Authors: Maggie Toussaint
Assumptions that would be dead wrong if you didn’t know Jonette.
Voicing my suspicions to a murder suspect wasn’t particularly brilliant, but I wasn’t one to stick just my big toe in the shallow end of a pool. It was more my style to dive in headfirst in the deep end and worry about the outcome later.
“Don’t shoot me for asking, but do you have an alibi for last night?” At her pained expression, I qualified my remark. “I know you didn’t kill Bennett, but can someone verify your whereabouts last night?”
Jonette planted her hands on her hips. “Are you asking me if I shacked up with anyone last night?”
I groaned. Why was everyone obsessed with sex? I hadn’t noticed this preoccupation until I didn’t have a sex life, but now it seemed that sexual innuendoes were everywhere. “Jonette, who you sleep with is your business. In fact, I’d rather not know the details. All I want to know is, do you have an alibi for the time of the murder?”
“Seeing as how I don’t know what time the murder was, that makes having an alibi a little challenging. Fortunately, I have someone who can corroborate my story. Britt’s had a deputy tailing me for days now. I spent last night home alone with the police watching my house.”
I exhaled sharply. “Well, that’s a relief.”
“No kidding,” Jonette said. “I was worried about spending the rest of my life in an orange jumpsuit.”
I nodded towards the thick knot of bank employees. “Do you think it’s one of them?”
Jonette shrugged. “How the hell should I know?”
“I thought you knew everything.”
“Don’t confuse me with your mother.”
I arched an eyebrow at her. “Fat chance of that.”
Chapter 19
Denise knocked on my door several hours later. Just the sight of her in that wrinkle-free, cleavage-displaying business suit stirred the hair on the back of my neck. I wanted to take this opportunity to kick the crap out of her for ruining my life, but I was bigger than that.
Maybe.
“Cleo?”
“Yes?” I stood just inside the screen door. Not inviting her in, but not doing anything bad either. Mama had gone down to the church office to help fold the monthly newsletter and I was home alone, unless you counted Madonna who was snoozing on my bed.
Denise had been inside my house exactly one time and I’d vowed she would never enter it again. On that singular occasion two months ago, Denise had come to pick up the girls instead of Charlie. Since Lexy was still in the shower, Charla had invited her new stepmother up to see her room.
Denise had felt faint. I couldn’t much blame her for that as Charla’s room looked like it had been hit by a tornado. Anyway, I’d come home to find Denise in my bed. I’d gagged, evicted Denise, and then burnt my bed linens in the backyard.
I wanted to snap and growl at her on general principle. Instead I schooled my features into those of a woman who had moved on.
“Charlie won’t be picking the girls up this weekend,” Denise said. “He’s off on a fishing trip and I’m just too frazzled to deal with the children after what happened at the bank this morning.”
As if I wanted her alone with my girls. I’d just as soon send both girls to lion tamer school as to send them off to spend the weekend with Denise. “No problem. When do you expect Charlie back?”
Her thick lips drew down into a face wrinkling frown. “Don’t know for sure. He left yesterday afternoon and I haven’t heard from him.”
And she wouldn’t if I knew her husband. He’d come home when he was good and ready. It could be a few days, it could be a week or more.
That man didn’t believe in calendars or clocks once he started fishing. He spent time up there clearing his head. And from what I’d seen, he needed to have his head cleared.
“I told the police I hadn’t heard from him since early yesterday afternoon,” Denise said. “They’re up at the lake looking for him. They want to talk to him about Bennett Glazier’s death.”
That got my attention. First because Charlie would be pissed that anyone bothered him while he was fishing, and second because she was lying about the time he left. Was there more she wasn’t telling me? “Oh?”
She wiggled and her boobs waggled and I remembered how those boobs had mesmerized my former husband. Was Denise using this opportunity to punish Charlie for threatening to divorce her? She didn’t know him very well if she thought she could manipulate him that way.
“It appears Charlie stopped off at the bank on his way out of town last night,” Denise said. “The police took Charlie’s computer and they won’t let the rest of us go back to work until they check out all the computers. Can you imagine how long that will take?”
I could imagine it all right. This was a small town and folks would be greatly inconvenienced. No telling how many would move their accounts to a Frederick bank after this. Our independent bank didn’t stand much of a chance of survival if it remained closed for any length of time. “Oh dear.”
