The Readaholics and the Poirot Puzzle (9 page)

“I heard you've gotten mixed up in another murder,” she greeted me.

“I wouldn't say ‘mixed up,'” I protested.

“Well, if you aren't yet, you will be,” she said, digging through an in-box and retrieving a couple of pieces of paper stapled at the top. She thrust them at me. “Here. You're supposed to sign this.” She pointed to the signature line and slid me a pen she pulled out of her tight curls.

I took it, disappointed that I wasn't going to see Hart. I started to read the statement.

“What are the Readaholics reading now?” Mabel asked.

“
Murder on the Orient Express
.”

“Ah. That was the first Agatha Christie mystery I ever read. It seemed very clever to me then, the way Christie built up to the climax with Poirot interviewing the suspects one by one, and then gathering them together and revealing all.” Mabel spread her hands wide on the last word, as if performing a magician's trick. “And the elegance of that train, oh my. Of course, it doesn't work like that in real life.” She gestured to our surroundings. “Crooks don't work together, and if they do, one of 'em rats the others out.” She eyed me sideways. “Heard anything from Doug Elvaston lately? I hear he's sailing around the world. Any idea when he'll be back?”

I didn't need her prying into my private life. Not that Doug and I had had anything to be private about since we broke up more than two years ago. I didn't lift my gaze from the page I was reading. “Nope.”

“I hear tell your brother could use a good lawyer,” Mabel said.

That brought my head up. She blinked at me innocently from behind her lenses.

“Have you heard something?” I whispered. “Are they going to arrest him?” I resisted the urge to add
He didn't do it.

“How would I know that? Chief Uggams and Detective Hart don't check with me before they go off and
make an arrest,” she said, her expression inviting me to probe further.

“No, but you might overhear something,
accidentally
.” I could just picture Mabel lingering in the hallway outside the chief's office, or taking note of indiscreet conversations between the uniformed officers. They should probably put suspects in an interview room with Mabel, I thought, who could coax information out of a spaghetti squash.

“Well.” She leaned forward so a brass button clicked against the counter, pushed her glasses up her nose, and looked around. “I did get the impression Lindell—Detective Hart, I should say—and the chief were pretty excited about something they found in the vic's phone records. And the chief and Jackie Merton, the DA, left at lunchtime for a couple days' fishing up at the chief's cabin, so I wouldn't expect an arrest before they get back on Tuesday, at the very earliest. But you didn't hear that from me,” she said, sitting back.

“Thanks, Mabel.” I signed the statement and handed it to her. “We're thinking about reading a Michael Connelly book for next month. Want to join us?”

“Harry Bosch or Lincoln lawyer?” she asked, tucking the pen back in her hair.

“We haven't decided. Do you have a preference?” I expected her to go for the cop series, but she surprised me.

“Lincoln lawyer,” she said. “Then we can watch the movie. That Matthew McConaughey has got It with a capital
I
.”

I laughed, tickled that Mabel was still interested in
“It,” and told her I'd let her know what book we picked out.

Emerging onto the sidewalk, I dodged the skateboarder again and bumped squarely into Detective Lindell Hart. I recognized his smell before my eyes told me who it was. His arms caught me at the waist automatically and steadied me. His palms burned through my thin blouse to my skin. Was it my imagination, or did he hold on a few seconds longer than necessary?

“Sorry,” I said, stepping back. “Someone should give that kid a ticket.”

Hart smiled, like he'd forgotten he was disappointed in me, and said, “Officer Bradford talked to him. The kid's here with his parents for a week. Tourists. The town council has asked us not to discourage tourism, so . . .”

“I signed my statement,” I said, then could have hit myself for reminding him that he was mad at me.

No anger showed on his face. The breeze riffled his brown curls. “Thanks.”

“I'm really sor—”

“Over and done with,” he said, not letting me finish another apology. “I might have done the same if it was my brother.”

