Murder at the Book Group (10 page)

I thought Kat would make a better bodyguard. Another reason to drop suspicion of her—I could take advantage of her muscle.

I HUNTED FOR
the napkin I'd used to scribble Evan's cell number and headed back to bed. I stifled a scream when his electronic voice exhorted me to leave my name, number, and a brief message.

“Evan, I'm so sorry. Carlene was a lovely woman.” I sounded like someone's elderly aunt, but I felt strapped for sincere platitudes. I thought about trying him at Warren's house since I knew he was probably there, but decided that calling him on one number was sufficient. I speed-dialed Vince.

He answered immediately. “Hazel! How are you holding up?”

“Frankly, I've been better. I keep seeing poor Carlene, the way she looked . . .” I trailed off and shuddered. “But I've been so busy—or so asleep—that the whole thing hasn't hit me.” Shammy joined me on the bed. I adjusted the pillows behind my head. “How did you hear about it, Vince? I'm sure it didn't make the San Diego news.”

“Dennis called me. He knew I'd want to know.” Dennis Mulligan and Vince were long-time partners in the Richmond Police Department. “He remembered when Carlene consulted with me about her book. And he knew you were there last night.”

“You've probably already heard, but the memorial service is on Friday at eleven. Will you be back by then?”

“Yes, I'll be back on Thursday night.” He paused. “How's Evan doing?”

“Don't know. I tried calling his cell but wound up leaving a message. Kat says he's staying with his friend Warren.”

Vince turned the conversation in a direction I'd hoped to avoid. “According to Dennis, Evan and Carlene were separated.”

I vowed to keep my responses short, hopefully to one syllable. “Yes.”

“So you knew about that?”

“Yes.” Then my mouth disengaged from my brain and I heard myself adding, “I ran into Evan one day. At Target. He told me then.” I prayed my brain and mouth would synchronize before I spilled the beans about the Lemaire proposition. For a distraction, and because I did want to know the answer, I asked, “How long will the house be a crime scene?”

“Hard to tell. Probably not long.”

“The place is so clutter-free it should take about thirty minutes to process it.”

A long pause followed. Vince, while retired, hadn't forgotten about the silence tactic police used in interrogations. The human tendency to fill the silence with talk often works to police advantage. The real problem for me was Vince's soft-spoken Brooklyn accent, an accent that invited confidences, the baring of souls, the baring of . . . No lascivious thoughts, Hazel, I admonished myself. Focus on the matter at hand. I doodled on my envelope and scored a mini victory when Vince broke the silence. “How's Kat taking this?”

“She's pretty shaken up.” Should I tell Vince about Kat and Evan's past relationship? I stopped doodling and made a note to think about it.

“Did I tell you I saw Kat and Evan at Chipotle's over at Stony Point?” Was the man reading my mind? Scary thought.

“And?”

“Well, that's it. I saw them.”

“When was this?”

“Last week. Maybe the week before.”

“What were they doing?”

“Eating.”

“So?”

“Just thought it was curious, that's all.”

“They couldn't have been doing anything intimate with all those windows at Chipotle's.” As much as I like Chipotle Mexican fast food, I didn't find the fishbowl atmosphere conducive to a rendezvous.

“No, they probably just ran into each other.” Based on my earlier conversation with Kat, I felt a stab of skepticism about the just-running-into-each-other idea. As I'd wondered earlier, when did Kat find out about Evan and Carlene's separation?

“Did you talk to them?”

“No, I didn't have time. We just waved.”

The Chipotle sighting was interesting, but I still didn't feel comfortable talking about Kat and Evan. Redirecting the conversation, I asked, “You said you talked to Dennis. Any word on what it was that . . . killed Carlene?”

“Not yet. Hopefully tomorrow we'll know. You gave the pathologists a good lead with the bitter almond smell.”

“Detective Garcia didn't seem impressed. It's nice to know she gave my nose some credence.”

“Detective Garcia is a woman of few words, but she's a damn fine detective.”

