'Til Dice Do Us Part (20 page)

And if Bill wasn’t responsible, who was?

I wouldn’t be able to rest until I knew the answer. Before I lost my nerve or changed my mind, I decided to pay Bill a visit. I spotted his pickup in the drive and parked behind it. I felt a little nervous as I traipsed to the front door and rang the bell.

Though I’d been there before, I wasn’t in the habit of dropping by unannounced. Did this make me a shameless, man-chasing trollop? Back in the day—my day—it was taboo for a woman to even phone a man. A lady waited for the gentleman to call her. She might grow old and wrinkled in the process, but she never, ever, phoned him. Times may have changed, but I’m still on the low end of the learning curve.

No one seemed to be home. I rang the bell a final time and was just about to leave when the front door opened. And there he stood, my own personal version of Mr. February. A pair of safety goggles dangled around his neck; a tool belt hung low on his narrow hips. A gray waffle-weave Henley peeked from a plaid flannel shirt, and a spattering of sawdust covered his faded jeans. Suddenly I felt transported back to fourth grade and my first school-girl crush on Joey Trapani. I still have the Valentine he gave me at recess tucked away somewhere.

“Kate!”

Bill actually sounded happy to see me. I took this as a good omen. “Maybe I shouldn’t have come. I can see I’m interrupting your work.”

“Nonsense. Feel free to interrupt anytime.” He held the door wide. “Come in, come in.”

Still feeling a bit nervous, I trailed after him through the foyer. I glanced around, unobtrusively I hoped, but didn’t see any changes since his return from Michigan. Simple and uncluttered. Neat as a pin. Some might even call his style of decorating Spartan. A card table and four folding chairs made up his dining room set. A leather sofa, recliner, and flat-screen TV were the only furnishings in the great room. It was a home in dire need of a woman’s touch. I bit my tongue to keep from volunteering. Down, shameless hussy, down!

“How about I put on a pot of coffee?”

“Sounds perfect.”

“Great. May I take your coat?”

“I’ll just keep it here,” I replied. Shrugging out of my lightweight jacket, I draped it over the back of a kitchen bar stool. “Looks like you’re in the middle of another of your woodworking projects.”

“I’m making a gun rack.” He tugged off his safety glasses and tossed them on the counter. “The guys in the Rod and Gun Club asked me to make one as a sample for them.”

Making a gun rack? Swell. A perfect segue. “Do you own a lot of guns?” I asked with the studied casualness worthy of a seasoned detective—at least my version of a seasoned detective. I’m no Lennie Briscoe from
Law & Order
, but I’m learning.

Bill moved about the kitchen, his movements efficient and economical. He filled the carafe with water, then carefully measured coffee. “I have a rifle for hunting and a couple handguns I use for target shooting.”

“Including the one you loaned Lance?”

“Yeah, I’ve got a concealed weapons permit. Took a class the sheriff’s department offered.” He took a partially empty bag of Oreos from the cupboard and heaped them on a plate, which he set in front of me.

Now, some men might ply women with alcohol, but they should take a page from Bill’s book. I say, ply them with chocolate, gentlemen. They’ll be putty in your hands. First hot chocolate at Claudia’s, now Oreos with Bill; the chocolate gods were smiling on me. I must have been a good girl to rate this kind of treatment.

“Bill,” I said, nibbling a cookie, “there’s something I need to ask.”

“Shoot.”

Shoot as in bang-bang? Another segue I couldn’t ignore. “Since you brought up the subject of shooting, is it possible you might’ve left a bullet in the gun you gave Lance?”

He turned, looking as unhappy as I’d ever seen him, a half-filled mug in his hand. Oh dear. Was I about to hear a confession? If so, what next? Turn him in to the sheriff? Wave as he was hauled away in a squad car?

“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve asked myself the same question,” he said at last.

The cookie in my mouth turned tasteless. “Is there even a remote possibility?”

“I’ve gone over this a thousand times, Kate.” Resuming his role of host, he finished filling a mug for me, then poured another for himself. “As I told the sheriff, I cleaned the gun that morning before handing it over to Ledeaux. If there was a bullet in the chamber, there’s no way I could have missed it.”

“You’re positive?”