I didn't believe that, but happiness bubbled through
me, making me feel lighter. I smiled. “Over and done with,” I agreed.

“What do you have going on tonight?”

“A retirement for the school superintendent,” I said regretfully. Was his question a precursor to asking me out? “If you're not doing anything tomorrow, I could make you dinner,” I heard myself offer before I thought it through. What was I thinking? I wasn't much of a cook. He'd think I was too pushy. We weren't—

“Sounds great,” Hart said immediately. “No job talk, though. Nothing about your brother, or the case.”

“Cross my heart,” I said, making the familiar gesture.

Taking me by surprise, he leaned forward and kissed my cheek. “I'll bring the wine.”

Before I could react, he disappeared into the building, whistling.

T
he retirement roast Saturday night went off without a hitch, thank goodness. Eventful! couldn't stand another evening like last night. As Al and I watched from the back of the musty-smelling auditorium while various teachers and principals shared anecdotes about the superintendent, I told Al that I'd changed my definition of “successful event.”

“No dead bodies,” I whispered. “That's it. We can cope with anything else, but no dead bodies.”

“What about a hostage situation?” Al asked, obviously trying to poke holes in my new definition. “One with gunmen and a SWAT team and huge media coverage?”

“As long as there are no dead bodies, I'm good with it,” I maintained. “The media coverage might draw in more business.”

“What if it goes on for months, like in Iran?”

I gave him a “now you're just being silly” look. “If it goes on for months, then it's not part of the event we contracted for, so it doesn't count.”

Al choked back a laugh as a man in the back row turned to frown at us. “I'm going to check on the caterers,” I whispered, making my escape.

My heels clicked on the school's linoleum floor as I
walked. It felt weird to be back in the high school as a grown-up. The walls had obviously been painted over the summer, since the odor still lingered and they were glossy and pristine. The top half of the walls was white and the bottom half a crimson red, the Heaven High School colors. The lockers hadn't been replaced, it didn't look like, not if the dents were anything to go by. Just before reaching the cafeteria, I came to my old locker, 214. On a whim, I dialed the combination, which came back to me as if I'd been stuffing my history and biology texts in there yesterday, rather than twelve years ago. The door popped right open, emitting a too-sweet fragrance I recognized from my last visit to Bath & Body Works. I found myself staring at myself in a mirror attached to the inside of the door and automatically smoothed my copper hair and dabbed a fleck of mascara from my lower lid. Pictures of a callow-looking teenager were taped to the door, and basketball jerseys, shoes, texts, folders, pens, cosmetics, hair paraphernalia, and other gear were jumbled together. A film of pink powder that might have been a broken blush covered it all. How could it be such a mess this early in the school year? When this was my locker, it had been a model of neatly shelved texts and clearly organized folders and notebooks, color-coded by class. Even in high school, I thought, closing the door with a clang, I'd been headed for a career based on organizational skills.

With a reminiscent smile, I stepped into the cafeteria, happy to see that everything looked to be on schedule. The high school choir stood on risers at one end of
the long room, ready to burst into song when the superintendent appeared, and nets secured hundreds of balloons to the ceiling. Tables set—check. Food ready—check. I let out a long breath, relieved that nothing was on fire and no one was screaming about rats or overflowing toilets.

“About ten more minutes, I'd guess, before they wrap up the roast,” I told Alana Higgins, owner of the catering company I favored for large events.

“We're ready,” she said, and we chatted for a couple of minutes, before I saw Bernie Kloster, in the black slacks and vest, white shirt, and black bow tie that made up her bartending gear, emerge from the kitchen carrying a tub of ice. I'd forgotten she would be here.

“Let me help you with that, Bernie,” I called, moving toward her. Taking one end of the tub, I helped her carry it to the bar set up at the back of the cafeteria.

“Thanks, Amy-Faye,” she said.

Her face was pale and pinched, and even her exuberant hair seemed limper tonight. She'd hinted that she'd dated Gordon and that they'd broken up; I wondered if she'd really cared for him.

