Mom Zone Mysteries 02 Staying Home Is a Killer (12 page)

Chapter Twelve

M
y fingers trembled as I snapped the lid back on the cup. I didn’t want Victor or the man in the baseball cap to see me. If I walked back through the tables to the play area, I could leave through the exit there.

“You better not be holding anything back, ’cause that would be real stupid.” The baseball-capped man stood and strode out the door. I felt like my feet were glued to the floor. I couldn’t have moved if I’d wanted to.

I managed to crane my neck around and look back at Victor. His head was down, bent over the table. He ran his hands through his hair and then leaned back. He looked pale, like he was about to be sick. I managed to lift my heavy feet and make it back to the play area. I followed a mom with a baby in a high chair. Victor was so absorbed in his study of the tabletop that he didn’t see me.

Inside the play area, I checked on Livvy and then quickly cleared our trash off the table and grabbed my suede crescent hobo bag and Livvy’s diaper bag. As I gathered Livvy’s shoes from the shoe keeper, I scanned the parking lot. A dark pickup, one of the oversized kind that rumble and need two parking spaces, pulled out and swung onto the street. A person wearing a baseball cap was at the wheel.

I went through the motions of driving home, tucking Livvy in her bed for her afternoon nap, and singing her a song, but the whole time I was preoccupied with what I’d overheard. I scooped up the clothes from the floor where Livvy had tossed them and dumped them on the ottoman. With a thump, I plopped down into the overstuffed chair and contemplated the lumpy gray sky. Tiny flakes floated to the ground, but I was thinking about Victor. He’d said he didn’t have “it.” He’d tried to get “it” from Penny, but she died before he could get “it” from her. I picked up a black turtleneck and smoothed it out on the ottoman. I’d thought Penny’s death had something to do with what we talked about the morning of the day she died, either the flight crew or her activities with the exhibit. But the flight crew was just nervous about flying naked. That’s why they were so skittish when I talked to them. Penny wouldn’t have liked the stunt Will participated in, but even if Penny threatened to tell, flying naked wasn’t the kind of thing you killed someone over.

I folded the turtleneck into a perfect square and stared at it. If only the questions surrounding Penny’s death could be squared away so neatly. There was still the question of what Clarissa Bedford was up to. She’d hated Penny and was probably having an affair, but now there was the question of Victor, too. He’d wanted something from Penny. He told the man he hadn’t got it. But what if he had? What if he was just saying he hadn’t to keep the man away from him? And throwing Mr. Baseball Cap my name to keep him occupied? I quickly grabbed a soft long-sleeved white shirt and folded it. I wished Mitch wasn’t in a training class today or that Abby wasn’t gone on her trip. I needed one of them to talk through this with me.

Then there was Ballard Nova. Penny babysat for her group. With a sigh, I stacked the shirt and grabbed another. So there was another person. How many people had Penny’s life intersected with? There was her art class, too. I left the laundry and pulled out my list. I added
Victor, Ballard
, and
art class
. My mood felt as gray as the day.

“But what is ‘it’?” asked Thistlewait.

“I don’t know.” I shifted in the thinly padded office chair. I’d called Thistlewait late that afternoon and he’d agreed to see me at three o’clock at the OSI office. I was trying to convince myself that the hard looks I’d received on my way in had nothing to do with the investigation.

“Well.” He closed his small notebook and shifted gears. “Mrs. Follette ingested the same poison that put Lieutenant Lamar in the hospital.”

“But Penny didn’t die of poisoning,” I said, puzzled. I glanced over to the corner to check on Livvy. She looked like an Olympic weight lifter as she squatted with her back perfectly straight to examine the carpet.

“No, but if she’d lived long enough, she would have. The type of poison Mrs. Follette ingested sometimes takes seventy-two hours to affect the victim.”

“What was it?” I asked. Livvy tottered over, a staple pinched in her chubby fingers.

“I’m afraid I can’t go into that,” he said, his tone formal.

I took the staple and said good-bye, thoughtfully. Wasn’t poison supposed to be a woman’s choice for a murder weapon? The only women on my suspect list were Clarissa and Ballard. I needed to talk to Clarissa when she got back from her trip. Thistlewait hadn’t seemed very interested when I told him about Mr. Baseball Cap. And Mr. Baseball Cap looked more like the type to use direct, hands-on violence than a removed murder weapon like poison. Besides, if Penny had something he wanted, it wouldn’t make sense to kill her.

