A Lie for a Lie (19 page)

Teddy went willingly. She’d told me she wasn’t satisfied with the screenplay climax, in which the bad guys—two stagestruck neighbor boys—are caught stealing bicycles. She felt there needed to be a scene where they admitted how badly they felt about what they’d done. I was glad she wasn’t going to make the film too realistic.

She settled herself on the van floor by the sliding door, swinging her legs and happily scrawling notes in the margins of her script. I went out to see what Henry wanted.

“How’s Sister Nora?” I asked. “Have you been able to see her?”

“Yank’s talked to her by phone. They’re just holding her in town until they can arraign and transfer her to the regional jail. We can visit tomorrow night if she’s still there.”

I had tried not to think about Nora since the arrest. Clearly I’d already exceeded my involvement quota. A fair portion of this had simply landed in my lap, but I didn’t want that to send me off and running to find a murderer. The police had their woman. The evidence was convincing. So what if it felt completely wrong? Like my mother, I wasn’t one bit psychic.

“I’m kind of surprised to see you
here
,” I said.

“After Nora was arrested, I saw you and Lucy talking to that detective, Roussos.”

“We’ve met,” I said, in classic understatement.

“More than that, I’m told. You’ve helped him find a couple of killers.”

“I don’t think he’d put it quite that way.”

“How would he put it?”

“That I’ve stuck my nose where it doesn’t belong more than once and almost died in the process.”

“You didn’t die.”

“Yes, well, I seem to be like a cat, only there’s no proverb promising how many lives I’ve been assigned.”

“Nora didn’t kill Grady Barber. She doesn’t have murder in her. Back down East Texas way, I knew men, and a few women, who did. Once in some oil patch or the other a man got stomped into the ground and left for dead just for eating somebody else’s share of corn bread. That takes a right lot of meanness, and there was plenty to go around back then. So I know murder, and I know mean, and I know when a woman’s got neither inside her. Nora Nelson’s the finest human being I know, and I plan to make sure she doesn’t go down for something she didn’t do.”

I glanced back at the van. Teddy was still swinging her legs. “I’m glad you’re on her side.”

He pocketed the toothpick, and took off the glasses. “So you think she did it?”

“There’s some pretty strong evidence.”

“That’s not what I asked you.”

I thought I could see how this man had made so much money. “It’s hard to believe,” I admitted. “I don’t really know Nora, but why on earth would she kill Grady Barber? They’ve been divorced, what, twenty years?”

“More like twenty-four, and she hadn’t seen him since the decree.”

I knew Henry believed this. And so far the newspaper accounts of their marriage and divorce hadn’t reported any recent connections. But Grady had died on Friday, and this was only Monday. Evidence takes time to assemble.

“What was she doing backstage?” I asked. “If she hadn’t seen him since the divorce, why on earth was she visiting him on Friday night?”

“I’m not sure. She told Yank she was going into town to deliver a message. We weren’t performing that night, on account of not wanting to draw crowds from what you folks were doing, since the cause was good and all.”

“Was good, yes. Now there’s no chance we’ll reach our goal anytime soon.”

“Not because of Sister Nora. She’s caught up in this mess, sure, just like you are, but it’s not of her making. Somebody wanted her to take the fall, planned and executed it that way. Why use one of Yank’s knives if not for that? You think Nora would have taken a knife so easy to trace, kill her ex-husband, then leave it lying there?”

I’d gone over that in my head a dozen times, and it made no sense to me, either. “Maybe she was scared off. Maybe she meant to remove it after she killed him, and the whole Grady dying in front of her thing was so awful she got spooked and left.”

“She doesn’t spook. She’d stand up to the devil himself, if she thought she was supposed to.”

Prophets are pretty good at that, I suppose. Who else would be willing?

I reminded him of another puzzle piece. “Grady traced
nor
on the wall before he died.” That was now common knowledge, and all over the papers.

“
Somebody
wrote it. Maybe the same person who stole Yank’s knife.”

