photography work. But that only got me his photo credits on several magazines sites, and his own website that talks about his work.
“So then I went with William Ewing. It’s not an uncommon name, so I had to sift through a lot. Did you know there was a William Ewing who was governor of Illinois back in the 1830s? I didn’t even know Illinois was a
state
then. The things you learn. Anyway, I finally found this.” Dulcie gestured to her monitor.
state
then. The things you learn. Anyway, I finally found this.” Dulcie gestured to her monitor.
Jo leaned forward and saw that Dulcie had pulled up an archived newspaper story. It was short, and she read it quickly “Oh, wow!” she said, straightening up.
Ina Mae asked to see, and Dulcie gave up her chair to give Ina Mae better access. “I’m sure it’s
our
William Ewing,” Dulcie said, “because it happened near the site of a Michicomi craft show that was going on at the time in Albany. I checked that.”
our
William Ewing,” Dulcie said, “because it happened near the site of a Michicomi craft show that was going on at the time in Albany. I checked that.”
“All the details certainly fit him,” Jo agreed.
“Well!” Ina Mae said, looking up. “So our Mr. Ewing has had a criminal charge against him. That’s interesting.”
“A charge but not a conviction,” Jo pointed out. “It was the owner of the camera shop who claimed he saw Ewing leaving the area after the rock smashed through his store window.”
“Shortly,” Ina Mae said, “after they had had an altercation over the expensive, secondhand camera Ewing bought from the shop’s owner.”
“Which Ewing claimed was defective, but the shop owner refused to take back,” Jo added.
“So apparently Ewing stomped off in a rage but returned later to hurl the rock through the man’s window, damaging merchandize that was displayed behind it as well.”
“Again,” Jo said, “all according to the shop owner.”
“Whose name,” Dulcie said, jumping in eagerly at that point, “was Clayton Pellet. I wasn’t able to find anything about how the criminal charge played out, so I did a search on Pellet’s name. Let me show you what I found.” Dulcie reclaimed her chair and clicked away until the monitor displayed what she wanted.
Jo looked over her shoulder to read it. It was an obituary for Clayton Pellet, camera shop owner. She checked the date. “He died before it went to trial!”
“He did?” Ina Mae cried. “From what?”
Jo straightened up. “All it says is ‘died suddenly.’ ”
“Hmm. And his sudden death, therefore, ended all charges against our Mr. Ewing, since Pellet was the only witness. Charges that might have been highly damaging to Ewing’s future.”
“Absolutely,” Dulcie said, looking triumphant. “What if Clayton Pellet’s sudden death came from an allergic reaction?”
“That would certainly be very highly suspicious,” Jo agreed. “But we don’t know that.”
“Maybe we can find out,” Ina Mae said, “though it might mean tracking down relatives of the man to ask.” She looked doubtful.
“Let’s think on that a bit,” Jo said. “Maybe we can come up with another, less intrusive way. Dulcie, that was terrific work! Things are looking very incriminating for Bill Ewing. I don’t, however, want to forget about Patrick Weeks yet. Could we do a search on him next?”
“Sure,” Dulcie said, her eyes shining. “But let me check on how things are going upstairs. Why don’t you get started?” She gave up her chair to Jo. “Can I bring anything down for you two when I come back?”
“You mentioned coffee, I believe?” Ina Mae said.
“Absolutely. Jo?”
Jo agreed that she could use a cup as well. It was stretching into a long day. She got down to work at the computer while Dulcie ran up to check on her husband’s progress with the children.
“I have to admit,” Ina Mae said as Jo clicked away, “that I hope you don’t find anything too bad on Patrick Weeks. From what you told me, he sounds like a devoted father. I’d hate to see that little girl of his lose a second parent.”
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