Murder and Salutations (4 page)

“
Then the two of us have to figure out who really killed Eliza,” I said resolutely.

“
Surely your brother is capable of doing that himself,” Lillian protested.

“
He is, but how long will Sara Lynn’s reputation last if Bradford doesn’t wrap this up quickly? Her business could die before the truth comes out, if there’s a suspicion that she’s a murderer. We can’t let that happen. We have to uncover the truth, and we have to do it quickly.”

“
I’m in,” Lillian said as we finished the dishes. “But where do we start?”

“
Let’s make a list of who had a reason to want Eliza dead,” I said, then hastily added, “besides my sister and her husband, that is.”

“
We can skip them for now,” Lillian agreed, “but that doesn’t mean we can just forget about them.”

“
I don’t want to talk about that,” I said, unwilling to accept the possibility that Sara Lynn, or even Bailey, could be a murderer. That was, along with a thousand other reasons, why I would have made a terrible cop. I let my emotions influence my thought process too much. Honestly, though, I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

Lillian looked around, then said, “I wish I had our white board from the store. It’s so much easier when we can see our ideas printed out. Wait a second, I’ve got an idea.”

She left me for a minute, and I stayed right where

I was. With everything that had happened today, I hadn’t had time to dwell on my own problems. Thanks to my nutty landlord, I was going to have to find a new place to live. The fact that Hester was also evicting my neighbors Barrett and Jeffrey didn’t help, though the two of them had found their own ways to make my life less than idyllic. So where could I go? I knew Lillian would take me in, but we spent enough time together at the card shop. I doubted either one of us could take cohabitating as well. Bradford and his family would give me a place to sleep, but I’d fought most of my life to get out on my own, and I wasn’t going to surrender it so easily. I’d find a place again. After all, I had some time. How hard could it be?

Lillian came back in with a large mirror and eyeliner. “Have you completely lost your mind?” I asked.

“
Hey, I’ve left many a message this way in the past. Most of my ex-husbands found it charming.”

“
I just bet they did,” I said.

Lillian wrote
suspect, motive, means, and
opportunity
on the mirror. Below those, she listed the names of the people my brother had talked to tonight. I knew there could be more suspects than that, but we had to somehow limit our list to less than the telephone book for all of Rebel Forge. She wrote the names Addie Mason, Luke Penwright, Polly Blackburn and Kaye Jansen down the left side of the mirror.

I nodded as she worked. “So we’re looking at everyone who admitted to seeing Eliza tonight.”

“
Yes, but I’m missing someone,” Lillian said as she studied the list.

“
Beth Anderson?” I asked, half in jest.

“
Exactly,” Lillian said.

As she added the waitress’s name, I said, “I wasn’t serious. What possible reason would she have to kill Eliza?”

Lillian refused to strike the name. “Don’t be so naive, Jennifer. Eliza could make an enemy faster than Stephen King can give you nightmares. We shouldn’t cross her off our list until we can prove she’s innocent.”

“
Then let’s see what we do know,” I said. “Let’s take Addie. Can you honestly see her killing Eliza? They’ve been partners for years.”

“
What better reason could she have?” Lillian said. “That woman would drive a saint to murder. I wonder what happens to Eliza’s share of Heaven Scent now that she’s dead.”

I shrugged. “I’d think it would go to her estate.”

“
Don’t be so hasty in that assumption,” Lillian said. “A lot of partners leave their stake in their companies to their co-owners so the business can keep on operating. We need to look into that.”

“
And how do you propose we do that?” My aunt had an underground network of sources and information that would have astounded Bradford, but I didn’t see how she could find that out.

“
We’re simply going to ask her,” Lillian said. “I think we should pay her a social call after work tomorrow to give her our sympathies in losing her business partner. You can make her a lovely card, and it will be the perfect excuse to deliver it.”

“
You could make her one yourself,” I said.

Lillian frowned. “I doubt she’d appreciate my humor. This calls for a more conventional card than my offerings. One of yours would be perfect.” I’d encouraged Lillian to indulge her wicked sense of humor and start her own card corner in my shop. While her dark sentiments weren’t appropriate for everyone who came into the card shop, she certainly had developed a rather loyal fan base for her wit.