Let's hope so,
I thought. Aloud, I said, “Anyway, I hope no one gets any ideas about calling me in to assist at autopsies.”

Vince snickered. I had a mental picture of him, and a pleasant picture it was: tall, broad-shouldered, shock of white hair, slate-blue eyes. Easy to get along with—except that somehow we didn't get along. Hmm—did that make me the difficult one? The Dr. Phil intervention would have to wait. There were more pressing matters at hand.

I asked, “Where was the cyanide? In the tea? Is it like sugar?”

“We won't know for sure until they finish with the toxicology testing. Cyanide is a white powder, but I'm not sure if the consistency's like sugar.”

“This is all pretty fast, isn't it? The autopsy and results.”

“Unless there's a backlog, it doesn't take long.”

“And Carlene's being cremated as soon as the results come in—gives me chills just thinking of it.” I felt myself choking up and took a deep breath. “By the way, where do you get cyanide?”

“It's used in pest control, gold plating, photography, jewelry cleaning. When I say photography, I mean the darkroom type. Of course, a chemist might have it.”

Who in our group would have such a chemical on hand? Or access to one? No one had confided in me about a pest control problem. I mentally scanned the interests of the members, trying to recall any avid gardeners, jewelers, or photographers. Helen used a digital camera for her website work, so didn't need darkroom chemicals like cyanide.

“Does anyone still develop in darkrooms?” I jotted down another note, this time to consider cyanide possession possibilities.

“I'm sure plenty still do.” Then Vince asked, his voice gentle, “Do you feel like talking about last night?”

“Sure.” I took a couple of deep breaths. Where to begin? At the beginning, I guess. And so I launched into the unbelievable tale of my first, and hopefully last, death experience. “Well, last night our book group met at Carlene's and . . .” A disjointed mess of facts, “and-thens,” “what-ifs,” and just plain angst came tumbling forth at breakneck speed. Vince listened and, save for an occasional uh-huh, didn't interrupt. His long career as a homicide detective hadn't been in vain—he was up to untangling such all-over-the-place accounts.

By the time I finished, I'd managed to cover every detail from my arrival at Carlene's to my much later arrival home. I described Carlene's tirade about the book, the ominous cyanide discussion, Linda's appearance, my discussion with Carlene, the “huge mistake” bit, the logistics of the tea mug, the love fugitive plot of Carlene's third book, Annabel's shrieking, and a host of other details, large and small. After all, the solution could be hidden in a point I deemed unimportant.

“I really think Linda is a key figure. The woman just shows up and Carlene dies. I believe in coincidences, but this is too much of one.”

“Are you questioning the suicide?”

“Well . . . there was that note.”

“Yes. And I'm sure that doesn't convince you.” Like a mere note was proof? I never bought the easy answers; I expected complications and difficulties. Vince knew that about me. The book group members did not, a fact that could work in my favor when I pretended to buy the suicide with the attendant note.

“Anyone could have left that note—Annabel, of course, since she found Carlene. But we were all down there in the family room running around like chickens without heads.”

A back-and-forth about the suicide question followed. Vince snorted when I presented Carlene's spa day from Saturday as an argument against her killing herself. “You've always claimed you didn't know her, that she refused to disclose much of herself, but now you're reading her mind.”

“No, I don't claim to know, or even guess, what Carlene thought or felt about anything. I do know that she looked better than ever last night. That is, until the end.” My voice caught on that last, but I plowed on. “A woman hell-bent on suicide doesn't invest in herself that way.”

“Maybe she wanted to look good when she died. If Evan's the one who precipitated the split, she wanted to send a message: look what you gave up.”

“That's assuming the split was Evan's idea.”

“Well, that really doesn't matter. Regardless of whose idea it was, she may very well have been distressed about the breakup. It's hard to say what will drive someone off the deep end.”

“And why pick cyanide? She couldn't have looked worse.” I shuddered again. “But maybe she didn't realize how she'd look. In detective stories, they never mention how someone looks. They just slump over their tea or whatever. And then I have this
House of Mirth
theory . . .”