From what Roussos had said, I knew this was unlikely. “What message was she delivering, Henry? I hate to say it, but maybe it was the one Grady got. The last one he’ll ever get.”

“No.” He shook his head.

“What do you want me to do?”

“You’ve got a relationship with the detective. You can ask him to keep looking, not to stop just because it’s easier. And whether he does or not, you can help us figure out who really did it. I can get lawyers. I can get the best, and will. But that’s legal mumbo jumbo, and I want answers.” He smacked his fist into his palm. “I want the real killer caught and punished.”

“You could hire your own detective.”

“I offered. Nora says no. But I know that you were with Grady Barber a whole lot while he was here. You’ve got a head start. You’re the one who could dig up those answers the fastest anyway.”

“I’ll be glad to talk to anybody you hire if she changes her mind, but my investigating days are over.”

He regarded me with ancient eyes. “Nah,” he said at last, shaking his head. “You’re fooling yourself.” Then he smiled. “That husband of yours think Nora did it?”

I hate it when I get pinned down. “He wonders.”

“Good.” He nodded. “Clergy get special visiting privileges at the jail. You can talk to Nora.”

“Ed’s the clergy, not me.”

“Something tells me nobody there’ll be splitting hairs.” He pushed away from the SUV and dug something out of his pocket and handed it to me. It was a business card with numbers where he could be reached. Then he held out his hand. “Where I come from, we shake when a deal’s done.”

“Where I come from, we shake just to be polite.” We shook.

“I’ve talked to that mother of yours, you know. She tells me you’re not from anywhere, and you spent as much time in Texas growing up as you did anyplace else.” He put the sunglasses and Stetson back on, fished the splintered toothpick out of his pocket, and stuck it in his mouth. Then he nodded, went around to the driver’s side, and drove off.

Henry Cinch was slick as a gusher, and twice as forceful. My sense of reality was distorted. I wondered if I’d just bought a piece of oil-depleted East Texas, or worse, sealed a deal to let Henry drill in the backyard of the parsonage. More realistically I was afraid he had sensed weakness and read my character, like the tycoon he is. Henry knew he’d planted a seed that was going to grow like a magic beanstalk.

Once I dropped Teddy off at Hillary’s house, I decided to go and see Roussos for a ray of daily sunshine. Maybe I wanted him to convince me they had the right person for Grady’s murder. Or maybe Henry had gotten to me. I didn’t examine it too closely.

As I drove I thought about what I knew for sure. I’d been busy all weekend trying to help with details relating to the end of the Idyll. By Saturday evening Grady’s manager had sent his own assistant to pack Grady’s things and take care of details, and I had given up my notes and everything else relating to Grady’s stay here. She’d thanked and dismissed me, promising she would call if she needed anything else. She did tell me that once the body was released, Grady would be flown back to Los Angeles for burial. On an even less personal note she’d said that her boss was going over Grady’s contract with our committee to see what was owed his estate, since Grady had not completed his commitment. The whole transfer of responsibility had been surprisingly cold-blooded, and I suspected that Grady had never endeared himself to the people who represented him. I found that sad.

I pulled into the parking area of the new Emerald Springs Service Center, which finally housed our police station and jail as well as the garage where all county vehicles and equipment are parked and serviced. There’s also a salt dome, a playground and exercise trail, and, since the start of the summer, a community swimming pool. The timing for that last expenditure had been just right. Without it we might have had a summer of riots. For once the county hadn’t waited until crisis struck before they spent our tax dollars.

I walked over to the station, trying not to think of an evening I’d spent here almost two years ago being chased by a murderer. That was the night I’d learned for the first time that meddling was not for the fainthearted. At least nowadays, the police would be on the premises if history ever repeated itself.

I was used to the old station downtown, held together by duct tape and testosterone. Once inside, this shinier, antiseptic version made me nostalgic. I felt like a stranger. I told myself that was a
good
thing.

