Gourdfellas (24 page)

“You know what—the answer is the same. I’d be wondering what you’re thinking and what you’re going to do about it. Either way, a little extra friendliness on your part might get you what want. If he’s not involved, you’ll be putting your relationship back on track. If he is, then you might calm some of his worries by playing nice. I just don’t think you should be alone with him, at least not for a while. So I’m not going home yet, and I don’t think you should go out with him yet. But invite him over, or cozy up at the next casino meeting or something and see what happens.”

What Neil said made a lot of sense to me. It was safe. It was prudent. It just wasn’t very satisfying.

I repeated the words aloud, trying to match Anita’s inflection, the tone of voice. It didn’t scan right, didn’t match the sound of what she’d said. If I could get it right, I’d have a pointer, a direction to follow.

When I sat down at the computer to work on the brochure, the refrain got louder. The more Anita Mellon’s words pattered around in my brain, the more I knew they would lead to the key to this puzzling situation. I couldn’t switch off the song and finish my writing job, not until I understood what Anita—and more important, Marjorie—meant. In my skittering, fitful state, I wasn’t likely to get there on my own. I needed help—the kind of help I trusted, the kind that knew the fabric of Walden Corners so well they could see the tiniest moth hole begin.

“We’ll convene a meeting this evening,” Nora said when I phoned her. “Can’t do it here because I promised Scooter that he and Armel could have quiet to finish up their term papers. Maybe Elizabeth’s, I’ll check. Anyway, I just tried out a new chocolate mousse pie recipe and I need some tasters to let me know if it works. But when we’re all gathered, you have to tell us about Anita. I’m a little hurt she didn’t ask about us.”

“Anita Mellon is the definition of self-absorbed,” I said. “Was she always like that?”

Nora didn’t answer right away. “I suppose. But when we were young, I remember thinking that she had to be. Nobody else thought about her.”

 

I arrived at Elizabeth’s and parked behind the four cars already in the drive. The night was soft, the air warmer than it had been, and the fragrance of the lilacs in bloom was like nectar that I wanted to drink in until I was so full I couldn’t move. But I had to move, and it had to be forward. Waiting around while the meter on B. H. Hovanian’s time ticked up a bill would only lead to years of servitude—indentured or not, that wasn’t the future I envisioned.

I knocked, pushed the door open, and passed through the cherrywood and granite kitchen, following the sound of voices to the living room. Melissa and Elizabeth sat on opposite ends of the white leather sofa, Nora sprawled in one of the white wingback chairs flanking the fireplace, and Susan sat cross-legged in front of the glass-topped coffee table. Susan pointed to a plate with the most amazingly rich-looking slice of chocolate mousse pie topped with swirls of whipped cream. Out of habit and in respect for the ten pounds I wanted to lose, I resisted for two seconds, then carried it over to the matching chair on the other side of the fireplace.

“We have a lot to talk about,” Nora announced. “Let’s get right to it. Lili, why don’t you tell us about your meeting with Anita?”

“I have to say, I probably would have recognized her from your descriptions. Except for the wrinkles near her eyes, she probably looks about the same as the last time you all saw her. Frozen in time. Except for her companion. You never mentioned her.”

Melissa frowned enough for everyone. “Companion?” My eyes drifted to the plate balanced on my lap. “Linda Bannerman. From Rhinebeck. They seemed very . . . close.” It wasn’t the ambiguity of their relationship that intrigued me, really. It was the fact that Anita appeared to have some kind of power over the other woman. “As though Anita knew something about Linda and had totally cowed the woman into a kind of emotional slavery.”

Nora’s sigh broke the silence. “She lived in Rhinebeck, went to high school there, so I didn’t know her, really. I’ve met her a couple of times in the past ten years, you know, local business events. She always struck me as smart enough but not a leader. It was Anita who held court with the kids, even the ones from other schools—they’d probably be goths today—you know, the outsiders who dressed to attract attention. Like Linda, back then.”

“Big change,” Melissa said, “once Linda went away to school. It was like she came back normal.”

