Peony Street (23 page)

“I’m trying to stay out of the limelight, police-wise,” Claire said. “So I’m hoping you’ll help us find out if she’s in there, and if she is, let her out.”

Amy motioned to the security guard to come over, and to Claire’s alarmed expression she said, “Don’t worry;
Roy’s my husband.”

“
Roy, honey,” she said when he got to her desk. “Knox has gone and locked up Meredith in his office safe, and these two ladies want to convince him to let her out.”

“Not again,”
Roy said, and shook his head. “That man will never learn.”

“Could you turn off the security camera pointed at the elevator for a minute?” she asked him. “We don’t want anyone to get in any trouble.”

Roy smiled and winked at Claire.

“No problem,” he said.

Claire thanked her old friend, who just shrugged and said, “It’s not the first time this has happened. When Knox was married to Anne Marie he used to lock her up in there once a month, it seemed like.”

As soon as her husband gave her the high sign, Amy produced the key from her desk and walked them to the elevator.

“I’m going to give you fifteen minutes and then Roy’ll turn the camera back on,” she said. “If you get in trouble you need to leave by the back stairs; the cameras in there are not even hooked up, per Knox’s orders. I hope y’all know what you’re doing. I’ve seen some of the people Knox meets with, and let me tell you, he’s not someone you want mad at you.”

Hannah looked at Claire with wide eyes, but Claire was resolved. Her friend turned the key and pressed “2.”

“Good luck,” Amy said.

Courtenay was at her desk, and rolled her eyes when Claire and Hannah came in her office.

“What now?” she said. “Knox isn’t here.”

“We know Meredith is in the safe,” Claire said, and was rewarded with the astonishment and guilt that overtook Courtenay’s expression.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Courtenay said, but she choked on her words.

“The police are on their way,” Claire said. “If you let Meredith out before they get here you won’t be arrested as his accessory.”

“I didn’t have anything to do with it,” Courtenay said. “All I did was lock the door to the office.”

“That’s, um, exactly what an accessory does,” Hannah said. “Assists the criminal in the commission of a crime.”

Courtenay quickly stood up and was looking toward the door to the stairs as if she was about to make her escape.

“Help us rescue Meredith,” Claire said. “You’ll be a hero, then.”

“Meredith hates me,” Courtenay said, “and Knox will kill me.”

“Knox couldn’t have hit Tuppy, thinking it was Pip,” Claire said. “Knox was the one who boosted Pip back up to your bedroom window. He knew Pip was still in there with you when he left.”

Courtenay tilted her head to the side just like Mackie Pea did when she didn’t understand something Claire said.

“Meredith just wanted to make you hate Knox,” Claire said. “She wanted you to leave Knox for Pip. She knew you were in love with Pip because she planned it. She paid him to seduce you.”

“You’re just jealous,” Courtenay said. “Pip would never do that. He loves me.”

“The police are on their way,” Claire said. “You don’t have time to escape but you do have time to save yourself and Meredith. Then you’ll be free to be with Pip.”

Courtenay seemed paralyzed with indecision.

“Wait a minute,” Courtenay said. “I need to think.”

“I can smell the dust burning,” Hannah said, and Claire elbowed her.

“Give me the combination,” Claire said, “and I’ll open the safe and tell the police you helped.”

Courtenay unlocked her desk drawer, took a card out of her rolodex, and handed it to Claire. It had a series of numbers on it but nothing else. Courtenay relocked the drawer and started gathering up her things.

“How do we know this is the correct combination?” Hannah said.

“I’m outta here,” Courtenay said. “You’re on your own.”

“Don’t let her leave,” Claire said as she raced into Knox’s office.

“Get out of my way!” she heard Courtenay say.

“Oh, no you don’t,” Hannah said, and Claire could hear sounds of a tussle.

Claire pulled the desk chair away from Knox’s desk and looked underneath. There were three buttons: one red, one blue and one black.

“Great,” Claire said. “Which one is which?”

