A Truth for a Truth (27 page)

I also needed to tell Hildy about this new development, not to raise false hopes, but to let her know I was still working hard to find her husband’s murderer. And truthfully, I had another reason, too. A couple of questions had occurred to me, and if I could find a way to ask them, I needed to. If I was going to find a new and better suspect than Craig Brown, I needed, at the very least, more information. More likely I was going to need a whole new theory, and questioning Hildy was a place to start.

I filled the gas tank of my van at the cheapest station in the county, and when I went inside to pay, I fortified myself with a cup of coffee brewed—at the latest—on St. Patrick’s Day. I drank it anyway, checking out the magazines so I could delay getting back into the van. Who knew there were so many ways to skin a deer or drain a radiator? By the time I’d jacked up my courage to go see Hildy, I’d picked out three likely tattoos and several great topics to discuss with my father next time I visited his compound in Indiana. Did he know, for instance, that a simple fruitcake wrapped in cheesecloth, soaked in brandy and buried in powdered sugar, could save his life and sustain him practically forever once the world falls into chaos? Did I want to tell him and risk a fifty-pound package on my front porch on Christmas Eve?

The drive to Hildy’s took fifteen minutes, but only because I took back streets and braked for winged insects. I parked in front of the house and tried to tell myself I was investigating. Of course nothing much had changed. The trees, and what looked like a snowball bush, were a little closer to leafing out. A newspaper adorned the driveway. Ace detective that I am, I knew this meant either Hildy just hadn’t bothered to pick it up this morning, or she had gone away. Knowing Hildy, I discarded the latter possibility. She would cancel the paper rather than waste her carrier’s time. Besides, she wasn’t supposed to leave town.

Not picking up the paper? Either she’d slept late because she had finally come to the sad conclusion that nobody in town was ever again going to request her help early in the morning, or she had simply lost all interest in the world around her.

I felt worse than ever.

I finally ambled up the sidewalk. I told myself I was still investigating. For instance, I’d never noticed that the lots on this side of the street were somewhat unusual. The front yards are surprisingly deep, giving welcome privacy from the street, as well as long, lush stretches of lawn. To compensate most side yards are narrow, and the houses set close together, almost as close as town houses. Hildy’s yard is a good example. There’s almost no lawn to Hildy’s right, and on her left, the driveway extends beyond the house and up to her backyard, bordered along its outer edge by the neighbor’s identical drive.

The front windows of Hildy’s house are deep and wide, and the shrubs beneath them are trimmed low. Again, the airy effect offsets the close proximity to neighbors, but I wondered if Hildy ever opened curtains on the right side of her house.

On a whim I strolled across the yard—still wasting time—and peered into the side yard. The architect of Hildy’s house was no dope. He’d solved the problem of peeping Toms. I could only see one window on this side of the house, in a peculiar-looking extension that jutted out nearly to the property line. The window faced front, and a picket fence stretched from the extension to the front of the house, creating a narrow garden with a flag-stone path and no gate leading into it. Perhaps originally this had been a clever secret garden, but now, without a gate, it was simply one of those quirky features that make old houses interesting.

I reminded myself that due to the lousy real estate market, I was no longer flipping houses, and Hildy’s windows or lack of them were no longer of professional interest. I had delayed the inevitable too long. I took a deep breath and walked back to the front and up to the porch. After I rang the doorbell the fourth time, Hildy finally answered. She was as neatly dressed as ever, her hair pinned into a tidy knot on her head and face scrubbed and shiny. But she looked tired, as if sleep was no longer her friend.

I should have prepared a speech. Instead I just turned up my hands. “I’m sorry. Can you forgive me?”

She shook her head. “For what? Telling the truth?”

“How about for exploding when I could have told the truth with the respect and consideration you deserve?”

Tears filled her eyes. She held out her arms, and I stepped into them. We hugged hard.

“I always say it’s best to just come clean,” Hildy said. “But you already learned that from somebody else.”

