Murder and Salutations (Book 3 in the Cardmaking Mysteries) (5 page)

“
No, they balance each other
out. You could grab my bag for me, though.”

Lillian must have been waiting at the door
for us. She threw it open just as we reached it. “Hello, ladies.
Jennifer, you’re in the pink bedroom, and Sara Lynn, you’re in the
lavender one.” For a relatively unconventional woman, my aunt
enjoyed the softer color palettes when it came to decorating her
house.

I put the carriers in the designated
bedroom, then left their doors open, in case Oggie and Nash woke up
and wanted a stretch. Lillian had set up a litter box in one
corner, along with putting out some water and the treats both cats
loved. I was impressed that my aunt had been so thorough, but then
I realized that she was always the perfect hostess, no matter if
her houseguests walked on two legs or four.

I found Lillian in the kitchen, and took in
the delightful aroma of freshly baking brownies. “When will they be
out of the oven?”

Lillian laughed. “Patience, Jennifer.
They’ve got another five minutes of baking, and then I like to let
them cool before I ice them.”

“
Well, I’d like to lose
twenty pounds, but that’s not happening either. I’ll give you five
minutes to bake and five to cool, but that’s my best
offer.”

Sara Lynn came out, and I noticed she held
the note from Bailey clutched in her hand.

Before I could warn Lillian not to say
anything, our aunt asked, “What’s that you’re holding so
tightly?”

“
It’s a note from Bailey,”
Sara Lynn said simply.

“
How sweet,” she said, the
sarcasm dripping from her words. “So he’s already apologizing and
trying to crawl back to you. I know how you feel about him, though
I can’t imagine why, but if you do take the cur back, I hope you’re
going to make it so miserable for him that he cries like a little
girl.”

Sara Lynn handed Lillian the note, then
after she explained its meaning, she said, “Somehow I don’t think
this is a reconciliation attempt.”

Lillian looked surprised by the admission.
“Everyone knows I’m not Bailey’s biggest fan, but it seems petty
even for him, to rob you on his way out the door.” She tapped the
note with a finger, then said, “If that’s what he did. Sara Lynn,
when was the last time you saw that cash?”

She thought about it a few seconds, then
said, “It’s been months. I don’t ordinarily keep tabs on my
emergency fund. Every now and then I’ll check on it, though, just
to make sure it’s there if I need it.”

Lillian said, “Then how do you know he took
it tonight? This note’s not dated, is it?”

Sara Lynn took it back from her, studied it
a few seconds, then said, “No, there’s nothing here that would tell
me he robbed us tonight, but somehow I know in my heart he did. Why
else would all the lights be on in our house?”

Lillian shrugged. “Sorry, I don’t have an
answer for that. You’ll just have to ask him the next time you see
him.”

The oven timer went off and Lillian said,
“The brownies are ready.” She opened the oven door and poked a
toothpick into the center of the rich brown concoction. After
seeing that it came out clean, Lillian pulled the pan out and put
it on a cooling rack. “I’d like to wait an hour, but I insist we at
least wait five minutes.” She reset the timer, then put out plates
of fine china, Waterford drinking goblets and linen napkins.

“
You don’t have to bring out
your best for us,” I said. “A paper plate and a plastic cup apiece
would be fine.”

Lillian arched one eyebrow as she looked at
me. “Jennifer, how can it be a party if we treat it like it’s so
commonplace?”

Sara Lynn was still staring at the note when
I looked over at her. There had to be some way to get my sister out
of her funk. I thought furiously of all the things that had worked
in the past, but none of them seemed appropriate tonight. Finally,
I decided to let her have her silent introspection. After all, if
Bailey really was gone, she had something worth mourning. While I
wouldn’t have been able to live with the man for more than fifteen
minutes without wanting to beat him to death with his television
remote control, he and Sara Lynn had found a happy balance in their
lives together, and I knew my sister would be devastated by her
marriage’s demise no matter what the circumstances. I lifted my
eyebrows as I looked at Lillian, hoping that she could make things
better, but she just shrugged as the timer went off again. Putting
on an air of false buoyancy, Lillian said, “It’s time to
indulge.”

