Murder Crops Up (14 page)

“That’s what I said last night.” I finally spoke, but no one paid any attention. They were all watching Carlotta.

Bright spots of red burned on her cheeks. “She wouldn’t dare,” she said huffily. “She knows I’ve told everyone about her. If she harmed me, everyone would know.”

“So tonight you kept Liz from murdering anyone, is that it?” Bruno clacked away at his computer.

“Bruno!” Bridget sounded incensed. “How could you—”

“Please, Bridget. I am talking to Mrs. Houseman.” Bruno fixed Carlotta with a stare. “Is that right? Tonight you saw her go down her driveway? Then you moved your car?”

“Yes.” She pressed her lips together, but finally added into the silence, “The kitchen light in this house came on just after I’d parked.”

“Did you see Liz in the house?”

“Not really. But it had to be her, gloating over how well she hoodwinked poor Vivien.” Carlotta looked around the living room in a disparaging way. “Not that this place is any great shakes, but since she seduced the man she sold it to, I suppose she’ll be getting it back.”

“That is totally outrageous!” Bridget bounced on the sofa as if she were planning to tackle Carlotta, who shrank back against the cushions.

“Please, Bridget. Allow me to finish. So, Mrs. Houseman, you were parked outside while Liz was in here. She did not leave at any time?”

“She couldn’t have driven away, since I was in the way of her getting out of her driveway.” Carlotta shot me a triumphant glance. “That’s why I parked there.”

“And you did not see her leave on foot?”

Carlotta snorted. “That’s not likely. She goes everywhere in that wretched old thing she drives. And in fact—”

Bruno looked up from his computer when she faltered. “What, Mrs. Houseman?”

“I saw a little movement back in the kitchen. I don’t think she’d realized I was here.” Carlotta wouldn’t look at me. She spoke as if I wasn’t even in the room. “I mean, she didn’t come out and yell at me like she did last night. I suppose she will try to murder me one of these days, and it will be your fault for not locking her up where she belongs.”

“Bruno, what is it?” Bridget had realized something was going on. She looked at me anxiously.

“There has been another death.”

“Aha!” Carlotta was triumphant. “I knew it!”

“The death occurred after the meeting at the garden. During that time, I observed Liz until she left with Bridget. Then you began your surveillance of her.”

Bruno looked at Carlotta and allowed himself to smile. “Thanks to you, Ms. Sullivan has a cast-iron alibi.”

“Who was killed?” Bridget twisted her hands together. “This is terrible!”

Bruno watched Carlotta, who had lost the power of speech, if her gaping jaw was any indicator. “Lois Humphries. We have not yet decided how she died. It is possible she simply had a heart attack.”

“Lois?” Carlotta rose to her feet. “Lois is dead?” She stared at Bruno, then around the room. “She—but this can’t be. She said—”

“What did she say, Mrs. Houseman? When did you speak with her?”

“I saw her,” Carlotta whispered dazedly. “I saw her at the garden tonight. She was so angry when they wanted to set up a place for the flowers and candles in front of her plot. She made them move it outside by the fence. And she said—”

Her jaw worked. Bruno waited patiently. Bridget opened her mouth, then closed it again at Bruno’s commanding glance. Officer Rhea shifted in her chair, and the implements on her belt clanked faintly.

“She said she would pay back the person who’d desecrated her garden,” Carlotta continued, her voice faint. “I thought she meant Liz.”

“So you parked here, hoping to see a fight?” Bridget bounced on the sofa again. “I’ve never heard anything so outrageous in my life! You ought to be ashamed!”

Carlotta didn’t hear her. She looked as if she might faint. Officer Rhea went into the kitchen and ran a glass of water, but Carlotta didn’t even see her offer it. “I thought she was coming over here tonight to have it out with Liz.” She lifted dazed eyes to Bruno. “If it wasn’t Liz, then who was it?”

“That,” said Bruno, making a final note on his computer, “is what we would all like to know.”

Chapter 17

I sat in the waiting room at the Planned Parenthood clinic, trying to read an out-of-date
People
magazine. Amy was seeing the doctor for a pregnancy test and presentation of her options. She had called first thing that morning to find out if it was legal for her to get an abortion in California without her parents’ knowledge or permission. It was.

