But she had also discovered that he had no clear alibi for the time Parker Holt was killed. Did the tools Jo had seen in his studio include wire cutters and strippers that would have been needed for the electrical trap? Possibly. Had they been used, though, for that purpose?
That question still remained.
Chapter 15
That evening, Jo pulled into the parking lot at Pheasant Run next to the blue Chevy Malibu that held Ina Mae and Loralee. Javonne stood waiting beside her SUV, and the headlights of Vernon’s white pickup appeared in Jo’s rearview mirror as it turned into the lot.
“Thanks, everyone,” Jo said when they’d all gathered on the sidewalk. “I appreciate your agreeing to move our workshop over here tonight.”
“No problem,” Javonne said. “I’ve always wanted to see this place. This is my chance.”
“Angie Palmer certainly set this up in a hurry,” Loralee said.
“When I called this morning to suggest it,” Jo explained, “Angie said the ladies we spoke to yesterday morning had been talking to their friends, who all immediately expressed interest, so she knew she had a ready-made group. Bringing you all here works great for me, for the time factor of doing one instead of two workshops, plus”—Jo grinned—“for the help I know you’ll provide in the sleuthing department.” Jo had updated them all on what she had learned recently. “Now,” she said, “if everyone will please grab as much as they can carry from my car and follow me?”
The group gathered up boxes, then followed Jo in a line as she led the way through the front entrance of Pheasant Run and down its corridors. She couldn’t help feeling like a mother hen with her chicks, especially on hearing Loralee let out occasional peeps when one of her smaller boxes slid atop her stack.
As they entered the Great Room, Jo saw that tables had been arranged at the far end for her workshop, and she headed there to deposit her pile on the largest, with her “chicks” following suit. Jo unpacked her bead boards first and handed them to Javonne to spread around.
“Oh, you’re here!” Angie Palmer breezed through the door. “Great! I told everyone to show up at seven. Do you need anything more than what we’ve set up?”
“No, this looks perfect.” She introduced Angie to her regulars, and by the time they’d all shucked their coats and begun opening up Jo’s bead boxes, the Pheasant Run ladies had begun drifting in. Jo welcomed them, recognizing Loralee’s friend, Betty, and her companions Donna and Celia, among a few others. She waved everyone to seats around the smaller tables and listened as the conversational noise level rose. Good, she thought. If this is a chatty group, the better to learn a few things from them. The only problem, though, was that Angie Palmer was still hanging around. Jo feared her presence might quash discussion of Pheasant Run’s management problem with the late Parker Holt. She’d have to come up with a way to get rid of her.
“Everyone,” Jo called out to get the group’s attention, then tapped her pliers on the table and raised her voice to shout, “Ladies!” Several heads swiveled, and the group quieted down. Jo began her class.
“You each have at your place a bead design board. This is what you will create your necklace on.” Jo paused as the women picked up their boards and examined them. “As you see they have three channels. That is where you will lay your wire, or wires if you decide you want a multistrand necklace. You will also have to decide on the length of your necklace. These bead boards, as you see, have lines and measurements marked on them. They will help you find your center as well as line up your beads in a nicely balanced way.
“The boards are flocked to keep your beads from rolling away on you. Plus you can use the handy pocket wells at the corners to separate your beads and to hold them.”
The group was giving her their rapt attention, so Jo went on to explain about the various clasps they could choose from, and then held up a few sample necklaces to give them some ideas to start with.
“The cost of your necklace will depend on the particular beads you choose and the number of them. For instance, these plastic beads are very inexpensive but quite colorful and appropriate for a certain type of necklace, whereas the gemstones, especially the larger ones, get pricier. Then there’s these Swarovski crystals, which are beautiful but will add to your cost. But you might be happy with a single, large stone strung as a pendant, with perhaps only a few smaller beads and spacers added to set it off. All of my bead boxes are labeled for price to help you estimate, but don’t worry, I’ll total it all up for you when you’re ready.”
