5 A Bad Egg (15 page)

Moose and I
had skipped lunch, and I could feel the hunger pangs beginning, but I didn’t
want to eat there, not with three of our suspects in the house. I was probably
being paranoid, but what if one of them decided to get rid of us, too? A little
poison mixed in with the food, and Moose and I would be finished with our
investigation forever. I knew that the thought wasn’t all that rational even as
it popped into my head, but I still couldn’t help myself. “Thanks, but we’re
eating soon ourselves. It’s going to be really special, so we’d better not ruin
our appetites.”

Moose looked
at me, questioning the statement with his gaze. I nodded slightly, and he
joined right in with my lie. “Martha and Greg are preparing a feast for us
tonight,” he said heartily.

“Well, then,”
Robert said, “What can we do for you?”

“We were
wondering if we could have a chat,” I said.

He stood.
“I’d be happy to, but I’ll have to take a rain check. I was just going across
the street to have a smoke. I know it’s a bad habit that’s probably going to kill
me someday, but I can’t seem to help myself.”

“I’ll walk
over with you,” I said, making a snap decision.

“You don’t
smoke,” Moose said to me.

Thanks for
stating the obvious, I thought. “No, but I wouldn’t mind stretching my legs a
little. Come on, Robert. I’ll keep you company.”

“I don’t want
you to breathe any secondhand smoke on my account.” Wow, Robert really didn’t
want me going with him. Was he afraid of what I might find out if he spent a
little time alone with me?

“Nonsense. I
insist.”

“Very well,”
Robert said, but he clearly wasn’t pleased by the prospect of having me for
company.

We walked
across the street to his place together, and he settled in on the porch with
his back against one of the columns holding the roof up.

I found a
spot upwind from him.

Robert lit a
cigarette, and then he frowned at it. “I must have stopped a dozen times over
the years, but I always come back to them, especially in times of stress.”

“Are you
under any undue pressure right now?” I asked.

“Do you mean
besides the fact that my daughter’s ex-husband was murdered, and everyone I
love is a suspect? What do you think?” he asked as he took another puff. After
a moment, he snuffed it out in an overflowing ashtray. “That’s all that I’m
allowing myself,” he said. “It’s not a perfect system, but I’m doing what I can
to hold it together.”

“How’s Opal
handling things?” I asked.

“I’m worried
about her,” Robert said.

“Is there any
reason in particular?”

“She hasn’t
been herself since Gordon came back into town,” Robert said. “I don’t know
what’s going on with her.”

“Do you
suspect her of having something to do with what happened to your former
son-in-law?”

He took a
deep breath, and then let it out slowly. “I don’t know what to think anymore.
Ellen loves her children, and if it were possible, I’d say that Opal loves them
even more. What would either woman do to keep them safe?”

“I hate to
think either would be capable of killing someone,” I said.

“Well, you
and I don’t know the strength of the bond between a mother and her children,
Victoria, no matter how much we speculate.”

It was true
that I wasn’t anybody’s mother, at least not yet, but I felt as though I could
guess what it must be like. “We might not have children, but we’ve both been on
the other side of that bond. I can say with all certainty that my mother
wouldn’t do it.”

Almost as an
unconscious act, Robert reached down, grabbed another cigarette from the pack,
and then lit it. “Your mother is a strong woman. She wouldn’t sit idly by while
someone was threatening you, nor would your grandmother.”

“Are you
discounting my father and my grandfather?” I asked.

“No, the
entire town knows how much those two men love you, but the bond between mother
and child is extra special. When Ellen was growing up, I was fine to have fun
with, but whenever things got serious, or when she was the slightest bit sick
or injured, only her mother would do. To be honest with you, it kind of hurt my
feelings at first, but I got used to it over time.”

“So, you
believe that both your wife
and
your
daughter are capable of murder,” I said.

He hesitated,
took another drag from his cigarette, and then snuffed it out as well. “It
sounds really harsh when you put it that way.”

“That’s what
it boils down to, though, isn’t it? It’s cold-blooded murder to hit a man in
the back of the head with a pipe when he can’t defend himself.”

