“Shrimp salad on a croissant, Ruthie.”
Jo remembered what Ina Mae had mentioned, and said to Alexis, “I’ve heard one thing Mallory Holt was pretty involved with was the Abbotsville Women’s Club.”
“Oh, yes,” Alexis agreed. “She’s been our president these last few months. Mallory’s the one behind our club’s decision to purchase red, white, and blue flowers to plant about the base of the statue of General Jeremiah Boggsworth in the park. Quite an exciting idea, isn’t it?”
Unsure whether Alexis was being sarcastic, Jo simply nodded.
“In fact,” Alexis continued, “I was at the committee meeting with her Monday to discuss that and other things when she got the call about Parker.”
“You were?” This was one thing Jo had wanted to look into—the whereabouts of Mallory Holt that afternoon.
“Didn’t I mention that at the shop yesterday? Yes, Mallory asked Sally Robinson to hold the committee meeting. Very inconvenient, I thought, even though Sally lives in Mallory’s neighborhood. Sally’s driveway, though, is being repaired, and we had to park on the street a good distance away and then dodge slush puddles to get to the house. But Mallory said she couldn’t hold the meeting herself because she would be coming from a shopping trip in Baltimore with her aunt, Lucy Kunkle, and wouldn’t have time to get anything ready.
“Interesting, isn’t it? I mean, who knows what might or might not have happened if we’d all been at Mallory’s place instead of Sally Robinson’s?”
Jo nodded. It
was
interesting. “Your meeting was all afternoon long?”
“Oh, no. Mallory didn’t get back until three.”
So Mallory, according to Alexis, was with her committee members from three until the time she got the police call, and with her aunt before that. Much too occupied to slip into her basement after Dan and Xavier left, to set up the deadly trap for her husband.
“Turkey and bacon, and ham and cheese,” Ruthie announced, and Jo took her order and paid for it.
“You and Carrie are working at the shop today?” Alexis asked, eyeing the two sandwiches.
“No, the shop’s closed on Wednesdays as usual. But I’m getting some repair work done in the stockroom.”
“Oh. Dan’s doing it for you?”
Jo shook her head and had no real reason not to explain further, but she was just as glad when Ruthie called out, “Shrimp salad on croissant.”
“Enjoy your lunch,” Jo said, and turned toward the door.
“Oh, I will,” Alexis said, “just as I’m sure Mallory will be enjoying her lunch at Hollander’s with Sebastian Zarnik.” At Jo’s surprised, and, she was sure, blank look, Alexis’s lip curled, and she elaborated. “Her artist friend. Mallory always admired his art. Perhaps,” she said, her eyes innocently wide, “they’re getting their heads together to design a really nice tombstone for Parker.”
Jo headed back to the Craft Corner, clutching the carryout bag and thinking about Alexis’s final comments. Clearly they were dropped with the intention of stirring gossip. Was it credible, though? Ina Mae had warned that Alexis was more interested in a spicy story than an accurate one. At the thought of Ina Mae, it occurred to Jo that the senior center was located fairly close to Hollander’s, a fine restaurant Jo knew about but had never dined in. With all the classes Ina Mae took at the senior center, maybe she was currently within quick checking distance? Jo pulled out her cell phone and punched in Ina Mae’s cell number—the one Jo had been so skeptical of ever needing.
“Yes?”
“Ina Mae, it’s Jo. Where are you?”
“Waiting for a lecture on vitamin supplements at the center. Do you need me?”
“Yes, but not for the shop.” Jo explained what Alexis had told her, and heard disapproving noises coming across the distance from her friend. Ina Mae’s personal book of proper behavior clearly did not include a widow of only two days lunching alone with a single man.
“Do you feel like running over to check on the story?” Jo asked. “Maybe Alexis forgot to mention that Lucy Kunkle was also along. Or possibly she, ah,
created
the whole story.”
“I’m on my way,” Ina Mae said, and Jo heard the line go dead. She pictured Ina Mae sprinting out of the senior center in her blue warm-up, white hair flying, and smiled to herself. Ina Mae was never one to waste words—or time.
