A Killer Collection (11 page)

The last residence on the street
belonged to Hillary Keane and Molly's hopes were restored. A large white
colonial, the house looked down on the street from its green crest and yawned
widely with a columned mouth. Surrounded by trimmed rhododendron and azalea
bushes, the house looked quite comfortable perched above the other homes in the
neighborhood. As Molly pulled up the driveway, she admired the large bed of
rose bushes to the left and a neat, brick walkway lined with an explosion of
impatiens leading up to the front door.

The driveway led her to the back
of the house, where a wide, low porch extended out onto the lawn. Molly parked
in front of the garage, surprised that it was big enough to hold three cars.
She wondered what Keane did for a living in order to afford multiple cars in
addition to a large pottery collection.

Walking around to the front door,
she noticed that the grass was not as neat as the garden beds. Despite the lack
of rain, it had grown tall and was long overdue for a trim. Molly rang the
doorbell and waited, going over her mental checklist of necessary supplies:
mini-recorder, pad of paper with questions, pen, and camera. When no one came
to the door and Molly didn’t hear the sounds of footsteps from within the
house, she rang again. She could hear the loud chimes echo inside, but no one
responded to the bell.

She decided to try the back door.
No answer. She checked her watch. It was exactly noon. Maybe Swanson had set
the appointment for a different day. He had made scheduling errors before.

Stepping up onto the porch, Molly
noticed a pair of parched ferns and a strewn pile of local newspapers around
the welcome mat. She picked one up. It was the
Washington Post
. Hillary
had left five days worth of papers scattered about. Molly frowned. She hated
things to be untidy.

Opening the screen door, she
knocked on the wood interior door, growing irritated over having given up her
day off for no reason. As she stepped back from the door in surrender, a scrap
of paper fluttered out from its place between the two doors. She picked it up
and read:

Sunday

Hey Buddy,

Where are you? We had a tee
time for this morning.

Did you forget? Stopped by here
to pick you up, but no one was home. I called you on your cell, at home, and at
work, but no dice. I don’t know what’s going on, but let's reschedule for next
weekend. Give me a call.

—Gil

Molly stuck the note underneath
the grip of the doorknocker, and then peered in one of the porch windows. She
could see into the kitchen, where three of the Meaders roosters stood guard
from their prominent place on top of the cabinets, but nothing struck her as
odd. A mug sat out on the counter next to some brown bananas. Turning back to the
drive, she looked again at the papers and the unkempt lawn.

Molly walked over to the garage
and tried the door. It was locked. Peering in through the square windows of the
garage doors, she could see that only one of the garage bays was occupied. A
small, inexpensive pickup truck sat next to an empty bay, while the third was
taken up by a large worktable surrounded by tools. Molly assumed Hillary Keane
kept his other car in the second bay, so nothing looked out of place in the
garage. Except for the rows of cardboard boxes carefully arranged on shelves
lining the entire back wall. Whatever was in those boxes took up a great deal
of space.

Molly moved over to the far bay,
hoping to get a better view of the back wall from a different angle. From this
vantage point, she could see that several of the shelves were empty, but there
were rectangular-shaped clean spaces in the dust, indicating that boxes had
once been stored there. The box closest to her had obviously been looked at
recently, because the newspaper had not been completely replaced. No longer
obscured by the classified section, the necks of two large pottery jugs jutted
out from their nest. The rows and rows of packed boxes all contained pottery!

But why would Hillary Keane keep
all his pottery out here, out of sight? Pottery collectors loved to touch and
see their objects of desire. How had Keane planned to
show
her his
collection if it was all buried out here in the garage?

She walked back toward her car and
dialed the office. Swanson's secretary informed her that he was home with a
cold and gave her his home number. She knew that there was a good chance her
"sick" boss would be out fishing, but he answered his phone with an
angry grunt.

"Carl? It's Molly."

"This better be good,"
he grumbled. "I've got a nasty cold, you know."

"Sorry to hear that. I'm at
Hillary Keane's house, for our appointment, but he's not here."