“Very positive.” He sat down beside me at the breakfast bar. “I’ve been around guns since I was a kid. No way I’d be that careless. Face it, Kate. This was no accident. Someone wanted Lance dead.”

“But who?”

Ever since the shooting, I’d had trouble wrapping my mind around the notion that Lance had been murdered. The word
accident
seemed safer, less frightening. As I said before, denial is a wonderful thing; best defense mechanism God ever created. But time had come to take my head out of the sand and face facts. Bill was absolutely certain he hadn’t left a bullet in the chamber. And the only place Claudia would’ve killed Lance was in a divorce court.

“Time to get down to business.” I reached for the large purse I always intend to trade in for a smaller one. At times like these, though, it’s good to have everything at your fingertips—things such as latex gloves, an LED flashlight, and my very own little black book, which bore an uncanny resemblance to the sheriff’s. I dragged out the notebook and rummaged around for a pen. “Let’s make a list.”

“What kind of list?”

“Work with me, Bill.” I flipped open to an empty page. “We need to write down all possible suspects. Then we’ll eliminate them one by one.”

“How do you propose we do that?”

I sighed. Clearly Bill needed guidance—my guidance, that is. I’d be more than happy to take him under my wing and teach him the ropes of being a PI. “Remember what Sheriff Wiggins said about the Big Three?”

Bill frowned. “General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler?”

I sighed. Figures coming from someone who lived in Michigan most of his life. “The Big Three in detective work are motive, means, and opportunity. Everyone backstage had means and opportunity. All we need to do is find out who, other than Claudia, had a reason to want Lance dead. A walk in the park for two pros like us, right?”

“If you say so,” Bill agreed reluctantly, but didn’t look convinced.

I proceeded to write down the names of everyone who had been present at rehearsal the night Lance was shot. “Let’s start by crossing both of us off the list since neither of us is guilty. I’ll scratch Claudia off the list, too, since we believe she’s innocent.”

Bill pointed at the next name on the list of possible suspects. “Monica?”

I shook my head. “Monica would never shoot anyone.”

“Why’s that?”

“She has a weak stomach and can’t stand the sight of blood.” I drew a line through her name. “If she ever decided to kill someone, she’d use poison.”

Bill’s eyes danced with amusement. “Has anyone ever told you that you have a devious mind?”

I refused to be sidetracked by a pair of baby blues. “Rita would never kill anyone either.” Hers was another name to cross off.

“She have a weak stomach, too?”

“Rita’s a gardener. She likes to plant things and watch them grow. I once saw her refuse to throw out an African violet infested with mealy bugs. That’s not the type of person who’d cold-bloodedly kill a human being.”

“Guess not.” Bill took a sip of coffee. “That leaves only Bernie and Gus on your list. Since Gus met Lance for the first time when I introduced them, what motive could he possibly have?”

I crossed Gus from my ever-shortening list. I stared at the plate of Oreos. Wasn’t chocolate supposed to be good for you? Dark chocolate, Monica had preached, not white chocolate, not milk chocolate. Yep, Oreos looked dark to me. I helped myself to another cookie. “That leaves Bernie Mason as the prime suspect.”

We sat for a moment in silence, contemplating the possibility.

Heaving a sigh, I suddenly knew what I had to do. Slowly, and with some regret, I drew a line through the name of our lone suspect. “Bernie has the backbone of an amoeba. He’d never get up the nerve to murder someone.”

I flipped a new page over in my notebook. “Let’s look at this a different way,” I said, bowed but unbroken. I then proceeded to tell Bill about Polly seeing Lance looking chummy with a dark-haired woman she swore was Krystal.

“But Krystal’s new in town. What motive could she possibly have?”

“I confess it’s a long shot. The only possible connection I can see is that both she and Lance had previous acting experience.”

“You’re overlooking the fact she wasn’t at the rec center that night.”

I didn’t want to hear the voice of reason. I wanted to solve the case, clear Claudia, and get on with my life. Next I told Bill about seeing Lance arguing with a dark-haired woman behind the Piggly Wiggly—a woman driving a luxury car identical to that of my new neighbor, Nadine Peterson.

“Since this Peterson woman wasn’t at the scene of the crime either, even if she had motive, she still lacks means and opportunity.”

