Damsels in Distress (31 page)

So who was Angie and where was she?

Edward and the fairies were the only people who might have seen her. Tracking down Rhonda Maguire and her cohorts would require Caron’s assistance, and I wasn’t ready to go to the bookstore. I still didn’t know Edward’s address, but Lanya might.

I stayed on the bypass and turned down the highway to Anderson and Lanya’s farm. The only vehicle parked in the yard was the mud-splattered station wagon. There were no shrieks or whoops, intimating the children were not yet home. I knocked on the front door, waited a few minutes, then knocked more loudly. The house remained silent. This meant that no one was home—or that Lanya was still locked in her bedroom. The latter seemed more likely. I went around the house and onto the screened porch. The kitchen was vacant. I opened the door and called Lanya’s name. There was no response. A vague uneasiness kept me from going inside the house, although I realized I might have to do so sooner or later.

I went back across the porch and sat down on the top step. The sun was hot, but not unbearably so. Insects and butterflies fluttered over the vegetable garden, and bees were enjoying the hollyhocks alongside the house. Blue jays battled at a bird feeder. A deflated plastic wading pool was surrounded by oddments from the kitchen cabinets. In the pasture, all traces of the Renaissance Fair were gone, except for trampled paths and a few paper cups caught in the weeds.

It was past noon, and Caron would be taking out her frustration on unwary customers. I was not leaping from one brilliant deduction to the next with the grace and agility of a gazelle. I was confident that Rosie Neely had been living in the blue house on Willoughby Street at the time of the fire, but I couldn’t come up with a reason why such a quiet woman with few friends and no enemies might have been the intended victim. Angie had disappeared. It seemed more logical to think the fire had been set to frighten her badly enough to convince her to leave town. It would have been nice to know what the police thought, but I doubted Lieutenant Rosen would fill me in on the details.

I decided to go in the house on the pretext of picking up the clothes I’d left there on Saturday. I would knock on Layna’s door but not persist, and if I happened to see a box of ARSE material, I could have a quick look for Edward’s address. If I came up empty- handed, I would slink back to the bookstore and spend the afternoon rearranging the window display with beach books. And, when I rallied the courage, call Peter and meekly invite him over for dinner. We would eat steaks, drink wine, and discuss potential honeymoon destinations.

The floors creaked as I walked through the kitchen. Dirty dishes were piled next to the sink, and bread crumbs were already attracting a thread of ants. Empty bottles and jars cluttered the counters. I continued into the living room. The door of the room in which I’d changed clothes was closed. I tapped softly. “Lanya?”

“What?” demanded a hoarse, snuffly voice.

“It’s Claire Malloy. I came by to pick up my clothes. Shall I come back later in the week?”

“No, wait there.” Footsteps thudded across the room and a key turned in the lock. Lanya opened the door and glared at me.

I tried not to grimace. Her unkempt hair hung down her back. Her bathrobe was haphazardly buttoned and badly stained. Her face was pasty, accenting her red, swollen eyelids. Her nose dribbled steadily, leaving her chin glistening with moisture. “Are you ill?” I managed to say. “Can I get something for you?”

“Are you alone?”

I nodded. “I don’t want to intrude, Lanya. I should have called first. Why don’t I come back-”

She caught my arm and yanked me inside the bedroom. After she’d locked the door, she turned around and said, “Did Anderson send you?”

“No, I was just driving out this way and-”

“Sit down,” she said, pushing me toward a chair. “It would be like him to find someone else to spy on me. He’s a coward. That’s why he likes to put on his armor and bash people with his sword. He knows he looks manly and brave, but he won’t get hurt. If he accidentally gets a bruise, he stays in bed the rest of the week, whining like a damn baby and making me bring him ice packs.” She shoved her hair out of her face and began to pace around the room with such fury I was surprised the glass didn’t rattle in the window frames “The noble Duke of Glenbarren cries when I have to remove a thorn from his foot. He’s afraid of the bees and won’t go anywhere near the apiary. When he saw a snake in the pond, he wouldn’t go out in the yard for months.”

“Was he like this when you married him?” I asked.

“I don’t know.” She flopped down on the bed. “Not as bad, anyway. As long as he can control things, he oozes confidence and charm. I wouldn’t have married him if Benny hadn’t...”