Jo tucked her phone into her purse and entered the craft shop. She heard Randy thumping the walls of her stockroom, and headed on back there. “Time for a break,” she announced, holding up the lunch bag. “I brought you a ham and cheese. Hope that’s what you like.”
Randy stared at her. “Ham and cheese. Uh, yeah, that’s great.”
“Set your tools down and come on out. We can eat at my workshop table. Want another Coke with it?”
“Uh, I, ah, I guess,” Randy stuttered out. “Thanks.”
“No problem. It’s always been my opinion that a hungry workman is, well, a hungry workman. I imagine Tillie Watson isn’t big on packing lunches, huh?”
Randy grabbed a rag and wiped at his hands, then finger-combed his hair out of his face as he came out of the stockroom. “How’d you know I’m at Tillie’s?”
“I was out with Loralee Phillips this morning and told her about the job you’d be doing for me today. She mentioned it.” Jo set the sandwiches on the table and pulled a Coke out of her refrigerator, handing it to Randy. She poured a mug of coffee for herself.
“Mrs. Phillips,” Randy said, nodding. “She’s a nice lady.”
“Yes, she is.” Jo unwrapped her turkey and bacon, and passed a couple of paper napkins to Randy. “But sometimes a little
too
nice for her own good, in my opinion.”
Randy looked over his sandwich at Jo as he took a huge bite of his ham and cheese. He worked at it a few moments, gulped, then asked, “Too nice?”
Jo wiped at the corner of her mouth. Bert’s sauce was delicious, but definitely oozy. “I guess I mean that if you’re making yourself unhappy because you’re trying to please other people, you’re being too nice. Right now Loralee is considering selling her house in order to make someone else happy. But I’m afraid doing that will ultimately make Loralee miserable. Her home means a lot to her.”
Randy nodded, chewing on that thought as well as his ham and cheese. “We had a nice house on our farm,” he said. “I miss it.”
“Yes, I heard you grew up on a farm.”
“Yeah,” Randy said. “We grew tobacco, some corn, kept cows. I even had a couple goats for a while.” He looked up at Jo with a face fluctuating between pleasure and pain at the memories.
“I guess that was a great way for a kid to grow up, huh?”
“Yeah. But then my pop had that tractor accident. I was off picking up seed when it happened. It was tough. My mom, she was never the same after that. I think that’s probably why she got sick and died. But I know she felt bad about leaving me on my own, even though I was out of school and everything.”
“How long out of school?” Jo asked.
“Almost a year.”
So Randy was only about nineteen when he was orphaned. Old enough, some would say, to stand on his own two feet. But to Jo it seemed terribly young. No wonder he’d stumbled around, with the rug being yanked out from under him like that. When Jo’s own father died, her jewelry-design career was already off to a good start and she was on the brink of being married. Losing her father had been traumatic, but it hadn’t derailed her life like losing Mike had.
“So you sold your farm then?” Jo asked.
“Yeah. But I didn’t want to, really. It had been in our family for, uh, since my great grandfather bought it, way back.”
“You didn’t think you could run it alone?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. There was a lot of, well, stuff going on then. And I was just a kid, you know?”
Jo nodded. Her cell phone rang, and she said, “Excuse me,” and got up to retrieve the phone from her bag. She saw from the display it was Ina Mae. Jo walked toward the front of the store to take the call, wondering what this senior sleuth would have to tell her.
Chapter 11
Jo heard voices in the background, along with a soft clatter of dishes and tableware and realized Ina Mae must be calling from inside Hollander’s restaurant. The older woman spoke in a hushed tone. “They’re here. Just the two of them.” Ina Mae’s voice suddenly rose, startling Jo. “No, just coffee’s fine, thank you,” then, after a brief pause, she resumed her conspiratorial tone. “I walked past their table as slowly as I could manage without looking like an utter fool. What I picked up sounded like they were talking about an art show, maybe his. And I caught mention of Los Angeles.”
Jo heard Randy get up from the table and drop his sandwich wrappings and Coke can in the wastebasket. He walked toward her and continued on out the door, heading for his truck.
