Death in the Choir (13 page)

Anyway,
she comforted herself,
if he tries
anything, I can get out easily.
She moved her chair closer to the door.

“You were saying? About Randall?”

“Look, when you live next to a guy a long time, you
notice things. And I’m an observant kind of a guy. And there have been some
very...” Here he stopped to pluck just the right word from his vocabulary bank.
“Very seedy, yes, that’s it, seedy-looking people going in and out of Randall’s
house some nights.”

He paused now and delivered the jewel of information
he’d come to hand her. “I think he was into some drugs, if you know what I
mean.”

And I
wouldn’t be at all surprised if I weren’t staring right at his dealer,
she
thought cynically.

Scotty absently picked up a book from the coffee table.
He turned it over in his hand as if he were an archeologist examining an
artifact from a lost civilization. It was a small hardbound edition of “The
Imitation of Christ.” When he saw the title, he dropped the book as if it were
radioactive. It fell with a resounding thud onto the tabletop.

He shifted on the couch and scratched his shaven head.
“That’s all I came to say about Randall, but the main thing is not to bother my
grandmother again. She’s got a heart condition and I don’t want no one
upsetting her.”

“Of course, I understand. The only reason I asked her
any questions at all was that I was concerned about Randall.”

“Well, it was suicide, plain and simple.” Scotty touched
his nose ring as if to make sure it was still there. “See, my guess is Randall
was into a lot of drugs, not just the stuff he killed himself with.” He shifted
his weight and the chains rattled. “It’s just what happens.”

“I had nothing to do with his death,” he said firmly, as
if reading her thoughts. Now his face assumed a sneer that reminded her of a
particularly gruesome Halloween mask. “And I don’t want you – or anyone else --
snooping around in my life, understand?”

She nodded brightly, silently repeating her plea to
Jesus for mercy. Scotty’s face relaxed, the sneering expression replaced by a
blank look. He scratched his unshaven chin and continued.

“When you came to talk to Granny, I got suspicious. That
stuff about checking out the neighborhood was pretty lame.”

So
much for my acting career.
“I suppose that’s why you called me?”

He sniffed loudly and rubbed his nose against his
sleeve. “I didn’t call you. I came to see you in person. I knew where you lived
because I followed you over here the other day.”

She edged even closer to the open door, watching him
nervously as he rose from the couch. He headed straight for the door.

“Well, I
gotta
go. Granny is
waiting for me,” he said as if they had just had a nice social chat. “This is
our bowling night.”

At that moment she didn’t know which was more ludicrous:
her mental picture of Mrs.
Brumble
in bowling shoes,
trying to score a strike -- or the idea that Scotty really had nothing to do
with Randall’s death.

“And one more thing.” He was outside now. Under the
porch light, his numerous black tattoos gave him the appearance of someone
who’d been badly burned in a fire.
 

“Yes?” She got a firm grip on the door so she could slam
it in his face if necessary.

“You really should have better security around here.”
Then he clanked off into the night.

Her heart was still thumping ominously as she threw the
deadbolt on the front door. Then she ran downstairs and locked the back door,
silently condemning herself for being so careless earlier. She also checked all
the windows. Meanwhile, Tubs had cautiously emerged from the bedroom and was
standing in the kitchen, examining his empty supper dish. Francesca gave him an
extra large portion of food and then poured herself a generous glass of wine.

What
am I getting into here
? She sank down on the couch.
Why don’t I just take
Tony’s
advice and keep out of it?

The visit from Scotty had really shaken her. It could
have been so much worse
.

I’m
exhausted and totally stressed out.
I really should call Tony and tell him what happened, but all I want to
do is sleep.

After finishing the wine, she checked the doors again,
took a hot shower, and gathered up Tubs. Then she headed to bed. She slept that
night with the lights on for good measure.

* *
*

She overslept the next morning and arrived at the
rectory a half hour late. Tony called just as she sat down at the desk. When
she told him about the visit from Scotty, he sounded angry.