“
You’re probably right,” I said. “But I can’t do it after work. I’m having dinner with Gail and her new boyfriend.” Gail was my best friend in the world. I couldn’t imagine my life without her in it.

“
Just the three of you?” Lillian asked. “How cozy.”

I’d been avoiding telling my aunt about my dinner plans for tomorrow night, but it was time to get it over with. “Actually, Gail’s boyfriend, Reggie, is inviting an old college roommate to be my dinner companion. We’re going to his mother’s house in High Meadows.”

“
That’s so very cosmopolitan of you. Very well, if we can’t do it after work, we’ll take a long lunch and close the card shop.”

I stared at my aunt, not able to believe that she was letting me off the hook that easily. “That’s it? No third degree? I expected at least a water torture to pry more details from me.”

“
Please, Jennifer, your social schedule isn’t all that great a concern to me.”

“
Since when?” I asked. She’d done everything in her power to fix me up with an eligible young man, and now suddenly she was backing off. What was going on here?

“
Don’t flatter yourself, child. I’ve got more important things to think about.” She tapped the next name on our list. “Luke was there tonight, though I didn’t realize he was a member of the chamber. I wonder how he managed an invitation. Or did he just crash the party to see Eliza?”

“
Bradford will find out,” I said, confident in my brother’s abilities to follow all of the orthodox clues. He came up a little short sometimes only when the killer used real imagination—something he assured me was rarer in reality than the mysteries I liked to read.

Lillian frowned, then asked, “Why would he kill her, though? I’ve been under the impression that for some unfathomable reason, the man was still in love with his ex-wife.”

“
Don’t you think any of your exes are pining away for you?” I asked, only half joking. My aunt could cast a spell on a man that made him lose his senses completely.

“
I’d be terribly disappointed if any of them have gotten over me,” she said with an utterly straight face.

“
So he wouldn’t kill her,” I said. “Not while he still had hope.”

“
But did he? Eliza was seeing Bailey. Perhaps Luke took that as a threat.”

I shook my head. “That might explain it if Bailey was the victim, but not Eliza.”

Lillian frowned. “We’ll come back to him later, then.”

She moved her pencil to the next names on the list. “Polly and Kaye both hated her, but did either one of them despise the woman enough to drive a letter opener into Eliza’s chest? That speaks of a certain level of passion I have difficulty seeing either one of them attain.”

I thought about what I knew of the women in question. Polly had visited the card shop twice since we’d opened, and though I’d tried to entice her to try her hand at crafting her own cards, she’d opted both times for a ready-made offering. While I enjoyed the profit margin of selling cards Lillian and I made, I was always proselytizing, trying to share just how much fun card making was with my clientele. She’d flatly refused, though, so I’d dropped the matter. As for Kaye, while she hadn’t been in my shop, she had visited Sara Lynn’s a time or two when I’d worked there. I’d found the woman abrupt and condescending, but I didn’t know if I could see her as a murderer.

“
So what do we do next?” I asked, as Sara Lynn walked out in her pajamas and a robe.

At least the back of the mirror faced her, and not the front. I sprayed the glass with some cleaner Lillian had brought out to correct any mistakes we might make, and then wiped away the evidence of our notes I with a paper towel as Sara Lynn approached. She noticed me working on the mirror and said, “It’s a little late for housecleaning, isn’t it?”

“
I just wanted to touch it up a little,” I said as I handed the glass cleaner back to Lillian. “There, I think that got it. Thanks, that smudge was bugging me.

Lillian laughed, and though I could tell it was forced, I wasn’t sure Sara Lynn could. Working closely with my aunt over the past several months had taught me the nuances of her actions and tones of voice better than I’d ever learned around her in the past. “I’m hoping Jennifer finds something unsettling about the hall carpet. I’ve been meaning to run the vacuum for the past three days, but I just never manage to get around to it.”

She’d been teasing, but Sara Lynn was a demon of a cleaner. “Is your vacuum still in the closet over there?”

“
Dear, I was just trying to be amusing. Failing at it, too, I might add.”

“
I don’t mind,” Sara Lynn said as she retrieved the vacuum and had the hall runner clean in no time. “Now, that’s better, isn’t it?” she said as she surveyed the results.

“
Absolutely,” Lillian said.