“You heard about Gordon?” I asked tentatively.

She nodded and bit her lower lip. “Yeah. I couldn't believe it when Billy told me this morning. He's always up before the rest of us on a Saturday and he was looking for the funnies page when he saw it in the paper. He hobbled in and knocked against my bed and I swear to God I thought the house was on fire, the way he was carrying on. When I finally got him to calm down, I didn't believe what he was saying, not until he showed
me the front page with Gordon's picture. ‘That's that guy who liked you,' Billy kept saying, jabbing at the page so hard he tore a hole in it. ‘The one with the Camaro.' He's mad about cars, Billy is. Gordon took him for a spin once and Billy didn't talk about anything except that car for a week. Supercharged this, direct injection that, Bluetooth and navigation system.” She smiled thinly.

“I'm sorry, Bernie.”

She waved a would-be dismissive hand as she began setting glassware up on a table behind the bar. “I didn't love him . . . At least, I don't think I did. Not really. He was exciting, and handsome, a good lover, and he had money. I know that shouldn't matter, but when you're barely scraping by, a guy who can take you out for a nice steak dinner seems nicer and smarter than the guy who can't even manage a bucket from KFC.” Her voice was tinged with matter-of-fact self-knowledge. “It's the shock of it, more than anything. That, and I feel bad that I was hanging out with those women who were bad-mouthing him all night. He wasn't a saint, but he didn't deserve that.” She sniffed.

I dug a packet of Kleenex out of a pocket and offered them to her. “Did you know any of them?” I asked after she blew her nose. “Had you met them before?”

I helped her align liquor bottles atop the bar's tablecloth-covered surface. I knew it wasn't the first time liquor had been present in the high school; Allen DiDomenici and some of his pals had spiked the punch at the prom our senior year.

She shook her head. “Well, I knew Susan Marsh, of
course. She had no business there, I'll tell you. The pot calling the kettle black.”

It took me a moment, and then I clinked two bottles together in surprise. “You're saying Susan cheated on Gordon?”

“Uh-huh. She had a fling with one of Kolby's teachers, Gordon said. Even though it was years ago and they've been divorced forever, I could tell he was still hurt by it.”

“Huh.” I didn't know what, if anything, to make of that. “What about the other women? Did you get their names?”

“The blond with the big boobs was Guinevere Dalrymple. I mean, how do you forget a name like that? Her parents should be shot, don't you think? Gawd. She seemed to be in charge. I think one of the other gals was Sally something. I was pissed, so I don't remember like I should. The opening was a disaster with the fire and all, and I was sure I wasn't going to have a job in a week, so I drank a bit more than I should have.” She busied herself pushing the cartons the liquor bottles had been in beneath the table, and I guessed she was ashamed of getting drunk on duty.

I committed the name to memory. There shouldn't be too many Guinevere Dalrymples, if I Googled it. The sound of voices headed our way told me the roast
portion of the evening was over. I needed to get back to work. Saying a hasty good-bye and good luck to Bernie, I gave the choir director the high sign and they began a rousing chorus of “For He's a Jolly Good Fellow” as the super and his family came through the door. Crimson and white balloons cascaded from the nets secured to the ceiling, and people gasped with pleasure. Everyone joined in the singing and I let myself take pride in how well things were going. It was balm for my wounded professionalism after last night. Maybe I still had a future in the event-planning biz.

I
t was already hot when I got out of bed Sunday morning and readied myself for church. I didn't go all the time, but I felt the need after the week's events. My parents would be at St. Luke's and I suspected they'd drag Derek along if he'd spent the night with them. I was right, I discovered, when I slid into the pew beside them two minutes after the service started. I never seemed to get to church exactly on time. I'd long ago decided there was something psychological about that, since I could make events at a party happen with the crisp timing of a Sousa march.