“I’m not angry with you, I’m furious with him. We can
get him for breaking and entering.”

She nervously toyed with a pencil. “Well, I’m ashamed to
admit this, but somehow I left the back door unlocked.”

There was a sigh on the other end. “We can still charge
him with criminal trespassing.”

She thought it over quickly.
If I bring charges against Scotty and for some reason they don’t stick,
he’ll have even more reason to come after me. And he really didn’t harm me,
except for giving me a terrible scare.

She bore down so hard with the pencil, she broke the
lead. “I’m not sure I want to press charges. Maybe I’d rather just drop the
whole thing.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line, then
another big sigh. “It’s up to you, but if I were you, I’d get the guy. You never
know what he might try next. Besides, I’m worried about you. Think it over, and
let me know if you change your mind, OK?”

“Yes, Tony, I will.”

“You might as well know who you’re dealing with. I
checked on Scotty in the computer, and he has a record. Nothing very serious:
loitering, shoplifting, and one time for disturbing the peace.”

Tony seemed interested when she told him what Scotty had
said about Randall and drugs, but he didn’t comment. At that moment, she
noticed that Spot had entered the room and was sitting near her with what she
took to be a longing expression on his face. He had carried in what appeared to
be one of the priest’s slippers and apparently wanted her to throw it for him.

She ignored the dog. “From what Scotty said, it sounds
like Randall could have been into the hard stuff. And isn’t it possible that
Scotty was his dealer?” she postulated. “And what if Randall decided to get off
drugs? And what if Scotty was afraid that Randall might tell the police who his
dealer had been? And then Scotty decided to get rid of Randall?”

“The autopsy didn’t show any traces of drugs other than
the legal prescriptions Randall was using,” Tony countered. “And we didn’t find
anything when we searched his house.”

Now his tone of voice became very serious. “Francesca, I
know you’re fascinated with what makes people tick, their motivations and all.
But in this case, don’t play psychologist. It’s much too dangerous. If it’ll
make you feel better, I’ll do some more checking on Scotty. But, remember, I’m doing
this on my own time, since the case was ruled a suicide.”

“Tony, I want you to…STOP IT, right now!” she shouted.

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, not you, Tony, I’m talking to Spot, Father John’s
dog. He’s trying to eat one of my shoes. Tony, I really appreciate what you’re
doing. I promise to leave everything to you.”

After they said goodbye, she had to dissuade Spot from
destroying her shoes. She also removed the slipper from his vicinity, placing
it safely on the desk. As soon as her back was turned, however, he went for her
purse. She removed it patiently from his drooling mouth and placed it out of
harm’s way.

“Go get a toy.” He looked at her curiously. “Toy. Go.
Get. A. Toy.” She carefully enunciated each word. He wagged his tail and
vanished down the hall.

Margaret Hennessy appeared moments later, carrying a mug
of coffee and wearing a yellow sweater and emerald-green pants. Somehow she
reminded Francesca of a large parrot in her improbable colors, but a very
friendly parrot. Margaret placed a Three Musketeers bar on the desk.

“A little sustenance. How are you, dear?”

Francesca almost broke down and told her about the visit
from Scotty. But she was still embarrassed about having left her back door
open.

“Just fine,” she lied. There was the loud sound of
toenails scraping against the wood floors, as Spot reappeared joyously in the
foyer with something dangling from his mouth.
 

“What do you have, boy?” Francesca bent down and grabbed
one end of the object in the dog’s mouth and tugged. Spot appeared to be
enjoying the game thoroughly, and surrendered his treasure with great
reluctance. It was a pair of men’s polka-dotted boxer shorts, now quite
torn.
 

“Oh, my.” Margaret’s face had turned scarlet. “I bet
that belongs to one of the priests.”

At that moment, Francesca saw Father William, prayer
book in hand, coming down the hall. At this time of morning, she knew he was
probably on his way to visit elderly patients at the Eternal Sunrise Nursing
Home. After that, he usually headed over to Emory Hospital to give Communion to
Catholic patients. She had often heard him say that it was his favorite part of
being a priest, comforting the sick and lonely.

