Book Clubbed (12 page)

“Number 79 is on the right and 75 is on the left. Process of elimination says this is the right one.”

Angelica pressed the accelerator and drove on. “If we're going in, I don't want the neighbors to see my car and take down my license number.”

“Where will you park?”

“That little strip mall on Nashua Street.”

“Good idea. I'm glad I wore layers. It's at least a three-block walk and it's freezing out.”

Angelica parked the car under one of the strip mall's tall lampposts. She groped under the driver's seat and came up with a big flashlight. “Will you take charge of this?”

“Sure thing,” Tricia said, taking it from her.

They pulled on their gloves, got out of the car, locked it, and started off on foot.

After they'd gone a block, Angelica spoke. “Remind me again why we decided to move to such a cold place?”

“I wanted to open a bookstore. You arrived on my doorstep and never left. And you got here when the weather was perfect, and had no clue how nasty winter could be.”

“I guess you're right. And I guess I love it too much to leave just because it's cold and miserable for five or six months of the year.”

“Good.”

Angelica stopped abruptly. “What did you say?”

Tricia stopped, too. “I said ‘good.' Stay here with me forever.”

Angelica smiled, her eyes filling with tears. When she spoke again, her voice cracked. “Okay, I will.”

Tricia patted her back and then gave her a nudge, and they started off once more.

“I hope the wind has blown the snow off Betsy's driveway,” Tricia said. “Otherwise we'll leave footprints.”

“Good point,” Angelica agreed. “Maybe we should have brought a shovel.”

They walked the next block in silence. Would it look equally suspicious to Betsy's neighbors to see two strangers walking down their dead-end street on a cold winter's night?

“Have you got those keys handy?” Tricia whispered.

“Right in my pocket.”

They turned up number 77's driveway. Betsy's house looked dark and forbidding with all its drapes drawn. The shaggy bushes that flanked the front steps helped reinforce an aura of neglect, but then most houses looked rather that way at night with no illumination to highlight their best attributes. Tricia and Angelica had already agreed to try the back door first in hopes of staying out of the neighbors' sight, and headed straight there.

Angelica fumbled with the keys while Tricia held the flashlight beam fixed on the door's lock. But something wasn't right. She moved the light to take in the doorframe. “Ange, I think this door has been kicked in—just like at your apartment.”

“You mean someone's already been here and robbed Betsy? That's disgusting.”

“Maybe we should just call the police,” Tricia suggested.

“And tell them what? That we were about to enter a dead woman's house to snoop around and found that another crime had been committed before we even got here?”

“It doesn't sound good, but it's the right thing to do.”

“We can do the right thing after we take a look.” And with that, Angelica pushed open the back door and stepped inside. She fumbled for a switch, found it, and a light near the ceiling flashed on in what Tricia assumed would be the kitchen. “Oh, my God,” Angelica murmured.

“What is it?” Tricia asked, trying to see beyond her sister, but Angelica's bulky parka made an effective barrier. “Move,” she ordered.

“I can't. Wait a minute.”

Angelica seemed to shuffle a foot or so forward, giving Tricia just enough room to enter. It was then Tricia's turn to mutter, “Oh, my God. Betsy was—”

“A hoarder,” Angelica said in disgust. The entire kitchen was filled with mounds of big black trash bags, stacks of cartons, heaps of newspapers, dirty dishes with caked-on dried food, clothes, and heaven only knew what else.

“Well,” Angelica said, sounding overwhelmed, “I never expected this.”

“I don't suppose anyone does. Is there a trail you can follow?” Tricia asked and wrinkled her nose. The place didn't smell all that good, either.

Angelica shuffled forward, shoving stuff aside as she went. “I'm going to try to get into the next room. Are you game to follow?”

The truth was, no! But Tricia answered yes, anyway. She stepped farther into the kitchen and then shut the door as best she could and followed Angelica.

It took a good couple of minutes to navigate through the four-foot-high piles of garbage and junk before they made it into what must have been a living room, although if there was furniture, it was buried under more trash, clothes, unopened Priority Mail boxes, sagging cartons, and bulging plastic storage containers. Angelica hit a light switch and the dusty light fixture in the middle of the ceiling flashed on.