Mom scooted over to make room for me, and I whispered a compliment on the hibiscus-patterned muumuu that swathed her bulk. Its pink background rosied her magnolia-petal complexion, the envy of every woman north of forty in the entire town. Her naturally curly hair was pinned up under a straw hat with a rolled brim. Sheena at Sheena's Hair Jungle was responsible for dyeing it back to its original chestnut every month or so. Her eyes were hazel, like mine, and she had a wide mouth slicked with a pink lipstick that matched her dress. She patted my thigh, smiled in her good-humored way, and faced forward to listen to the minister.

My mathematician dad, built like a lumberjack with a graying beard, loomed on her other side. He waggled his bushy eyebrows at me in welcome. He'd exchanged his usual plaid shirt and jeans for his church attire of short-sleeved shirt and belted slacks. Dad had no interest in clothes. Zero. Keeping Dad dressed appropriately for his job as a professor at the university was kind of a family hobby: Natalie gave him a couple of no-iron shirts each year, Mom supplied him with socks and underwear, and my other sisters contributed sweaters and the occasional tie. I gave him a new belt, reversible black/brown, every other year for Christmas as my contribution to his sartorial adequacy. Derek, not usually a churchgoer since he'd left home, gave me a look that said,
Get me out of here
.

It almost made me giggle, but I primmed my mouth and paid resolute attention to the service. After, we greeted the minister and some of our friends. Derek drew me away while Mom and Dad were chatting with one of the elders about the new capital campaign. “Let's get breakfast,” he said. “I'm starving.”

“Shouldn't we wait for Mom and Dad? They—”

“I've been mommed and dadded to death,” he said, tugging me along toward his Subaru Outback, a venerable workhorse used to hauling all sorts of brewing, camping, and skiing gear. “Don't get me wrong—I'm grateful for them, they're sticking by me, and they let me hide out at the house yesterday—but I need a break. Mom kept wanting me to feel a lump on her arm and tell her if I thought she had liposarcoma, whatever the
heck that is. I reminded her that she banged her arm on the car door.”

I laughed in understanding. “Where do you want to eat?”

In answer, he put the car in gear and headed toward the Pancake Pig, where a chef-hatted pig held aloft a platter of pancakes from atop a tall pole. An Elvis number battered us as we entered the white, turquoise, and chrome interior, which wasn't as crowded as I expected. We must have walked in between the before-church crowd and the after-church crowd, and gotten lucky that the didn't-go-to-church crowd was out hiking or boating or otherwise enjoying the glorious day.

“I'm going over to the pub today,” Derek announced after he ordered a Western omelet and I asked for my usual blueberry pancakes. “The police said they'd be done with it. I need to get started on cleanup.”

“Good for you,” I said, relieved that he seemed to be past the shell-shocked despair of yesterday. “Do you need me to help? I don't have anything going on this afternoon.”

He looked grateful but hesitant. “Foster's coming—I'm paying him triple overtime—but if you have time . . .”

“I'll come out for a couple of hours.” I told him that the Readaholics were all on his side and filled him in on our plan of attack.

He looked skeptical, as if he didn't think we could really help, but said, “Thanks. I appreciate your friends helping out.” He went on to tell me about his discussions with his lawyer and what he'd heard about
Gordon's funeral. “His mom's in a nursing home in Denver, so they're doing it there,” he said. “His sister's putting it together. Angie, from the opening. Kind of surprising, actually, given that they never got on, even before Kinleigh died. Her mother was suing his dad, or vice versa—I couldn't keep it straight. Organizing the funeral might be her way of saying ‘sorry.' I'll go, of course, if the police don't toss me in jail before then.” He squirted Tabasco on his eggs with a splatting sound.

I hated to hear him sound defeatist. “Derek—”

“I know, I know.”

“I'm happy to go with you, keep you company on the drive, if you want.” Denver was a good four hours from here.

“Thanks, but I've got business in Denver, too. With GTM.”

Gordon's company. I didn't pry into the details beyond asking, “Will you be able to keep Elysium open?”

