Lye in Wait (12 page)

I remembered my teenaged relationship with my mother. "I
have a feeling most things won't be easy when she's fifteen."
"

I guess we'll find out," Meghan said. "Wait a minute. She was
here when you came home?"

I told her what Erin had told me, and that Richard now knew
where we hid our spare key. Her lips pressed together for a moment before Erin came back into the room. Then she smiled at her
daughter and jingled her keys in her pocket.

"Ready, Bug?"

Erin nodded and they left. Richard was going to be hearing
from Meghan about this one.

And I was itching to tell her I wasn't the only one who thought
Walter might have been murdered. Tonight I'd have to try to grab
her away from Erin for a few minutes.

That night while I measured and melted lip balm ingredients, then
painstakingly filled three hundred little white tubes, I thought
about who would want to kill Walter.

Murder. How odd: even though the concept was far more
frightening, it was easier for me to think about than suicide. The
specter of Bobby Lee had promptly receded to the shadows at the
first suggestion Walter may have died by a hand other than his
own. And I didn't miss the heavy weight of that presence at all.

Shrugging off that bit of introspection, I returned to theorizing. Love and greed were supposed to be the two most common
motives for killing someone. Debby and the lottery. Or something
else? What about an insurance policy? Walter wasn't someone I
thought of as having life insurance. I'd have been surprised if his
old International Scout was insured for anything beyond liability,
never mind his own life. But I hadn't thought of him as someone
who would win the lottery and donate the winnings to charity, or
be engaged to the charming Debby, either. And those two things
together could be a reason for him to have life insurance he'd want
to pay out. If he'd given all the money away from the lottery and
then it turned out he had someone to take care of, he might be
prompted to take out a policy.

I warmed to the idea. Was there an insurance policy in the
boxes upstairs? Meghan and I could have missed it while packing
up Walter's papers, all our attention focused on finding his will. We
could have missed the will, too, considering how fast we'd packed
the boxes. And a will would open up a whole new bag of possibilities, greed being what it was.

So how did the person who had been in Walter's house play
into this? Had I been alone with a killer? My stomach quivered
at the thought. Could it have been a coincidence, a break-in? Unlikely. When Mrs. Gray had let us in, the front door hadn't looked
like it had been forced open. Debby could have a key. Or, Jacob
might have dropped by, though neither of them had given any indication of having seen me before. But I hadn't seen whoever was
hiding in the kitchen that night, so maybe he-or she-wouldn't
recognize me either. In fact, I sincerely hoped not.

But if someone had used a key, why was the key under the
flowerpot out back missing and the door still open? And if you
had a key, why would you take the one under the flowerpot? To
divert attention away from yourself. To confuse the issue. Because
you didn't have your key with you. Or maybe the key hadn't been
under the flowerpot for a long time-Walter had told us about it
a year ago or more-and maybe he was the one who left the door
hanging open when he left that morning, as I had first believed.
The key, or rather the absence of the key, might not mean a thing.
Come at it from another direction.

If Walter did have a policy that named Debby as the beneficiary, she could have wanted the money, since any hope of getting her hands on his lottery winnings after they married faded
with each check he wrote to charity. Jacob could have killed him
because he wanted Debby. And either or both of them could have
known about my soap-making business and the lye from Walter
himself.

I stopped still. Had someone intentionally tried to frame me? I
lowered myself slowly to a stool, setting the lip balm tube I'd been
filling on the counter in front of me. Crap. Oh, crap, crap, crap. I'd involved myself in finding out what had happened to Walter
because I wanted to understand his need to kill himself, and that
desire had segued into wanting to know why someone else would
want to kill him. But, I realized now, a lot of my interest came from
the fact that he'd died right here, right here, on the floor under this
very stool. This was the first time it had occurred to me that I, personally, could have been on someone's mind as they thought about
needing Walter to be dead.

Could I really be framed for killing Walter? Was there some
manufactured evidence waiting for the police to find it?

I felt a little nauseated and walked to the back door, opening
it and walking out into the backyard. The air was cool and damp
and I sucked it into my lungs, trying to steady my sudden onrush
of nerves.

Oh, for heaven's sake, Sophie Mae. Stop being so paranoid. Sheesh.

How exactly do you make someone drink lye? At gunpoint,
maybe? Only if the victim is stupid or believes they can survive
the lye, but not the bullet. Or, you might threaten something, or
someone, they wanted to keep safe. I could see Walter drinking lye
to save someone else. Debby. Or-I had a horrible thought-Erin.
Or maybe it would be possible to trick a person into drinking lye.
Disguised as water?

When lye is first mixed, the chemical reaction results in heat.
The lye on the floor had been room temperature, so it had been
mixed long enough before to allow for cooling. How long was
that? A couple hours, I thought, maybe more. I hadn't really paid
attention. And, of course, you could speed it with ice, but not too
much or the granules would precipitate out of the liquid. Also, the
volume of the mixture would affect how quickly it cooled. So, the fact the lye had cooled to room temperature didn't mean anything
more than it had been mixed at least some time prior to Walter
drinking it. No, it didn't even mean that. Maybe he drank it hot,
and it had then cooled on the floor before I got home and found
him.