The questions came then, all at once, and Jo did her best to answer them, explaining that she would help them individually with things like putting crimps at strategic points to keep beads in place, and attaching clasps. “Just holler when you need me.” Considering the noise level the group had risen to earlier, she imagined the “hollers” would need to be lusty ones to be noticed, but she felt sure this group would manage.
The ladies milled about the circle of bead boxes, which Jo had arranged by color. She listened to the hum of voices, as each dithered over which beads to choose, how densely to string them, what colors went with what, and so on. There were dozens of decisions to make, and Jo understood how overwhelming it could be to the first-time beader. She hovered nearby, pitching in with advice. Unfortunately, she noticed Angie Palmer also hovering closely, apparently just as fascinated as the other ladies, though not participating.
“Loralee,” Jo heard Loralee’s friend Betty ask, “have you decided on buying a condo?”
Loralee looked up from her bead board on which she had lined up several pink beads of various sizes. She shook her head. “It’s a big decision.”
“If you have any questions,” Angie, whose ears had perked up, quickly jumped in, “I’d be more than happy to try to answer them.”
“Thank you, dear,” Loralee said politely, but turned back to her bead choices.
Vernon, Jo saw, had lined up an attractive set of beads on his board, a soft combination of beiges and browns, which he said his daughter Patty had requested. He settled down to begin stringing, and Jo demonstrated the crimping process to him with her needlenose pliers as several others of the class leaned over to watch.
Javonne brought her bead lineup over for Vernon’s approval. “What do you think?” she asked. “Should I go with the blue and green, or stick with all blue?”
Vernon studied Javonne’s beads a moment, then said, “The blue and green works, but I’d arrange them like this.” He moved several beads around to make a new pattern, which, Jo saw, improved the look considerably. Javonne agreed, smiling broadly and thanking Vernon profusely. A few of the ladies who had turned to watch held their bead boards out to him, asking, “What do you think?” Vernon looked each over, giving a thumbs up or offering suggestions for improvement.
Jo grinned. It appeared she had an unpaid assistant with her. If Vernon continued to progress as rapidly in this craft as he had been, he might be teaching her a few things before long.
One by one, the ladies finished picking out their beads and sat down to work at assembling their necklaces.
“If this turns out,” Donna, the thin, dark-haired friend of Betty’s said, “I’ll want to wear it to the Abbotsville Founders Ball on Saturday. I have a gray dress that will be perfect once it has something bright at the neckline.”
“But Donna,” Betty asked, “are they still having the ball? Mallory Holt was in charge of it, you know, as president of the women’s club.”
“Oh, I hadn’t thought of that!” Donna looked stricken.
“Surely the ball has been all arranged before, well, before this other thing happened,” said Celia, the woman Jo remembered as having overheard fights between Parker Holt and Pheasant Run’s first manager. Celia held her own work-in-progress around her neck and judged it for length, pulling the wire tighter, then looser over her blouse.
“Yes, don’t worry, Donna,” Ina Mae spoke up. “I talked with Sally Robinson just yesterday. The ball is still on, despite Mallory’s state of affairs.”
Donna looked relieved, and renewed work on her beads.
“What’s happening with that man they think did it?” A woman in a bright flowered top over raspberry-colored pants asked. “I mean that Hispanic worker. Have they charged him?”
Jo exchanged a glance with Ina Mae, not happy with the implied assumption of Xavier’s guilt. Ina Mae spoke first. “No one’s been charged yet. Obviously, the police don’t have any clear evidence yet on anyone.”
“How is Mallory holding up, anyone know?” This from Betty Kidwell, whose three-tiered, multibeaded necklace, Jo could see, was going to take her more than one workshop to finish.
The flowery-topped woman said, “My hairdresser told me that Lucy Kunkle told her Mallory is devastated and barely able to function.”
Jo caught Ina Mae’s eye again and knew what she was thinking. Mallory was functioning well enough to meet Sebastian Zarnik for lunch. But Ina Mae wisely remained silent on this point.
