A Lie for a Lie (27 page)

“I told them you’re trying to help Nora,” Junie said. “They want to help her, too.”

“She was my friend,” Caprice said. “We were like sisters.”

I could hardly comment on the event that had destroyed that intimacy with the result of it standing beside her.

“I know she’d like to talk to you, too,” I said instead. “She told me she would.”

“We came back to the U.S., Felice and I, to set things right here. Felice thought it was time to meet her father. I wanted to see Nora, to try to explain things. After we arrived I was sure we had all the time in the world.”

“I’m sorry about your father,” I told Felice.

Felice nodded gravely. “I didn’t know him, and I’m afraid to ask what you might know.”

I suspected she’d heard plenty already, although maybe not that I was the one who had found him. I wondered if Veronica would be willing to tell Felice some of Grady’s finer points. Felice deserved that much.

“You know there’s going to be a memorial service next week?” I asked.

“I’ll be there, but he’s really a stranger to me. Once we got to Michigan I tried repeatedly to contact him. I wasn’t successful.”

“I’m sorry about that, too.”

“If we’d been in the States last week, maybe we would have come to see the talent show, so Felice could meet him there,” Caprice said. “Although in retrospect, it’s better that we weren’t.”

I zeroed in on the important part. “You were overseas?”

“Felice and I work with inner-city children in Detroit. We have a small circus all our own. We took it to Italy to perform. Just for two weeks, but that might as well have been a century to the kids. They loved it, and everybody loved them. Then we came home to this terrible news.”

Like so many other things, this would be simple to check. I imagined she was telling the truth. There was always the possibility that somebody in her family had done away with Grady, but those odds were diminishing.

After a moment Felice excused herself and started toward the cookhouse with Junie, but Caprice held back.

“I’m going to try to see Nora, if they’ll let me,” she said. “But this is a good example, isn’t it, of waiting too long to put things right?”

“She’s forgiven you. She told me she understood what drove you.”

“Grady was so persuasive, and I was so foolish.” She smiled a little. “He wouldn’t care, of course, but he did give me the thing I value most in the world. My wonderful daughter. Of course I hated him after he left me with nothing except a swollen belly and a circus in ruins. But in the end I was grateful to him, although nothing but sorry about the way Felice came into the world.”

“To my knowledge he doesn’t have any other children.”

“Felice may well be his legal heir. I don’t know, and I don’t know if there’ll be anything to inherit. But she’s already said that if there is, it will go to our circus. We help teenagers reach their potential and become more than they ever thought they could. Performing for Life would be a tribute to Grady Barber, wouldn’t it? Whether he deserved one or not.”

 

 

When I drove up to the parsonage Teddy was sitting cross-legged in the shade. She had a book beside her, probably something relaxing and lightweight, like Tillich’s
The Courage to Be
, or maybe some of Ed’s sermon research. I was afraid he and Teddy would be the only people in church on Sunday who would understand what he was talking about.

I parked and went over to sit beside her. She looked glum and bedraggled. Her glasses had slipped to the end of her nose, and her hair was pushed behind her ears.

“So what’s up?” I asked, stretching my legs out and leaning back against my arms.

“Deena still won’t talk to Daddy.”

“That worries you?”

“What if she never talks to him again?”

“I think that’s unlikely.”

“If it’s unlikely, that means it could still happen.”

“I guess, but I’m pretty sure you don’t have to worry.”

“I told her she was being stupid, and she ought to just get over it.”

“And that didn’t help, did it?”

Teddy shook her head. “Now she’s not speaking to me, either.”

“Think of it as a club that you, Daddy, and I are members of. But let’s not charge dues, okay?”

“Can’t you make her start acting normal again?”

“I wish. Unfortunately you can’t make somebody act exactly the way you want them to. I can make her do things. I can even make her answer questions and be more or less polite, but I can’t make her initiate a conversation or tell us what she’s doing. That’s up to Deena.”

“Can’t Daddy do something?”

I tried not to smile. Teddy, unlike her sister, still thought Ed could work miracles. “Not even Daddy.”

