Murder at the Book Group (16 page)

We shook our heads and I turned back to Annabel. “Yes, not only did you remain friends with Carlene, but the two of you went on tours, attended exhibits, stuff like that. And you came to the book group because of her.”

“Yes, well, we had common interests. Like mysteries. And the arts. But that didn't make us close.” It occurred to me that if I wanted to kill someone, I'd manage to be in that person's company on a regular basis. That way I could plan my murder strategy and wait for the optimum time without being pressured. Lucy returned as Annabel said, “And you know something . . . I believe in forgiveness. I'm not a grudge holder.” This she managed with such a pious tone that I was hard-pressed to keep from laughing.

To appease her, I said, “I'm sure you're not.” Privately, I wasn't so sure. Just as I wasn't so sure Annabel was the forgiving soul she claimed to be. She had a powerful motive for killing Carlene, regardless of how many years had passed since they'd shared that Fan duplex. Apparently, grudges run deep and long with some folks. And Annabel wouldn't be the first person to be in grudge denial. But my musings about grudge holding distracted me from Annabel's recounting of Carlene and Randy's tawdry relationship. I cautioned myself to stay focused.

“Carlene asked me if I minded if she went out with Randy, I'll grant her that much. Not that they went
out
much.” Annabel arched an eyebrow at this. “I assured her I didn't mind in the least. Of course, I did mind, but I didn't want to admit it.” Annabel and Kat operated by the same set of dumpee rules. Mind, but don't
ever
admit it.

“So how long did Carlene and Randy see each other?” Lucy asked.

Annabel raised her eyes like she expected to find the answer on the ceiling. “Oh, I don't know. Six months? Real hot and heavy, then Evan came along and Randy got dumped on his behind.” I thought about Kat getting dumped by Evan at the same time. A whole lot of dumping going on. And musical beds.

“Then what happened?” Lucy and I looked like children listening to stories around a campfire.

Annabel grabbed a chocolate chip cookie and took a bite. “Randy didn't take well to being dumped and kept coming around to Carlene's place, even when Evan was there. Maybe especially when Evan was there. One night there was a big brouhaha because he was banging on the door, yelling things like, ‘You f-ing bitch,' and worse. It went on and on, and finally one of the neighbors called the police. The first time Randy left before they arrived. The second time, he didn't manage to escape, or maybe didn't want to, and the incident ended up in the paper.”

“What happened after that?” Lucy asked.

“Randy showed up a few more times, but he was much quieter. Evan and Carlene got married quite soon after they met, about six weeks, and they moved to where they live now. Lived,” she amended in a rueful tone.

In keeping with my ask-don't-tell policy, I didn't want to reveal that Carlene and Evan had separated or that she'd been seen with another man. So I tried an oblique approach. “I wonder if Carlene and Evan were happy. Did she confide in you about that or if she was seeing another man?”

If I had any doubts about this being a silly question, Annabel's gales of laughter set me straight. “Are you joking? Carlene confide? In
me
? No way, recently or not. Carlene was not a confider and didn't suffer personal questions.” She laughed again.

Lucy asked, “Did she ask you for advice on writing?”

Annabel waggled her hand back and forth. “Sometimes about publishing, agents, that kind of stuff. But not writing per se.” That struck me as odd. But maybe Carlene didn't like Annabelle's writing.

I moved on to Trudy. “When Trudy showed up at book group, did you recognize her as being Randy's ex-wife?”

“Oh, yes, we knew each other from the library. Neither of us ever mentioned Randy. As for Carlene, I don't know if she recognized Trudy. You see, Carlene and I never referred to that . . .
time,
or anything or anyone associated with it.” Annabel scowled. “We pretty much kept our conversations to small talk.”

Annabel had no more information and no memory of other men in Carlene's life, although she assured us there were plenty. Carlene didn't go long without male companionship. And Annabel had nothing to add to the meager knowledge we had of Linda Thomas—she remembered her from the signing but nothing of any ruckus with Carlene.