She hesitated a moment before she chose the blue one, surmising red must be for security. She pressed blue and watched the bookcases. Nothing happened, but she could hear the door to Knox’s office lock. She pressed it again and the door unlocked. She then pressed the black button, and an ear-splitting alarm went off.

“Crap!” she yelled and pressed the red button.

The bookcase behind Knox’s desk clicked and swung outward about two inches. She pulled hard on it, not realizing how well-calibrated the balance was, so it swung back against the wall with a thump and many of the books fell out. It also made the same creaking noise she had heard earlier from outside the office. Behind the bookcase was a small vestibule and a huge walk-in safe with a digital keypad. The alarm was blaring but she could still hear Hannah and Courtenay yelling at each other. Her hands were shaking as she held up the rolodex card in the dim light and punched in the code. Nothing happened.

“Holy crap,” Claire said as she pictured herself trying to explain to Tiny Crimefighter why she had punched the bank president and attempted to break into his safe.

Just then the mechanism clicked and the handle turned. As Claire gripped the handle and pulled it she heard something behind her. She looked around and ducked just in time to avoid being hit with the golf club Knox Rodefeffer was wielding. His face was blood red and veins were bulging in his forehead. He swore and swung again, just missing her as she jumped backwards. The door to the vault swung open so hard it knocked Claire off her feet. Meredith came out swinging what looked like a collectible coin case, and she clocked Knox upside the head with it. As he went down Meredith started screaming like a crazy woman and continued hitting him over and over with the coin box.

“Meredith!” Claire screamed, and Meredith turned on her with crazed eyes and bared teeth.

“You!” she screamed, and raised the coin box as Claire watched in horror.

“Don’t kill me!” Claire yelled over the loud alarm. “I’m the one who rescued you!”

Meredith paused and looked Claire in the eyes; in that moment she seemed to come to her senses. She dropped the box and slumped to the floor. Claire glanced at Knox, who seemed to be down for the count but was still breathing. She could hear Courtenay screaming in the outer office but Hannah was strangely silent. Claire knelt down next to Meredith, who was crying so hard she was gasping.

“Did you hit my friend Tuppy?” Claire asked her.

Meredith looked up.

“What?” she asked. “Who?”

“My friend Tuppy was in the street that night you left Courtenay’s,” Claire said. “Was he already dead or did you hit him?”

Meredith shook her head, crying pitifully.

“Is that what he told you?” she wailed. “It’s a lie. That poor man; I told Knox we should call the police …”

“Did Knox do it?” Claire asked her. “I need to know, Meredith. Tuppy was my friend.”

“There was no pulse,” she said. “He was already dead when I found him. Knox came afterward. Knox wouldn’t let me call the police. He said it would cause a scandal. We should have called! Now look at us …”

She dissolved into tears again and Claire felt like she had just heard the truth.

Claire stood up, stepped around Meredith, over Knox, and ran to the outer office, where Hannah was sitting on top of Courtenay, who was laying face down while Hannah held her arms behind her back.

“Get off!” Courtenay shrieked, but Hannah just grinned at Claire.

“She’s feisty,” Hannah said. “Plus she bites.”

“C’mon,” yelled Claire, and ran for the back stairs.

Hannah jumped up and followed. In the stairwell the alarm wasn’t nearly as loud, so as Claire and Hannah hit the landing after the first flight they could hear Courtenay panting and running close behind, her high heels tapping on the metal stairs. Just before the door to the stairwell on the second floor closed behind her they heard the ding of the elevator arriving on the second floor.

“Go, go, go!” Courtenay said. “That will be the police!”

“Won’t the alarm go off if we open the back door?” Claire said when they reached the main floor.

“The alarm is already going off, you big dummy!” Courtenay said. “It’s the same one!”

They reached the back door, flung it open, clambered down the back steps, and then ran down the alley to the back door of Little Bear Books, to which Hannah had a key. Courtenay tried to follow them through the door.

“Why should we help you?” Hannah said, barring her way.

“I’m your witness and you’re mine,” Courtenay said. “If anyone asks me we’ve been in here since I got off work at six.”

“I owe you an apology,” Claire said. “You’re smarter than you look.”