He chewed and swallowed before answering. “If I don't go to prison. Gordon's death doesn't change GTM's contractual obligation to Elysium. He was going to pull out of the deal, but there were several iterations of lawyers and court dates and arbitrators to wade through before that got finalized.”

So Gordon's death benefited Derek even more than I imagined. A million dollars of insurance. Freedom from the worry that Gordon was going to pull the plug on their partnership. I didn't say so aloud. There were others who had benefited by Gordon's death; there had to be.

•   •   •

The standard August afternoon storm clouds scudded across the sky as I arrived at the pub around three o'clock. It looked so much like the way it had on Friday that I repressed a shiver. The gravel in the lot was churned up and the grand opening banner sagged sadly from one side of the building, tangling with yellow-and-black crime scene tape that had been torn down but not removed. Derek's Subaru and a Honda Accord I took to be Foster's were the only other vehicles in the lot. Squaring my shoulders, I walked into the pub, determined not to let the atmosphere get to me.

“Where shall I start, O captain, my captain?” I asked Derek, who was collecting glassware in a plastic tub. My perky attitude and smile were intended to lift his spirits.

“Stop with the poetry stuff, okay?” he said semiirritably. “We weren't all lit majors.” He thrust the tub at me and I took it automatically. Its weight strained my biceps.

“Wow. We weren't all music majors, either—does that mean we never listen to music? And we didn't all study art, so does that mean—?”

“Just get the glasses into the dishwasher, okay?” he said. “Foster's working on the bathrooms. I'm going to start upstairs.”

“And we weren't all dishwashing majors, but we still do dishes,” I called after him as he headed up the stairs. I thought I heard a snorted half laugh from him, so I was happy.

The kitchen was a disaster. Between the fire and all the police marching in and out in the rain, tramping in
mud, it looked like a herd of drunk mastodons had held a convention in it. My gaze went to the back door, but it was closed. Relief sighed through me. I didn't have to look at the Dumpster where I'd found Gordon's body. I set to work loading the glassware into the industrial dishwashers, and made three trips into the bar area and the pool lounge to collect more before setting the dishwashers to run. They started with a satisfying gurgle and were soon emitting a brisk lemony scent that made me feel efficient.

I began making a list of what else needed to be done; I couldn't help myself—lists pour out of me like words from a novelist or stock market figures from a broker. The microwave needed to be replaced and someone brought in to repair the burned dry wall and paint it. The—

Tuneful whistling sounded behind me, making me whirl. Foster came in, black bangs sweat-glued to his forehead, coverall damp in spots. He stopped whistling midtune when he caught sight of me, and used the mop to push the wheeled bucket into the kitchen.

“You startled me,” I said.

“Sorry. Bathrooms are done. Not much point in mopping in here yet, I guess.” He looked around at the chaos and smiled.

I realized it was the first time I'd seen him smile and it seemed weirdly inappropriate in the circumstances. Maybe he was happy to be making extra money. “Uh, thanks for coming in on a Sunday,” I said. “I know my brother appreciates it.”

“Seemed like the least I could do,” he said with a
nod of acknowledgment. He opened the louvered door of a storage closet and slid the bucket in, hanging the mop on a rack.

“You mean because of what happened? Gordon dying?”

“Tossed off a roof: Couldn't have happened to a more deserving guy,” Foster said with simple pleasure. He banged the door closed.

I hadn't expected him to be grief-stricken, but his reaction was several shades off normal. I backed up a step. “Come again?”

“Gordon Marsh was a bottom-dwelling, scum-sucking lowlife,” he said, a hint of venom twisting his smile. “If I had any balls, I'd have killed him myself. Bully for whoever did it.”

I stared at him, speechless for a moment. The clinking of glasses in the dishwasher and the churn of the machine filled the kitchen. Clearing my throat, I finally said, “I take it you knew him?”