The conversation drifted to the topics of life insurance and Medicare, with Angie Palmer continuing to linger. At one point, just as Jo began to despair of getting anything helpful from the women, she noticed Ina Mae in close discussion with Loralee. Loralee shook her head—at what Jo had no idea—but then crept over to Vernon. Loralee put her head down close to her former butcher, speaking softly, and Vernon nodded and looked back at Ina Mae. Jo wasn’t sure what they were up to, but in a minute or so, as she helped Betty choose a clasp, she found out.
“Jo,” Vernon said, standing up, “I’m finished. When you have a moment, would you total up the cost of my materials?”
“Of course,” Jo said, reaching for Vernon’s board, which held a lovely two-tiered “illusion” style necklace in browns and beiges, its beads widely spaced and seeming to float on their near-invisible wire.
“Miss Palmer?” Vernon turned to Angie. “If you wouldn’t mind, I’d be very interested in taking a look at your model condo.”
“Certainly!” Angie cried. She popped up from an empty table on which she’d half sat, watching over the workshop. “Are you and your wife thinking of joining us at Pheasant Run?”
“Well,” Vernon began, and Jo was left to imagine the tale he spun as he drew the woman away from the group. She glanced over to Ina Mae and Loralee, whose eyes danced. Mission accomplished, they seemed to say, and Jo smiled back.
After a moment, Ina Mae pronounced to no one in particular, “Angie seems to be a very capable manager.”
“Oh, yes,” Betty agreed, and several other heads nodded. “I have no complaints with her whatsoever.”
“Pheasant Run is fairly new,” Ina Mae continued. “Has she been here from the start?” she asked, already aware, of course, of the answer.
“No,” several voices hastened to enlighten her at once. Celia’s, being the strongest and highest pitched, prevailed. “The first manager was a younger woman. She was the one who sold Ralph and me our Blue Jay.”
“Oh,” a tiny-voiced woman piped up. “Was that the pretty blonde woman who first showed Jim and me around? She wasn’t here when we came back for a second look.”
“Yes,” Celia confirmed. “Blonde, slim, liked to wear a lot of perfume.”
“Uh-huh.” Several heads nodded agreement.
“Poison,” Celia said, then, noticing startled looks, explained. “I mean, that was her perfume. Poison.”
“Oh!” Titters rippled through the group.
“You mentioned something the other day about problems between her and Parker Holt,” Jo said. “What sort of problems were they?”
“Well,” Celia said, drawing a breath as well as the group’s attention, “all I know is several people overheard them arguing. My next-door neighbor, Elaine, told me she was passing by the office on her way out to her doctor’s appointment—Elaine suffers terribly from psoriasis, you know—and she heard Heather—that was her name, Heather Bannister—say she was going to sue. Then a man who sounded very much like Parker Holt started laughing. Elaine said it gave her the chills, the sort of laugh it was. He said something like, ‘You even think of doing that and I’ll . . .’ and Elaine couldn’t hear the rest. But she thought it must have been some kind of terrible threat because next thing we knew Heather was gone and no lawsuit ever materialized.”
The ladies of the workshop were silent as they took in this story.
“Heather Bannister?” Javonne asked. “I’m trying to remember. Is she related to the Prices who have the hardware store on Mulberry?”
The ladies exchanged blank looks until Betty answered, “Not her. It’s her husband who’s Ellie Price’s nephew.”
Javonne nodded. “That must be it.” She looked over at Jo and smiled slyly, her eyes seeming to ask, “How’d I do?”
“Excellent,” Jo said aloud, then added, “I mean, your necklace turned out beautifully, Javonne.”
The ladies near Javonne looked over, oohing and ahhing.
Jo, however, looked over to Ina Mae and Loralee.
Excellent
, she telegraphed.
You all get an A.
Chapter 16
As they returned to their cars, Jo thanked the ladies and Vernon profusely for their help. Vernon had told her that Angie gave him an enthusiastic grand tour of the facilities, but that he had put her off about bringing his wife to see it, claiming Evelyn wouldn’t even consider downsizing from their three-bedroom house until he cleaned forty years’ worth of junk out of his garage and basement.