Deadly Greetings (Book 2 in the Cardmaking Mysteries) (20 page)

“
I was thinking we could go
by Hurley’s,” Lillian said. “I’m in the mood for a
salad.”

“
You’re always in the mood
for salad,” I protested. “How about The Lunch Box
instead?”

“
Surely you’re kidding. I’m
not going to let Savannah see me like this. She’d never let me hear
the end of it.”

“
You look great,” I said,
“and you know it.”

Lillian started the car. “The only way I’ll
agree to a The Lunch Box is if you get our food to go.”

“
Fine,” I said. “But I still
think you’re overreacting.”

It Lillian quickly pulled up in front of my
place. “And I’ll ask you to tend to your own knitting. Why don’t d
I wait here while you change?”

“
You don’t
want to come upstairs and say hello to my roommates?” I asked.
While Lillian had made her peace with Oggie and Nash, they weren’t
the best of friends. I thought it had more to do with Lillian’s
choice of perfumes—they invariably made Oggie sneeze—but Lillian
claimed it was deeper than that.
“Thank you, but I’ve got a few telephone calls to make while
you’re changing,” she said as she pulled out her cell
phone.

“
Coward,” I called out as I
hurried inside. To my surprise, Jeffrey Wallace’s door was open
when I walked into the foyer.

“
Jennifer, I was hoping to
speak to you,” he said, still dressed in the same clothes he’d worn
to the service.

My first reaction was to blow on past him,
because I really wanted to start digging into Maggie’s life, but I
caught myself. Wasn’t that what this could be, if I just played it
right?

“
Fine,” I said, stepping
into his apartment before he had the chance to meet me in the
hallway. Jeffrey looked at me, then the door, and finally decided
to close it behind us. Could he be afraid of being alone with me? I
couldn’t see how, though I was taller than him and would admit—only
under oath or at gunpoint—that I probably outweighed him
too.

“
That was an abrupt exit you
made today,” I said bluntly. There wasn’t time to dance around the
issue, and besides, I couldn’t help wondering if a more direct
approach than I’d been taking up to now might be more
helpful.

“
It was a pitiful excuse for
a memorial,” he said, slumping down into a nearby chair. On a table
beside it, I saw a photograph of Maggie. Whoever had snapped it had
captured her essence, as far as I was concerned. The laughter was
on her lips, and in her eyes as well. I reached over and picked it
up. “This is remarkable. Did you take it?”

“
I did,” he said. “I don’t
know if you’re aware of it, but Maggie and I were special
friends.”

“
I heard,” I said, wanting
to add that I’d heard they’d been a lot more than that, but I
didn’t know how to do it delicately.

Jeffrey said, “Why am I not surprised?
There’s not much that goes on in this town that everyone doesn’t
know about two seconds after it happens.”

He reached for the photograph, but I took a
step back. “Jeffrey, is there any way I could get a copy of
this?”

He snatched it out of my hands. “Why on
earth would you want one?”

I shrugged. “I lost her too, and this is the
way I’d like to remember her. It’s exactly how I’ll picture her
from now on.”

Jeffrey offered it to me. “Keep it. I’ve got
others.”

“
I couldn’t,” I said. “I’d
just like a copy.”

He pushed it on me. “I insist. Jennifer,
your request just now was more of a memorial than she had out there
on the lawn. Can you imagine such nonsense?”

I had to ask. I just had to. “Jeffrey,
when’s the last time you saw her? I’m not asking for alibis, just
memories.”

He looked at me a moment, then said, “So you
think it’s murder too?”

That surprised me. “What makes you say
that?”

“
Come, Jennifer, I haven’t
known you long, but you J seem fairly intelligent. What is the
police’s theory, that Maggie fell asleep driving and missed her
turn? In the middle of the afternoon? I don’t think so.” He’d
certainly captured my attention.

“
So what do you think really
happened?”