Once inside the bookstore, Hannah pulled Claire along to the café and pushed her into a chair. Courtenay flung herself down in a chair at the same table and yelled, “Service! Service here, please!”

“That’s enough of that,” Maggie said, from behind the café counter. “What are you three up to?”

“Establishing an alibi,” Hannah said.

Maggie shrugged.

“You better be prepared to spend some money, then,” Maggie said. “Alibis don’t come cheap in here.”

The next morning Claire was sweeping up the hair from her third customer when Hannah came in The Bee Hive.

“Sweet sassy molasses!” Hannah said. “I’ve got gossip so juicy I feel like I’m gonna pop.”

“Come in, come in,” Claire said. “I’ve been dying to know what happened after we left the bank but I’m scared to ask anyone.”

“Our dear friend Meredith is now residing in a very exclusive mental health facility in
Maryland,” she said. “And that’s just part of my story, morning glory.”

“Why don’t you let me cut your hair while you tell me about it?”

“And cheat on my nail scissors? I wouldn’t think of it.”

“If you want me to listen you have to let me cut your hair,” Claire said.

Hannah took off her baseball cap and let Claire wash her hair.

Hannah was a small, thin person with mouse brown hair. She had a prominent nose and her small hazel eyes were a little too close together. Claire reflected that plastic surgery would only destroy the features that made Hannah so distinctly herself. A character actress wouldn’t profit from looking like every ingénue off the bus from the
Midwest. Hannah was better cast as the wise-cracking sidekick, the comic relief who often stole the movie from the lead actors.

“Spill it,” Claire said. “Tell me everything.”

“The bank alarm is connected to our humble police station, in which Tiny Crimefighter just happened to be using the litter box when it went off. Lucky for us she had to resort to Sir Skipsalot for backup; he saw everything and he couldn’t keep his mouth shut to save his life.”

“My dad says he doesn’t have a lick of sense,” Claire said.

“Picture it with me now,” Hannah said. “The crime fighting kitten rushed into the bank with her back arched and her tail frizzed, expecting to thwart a bank robbery, only to find Meredith sitting in Knox’s office having a nervous breakdown and Knox out cold on the floor.”

“She knew she’d better handle the situation with kid gloves,” Claire said. “Knox has a lot of power around here.”

“Exactly,” Hannah said. “While they waited for the ambulance Sarah called her boss, who told her to take Meredith to the hospital for a psych evaluation while Knox had his fat head examined.”

“If you had seen how she was going to town on him,” Claire said. “You’d be surprised he’s still alive.”

“Skip says he has a concussion and looks like he’s been beat all to hell but he’s going to be okay. When Knox came out of it he refused to press charges, saying that Meredith had a complete mental breakdown and couldn’t be responsible for her actions.”

“That’s actually kind of true.”

“So the hospital says, yes, she’s definitely got monkeys missing from her barrel, so Miss Meredith is being transported to the Trembling Hands Home for Wealthy Psychopaths over in Maryland.”

“And there was no mention of the three witnesses who were allegedly sipping cappuccino at Little Bear Books when all this went down?”

“Why would he rat us out? We could only make things more uncomfortable for him with Detective Fuss-in-Boots.”

“That’s one I hadn’t heard.”

“I just made it up and I love it. I’m keeping it in rotation.”

“So that’s that,” Claire said. “We’re so lucky; when I think about what would have happened if Meredith had not been in that safe …”

“I haven’t even told you the juiciest part, yet,” Hannah said. “Evidently Meredith told Skip and Sarah that she not only killed her father and her first husband, but that she also intended to kill Knox.”

“Mamie was right!” Claire said. “Those must be the two murders Anne Marie saw in her vision.”

“She overdosed them with their medication and got away with it.”

“But why would she tell it now?”

