Elaine Orr - Jolie Gentil 02 - Rekindling Motives (12 page)

I feigned interest.
Since Robby’s arrest I have little desire to talk about any form of wagering.

Scoobie was onto his third marked page when he looked up and seemed to catch my lack of enthusiasm.
“Jeez, I’m sorry Jolie, I should have thought…” his voice trailed off.

I didn’t want to be a killjoy.
“I’m really glad you won, especially since I got lunch out of the deal. And,” I hesitated before continuing, “you’re not going to pour all your money into lottery tickets or slots. Most people just have fun.” Part of me wondered if my former marijuana smoking friend would be easily addicted to the possibility of winning regularly.

He nodded slowly.
“Yeah, when I tell them about this at AA at least five of the guys will tell me to watch out for that.” His eyes grew brighter as he picked up his mug of decaf coffee. “I’ll offer to give them some of my picks, that’ll shake ‘em up.”

We added some of Arnie’s chocolate pie to our meals and then I dropped Scoobie at the library and headed over to the Purple Cow to check Ramona’s schedule for helping with the attic inventory.
Despite their antics as they rooted through old clothes and such, the team of Ramona and Scoobie worked a lot faster than if Scoobie was searching by himself and hollering down to me.

Ramona’s white board was inside the store today as the wind had picked up over night.
Today it read, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a flat tire.” The first part was in Ramona’s handwriting, the second in someone else’s, meaning Scoobie must have stopped by to tell her about his good fortune and taken advantage of her inattention while Ramona helped a customer. Since the board was angled toward the entry, she hadn’t seen the editing.

“Hello Jolie,” came Ramona’s lilting voice from the counter near the cash register.
She had on a skirt in deep purple that came to mid-calf and a lavender top with deep purple trim around the v-neck. Only Ramona could pull off that outfit, and for the twentieth time since returning to Ocean Alley in October I was conscious of her strong sense of style and my feeling of ineptness around her. No one would call my brown corduroys and gold turtleneck ugly, but no one would take a second look, either.

“Did you talk to Scoobie?” she asked, as she stooped to pick up a pen.

“Yes, and I figured he’d been in.”
Before she could ask why I added, “We saw Roland at Newhart’s and Mr. Purple Cow congratulated Scoobie.”

Ramona nodded, but her expression looked more concerned than happy for Scoobie.
“I’m worried that a lot of people will hear him talking about what all’s in the attic.” When I gave her a puzzled look she continued, “There’s no security system at the house, at least not that I saw, and there are a lot of antiques in that attic.”

“Ah, I get your drift.”
I watched Ramona wipe a smudge off the countertop with glass cleaner and a paper towel. “Don’t you think it would be tough for someone to sneak in and out of there with a load of stuff?”

“Yes, but they don’t know that until they’re in
there,” she said.

With this cheery thought rattling around in my brain I set up a couple of times to go look through the attic some more and then trekked over to the Food Pantry.
Megan was going to train a new volunteer on how to manage the front counter, and I figured I needed to know how the place worked.

CHAPTER
TEN

AS I DRANK ORANGE juice the next morning I stared unhappily at a short
Ocean Alley Press
article about Scoobie’s good luck. Winning $50 was hardly a big news story, but I knew George Winters was looking for anything to write about the Fisher-Tillotson house and its skeleton discovery. At least the story didn’t mention the kind of business the ledgers dealt with. I was pretty sure Gracie did not want her family’s moonshine roots noted on the front page of the paper.

Scoobie and I picked up Ramona at
three o’clock at the Purple Cow and we headed to the Fisher-Tillotson house to continue our inventory. We hadn’t been at it long when my cell phone rang. “Where you at?” asked Sgt. Morehouse without so much as a hello.

“At the old Fisher house,” I said, trying to keep irritation out of my tone.
I wasn’t obliged to tell him what I was up to.