"And what would you like me
to do about that?" Swanson demanded.

"I'm just checking to make
sure this is the correct day," Molly said carefully.

"Of course it is!" he
barked. "I talked to him on Thursday, the day before the Burle kiln
opening. He said he was thrilled to be able to show off his collection. Really
wanted to help spread the word about the local potters. Seemed like a decent guy."

"Well, maybe he had to leave
town. What should I do now?"

Swanson sighed, "I'll call my
friend and see if he knows what happened to Keane."

"His name wouldn't be Gil,
would it?" Molly asked.

"No, it's Bryant. Why?"

"Keane was supposed to play
golf with Gil on Sunday. There's a note here from him. Apparently, Keane missed
his tee time."

Uninterested, Swanson replied,
"Ah, that's where I'm going right now. I need
something
to get my
mind off of this cold."

Molly hung up and returned to her
sweltering car. As she reversed down the driveway, the house seemed to be
watching her through the streaked sunlight. It seemed especially silent on its
lonely hill. Molly suddenly remembered how George-Bradley had cut in front of
Keane at C. C.'s kiln opening. The look of outrage in Keane's eyes was
unforgettable. Had George-Bradley stepped on Keane's toes more than once? Molly
had a strong feeling that something was wrong in Hillary Keane's life, and it
wasn't more serious than a head cold.

One thing she felt with conviction.
Whatever had caused Hillary Keane's absence was linked to those boxes of
pottery.

~~~~~

On the ride home, Molly called her mother to see if she
wanted to go out for dinner. Clara was settled in a lounge chair reading. She
sat up lazily and reached for the phone; only her interest in hearing about
Hillary Keane's collection could tear her away from the mystery she was
reading.

"How's Lord Menes
doing?" Molly asked after the novel's hunky Egyptian hero. She had already
plowed through the series of five books.

"Handsome as ever. Every
other paragraph is about his tan, muscular torso. I can't stand it."

"What will you do once you're
finished?"

Her mother sighed longingly.
"I'll just have to reread all the Horatio Hornblower books to keep me
satisfied. How was your interview?"

"Didn't happen."

"What do you mean?"

Molly told her mother about her
visit to Hillary Keane's. Clara listened, frowning in thought.

"The pottery was packed in
cardboard boxes?" Clara asked, completely perplexed. "What's the
point of having such beautiful and interesting pieces of art hidden from
view?"

"Maybe Keane just liked to
hoard stuff. My boss said he sounded like a nice enough guy when they talked on
the phone," Molly said.

"It's the South. Everyone
sounds kind and cordial on the phone. Doesn't mean they can't snap at you like
a rabid dog if duly provoked."

'True, but I may never find out.
Carl is trying to locate Keane and will call me back tonight."

"What are we doing for
dinner?" Molly heard the sound of fabric stretching and imagined Clara
leaning all the way back on her lounge chair, her long legs crossed as she set
her novel aside. "It's too hot to cook. Let's go to Panchos."

Molly laughed. "Excellent
idea. I could use a margarita. After all, this
was
my day off."

~~~~~

Panchos was one of the few restaurants in Hillsborough.
It had had a slow start, opening its doors in a town where people had been
eating grits and barbeque all their lives. But it hadn't taken long for the
delicious and inexpensive Mexican food to seduce the taste buds of even the
least risk taking eaters around.

Molly and Clara ordered jumbo
margaritas on the rocks and dug into the warm tortilla chips and spicy salsa.

"Time to talk about serious
matters," Molly began, swallowing a sip of her frozen delight. "There
is something rotten in the state of North Carolina."

"Such as?"

Molly pushed the basket of chips
toward her mother. "George-Bradley's death, for starters. Bunny was
adamant that she gave him his daily insulin shot. On top of that, there's the
missing pottery."

"Lex is going back over to
the Staunton place tomorrow. He'll ask the cleaning lady if she knows anything
and one mystery will be solved. As for the insulin issue, what are you
suggesting?"