“Good grief,” Tricia cried in awe as she took in the decorations lined up on the wall. “I was only kidding when I said Betsy collected clown plates.” There must have been twenty or more of them hanging about a foot above the trash heaps, each of them encrusted with greasy dust and cobwebs. “If someone broke in to rob Betsy, how would the police know if anything was missing?”

“That's a good question.” Angelica shuffled forward again, then halted and let out a strangled squeak.

“What's wrong?” Tricia asked, concerned.

“Eew. There's a dead mouse on this pile of crap,” Angelica wailed.

“Better it's dead than alive,” Tricia said.

“How could Betsy live like this? I always thought she had a screw loose, but I never anticipated this,” Angelica said in exasperation.

“It beats me how someone so organized at work could be so disorganized at home,” Tricia said. She thought of something she'd heard some months before. “Last fall, after Joelle and Stan Berry broke up, Frannie told me that Joelle used to come here to stay with Betsy so as not to sully her reputation. But I can't imagine anyone in her right mind wanting to stay in this hovel.”

“Unless Joelle is a hoarder, too. Then she probably wouldn't blink an eye at a mess like this.”

“Maybe.”

Angelica gazed around the room. “What should we be looking for—and more important—are we ever likely to
find
what we're looking for?”

“You got me.” Tricia thought about her sister's question. “Keep an eye out for bank statements, insurance forms, and stock certificates—you know, financial papers.”

“A lot of that stuff is now delivered via e-mail. Do you see any sign of a computer?”

Tricia looked around the room. “Maybe we should try to find her bedroom. She might have stored all her important stuff in one place.”

“I think the trail veers to the left,” Angelica said and started shuffling forward again.

Tricia kept her eye out for anything that looked important—but it all appeared to be trash littered with mouse droppings and spiderwebs, and around the floors and on every picture or knickknack hanging on the walls was a thick layer of greasy dust. And worse, she suspected under all the rubbish was likely to be black mold. After all, packed in tightly as it was, the junk curtailed the circulation of air. Tricia shuddered at the thought, and couldn't wait to get home to throw her clothes—jacket and all—into the washer, and then jump in the shower with water as hot as she could stand.

Angelica had stopped moving and stood before the opening to a hall, grimacing. “Oooh, it's the bathroom, and it's even nastier than a gas station restroom.”

It took a few moments for Tricia to reach the open door to the bathroom. The hall before her was stacked with cartons and draped with yet more piles of clothes. She looked into the bathroom and felt distinctly queasy. The toilet had no seat, and the bowl was caked with . . . she didn't want to speculate. The tub was piled so high with clothes and towels that there was no way Betsy could bathe in it. “No wonder Betsy spent so much time in the Cookery's washroom. Her own was unusable.”

Angelica made no comment and continued picking her way through the accumulated trash once again. She opened a door. “It's a bedroom . . . I think. This could have been a child's room. It's painted lilac—favorite little-girl color.”

“Joelle mentioned Betsy had a daughter who died. Can you get in?” Tricia asked.

Angelica shook her head. “I don't think so. I can't see a bed, or any toys or books, just more piles of crap.”

Tricia caught up with her and looked inside. Other than the color of the wall, there was no indication the room had ever belonged to a child. It was filled with more of what they'd found in the rest of the house. “Do you think Betsy was trying to replace her dead child and the husband who left her with piles and piles of rubbish as some weird way of filling the voids in her life?”

“It doesn't make sense to me, but after the death of a child, heaven only knows how deep her grief ran.” Angelica craned her neck. “There's another door across the way.” She sidled past more boxes and stood before an open doorway. “This might be it.” She reached inside the room, found and flipped a switch. Yet another dusty bulb illuminated the littered space.

Angelica waited for Tricia to catch up before she entered the room. At least this space wasn't quite as cluttered. A small area had been cleared and Tricia saw a dirty Berber carpet covered with coffee and food stains. A computer desk piled high with papers, dirty coffee cups, and a thick layer of dust was crammed into a corner next to a double bed. Half the bed was piled with clothes, leaving only a narrow sleeping area with grimy sheets and blankets.

Tricia swallowed hard, disgusted. What a difference from her lovely, uncluttered home—where she fervently wished she was at that moment. “How could anyone live like this?”

“It's a disease,” Angelica said with sadness. “Poor Betsy couldn't relate well to people, so she must have spent her free time collecting stuff that comforted her. I'll bet she valued all this rubbish over the people who remained in her life.”

