A Truth for a Truth (18 page)

He was growing redder. I wondered if anybody at the party had a medical degree. I wanted to grab him and unbutton his shirt collar.

“Until the day I confronted him about Marie,” Samuel choked out. “You see, I saw him coming out of her house early one morning when Hildy was out of town. And I realized that couldn’t be good. So I went to him that afternoon at the church and confronted him. I was the board president that year, it was my duty. I asked him what was going on. And you know what he said? He said some things need to be kept quiet, that nobody should understand that better than I did. When I asked him to clarify, he said that revelations of bad behavior are almost always harmful for everybody concerned, and again, I should understand.”

I let that sink in. “You think he was saying that if you told anybody what you’d seen, he would tell people about your past?”

“He made it crystal clear, even though he never came right out and said it. My silence for his silence.”

I wondered if Win really would have exposed Samuel if he had gone to the board about Marie. But even if he hadn’t, making the threat had been bad enough.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, and meant it. “That’s terrible, Samuel. You had every right to expect complete confidentiality from Win. And you were right to confront him about Marie.”

He didn’t seem to hear me. “So now you know my secret. But let me tell you something, young lady. You go ahead and expose me if you think that will help anybody. I did not kill Win Dorchester, even if I was sorry to see him moving back to Emerald Springs. And I’ll tell anybody who asks that I told you all this of my own free will, because maybe I have been trying to hide something that happened more than fifty years ago, but when it comes to Win’s death, I have nothing to hide. Nothing!”

I thought the man was one angry word away from a stroke. “Honestly, I have no intention—”

“Samuel!”

I turned and saw Fern bearing down on us. She was nearly as red-faced as her husband. As angry as she looked, I was still glad to see her.

“What’s going on?” she demanded.

“There’s a bench over there.” I pointed to a quiet spot under a small group of trees. “I think Samuel should sit for a while. Will you go with him?”

“What did you say to upset him?”

“Samuel’s under a lot of stress. I really think he needs to sit and calm himself. I’ll be glad to go with him if you don’t want to.”

The look she shot me would have felled a rampaging elephant. “I will take care of my own husband.”

“I’ll get you both water.”

She leaned closer and took Samuel’s arm. “Just leave us alone.”

I watched them move slowly toward the bench. I was shaken, but I waited until they were seated before I left. I wasn’t sure why Samuel had made his confession, but I guessed that he believed two erroneous facts. One, that because I had stopped by their house last night, I had singled him out as a prime suspect. And two, that I had the ability and resources to dig up a manslaughter conviction in another state that was more than fifty years old. So he had decided to preempt me, to show that he had nothing to be afraid of, because he had
not
murdered Win.

I didn’t know Samuel Booth very well. Fern was the outspoken spouse in the Booth household, and I was sorry I knew
her
as well as I did. But now I was pretty sure Samuel had spent most of his life steeped in regret for a death he may or may not have been able to prevent. Then, as if that hadn’t been enough of a burden, the one outsider he had trusted with the truth had betrayed him. I felt a surge of sympathy. Samuel had made two bad decisions in his life, and both would haunt him until he died.

I just hoped he hadn’t made a third right before Easter and deprived the world of the man who had blackmailed him into silence.

I had lost my appetite for dessert; instead I went to see if Ed was ready to go. Hildy found me before I could find my husband. She gave a nearly full plate of food to one of the servers before she caught my arm.

“Geoff is looking for you. He’s going to see if he has copies of any of Win’s sermons.”

If anything, she looked more wan than she had earlier. I had really expected to see people surging around her, offering comfort, but they all seemed busy elsewhere, and Hildy was alone. I didn’t want to leave her standing here by myself. Not today.

“Why don’t you come with us?” I suggested. “If he has more than one, you can go through them and pick the one you think Win would have wanted to go into the history.”

She nodded. It seemed to take extra effort. “His office is in the back. I’ll show you.”

We intercepted Geoff on the way to a building about thirty yards behind the house. The construction looked newer, but the same dark siding set off dark green shutters, and the office favored the house in its casual, sprawling style. It was exactly the kind of office I would like myself, if I had a job and a reason. Oh, and the money for a lakeside estate.