I asked for Roussos and got the evil eye from the woman in uniform behind a Plexiglas partition. For a moment I thought she was going to come out and frisk me. I took a seat in a plastic chair—the discomfort, at least, was familiar—and leafed through pamphlets about home security and the evils of pets running free. I thought that last pamphlet ought to be mailed to the new residents at the old Weilly farm.

I fully expected to be summoned back to the window for another dose of evil eye and a recommendation I never show my face again, but a jeans-clad Roussos came out to welcome me. Okay,
welcome
’s not quite the right word. At least he didn’t chase me off the premises.

“Let me guess. Either another person close to you has gone belly-up, or you’re here about the last one.”

“Door number two.”

“You can tell me outside.”

Roussos isn’t fond of allowing me into his private space. Whenever we’ve had the opportunity to chat, it’s always elsewhere. I tell myself he looks on me as an informant, and he doesn’t want anyone else to guess my identity.

More likely he’s embarrassed someone will discover that he tolerates my interference.

The sun was busily destroying epidermal layers when we stepped into it. Roussos nodded toward the exercise trail winding through a grove of young trees that were yet to cast much shade. This was the best we could do.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about Sister Nora,” I said, when we were no longer in earshot of anybody else. “I know you have good evidence that points to her, but Roussos, anybody could have planted the knife and traced those letters on the wall. I guess I just need to tell you one more time that there were a lot of people who disliked Grady. I just spent a few hours with somebody from the agency that represented him, and you know what she told me?”

“Is this where I’m supposed to pretend I care?”

Having expected this, I continued. “She said that everybody was shocked he’d been murdered, but nobody was surprised. When I asked what she meant, she said Grady was good at pissing off people. Her exact words, by the way, in my quest for accuracy.”

“Thanks. Four-letter words make all the difference. Case closed.”

Again, I ignored him. “So I’ve been making a mental list of people I know he upset. There was the guy I told you about who showed up backstage that night. Did you find him, by the way?”

“I remember how you slip in those little questions.”

“Well, did you?”

“We didn’t. Mrs. Beauregard was unable to furnish a better description, and nobody else remembered him.”

At least Roussos had followed up. I was encouraged. “Then there’s Fred, Grady’s former assistant. Grady was awful to him. I was called in to break up a fight in Grady’s suite, and when Fred came to the door, his cheek was bruised. Supposedly he left town after he quit his job, but what if he didn’t?”

“You’re wasting your time.”

I plowed on. “He was hateful to the contestants he kicked out of the finals. One of them might have killed him. He upset everybody at the hotel. I wouldn’t be surprised if somebody there snapped. The car accident I told you about? The young man in the pickup that Grady plowed into looked ready for murder.”

I didn’t mention Madison or her mother, who I was afraid might have had their own good reason to want Grady Barber dead. Madison had been missing that night, but maybe she had actually come . . . and gone.

“When I said you were wasting your time, I wasn’t just moving my lips to keep them lubricated,” Roussos said. “We have our suspect.”

I waited, because I had the darndest feeling there was something he wasn’t saying.

He turned around, and we started back toward the station. We were halfway there before he spoke again. “This is a high-profile murder. We’re under pressure to solve it.”

When silence fell again, I mulled this over. “Are you saying that in the rush to show what a fine department we have, justice might get edged aside?”

“Not me.”

“Roussos, are you saying that you’re not really sure Nora’s the murderer?”

“The prosecutor thinks he has a good case. Your Sister Nora’s a kook. She’s also the victim’s ex-wife. But I don’t need to tell you any of this. You know it all.”

“She’s not a kook.”

“Then she’s converted you?”

“I was converted to a need to stop global warming a long time ago.”

“She’s got the whole town up in arms.”

“So she’s fodder for the local lynch mob.”

“I don’t make these decisions.”

That was as clear a statement as I would get, but again, I was encouraged. Roussos wasn’t exactly on my side, but he had doubts about the side he was on. I decided this was the right moment to ask my last question.

“I’d like to see her. I know you have visiting hours and all kinds of rules. But can you bend them for clergy?”

“You’re not wearing a collar or carrying a Bible.”