No Way to Kill a Lady (18 page)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I
n the morning, I took care not to wake Michael when I slipped out of the bedroom.

I carried Madeleine's book downstairs and found the drafty old kitchen as cold as a cave and cluttered with the dishes we'd abandoned during the night. I reread Emma's note. She had gone off with Hart, she wrote. She'd call later. Emma's absence had given us the privacy of the house, but I wondered where she had spent the night. And how.

I lit the oven and left its door open to heat the room while I brewed coffee. Since the oven was already warming, I decided to bake muffins. As I worked, I thought about my little sister and what a disaster she could make of her life if she didn't think things through.

My thoughts traveled back to last night's encounter with the bones in the woods. I washed the dishes while the muffins baked, considering my options.

As I dried my wooden mixing spoon, I gathered my courage. After tucking the spoon into its slot in the drawer, I phoned the police.

The state police arrived around nine: a plainclothes detective and a stern state trooper in uniform. The uniformed trooper was the same one who'd followed us home from the church, so I assumed he had tagged along with the detective to check up on Michael. I let them in and poured coffee.

Setting a plate of muffins on the table, I told them I'd found a skeleton in the woods near Shirley van Vincent's house.

They stared at each other, clearly unprepared for this bit of news.

I didn't bother to explain why I was wandering around at night, and maybe they were too surprised to ask. I told them in detail what I'd found and where.

The trooper jotted notes and stepped outside to make a call.

While he spoke on his cell phone, the detective finally noticed my trembling hands and made the effort to assure me that bodies were frequently found in the woods. “It was probably a homeless person or a hunter or maybe someone with dementia who wandered away from home. Sometimes people just disappear. It happens all the time.”

“But,” I said, “surely somebody reported this person missing?”

He shrugged. “Yeah, but the body wasn't found until now. Who knows how long it's been there? Don't let it bug you. We'll check it out.”

When the trooper returned, we sat at the kitchen table. The detective questioned me for nearly an hour about the case on their front burner—­relentlessly going over the details of what I'd seen at Madeleine's house when the body in the elevator was found. Feeling guilty for having left the scene of the crime—­even one that had been committed twenty years ago—­I patiently answered all his questions.

“Have you identified the body in the elevator?” I asked at last.

The detective told me the process would take weeks.

Finally, I said, “Madeleine Blackbird had some very distinctive jewelry. Three diamond rings she always wore.”

The two of them sat still and absorbed what I had said. They glanced at each other again.

I had decided it was ridiculous to pretend we hadn't guessed it was Madeleine herself in the elevator. Sutherland may have had his reasons for keeping the truth from the police, but I did not. In fact, I was pretty peeved with Sutherland.

I told the detective about Madeleine's postcards, and when he realized what I already knew—­that someone had pretended to be Madeleine after her death—­he was suddenly on my side. I handed over one of the postcards and suggested there might be a way to compare the handwriting. If Pippi had been pretending to be Madeleine, maybe somewhere there existed a sample of her handwriting? We brainstormed together quite companionably. They finally accepted muffins, and the two of them even laughed when I made a joke about Sutherland.

I did not tell them that the black leather-­bound book that lay on the table right in front of them was the one I'd had stolen out of Madeleine's home.

Only when they prepared to leave did the uniformed trooper ask after Michael.

“He's sleeping,” I said, although I'd already heard the shower turn on upstairs. “He had a long night. Can you come back later?”

They assured me they didn't need to, and we parted on pleasant terms.

I was sitting at the table, sipping hot coffee and reading Aunt Madeleine's ledger, when Libby drove up and pounded on the back door. Against my better judgment, I let her in.

She blew in like a storm, carrying her year-­old son, Max, into the kitchen. “Do you know there's a pig on your porch?”

“His name is Ralphie.”