Nora sighed. “Sheesh, high school is such drama. Sorting people out by how they look . . . how weird is that? But Anita’s clothes and her makeup were things that made it hard for me to warm to her. I mean, I wanted to. I wanted to be a big person and not let appearances put me off. But it felt like she decided I wasn’t cool or something and so she ignored me whenever I tried to . . .”

“You were
too
cool.” Susan sniffed and tossed her red curls. “She knew that if she was seen with you, the outsiders would reject her and find a new leader and she’d be left where she started. My mom and dad once dragged me to a barbecue at the Bannerman’s, some kind of business obligation. Linda was an only child, grew up with rich parents in a huge house that required outdoor and indoor help.

Servants, right? It was a rumor, but I remember hearing that Linda got pregnant in junior year.”

“Not a rumor.”

All eyes turned to Nora.

“I can’t remember how I know this, maybe something Connie told my husband when they worked together at Walden High. They were putting together a program on teen pregnancy and telling stories about local kids, saying how nothing much had changed since our day. Anyway, Anita was the one who went with Linda to get it taken care of. Out in Pennsylvania somewhere, so that Linda’s parents wouldn’t know. I wish I had listened more carefully when Coach told me.”

I stared at the red, orange, and gray painting above the sofa, thoughts exploding in my head like those colors against the backdrop of this snowy room. That might explain what I’d seen in the house. The real question was how long a period of servitude Anita would demand to repay that long ago favor, and to what lengths Linda would go in order to satisfy her.

Elizabeth cleared her throat noisily. “So what did Anita say this morning?”

Heads swiveled in my direction, as though the ball had just been hit over the net and now it was up to me to make the perfect return volley.

“She said one very interesting thing. She was talking about a conversation with her mother and she said, ‘She told me she found out something that would turn this town upside down.’ But Marjorie never told her what it—oh no!”

Time stopped then.

My heart ticked and I was aware of each tiny muscle in my face as a smile formed. My laugh was a release of tension that started in my chest and made its way to my throat, where it bubbled out in a rain of sound. Finally, I inhaled deeply and looked into the confused and expectant eyes of my friends.

“This has been driving me nuts all day. Those words kept going around in my brain but they weren’t right, they didn’t scan correctly. I was so frustrated I thought I’d spit. What Anita really said was ‘She told me she
found
something that would turn this town upside down.’ Not found out. Just plain found. As in discover. Come upon. Find. A thing.”

“While she was working,” Melissa said softly. “She must have made her discovery when she was cleaning.”

“That’s it! How could we have missed something so obvious?” I jumped out of my chair and marched around the room, stopping only long enough to put my pie plate back on the serving tray. “Marjorie ran a commercial cleaning business. So maybe whoever murdered her wasn’t trying to stop the casino. Maybe they were trying to keep her from revealing some secret she discovered when she was vacuuming and dusting.”

Blood pounded in my ears, and I watched the stunned faces of the others as this new idea sank in.

“What?” Melissa pointed her fork at Elizabeth, whose narrowed eyes blinked once. “It’s possible, right?”

“Of course it’s possible.” Elizabeth’s lawyer voice was a half-tone louder than her normal conversational speech, and her eyes brightened with excitement. “You have any idea how many people Marjorie Mellon might have had the goods on? Anyone who comes into a business after hours has access to whatever’s lying around. She knows secrets that no one else does.”

“Doesn’t that make
you
a better suspect than me?” My brain was busy sweeping out old assumptions to make room for new possibilities. Elizabeth had said two or three times that she looked forward to going to work on Thursdays because Marjorie put things right in her office every Wednesday evening at eight.

“Believe it or not, we’re not the only ones thinking this way. Michele Castro stopped by to see me this morning.

And it wasn’t a social visit, either. She asked a lot of questions about Marjorie. When she’d been at the office, what our relationship was, whether I left my computer on when she came, whether the file cabinets were locked. Pretty easy to read between those lines. What she was really asking was whether Marjorie had access to information that I might want to hide from the rest of the world.”

“So, what might she have discovered? Who are her clients?” Susan pushed out of her chair and stacked empty dessert plates on the serving tray, her red hair flying out behind her. “What would be damaging enough that it would be worth killing for?”