“Of course, I know
way
too much about the woman's colonoscopy.” Annabel rolled her eyes. “Honestly, between her and Helen, it was tough avoiding the two of them the other night.
Every
time I turned around, there was Helen, or there was Linda, nattering on about something I didn't want to hear.”

Annabel frowned at her fancy watch. “Goodness, is it nine thirty already? I must dash.” She slanted a look at me and asked, “Now do you see why I need to talk to Vince? How can I get in touch with him, Hazel?”

“Well, let's see . . .” I hesitated. I thought that a lawyer would be a better choice than Vince. Aloud, I said, “I'll give you his e-mail address. Wait a sec while I go upstairs and look it up.” Annabel didn't need to know that I had it in my head.

When I returned with the address on a Post-it, Annabel said, “Thanks so much!” She picked up her satchel bag, started to stand, and then, as if the effort was too great, she sat down again. “I just hope that Ronnie doesn't show up at the service. I'm just so upset about this whole thing. Plus I'm devastated about poor, poor Carlene.” The “poor, poor Carlene” part sounded like an afterthought if ever I heard one.

“Did Carlene ever mention a person named P.G. or P.J.?” Catching Annabel's exasperated look, I said, “I know, I know, she didn't confide in you. But you never know . . .”

“I understand. But, once again, I can't help you. Sorry.”

This time Annabel managed to stand, smoothing her pants and adjusting the straps on her sling-backs. “Well, gotta go! See you on Friday.” We walked her to the door.

Lucy and I waited until Annabel started her car and drove off. Then, in perfect synchronization, we turned to each other. Lucy mimed wiping her brow and said, “Whew! Do you believe her?” From Lucy's skeptical tone, it didn't sound like she herself did.

I waggled my hand back and forth. “Not sure. Not sure at all. But she's definitely gained a top spot on the suspect list. Unlike Kat, she didn't voice any doubt about Carlene's committing suicide. That could mean that she poisoned her. What better cover for murder than a suicide verdict?”

“And just yesterday we talked about how Annabel found Carlene and could easily have left the note by her chair.”

I nodded. “I wonder if Carlene did, or said, something recently to piss off Annabel and dredge up the old feelings. Something that stoked Annabel's dormant rage. Or maybe not so dormant.”

“The woman is—what would be a good word—fraught?”

“As good a word as any. I sure wouldn't want to get on her bad side. I can just see her sitting at home sticking pins in voodoo dolls.”

Lucy said, “And my guess is that two of those dolls resemble Carlene and Ronnie. Ronnie sounds like the devil incarnate. As for Carlene, she didn't respect relationship boundaries, did she?”

I considered the recent reports of Carlene as a sexually provocative woman who made a practice of appropriating other women's husbands and boyfriends. Did she finally piss off the wrong woman? It may have been just a matter of time before she got her comeuppance. A very deadly comeuppance.

Lucy said, “All this talk about blackmail . . . Remember how the other day we wondered if Carlene knew about Annabel's husband and maybe . . . blackmailed her?”

“As I recall, I wondered about it and you dismissed the idea out of hand.”

“Yes, well, you may have been on to something.”

“So Annabel could have more than one motive.”

“She very well could.”

AT TEN O'CLOCK I
left Lucy, reading
Murder in the Keys,
and went upstairs to my den. I had felt exhausted and talked out before Annabel's arrival. Her visit, while enlightening, hadn't energized me. But I didn't want to put off my quest to dig up dirt from Carlene's L.A. days. It was seven in L.A., and unless she was sitting in freeway traffic, I had a chance of finding Susie Abbott at home.

I hoped the number I had for her was a current one, as she moved a lot. So did many others in my address book, judging by the crossed-out entries in the AB section alone. I could barely make out the number squeezed onto the edge of the page. When would I learn to use a pencil?

I wound up leaving a message on Susie's machine. It was probably just as well, as a conversation with her could run into hours. I told her I'd send her an e-mail and that we could talk the next day. The e-mail I composed outlined the bare bones about Carlene's death and a description of Linda. I included a link to Carlene's site.