Geoff chatted as we closed the distance to the door, and once we were there he patted his pants pockets and grimaced. He leaned down and felt between two decorative boulders on the right, produced a key, and held it out sheepishly. “I keep a lot of personal and business records out here, so I compromise between laziness and common sense. I lock the door, then I hide the extra key in the first place any enterprising thief would look for it.”

I smiled to show I was in on the joke. “That would be the second place. The first would be under the mat.”

“Crime’s not much of an issue out here. If I worried, I’d worry about my boats, not my computer files, but the cops do a good job of keeping trouble at bay. They even have a lake patrol.”

We followed him inside. The casual ambience of the house hadn’t made its way here. This was all business. Wall-to-wall file cabinets on one wall, another wall with shelves of supplies, and a comfortable seating area. In the middle a desk as large as my mother’s quilt frame, and the Death Star of computers, a black monstrosity that probably blew up friendly planets whenever Geoff left the room.

“It’s really more or less records storage,” he said. “Most of these are old documents and files. Our real office is in town above the store.”

I noted the Emerald Eagle logo on the wall above a leather sofa. The design is a series of green lines, four of them, shaped to look like an eagle soaring. Both simple and clever, kind of like Geoff.

“Win told me you were the best treasurer he ever had,” Hildy said. “He wished he could take you along to every church.”

“I’m glad I had time to serve when I wasn’t as busy with the business. Otherwise he wouldn’t have been so impressed.” Geoff walked to one of the filing cabinets and selected a drawer. He opened it and began to page through files.

“Can we help?” I asked.

“No, I have miscellaneous records organized by dates. If I have them, they’ll be right here. “

I spent the next minutes wishing I could say that about everything in my life. Although I’m not a slob, I am far too creative to believe that just one destination per object ought to be the norm.

He finally straightened. “Nothing.” He turned up his hands in apology. “I really thought I might have kept at least a couple in with all my records from the years I was on the board. His sermons were so memorable. I’m sorry.”

“It’s too bad all Win’s files are packed away,” Hildy said. “But it would be much too difficult for anyone else to go through our boxes at the storage facility. And I’m not supposed to—”

I heard what she didn’t say. “Leave town.” Hildy was not supposed to leave town because she was the top suspect in her husband’s murder. I hurried to fill the space. “I haven’t even started asking around. Somebody will have one.”

Geoff slid the drawer closed with a bang. “It’s too bad Win didn’t have the chance to write his—”

Somebody knocked on the door, and before Geoff could finish what might have been an interesting sentence, Ed nudged it open. “I was told you kidnapped my wife.”

After a moment of polite chat, Ed asked if I was ready to go. We had almost an hour’s drive, and he wanted to make sure we were home in time to greet Teddy.

“Thanks for looking,” I told Geoff. We invited Hildy to ride back with us, but she said she felt she ought to stay and go home with Esther and Dolly, who had brought her. Ed shook hands with Geoff, kissed Hildy’s cheek, and we left.

“What did you say to Samuel Booth?” Ed asked, when we were just a few yards from the office door.

I was sorry he’d learned about the altercation so quickly. “What do you mean?”

“They left, but on the way out, Fern told me you nearly gave him a heart attack.”

And here I’d just been worried about a stroke. I considered what to say in response. This was my husband, and I trusted him completely. Still, Samuel’s words were echoing through my head. Samuel Booth had trusted two people other than his wife with the truth about his past. One of them had betrayed him. The other was me. Did I have the right to tell Ed what I’d learned? I had to think about that.

“He feels strongly about Win’s ministry here,” I said, which was certainly true. “He got pretty worked up. This murder’s hit a lot of the congregation hard.”

“That’s it?”

“Pretty much.”

“They can make a lot of trouble for us, but I trust you. I know you didn’t set out to antagonize them.”

The vote of confidence felt good, but nothing felt as good as leaving the lake behind us, and at least for the moment, Hildy’s problems, too.