“Betrayed you?”

“Exactly! The very night before Benny and I were supposed to get married, he went after some tramp at the camp. They snuck into the woods, but they were making so much noise that all of us could hear them. I was humiliated. Anderson took me to his tent to calm me down, and—well, we decided to get married. Anderson admitted later that he’d only done it to get back at Benny.”

“Would you have been happier with Benny?”

“No,” she said, her shoulders sagging. “Neither of them is worth a puny pence. I should have finished my degree in agronomy and bought a vineyard. Salvador told me it wasn’t too late. He promised he’d back me-” She fell back on the bed and covered her face with her hands. “It doesn’t matter now, does it? He’s dead, and so are my dreams. Anderson will walk out on me one of these days. He’ll send child support payments and see the children once a year. I won’t be able to afford to sell this sorry place. I’ll just get older and fatter and lonelier.”

I would have said something encouraging had anything come to mind. I sat for a long while, listening to her whine. “Maybe,” I said hesitantly, “Edward might be persuaded to invest some money in a vineyard, especially if you tell him what Salvador promised.”

“Why should he believe me?”

“Anderson did, didn’t he? Wasn’t that what you two were arguing about Saturday afternoon in the backyard?”

She sat up and looked at me. “How do you know about that?”

“Several people overheard you,” I said, hoping she wouldn’t demand a list or specifics. For all I knew, they’d been arguing about the laundry.

She smiled wryly. “Yeah, Anderson believed me. Salvador found a vineyard listed for sale on the Internet. He said that if I’d take a six-week course in viticulture and enology at a college in California, he’d go into partnership with me. I think he was smitten with the idea of having his own label. Something classy to mention ever so casually at cocktail parties. Anderson exploded when I told him I was leaving in September and that he could do the cooking and cleaning and help with homework.”

“I suppose he was angry at Salvador, too.”

“Of course he was, but that doesn’t mean ...” Her bloodshot eyes widened. “I didn’t see him again until the final battle of the day. Someone would have seen him go down to the archery range— unless he changed clothes after our argument. He prefers to wear shorts and a T-shirt under the armor so he doesn’t get his royal garb all sweaty. The dry cleaners don’t take proper care with it.”

“They don’t get much practice,” I said. “You know Anderson better than I, but I can’t imagine he’d kill Salvador just to avoid six weeks of drudgery. Wouldn’t he be more likely to hire a cleaning service and a nanny?”

Lanya shrugged. “He wasn’t thinking that clearly when I told him. I thought for a moment that he was going to hit me. I turned my back on him and went to warn Salvador. I don’t know what he did after that.”

“And did you warn Salvador?”

She yanked a tissue out of a box and blew her nose. “Yes, but he didn’t take me seriously.”

“Were you angry?” I asked, remembering what Inez had said.

“I wasn’t so much angry as frustrated. I expected him to be proud of me for telling Anderson about the vineyard, but he just shrugged. He was acting so peculiar that I gave up and left.”

It struck me that although the Renaissance Fair was all music and gaiety on the surface, it had been a bubbling cauldron of acrimony (as well as eye of newt and tongue of frog). “I need to ask you about Edward,” I murmured.

“What a tragedy,” she said automatically. “Spending all those years searching for his father, and then—well, to lose him. He must be heartbroken. Have you spoken to him?”

“He’s distraught. I’m hoping you have his address. I’d like to find him and make sure he’s okay.”

She seemed much more cheerful now that she’d tacitly accused her husband of a brutal murder. “Yes, somewhere. Let’s go in the kitchen. You can have a glass of mead while I look for my notebook. It’s so hard to keep track of things because of the children. They’re forever moving things and forgetting to put them back. One day I found Anderson’s razor in the sandbox. They’d tried to shave one of the cats.”

I spotted my clothes in a heap in the corner and scooped them up. Lanya sighed when she saw the disarray in the kitchen, but fussed around until she found a jelly jar and a gallon jug of what I presumed was mead.

“Now you sit here and enjoy this while I find my notebook,” she said. “It should be in a drawer in my little office.” She bustled away, humming like one of her bees.