I thought I’d seen the last of Thistlewait for a while, but he showed up at my door at six that night and handed me a piece of paper. “Search warrant,” he said and motioned to a group of people behind him.

“What?” A stream of people pushed past me. “Wait a minute.” I flicked a glance over the paper. “You can’t barge in here—”

“We can,” Thistlewait said with a mixture of finality and sympathy. Mitch came in from the kitchen carrying Livvy, who was chanting, “Moe, peez,” words she knew would get her more food.

“They say they’ve got a search warrant.” I handed the papers to Mitch and took Livvy.

Mitch’s face went from puzzlement to anger as he said, “What is this?”

Thistlewait said, “Sorry. We’ve got to do it.”

“I’m calling Legal.” Mitch left the room.

“There’s a problem here?” asked a man on my porch. In his quilted vest over a plaid flannel shirt he looked like he’d just returned from deer hunting.

“No, I don’t think so,” Thistlewait said, then turned to me. “This is Detective Jensen. Vernon police. He’s investigating Mrs. Follette’s death.”

Detective Jensen held out his hand. I looked at it, then Thistlewait. A rush of anger surged through me. How could Thistlewait perform perfect social introductions at a time like this? People were invading my home! Did he think I was going to politely shake Jensen’s hand, fall into chitchat mode, and say things like “So how is homicide these days?”

I don’t think so. “We’ve met,” I said shortly. Detective Jensen pulled his hand away and smoothed his salt-and-pepper beard. I stepped back stiffly and the men came inside. I was so angry I was speechless, a common condition for me. I couldn’t put the phrases flying through my mind into coherent sentences. I shoved the door, it slammed, and I retreated to the kitchen.

I put Livvy in her high chair and gave her some plastic cups and bowls to play with. At the stove, I automatically stirred the ravioli noodles. It cooked so fast, it would be done in a few minutes. What were we supposed to do? Eat it with the police poking into our closets, drawers, and papers? A strange sound bubbled up my throat, half laugh, half sob. Why was I thinking about dinner at a time like this? Through the doorway, I saw the people, crime scene technicians probably, pull on latex gloves and then spread out through the living room and back into the bedrooms, like bugs, infecting each room. How could they invade our life, our privacy like this? I heard Mitch talking to Thistlewait, and then Mitch returned to the kitchen and sat down heavily at the table. “Legal’s closed.”

“It figures, it’s after four-thirty. How can they do this? How can they come in and search?”

Mitch tossed the paperwork on the table. “Thistlewait said they had information about the poison, and there was something else that he wouldn’t tell me.”

“Can’t we stop them?”

Livvy banged her bowl on the high chair.

Mitch sprawled back in the chair. Anger edged his words as he said. “How? Do you know a good lawyer we can call quick?”

“No, I don’t know any lawyer, much less a good one.”

“We don’t have anything to hide, anyway.” Mitch sat up. “Let them search.”

Something sizzled behind me and a scorched smell permeated the kitchen. “The ravioli!” I pushed the pan off the burner, just as the buzzer went off. I dumped the noodles in the drainer in the sink. “Agh! I forgot to warm up the sauce.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Mitch went to the pantry and came back with a jar of spaghetti sauce. “I’ll nuke it.” He tipped the jar’s contents into a bowl, slammed the microwave door, and pushed the number pad. By the time I had the noodles drained, the sauce was done and we sat down to our one-item supper.

“I was going to make a salad.” I heard the creak of the linen closet door opening. “I hope they like my towels,” I said sarcastically. Then came the faint beep of the computer starting up. “Can they do that? Search our computer, too?”

“Yeah,” Mitch said with a sigh, “they can. But they’re not going to find anything.”

There was a shout from the back of the house and Thistlewait left the living room where he’d been looking through drawers in our end table. I glanced at Mitch and we both followed Thistlewait back to our bedroom. The room was small to begin with, but with the technician, Thistlewait, Detective Jensen, and Mitch crowding in, I could barely get in the door. I popped up on my tiptoes and looked over Mitch’s shoulder.

A long beaded necklace dangled from the technician’s gloved hand above my open jewelry box. Then it dribbled down into a pool of dark beads inside a plastic bag. After scribbling a note, the technician handed the bag to Thistlewait.