“I guess being locked up in Knox’s safe all day freaked her out so much she went bat-poop bonkers and lost her ability to lie. On the way to the hospital she told Sarah and Skippy about finding your friend’s body and Knox not letting her call the police. She also told them that she married Knox because she lost all her family money in a Ponzi scheme and couldn’t get her hands on her son’s trust money. When Knox found out she was broke he cancelled her credit cards and cut off her funds. Tony Delvecchio told Frank Meredith recently took out a multi-million dollar life insurance policy on Knox.”

“She told Sarah all that?”

Hannah made the cuckoo sign with her finger circling the air next to her head.

“I’m telling you Skip said this stuff was pouring out of her as fast as she could tell it,” Hannah said. “Sarah kept repeating her Miranda Rights but Meredith wouldn’t stop talking. Of course Knox’s lawyer is claiming she wasn’t competent enough to be questioned. They’re going to say it was all inadmissible because she’s just been crowned Miss Crackaloop Crazypants.”

As Hannah brought her up-to-date Claire shaped her unevenly cut mop of fine hair. It was a challenge to take such a randomly butchered coif and turn it into art, but Claire did her best. What she really wanted to do was highlight it to look like Sammy’s, but she knew Hannah would just pull it back in a pony tail and slap her hat back over it as soon as she was done.

“What about Courtenay?” Claire asked.

“Our fair Courtenay is now free to join King Pipster in the kingdom of Pipsalot.”

“Pip’s a one-trick pony; all he has to do is bat those long eyelashes, cry like a baby and feel sorry for himself,” Claire said, “and the women line up to save him.”

“If he cried in the self pity Olympics,” Hannah said, “he’d win gold.”

“I’m hoping his mother doesn’t come looking for me today,” Claire said. “She’s liable to pitch a fit as soon as she finds out where he is.”

“What are we going to do now?” Hannah said. “How will we find out who killed your friend?”

“I was all for believing Knox or Meredith killed Tuppy until yesterday. Now I’m thinking Tuppy must have had something on Sloan, something really bad or she wouldn’t have brought her thugs here.”

“You think Sloan had someone kill him?”

“Everybody who was there that night lied about something, but each person also told me something true; I just have to sort it all out.”

Maggie came through the door.

“I worked your mother’s shift at my mother’s bakery and lived to tell about it,” she said.

“Thank you,” Claire said.

“I’m headed up to the
Inn after lunch to cover Delia’s shift,” Hannah said. “You want me to sneak up to the second floor and spy on Sloan?”

“Better not,” Claire said. “These are not friendly people, and
Stanley is probably armed.”

“Your hair looks better,” Maggie said to Hannah.

“We always look better after Claire’s been home a week,” Hannah said.

Hannah left without putting on her ball cap and Claire was touched.

Maggie sat down in the hydraulic chair and spun around a few times, just like Hannah had.

“Your dad’s at the service station,” Maggie said. “Uncle Curtis will take him over to the bar at lunchtime.”

“I don’t know what I’d do without you guys,” Claire said.

“We’re your family,” Maggie said. “This is what we do. When one cog in the Fitzpatrick fun machine breaks down, another cog fills in.”

“Your mom doesn’t seem to be slowing down or falling apart,” Claire said.

“If you don’t have a heart it can’t be attacked,” Maggie said. “Plus she’s too mean for germs to live on her very long.”

“I only worked there Monday morning and I’m still sore.”

“Is that how you hurt your hand?”

“Yeah, let’s say that.”

“So I guess you won’t be volunteering to take over the bakery when Mom retires,” Maggie said.

“No way,” Claire said. “Are you?”

“No, thank you. When that old lady finally lays down her rolling pin the business will be sold or closed.”

“How’s your dad?”

“Come see him this evening. He’s been asking about you.”

“When’s a good time?”

“Call first,” Maggie said. “That way if he’s too drunk or passed out you won’t waste your time.”

“Still done with doctors?”

“Oh, yes,” Maggie said. “He hasn’t changed his mind about that. His back is still so screwed up he can barely walk. After Grandpa Tim and Brian died he gave up hiding the booze. Now he and my mother live under the same roof but never speak a word to each other. It makes family dinners so much fun.”

“If he can’t get around how does he get the alcohol?”