It was possible that Charlie went to the bank and worked for a bit after he left her yesterday. But not probable. Charlie was a fairly linear guy.
If he was upset and wanted to go fishing, there wasn’t any way in hell he would stop at the bank and work for a few hours. It was fairly miraculous that he’d veered off his course to spend the night here.
Denise pouted. “I don’t even know if we’ll be paid for the time we’re closed. It’s such a mess. I can’t wait until the police clear out of there so that I can get back to work.”
Was she nuts? If my workplace closed for a few days I’d be dancing in the streets. Denise sounded a little too good to be true right now. Was she practicing her speech for her boss?
Oh, wait. Charlie was her boss. She could practice on him anytime of the day or night. I ground my teeth together in frustration and a sharp pain shot up my jaw.
I would have to watch it or my teeth would soon be ground down to nubs. The whole Charlie and Denise thing was one source of major teeth gnashing. Dudley’s murder was another.
Charlie had mentioned that he didn’t have an alibi for Dudley’s murder because Denise wasn’t home. I was Charlie’s alibi for the second killing. I couldn’t ask Denise about her alibi for the second killing without sounding like I was interrogating her, but I knew something about her alibi for the first murder if I could just remember what it was. I strained through the bits of information stored in my feeble brain.
It came to me a moment later. She was supposed to be off doing something with her mother that night. “It’s nice to have family in times like these. I rely on Mama to help me out in a lot of ways. Do you have a close relationship with your mother?”
“My mom is terrific,” Denise said with another annoying wiggle.
I don’t know why she was posturing and jiggling her fake boobs under my nose, unless it was because she could. I certainly was not impressed, but I was getting closer to finding out where her mother lived. “Is she located near enough that you get to see her frequently?”
“She’s in a retirement community about thirty minutes away. I go see her at least once a month.”
Thirty minutes. That wasn’t so far that Denise had to spend the night there before driving home. Why did she stay overnight? If it were me, I’d have wanted to be home in my comfy bed instead of sleeping on a borrowed cot.
How tacky would it be to ask the name of the place? Jonette routinely assured me that tacky was in the eye of the beholder, so I boldly kept the questions coming. “Does she like the retirement place? Mama has been making noises about one. I understand they have all sorts of activities and trips at these types of places.”
Denise nodded energetically and everything wiggled. “Mom’s made so many friends there she barely has time to fit my visits in her busy schedule. Montclair is the greatest. They even have Mom on an aquatic volleyball team.”
Montclair. I had the name of the place. Now all I needed was to learn if Denise’s presence there the night Dudley was killed could be verified.
Mama pulled up in the driveway and Denise suddenly seemed very anxious to leave. When I get to be Mama’s age, I’m going to cultivate a reputation like Mama’s so that people get the hell out of my way.
Denise tossed her head and her blonde curls shimmered. She waved goodbye in a Miss America–style minimal wrist rotation. “Once Charlie gets back in town, I’ll have him call and reschedule his visit with the girls. Ta ta.”
My fingers clenched into tight fists. I’d like to squeeze her ta tas until they popped.
Mama growled at Denise as she passed her on the steps. “What did that hussy want?” Mama asked.
I opened the screen door and stepped aside for her to pass by. “She canceled the girls’ weekend visitation with Charlie. It seems he’s gone fishing and she doesn’t know when he’ll return.”
Mama snorted. “Fancy that.”
“But she didn’t just come here to tell me that. Did you hear about the bank guard?”
“Sure did. It’s all Muriel and Francine could talk about down at the church.”
“Denise implied that the police like Charlie for this murder.”
Mama tugged at her ear as if she couldn’t believe what she’d heard. “What?”
“I kid you not. Denise claims he worked on his computer at the bank after he left to go fishing. With the bank guard turning up dead today, it’s no wonder they think Charlie might be involved.”
“What time did all of this happen? Didn’t Charlie spend the night here?”
“I don’t know when the guard was killed,” I said. “I was watching that TV show about cops and lawyers so it must have been after ten when Charlie arrived. Denise claims he left home in the afternoon.”
Mama frowned. “Do you suppose he whacked the bank guard and then came here to give himself an alibi?”
I blinked at her choice of words. “Whacked the guard? When did
whacked
become part of your conversational vocabulary?”
Mama slipped her taupe pumps off and rested her stockinged feet on the coffee table. “We have weed whackers. I’m sure there’s such a thing as people whackers too.”