Sara Lynn said, “I just wanted to come out and wish you two a good night. Lillian, thank you for having us.”

“
You can stay as long as you’d like,” she said. “You know that, don’t you?”

“
That reminds me. Jennifer, did you tell her the news?”

“
What news is that?” I asked, hoping Sara Lynn wasn’t going to bring up my living arrangements. I didn’t want to fight that particular battle, especially not this late.

“
Jennifer’s being evicted,” Sara Lynn said, and I saw Lillian’s face cloud up.

“
What are you talking about?”

There was no escaping it now. I brought her up-to-date, and before I could stop her, she was reaching for her telephone. “Don’t, Lillian, I can handle this.”

“
I got you hooked up with Hester Taylor, and I’m not about to let her throw you out on the street like this.”

There was no arguing with Lillian, so I kept my thoughts to myself as she punched in her friend’s telephone number. After a minute she hung up without saying a word. “I got her machine. Can you believe it? She’s already gone, spouting some nonsense about moving to the Florida Keys.”

“
I think the Keys are beautiful,” I said.

“
I know how pretty they are, but I didn’t think Hester would actually go through with her crazy idea.”

“
You knew about this?” I asked.

“
I just assumed she was daydreaming out loud. Last year she wanted to move to Alaska. The year before that it was Tuscany.”

“
So where is Jennifer supposed to go now?” Sara Lynn asked.

Before Lillian could reply, I said, “Jennifer’s going to bed. You two don’t need to worry about where I’m going to live. I’ll find a place on my own.” Before either one of them could say another word, I said good night and headed off to my room. If I wasn’t there with them, they couldn’t persuade me to do something I had no intention of doing. I crept silently into the pink bedroom, and from the light shining in from the hallway, I could see Oggie and Nash curled up on my pillows, one cat per pillow. It appeared that they’d had no trouble making themselves at home, but I hoped they didn’t get too comfortable.

There was no way I was moving in with Lillian for more than one night.

THEMED CARDS

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Chapter 4

The next morning, I had to rush to get the cats back to my apartment before work. Lillian had gotten up early and had outdone herself with a feast of breakfast for the three of us, and I’m afraid we all dawdled over coffee long past when we should have been getting ready for the day ahead. I’d offered to help clean up, but Lillian had refused my aid on the pretext that I had enough to do as it was. I suspected she’d witnessed a couple of near drops last night when I’d been rinsing her crystal and china, and didn’t want to take any chances this morning. Sara Lynn’s spirits seemed to be good, so I headed home to get ready for a new day of card making.

At the card shop, I found a message on my machine. I was just starting to play it when the telephone rang.

“
Custom Card Creations,” I said.

“
You’ve really got the hang of that greeting,” Gail, my best friend in the world, said.

“
What are you doing up this early? I didn’t think you salespeople rolled out of bed until noon.”

“
Don’t kid yourself. The guys I start selling to are up at five A.M., and they expect me to keep their bizarre working hours, if you can imagine that.” Gail sold heavy-construction equipment, and if her expensive wardrobe and fancy jewelry were any indication, she was very good at what she did.

“
So what’s up?” I asked as I sorted through the mail.

“
I just wanted to be sure you’re still coming to dinner. I heard about what happened last night, but I don’t want that to interfere with our plans.”

“
Why would it?” I asked. “I’m not involved in the murder or the investigation.”

I had to hold the telephone away from my ear as she erupted in laughter. After she calmed herself, I asked, “Are you through cackling yet?”

“
Sorry, I couldn’t help myself. Jennifer Shane, I know there is no way in the world you’re not going to poke your nose into Eliza Glade’s murder, and I’m not silly enough to ask you not to. But I don’t want you to bail on dinner tonight, no matter what the excuse. Reggie said his friend is really excited about meeting you.”

“
That alone is enough to make me worry,” I said.

“
Why’s that? You’re a charming, beautiful woman who owns a successful small business.”

I laughed. “Okay, first, thanks for the pep talk, and second, I can’t imagine anyone in their right mind being excited about a blind date.”

“
Don’t think of it that way,” Gail said. “Consider it an opportunity to meet someone new and interesting.”

“
In front of you, your new boyfriend, his mother and her date. You’re right, no pressure there to be on my best behavior.”