“Doc gives him the pills and Patrick gives him the booze. When he finally has too much of both and keels over, they’ll have to share the blame.”

“Everything’s so depressing today,” Claire said. “Let’s flat iron your hair.”

“I was hoping you’d offer,” Maggie said. “It hasn’t been done since the last time you were home.”

When Maggie lay back in the shampoo chair her unruly red hair filled and exceeded the capacity of the bowl. Claire wet it with the sprayer and it instantly deflated. Claire washed it, deep-conditioned it, rinsed it, and then treated it with an anti-frizzing serum before leading Maggie back to the hydraulic chair. Clair pumped the chair up as high as it would go and started detangling the matted mess from the bottom, using a wide tooth comb.

“Where’s your little dog?” Maggie said. “I heard it’s really cute.”

“Skippy’s mom has it,” Claire said. “She’s like my daycare now. She’s knitting Mackie a little sweater that I’m terribly afraid she will be forced to wear home today.”

“Ouch, Claire,” Maggie said. “You’re pulling too hard.”

“You’d think that when God gives you hair like this you’d get a tougher scalp to go with it,” Claire said. “Once I get it detangled I’m going to trim it just a little before I blow dry it. You’re going to be here at least an hour, so start at the beginning and don’t leave anything out. The last time I saw you Scott was still chasing you around and Gabe hadn’t come back.”

Maggie got her caught up on the events of the past few years while Claire detangled her hair and then pinned it up in sections so she could blow dry the underneath first, using a large flat paddle brush. She had the flat iron heating up on the counter.

“So after Grandpa Tim died and Brian got killed Gabe disappeared again,” Maggie said half an hour later. “That was three years ago.”

“You think Gabe had something to do with Brian’s death?”

“No,” Maggie said. “The feds let Gabe out of prison early so he could testify against the drug dealer we think killed Brian. One of the drug dealer’s thugs kidnapped Gabe and Scott and tried to drown them in the river. Gabe escaped and Scott got rescued but I’m not entirely sure which one of them killed the thug. Gabe disappeared right after that and no one has seen him since.”

“I always thought Gabe was such a nice guy,” Claire said. “I can’t believe he did all those things.”

“He had us all fooled.”

“I hate it when someone doesn’t live up to my expectations,” Claire said. “But it seems to happen all the time, so maybe it’s my fault for having unrealistic expectations in the first place.”

“I lived with him for three years and I had no idea Gabe was a drug dealing ex-con,” Maggie said. “Even after I knew he was a liar and a criminal, I still believed he loved me; for a little while, at least.”

“The heart is not the best judge of character,” Claire said, and looked Maggie in the eye in the mirror.

“No,” Maggie said, meeting her gaze. “It’s not.”

“So what about Scott?”

Maggie shrugged.

“C’mon,” Claire said. “It’s me you’re talking to. We don’t have any secrets.”

“I hear you’ve been spending a lot of time with Scott,” Maggie said. “Any secrets you’d care to share?”

“He’s been a life saver and a great friend,” Claire said, “but that’s all.”

“He’s always there when you need him,” Maggie said. “He’s the best man I know.”

“So why aren’t you with him?” Claire said. “He’d take you back today if you’d let him.”

“Sometimes,” Maggie said, “you can put someone through too much. Sometimes the kindest thing you can do for someone you love is to let them go.”

“You’re wrong about that,” Claire said. “He doesn’t want to be let go.”

“I’ve burned that bridge,” Maggie said. “Trust me on that.”

“And Scott thinks he’s to blame,” Claire said. “Clearly y’all need to talk.”

“I’ve moved on,” Maggie said.

“To the professor Hannah keeps talking about?”

“He’s just a friend,” Maggie said. “Just like you and Scott.”

Claire didn’t meet Maggie’s gaze in the mirror.

“Look how long your hair is when it’s straight,” Claire said. “It looks about a third as thick, too.”

“It’s just too much hair, isn’t it? Be honest with me.”

“I think we should take off some more length but not do anything drastic.”

“Let’s cut it,” Maggie said. “Let’s cut it all off.”