Jo asked, “How does this lunch strike you? Business or social?” She could see Randy through the window, rooting around in his truck bed. Jo edged toward Carrie’s yarn bins, idly reaching out to stroke some of the softer skeins stacked there.
“Oh, social, definitely,” Ina Mae said. “Mallory Holt has been known to patronize the arts, and I suppose this Zarnik fellow qualifies as an artist, though I’ve seen some of his work and it wouldn’t hang on
my
wall. But the look on her face—she’s facing me—is what we used to call moony-eyed.”
“Hmm. So this confirms what Vernon said, that Mallory Holt was unhappy in her marriage. And she seems to have found her happiness elsewhere.”
“Hmph!” Ina Mae snorted. “Happiness! If that’s what you want to call it. And,” she said in the same disdainful tone, “this
relationship
, as people also like to term these things now a days, certainly didn’t develop overnight. It’s been brewing for a while. Sitting here, out in the open with her husband not even in his grave yet, says a lot.”
“Does it say she had a motive for murder?”
“It does to
me
.”
“Me too,” Jo said, squeezing a skein of supersoft pink baby yarn. “Unfortunately it doesn’t look like she had the opportunity.” She told Ina Mae what Alexis Wigsley had said about Mallory being off in Baltimore with her aunt, then at the committee meeting from three until six. As she did, Randy reentered the shop and headed on back carrying a small rubber mallet.
Ina Mae asked, “Have you had a chance to confirm Alexis’s story yet?”
“No.”
“I’ll give Sally Robinson a call, though it might mean getting roped into a committee I have no interest in. Have to have some pretext for calling, though, don’t I?”
“You’re a trooper, Ina Mae,” Jo said with a grin. Volunteering to discuss flower choices for three hours over tea and cookies would probably be, for this dynamic ex-teacher, as excruciating as seeing a class of third-graders run through a museum at top scream.
“They’re getting up to go now,” Ina Mae whispered. “I’ll call you later.”
Ina Mae disconnected, and Jo closed up her own phone. She heard Randy back at work banging at her stockroom walls, and headed back thoughtfully to her desk. Ina Mae might be able to establish that Mallory Holt was definitely with others the entire time Parker Holt’s murderer was setting up his death trap. Mallory had motive, but she may not have had opportunity. Someone new, however, had appeared on the radar who had the same motive as Mallory: Sebastian Zarnik.
What, Jo wondered, was
he
doing between three and six?
Jo had settled back at her desk and was pulling out an order sheet for stamping items when she heard a tapping noise coming from her front window. Surely Ina Mae hadn’t rushed over from Hollander’s, had she? Or could it be Carrie? Except Carrie had her own key and wouldn’t be tapping. Curiosity caused Jo to stand up impulsively, which she quickly regretted as she spotted Alexis Wigsley peering back at her, hands cupped around her eyes, nose pressed against the glass.
“Yoo-hoo! Jo,” Alexis called, waving.
It was too late to hide, but Jo walked to the window instead of the shop’s door, hoping to limit this interaction.
Alexis, however, asked, “Can I come in, Jo? Just for a minute? It’s important.”
Jo groaned inwardly, but how could she say no? She went to the door and turned the lock, stepping back to let Alexis—and a chilly wind—in.
“It’s so
lucky
I ran into you at the deli and found out you’d be here. I suddenly realized that I
have
to get some of that rainbow-colored wired ribbon I saw here the other day. You don’t mind, do you, Jo? After all, a sale’s a sale, isn’t it? I’m having guests for dinner tonight, and I know I can make darling bows for my napkins with that ribbon. Won’t that be pretty?”
“Yes, it will,” Jo agreed, and she headed to the shelves that held her wired ribbon.
Alexis’s interest, however, turned toward Jo’s stockroom, from which Randy’s hammering reverberated. “How’s the repair work going?” she asked, following Jo.
“Fine. You wanted rainbow-colored?” Jo asked, running her finger down the rolls of solids, polka dots, and plaids.