Her website photo was backlit, so I hunted around for some better ones. The previous Christmas Lucy had given me a digital camera, and for a while I had snapped pictures every chance I got. I found a folder on my computer called “Book Group” with three good pictures of Carlene, including one of the two of us, looking chummier than we ever actually were. I attached them to the e-mail and asked Susie to send them around to people in the IT community. I figured that if she sent them to enough people and they in turn sent them to enough people, someone was bound to remember Carlene. I wished I had a photo of Linda to include.

LATER THAT EVENING,
I lay back against my pillows, petting Daisy as she nestled up against my thigh. Usually Shammy was my buddy, but every so often the cats switched allegiances. I had just finished
Murder à la Isabel
but felt none the wiser for having reread it. No buried clues. Carlene's second or third books might be more insightful. Maybe eventually I could take a look at her computer.

Carlene's author photo on the back cover was a duplicate of the one on her website. It showed her posing beside a dogwood tree, backlit by the sun. She wore a black leather coat over slacks and a turtleneck, and stood with arms raised and spread apart, like she was doing the yoga sun salute.

Her author biography was a sketchy one. She was a programmer analyst in another life. She wrote mysteries at an early age, reading installments to her friends on her way home from school. Nancy Drew and the Dana Girls were her biggest influences. She lived in Richmond with her nameless husband and was hard at work on her next Minerva Mazarek adventure.

I continued to study the photo that was little more than a silhouette and her to-the-point biography. “Hiding,” I said aloud. “Why's she hiding?”

Hiding. And who hides?

Fugitives.

Love fugitives
.

“COFFEE. I NEED COFFEE,”
I groaned to myself. Either coffee or twenty-four hours of uninterrupted sleep.

I was back at the Women's Resource Center, trying to proofread a grant proposal, but fatigue was having its way with me. But I perked up considerably when Vince, waiting for his plane to board in San Diego, called.

After the preliminary inquiries—“How are you?” “How are you feeling?”—I found myself telling him about Annabel's visit.

His reaction was predictable enough. “Annabel came to your house? Hazel, I told you to be careful. Like it or not, everyone in your book group is a suspect. And that includes Annabel.”

“I
was
careful.” I practically bit off my words. “Lucy was with me, we were armed with cell phones, and I've been taking pictures madly.” All two of them. “Now let me tell you what Annabel said. Without the interruptions.”

“Okay. Calm down. Proceed.” I gave him a rundown of Annabel's revelations, including her version of the Randy saga and Ronnie's hints of blackmail in the matter of Annabel's dear husband and his unsolved murder.

When I finished he said, “I remember hearing about those incidents with Randy. As for Greg Mitchell, when I was running through the names of your book group members, I refreshed myself on the details of his murder. The man wasn't dear. He was a philandering cop who enjoyed ‘special' relationships with scores of women. So many that prevailing thought had it that an unhappy woman or her husband had killed him. Annabel may have taken advantage of that theory. She was certainly a suspect herself. As you know, they never did catch the person who shot him.”

“Maybe Annabel hired someone.”

“Maybe.” Vince sounded skeptical. He went on, “The neighbors had a lot to say about Greg and Annabel. A lot of fighting and yelling. No one would have been surprised if Annabel did it.”

“Just supposing it was Annabel, why shoot him? Why not just divorce him?” The very question Laci Peterson's mother asked her son-in-law, Scott Peterson, during his trial for murdering her daughter. It was a rhetorical question—I neither expected nor received an answer.

“Greg helped her with her writing. She wrote her first two books before he died—one was a poisoning, the other a shooting. In both, a woman killed her husband. Ironically, Greg may have been participating in his own murder.”

“Cheery possibility to ponder.”

After a pause Vince said, “And now she's bringing up all this stuff about the library and her fingerprints. Interesting.”

“Yes, it seems kind of dumb, but I think she wanted to get all her dirty linen out in the open. That way, she'd look like she had nothing to hide and could make Ronnie reconsider her blackmail scheme. Assuming she had blackmail in mind.”

“Could be, but it doesn't gain Annabel much as far as Carlene is concerned. She had as much of a motive as anyone.”