“You’re interested in the necklace I brought back from our honeymoon cruise?” I asked.

“That’s where these came from? Your honeymoon?”

“Yeah,” I said as I watched the technician continue his inspection, opening our dresser drawers and shuffling the clothes around. I was going to be busy cleaning up after these people.

“Where?”

“What?” I said, drawing my gaze away from the mess of the linen closet down the hall where towels and sheets puddled on the shelves and on the floor. “Do they have to make such a mess?”

“Where on your honeymoon?”

“Cozumel. Or was it Saint Thomas?” I looked at Mitch.

He shrugged. Jewelry made his eyes glaze over, so no help there. “Well, I’m not sure, but it was on our honeymoon. We stopped at Jamaica, Saint Thomas, and Cozumel. It was in one of those places.”

“And it’s been in your jewelry box ever since. How many years?” Detective Jensen asked.

“It’ll be four years in June. But I wore them a few weeks ago. They’re really popular now. There’s even a little shop in the mall that sells them.” I didn’t like the way Thistlewait studied the bag, then eyed me carefully, as if he was reevaluating me. “If you think that had anything to do with the poisoning, then you’re going to have to look in a lot of jewelry boxes. I’ve seen lots of people wearing those necklaces lately.”

Thistlewait’s eyes narrowed. “Really?”

“Yes, really. You know something, a purse or a necklace gets ‘hot.’ Everyone wants one. Like that necklace in the movie
Tin Cup
. For a while everyone I knew had a floating pearl necklace.” I walked over to the twisted pile of necklaces on the dresser and plucked out a necklace with pearls suspended individually along the chain about one inch apart. “Those dark beads are just as popular around here.” I closed my eyes. “I saw some the other day.” I opened my eyes. “Ballard Nova was wearing them at McDonald’s and she knew Penny fairly well. And Bree had some at Jeff’s party. They’re everywhere.”

“I see.” Thistlewait rubbed his hands through his curly hair and didn’t bother to try and hide his sigh.

Despite four hours of poking and prodding into every corner of our house, the only thing Thistlewait and Detective Jensen left with was the small bag of beads. I hurried out of the grocery store the next day and wished I’d parked under a light instead of on the murky fringes of the parking lot. Mitch was home with Livvy so I’d made a quick trip to the store. I’d been so busy cleaning up the mess the police left that I’d forgotten to buy milk.

I shivered, remembering the search and Thistlewait’s assessing look when he held the necklace. That stupid necklace. I’d bought it on a whim. If only I’d admired it and put it back. I could’ve bought a T-shirt instead, but no, I had to have something different from the usual tourist junk.

I took a deep breath and maneuvered the cart over icy ruts in the parking lot.
Stop worrying
. Worry wasn’t going to get me out of this mess. Surely there was something I could do instead of playing the same track of worries repeatedly in my mind. With my keys laced through my fingers, I gripped the basket handle tighter and splashed through the slush as huge snowflakes dropped from the darkness. The flakes had grown during the day and now floated down like large weightless quarters.

Maybe Georgia could help me out with more information. And then there was Irene’s phone call earlier in the evening inviting me to the Pathway group on Sunday night. I pushed the basket into the narrow valley between the Cherokee and the SUV parked beside it. I stepped in the V of the open back door and heaved in my tan Coach bag. Then I grabbed two gallons of whole milk and set them on the floorboard. Since Livvy had transitioned to whole milk, I couldn’t seem to keep it in the fridge. Between her and Mitch, we were going through three gallons a week. I turned back to scoop up the bags with diapers, cereal, and apples. I leaned in the Cherokee, tucked away the last bag.

Feet pounded through the slush near me. I glanced back and got a quick impression of a large man in a hooded coat bearing down on me. Before I could move he shoved the basket aside and cinched his arm roughly around my chest from behind me and pinned my arms to my side.

I felt his labored breathing. Gaspy white puffs of air floated above my ear. An acrid sweaty smell enveloped me.

Move, scream, fight
, I commanded myself, but I couldn’t. It was like one of those awful dreams where I strain with all my might to move or talk, but I’m held motionless and mute. Bits of self-defense classes and advice flickered through my mind. Where were my keys? Probably on the ground. Go for the eyes, I remembered. I took a deep breath, ready to reach back and poke, but then a thin coldness touched my neck. I stayed still.