“And maybe her hoarding was responsible for her failed marriage,” Tricia said. “Joelle mentioned how she and her husband fought over their assets. Maybe she couldn't find them in all this junk to satisfy a judgment.”

Angelica picked through the stack of papers on the computer desk. “Looks like mostly old bills. I'll bet she paid them electronically.”

“That would save on stamps,” Tricia agreed.

“And maybe she paid them as they came in so they wouldn't get lost.” Angelica hit the computer's power button and they waited for it to boot up. Unfortunately, the first screen up demanded a password. “What do you think Betsy would use?” she asked.

“I have no idea. Maybe her maiden name?” Tricia suggested. “What if it's her mother's maiden name? That's what the banks always seem to want as a security check.”

“Do you have to be such a pill?” Angelica accused. She turned back for the keyboard. “Lowercase? Initial caps? All caps? We've only got three tries before we're locked out.”

“We're as good as locked out now,” Tricia pointed out.

Angelica sat on the grubby office chair, stared at the dust-covered, grimy keyboard for a long moment, and then removed her gloves.

“You'll leave fingerprints,” Tricia warned.

“I can't type with them on. And I can always dust the keyboard off when I'm done. It certainly needs it.” She rested her fingers on the home-row keys, but paused. “What's Betsy's unmarried sister's last name?”

“Morrison.”

“I'll try initial caps.” Angelica tapped the keys and got a warning message to try again. She tried all lowercase letters and got the same warning. “One last time,” she said, hit the caps lock key, and tried again. Sure enough, the sign-on screen morphed into the desktop display, which was as littered with files as the room was cluttered with junk. “Oh, boy. Where do we start?”

Tricia noticed an open container of recordable CDs peeking out from under a soiled towel. “Copy all the files onto these CDs and we can peruse them at our leisure.”

“Who has time for leisure?” Angelica asked, but she accepted an empty disk from Tricia and proceeded to copy all the desktop files. After that, she dug deeper into the documents file and copied everything there before starting on a third disk.

The task took a good twenty minutes, and as each minute passed Tricia's anxiety level rose. “That's got to be enough,” she said. “We've got to get out of here before someone finds us here.”

Angelica popped the final CD from the read/write drawer and added it to the others in her pocket. Then she pulled out a pocket container of hand sanitizer and squirted some into her palms, working it in before she pulled her gloves on again. She grabbed a towel from the pile overhead, squirted sanitizer on it, and wiped down the keyboard.

Tricia began to make her way through the house, aiming for the kitchen with Angelica following, switching off lights as she went.

A loud bang reverberated through the house and Tricia stopped dead.

“What was that?” Angelica whispered.

“There's someone else in the house!” Tricia practically squealed.

“Hide!” Angelica said.

“Where?”

But they had no time, because a voice from the kitchen doorway demanded, “What the hell are you doing here?”

Tricia felt
her mouth go dry, but managed a nervous laugh. “Hi, Joelle. What a surprise to see you here.”

“It's an even bigger surprise to find the two of you in my sister's house. Did you kick in the back door?” she demanded.

“No, we found it that way,” Tricia said.

“We were going to use Betsy's keys,” Angelica said and pulled them out of her jacket pocket, dangling them for Joelle to see.

“You have no right to be here. I'm going to call the cops,” she said, and began to dig into the purse hanging from her shoulder.

“Wait—please don't,” Tricia said. “We came here tonight to try to figure out why Betsy was killed.”

“That's a job for the police,” Joelle said.

“Did you know that Tricia has assisted the Sherriff's Department and the Stoneham Police Department in solving several local murders?” Angelica said.

“Yes,” Joelle grudgingly admitted. “After Stan was killed.”

“You
do
want your sister's murderer to be found sooner rather than later, don't you?” Angelica asked. “I know I would.”

Tricia shot her an annoyed glance. “All we want to do is help. I assure you, we had no intention of taking any of your sister's things.”
Except for three CDs' worth of data from her computer,
she silently amended.

Joelle waved a hand before her, taking in the mess. “As you can see, Betsy really had nothing worth stealing.”

“When did she start hoarding?” Tricia asked.

“Betsy never was a neatnik, but she didn't start collecting papers, clothes, and other junk until after her daughter, Amy, died. That was ten years ago. In the last five years—since her husband, Jerry, left—she became much, much worse.”