I couldn’t bring myself to sample the mead on an empty stomach. I was painfully aware that it was well into the afternoon. The last thing I needed to do was show up at the bookstore with alcohol on my breath. I poured a few drops in the jelly jar and swished it around. I heard Lanya chortle in triumph and was waiting in the living room when she came out of a hallway.

“Here’s the address. He doesn’t have a phone yet.” She handed me a slip of paper. “Do tell Edward how sorry we all are for his loss. I think it would be a nice gesture for our fiefdom to get together for a little memorial potluck in honor of Salvador. Let’s say Wednesday at six o’clock, shall we? Please tell Edward when you see him. I expect you to come, too, Lady Clarissa. You’re one of us now.”

“I’ll have to check my calendar,” I said, easing toward the front door. “My fiance is back in town, and we have to make wedding plans.”

“You must bring him with you. After all, he is your knight in shining armor.”

“I’ll mention it to him.” I did not add that I would do so shortly after the next Ice Age receded.

“We look forward to meeting him,” she called as I got in my car.

I turned around and drove as rapidly as I dared toward the highway. Peter was not apt to fancy himself my knight in any kind of armor, and the members might not be all that pleased if he showed up at the memorial potluck. He is not always the most pleasant of interrogators, particularly when he’s tired. And miffed at me, which he surely had been—and would be, as long as I kept finding myself involved in his investigations. This would the last one, I swore. I had not intended to get snarled in this one, and had done my best to disregard it. In the future, all my energy would be directed at bookselling, gardening, and getting Caron through high school and safely packed off into the hands of some naïve college dean in a distant state. I would read travel magazines and gourmet recipes. I would memorize the phone numbers of every caterer in Farberville. In my spare time, I would write mystery novels and use my earnings to buy Peter a new sports car every year. I would be a wife, a wanton lover, a sympathetic ear, a friend in need.

As soon as I talked to Edward about Angie, anyway.

Edward lived in an old house that had been chopped into apartments. It was only a few blocks from my duplex, but lacked both the view and the charm. The gray paint was peeling and streaked; several cracked windowpanes were held together with duct tape. I went up a few creaky steps to the porch and read the names on eight rusty mailboxes. Edward lived in 2-C, which implied the second floor. I went into a foyer of sorts and up a staircase, ignoring the graffiti sprayed on the walls and the subtle stench of beer. I kept a watch for bats as I continued down a hallway. Edward’s door was open, and discordant music pulsated from within the apartment.

I stuck my head in and shouted, “Edward?”

After a moment, he appeared from another room, wearing only a towel around his waist. “Claire? What are you doing here?”

“I came by to see how you’re doing,” I said glibly. “May I come in?”

“Yeah, sure, give me a minute.” He retreated, closing the door behind him.

I found the source of the din and turned down the volume to a tolerable level. The room functioned as a living room and kitchen. The furniture had come from a thrift shop or a yard sale, and the walls were a dirty beige. Edward had made no effort to disguise its bleakness with so much as a poster. He had made at least one friend, I noted as I spotted a lacy bra under the coffee table.

I sat on the edge of the sofa and tried not to stare at the remains of a marijuana joint in a saucer. The pungent aroma lingered. It occurred to me that I might have come at an inauspicious time, but I was worried that I might make things more awkward later if I were to leave. All I needed was five minutes to show him the photo of Rosie Neely and ascertain if she was the person he’d spoken to on the porch.

Edward was dressed in jeans when he came back into the room. “Excuse the mess,” he said. “This is temporary. I haven’t even unpacked my suitcases. Do you want a beer or something?”

“No, thank you. I promise I won’t stay long. I need to ask you something.”

“How I’m doing? Okay, I guess. The detectives were mad at me because I left the Ren Fair, but they let me explain and seemed satisfied. They let me go after a couple of hours.” He opened the refrigerator door. “You sure you don’t want a beer?”

“I’m sure,” I said. “I want to show you a photo.”

He sat down next to me and peered at it. “Who’s that?”

“It’s the woman who died in the fire at Angle’s house.”

“It is?” He sounded bewildered. “What’s her name?”

“That doesn’t really matter. You went by the house after the potluck and talked to someone. If it wasn’t this woman, then it was someone calling herself Angie. I want to know who and where she is.”