“Never mind. You won't believe this. I spent last night being
interrogated
by the police—­and they were all business, not even a
spark
of concern for a private citizen's emotional well-­being. The whole ordeal was agonizing and exhausting, so I desperately need a break this morning. But my usual babysitter has cramps, which is terribly inconsiderate, so I'm throwing myself on your mercy.” She pushed Max into my arms and stopped her tirade long enough to take a long, speculative look at me. “Good heavens, Nora, you look positively ten years younger today. What have you done to yourself? A facial? Grapefruit? I hear grapefruit does wonders for your skin, but they give me heartburn. Or—­oh, for the love of—­! You've been up all night with That Man of Yours, haven't you?”

Since I had already baked the ultimate Libby distraction, I said, “I made muffins. Help yourself.”

“Ooh, they smell heavenly! Here, take a quick snapshot of me holding one for my PitterPat followers.”

I took a photo with her cell phone. While she dispatched the picture to her cyber friends and pulled butter from the fridge, I cuddled Max close and gave him kisses. The baby squirmed with delight and grabbed handfuls of my hair. I wiggled my nose into his tummy to make him giggle.

“My followers love it when I post food pictures! And last night after those dreadful police finally left, I posted a photo of my new pedicure, and my hits went through the roof! It's wonderful having so many people paying attention to me. It's like having a fan club.”

Libby fluttered around the kitchen—­selecting a mug and plate from a cupboard, pouring coffee and choosing a large muffin for herself—­before settling at the table like a broody hen getting comfy on her nest. For the morning's outing, she wore another stretchy tracksuit—­ruby red this time—­over a T-­shirt emblazoned with the word
SPECIAL
.

Libby planted her elbows on the table and blew across her coffee, eyes alight. “Now. Tell me everything about the sex. Is he taking out all his pent-­up frustrations on you after the forced abstinence? Keeping you awake till all hours? Tying you up, maybe?”

“Libby, you appall me sometimes.” I fed Max a hunk of my muffin.

“I don't mean tying up for real, just for play. You know—­captured-­slave sex.”

“No,” I said firmly. “There's no slave sex whatsoever.”

“Well, that's disappointing. I have a theory about tying up. I think some women enjoy that fantasy because it means they don't have to be in charge for once. We're saddled with every other responsibility—­I mean, after I've raised the children, paid the bills, kept the house, fed the dog and made myself desirable by dieting and exercising and exfoliating until my skin literally peels off, shouldn't I get a pass when it comes to making whoopie? Why shouldn't somebody tie me down and bear the burden of making the sex great?”

“That's actually rather profound, Libby,” I said. “Almost a feminist doctrine.”

“Thank you. Is he very demanding, though?” Her entire face sparkled. “Insisting you do everything in the book?”

“I don't think you and I read the same book, Lib.” Desperate to change the subject, I asked, “How about you? Making any headway with the deputy?”

She preened, clearly happy to switch to talking about herself. “As a matter of fact, he telephoned yesterday. He asked if I'd accidentally left a spritz bottle of perfume in his car, and could he return it?”

“Did you? Leave perfume in his car?”

“Well, not on purpose.” She turned pink. “He might drop by this afternoon. Do you like my hair?”

“It's lovely.”

Libby helped herself to a second muffin. “So tell me everything about last night when you broke the law.”

“No laws were broken.”

“I mean about breaking into Quintain! Do you have sex on your mind all the time? What happened? And where's Emma?”

Reluctantly, I told Libby about my escapade at Quintain, Emma's arrest and my discovery of another dead person. But Emma's departure with Hart Jones elicited a cry of delight from Libby.

“Hart's back in the picture?” she exclaimed when I had related the whole tale. “Oh, Nora, do you think he might sweep her off her feet this time? Where do you think they went together?”

“Probably not home to meet his mother.”

“Do you think they've run off for some kind of romantic tryst? Only Emma could seduce a man when she's seven months pregnant!”

“Eight,” I said. “And let's remember he's engaged to be married.”

“Into the Haffenpepper family,” Libby replied. “And they hang on to their in-­laws with talons. Once he's married, he might as well be cemented to Penny. They'll never divorce. Family values—­that phrase might have originated with the Haffenpeppers.”