“She accumulated all this in only five years?” Angelica asked.

Joelle nodded. “For the most part. Her collections, as she called them, became more important to her than any of the people in her life. She lost all of her friends, and her husband, because of them. I was the only one left who'd have anything to do with her, and sometimes she was so mean to me, I think she deliberately tried to drive me away.”

“So you two were no longer close?” Tricia asked.

Again Joelle nodded. “I guess I tried one too many times to get her some help, but she just got angry. She told me she was going to change her will. I had been her beneficiary since the divorce, but she said she knew I'd throw all her treasures in the trash before her body was cold.” She looked around the dump that had been Betsy's living room. “She had that right.”

“Do you have any idea who might have wanted her dead or why someone would have kicked in her door?”

Joelle shook her head. “She kept to herself these past five years. She worked, she shopped, and she stayed home alone. It wasn't much of a life.”

“And someone took even that from her,” Angelica commented sadly.

“What made you decide to come here tonight?” Tricia asked.

“I . . . um . . . came to look for a nice outfit for her to be buried in.”

“Then you've heard that the medical examiner ruled on the cause of death?” Tricia asked.

“She was crushed,” Joelle said with a shrug.

She hadn't heard. And why hadn't Grant Baker contacted her to tell her the official cause?

“You said you came here tonight to look for something that would help you figure out who killed Betsy. And?” Joelle demanded.

“And?” Tricia repeated dully.

“What have you discovered?”

Tricia threw Angelica a guilty look.

“That the motive wasn't robbery,” Angelica said.

Tricia's head snapped around to glare at her sister and could have cheerfully kicked her. “Sadly, nothing,” she told Joelle.

Joelle scowled. “You're supposed to be so smart when it comes to mysteries. You haven't been able to come up with anything else?”

Tricia shrugged. “Not so far.”

Joelle scowled. “Then I assume your reputation as an amateur sleuth has been greatly exaggerated.”

“I've always thought so,” Angelica muttered.

Tricia gave her sister another annoyed glare, but Angelica seemed oblivious.

“Look, it's getting late. You two had better go,” Joelle said firmly. “If you give me Betsy's keys and leave right now, I won't call the police and report you.”

“We were just about to leave when you got here,” Angelica said.

“Yes. It's getting late,” Tricia agreed, and she made her way through the piles in the living room and squeezed past Joelle to head for the back door.

Angelica handed Joelle the set of keys as she passed. “Please let us know what you decide to do about the funeral. We'd like to come.”

Speak for yourself,
Tricia was tempted to say. “Good night,” she called as she went out the back door.

“Good night,” Angelica echoed and tried to close the door behind her. It wouldn't catch, and after a few tries she gave up.

Tricia breathed in the crisp clean air. The odor in Betsy's house had been so penetrating she felt as if she could taste it. She waited until Angelica flanked her, and then the sisters started down the driveway. “Do you notice what's missing?” Tricia asked.

Angelica looked all around her. “No, what?”

“Joelle's car.”

“What are you saying—that she was sneaking around the same as us?”

“It did take her a moment or two to come up with the burial-clothes excuse.”

“So why do you think she really came here tonight?”

“I have no idea. But if she'd been disinherited, then just like us, she really had no right to be there. Was she going to sift through the trash to find hidden treasure before the house is sealed for probate?”

“If so, naughty Joelle.”

They turned the corner and walked along Nashua Street, heading back toward the strip mall and Angelica's car. Angelica raised her arm to sniff her jacket sleeve. “I think I'm going to have to fumigate my clothes. Either that or burn them.”

“Mine, too.”

“Do you think the smell will transfer to my car seats?”

“Not if you leave a window open overnight—and pray it doesn't snow.”

“Great idea.”

“What do you want to do about the CDs?” Tricia asked and ducked her head, wishing the wind weren't so strong.

“You have more free time than I do. You can have them, look them over, and then let me know what you find—if you find anything at all, that is,” Angelica said, reaching into her pocket and withdrawing the CDs, and then handing them to Tricia.

“It might be that Betsy only chronicled the junk she collected.”

“And if that's the case, I think you should look at the disks and then destroy them. As it is, we're violating her privacy,” Angelica said.

“But now she's dead and beyond caring. And you can tell an awful lot about a person by the junk they collect on their hard drive.”