“What’s the point of church and ministers if people won’t listen and be good?”

“Deena’s still good. She just hasn’t figured out how to move on after she gets angry. She will.”

“Do I have to act like her when I get to middle school?”

“Nope.”

“I don’t want to make mistakes.”

I gave her a hug. “You will. It’s okay. That’s how you learn.”

“She sure learns slow!”

I left Teddy to contemplate the mysteries of the universe and her even more complicated big sister and went inside to start dinner. I figured that telling Ed about the stampede could wait a year or two—or maybe just until whoever had sicced elephants in my direction was no longer a threat.

We had Mexican beans and rice and something too close to silence at the dinner table. I was afraid to talk about what I’d done for fear I’d go too far. Ed was thinking about his sermon. Deena and Teddy were too busy trying to stare each other down to articulate.

Afterwards I tossed everybody out of the kitchen so I could clean up in a nicer kind of silence. But the silence didn’t last. Junie trooped in carrying a notepad. “Still doing all right? You don’t think any ribs are broken?” she asked.

I
shush
ed her. “I’ve more or less not told Ed about the stampede.”

“More or less?”

“Okay, I didn’t tell him at all. I didn’t even start a sentence.”

“And you’ll explain your bruises how?”

It always surprises me that after being the oh-so-thoughtful mother of Teddy or Deena, I can instantly turn into a little girl again.

“He’ll worry,” I said.

“I’m sure you’re right. And he won’t worry when he goes to hug you and you faint dead away.” She took my hand and patted it. “But you know best, precious.”

I turned back to my dishes. “You should have come for dinner. You know you have a standing invitation.”

“You don’t have to worry about me. I have a life here and friends. It’s a good place to be. And guess what? I already talked to Sue Grossman.”

“You’re a wonder.” And she was. I leaned over and kissed her cheek. “You’re now officially my assistant.”

“Here’s what she said.” Junie propped the notebook on the counter beside the sink. The page was filled with her scrawls.

She looked up after a moment. “She said they weren’t there.”

“All that writing, and that’s all she said?” But my mind was flashing on the possibilities. Madison and Tammy had not been in the middle of a wardrobe malfunction at Sue’s house when Grady Barber was murdered. So where had they been?

“The rest of this is notes about the class she wants to teach.” Junie clapped the notebook shut. “But she was positive about Madison not being there the night Grady was killed. She didn’t see them that day or evening. There was a problem with a costume, but it happened another night. She even checked her receipt.”

I wondered if Tammy had banked on Sue being fuzzy about the dates. Or maybe she had hoped I would be hesitant to approach a stranger. Whatever her reasoning, she had lied to me. And lying, under the circumstances, made very little sense, unless she was desperate.

Junie went to find her granddaughters. I hoped she would work a miracle and convince Deena to have a conversation.

She hadn’t been upstairs more than a minute when the doorbell rang and I had another visitor.

Esther was waiting on the front porch when I answered, and she held out a book as soon as I opened the door. “I told you’d I’d find it.”

Grady Barber smiled up at me from the cover, as he would never smile again in real life.

I took it and put it under my arm. “You’re a miracle worker. Where did you get it?”

“One of those bookstores that only sells remaindered books. Apparently nobody bought it after it came out. I was in Columbus for an afternoon concert. I stopped by the store on the way home.”

“What do I owe you?”

“Tea and an explanation if you figure out that somebody else killed him.”

I didn’t remember mentioning I planned to solve another murder, but before I could protest, Esther winked.

“Aggie dear, your secret’s safe with me.” She lifted her hand in good-bye and headed back to her car.

I could hardly wait for bedtime. I finished the dishes, helped Teddy with a complicated jigsaw puzzle, ate popcorn with everyone except Deena, and painfully fended off my husband as we got ready for bed, finally admitting the truth so he wouldn’t think my libido had gone farther north for the summer.

“Elephants?” he asked.

“Wouldn’t that be hard to explain to the congregation?”

He shook his head. “They expect nothing less from you.”

