Dearly Depotted (9 page)

“You always say that.” She flounced down into the folding chair my mother had deserted, skirts billowing around her. No charm school had ever held Jillian for more than two days. “I’m bored stiff. Tell me what you’d do if this were your case.”

An armchair detective game. I could handle that. “If this were my case,” I said, enjoying the mental exercise, “the first item of business would be to find out why Jack returned to the banquet center.”

“Jack Snyder—what a loser,” Jillian said as Claymore joined us. “He always was the bad acorn of that family. Wasn’t his brother Rick in school with you, Abs? Now
he
was a real brainiac. Oh, sorry. You probably didn’t know him.”

What would it take, I wondered, to collapse her chair? A little nudge with the toe of my shoe? “I knew Rick, Jillian. And the expression is bad
apple,
not acorn.”

“Not in Jack’s case. He was definitely a member of the nut family. Who else would be crazy enough to fool around with Uncle Josiah’s daughter, and then refuse to acknowledge his own kid or pay child support? Who else would get out of jail and immediately take up with a woman old enough to be his mother? God only knows what Melanie saw in Jack, unless she was hoping to escape the clutches of her father. Now she
and
the baby are stuck living with that maniac. I can’t imagine how she stands it.”

“Perhaps she has nowhere else to go,” Claymore suggested.

“Well, it’s her fault for falling for Jack.” Jillian gave an indignant huff. “I could just kill Jack for ruining my reception.” She caught Claymore’s appalled look and said,

“Well, I could.”

“So who would your suspect be, Abby?” Claymore asked, clearly embarrassed by his new wife’s lack of sensitivity.

“That’s a no-brainer,” Jillian said, rolling her eyes as though she couldn’t believe the man she had married could be so dense. “Uncle Josiah.”

“I was asking Abby,” Claymore said coolly.

“I knew that,” she retorted.

Fearing I would be caught in their crossfire, I said quickly, “Josiah had a motive. Plus he left the reception before Jack’s body was found, so he had the opportunity.”

“It had to be Uncle Josiah,” Jillian said. “He hated Jack with a passion.”

“Hating Jack is one thing,” Claymore said; “killing him is another. Josiah isn’t a stupid man. He had to realize that murdering Jack would be counterproductive to his daughter getting any support money. What he should have done was to have Melanie go after Jack in the courts.”

“Don’t think she hasn’t tried,” Jillian said. “The first time Jack left town and the second time he went to prison. How do you make a prison inmate pay support?”

“Why doesn’t Melanie move out?” I asked.

“She doesn’t have a college degree or any skills other than cooking and cleaning, so what can she earn, maybe ten bucks an hour? Where can she live on that income and pay for child care?”

“There’s your second suspect,” Claymore said. “Melanie. She certainly had a motive—and the opportunity.”

“I don’t know Melanie very well,” I said, “but she doesn’t seem like the killer type. A lot of women get dumped. They don’t commit murder because of it.”

“
You
didn’t,” Jillian pointed out, in case I’d forgotten what Pryce had done. “Maybe living with her crazy father drove Melanie over the edge. It might have been a crime of passion. She saw Jack in the gazebo and pleaded with him to pay child support. He laughed in her face—
hahahahaha
—and she clobbered him.”

I grabbed her hand before she could demonstrate on Claymore’s head. “What was her weapon? The gouge on Jack’s forehead was deep.”

“Did you get a look at those combat boots she had on?” Jillian rolled her eyes. “Have you ever seen a chunkier heel? Where are the fashion police when you need them?”

“But why was Jack in the gazebo?” I put to them. “In my opinion, this whole case rests on Jack’s purpose for coming back. Was it for revenge, or was he supposed to meet someone there? What about your friend Vince Vogel?” I asked Claymore. “Pryce mentioned that he had a long-standing feud with Jack.”

Claymore scoffed. “That happened a long time ago.”

“Four years isn’t that long,” Jillian said, leaning back in her chair, “and Jack did ruin Vince’s dream of getting into the FBI. The poor guy was devastated.”

I smelled a motive. “Tell me about their feud.”