Deena is one of a group of girls who call themselves the Green Meanies. I’ve watched them intently since their informal friendship hardened into something approaching a middle school sorority. They’re all good kids, some better than others. Some of them worry more about being popular than about grades. Some are brainiacs, and, at least on the surface, still more or less oblivious to the male of their species. They all have other friends and interests. There are no clubhouses, rules, and procedures—at least that I know about—or initiation rites. But a week rarely goes by that they don’t get together at somebody’s house. The Meanie Moms haven’t made any real attempts to discourage this, although we meet occasionally to make sure we’re on the same page, so that none of the girls can legitimately claim somebody else’s mother is cooler than her own.

On the day after the reception, I opened my door with Moonpie in my arms to prevent escape, and found Grace Forester, Shannon Forester’s mother, standing on my porch. I assumed she had come to enlighten me about some Meanie madness I wasn’t yet privy to. Grace, with her Alice in Wonderland hairstyle and pale green eyes, looks demure, even shy. She appears to be that accommodating somebody you want behind the counter at a hotel or shop making certain you get everything you’d ever wished for. In truth Grace is a pit bull, the Meanie Mom most likely to scent problems in the making and snarl, snap, and lunge until they’re fixed. She’s as subtle as a pit bull, too.

“My whole world will come crashing to a halt if you don’t do something, Aggie!”

I was only on my second cup of coffee, not quite up to saving the world. I motioned her inside, and after I freed the cat, Grace followed me to the kitchen where she flopped down at the table that dominates the room and thankfully covers much of our sad old floor.

I poured her a cup of coffee without asking and freshened my own. Then I plopped down in a chair across from her. I was dressed in sweats, but my feet were covered in fuzzy bunny slippers, a Christmas gift from Teddy. I wiggled my toes to make sure I was really awake.

“This is about Shannon or Deena? Is Shannon on the debate team?”

Grace frowned. She tasted the coffee before she spoke. “I’ll give you the name of a good place to order beans. You ever grind your own?”

“Maxwell House is a family friend.”

“You have better taste than this. Did you ever try cold brew? Even grocery store coffee is good if you cold brew.”

“My oldest sister’s the gourmet. She roasts and grinds her own beans, and her coffee is fabulous. She has no children or husband.”

“Make Deena do the work. None of those girls work hard enough. Slackers, all of them.”

I was used to Grace’s rants. “Is that why you’re here? Cracking the whip before breakfast?”

She drank half of her mug of substandard coffee, which tasted like life-giving nectar to me.

“I’m going to be ruined,” she said at last. “If you don’t figure out who murdered Win Dorchester, I’m finished. You know this economy. Who’s going to use a caterer who poisoned a guest?”

This was a surprise and news to me, big news. “You?
You
catered the party at the Dorchesters’ the night Win died?”

“Emerald Excellence. You didn’t know?”

I wasn’t sure how I’d missed this bit of gossip. “How long have you been catering?”

“Three months. I bought the business from the former owner. She threw up her hands and said good riddance, and I got it for a song, pots, pans, recipes—not that most of them were any good—the whole works. That’s why Hildy Dorchester called me. The name was familiar. And we did such a good job. The food was fabulous, only some bozo poisoned the shrimp dip. And I told Win Dorchester to throw the stuff out because it had been sitting on the table all evening. If he’d listened to me, he wouldn’t be dead right now!”

I figured that would teach poor stubborn Win, although unfortunately, he was no longer all that teachable.

“Haven’t the police given you a pass already?” I asked. “They don’t seem interested in pursuing anybody but Hildy as the murderer.”

“I don’t have any connection to the Dorchesters except that they hired Emerald Excellence for their party. Why would I kill the man? He only paid a deposit. He was going to mail the rest. You see if I do that again!”

“So why are you worried?”

She ran her fingers through her light brown hair and looked as if she was trying to calm down. “Because I can’t go all over town protesting I had nothing to do with this. That makes me look guilty. But until the police arrest somebody, people will wonder anyway. I had a cancellation the day the news got out that Dorchester died from my shrimp dip. Had another yesterday. It’s a slow bleed out. I’m dying here.”