“It will cost over three hundred dollars.” Amy had been more shocked by that than by anything else. “Unless I have MediCal, whatever that is.”

“You don’t. It’s for California residents.”

“I hate Colorado,” Amy burst out. “I don’t want to go back.”

That, too, was troubling.

Amy hadn’t asked me for any money, which was fortunate. Not that I wouldn’t have dipped into my precious little savings on her behalf, but the insecurities of my life are such that I hoard every dime against an uncertain future. Aside from that, it seemed to me that it was up to Amy to pay for what she wanted so badly. I was still too ambivalent about the whole thing to be comfortable footing the bill.

I stared at the glossy faces in the magazine on my lap, but the coy snippets of gossip meant less than nothing to me—I had never heard of the TV stars, since I don’t have a TV, and the only movies I saw were those rented by Drake on occasion, which tended toward art films and classics. He’d taken me to a first-run movie once, but the cost was so incredible I felt guilty all the way through. Perhaps he’s right when he says I’ve been ruined for normal life.

Instead of the beautiful faces on the page, I kept seeing Lois Humphries—self-righteous, thin-lipped, disapproving, but still a person who worked hard for what she believed in. Now she was dead, and perhaps because of her hard work. I couldn’t help but wonder if her death happened through something at the garden. It seemed unlikely that two accidental deaths could occur so close together. One, or both, must have been caused by human machinations. But why would Lois be killed?

Unless she knew something about Rita’s death. Something that someone else had wanted to keep concealed.

I remembered her visit to me—was it only two days ago? Her perturbation, her anxiety once it was clear to her that I had nothing to hide. She had known something, and she had chosen to deal with it herself instead of telling the police.

The baby next to me began wailing, jolting me from my thoughts. The girl in charge of the baby was very young, her shoulders bowed as if she carried the troubles of the universe instead of one small baby. She should have been strolling through the mall with her friends, giggling and stopping at the food court. Instead, she
was
the food court, trying to give her baby a bottle while rummaging in the enormous bag of stuff with her other hand.

“Can I help?” I indicated the bag. “What are you looking for? Perhaps I can get it for you.”

“Gracias.”
Looking frightened, she tightened her grip on the baby. “I need nothing, thank you.”

She abandoned her attempt to find whatever it was in the bag, and the infant quieted when she directed all her attention toward giving it the bottle. I wondered why she didn’t breast-feed, why she was alone when she couldn’t have been more than fifteen, whether the father of her baby spent any time with her and it. But I couldn’t ask.

The outer door opened and a vivacious brunette swept in, her V-necked green scrubs proclaiming her a health-care professional. She carried a paper bag, and she stopped at the reception desk to pull out a tall, capped cup and hand it over to the woman behind the desk, who took it thankfully.

The brunette lingered, uncapping her own cup. “He’s out there again,” she said ominously.

The woman behind the reception desk looked alarmed. “Oh, no.”

“Yes.” The brunette shook her head. “I told him he had to get back, that he wasn’t allowed to stand so close. But he didn’t pay much attention. You may have to call the cops.”

The woman behind the desk seemed resigned. “I’ll get Evelyn to come over and escort people first,” she said, pulling the phone toward her.

A nurse came into the waiting room. She took a clipboard from a rack of them by the door and announced, “Teresa Hidalgo.”

The girl next to me stood up, clutching her baby, the enormous bag bulging off her shoulder. “This way,” the nurse said, and Teresa disappeared.

I went back to my magazine, but the people in it seemed even further from real life. They were in love, engaged, in counseling, divorcing, seeing someone new. What did it matter?

Amy returned, followed by a slight young woman in a white coat, with a dark, glowing complexion and short dreadlocks springing from a wide forehead. “Hello,” she said, offering a firm handshake when I joined Amy. “I’m Dr. Jones. Amy’s doing fine, and I’ve given her a bunch of stuff to read.” She turned to Amy, who clutched her pile of literature with a dazed expression. “You should go ahead and make an appointment now, and if you decide against the procedure, you can cancel it. But you should decide soon."

Amy tightened her grip on the literature. “Okay,” she mumbled. “Thanks, Dr. Jones.”

She went to make her appointment at the desk, and Dr. Jones smiled at me. “Amy seems very sensible, very centered.”

