Chapter 6
A
moment later Bernie reentered Sean's bedroom with Clyde Schiller in tow.
“Don't trip on the books on the floor,” Sean warned his old friend, fighting the embarrassment of being seen in a wheelchair.
“I'll try,” Clyde told him as he came over and grabbed Sean's hand in his two big ones and gave it a vigorous shake. “Wouldn't want to have to sue ya.”
Sean snorted.
“Be my guest. Still skinny as ever, I see.”
Clyde released Sean's hand and patted his ample midsection. “Pretty amazing, isn't it? Considering the way that Janey cooks, I should weigh a hundred and forty.”
Sean smiled. His friend looked like an overweight, genial kind of guy, the kind who sat in front of the TV with a remote in one hand and a beer in the other. In reality, little ever got by him.
“What has it been? Three years? You should get out more,” Clyde told him.
“That's what I've been telling him, too,” Libby observed.
“How's life down at the station with old Lucy?” Sean said, shifting the focus from himself. He was still old-fashioned enough to believe that a man's problems were his own business.
When the Longely police department had imploded in a political scandal and Sean Simmons had lost his job and two officers had been forced to retire, Clyde Schiller had managed to stay on. To this day Sean wasn't sure how he felt about that.
Clyde Schiller grinned.
“Life with the redoubtable Chief Lucas Broad is fine, thank you very much.”
“Good to know. Now tell me and my daughters what this is about.”
“Well,” Clyde began. “I've got some questions I got to ask your girls and I'm thinking maybe it would be better if I did it downstairs and let you rest a bit.”
Sean suppressed a smile.
“You mean, you'd feel more comfortable talking to them out of my presence. Well, that's not going to happen.”
Clyde thought for a moment and said, “Okay, Cap. If that's the way you want it.”
“It is.”
He plucked at a button on his uniform before continuing.
“It seems that the heart attack Laird Wrenn, aka Lionel Wrenkoski, died of was precipitated by a concentration of cyanide . . .”
“Cyanide!” Libby brought her hand up to her mouth.
“Libby, please let Clyde finish what he has to say,” her father instructed, but she kept right on going. It was, he thought grimly, like trying to divert a runaway horse.
“It was in the water he poured out of his bottle, wasn't it?” she asked.
As he watched Clyde's expressionless face, Sean knew what his friend was thinking, because in his place he would have been thinking the same thing.
“How'd you know that, Libby?” Clyde asked gently.
Bernie took a step forward.
She's like a tight end running interference for her sister,
Sean thought proudly.
“What do you mean, how does she know that?” Bernie said. “It's obvious. Lionel poured water from the bottle into his cup, took a drink, put the cup down, and grabbed his throat. What else could it have been? The wine?”
“See.” Clyde looked at Sean reproachfully. “This here behavior being exhibited is the reason I'd like to speak to your daughters separately.”
“You mean we're suspects?” Libby cried.
“Is there a reason why you should be a suspect?”
“I didn't say it, you did,” Libby pointed out while her sister and father exchanged looks.
That's my daughter,
Sean thought. In times of trouble you could always count on Libby to talk when she should shut up and to shut up when she should talk.
“No, I did not,” Clyde said.
“Are you talking to everybody?”
Clyde didn't say anything.
“Why me?” Libby demanded.
“We're talking to you among others,” Clyde corrected. “And I'm talking to you because not only did you have access to the waterâ”
“So did half of Longely,” Libby replied.
“But,” Clyde continued, keeping his eyes firmly fixed on Libby and away from his former boss, “because it has come to my attention that you and the decedent, Laird Wrenn, had a disagreement earlier in the day.”
“What are you talking about?”
“He means the coffin, Libby,” Bernie said.
“That's ridiculous. I just asked him to put it off to the side and he refused.”
“So you didn't say that you hoped . . . Let's see . . .” Clyde consulted his notes. “. . . that he died?” Clyde asked.
Libby put her hands on her hips.