“Yeah, right. If this were a mob-run town. This is Hogan’s Glen. Nothing ever happens here.”
Could I have been wrong about the town too? I had always assumed Hogan’s Glen reveled in its close-knit small town atmosphere. But then, I had also assumed Charlie was content in our marriage and I’d missed the mark there.
“Not anymore,” Mama said. “With two murders, I guarantee you we’re on the map now.”
“What if Charlie committed the murders?” I asked. “Could I have been married to a murderer all those years and never suspected a thing?”
“People change. People do bad things. You never thought he’d cheat on you either.”
My teeth clenched automatically and I braced for the shooting jaw pain. “Cheating and killing aren’t exactly in the same league.”
“That’s why children should never do drugs.”
“What? What are you talking about now, Mama?”
“Drugs. They’re bad for you.”
I didn’t get the connection. In all the years I had known him, Charlie had never shown any interest in drugs. He liked being in control too much to ever let his guard down. “Are you saying Charlie is doing drugs? I can’t believe he’d do that.”
“I’m saying that it’s possible to go a little ways down one road and find yourself in a whole new place with different rules. Once that happens, people don’t know how to act and bad things happen. That’s why they have gangs in the big cities. So that folks know how to behave. Granted it’s bad behavior, but gangs have stepped into the vacuum of kids with no home training.”
I didn’t care that much about faraway inner-city kids and neither did Mama. She just liked to shoot her mouth off. “This is a little too bizarre for me. I don’t know how we got from the bank guard’s murder to inner-city gangs, but I can’t save the world. As far as I’m concerned, if Charlie’s gone off-road with bad behavior, he’s got only himself to blame. He had a great life and he threw it away.”
Mama’s gaze narrowed. “Just make sure he doesn’t drag you into this cesspool. I don’t want my granddaughters having to go to prison to visit both of their parents.”
My chest froze in mid-breath. “Prison?”
Mama waved her arm in a wide circle. “That’s where they put murderers, remember?”
My head snapped back as if I’d been gut punched. “There’s no way they could put me in prison. The closest they could put me to either crime scene is that I know how to play golf, I have a bank account, and I know my way around a computer. And if they use those criteria, they’d have to arrest half the county.”
“Be careful, sweetheart.” Mama patted my shoulder. “There’s a rotten apple in this town and I don’t want you getting too close.”
Too late. I was already too close. The only way to get rid of a rotten apple was to throw it out of the apple barrel. I didn’t want my family members to be the next victims of a deranged killer. Finding the killer was the only way I knew to protect them. Rooting out the rotten apple was my top priority.
I had three other reasons for finding the killer. Jonette and Bitsy and Charlie topped the police suspect list. Jonette had an alibi for the second murder. What about Bitsy?
I phoned Bitsy and her mother answered the phone.
“Bitsy’s at a doctor’s appointment,” Mrs. Noblit said.
“I’m sorry I missed her. How is she doing?”
“As well as can be expected now that her life is ruined.”
I guess Mrs. Noblit wasn’t excited at the prospect of having a third grandchild. “Please tell her I called and asked after her. One more thing. Do you happen to know where she was last night?”
“Bitsy was right here serving tea to my bridge club. Why do you ask?”
I crossed my fingers and told a small fib. “I thought I saw her dining at the Boar’s Head last night.”
“You were mistaken. My daughter was right here.”
I hung up. It seemed Bitsy had a solid alibi for the second murder. Of the three top suspects, that left the brunt of the suspicion on Charlie.
If Charlie was Britt’s new top suspect, I had to get him cleared too. I’d been willing to find the real killer to clear Jonette and Bitsy, so how could I let the father of my children go to jail? Even though he had treated me badly in the past, I couldn’t stand by and do nothing.
Like Mama, I couldn’t envision a future where I’d be driving my daughters to prison to visit their father.
No way around it. I had to find the killer, now more than ever. Over the years, I’d found that it paid to take problems to the top of an organization. Right now I had plenty of questions for our mayor.
* * * * *
“Thank you for seeing me on such short notice, Mr. Mayor.” I sat down in the paneled office. Darnell Reynolds had the American flag on one side of his desk and the Maryland state flag on the other. With his dark suit, white shirt, and narrow red tie, Darnell was the picture of patriotism.