I laughed, and okay, I wiped my eyes, too. “That darned floor’s just been such a sore point. I guess it’s my Achilles’ heel.”

“And I have a terrible habit of taking over. I knew it, and now I know it even better.”

“I just had the worst cup of coffee in the entire world. Any chance you have something to chase it while I tell you some news?”

I followed her into the kitchen, and she made a pot of coffee while I told her about the events of the previous night and the links to Win and Ellen Hardiger.

“So they’re looking at Craig Brown as a possible suspect,” I said, ending with the good news.

“Goodness, you do get yourself into tense situations, don’t you?”

After all we’d been through, how could I fault her for stating the obvious? And, besides, wasn’t that just the nicest way of summing up my life?

“Putting my life in jeopardy seems to be my way of establishing a separate identity,” I told her. “I guess it’s about as far from what’s expected of a minister’s wife as I can get.”

Hildy took down two mugs from the cabinet beside the sink. “In the long run, you’ll be the best kind of role model, won’t you? A good marriage and happy family. Your own place in the community, and well loved in the church anyway. All because you made yourself happy doing what you’re good at.”

I waited until she served the coffee, with a pitcher of cream, cloth napkins, and sugar cubes, to boot.

“You were happy doing what you’re good at, weren’t you?” I asked when she’d seated herself across from me at the kitchen table.

“I really wanted to be a doctor.” She took a sip, then she smiled. “I should have, was going to, then I met Win. I loved him enough to put that behind me, only, once I made that choice, I knew I had to be the best minister’s wife out there, just to prove to myself I’d done the right thing. Maybe we’d all have been better off if I’d just gone ahead with my plans, and Win had been forced to make some adjustments for
me
. Maybe if I hadn’t put him at the center of the universe, he wouldn’t have settled there so comfortably.”

I was surprised how clearly she saw her life. I wondered how many people were able to look back at decisions they had made and see them for what they really were.

“But I helped a lot of people, a lot of churches,” she said, after a pause. “I did a lot of good. I just never learned when to pull back. I guess I’ll learn that now.”

“I’m so very sorry you’re having to learn anything from this situation, Hildy. I promise, I’m still looking for Win’s murderer.”

“Do you think it really was Craig Brown?” She gave a visible shudder. “To think he was here in my kitchen doing who knows what?”

I told her the questions Roussos had raised about Zoey’s ex, questions I’d already considered. She sighed.

“There is something else, another avenue to explore,” I said. “But it’s not pleasant, Hildy. I don’t want to make you unhappier than I have already.”

“Why don’t you let me decide where to go with whatever it is?”

I debated. But if we were really going to find out who killed Win, I had to know more.

I decided to edge into it. “Win’s memoirs. How serious was he about writing them?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t. He was having as much trouble letting go of his ministry as I was. I suppose that would have been one way to relive it. But he also talked about publishing his sermons, maybe in some sort of self-help, popular theology format. I think that was more likely. He was a practical man. His sermons might have found a home with a publisher. But memoirs? Who would have been interested in his life as a minister, except the people who’d known him as one?”

“Then you’re doubtful he would have written them?”

“Why is this coming up now?”

I thought about Samuel Booth. “Maybe somebody was afraid he might.”

“Somebody with something to hide? There was no reason to be afraid. Win would never expose a parishioner’s secret.”

I hoped she was right, and Win’s threat to Samuel had either been unintended or just a bluff. “Maybe whoever this was didn’t believe that.”

“What kind of secret?”

When I didn’t answer, she set down her cup. “Let’s have it, Aggie. If you and I are going to be honest with each other in a good way, this is the place to start.”

“Somebody told me Win may have had more than one affair, and you probably know.”

She looked stunned. Then she shook her head so hard wisps of hair escaped their carefully pinned home. “No. I know no such thing, and furthermore, I don’t believe it.”

She was telling the truth. I had no doubt of that, but was she just closing her eyes to an unpleasant possibility?