Robert
frowned and shook his head. “Perhaps, but then again, maybe it is the lesser of
two evils.” He stared off into space, and then ran a hand through his hair. The
act made him wince a little, and I had to wonder if his bruised hand wasn’t
still killing him. “I don’t know what to think. Do you believe for one second
that I enjoy thinking of Ellen and Opal as potential killers? Sometimes I wish
that I’d done it for them, so that they’d be spared Gordon’s threats.”

“Are you
saying that you didn’t kill him?” I asked. There was nothing subtle about the
question, but I was done dancing around it.

“I didn’t do
it,” he said flatly, though he wouldn’t meet my gaze as he said it. “I don’t
suppose that you have any reason to believe me, but there it is.”

“Let’s say
for argument’s sake that you
are
innocent,” I said.

I was going
to finish the thought when he interrupted me. “Let’s not. I’m many things,
Victoria, but you can’t list innocent among them. I’ve done a great many things
in my time that I’m not proud of, but I’ve never killed anyone.”

“Then who do
you think really did?” I asked.

I could tell
that he had a solid suspect, at least in his own mind. It was clear by the way
his eyes flashed and his lips tightened, but all he said was, “It could have
been anybody.”

“You were
going to say something else for a split second there, weren’t you?” I asked.

I honestly
thought that he was about to answer, when Opal came out onto her porch across
the street. “Robert, we’re going to be eating soon. You’re welcome to join us.”

As he started
to stand, Robert Hightower called out, “Thank you. I’ll be right there.”

As we walked
back across the street together, Opal asked me, “I know that you have plans,
but are you sure you don’t want to join us?”

“Thanks for
the invitation, but Moose and I need to go.”

My
grandfather met me on the front porch, and we thanked the Hightowers for
speaking with us.

“We’ll be in
touch,” I said as we left them.

Opal frowned,
as though what she wanted most was for us to leave her family alone, but Ellen
smiled at us as she joined her mother on the porch.

“If it’s okay
with you, I’m coming into work tomorrow,” she said.

“You don’t
have to,” I said. “Jenny’s glad to handle your shift.”

“Tell her
that she can sleep in, anyway. I’ll trade off with her at eleven when Greg gets
there. How’s that for a compromise? I swear I’ll be more focused tomorrow, and
I won’t let idle whispers distract me from my job.”

“Who’s been
whispering about you behind your back?” Opal asked, clearly concerned by the
thought of someone disturbing her daughter.

“It’s not
important, Mom,” Ellen said with a smile, before she turned back to me. “My
mother always did watch out for me.”

“Don’t forget
your dad,” Robert said with a smile.

“Okay, my
dad, too. I’ll see you in the morning, Victoria.”

“I’ll see you
then,” I said.

After my
grandfather and I headed back to the truck, I said, “Before we go back to the
diner, I’d like to go by the murder scene.”

Moose nodded.
“I’d be happy to, but what makes you think we’ll get anything out of it that
Sheriff Croft hasn’t already discovered?”

“I don’t
know. Humor me, okay?”

“Okay,” Moose
said. “It’s on the way back to the diner, anyway.”

As he neared the
alleyway where Gordon had been murdered, I said, “Pull over right here.”

He did as I
asked, and we both got out and moved to the sidewalk. As I looked up and down
the street, I tried to imagine it the day of the murder. It was sometime around
the same time of day, and the street wasn’t very crowded at all. How did the
shops manage to stay afloat? As we walked to the scene, I noticed that the yarn
shop had a sign on the door with its business hours. It was closed now, but it
had been open the day of the murder. It might be nice to talk to the owner, but
I didn’t have a clue how to find her.

Moose and I
walked a little into the alley, and I wondered where Gordon Murphy had been
standing when he’d been struck down. Had he been facing the street, or the alley?
That could matter, based on where his killer had stood. There were no windows
along the way, just a few solid steel doors that were all closed. Chances were
good that no one had witnessed the crime from there.

“It’s kind of
grim, isn’t it?” Moose asked me in a soft voice.