As she lifted crumbling fragments of brownie
out of the pan, I was there with a knife, ready to slather on the
frosting. The brownies were from a boxed mix and the icing was in a
plastic container, but I didn’t care. They smelled delicious, and
besides, who had the time to make them from scratch anymore?

After Lillian had filled our plates and I
had topped the brownies with an ample layer of milk chocolate
icing, we took our treats to the table and sat down.

Our hostess said, “I’d offer you ice cream,
but all I have at the moment is peach, and I’m not sure how it
would go with our main course. Would anyone like coffee?”

“
Not me,” I said. “I want
milk.”

“
Sara Lynn?” Lillian
asked.

“
Whatever you’re having will
be fine with me,” she said absently.

Lillian and I did our best to make it a
party, but Sara Lynn was only half there, and soon after we ate,
she excused herself and went off to the lavender bedroom.

As I helped Lillian clean up, I asked, “Is
there anything we can do for her? I hate seeing Sara Lynn like
this.”

Lillian said, “Goodness knows I’ve been
through more than my fair share of divorces over the years. All I
can say is they seem to get a little easier as you go along—not
that that particular advice would do her much good right now. She’s
going to have to work her way through it by herself. All we can do
is support her in any way we can.”

As I rinsed the dishes Lillian washed in the
sink, I said in a low voice, “Can you believe he robbed her on the
way out?”

“
So you don’t think it could
have happened months ago?”

“
Lillian, it’s a good story,
but I’m not buying it.

Those lights were on for a reason. I’m
betting that Bailey wanted her to know exactly what he was
doing.”

Lillian frowned as she handed me a glass. I
hated the thought of dropping one, knowing that I couldn’t afford
to replace it without depleting the entire contents of my slim bank
account.

“
There’s something we
haven’t considered,” she finally said. “Maybe he needed it tonight
to escape.”

“
Escape from what?” I asked.
“A bad marriage? Five hundred bucks wouldn’t help him do
that.”

“
You’re forgetting
something, Jennifer. If Sara Lynn is right and Bailey was having an
affair with Eliza, is it possible he killed her and needed the
money to run away?”

I nearly dropped the glass I was rinsing.
“Honestly, can you see Bailey murdering anyone?”

Lillian shrugged. “Some people have a
surprising way of fooling those closest to them. If you hadn’t
heard it from Sara Lynn herself, could you ever have imagined
Bailey would cheat on her, especially with Eliza Glade?”

I thought about it for nearly a minute
before I spoke. “No, it’s still hard for me to believe, but I once
heard Bradford say that given the right circumstances, anyone could
commit murder.”

“
I believe it,” Lillian
said.

“
You honestly think Bailey
could have done it?” I couldn’t imagine my brother-in-law
displaying anything that resembled that kind of passion or
anger.

“
I’m not just talking about
him anymore,” Lillian said as her gaze drifted back toward the
lavender bedroom.

I was just glad I didn’t have anything in my
hands at the time or I would have surely dropped it. “You’re not
suggesting Sara Lynn killed her, are you? I don’t believe it—not
for a second.”

“
Calm down, Jennifer, I
don’t believe it either. But your brother is going to have to
consider the possibility, whether she’s related to him or not. Sara
Lynn is going to be under his microscope, and so is
Bailey.”

“
Then the two of us have to
figure out who really killed Eliza,” I said resolutely.

“
Surely your brother is
capable of doing that himself,” Lillian protested.

“
He is, but how long will
Sara Lynn’s reputation last if Bradford doesn’t wrap this up
quickly? Her business could die before the truth comes out, if
there’s a suspicion that she’s a murderer. We can’t let that
happen. We have to uncover the truth, and we have to do it
quickly.”

“
I’m in,” Lillian said as we
finished the dishes. “But where do we start?”