“It happened during my junior year down at IU Bloomington,” Claymore explained. “Vince blackballed Jack to keep him out of our fraternity, so Jack stole a professor’s car, set it on fire, and made it look like Vince did it. Vince spent a week in jail and was nearly convicted. He was eventually cleared of the charges, but the arrest was enough to disqualify him for any government job.”

“Jack is four years older than you,” I said. “Why was he at IU at the same time?”

“He’d go a year, drop out a year, switch to a different school, change majors—”

“You know how that goes,” Jillian said helpfully.

One little push against the hinge of that chair leg . . . “I only changed majors once, Jill, and I never dropped out of college.” I turned back to Claymore. “Did Jack ever finish school?”

“Up here, at the extension.”

“Has Vince ever said anything more about the incident?” I asked Claymore.

“Not to me. Vince is happily married now and working as head butcher at the Meat Market.”

Jillian instantly shushed him. “Keep your voice down. My mother is a member of PETA. Besides, how can someone be happy when all they do is chop up dead animals?”

“He makes a good living,” Claymore said patiently. “He doesn’t need to be happy.”

That was typical Osborne thinking. “Does Vince strike you as a killer?” I asked him.

“Absolutely not,” Claymore said.

“But he does have a bad temper,” Jill reminded him.

“He keeps it under control,” Claymore countered.

She glared at him. “Usually.”

“So a couple of times down at school Vince got a little carried away,” Claymore said. “He was drunk, and some people are mean when they’re drunk.”

“Are you mean when you’re drunk?” Jillian asked, her hackles all set to rise.

“As you know, dearest, I don’t get drunk. I’ve never been so much as tipsy a day in my life.”

Jillian beamed at me as she slipped her arm through Claymore’s and gave it an affectionate squeeze. “Isn’t he priceless?”

I smiled back, wishing my life had been Pryce-less.

“I’ll point Vince out,” Jillian said and turned to look around the room.

“He left after the ceremony,” Claymore reminded her. “Don’t you remember? He came through the receiving line and said he had to go home to check on his wife. She had a migraine.”

At that moment, my parents returned and my father said to the newlyweds, “You’re all set.”

Jillian clapped. “Super! Thank you, Uncle Jeff.”

“Jillian, do you have two minutes?” my mother asked hopefully. “I want to give you and Claymore your gift.”

“Not now, Mom,” I said. “They have a plane to catch.”

“I’m truly sorry we can’t stay,” Claymore said. “We’ll open our presents as soon as we get back from Hawaii. As it is now, we’ll just make our flight.”

“Let’s not be too hasty,” Jillian said, smiling at my mother. She never could turn down a present.

“I promise this will only take a moment,” my mother told them, motioning frantically to my brother Jordan, who had been trying in vain to hide behind his wife, Kathy. He carried over a three-foot-tall, foil-wrapped box and set it on the floor in front of them. The rest of the Knight clan gathered to watch, and all those bright red heads drew the Osbornes like moths to lit matches. By the time my cousin had ripped off the ribbon and torn her way through the wrapping paper, most of the people in the room had gathered around her.

The moment Jillian lifted the top off the box I scrunched my eyes shut. Around me, guests gasped, and a woman nearby whispered, “Look at that!”

I knew I’d have to look eventually, so I opened my eyes just a little and saw Claymore. He hadn’t fainted—that was a good sign—so I shifted to Jillian, whose mouth was open, but not in horror. More like
Wow!

Holding my breath, I took the plunge and looked straight at it. What I saw was—a vase. Not an ordinary vase, naturally—this was my mother’s creation, after all—but a two-foot-tall vase that curved and swayed in graceful motion like a wet manicotti noodle. My mother had painted the clay in soft pastel colors, then heated it somehow so that the colors ran and bled into each other, forming a hazy aura that was actually rather attractive—in an offbeat kind of way. Just the thing Jillian would go for. I let out my breath in a
whoosh.
I’d been holding it so long I might have blacked out for a second.

“Let me through,” Grandma Osborne called, jabbing people with her bony elbows. She pushed her little gray head between two people, fixed her gaze on the gift, and said, “What the hell is that?”

“Aunt Maureen, it’s beautiful,” Jillian exclaimed, ignoring the outburst. She knelt beside the vase and stroked a hand lovingly down its curves. “Isn’t it beautiful, Claymore?”

