Lemon Larceny (The Donut Mysteries) (23 page)

“You understand
that we’re going to have to speak with Sasha before we mark you off our list of
suspects, don’t you?”

He shook his head
in disgust.
 
“Don’t you believe
anything anyone tells you?
 
Don’t
drag her into this mess.”

“If she confirms
your story, we won’t have to breathe a word about your involvement with her,” I
said, “but if you contact her before we speak with her, we’ll know, and I
guarantee you that things will escalate after that.”

Hank laughed a little.
 
“Is that a threat?”

“No, it’s a
promise.
 
You don’t know this, but my
boyfriend is a state police inspector.
 
If I point him in your direction, it’s not going to be a pleasant
experience for you.”

“Ask her,
then.
 
Just don’t do it in front of
Harry,” the handyman pleaded.

“What was the
pretense for your last visit?” Momma asked him.
 
“I’m assuming she ‘hired’ you to do odd
jobs for her around the house.”

“How did you know
that?” he asked her incredulously.

“Please, your job
description offers you the perfect cover for visiting married women in their
homes in the middle of the day without arousing suspicion.”

Hank clearly
didn’t like the implication of what my mother had just told him, but he didn’t
deny it, either.
 
“She had a problem
with her washing machine that I was supposed to be looking at,” he said.

“I’ll just bet
she did,” I said.
 
“Where can we
find her?”

Hank glanced at
his watch, and then he said, “Most likely she’s at home.
 
Harry’s at work, so now would be the
perfect time to go over there.”

“And you won’t
warn her that we’re coming, is that correct?” Momma asked.

“I promise not to
contact her,” he said.
 
“Now I’d
better get going.
 
It’s hard to tell
what kind of trouble Greg has gotten himself into in my absence.”

After Hank and
his assistant were gone, I said, “Grab your car keys.
 
We’re going to go confirm Hank’s alibi.”

“Suzanne, do you
honestly believe that this woman is going to admit to us that she’s planning to
leave her husband for our handyman?”

“That’s the
beauty of it.
 
All we have to do is
hint at what we know and I’m willing to bet that she’ll come clean with us.”

“Why do you say
that?” Momma asked me.

“I think it’s
pretty clear that she’s not going to leave her husband,” I said.
 
“If she were, she probably would have
done it by now.
 
That means she’ll
want us to keep her little secret about her plans with Hank, and we can use as
that as leverage.”

“It’s all a
little tawdry, don’t you think?”

I nodded in
agreement.
 
“It’s a lot tawdry, but
what choice do we have?
 
We don’t
have a lot of time to find Aunt Jean’s killer, and we can’t compel anyone to
talk to us like the police can.
 
We
have to use the tools we have and do our best to make things happen.”

“We’ve certainly
accomplished that, haven’t we?”

“Time will tell,”
I said as we locked up Aunt Jean’s house and headed over to Sasha and Harry
Usher’s house to find out if we finally might be able to mark a suspect’s name
off of our list.

Chapter 20

“You must be Sasha
Usher,” I said when she answered her door.
 
The middle-aged woman was a good twenty pounds over her ideal weight,
and all of it had been used for some pretty impressive curves.
 
Her dark roots were showing, but most of
her styled hair was a bold shade of striking blonde.
 
Hank had given us her address, as well
as instructions on how to get there.

“I’m Sasha,” she
said curtly, “but I’m not interested.”

“In what?” I
asked.

“Whatever it is
that you’re selling,” she replied as she started to close the door.

“We’re not here
for commerce,” my mother said.
 
“We’re here because of Hank Caldwell.”

That caused Sasha
to hesitate.
 
“What about Hank?”

I looked around
the empty street, pretending to see crowds that clearly weren’t there.
 
“Wouldn’t you be more comfortable discussing
this inside?”

“I don’t even
know you,” she said guardedly.
 
“I’m
not about to let you into my home.”
 
Clearly she hadn’t always been that picky about who she let inside.

“That’s easy enough
to fix.
 
I’m Suzanne Hart, and this
is my mother, Dorothea.
 
We were
related to Jean Maxwell.”

“I’m sorry for
your loss,” Sasha said automatically.
 
“I don’t suppose it would hurt to give you a few minutes of my
time.
 
Come in.”

We walked inside,
and to my surprise, the place was nothing like I’d expected.
 
Instead of flowery furnishings and muted
pastels, the living room was sleek and modern, with bold color choices and
futuristic furniture.
 
“Please
excuse the interior, but my husband fancies himself an amateur decorator.”

“It’s absolutely lovely,”
I said, and in its own way, it was, but like Sasha, it wasn’t to my particular
taste, and I was happy that I didn’t have to live there.

“Would you care
for some tea?” she asked us.
 
Sasha
was ever the good hostess, but I had a hunch that was all about to change.

“Thanks, but we aren’t
staying.
 
We just need to know one
thing.”
 
I let the statement hover
in the air for a few moments, hoping that her own imagination would fuel her
anxiety.
 
Fortunately, Momma picked
up on what I was doing.
 
We were
slowly learning to be a team, and I found myself enjoying the interactions with
my mother despite the reason we were investigating together.

“What is it?” she
finally asked us with dread.

“Was Hank here with
you the morning my aunt had her accident?” I asked.
 
There was no reason to muddy the waters
with Sasha and disclose that we knew that it was murder.

“Why, did he tell
you that he was?” she asked.
 
The
woman was clearly upset now.
 
Were
her secrets about to be exposed?

“He told us that he
was here to look at something for you,” Momma said.

“He was,” she
said in obvious relief.
 