“What I said was I'd like to kill him. And I didn't say it. I muttered it under my breath. So what?” Libby said. “People say things like that all the time when they're annoyed. It's not a crime.”
“You're right. It's not.” Here Clyde paused. “If that's all you did.”
“Get real,” Bernie said.
“We have to check out all possibilities,” Clyde Schiller said defensively.
“Bree Nottingham told you, didn't she?” Libby asked Clyde.
“Okay.” Sean put up his hand. “I've heard enough.”
Everyone turned towards him.
“Tell Lucy,” he said to Clyde, “that my girls will be down at the station with their lawyer to give their statement tomorrow morning.”
“You really want to do that, Cap?” Clyde said. “Makes them look bad.”
“Don't try that line on me,” Sean snapped at his old friend. “I invented it.”
Clyde colored slightly and shifted his weight from one foot to the other.
“This is a small place,” he observed stubbornly. “People are gonna talk.”
“Not if you don't say anything, they won't.”
“I'm not the one you have to worry about.”
“Maybe, he's right, Dad,” Libby said. “Maybe . . .”
“Libby, really. Let me deal with this.” He turned back to Clyde. “You tell that boss of yours that if I hear one word about my daughter being a suspect . . .”
“Suspect?” Libby cried.
Her father shot her a look.
“Okay,” she said. “I get the message.”
“About time. As I was saying,” he continued. “I hear that rumor going around this town and I trace it to Lucy, it will be my pleasure to sue him for libel. And you'd better believe I will. Lord knows, it's not as if I have much else to do these days.”
Clyde nodded. “I'll relay the message. Don't bother,” he told Libby and Bernie as he turned to go. “No need to go down those stairs again. I'll show myself out.”
“Oh, my God,” Libby cried when she heard the door slamming shut. “I can't believe this. No one is going to set foot in this store ever again. I might as well go over to Burger King and fill out a job application right now.”
“You're a possible suspect in a murder investigation and that's your major concern?” Bernie asked.
“It would be yours too,” Libby snapped, “if you'd spent years working here, building the business up, just to see everything go down the drain. I just knew something was going to go wrong. I could feel it.”
“Nothing is going to go down the drain,” Bernie said.
“Yes, it will. People aren't going to buy anything if they think I poisoned someone.”
Bernie shook a finger at Libby.
“That, my friend, is where you're wrong. If you gave people food poisoning, you'd be right. You might as well close the door and padlock it. No one would set foot in the shop ever again. But cyanide . . . now that's a different matter entirely.”
Libby looked at her sister incredulously.
“You really are nuts.”
“Excuse me. Everyone came to Lucrezia Borgia's table, didn't they, and she poisoned people all the time.”
“They were summoned.”
“Not all of them.” Bernie pointed a finger at Libby. “You wait. People will be lining up to get in. People always want to come to someplace notorious. Right, Dad?”
Sean nodded. “She's correct. It's sad but true. People visit murder scenes all the time. They find murderers fascinating. Think of all the books that are written about them and the movies that are made.”
“But I didn't kill anyone!” Libby yelled.
Bernie patted her on the shoulder.
“I know that, but you were there when it happened and that's almost as good.”
“L.A. has fried your brain.”
“I'm just trying to explain why you shouldn't be worried about the business. In fact, if I were you I'd do some extra baking for tomorrow morning because, trust me on this, you are going to be selling a lot of scones when the store opens tomorrow. Everyone is going to want to talk to you.”
“I hope you're right,” Libby said dubiously.
“Of course I am. Nothing this exciting has happened in town since 1880 when the sheriff caught his deputy climbing out of his wife's window and filled his backside full of buckshot. Right, Dad?”
But this time Sean didn't answer. He was scowling at the squirrel. Finally, he pulled his gaze away.
“All I know,” he said, “is that if Lucy thinks he can play around with this family, he has another think coming.”
“He wouldn't do that, would he, Dad?” Bernie asked.
“Yeah, he would. And he'd enjoy it too.”