Jeffrey stood and paced around the room.
“Don’t you think I’ve been tearing my hair out trying to figure
that out? Maggie was a special woman, the most alive person I ever
knew. When she agreed to pursue a relationship with me, a man
twenty years her senior, I actually tried to talk her out of it!
Can you imagine that? I didn’t want to hold her back, but she’d
have none of it. Three months might not seem like a long time, but
it was the best part of my life, those days I had with her.”

Though there wasn’t a single tear on his
face, I could tell he was destroyed inside, fighting to keep hold
of his emotions. There was only one thing I could say after hearing
that. “Okay, I admit it. I’m trying to discover what happened to
her. You’re right; I don’t believe it was an accident, either.
Jeffrey, did she send you a card in the mail?”

“
Are you kidding me? She
sent dozens. Maggie loved making them, and they were great fun to
get. Follow me.”

We walked into a room that turned out to be
a spare bedroom. On a card table, I saw quite a fewest handcrafted
cards, all with Maggie’s distinct touch. Beside me, he said, “She
had a real knack for it, didn’t she?”

“
No doubt about it,” I said.
“Do you happen to remember the last one she sent you?”

He frowned, scratched his chin a second,
then grabbed one and handed it to me. Maggie had added a few real
oak and maple leaves to the front, their stems crossed like swords.
They were pressed under contact paper, and I knew they’d stay like
that forever. I opened the card, and saw in Maggie’s distinct
script, “I’d Fall for You All Over Again.”

“
This was the last one?
You’re sure?”

He nodded, then took it from me and placed
it back on the table in his makeshift shrine. “Why are you so
adamant about it?”

Should I tell him about the other messages
from the grave, and let him know that she’d skipped him? What
purpose would it serve, to break his heart for no reason? I just
couldn’t bring myself to do it.

“
I just wondered about it,”
I said.

I wasn’t absolutely certain he bought it,
but if he didn’t, it was pretty obvious he was going to let it
slide. “So why do you think anyone would kill her?” I asked.

He shook his head. “It doesn’t make sense.
Believe me, I haven’t been able to think about anything else.”

The poor man looked as if the tears were
about to fly. I had to change the subject, and quickly, if I was
going to get anything else out of him. “How did you two happen to
meet?”

He hesitated for a moment, then said, “It’s
ironic, but Frances introduced us. They were best friends, and I
happened to run into them outside one day. I was smitten with
Maggie instantly; she had that effect on me from the start. I asked
Frances to introduce us formally, and I started courting her soon
after.”

“
Tell me a little about
Frances,” I said, trying to acquire more information that might
prove to me one way or the other if the two friends’ deaths could
be related.

“
She was gruff, stubborn, a
real pain at times,” Jeffrey said, contradicting his word choices
with a great amount of love in his voice. “We were cut from the
cloth, so it was natural that we became friends the second day she
moved into Whispering Oak.”

“
I heard she was rich,” I
said.

Jeffrey snorted. “Hardly. Her parents were—I
knew that—but Frances lived on a pretty modest pension from them.
When they died, they left her a rock, a pair of doorstops, a batch
of other worthless things and a note chastising her for her choices
in life. From what I understand, the rock was symbolic of their
entire relationship.”

“
So if she didn’t get their
money when they died, do you know who did?”

He laughed. “Anyone who knew Frances was
well aware of that. There’s a trust fund set up now in Rebel Forge
for neutering stray cats and dogs, and from the lit size of the
account, there won’t be an unwanted pet in this entire part of
Virginia. She thought it was a wonderful idea, and never made a
squawk about not getting anything from them.” So that ruled out
money as the reason for her death.

“
Did she have any enemies
that you knew of?”

“
Frances? She had scores of
them. As I said, she as wasn’t an easy woman to get along with.” He
paused, oil then added, “Jennifer, I thought you were looking into
Maggie’s death. Why the sudden interest in Frances?” I started to
stammer out some lame excuse when he said, “It’s pretty obvious,
isn’t it? Forget I asked, as It’s perfectly natural for you to want
to find out what an happened to the woman who once lived in your
apartment.” He led me out of the bedroom and to the door. “Listen,
if there’s anything I can do to help you to in your investigation,
I trust you won’t hesitate to call on me. Day or night, I mean
it.”