We sat in silence with our own secrets for a few long seconds. There were lots of things I’d done in my life that I wouldn’t want to broadcast to the entire world—shoplifting an Annie Lennox CD when I was thirteen; having a one week secret fling with a college friend’s newly discarded boyfriend; telling my sister Anne that I had the flu on her twenty-fifth birthday and then spending my precious Saturday in my gourd studio. None of these were offenses I couldn’t get over.

“Good question,” I said. “First of all, it would have to be something that would change your life if other people knew.”

“Make you lose your spouse or your business or your reputation, you mean?” Nora looked skeptical. “Why wouldn’t you just pick up and start over somewhere else?”

Elizabeth laughed. “There you go, thinking like a normal person. Someone who can take a life for any reason except self-defense doesn’t think like a normal person. I guess I’m the one with the most experience in dealing with the criminal mind. Uh uh, don’t you go there, Melissa Paul. I see that twinkle in your eye.”

We all saw it. Melissa looked down into her tea cup, the knowing smile still lifting the corners of her mouth. Finally, as though she could hold it back no longer, she said, “I was just thinking that you’re very good at what you do.

Which means you have to out-think the other side. Which means that you’ve had some practice trying to come up with bizarre and illegal schemes. Right?”

“Now my secret’s out.” Elizabeth laughed with the rest of us. “But I don’t have any big ideas, not yet. So, let’s look at what we have so far. Marjorie found something, possibly that belonged to someone she worked for. That someone’s life would have been ruined if Marjorie revealed that something. We need to start with a list of her clients. Normally, that would be difficult to obtain, given that we have no power to impound her files or her computers.”

Her smile gave me a shiver. She was going to suggest something that would have us skating on the edge of legal. Elizabeth Conklin drew out the moment for the sake of heightening the drama until Nora tapped her fingernail against the rim of the pie plate.

“But you’re going to tell us why it’s not going to be so hard this time, right?”

“Who knows as much about people’s business as a cleaning person?” One raised eyebrow nearly touched Elizabeth’s hairline.

“Marjorie probably didn’t have her nails done, so it isn’t her manicurist.” Who else? “Her hairdresser?”

Elizabeth shook her head slowly. “Marjorie went to the barber shop, had him cut her curls the same length all over, and then she left. No gossip.”

“No, it’s not who she would tell about her clients, but who would already know them.” Melissa’s eyes narrowed. “An accountant. That’s the only . . . I’m right, aren’t I? You know Marjorie’s accountant.”

Elizabeth’s grin was answer enough. “I don’t want to get him in trouble by asking him outright for that list. So maybe I’ll visit his office, and while I’m there he might just happen to leave her client list out on his desk while he visits the men’s room. If I can figure out how to tell him what I need without actually saying it.”

Nobody expressed a shred of doubt that Elizabeth would find a way make her intentions known to the accountant.

“Meanwhile, though, we know enough about Marjorie’s clients to get started.” Assuming her role as unofficial recording secretary, Nora started listing names. “Elizabeth Conklin, Seth Selinsky, Joseph Trent, Holly Herman, Luney Toons.”

“B. H. Hovanian,” Elizabeth said, avoiding my eyes. “Walden Savings and Loan.”

“Taconic Inn,” Melissa said, grinning. “Four times a year, you know, when we do big seasonal changes. I think she also does that—
did
that—for Maria’s Italian Restaurant and for that new, expensive French bistro in Rhinebeck.”

“Seems like enough to start. I vote that we save Elizabeth Conklin and Melissa Paul for last.” Everyone giggled nervously, and I laughed with them. The next part was what was making me nervous. “I’m not going to be the one to talk to Seth. If one of you finds out something, fine, I’ll live with that. But I don’t want to go sneaking around in the dusty corners of his life.”

“I’ll do it,” Nora offered. “He’s always been nice to me, helped me take a second mortgage after Coach died. I’ll see what I can find out.”

“I’ll talk to Rick Luney,” Elizabeth said. “We bump into each other at the diner at least once a week, and he likes to gossip much more than he likes to work. I think I can get him to open up.”