I grimaced. The only thing worse than drinking lye would be
drinking hot lye. Still, it was a possibility.

I went back inside and continued filling lip balm tubes out of
sheer stubbornness. My eyes were bleary as I finished the tedious
and exacting process, and it was after eleven by the time I poured
the last one. My bed beckoned, but I wanted to make a start on
Walter's paperwork. On a tea run upstairs, I'd managed to pull
Meghan aside and tell her Ambrose had at least implied Walter
might have been murdered. Her face had pinched at the news, the
fear of lawsuits replaced with a more primal one.

Settling cross-legged onto the wood floor of the spare room, I
dumped one of the boxes of papers out in front of me. As I sifted
each individual piece out of the jumble, it received a thorough perusal and my judgment regarding any relevance to anything. All
I ended up with after an hour was a pile of charity receipts held
together with a stray paperclip and a box full of unmitigated junk.
Sure, a particular check stub or movie theater ticket might provide
the telling clue, but not with the dearth of information I had. I'd
be happy to turn the whole lot over to Ambrose.

Just as soon as I went through the other two boxes.

I WAS HAVING ONE of those crazy dreams that you can't describe
when you wake up but you know was crazy because you remember
something about Captain Kirk and a pecan orchard and someone
losing a piece of Swiss cheese. The siren in the background fit well
enough, and it took me a while to realize it wasn't in my dream.
Brightly revolving lights flashing through my window added to the
surreal effect when I got around to opening my eyes.

Groggy, I dragged myself out of bed and looked out. My bedroom was at the back of the house, overlooking the backyard and
the alley and Walter's little house. Which now had flames licking
out the windows.

I threw on my robe and a pair of tennis shoes and ran into the
hallway. Erin stood in her bedroom doorway rubbing sleep from
her eyes, Brodie woofing low in his throat beside her. Meghan
rushed past me to her daughter.

"It's Walter's place," I said. "Fire"

She nodded and began speaking to Erin. I went past them and
down the stairs, through the living room and kitchen and down
to my workroom. I unlocked the back door and trotted out to the
alley.

The smell hit me like an open-handed slap. Bitter, harsh, and
acrid, it was nothing like the pleasant wood smoke from a friendly
hearth fire. This reek contained destruction. Wisps of ash floated
down like snow from hell, settling on my shoulders and in my hair.
My eyes started to burn.

Two figures in bulky fire gear appeared, lugging a huge hose
around the corner of the little house. Another appeared behind
them, speaking into a radio. They aimed, and a column of water
gushed forth. They trained it on the roof. The hose seemed to flex
and pulse with a life of its own.

Walter's old international Scout, painted the same bright yellow as the suspenders he'd always worn, flared like a torch. The
firefighters, concentrating on the house, let it burn.

None of the windows had glass in them anymore; fire shot out
of one, and black smoke poured out of the others, accompanied by
flickers of flame. One of the firefighters shouted something, and
the other one nodded. They shifted the plume of water to the left.
The flames roared, as if trying to fight back, but the abundance of
water tamed them somewhat. The roofing sputtered and steamed
as water worked into the burning interior.

Up and down the alley and on the street in front, neighbors
stood around watching in their varied night garb. Sensing movement behind me, I turned to find Meghan approaching, Erin's
hand clasped tightly in hers. Erin wore sweat pants, and a coat over her nightgown, though heat shimmered through the air and made
them unnecessary. She wrinkled her nose and blinked rapidly.

There wasn't much to say. We stood and watched as the firefighters worked to contain the fire, to keep it from spreading to
any of the other homes. There was a bad moment when the siding on Mrs. Gray's house flared up near the roofline, but the
men extinguished it in seconds. The whole thing took less than
two hours, and half of that was spent soaking the dying embers.
Walter's house was a complete loss, a charred skeleton reaching up
from the soggy black mess of scorched furniture and unrecognizable flotsam and jetsam.

Meghan took Erin back to bed after the worst was over and
came back to stand by me for a while. Then she left again. I
couldn't seem to go inside, though. A gawker knot had gathered
around Mrs. Gray at one end of the alley, but I ignored them, more
stunned than morbidly curious. I was sure this fire hadn't been an
accident any more than Walter's death had been.

I picked my way through the sodden detritus in the alley, walking to where the firefighters were packing up their equipment.
After a few moments of watching them, I decided on who looked
to be in charge. I walked toward him, but another man ran in front
of me, shouting.

"Chief Blakely. Please, Chief, what can you tell us about this
fire?"

Us? I looked around. A sudden flash of light blinded me, and
I put a hand over my eyes. Squinting, I lowered my hand, and another flash went off.

"Stop that!" I said.

The photographer, a tall angular woman with short blonde
hair, ignored me, turning to take a couple shots of the chief talking
to the man I'd figured out was a reporter. I waited until she had
moved on to the smoking mess behind me, then walked toward
the fire chief.

He was saying, "I have no comment, Randy. You know it's too
early for me to be able to tell you anything more. We have to complete our investigation."