“I’m off to do my visits,” he announced to the two
women. Then his face turned a more vivid shade than Margaret’s.

“Uh, Father, it seems Spot somehow got hold of...”
Somehow Francesca was unable to say “underwear” in front of him.

The dog spared them the embarrassment of any further
discussion by suddenly lifting his leg and watering the carpet. In the ensuing
chaos, the boxer shorts were forgotten.

The voice on the telephone the next morning sounded
tentative and nervous. And when the caller identified herself as Lily,
Francesca was surprised.

Now
what?
I’ve promised
Tony to leave the case to him. Still, I shouldn’t jump to conclusions. Maybe
this call has nothing to do with Randall’s death.

“I’ve meant to call you sooner.” Lily’s vowels revealed
traces of her native Spanish. “There are some things I’d like to talk to you
about, but not over the phone. Can you stop by for coffee – maybe this
morning?”

It turned out that Lily’s place wasn’t that far from
Randall’s, so it took Francesca only a few minutes to drive there. The house
immediately brought to mind the word “charming” with all the associated
clichés. It was adorned with an almost preternaturally manicured yard.

The driveway was gleaming white, and there was not a
leaf out of place. Francesca thought about her own yard, usually strewn with leaves,
bread crumbs, and the occasional pile of poop from the neighbor’s dog,
Bainbridge. As she rang the doorbell, she looked around, half expecting to see
a well-groomed squirrel decked out in a tuxedo.

Lily was attired in a pair of black corduroy pants and a
long-sleeved purple sweater that exactly matched the stones in her earrings.
Her big dark eyes were carefully circled in black liner, and her lips were the
color of blackberries. She invited Francesca to sit down on a flower-print
couch in the living room.

“I’ll be right back,” Lily said. “The muffins are almost
ready.”

Homemade
muffins
. Francesca savored the aroma.
I didn’t realize Lily was so domestic.

She settled back on the couch, which was almost groaning
under the weight of ruffles. Then, glancing around the living room, she
recognized the unmistakable signs of a devoted disciple of Martha Stewart. A
cluster of hand-decorated knick-knacks perched upon the mantle, while on a
nearby shelf, picture frames were adorned with shells and dried flowers.

She had long been convinced that, just as wild animals
can be identified by their droppings, Martha Stewart’s followers make their
presence known with a trail of glitter, ruffles, and artificial flowers.

Once she’d read an article by Martha describing how to
make party favors out of egg shells. First you had to remove the raw eggs from
the shells, which was a miraculous enough feat. Then you had to glue
diminutive, dried flowers inside the shells. It had sounded like an abominable
waste of eggs and time, she recalled.

Or
maybe I just have a case of sour grapes because every time I try to make
something by hand, it looks like an infant did it.

Lily emerged from the kitchen carrying a shining tray
upon which rested an engraved silver coffee pot and delicate china cups with a
butterfly motif. Cream and sugar were cozily ensconced in matching china
vessels, and a cluster of steaming muffins perched upon a platter. Lily
carefully handed Francesca a cup of coffee and placed a muffin on a china
plate, along with a generous slab of butter. Then Lily poured herself a cup of
coffee and sat down in the ruffled chair opposite Francesca. An unusual spicy
odor, which was emanating from a bowl on the table, wafted up to Francesca’s
nostrils.
Potpourri, another sure sign of
Martha.

The tender muffin was delicious and the butter oozed
generously over its top, coating Francesca’s fingers with a sweet slickness. As
they sipped the steaming coffee, which Lily said was made from freshly ground
beans, Francesca murmured a few sincere compliments about the muffins. And then
Lily launched right in.

“Well, I don’t want to beat around the proverbial bush,
so I’ll just come right out with it.”

“
Mmm
?” Francesca’s mouth was
too full of muffin to say much else.