“Yes, I think she is.” Through the consulting room door, I could see Teresa Hidalgo being weighed while the nurse held her baby. “Do you all take care of babies here, too?”

“No.” Dr. Jones glanced over her shoulder. “We do offer gynecological care and contraceptives, though. The moms-to-be come to us throughout their pregnancies, and after the birth, too. If Amy chooses to have her baby, we’ll be happy to provide her prenatal checkups. Then she’d deliver at Stanford.”

This was another stunning thought. “But—she doesn’t live here. I mean, she’s from Denver.”

Dr. Jones wrinkled her forehead. “Somehow I got the idea—well, Amy will talk about it with you, I’m sure.”

Her brown eyes were sympathetic, her rich voice soft. “I understand your family is Catholic.”

“Yes,
very. She hasn’t told them about her—condition. They’d hit the roof.”

“What do you think about that?”

“She’s making her own decisions. What I think doesn’t matter.”

“Well, that’s not really true. But it’s good you’re standing by.” Dr. Jones gave me a pat and went back to the consulting rooms.

While Amy waited at the appointment desk, I drifted over to the clinic’s door and looked through. A man stood at the sidewalk, his back to the clinic, holding up a large sign toward the traffic on Middlefield. Something about him was familiar. I assumed he was an antiabortion protester, and I didn’t think I knew any men foolhardy enough to tell women how to use their bodies.

The man wore a billed hat pulled low over his eyes and a fleecy vest with the collar up around his ears, despite the mildness of the November day. While I watched, a pair of women approached the clinic, the younger one moving slowly, her older companion supporting her. The older woman—her mother?—took one horrified look at the sign the man carried and averted her eyes. The man gestured with his sign, and the younger woman shrank away, hesitating.

I barged out the door, but the older woman was already coping with the problem. “Please move aside, sir,” she said with gentle dignity. “My daughter has had a miscarriage and needs to see her doctor.”

I tapped the man on the shoulder. “Excuse me.”

The woman hustled her daughter past as the man turned to face me. It was Tom Dancey.

“Mr. Dancey. What a surprise to see you here.”

He pulled the hat lower over his eyes. “Do I know you?”

“I’m one of the community gardeners. You gave a very affecting speech at the garden last night.” I looked at the sign he carried and nearly threw up. Under a huge, stomach-wrenching, color picture of mangled tissue and blood, large red letters asked ARE YOU A MURDERER? It was no wonder the young woman had hesitated to pass by.

“That’s really nasty.” I noticed that cars on Middlefield Road were slowing down to read the sign, maybe hoping we were going to have a Confrontation with a capital C.
“Why are you doing this, Mr. Dancey? I mean, the women who come here face hard enough choices.”

His face was stony, his gaze turned away. “What happens in there is murder, plain and simple. Are you here to murder a baby?” He glanced at me briefly, then turned away, his sign facing toward Middlefield Road.

“I don’t think you have a clue what happens inside.” I wanted to shake him, but contented myself with moving around to face him. “The woman you just harassed had a miscarriage. Does that sound like abortion? Maybe she wanted that baby desperately and having to pass your sign is just more torture. I sat next to a girl—not even sixteen. She had a tiny baby that will take over her life for the next twenty years. I didn’t see the father there.”

He shook his head as if shaking off my words. I stepped closer, impelled out of my usual observer status by some emotion I couldn’t quantify. “Tell me, Mr. Dancey. Tom. If you want to have a positive effect on this problem, why aren’t you over at the middle school, at the high school, asking the fathers of those babies what they were thinking of? Why are you bothering these women?”

He didn’t even look at me. “You have your views, I have mine. Freedom of speech guarantees me a hearing.”

“I call this harassment, not freedom of speech. You’re picking out the most vulnerable segment of society and persecuting—”

Stung, he raised his voice. “I’ll tell you who’s vulnerable. Those babies! What about them?” He shook his sign at me. “What gives a woman the right to flush my baby away?”

Amy came out of the clinic. I didn’t want her to see Tom Dancey’s horrible picture, but by arguing with him, I had made sure to draw her attention to it. I made a vain attempt to block her view. “Don’t look, honey.”

She looked anyway, and quickly averted her eyes.

Tom Dancey regarded her sadly. “So, young woman. Are you going to murder a baby?” He shook his head. “Death everywhere. Everyone dies. Are you ready to die?”