“
House of Mirth
?” Vince groaned. “You mean that interminable movie you made me sit through?”

“It was a great movie.” I outlined my idea of how Carlene would have picked Lily Bart's suicide method and be found prettily dead and alone in bed, as opposed to how she was found: flushing and foaming at the mouth like a menopausal, rabid dog while hosting the book group. I failed to impress Vince.

“I was just glad that she, meaning the character, did die and the damn movie ended. You
may
have a point about Carlene's vanity determining her choices, even in death. But you said she brought up the cyanide topic during the book group. And that she seemed distressed.”

“People get distressed and don't do themselves in. Besides, distressed isn't quite the right word. Agitated is more accurate. As opposed to her usual calm, serene self. Besides, there's her book success. Despite the thing with Evan, things were looking up—oh, I forgot about the Costa Rica trip.” I told Vince about Carlene's travel plans and how she asked me to have coffee with her and Georgia. “She wanted travel tips about the country. Does someone plan a trip and then turn around and kill herself?” Vince allowed that suicide didn't follow.

“Of course, I don't want to get carried away here. It's certainly possible that she did commit suicide. Who could figure the woman out anyway?” I moved on to share the conversations I'd had earlier, starting with the man in the car.

“Sounds like this was an ongoing relationship,” Vince noted when I finished. “Maybe ongoing encounter is a better word.”

“Why, I didn't think of it that way. I had an idea he was someone new.” I resolved to start thinking outside the box and wrote it down to be sure I remembered. “Do you think he was the reason for the separation?”

“Could be. Just speculation, of course. What other conversations did you have today?”

I told him about Art's description of Linda and Carlene at the signing. Despite my earlier decision to keep quiet about anything to do with Kat and Evan, I wound up spilling the beans on their hot affair. Other than agreeing that it was a funny combination, strange bedfellows and all that, Vince had little reaction. I imagined that as a cop he'd seen and heard it all.

After a pause, Vince asked, “Did Carlene and Linda talk to each other last night?”

“Not that I saw. I'm sure Carlene was avoiding Linda. She seemed puzzled that Linda remembered her so well when she didn't remember Linda. Personally, I think she remembered Linda very well, and that she wasn't a pleasant memory. I never saw Carlene so rattled. Of course, she was rattled before Linda showed up . . . That could mean that she knew ahead of time that Linda was coming . . .” I trailed off, trying to collect my thoughts. “I thought Linda and the huge mistake might be connected.”

“Did you talk to Linda?”

“No. She was in the dining room describing her colonoscopy to Annabel. I didn't want to interrupt.” Vince hooted. “She left early, way before any one else did, so the police don't have any contact information for her, and no one else does either.” I told him about Kat's deleting Linda's number from her incoming call register.

“You say you were all in the dining room when Carlene closed the pocket doors to take her call in private. Did Linda look for Carlene to say good-bye?”

“No. I distinctly remember that because I thought it was funny that she didn't ask where Carlene was, or say, ‘Well, tell her I said good-bye,' something like that. She just left by the front door. Of course, Carlene had ignored her, so she might have been miffed about that.”

“And now a word of caution, Hazel.” Vince, in police mode, echoed Lucy's earlier words. “Don't discuss this information with anyone, especially not with your group members.”

Sniffing, I said, “Well, since I was there last night, I have a vested interest in anything to do with what happened.”

“Not if it puts you in danger. Keep in mind that if Carlene didn't die at her own hand, she died at someone else's, likely someone in your group.” Vince issued the expected warnings about not being alone with any of them, avoiding eating or drinking anything with them, and so on.

“Okay, let's wrap this up. You must be exhausted. Will you send me a list of names and addresses—snail mail addresses—of everyone in your group? I'll run background checks on them.”

“And are you going to share your findings with me?”

“Only if appropriate.”

“Will you at least give me Linda's number? To welcome her to the group and all.”

He ignored me. “By the way, did you ever figure out how to use the camera on your cell phone? Are you even using your phone?”