Bill was proving a star pupil in the Kate McCall School of Private Investigation—a school about to go defunct without a single suspect.

I idly riffled through the stack of yesterday’s mail still waiting to be opened. The house seemed quiet with Krystal at work. Funny how quickly one grows accustomed to having another person around—and how unusually quiet it becomes with them gone. Until now, I thought I’d adjusted nicely to Jim’s death. Granted, I get lonely at times, mostly evenings and weekends. Evenings the two of us used to gab over dinner, then watch TV or read the paper. Weekends meant get-togethers with friends; maybe taking in dinner and a movie—couple activities.

For a short time, Bill helped relieve the emptiness. I’d invite him over for a home-cooked meal. Afterward we’d pop corn and maybe watch a video. Hold hands on the sofa. Kiss good night. It’d been nice while it lasted—I missed the closeness. While we were slowly regaining lost ground, our relationship still wasn’t back to where it had been before his brother’s heart attack.

I was about to set the mail aside when an ad from an online dating service, Love Line, Inc., caught my eye. Had such an innocent scrap of paper started Claudia’s downward spiral? Had it seduced her with sweet illusions of romance, excitement, and male companionship? Then again, what’s so wrong with romance, excitement, and male companionship? I could stand a little of those myself. I was torn between the temptation to rip open the envelope or toss it in the trash. Common sense prevailed. I threw it away.

A business envelope bearing a Nashville postmark and a logo of a judge’s gavel captured my attention next.
Down with Deadbeats
was written in large block letters in the upper-left corner. Just below, written in a smaller font,
Tennessee’s Premier Detective Agency.

“Hmm,” I muttered aloud. “Interesting.”

All right, busted! I confess that on occasion I do talk to myself. And on rarer occasions, I even talk back. I rationalize this by saying sometimes it’s the only way to have an intelligent conversation.

Down with Deadbeats was about to follow the path of Love Line, Inc. when a second glance revealed the letter wasn’t addressed to me but to my new neighbor, Nadine Peterson. My fingers itched to pry the flap open and find out why Ms. Peterson needed the services of Tennessee’s premier detectives. All I had to do was steam the envelope open with a teakettle. It didn’t require rocket science. Through the years, I’d watched the same trick done a dozen times on TV. Then my conscience kicked in, reminding me mail tampering was against the law, and spoiled my fun.

Heaving a sigh of regret, I slipped on a sweater and headed across the street. I intended to be neighborly even if it killed me. For a nanosecond, I debated my next step. I could easily slip the envelope into the mailbox at the end of her drive. Or I could deliver it in person. I opted for the latter.

As on my last—my one and only—visit, Nadine Peterson was slow to answer the door. A lesser person would have given up, but not I. My persistence paid off when Nadine finally appeared, a smoldering cigarette dangling from her fingertips.

“Kate, isn’t it?” she asked in her deep, throaty voice.

I held out the envelope. “This was delivered to my mailbox by mistake. I thought it might be important.”

She gave it a quick glance. “Sure, thanks.”

I wondered how many times her voice was mistaken for that of a man. If eye shadow alone were any indicator, there’d be no question about her gender. She wore enough eye makeup to supply an entire class of eighth-grade girls.

From her expression, I could tell she was about to close the door in my face. “I, ah, couldn’t help but notice the postmark. You from Nashville?”

“Yeah, I guess you might say that.”

I tossed out another gambit. “Nashville’s a great city.”

At least it had looked great when Jim and I sailed through at seventy miles an hour on our way to Grace-land. I’ve been a big Elvis fan since I was a kid. Jim took me there some years back for my birthday. We even spent the night at the nearby Heartbreak Hotel. He drew the line, however, at listening to Elvis nonstop all the way home. Some men just don’t have an ear for the classics.

Nadine took a drag from her cigarette and blew out a plume of smoke. “Nashville’s OK, I guess.”

Getting this woman to impart information was harder than pulling random chin hairs. Her evasiveness only served to whet my curiosity. Down with Deadbeats? Deadbeat fathers? Boyfriends? Husbands? I racked my brain trying to remember what
The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Private Investigating
had to say about recalcitrant witnesses. I reminded myself to review that chapter before exam time.