“We didn't hit the links together, if that's what you're asking,” he said, crossing his arms over his broad chest and leaning back against the counter. The fingers of his right hand tapped incessantly against his left biceps. “GTM—Gordon—bought out my company a year ago. Before the ink dried on the contract signatures, I was out on my ass. All the leadership team got canned because Gordo wanted to bring in his own team. He fired me personally. Looked me in the eye and told me I didn't have the skill set the company needed, that I didn't fit with the new management philosophy, that I was a dinosaur. I spent twenty-six years with that
company, and suddenly I don't fit in?” Ruddy patches flared on his olive skin, and the pulse in his neck beat like he'd run a four-minute mile.

“I'm fifty-four—not exactly highly employable in this economy. We had to sell our house and move into a crummy apartment. We're living upstairs from a pair of high school dropouts who smoke dope, sleep all day, and play crappy music all night, and next door to a loser who stocks shelves at City Market. That's not who we are. We used to live in Redlands Mesa in Grand Junction. My wife stuck by me, but she had to go back to work—she's teaching preschool for a pittance. You don't think it kills me that I can't support my wife? Most of our old friends are embarrassed by our circumstances—we don't see much of them anymore. It's not like we can invite them to dinner; we don't even have a dining room. My son—my twenty-six-year-old son!—offered us money to tide us over.”

“That was nice of him,” I ventured, thinking that Foster had a darn good motive for murder (if there was such a thing). He'd also had opportunity . . .

“A father's supposed to take care of his children, not the other way around,” he yelled.

His fury brought home the fact that I was trapped in the kitchen by the man who might have murdered Gordon. He was between me and the door leading to the pub. I was closer to the back door, but if it was locked, I'd have to fumble to open it and he'd catch me, if he wanted to. He didn't have a weapon, but he was a burly guy and since I'd neglected to add hand-to-hand combat skills to my résumé, he could probably take me
down without even breaking a sweat. Resolving to sign up for a krav maga class if I got out of this kitchen alive, I held up my hands in a placating gesture. “How did you end up working here?”

Almost absentmindedly, he picked up a scrubbie and began to scour the counters. That knocked my tension level down a notch; a scrubbie wasn't as threatening as a knife or an Uzi.

“I had a lot of time on my hands, what with no job and only the occasional interview for something for which I'm hugely overqualified, so I started following Gordon's buyouts and investments. I was looking for an opportunity, an opportunity to do to Gordon what he'd done to me. I was a bouncer at Moonglade for a while, but then that went out of business. I had nothing to do with it, but I counted it as a win. I took home a bottle of champagne that night and celebrated with my wife. Oh, she thinks I'm obsessed and I should just let it go, but how do you just give a pass to the guy who ruined your life?”

I was afraid he was going to wear a hole in the stainless steel counter. After a moment, he took two deep breaths and moved to the sink to rinse out the pad. “Then I heard about Elysium. I checked out the hiring Web site and here I am.” He spread his arms wide. The scrubbie dripped on the floor.

He wasn't a threat to me, I realized. He wanted me to be his audience, to applaud his ingenuity and planning, to rejoice with him in Gordon's downfall. Oops. Bad choice of words.

“You sabotaged the grand opening,” I said,
understanding and fury rising in me. “The bathroom? The microwave?”

He gave a mock bow.

“You were willing to crush my brother's dream, to cost him his life savings, to lose people like Bernie Kloster their jobs—all to get back at Gordon?”

For the first time his self-assurance faltered. “He deserved—”

“Derek doesn't deserve to lose the pub!”

Foster turned sulky, his mouth pulling down at the corners. “If he's going to get into bed with an asshole, he's got to expect—”

“What? That a disgruntled jerk like you is going to show up and try to ruin everything he's worked for his whole life?” I was breathing so fast and hard it was making me dizzy. I forced myself to take a slower breath. “You're just like Gordon. Worse. At least Gordon was trying to make money for his company and employees. You . . . you just wanted revenge and you didn't care who got screwed. Bernie has kids to support.”