“What the hell are you doing over there?” he bellowed.
I dropped the phone, but it didn’t keep me from hearing him as the phone skidded across the hardwood floor, stopping just at the edge of the stairs that lead down to the first floor. Words such as “crime scene” and “don’t touch anything” drifted up to me.

I leaned down painfully and picked up the phone and held it a few inches from my ear.
“We’re doing an inventory of the attic for Gracie. What do you mean ‘crime scene’?” I looked up to see Ramona’s and Scoobie’s heads looking down through the trap door.

“I’m on my way over there.”
Morehouse hung up and Scoobie came down the attic ladder faster than I would have thought possible.

“What are you…?” I began.

“He doesn’t like me, and he isn’t first on my Christmas card list either,” said Scoobie as he started down the stairs.

“Jeez, Scoobie, we’re supposed to be here.”

He pause
d and gave me a look that said “that won’t make any difference.”

“I mean, go if you want, but we aren’t doing anything wrong,” I
added, feeling kind of naive as he looked at me.

Ramona was making her way carefully down the attic ladder.
She had to gather her wide skirt in her hand so it didn’t catch on a ladder hinge, so she was holding onto the ladder with only one hand. Scoobie walked the few steps back to the ladder and steadied it. “Don’t you own a pair of jeans?” he asked as she stepped onto the hallway floor.

“One, but I don’t know where it is.”
She fixed a stern gaze on Scoobie. “You’re acting like you’ve done something wrong. You aren’t sitting here smoking a joint.”

The slamming of a car door at the front of the house told me the discussion was moot.
Morehouse must have been on his mobile phone when he called. “I’ll let him in,” Ramona said as she walked down the steps.

MOREHOUSE SEEMED TO have calmed down a bit since his bombastic phone call.
As he and Ramona walked up the steps together he asked her if she still volunteered as an art instructor at the local Boys and Girls Club. Her answer did not carry up the steps. When he saw me his expression grew harsh. “Have you moved much up there?”

I met his gaze directly.
“Of course we have. We’re doing an inventory and Gracie didn’t say you had asked her not to touch anything.”

His posture sagged a bit and he ran his hand through his hair.
“We just got the autopsy report from the medical examiner. Mary Doris Milner did not die of natural causes.”

Uncertain I could keep standing, I sat back on the sewing machine stool and adjusted my donut.
Scoobie leaned against the ladder and Ramona sat on the top step of the stairs that lead to the first floor. Scoobie spoke first. “I liked her. She used to see me working on poetry in the library and sometimes she’d read some of it.”

Morehouse gave him a barely perceptible nod and turned his attention to me, but before he could say anything I asked, “How did she die?”

For a few seconds he seemed to have some sort of an internal debate with himself, then he said, “Methyl alcohol poisoning.”

“But, but…y
ou mean she drank herself to death?” I couldn’t imagine how she had gotten enough alcohol for that. Or whether she would even be able to drink that much.

Before Morehouse could answer, Scoobie said, “It’s not the kind of alcohol that’s in what you drink.
It’s made from wood, not grains.” He folded his arms across his chest and looked directly at Morehouse. “During Prohibition a lot of moonshiners made whiskey using it and a lot of people died. People would drink anything.” He glanced at me.

Ramona’s sob brought me back to the present.
She bent from her waist and put her head in her lap. Scoobie was sitting next to her and had an arm around her shoulder before I could think about getting off my donut. “Why?” Ramona wailed. “Everybody loved her!”

Scoobie gave her shoulder a hug.
“Unless she flunked them.”

“Stop it!
It’s not a joke.” Ramona pulled a handkerchief from the pocket of her skirt. Even with Mary Doris’ death I couldn’t help but wonder how many people our age carried a handkerchief instead of tissues.

“I know,” Scoobie said.