“
Let’s make a list of who
had a reason to want Eliza dead,” I said, then hastily added,
“besides my sister and her husband, that is.”

“
We can skip them for now,”
Lillian agreed, “but that doesn’t mean we can just forget about
them.”

“
I don’t want to talk about
that,” I said, unwilling to accept the possibility that Sara Lynn,
or even Bailey, could be a murderer. That was, along with a
thousand other reasons, why I would have made a terrible cop. I let
my emotions influence my thought process too much. Honestly,
though, I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

Lillian looked around, then said, “I wish I
had our white board from the store. It’s so much easier when we can
see our ideas printed out. Wait a second, I’ve got an idea.”

She left me for a minute, and I stayed right
where

I was. With everything that had happened
today, I hadn’t had time to dwell on my own problems. Thanks to my
nutty landlord, I was going to have to find a new place to live.
The fact that Hester was also evicting my neighbors Barrett and
Jeffrey didn’t help, though the two of them had found their own
ways to make my life less than idyllic. So where could I go? I knew
Lillian would take me in, but we spent enough time together at the
card shop. I doubted either one of us could take cohabitating as
well. Bradford and his family would give me a place to sleep, but
I’d fought most of my life to get out on my own, and I wasn’t going
to surrender it so easily. I’d find a place again. After all, I had
some time. How hard could it be?

Lillian came back in with a large mirror and
eyeliner. “Have you completely lost your mind?” I asked.

“
Hey, I’ve left many a
message this way in the past. Most of my ex-husbands found it
charming.”

“
I just bet they did,” I
said.

Lillian wrote
suspect, motive, means
,
and
opportunity
on the mirror. Below those, she listed the names of the
people my brother had talked to tonight. I knew there could be more
suspects than that, but we had to somehow limit our list to less
than the telephone book for all of Rebel Forge. She wrote the names
Addie Mason, Luke Penwright, Polly Blackburn and Kaye Jansen down
the left side of the mirror.

I nodded as she worked. “So we’re looking at
everyone who admitted to seeing Eliza tonight.”

“
Yes, but I’m missing
someone,” Lillian said as she studied the list.

“
Beth Anderson?” I asked,
half in jest.

“
Exactly,” Lillian
said.

As she added the waitress’s name, I said, “I
wasn’t serious. What possible reason would she have to kill
Eliza?”

Lillian refused to strike the name. “Don’t
be so naive, Jennifer. Eliza could make an enemy faster than
Stephen King can give you nightmares. We shouldn’t cross her off
our list until we can prove she’s innocent.”

“
Then let’s see what we do
know,” I said. “Let’s take Addie. Can you honestly see her killing
Eliza? They’ve been partners for years.”

“
What better reason could
she have?” Lillian said. “That woman would drive a saint to murder.
I wonder what happens to Eliza’s share of Heaven Scent now that
she’s dead.”

I shrugged. “I’d think it would go to her
estate.”

“
Don’t be so hasty in that
assumption,” Lillian said. “A lot of partners leave their stake in
their companies to their co-owners so the business can keep on
operating. We need to look into that.”

“
And how do you propose we
do that?” My aunt had an underground network of sources and
information that would have astounded Bradford, but I didn’t see
how she could find that out.

“
We’re simply going to ask
her,” Lillian said. “I think we should pay her a social call after
work tomorrow to give her our sympathies in losing her business
partner. You can make her a lovely card, and it will be the perfect
excuse to deliver it.”

“
You could make her one
yourself,” I said.

Lillian frowned. “I doubt she’d appreciate
my humor. This calls for a more conventional card than my
offerings. One of yours would be perfect.” I’d encouraged Lillian
to indulge her wicked sense of humor and start her own card corner
in my shop. While her dark sentiments weren’t appropriate for
everyone who came into the card shop, she certainly had developed a
rather loyal fan base for her wit.

“
You’re probably right,” I
said. “But I can’t do it after work. I’m having dinner with Gail
and her new boyfriend.” Gail was my best friend in the world. I
couldn’t imagine my life without her in it.