“I think you’ve figured out that Candy is my daughter,
haven’t you?”

Francesca didn’t know if she should feign surprise or
just admit the truth. Since her mouth was too full to do much feigning, she
nodded, and then felt a slow blush creeping into her cheeks.

“How did you know?” she asked, although it sounded more
like: “Mow did do
doh
?” thanks to the muffin.

Lily picked up a perfectly ironed cloth napkin and
touched it to her lips. “Oh, Candy said she saw you in the restaurant when you
were out with that police officer. She thought you were eavesdropping on us.”

“Eavesdropping! I was just standing by the cashier, and
you both were talking so loud, I couldn’t help but hear.”

Lily said nothing while refilling their coffee cups.

“In any event, there’s a lot more to the story. You see,
Randall and I were married for only three years. It was a very unhappy
marriage, to put it mildly. He started cheating on me after the first year, and
it just went from bad to worse. He was always very apologetic when I found out,
and he would promise it would never happen again.”

Lily toyed absently with her muffin, while Francesca
chewed quietly and listened.

“It’s like the alcoholic who promises he’ll get on the
wagon tomorrow. Tomorrow just never comes. We had Candy at the end of the first
year we were married. I made up my mind I’d do whatever it took to keep the
marriage intact.” She sighed. “So I stayed with him two more years and
pretended everything was fine.”

Just then, a snow-white miniature poodle entered the
room. The dog had little pink ribbons attached to the fur on its ears, plus
toenails that looked freshly painted. Lily scooped up the little dog and gave
it a kiss on its pristine head.

“This is Snowflake.” Her tone softened just a bit.

Francesca gave the dog a gentle pat on the head. She
could tell this was a dog that would never shed, bark out of turn, or eat
someone’s boxer shorts. This was a Martha Stewart dog.

“You can probably imagine how hard it was.” Lily
readjusted the dog’s hair bows. “I was constantly suspicious of him. And my
self-esteem was pretty low. I guess on some level I figured he wouldn’t have
been such a playboy if I had been a better wife.”

Francesca sipped her coffee thoughtfully, uncertain of
how to respond. Then she realized she didn’t have to say anything; Lily was so
intent on unraveling her tale that she didn’t need input from her audience.

“When it became too much for me to take, I divorced him.
He moved to Decatur a few years later to start a new life, and I only heard
from him occasionally. I had the definite impression he didn’t really change
his wild ways. But I never bad-mouthed him in front of Candy. You see, I wanted
her to grow up admiring her father.”

Lily’s
ploy seems to have worked
, Francesca mused. Candy had seemed
fairly star-struck when talking about Randall.

Lily put Snowflake on the floor, and the dog curled up
on the spotless white carpet and fell asleep.

“Then, ironically enough, my singing career brought me and
Candy to Decatur. When I joined St. Rita’s about five years ago, I felt right
at home.” She made a little grimace. “But he wasn’t the choir director then --
and you can imagine my surprise when he was hired.”

Her mouth was set in a determined way. “I decided not to
let him ruin our lives. I liked the church and the choir, so I wasn’t about to
leave.”

Francesca helped herself to a second muffin.
Delicious and a lot healthier than donuts,
I’m sure,
she told her conscience.

“Well, he and I had a long talk. We both wanted to put
the past behind us, so we decided not to tell everyone about our former
relationship. As for Candy, he’d never been much of a father to her, so the
three of us just agreed to keep the whole thing quiet.”

A little flicker of distaste shot over her face. “I
guess we were all living one big lie,” she said bitterly. “A few months ago, I
started dating someone else. I really felt there was a chance for a future with
this guy. Then, out of the blue, Randall started coming on to me again, just
like in the early days when we were dating. Told me he’d changed his ways and
wanted me back.”

Lily let out a big sigh, and Snowflake opened an eye and
stared at her. “He said what I wanted to hear. How he’d really matured and
changed -- and he wanted us to remarry.”

