1 Death Pays the Rose Rent (16 page)

“One boy. He’s eleven. Nice kid, I think. Don’t get to see him as often as I’d like.”

“Sorry. It seems I have a talent for asking you irritating questions.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said with a grin. “I’m beginning to enjoy it. But seriously, to get back to what’s important, you have got to leave the detective work to me. It’s obvious someone is worried by something you’ve done. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“I have an idea. Let’s list all the suspects and their motives, the way they always do in mystery novels.”

“It’s reassuring to know you listened to every word I just said.”

“Oh, come on. Humor me. You know damn well you don’t know who murdered Richard. What harm will it do to try and figure it out together?”

He shook his head as if I were a hopeless case, but I could see laugh wrinkles form around his eyes. In a few years, he might be all crinkly like Clint Eastwood—which wasn’t bad. He pulled a pen out of his shirt pocket. A fountain pen! He was beginning to earn my respect.

“Here,” he said, handing me the pen. “Make your list.”

“Got any paper?”

“Use the tablecloth.”

I wrote a large number one on the paper. “Who goes here?”

“The first and most logical suspect is always the spouse.”

“Come on, Garnet. You know Alice-Ann’s not a murderer.”

“She’s number one, until I’m proved wrong. She had a motive. He was running around on her, spent all their money, made her life a living hell. And she left the house that night and then lied about it. Motive plus no alibi equals murder.”

I reluctantly wrote down Alice-Ann’s name.

“Number two,” I said as I wrote the number on the table.

“Tori Miracle.”

“What?”

“If you were alone in the house, you have no alibi either. And you’ve never made any secret of your dislike for Richard. You and Alice-Ann were pretty close until he came between you. And you were overheard, at the castle, threatening Richard—something about if it happened, it wouldn’t be an accident.”

“Me? Threaten Richard? I don’t know what you mean. Oh, hell! Yes, I do. But I was threatening him with embarrassment, not murder. I didn’t think anyone heard me. Damn grapevine! You mean you were serious earlier when you suspected me of being jealous … of having a … a relationship with Alice-Ann? I can’t believe you’d be sitting here having dinner with me if you thought that.”

“I told you earlier, if I can see you, I know you’re not in trouble. Or causing it.”

“This is ridiculous. If you knew either one of us, you’d know that numbers one and two should be scratched right off this list.”

“Tori, this suspect list was your idea. Now stop being so huffy. Let’s get to number three.”

“Fine!” I wrote Garnet Gochenauer in big black letters.

“Do you want to explain that?”

“Sure. Maybe you used to be sweet on Alice-Ann before she got married. Maybe you wanted to get rid of Richard so you could have a chance with her.”

“That’s asinine!”

I smiled. “No more so than numbers one and two. Shall we go on to number four? How about that escaped convict? What’s his name?”

“Vernel Burkholtz.”

I wrote it down. “Maybe, while he was escaping, he encountered Richard on the road and killed him to keep from being sent back to jail.”

“Wrong, Tori. Vernel Burkholtz walked out of the synagogue and across the street into the AMVETS, where he proceeded to get stinking drunk in front of about fifty people. He turned himself in this morning, with a hell of a hangover and a perfect alibi.”

So much for Vernel.

“Let’s get to my favorite suspect,” I said. He watched as I wrote Praxythea’s name next to number five.

“Mind telling me why?”

“Does the name Marlin Kirkpatrick, Jr., ring a bell?”

“Of course. He died earlier this year. What’s he got to do with this?”

“I did a little research today, at the library and the newspaper. Marlin was a relative of Thomas Alva Edison, and he remembered Edison visiting his family back in 1920. I have good reason to believe that Edison came here to experiment with a strange invention, which he left here in Lickin Creek. And I think it’s something that Praxythea would kill for …did kill to own.”

“And just what was this strange invention no one’s ever heard of before?”

“A machine to communicate with the dead.”

His burst of laughter raised eyebrows all around the room.

I told him about the highlighted paragraph I’d seen in the book, mentioning Edison’s attempts to talk with the dead. And Richard and Sylvia’s sudden interest in Edison after Richard had been involved in selling Marlin Kirkpatrick, Jr.’s estate. And that I believed Edison had brought the machine to his cousin’s house and left it there. And that Richard had found the machine there and stolen it to use as a research project to earn membership in the prestigious Historical Society.

“Richard told me, and I believe he was right, that he had discovered something that would make him famous. Now, Sylvia already is established as the local society leader and member of the Historical Society, not to mention her position as founder of the modern Rose Rent Day, so she really doesn’t need any more glory. I think Richard enlisted her help because he realized he couldn’t handle the research himself, and I think she agreed to help him because she enjoyed playing the part of the local history expert.”

Garnet finished my pie. “I still don’t see where Praxythea fits in, or why you think she murdered Richard.”

“They brought Praxythea in to help them. She recognized an opportunity to become world famous. Think about it, Garnet. She’s already got some national recognition as a psychic who helps police solve crimes. If she could produce a machine that can communicate with the dead—whether or not it works—it would make her career. She’d be right up there with—uh—-Jeanne Dixon or Peter Herkos or—”

Garnet interrupted. “Why would someone in her position take a chance on ruining an already successful career by committing murder?”

I shrugged. “Why does anybody commit murder? Most people would never consider it to be an option, no matter how much they had to gain; others are willing to do anything to get what they want.