“You think that's what this is about?”
Sean began wheeling his chair towards his bed.
“Not entirely. But it certainly is playing a part.”
“Why do you call him Lucy anyway?” Libby asked.
“It's short for Lucifer.”
“He's really that bad?”
“No. He's just your average, incompetent, bumbling, grudge-holding petty bureaucrat. Other than that he's fine.”
Libby curled a lock of her hair around her finger. “Calling him Lucy probably doesn't make him feel any warmer towards you,” she observed.
“I know.”
Libby and Bernie watched a quiet smile of satisfaction creep over their father's face.
“Then why do you do it?” Bernie asked.
“Because it drives him crazy, and because I can. Now,” Sean said, “how about you two start from the beginning and tell me everything that happened last night, and I do mean everything.”
Bernie and Libby had just gotten to the part about Tiffany wanting a drink when the phone rang.
“Let the answering machine pick it up,” Sean told them
“No.” Libby moved towards the phone. “It could be Tiffany.”
But it wasn't. It was Orion.
Chapter 7
L
ibby couldn't believe she was out this late. Usually by nine o'clock on Sunday night she was home folding laundry as she watched TV. Instead she was sitting in the front seat of Orion's car watching the lights flicker on the Palisades and smelling the sweet scent of honeysuckle floating in the air.
“You know, my father offered to beat you up,” she told him.
“And what did you tell him?”
“I'd think about it.”
“That was nice of you.” Orion draped his arm over the back of his seat and turned towards Libby. “I guess he doesn't like me very much.”
“Would you if you were in his place?”
“No,” Orion conceded. “I wouldn't like me at all.”
They were silent for a few minutes; then Libby said, “This place hasn't changed much since we used to come here.”
Orion sighed.
“I wish there was a do-over button for your life.”
Libby leaned back in her seat. Orion's Infinity was new and still had that fresh-leather smell.
“I thought . . .” Orion began.
“That Sukie was glamorous and I was this chubby hometown girl . . .”
“Something like that,” Orion admitted.
Libby kept her eyes straight ahead.
“She's really been hell to live with,” Orion said.
“And I'm supposed to feel sorry for you?”
“No. That's not what I meant.”
“Then what did you mean?”
“That I made a mistake.”
Libby decided not to dignify that comment with a response as she watched the lights of a plane going overhead.
“What are you planning to do now?” she said instead.
“I make glass beads.”
Libby turned to stare at him.
“Since when have you turned into a crafts person?”
“Since my therapist suggested I find a hobby. I've been making the beads and selling them on the Internet for six months now. See.” And Orion dug into his pocket and came out with two glass beads. “Here.” He turned on the interior car lights and handed them to Libby.
She weighed them in her palm. “Pretty colors,” she said.
Orion nodded.
“They're a lot harder to do than they look.”
“What do people do with them?”
“They make bracelets with them or use them for decorative purposes. I'm beginning to sell to interior designers. And I have a design for a plate I'm working on. Here.” Orion folded his hand around hers, enclosing the beads in the palm of her hand. “Take them. Consider them a small sign of how bad I feel.”
Libby smiled at him.
“Okay.”
“Good.”
Orion looked at his watch and clicked off the car lights.
“And now I'd better get you home before your father does make good on his promise.”
“It feels weird both of us living with our parents again,” Libby observed as Orion put the car in gear and backed onto the road.
“Tell me about it. But if you want to talk about weird, let's talk about Saturday.”
Libby groaned. “Clyde Schiller was at our house. Evidently someone put cyanide in Lionel's drinking water.”
“So I heard. That wasn't very sporting, was it?”
“Definitely not.” Libby shot him a quick glance. “You don't seem exactly broken up about his death.”
Orion made a right on Ash.
“I'm not and I'll wager no one else is either. Not if they're honest.”
“Except for Tiffany,” Libby said.
“That's still going on?” Orion asked.
“Was,” Libby corrected. “Was going on.”