He turned over and went to sleep, and grateful he had suppressed everything else he wanted to say, I eased my sore body into bed and opened Grady’s autobiography.

One thing’s for sure. This publisher had missed a great marketing opportunity. Grady’s book should have been shelved in drugstores next to the sleep aids. Five intensely boring pages later, I was sound asleep.

Here’s the thing about towns the size of Emerald Springs. You really do have to watch what you say, and you really do have to watch what you do. No matter how hard you try to avoid somebody, you’ll run into them at the grocery store, or while you’re out walking the dog—which is at least part of the reason we have a cat. On Friday morning, despite that precaution, Moonpie, our silver tabby, flexed his kitty muscle and climbed the tree in our side yard, refusing to climb back down.

I wasn’t one bit worried, and I told Teddy so. “He seems perfectly happy up there. And he’ll come down when he gets tired of waiting for a bird to land.”

“I think he’s scared.”

“Sorry, but I think I’d be more scared climbing up to get him.”

“You could get the ladder.”

“Let’s compromise. If he’s not down in an hour, then I’ll get the ladder.”

“Daddy would get the ladder
now
.”

Teddy could say this since Ed was off visiting a parishioner and wouldn’t be around to fall off the ladder himself until noon.

“I’ll be back at”—I checked my Kermit the Frog watch, last year’s birthday gift from my sister Sid—“ten thirty. Are you going to stay here and coax him?”

“Somebody has to.” Teddy looked as if I’d suggested we tie stones to Moonpie’s tail and throw him into Emerald Springs, the real springs for which our town is named.

Thoroughly chastened, I went back inside and tried to figure out my plan for the day. Now that I knew Tammy and Madison hadn’t been with Sue Grossman when Grady died, I had to confront Tammy and tell her I knew she was lying. And if I didn’t get a straight answer, I had to figure out where to go from there. Planning seemed wise, but at the moment I couldn’t think of any way to tactfully introduce the subject.

The door banged and Teddy tramped in.

“Somebody’s getting Moonpie. It’s that policeman.”

I was afraid I knew exactly which policeman she meant. To my knowledge Teddy knows only one who might be familiar enough with my family to take this kind of risk.

“Detective Roussos?”

“He climbed up like a monkey. I wish I could do that.”

“I’m glad you can’t.” I followed her outside. A pair of jeans-clad legs swung from one of the branches halfway up the tree.

“Roussos, what are you doing in my tree?” I shouted.

Leaves rustled, and the tree shook. I watched as Roussos more or less shimmied down to a lower branch and set Moonpie in the crook against the trunk. The cat ran down as nimbly as a squirrel.

“Teddy, did you see how easily that cat got down once he knew he had to?” I demanded.

She caught up with Moonpie, grabbed him, and tucked him under one arm to haul back inside. “Because he had help!”

Roussos was not as nimble as Moonpie, but nearly. He swung down and landed with a jolt, dusted off his jeans, and straightened.

“I can’t believe you did that, Tarzan. I told her he would come down on his own.”

“She looked upset.”

“Are you on cat patrol today?” I gave up and smiled. “Thanks for putting us on the list.”

“I’m on elephant stampede patrol.”

I sobered quickly. “No need to be. There’s no evidence I was a target yesterday, or really, that anybody was.”

“You weren’t going to mention this?”

“Eventually. I was trying to figure out what to say. I didn’t want to sound like a crazy lady.”

He cocked a brow, and the point was taken. He was used to me sounding like a crazy lady.

“I have coffee. Come on in, it’s the least I can do.” I didn’t wait to see if he followed. The lure of coffee would reel him in.

In the kitchen I poured him a mug as he settled into a chair at the table, but I didn’t offer cream or sugar. I knew how Roussos took it. Then I poured myself some, and took a seat across from him.

I saluted him with my mug. “So who told you?”

“Jankiewicz. I got the whole story.”

Jankiewicz had clearly been shortened to “Yank.” I wondered if he had called to warn Roussos of more hanky-panky, or to prove, yet again, that Nora wasn’t the murderer. After all, if she was the killer, why was somebody trying to stop me from my investigation?