“Remember I told you I saw a suitcase on Richard’s motorcycle? At least I thought it was a suitcase then, now I’m not sure. I think I saw it again at the castle the night of the seance. It was stuck away in a dark corner of the library, and I thought it was a tape recorder. After the children came in and told us they’d found a body, there was a lot of confusion. Later, the case was gone. Nobody else admitted having seen it. I think Praxythea hid it because she knew it would be incriminating.”

Garnet looked skeptical. I couldn’t blame him. It had all seemed a lot more credible in my mind, unspoken. “How do you think she got the machine?” he asked.

“I overheard Sylvia tell Richard to ‘get here with it early’ because she wanted ‘it’ set up before the others arrived for the seance. She told me it was a tape recorder, but I believe ‘it’ was the Edison machine. After the fight with Alice-Ann, I think Richard decided to go ahead and take the machine over to the castle that night.”

“And I suppose you think Praxythea met him at

the door, clobbered him with Alice-Ann’s hammer, and stole his discovery.”

“She’s the only one with a motive.”

“It’s possible, I guess, but I have a hard time with it. I’ve worked with Praxythea. The first time she came to Lickin Creek was when she saw a picture of a missing girl in a New York paper. She said she’d had a vision of the girl lying in the dark near the edge of running water. She described the landfill near Pig Run so accurately that we drove there immediately and started digging. Unfortunately, she was right. We found the girl with a bullet hole in her head, buried under a couple of tons of trash.”

I groaned with exasperation. “Garnet, that stuff about ‘lying in darkness at the edge of running water,’ that’s exactly how she described the location of the lost diamond, Sylvia’s Star. It’s probably a standard line she uses to impress suckers. For heaven’s sake, there was even a novel written back in the thirties called The Edge of Running Water. It was about a man who was trying to prove immortality and invented a machine to communicate with the souls of the dead. She probably doesn’t think anybody would remember it. And don’t you find the subject matter of that book an odd coincidence, in light of what I’ve told you about Edison’s invention?”

“Despite what you say, Tori, she did find that girl.”

“Sure. And if we go back and dig in that trash dump for the next twenty years, maybe we’ll turn up Sylvia’s Star, too. She just made a lucky guess. If you hadn’t found the body there, she’d have had you digging up every creekbed in the country before she threw up her pretty hands and said there was an ‘error’ in her information source. Look at all the free publicity she got!”

Garnet shook his head. “You’re basing your whole theory on a completely implausible supposition—that Edison did build this machine and that he left it here. Even more implausibly—that Richard found it. What evidence do you have that this machine ever existed?”

“After I read about it in the book that Sylvia asked me to return to the library, I went to the newspaper. I found an article that said Edison had visited your haunted Historical Society building while he was in town—’combining business and pleasure.’ “ Even as I spoke, I knew I sounded like an idiot. It had all seemed so logical when I was at the newspaper office.

“I think we ought to go on to number six,” Garnet said. “There were a lot of people at the castle that night. All of them claim to have gone to bed right after the party broke up, which means none of them really have alibis. Put down Michael Thorne.”

I wrote Michael’s name down. “Why?”

“Revenge. Thanks to Richard, Michael is no longer going to inherit a castle or the very valuable property around it.”

“Michael told me about that. Naturally, he’s upset about it, but I can’t picture him murdering anyone …any more than I could picture his mother doing it.”

“Put Rose down for seven.”

“Rose! You’re nuts.”

“She was there. She had a motive. Put her down.”

I did. “Then Sylvia has to be number eight for the same reasons.”

Garnet shook his head. “Sylvia isn’t in line to inherit the property. There’s no motive there.”

“So you think Rose did it?”

“No. I just wanted to show you how foolish this whole exercise is. Rose looks perfectly normal, but I happen to know she has cancer and has only a few months to live. She’s very weak from chemotherapy—wouldn’t have the strength to bash anyone’s head in. And how would either she or Sylvia manage to ride the motorcycle down the driveway to where we found it?”

“At last, there’s something I know that you don’t. Richard was giving all the old ladies in the castle motorcycling lessons. He thought it was a hoot.”

Garnet scratched his forehead. “Motorcycle lessons. Now I’ve heard everything! Anybody else you want to put on the list?”

I nodded. “Number nine: the missing LaVonna Hockenberry.”

“What’s her motive?”

“Same as Michael’s—revenge. Her husband killed himself because of Richard and his oil scam. The night we went to the seance, she asked me to come back the next morning because she had something she wanted to talk to me about. Maybe she planned to confess, then lost her nerve after the body was found and took off instead.”

Garnet stopped me. “Which reminds me, Tori. I checked out LaVonna’s room. Her purse was not there, in the wardrobe or anyplace else.”

“But I saw it. Someone must have taken it. Rose was putting stuff back into it the last time I saw it.”

Velvet interrupted us. “Everything okay? You’uns ready for some more coffee?” She poured it without waiting for an answer. She noticed the writing on the tablecloth, but if she was curious about it, she didn’t ask any questions.

Garnet took a sip, then added cream and sugar. “You did more than just a little research today. Seems to me you know almost as much about the people in this town as I do.”

“There are others, too.” I was on a roll. “Twanya Tweedy should definitely be on the list. Maybe they had made plans to meet later that night at the castle—they had a fight and she killed him.”