She blew her nose. “I’m sorry, I just…”

“It’s hard for everybody,” Morehouse said, more kindly than I’d ever heard him.
He turned to me and changed tacks in a second. “The thing is, only you and Annie Milner saw her in the hours before she died, and I have a hard time pointing a finger at either of you.” He leaned against the railing that overlooked the foyer on the first floor. “But,” he seemed to rally, “you’re nosing into her business and Annie, well Annie will be a rich woman now. Everyone in town knows that.”

Except me, of course, but it didn’t make sense that Annie would murder her aunt.
“Annie told me she’s thinking about running for county prosecuting attorney. A murder investigation doesn’t strike me as a vote getter.”

Morehouse glared at me.
“You sure you didn’t give her anything to drink, or see her drink anything?”

I shook my head slowly.
“I didn’t bring her anything except some flowers in a jar, and I doubt she drank the water.” I thought for a moment. “I don’t remember seeing even a mug of tea in the room. But, I wasn’t really focused on drinks.”

“There was a cup of water.
We took it to the lab, but it was just the usual crap that’s in our city water. I’m just…” he looked over the railing to the floor below.

“Looking for someone to blame,” Scoobie said.

Morehouse fired up. “Yes, damn it, I am.” He paused for a moment. “I liked her. She was my mother’s English teacher 40 years ago. It’s always harder when you know ‘em.”

I empathized a bit, but still did not appreciate his overall attitude.
“Can we do anything else for you?” I asked, I hoped coolly.

He looked toward the attic.
“You found those photo albums. Anybody know what you were doing up there?”

I looked at Scoobie and Ramona.
“Us, Aunt Madge, umm, I told Annie when she saw me with the albums…”

“Roland,” Ramona said. “He let me leave early a couple of times to come over here. I didn’t ask him to keep it a secret.”

“Joe at the Java Jolt,” Scoobie said.
“And he could have told anyone. Plus, the paper sort of implied it. Anyway, how could cleaning out the attic matter?” Scoobie asked.

Morehouse pulled away from the railing and nodded at each of us as he started down the stairs. “Hearing that you found the albums was the only thing in Mary Doris’ life that was different in the last few days.
I doubt there’s anything in that attic that relates to her death, but if you see something, you tell me.” He glanced back up at me as he descended. “And I don’t mean a week after you find it.”

NEWS ABOUT
MARY DORIS’ MURDER took the fun out of the afternoon, and without discussing it we began to pack up. For me all that meant was standing up with my donut, but Scoobie and Ramona had to collect a couple of books and ledgers they wanted to take and close the attic ladder.

In the car I asked Scoobie how he knew so much about methyl alcohol.
He turned his body rather than just his head, but I didn’t want to take my eyes off the road so I couldn’t see his expression. “You know where I hang out, right?”

I had to smile.
“OK, there are lots of books in the library. How did you happen to read all about methyl alcohol and Prohibition?”

He shrugged.
“I just go where the books take me.” He paused for a second. “It was right after I got clean and sober and I was reading a lot about alcohol and pot. Maybe there was an article about Prohibition and Ocean Alley or something.”

I thought for a moment.
“But even if people made that stuff back then, who would have it now?”

“Maybe it’s not that hard to make.
I’ll look it up.”

In a brisker tone than I’d ever heard her use, Ramona interjected.
“Enough on Prohibition. Let’s get back to business here.” She tapped me on the back of the head with one of the small ledgers she had brought with her. “They’re funny little sets of business records,” she said. “These two are earlier than the one I took before — there are dates on the first page.”

“How so funny?” asked Scoobie.

“Maybe they wrote them to be hard to follow, but I think the other one I looked at shows they’re buying more ingredients but not bringing in any more money.” She flipped through a few pages of the ledger on her lap. “I want to see what some earlier ledgers say.”

First Scoobie and now Ramona had certainly given me something to think about.
If numbers didn’t add up, Peter and Richard may have both been trying to hide something from anyone who saw their ledgers. But, what if one of them was cooking the books instead of just bread or whiskey?