Gail laughed again. It was one of the things I loved about her: she had an infectious sense of humor that I could win over the coldest heart. “You’ll be fine. I promise. Remember, you need to be there by seven. , Are you sure you don’t want us to pick you up? It’s no problem, really.”

“
I can drive myself, thank you very much. Besides, if I need an excuse to take off, I don’t want to have to wait for a ride.”

“
Ever the skeptic, aren’t you? See you tonight,” Gail said, then hung up.

Honestly, she was the best friend I could ask for, but she worried about me too much. Whenever she was in love, which was often enough, Gail wanted nothing more than the world to be in love all around her. That meant that over the years I’d had more than my fair share of blind dates and fix-ups, all done to keep my best friend mollified more than in hopes of finding the love of my life. Sometimes I wondered if I’d already found my special someone, and we’d blown it. Greg Langston had looked pretty cozy with his latest love the night before. So where did that leave me? Still looking, I supposed.

The chime over the front door rang, and I looked up expecting to see Lillian. Instead, it was an actual customer—a welcome distraction indeed. A thin young woman with curly blond hair came in and started to look around.

“
Is there anything I can help you with?”

“
No thanks,” she said as she picked up a card, read it, then put it back in the rack.

I watched her do that for ten minutes, then said, “If you can’t find exactly what you want, I’m sure I could help you make the perfect card yourself.”

The girl said softly, “No, that’s way too much trouble.”

“
For you or for me?” I asked. “Because if you’re worried about my time, I’d like nothing better than to help you make something special. After all, that’s why I opened the shop.”

She looked at me with uncertainty. “Really? You’d really help me make my own card?”

“
Absolutely,” I said as I joined her and held out my hand. “By the way, I’m Jennifer.”

“
I’m Krystal,” she said.

“
It’s nice to meet you, Krystal. Now, exactly what kind of card are you looking for?”

“
I’d like a get-well card for my mom. She’s in the hospital.”

“
Okay,” I said as I led her to our supplies. “First off, what’s your mother’s favorite color?”

“
She’s a nut for anything blue,” the girl admitted.

I led her to the card stock and fancy papers we carried. “Pick out a shade you think she’d like.”

She did as I asked, opting for a midnight blue. I grabbed a sheet of lighter blue, and a few other sheets, too. “We’ll use these as complementary colors. Now what’s her favorite thing in the world?”

Krystal didn’t even have to think about it. “She loves her flower garden passionately.”

“
Perfect,” I said, and led her to the selection of pressed, dried flowers we had. “Would you like to choose some, or should I?”

“
I like these,” she said as she selected a small, flat bouquet of blue flowers. I took them from her, grabbed a sheet of rub-on letters and a few scraps of paper, and led her to our worktable by the window.

“
Let’s see, I know I’ve got just the right punch here somewhere.” I searched through the box of large paper punches, and found the one I wanted. I punched out a vase shape from the dark blue paper, then laid Krystal’s flowers on a sheet of the lighter blue stock. “Just put the vase over the stems and see what you think.”

She did as I asked, then said, “It’s beautiful.”

“
And easy, too,” I said. “We have sheets of scripted sentiments made up if you’d like to just say ‘Get Well,’ but if you’d like to personalize your card more, you can use these letters. You just rub the letter you want onto the paper with this burnisher and you’re all set.”

She took the stylus from me and said, “It’s just a chunk of wood.”

“
Actually, it’s a carefully sculpted piece of hard maple with a polyurethane finish, but you can call it a chunk if you want to.”

She studied the layout of her card, then asked, “Should I glue all this down before I do the lettering?”

“
The best way to approach it is to figure out where you want everything to go first, then letter on the flat paper before you start assembling your card.”

She rubbed a message to her mother on the paper, then I helped her arrange the vase and flowers with doubled-sided tape. Then we matted three different pieces of paper together, one just a little bigger than the next, to form a perfect border. After that, we attached the front to another piece of folded card stock and we were finished.

“
Now pick out an envelope, and we’re set.”

She chose a blue one—surprise, surprise—and I rang up her purchase. Krystal looked puzzled when she saw the amount. “Is there something wrong?” I asked.

“
You charged me the same as one of your regular cards,” she said. “It should be more.”