“Yes. Lovely,” he said, rather stiffly. But at least he was being a sport about it, which is more than Pryce would have been.

I glanced in Pryce’s direction and could see the snicker building behind those taut lips, so I flashed him a look that said,
Don’t you dare make fun of my mother. I’m the only one allowed to do that.

“Dearest,” Claymore said quietly, “we really must be going.”

Jillian jumped up, threw her arms around my mother, then bent to hug my dad. She turned, saw me, and rushed over to crush my head against her pearl-studded bodice. “Little Abs.”

“I know,” I said, trying to untangle my hair pins from her dress, “you wub me.”

“Actually, I’m so beyond the
wub
thing now.” She squeezed my head between her hands, pressed a kiss on my forehead, and dashed off, pulling Claymore by his sleeve.

“Well, Abigail?” my mother said as I scrubbed lipstick off my forehead. “What do you think of my sculpture?”

“Mom, you couldn’t have made anything more perfect or beautiful.” And I meant every word.

She sighed, very pleased with herself. “My work here is done. Jeff, let’s go home.”

“When can we leave?” my brother Jonathan asked, indicating the other family members, who were standing around forlornly, looking like cast members from some long-forgotten
Survivor
episode.

“Have you all been fingerprinted?” my father asked.

“An hour ago.”

“Come with us,” my mother said. “Your father will spring you.”

At a tap on my shoulder I turned, and there was Grace. “May I have a moment, dear?”

We moved to a quiet spot where Grace said softly, “I’m worried about Richard.”

I glanced beyond her and saw Richard chatting amicably with some of the other guests. He certainly didn’t seem worried, but that was in keeping with his character. Richard Davis was a throwback to the rootin’-tootin’ cowboy of old—a shade on the aggressive side and always in charge, which seemed at odds with Grace’s quiet, refined ways. I was surprised when they started seeing each other. Until two months ago, Grace had maintained that she was beyond needing a man’s companionship. Yet they seemed to adore each other, so who was I to say they weren’t a good match?

Richard had moved to town from Austin, Texas, shortly after his wife had died three years ago. His only son had attended the university here, then married a local girl and settled down to raise a family. Deciding he was ready to retire and be a grandpa, Richard had sold his hugely popular roadhouse and landholdings in Texas, packed up his belongings, and headed to Indiana. Within a year he’d purchased a bowling alley and miniature golf course and had built a recreation center. Now he had a sporting empire that employed more than one hundred people.

The only negative I’d ever heard about Richard was that he had a quick temper—any employee who didn’t get with his program was canned on the spot, and any customer who didn’t behave respectfully was shown the door—yet he was reported to be fair and generous to a fault. What really sold me on his character, though, was his car, a 1971 fire-engine red Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz convertible with monster fins on the back. Anyone who drove a car like that was okay by me.

“Why are you worried?” I asked her.

“As you know, the police are asking for the names of anyone who left the banquet center after the wedding. In addition they’re asking for the names of anyone who knew Jack Snyder previously. Unfortunately, Richard falls into both categories.”

“He knew Jack?”

“It seems Jack worked for Richard at the sports center about a year and a half ago, in his accounting department. Then Richard discovered that Jack had been embezzling funds—over twenty-five thousand dollars in all—but Jack fled the country before the police could arrest him. The money has never been recovered.”

“It would be a stretch to pin the murder on Richard for that reason,” I assured her. “Jack has probably bilked other people, too. And I’m sure Richard will have witnesses who can verify his whereabouts this evening.”

Grace twisted her fingers together. “There’s more, dear. At the time of the theft, Richard told a newspaper reporter that if he ever got his hands on the varmint—those are his words, not mine—Jack’s goose would be cooked—also his words—which, if one didn’t know Richard, might be construed as a death threat. I felt it best for him to be forthcoming with this information before the police uncovered it themselves—so they don’t think he’s trying to hide it—but he’s adamantly opposed to the idea. He said what’s in the past is in the past, and that we should let sleeping dogs lie.”

“I know what Dave Hammond would say,” I told her, referring to the lawyer for whom we’d both worked. “Don’t give the cops more information than they ask for. Besides, they have enough on Josiah Turner to make him their prime suspect.”