“
Thanks,” I said at the
door. “I just might take you up on that.”

“
Please do,” he urged
me.

Barrett must have come out of his apartment
at the sound of my voice. He’d been listening to the last bill of
my conversation with Jeffrey, but how much had he really heard? He
stared at me cryptically a few moments, then said, “It didn’t take
you long to make friends, did it?”

“
I respond well to civil
behavior,” I said as I turned my back to him and hurried upstairs
to my apartment. After I changed into my most comfortable pair of
jeans and an old shirt, I decided to feed my roommates before I
left, just in case I didn’t get back until late. If they noticed
the change in their dining schedule, neither one of them commented
on it.

I was all ready to blast Barrett again when
I went downstairs, but his door was shut, as was Jeffrey’s. Lillian
was outside her car, leaning against it and staring off into
space.

She studied me closely, then said,
“Jennifer, it took. you all that time to choose that to wear?”

“
Just get in the car and
start driving to The Lunch Box. I’m starving.”

She did as I asked, so I explained, “I only
took a minute to change.”

“
I can’t tell you what a
relief that is to hear,” she said.

“
Do you want me to tell you
what happened or not?”

Lillian bit her upper lip. “Of course I do.
Not another word from me, I promise.”

I didn’t see how I could possibly hold her
to that, but it was a step in the right direction. “I spent most of
my time talking to one of my fellow tenants.”

Lillian sighed, then said, “Jennifer, if
you’re going to tell me you had a quick dalliance with Barrett,
please spare me the details.”

I flicked her arm, not enough to sting but
enough to show my displeasure with her assumption. “I was with
Jeffrey Wallace, if you must know.”

“
Far be it from me to
criticize, but isn’t he a tad old for you?”

“
Lillian, get your mind out
of the gutter. We were talking about Maggie. You’ll never believe
this. He thinks she was murdered, too. They were in
love.”

Lillian nearly swerved off the narrow path.
“So it is true? He was dating Maggie?”

“
He confirmed it, and there
were a dozen cards on display that she’d made him. The one I read
inside certainly indicated that they had some kind of
relationship.”

“
You just never know, do
you? So what else did you discover in your impromptu
interview?”

“
Nothing,” I said, “but he
offered to help.”

Lillian glanced at me quickly. “And what
else did he offer you, Jennifer?”

“
What do you mean by that?”
I asked as we finally neared The Lunch Box.

“
Did it occur to you that
his offer might be to see what we discover, and not out of some
altruistic motive?”

I unbuckled my seat belt. “I’m not following
you.”

“
If he killed her, wouldn’t
he want to know if we were getting close to him? He could have
murdered Frances too, for that matter. After all, who else had
better access to her apartment than he did?” What was my aunt
talking about?

“
How about Barrett? He lives
there, too.”

Lillian studied me a moment before speaking.
“Jennifer, are you suggesting that Barrett had something to do with
both murders? I hope you’ve got more proof than an honest dislike
for the man.”

“
That’s the trouble, isn’t
it? We don’t have much proof of anything yet, just a few cards and
some suspicions.”

“
Perhaps that’s about to
change,” she said as she handed me a twenty.

I took the bill, then asked her, “What’s
this for, my superior detective work?”

Lillian grimaced. “Don’t flatter yourself;
it’s for the food I ordered while you were inside. Knowing
Savannah, it’s ready and waiting for us.”

“
I can’t let you buy dinner
for me, too,” I protested. “You pay for too many of my meals as it
is.”

“
Think of it as a business
expense for our new venture. As far as I’m concerned, Patrick
Benson can pick this one up. After ail, we’re doing him a
tremendous favor on rather short notice.”

“
Is that how you’ve spun it
in your mind?” I asked. “He hired us under unusual circumstances at
your request so we could have some legitimacy for our snooping. So
now you’re going to stick him for our dinner?”