She paused and refilled their coffee cups. “I wanted
Randall, so I broke up with the guy I was dating.”

Now she fiddled nervously with the cloth napkin on her
lap. “It wasn’t long before Randall started down the same old path again.” She
uttered the next words as if reciting a litany: “Pursuits, conquests,
deception, regrets.”

Francesca hoped she didn’t have a guilty look on her
face.
I guess I was one of the pursuits,
and Lily probably thinks I was a conquest too.
 

“Now that I look back, I think what Randall wanted all
along was to be sure I didn’t get involved with anyone else.”

Lily
really has a lot of reasons to hate him
.
It sounds like he treated her like dirt.
“Were you one of the women
who visited him after the party that night?” She figured it was time for her to
wade into Lily’s stream of consciousness.

Lily looked startled: “Women? I thought Patricia was the
only one?”

“Well, I don’t know how accurate this piece of
information is, but one of his neighbors said she saw
two
women visiting him that night.”

Lily glanced at her well-manicured fingernails. “More
coffee?” She lifted the silver pot. Its thin spout exhaled a delicate sliver of
steam.

“Sure.”
Lily’s
stalling for time.

“I didn’t go to see him that night,” Lily said. “I was
so fed up with him after the party, I just went home.” Her voice quavered. “I
wish I had gone, though, because maybe I could have prevented him
from...from...”

She pressed her hand to her mouth and looked as if she
would cry. “You see, Francesca, despite all our arguments and all his running
around, I still loved him. I never stopped.”

Lily idly plucked a faded petal from a peach-colored
rose in the crystal vase on the coffee table. As she did, four other petals
suddenly took a nosedive.

I
wonder if she’s telling the truth,
Francesca mused.
After all, as a professional singer, Lily is
trained in projecting a wide range of emotions at will. But maybe I’m being
overly suspicious.

Lily cleared her throat nervously. “There’s something I
want to ask you. Do you have his love letters and his journal?” Her eyes
indicated that she knew the answer.

“Love letters and journal?” Francesca hoped she sounded
innocent.
If Lily can read
expressions,
then mine is shouting “Yes, I do.”

“When we were on good terms, Randall mentioned that his
latest flame had sent him numerous love letters. And Randall was a pack rat, so
I know he would have kept them. I also know he kept a journal.”

Lily paused. “But when I looked through his house, they
were gone.”

Francesca took elaborate care in folding the napkin and
placing it back on the table.
  

“Why would you think I might have them?”

“Well, I know you had access to his office. And Candy
mentioned that you had a box of his stuff.” Here she shot Francesca an accusing
look.

What’s
the point of hiding anything?
“I did find the letters and his journal
in his office. I’m sure he didn’t realize they were there, and I would have
given them to him immediately if he…he were still alive. But I didn’t want to
give them to Candy because I wasn’t sure he would want
her
to have them. Plus, they could have had some important evidence
in them.”

“Evidence?”
 
Lily
put down the coffee cup with such force that Francesca was surprised it didn’t
shatter. “What do you mean?”

Might as
well drop the bombshell.
“I’ve had this very uncomfortable
feeling, right from the start, that Randall’s death wasn’t a suicide.”

Lily stared at her with an expression Francesca couldn’t
quite place. Fear? Worry?

“I think someone killed him,” Francesca said evenly.

Lily’s hand shot up to her mouth, and her eyes seemed to
double in size. She reached down and picked up the little dog, holding it
against her like a teddy bear.

Either
she’s a wonderful actress,
Francesca thought,
or she’s really never considered this
possibility.

“Killed?” Lily gasped. “No, that’s impossible. No one
would do something like that to him.” She nervously stroked Snowflake.

“He was depressed,” Lily continued. “And he was drunk and
had the medicine handy.” She wet her lips nervously. “He’d tried it before.”

“Oh?” This was news to Francesca, and she was definitely
interested in hearing more. If what Lily was saying was true, then maybe it
really was time to take
Tony’s
advice and consider
the case closed.