“
I’d say you could leave me a tip, but as the store owner I’d just have to turn it down. Krystal, why on earth should I charge you more for something I had fun helping with?”

“
I don’t know,” she said. “It just doesn’t seem right.”

“
If you’d like, I could always overcharge you next time you come in,” I said with a smile.

“
No thanks, that’s all right, but I’ll be back. That was fun.”

“
I’m glad you enjoyed yourself.” After she was gone, I started to clean up our mess, then I remembered that I needed to make a card for Addie Mason at Heaven Scent. I’d liked the way Krystal’s card had turned out, so I decided to make a bouquet myself. Not blue though, I’d had my fill of that.
I chose a nice pink and white collection of pressed flowers, then chose a patterned pink-and-white paper for my cutout vase. After some experimenting, I was happy with the results and set everything in place with doubled-sided tape. I didn’t care about a personalized message on the front, so I chose one that said, “With My Deepest Sympathy” and affixed the sticker to the card. It was quite lovely, actually, and I decided that as soon as Lillian came in, I’d make a few for my shelves. I generated a fair profit selling my cards, but the real joy came from the creative process.

Lillian walked in as I was finishing the card, and said, “It’s too pink.”

“
What can I say? I was inspired by your guest bedroom last night.”

She shook her head. “Then I’m going to repaint this weekend. It always was a little too feminine for my taste.”

“
I think it’s really very nice,” I said. “I made this for Addie. Should I do another one instead?”

Lillian shook her head. “It’s perfect for her.” She glanced at her watch. “Is it too early to go over there now?”

“
Lillian, what makes you think she’ll even open the shop today? After all, her business partner just died last night.”

My aunt said, “If you knew Addie as well as I did, you’d realize she’d never pass up the chance to make a dollar or two, no matter who died. Remember, Heaven Scent is her life. Besides, where else is she going to go? But there’s one factor that overrides everything else, that makes me positive we’ll find her at the shop this morning.”

“
What’s that?”

“
I went by there on my way here and saw that she was open for business. Are you ready to go?”

“
I’d like to make a little money first before we shut the place down,” I said.

“
I suppose,” she said. “What would you like me to do this morning?”

“
You could make more pink cards,” I said, just to see the look of disdain on my aunt’s face. “Or you could watch the shop while I make them.”

“
That one, I choose that one,” she said with enthusiasm.

I was working on a card when Bradford came in, a look of distress replacing his usual smile.

“
What’s wrong?” I asked him.

“
Sara Lynn just blew me off,” he said. “I can cut her a little slack, but if she keeps this up, I’m going to have to take her in on general principle.”

Lillian said, “She’s had quite a shock, what with Bailey walking out on her and all.”

“
So you knew about the affair, too.”

“
Come on, Bradford,” I said. “We’re family. She told us last night.”

He shook his head. “I’ve known about it for a few weeks. I hated to tell her about it, but she had a right to know. Now she’ll barely speak to me.”

To our surprise, Lillian patted Bradford’s arm lightly. “Shooting the messenger has been a well-respected reaction to bad news throughout the course of time. You did the right thing telling her.”

“
Thanks. That’s something, I guess.”

Before Lillian could retort and end the pleasantries between them, I asked, “Is she really a suspect in the murder?”

“
Jen, I wish I could say she wasn’t, but I’d be lying. The whole town knows how much she and Eliza hated each other, and that was before Bailey started sleeping with Eliza. She had an argument in the kitchen last night not two feet from where we found the body half an hour later. You do the math. I’m getting heat from the mayor’s office, and he’s threatening to call the governor if I don’t arrest our big sister.”

“
Can he do that?” I asked.

Bradford shook his head. “I doubt the governor of Virginia has time to take his call, but you never know. I’ve been trying to eliminate Sara Lynn as a suspect all morning, but every time I find something, it looks even worse for her than it did before. She won’t answer my questions, and I can’t help her if she won’t talk to me.”

“
Would you like me to talk to her?” I asked. “She might tell me something she’s holding back from you.”

Bradford slammed his palm down on my worktable. “She’s got to get it through her head that I’m trying to help her. I swear, she’s more stubborn than you and Lillian put together.”

“
I doubt that,” Lillian said. “Let us talk to her, Bradford. You can come along if you’d like.”