“Here’s why I’m sure,” she said, correctly reading my expression. “Because after Marie? I never trusted him again. Not fully, anyway. Once trust is breached, nothing’s ever the same. I tried to have faith in him, but I finally realized I never would. Not completely, and not unless I had proof. So I watched him. Checked up on things he told me. Kept an eye on our finances, on his trips out of town.” She lifted her shoulders. “You’re not the only minister’s wife with detective skills.”

“Wow.”

“Do you think I would have come back to Emerald Springs if I thought Win was still involved with Marie? Or if he had given me more cause to suspect him of infidelity? Win was a great storyteller, and he liked to shock people, just to see their reaction. He liked to throw them off balance. He was far from perfect, still an adolescent in some ways, right up until the moment he died. But with Win, it was mostly talk. I’m almost certain Marie was his only affair, and no matter what she says, I don’t think it continued after we left. In fact I’m almost sure he was glad to say good-bye to her. She was a complication, and he didn’t need or want emotional complications. That’s why he loved me. I made everything run smoothly, so he could just go on being Win.”

“You changed churches so often. I thought maybe . . .”

She shook her head again. “No, he wasn’t in trouble. Win just loved whipping churches into shape and moving on. Everybody knew he was good at taking troubled congregations, setting them on their feet, and looking for a new challenge when he’d finished. It was a rare talent, and I liked moving to new places and fixing things, too. That was something we shared.”

“What about the night of the party? Marie was a pretty big complication.”

“When I confronted him in the kitchen after my scene with Marie, he told me she had drunk too much, so he went outside to talk her into leaving. He was afraid she would upset me. He said he offered to drive her home, but she refused.”

“That’s when you saw them together?”

“So he said. He claimed he told her as nicely as he could that he didn’t want to pick up where they left off, and she needed to move on.”

I was trying to imagine this. “Where were they exactly?”

“On the side of the house.”

“In the driveway?”

“No, the other side.”

I was glad I’d wasted time by examining the house more carefully. “I only noticed one window over there, Hildy. Is that little extension part of your bedroom?”

“No, our—my bedroom’s upstairs. Win’s study was down here, in the back of the house with windows looking over the backyard. Then there’s a guest room in the front, and a little hall between them, ending in an alcove with the only side window, and it faces front. I was standing in the alcove when I spotted them.”

I was trying to imagine this. Hildy could tell, and she got to her feet. “Come, I’ll show you.”

I put down my coffee and followed her on what turned out to be a fast trip. Through the kitchen into the living room, then into a short hallway that ended in the extension I’d noted. A tall secretary rested at the end beside the window I had seen looking over the narrow side yard.

“What were you doing here?” I asked. “When you saw them?”

She bit her lip, then she pointed to the phone sitting on top of the secretary, a notepad beside it, a calendar on the wall behind it. “I think the phone rang. I’m almost sure it did.”

“It’s kind of a strange place for a phone, isn’t it?”

“I think this little nook was used as a study of sorts by the owners, to pay bills and such. The phone jack was here, so we put the secretary here and hooked up a phone when we moved in.”

“Why did you take the call here instead of the kitchen?”

“I was in the living room turning off lights and straightening up. The caterer was gone by then, and I was waiting for Win to help me put away the leftovers, since he had insisted on keeping them. I thought he’d gone outside to walk the last guests to their car. This was the closest telephone.”

“Who called, do you remember?”

She frowned. “Why?”

“Trying to get a picture, that’s all.”

She bit her lip again, and I worried about blood loss. “I can’t remember. I just remember seeing Win and Marie and losing my temper.”

“If that was the end of the party, it must have been pretty late. Do your daughters call at that hour because they’re on the West Coast?”

“Not usually . . .” She was still nibbling, then she nodded. “Nobody.”

“Nobody called you?”

“No, nobody was on the line. I answered the phone, and there was some kind of background noise, then the line went dead. By then I’d seen Win and Marie through the window, and I wasn’t paying attention to the call anymore. For all I know, I even left the receiver lying on the desk.”