“I thought
my washing machine was dead, but it turned out to be a false alarm.
 
I’m so silly about those types of
things.
 
I don’t know what I’d do
without Hank.”

I had a hunch,
but I wasn’t about to say anything.
 
“Now, tell us the
real
reason
that he was here,” I said.

Sasha looked at
me guiltily, and I wondered how she’d managed to conceal her duplicity from her
husband for so long.
 
Was Harry that
dense, or was he just in love with his own wife?
 
In some cases, that could turn out to be
a fatal flaw, but I doubted that Sasha would ever kill him, though I was pretty
sure she was going to break his heart someday, and for some folks, that would
be a fate even worse than death.

“I’m sure I don’t
know what you mean,” she said, her voice cracking a little as she said it.

“The request is
simple enough to answer,” Momma said with that firm voice she often used when
she chided me.
 
“We know what you
are planning to do, and we could expose your secrets to the world if we choose
to, so it is best if you answer our question without any more hesitation or
denial.”
 
I felt as proud as a
mother bird watching her little fledgling take flight for the first time, and
it occurred to me that my mother had the potential to be better at this than I
was.

“Like I told you
before, he was here looking at my washing machine,” she said softly.
 
“He wasn’t here for more than a minute
or two.”

Momma
nodded.
 
“Very well.
 
If that’s how you choose to represent
what happened, then we have no choice but to pursue this matter further.”

Momma started to
get up, but she didn’t get far before Sasha stopped her.
 
“Okay, there was more to it than that,
but nothing happened between us.
 
It
was all talk.
 
I swear it.”

“Very good,”
Momma said approvingly as she settled back down.
 
“Now tell us, exactly when did Hank
arrive, and when did he leave?
 
Be
as precise as possible, please.”

Sasha told her
that as well without any protest.

Momma stood.
 
“Excellent.
 
Thank you for your cooperation.”
 
She was clearly about to add something
else when she obviously changed her mind and beckoned to me.
 
“Let’s go, Suzanne.
 
We’ve taken up enough of Mrs. Usher’s
time.”

“It’s just Sasha,”
she corrected her automatically.

“Indeed,” Momma
said, and we left her a little less confident that she’d been when we’d first
arrived.

Before we made it
out the door, Sasha asked meekly, “This is just between us, right?”

“Right,” I said,
and then we left her standing there wondering if I’d been telling the truth or
not.

I didn’t feel any
guilt from answering her so sarcastically.
 
If she had a sleepless night or two because of our conversation, maybe
she’d reevaluate her life and work things out with her husband.

Or not.

I wasn’t her
confessor or her marriage counselor, but I’d been cheated on myself once upon a
time.

Pain was pain, though,
and even though I didn’t know Harry, I suspected that he deserved better.

Out in the car, I
told my mother, “Wow, I’ve got to hand it to you.
 
That was amazing.”

Momma dismissed
it with a wave of her hand.
 
“Truthfully,
it was manipulative and it was beneath me,” she protested.
 
“I never would have done it if it hadn’t
been my sister’s murder we were investigating.”

That took a
little wind from my sails, but I knew that some people weren’t cut out for what
I did, and there was no shame in that.

“What were you
about to say to her there at the end?”

“Was it that
obvious?” Momma asked, and I noticed that her hands were shaking a little as
she started the car and began to drive away.

“Maybe not to
anyone else, but it was pretty clear to me,” I said.

“I was about to
lecture her on the sanctity of marriage, if you can imagine that,” Momma
said.
 
“She’s not only toying with
Hank and whoever else she’s carried this flirting on with, but she’s showing
her husband a massive amount of disrespect.
 
If she’s that unhappy with her marriage,
she should leave him and start a new life with someone else or even on her own,
but I suspect that will never happen, at least not of her own volition.”

“What makes you
say that?” I asked, fascinated by how my mother’s mind worked.

“It’s clear,
isn’t it?
 
If she were going to
leave Harry, she would have done so by now.”
 
Momma paused, and then after a moment
she added, “I’ve never met the man, but I feel nothing but sympathy for
him.
 
Odd, isn’t it?”

“I don’t think
it’s odd at all,” I said.
 
“You have
a compassionate spirit.”

“Among other
things,” Momma said, clearly trying to shrug our last interview off.
 
“At least we’ve finally made some
progress.
 
There’s no way that Hank
could get from Meredith Pence to Sasha’s and back again, manage to install that
trip wire, and then remove it later.”

“Agreed,” I said.

“Why does it feel
so small eliminating one of our suspects, Suzanne?
 
I expected to feel more triumphant about
it than I do.”

“That’s because
we haven’t found the real killer yet,” I assured her, “but we just took a big
step forward, and that’s a very good thing indeed.”

“So then, it’s on
to the next one,” Momma said.

“Upward and
onward,” I agreed.

Momma hesitated
longer than necessary at the next stop sign.
 
“What’s wrong?”

“It might help if
I knew the name of the next person we need to speak with.”

“It just might at
that,” I said with a slight smile.
 
At least my mother had gotten a touch of her sense of humor back, and
that was never a bad thing.
 
“Drive
to Greta’s place.
 
I want to see the
housekeeper in her natural environment.”

“I would, but I
don’t know where she lives.”

“Fortunately, I
do,” I said as I called her address up on my phone.
 
“I looked her up last night.”

As I gave my
mother directions to her place, we chatted about how we were going to approach
Greta, but in the end, by the time we got there we still didn’t have any real
idea of what to say.

“Should I circle
the block until we come up with something?” Momma asked.

“No, just park
right out front,” I said.

“But we don’t
know what we’re going to say,” my mother protested.