“It’s always
sad to visit a crime scene,” I said, my voice matching his. Why were we
whispering? Out of respect? Neither one of us had respected Gordon, but that
didn’t mean that we couldn’t lower our voices because he’d lost his life where
we stood.

As we walked
out of the alley, we turned toward the hardware store. On a whim, I walked in,
but the owner wasn’t in his usual spot up front. I asked the young clerk, “Is
Jack around?”

“I think he’s
at the diner,” he said with a grin. “You must have just missed him.”

“Thanks,” I
said, and Moose and I left.

“What was
that all about?” my grandfather asked me.

“Let’s go see
if we can catch Jack, and I’ll show you,” I said.

As my
grandfather drove, I said, “It’s probably a good idea that we’re headed back,
anyway. I’ve got a hunch that my servers could use a break.”

“Don’t worry
about my wife. Martha can handle her end of it,” Moose said.

“Maybe so,
but Jenny has to be beat. Not everyone can work all day.”

“Just you,
maybe?” Moose asked with a grin.

“Not even me,
not without a lot of breaks. By the way, while I was with Robert, did you have
any luck talking to Opal and Ellen?”

“That
disappearing act of yours was brilliant,” Moose said. “I didn’t even think
about the possibility of going across the street with Robert.”

“That’s why
there are two of us,” I said with a smile. “So, did you have any luck?”

“No,
unfortunately, neither Ellen or Opal wanted to talk about Gordon Murphy. Not
that I can blame them. The man came back into their lives to wreak havoc, and
then someone stopped him from following through on his threats of taking
Ellen’s children away from her. It must have seemed like a dream come true to
them.”

“Do you
honestly think they were pleased that someone murdered Gordon?”

“I doubt many
tears were shed for the man,” Moose said.

“Maybe not,
but neither woman strikes me as being a cold-blooded killer. The funny thing
was that Robert didn’t seem to share your opinion of the women in his life.”

Moose looked
at me sharply. “Did he honestly say that he thought that one of them might have
done it?”

“No, he
didn’t come out and accuse either one of them of murder, but he did imply that
he could understand the urge if one of them decided to take matters into their
own hands.”

“Is there a
chance that he was just trying to deflect your suspicions away from him?” Moose
asked.

“I suppose
it’s possible, but it’s kind of drastic throwing his wife and his daughter
under the bus to save himself.”

“People have
done stranger things than that to keep from going to prison,” my grandfather
said.

“He made an
interesting point while we were chatting,” I said. “He claimed that the bond
between a woman and her child is stronger than a father’s bond with his kids.”

“I don’t know
if it’s always true, but I can see why he might think that,” Moose said.

“Do you feel
that way about Dad? Is Martha closer to him than you are?”

My
grandfather frowned, and for a full minute, I wasn’t sure that he was even
going to answer my question, but he finally said, “She is, as much as I hate to
admit it. I always tended to push your father a little harder than I probably
should have. I expected great things from him.”

“Is he really
that big a disappointment to you?” I asked. I knew that there was an underlying
tension between my grandfather and my dad, but I’d never heard Moose state it
so boldly.

“Of course
not. I couldn’t love him any more if he were my own son,” Moose said
automatically.

“You tell
that joke a lot; you know that, don’t you?”

“Do I?” Moose
asked.

“You do, and
to be honest with you, Dad flinches whenever he hears you say it.”

Moose
frowned, and after a moment’s thought, he nodded. “Then I’ll have to stop
repeating it, won’t I? Is there anything else I say that’s hurtful?”

“Come on, I didn’t
mean it that way,” I said.

“No, you were
right to point it out to me. Thank you, Victoria. Do you realize that
you’re
a point of contention between us,
too?”

I looked at
my grandfather oddly. “Me? What do I have to do with your relationship with
your son?”

“You and I
have a closeness that your father and I could never manage. How do you think he
feels when he sees us getting along so grandly?” Moose asked.

“He knows
that I love him, too,” I said defiantly.

“No one
doubts that,” Moose said. “I shouldn’t have said anything. It’s not your fault.
It’s who you are.”