“Which makes me want to purge my computer the minute I get home. That and change all my passwords. It really was far too easy for us to get into Betsy's computer.”

“And thank goodness it was,” Tricia said.

“But only if something good turns up. I have a feeling you'll find rummaging through her files to be a complete waste of time.”

Tricia did, too. And if she didn't, how on earth was she going to use the information without incriminating herself and Angelica?

It wasn't something she wanted to contemplate.

Yet.

*   *   *

It was
almost ten by the time Tricia had thrown her clothes into the washer and emerged lobster red from her shower, much too late to call Chief Baker. He was an “early to bed, early to rise” kind of guy, and she didn't want to annoy him by waking him.

Instead, she sat down in front of her computer with Miss Marple on her lap and went through the first of the three CDs. Not only did Betsy collect physical junk, she collected a lot of pictures. One of the files contained her user IDs and passwords to all her online accounts. Her Pinterest account had over forty thousand pictures spread over 252 boards. They ranged from recipes to vintage Christmas cards to do-it-yourself projects, and she had copied many of them to her hard drive.

Tricia felt like a voyeur pawing through the dead woman's virtual closetful of secrets, and like her home, nothing seemed to be of any real value.

The buzzer on the washer sounded and Miss Marple jumped down from her lap, allowing Tricia to get up and put the clothes in the dryer. She'd have to stay up and take the clothes out when the cycle finished, or she'd be spending the next night or so ironing everything, which was a chore she absolutely loathed.

With the dryer drum happily turning, Tricia wandered back to the computer, but this time Miss Marple did not join her. Tricia considered logging on to Betsy's account at the Bank of Stoneham but figured the police might subpoena the computer records and possibly trace the inquiry to her home computer. She wanted to find Betsy's killer, but not if she had to go to jail to do it.

Tricia scrolled through a number of files, but nothing seemed relevant to Betsy's death, and as Angelica suggested, she felt like a voyeur violating Betsy's privacy. Finally a glance at the time listed at the bottom-right corner of her computer monitor told her that the dry cycle would soon be finished. She'd started closing screens when she noticed a Word document with the title of DIET RECIPES. Since she worked so hard at maintaining her own weight, she found herself double-clicking on the icon. The software loaded and the document opened. Sure enough, a recipe for makeover chocolate muffins appeared. Instead of oil, the recipe called for prune paste or applesauce. Instead of cane sugar, the recipe called for an artificial sweetener. Tricia was all for lowering calories, but she preferred food to be made of real ingredients, not something from a test tube in some chemical company's laboratory.

She scrolled down to the next page, and the next. More and more interesting makeover recipes appeared, including a low-cal version of Waldorf salad—something she'd always enjoyed. She hit the print button, specifying that page, and wondered if she could get Angelica or her short-order cook to make it for her. She was about to close the file, wishing Betsy had included a table of contents, when she stopped scrolling. Her heart began to pound when columns of names, cities, and numbers filled the screen. What did it mean? Did Betsy have bank accounts spread out all across the nation with money hidden in other names? How could she have accomplished it?

Tricia sat back in her chair and pondered the implications. Had Bob looked into her background before he hired her, or had he offered employment to the first warm body he could find to fill Frannie's empty chair? Was it possible the Chamber still had her employment application? Would that give a clue to the woman's work background and her last several employers? If asked, would they give truthful answers, or would they fall back on the standard, “we can't give out that information” and only reveal Betsy's employment dates?

Tricia sat back in her chair and considered her options. If she said nothing, would Grant Baker—or one of his officers—find the information buried in a word processing document containing recipes, or should she tell him what she'd found—or have Angelica, as Chamber president, do it?

She glanced at the clock and realized just how tired she felt. It had been a long day and she was in no condition to make such a decision. She closed the files and shut down the computer. “Bedtime. Come along, Miss Marple.”

The cat opened her sleepy eyes, got up, and stretched, then jumped down from the couch.

Tricia grabbed a book from her living room shelves, and headed for her bedroom. She got undressed, climbed into bed, and opened Josephine Tey's
The
Daughter of Time,
but soon found she couldn't concentrate on the words. She had far too much on her mind. She lay awake in the dark for a long time, trying to make sense of all the various threads of information she'd gathered that day, but it was no use. None of the pieces to the puzzle seemed to fit properly, and it was only exhaustion that finally took her to dreamland.