"What if someone gave
George-Bradley more insulin? Someone who knew he had diabetes and knew his
habits well enough to know that he'd already had one shot."

"You're still fixated on the
possibility of
murder
?" Clara asked loudly.

At that awkward moment, the
waitress arrived to take their orders. Clara chose a vegetarian plate with two
bean burritos and a cheese enchilada. Molly skipped the beans and opted for
three cheese enchiladas.

"I need my calcium," she
told the waitress sheepishly. Turning back to her mother, she answered,
"Yes, I do believe George-Bradley was murdered."

"Who are your suspects?"

As a plate of sizzling fajitas
passed them by, Molly suggested that either Bunny or Susan could be the killer.

"I don't know," Clara
pondered. "Susan wasn’t exactly chasing after him at the kiln opening. I
don't even think she'd want him back as a boyfriend. What reason would she have
to kill him? I think Bunny had more motive."

Molly rubbed salt from the rim of
her glass. "But what about all of those pictures Bunny had of them
together? They were so nostalgic. And a little sad. She could have still loved
her husband."

"Those photos don't mean
anything
,"
Clara said dismissively. "They were probably put out just for show. Bunny
wouldn't let it
seem
like she and George-Bradley were anything but
happy. I doubt her closest friends knew if there was anything wrong in that
marriage. Bunny cares about appearances."

"She didn’t bother concealing
how she felt when we were there."

"That's because we don't
count as people who matter. We're the
help
."

"So what about Hillary Keane's
anger at the kiln opening? Keane knew George-Bradley, I could tell by the look
he gave our victim. And what about Keane blowing off both my interview and his
golf buddy? The man is gone, I tell you."

"He had to leave town. He'll
turn up. Look, as much as I love a good mystery, I don't think there is one
here."

As the waitress arrived with
scalding plates of food, Molly's phone chirped from within her purse. She
quickly grabbed it and made for the door. It was a pet peeve of hers that
people had loud phone conversations in restaurants, and she vowed never to be
so impolite.

"Hello?"

Her boss coughed in her ear.
"Seems that Keane really has disappeared. He hasn't been to work for the
last couple of days and my friend hasn't heard a word from him either. Says the
two of them are pretty close, too. He's actually going to call the police. In
the meantime, why don't you interview that potter who used to visit your
school? You told me about him last year."

"Sam Chance? I would love to
see him again." Molly was thrilled. Swanson was lining up another person
who had been to the kiln opening. However, she thought of one drawback.
"Just so you know, Sam produces mostly functional pottery. Nothing
fancy."

"That's fine. We want to
represent a varied mix of potters. It's not like people don't collect
dishes..."

"True. I'm also hoping to
arrange an interview with Susan Black, another collector. I left a message on
her answering machine, but haven't heard anything yet... Listen, is Keane
married?" Molly asked.

"Nope, he's a bachelor,
unlike me. And my wife is calling me for supper."

"Wait!" Molly caught
him. "Just tell me one more thing. What is Keane's profession?"

"He's a pharmacist."

Molly snapped her cell phone
closed and rejoined her mother.

"Let’s examine one of the
suspects on my list," she told Clara proudly.

"OK. According to you, we
have Bunny the jealous wife, Susan the vengeful mistress, and now ...?

"Hillary Keane."

"What did your boss
say?" Clara asked.

"Keane has officially gone
missing. Hasn't been home, hasn't  been to work, and no one seems to know where
he is. The police are being called in to investigate."

"And why does that make him a
suspect?"

"Because of his job. He's a
pharmacist!" Molly exclaimed.

Clara sat back in her chair and
sipped her drink thoughtfully. Then her eyes widened. "He's got access to
insulin."

"Exactly. And maybe he gave
himself access to some of

 George-Bradley's pottery. That
could explain the where in our 'where has the pottery gone?' question."

"All right, for argument’s
sake let’s assume Keane wanted to knock off George-Bradley and take some
pieces, how would he give him the extra insulin? I saw him at the kiln opening,
but only for a moment."