I had been thinking about Emma's choices lately. I said, “Hart's a good man, Lib. If we could choose someone for Emma to be with, it would be him, wouldn't it? Somebody stable, but fun. Employed, but not wedded to his career. He'd be a wonderful father, too.”

Libby nodded. “He coaches a baseball team, doesn't he? Of handicapped kids? Just the kind of selfless work the Haffenpeppers love.”

“Last night, Emma whistled, though, and Hart came running.”

Libby sighed. “Why can't I engender that kind of passion in a man?”

“You do.” I pointed at her phone. “On an hourly basis. How many PitterPat followers do you have at the moment?”

“Eighteen thousand.”

“Eighteen—­!” I was astounded. “Libby, I had no idea! Surely one of them wants to meet you in the flesh?”

“I'm not so sure,” she said, suddenly uncertain.

“Well, you should ask them. Invite one of them to meet you for a drink somewhere.”

“What if they all turn out to be . . .”

“Nerds?” I asked.

“Perverts,” she said, her eyes shifting sideways.

“Is that a bad thing?”

“Maybe not.” She smiled warmly again and broke off a bit of muffin. “I'm glad we can have these sisterly chats now and then, Nora. What's that you're reading?”

“Aunt Madeleine's ledger. It's a record book of some kind.”

Munching on her muffin, Libby pulled the ledger across the table and flipped through the pages. “This made no sense to me back when I was a child, and it still doesn't. What was she keeping a rec­ord of?”

I took a deep breath for courage. “Actually, I'm starting to worry about that.”

Libby put down the book and gave me a solemn stare. “Does this have something to do with the sex trafficking?”

“I never believed that story,” I said. “Even the morning news says there was only one woman who turned to prostitution, so we can hardly conclude that's what Madeleine was up to. But it certainly looks as if she was accepting money from men for something.”

“What are you—­? Wait a minute! You mean she was—­? Money for sex? Nora, that's a perfectly preposterous conclusion.”

I told Libby first about my long-­ago encounter with Aunt Madeleine and her request that I destroy her book in the event of her death. Then about the slap I'd been given when I mentioned Aunt Madeline's name to Mr. and Mrs. Banks. At last I flipped through the ledger book and found a name on one of the pages. I pointed it out to Libby.

“See? Mr. Banks. Listed three times. Each time with a sum of money in the opposite column. Clearly, he paid her. His wife must have assumed he paid Madeleine for . . . some other reason.”

“Maybe he was buying something. A painting. Or—­or a statue. Or—­some service.”

“I'm trying to guess what kind of service Aunt Madeleine performed.”

“Nora! She wasn't prostituting herself!”

Michael arrived in time to hear that declaration. “Prostitution? At breakfast? Hey, it's Max! Hiya, little buddy!”

Maximus splurted his muffin out of his mouth and reached his arms to Michael. “Da!”

“Hello, Libby.”

“Good morning,” she said coolly, as Michael leaned down and kissed me.

Then he snatched Max from my possession and swung him high. The baby gurgled with delight. His favorite playmate was back.

Libby said, “It's good to see you out of jail.”

“Yeah, thanks. It feels good to me, too. Max, I missed your birthday! Look how big you are! How much do you weigh now?”

“He's twenty-­three pounds,” Libby supplied.

“A linebacker,” Michael said, carrying the baby to the kitchen counter. “Let's see what we've got here. Muffins? What kind of breakfast is that for guys like us? Personally, I don't want to look at scrambled eggs ever again, so let's see what kind of leftovers we have to work with.”

Max was happy to find himself snugly tucked into the crook of Michael's arm. He sucked on his thumb, gaze full of anticipation while Michael checked the fridge and gathered up the fixings for a substantial hash.

Watching, Libby said to me, “It's good for Max to have a man in his life. Even if it's—­”

“Max always has Rawlins,” I interrupted before Libby could put her foot in her mouth. “He's practically a man these days.”

“Yes, I know. But he'll soon go off to college. Me with a child in college! I haven't broken the news to my followers yet.”