Raspberry Crush (31 page)

"It's from this library. I just thought if Ted Schneider was a patron here, you might've known him."

Miss Dibbs took the book in her hands and clutched it to her chest. Breathing heavily through her nose, she shut her eyes with emotion and nodded. After a long, heavy silence, she spoke. "Yes. I knew him. I knew him well."

Yes!
Finally somebody knew the guy well. "Can you tell me about him?" Billy asked.

With a sigh, she took a tissue out from inside her sleeve and dabbed the corners of her eyes. "He was a kind man. He had a gruff exterior, but when we were alone, he was sensitive—gentle." She paused, looking meaningfully at Billy, and said, "In case you haven't guessed, we knew each other in the biblical sense. We were having a clandestine affair, and I just don't want to hide it anymore."

Billy nodded, coaxing her to continue, thinking,
Jackpot!

"Teddy was very giving and generous in his lovemaking. In fact, he was the most tender lover I've ever known, and I've known quite a few." Okay, that was so not going in a book about the local fishing trade.

Trying to keep the flow going, without appearing too desperate for the info, Billy said, "That's lovely. How did you two meet?"

Sniffling softly, Miss Dibbs explained, "Ted moved into town a few months ago. I think he planned to stay here for only a little while. Teddy was like that, always on the move. He had a nomadic spirit." She made it sound so freaking beautiful that "Teddy" made a habit of leaving.
Tell that to Aunt Penelope.
"We met early one morning when I was out walking on the beach. We hit it off; there was just this spark between us. In time, he opened up to me—told me how he couldn't stand all the snobby, rich people in Churchill. Well, don't quote me on that part. Teddy knew I had my money, but he didn't hold that against me. He was on the outside of this town; I was on the inside. It was so romantic—so tragic. Like
Romeo and Juliet" Yeah, just like that,
Billy thought, holding back an eye roll.

"So you knew him well?" Billy fished.

"I don't know how well you can know a man like Ted. He was somewhat of an enigma, but I still loved him so much. It's hard to explain."

"Well, what did you know about him? I mean, did he ever talk about his background?"

Miss Dibbs shrugged haplessly. "He traveled a lot, most of his adult life; he moved around. He was married once. Apparently it didn't last long. He didn't talk about her much, but I got the impression she was one of those really cloying domestic types with no life or ideas of her own. One of those women who baked all the time for him and basically just smothered him to death. A man like Ted can't be smothered or his spirit will be stifled."

Billy resisted the sudden urge to gag as Miss Dibbs continued, sounding bitter, "We had plans. We were in love; we even talked about selling the stocks my husband left me and moving somewhere far away. But all those dreams died with Teddy."

A red flag went up. The idea of Miss Dibbs selling her stocks for Ted wasn't sitting well with Billy. She asked, "Why did Ted want to move? Just to get away from all the rich people here or...?"

"No—well, maybe I shouldn't say anything," Miss Dibbs said, but then shook her head. "Oh, what difference could it possibly make now?"

"What is it, Miss Dibbs?" Billy pressed.

"Claudia, please," she said. After a wistful sigh, she continued, "Someone was after him." Billy's heart rate shot up, and her palms prickled.
Now
they were getting to it. "I don't know who. All Ted said was that it was someone from his past. He needed to get away, and of course I would've done anything to be with him and to help him. I pleaded with him to tell me what was going on, but he said he couldn't bear to involve me, and I figured he would tell me everything when he was ready."

Déjà vu settled on Billy like a thick, gauzy cloud; confusion and doubt sat heavily on her chest. Why did this sound so much like what Aunt Pen had told her? Ted had needed money, Ted had needed to get away from a mysterious person from his past, but Ted hadn't wanted to talk about it. It was the same thing, except Ted had left Pen before he'd agreed to take any money from her, whereas Claudia Dibbs was all set to sell her stocks.

Billy
wanted
to believe that Ted's Dear John letter to Aunt Pen had been legitimate, but suspicion niggled in her mind. Considering what Joe had told her—that Ted had left his first wife after taking a payoff from her family—and considering that Ted had hit up both Pen and Claudia for money, Billy had to wonder if he had been just a con man. A grifter, pure and simple. Was Ted in the practice of romancing lonely women and scamming them out of their money? And if so, did that mean that no one from his past had ever really been after him? Was that all just part of the con so that Ted could later extricate himself from the relationship?

No, but that didn't make complete sense, either, because even if he
was
a bullshit artist, Billy still believed his death was murder. There wasn't a doubt in her mind. God, her head was spinning!

"Puss in Boots,"
Claudia said now with a humorless laugh, looking down at the book in her hands. "It was a little joke between us."

When she failed to elaborate, Billy said, "Guess you had to be there—but anyway, getting back to Ted's death—"

"Dear God, what a tragic accident!" Claudia said, pressing a soggy tissue to her breast. "I couldn't believe it when I heard. Teddy always made a point to ask about nuts whenever we went out to eat. Granted, he never bothered to carry around his EpiPen, so I always brought Benadryl with us in case, but still, it wasn't like Teddy at all to be so careless with his allergy. He knew it could be fatal."

Inhaling a ragged breath of emotion, she added, "Why would he do that when he had
me?
We had smoldering passion. He was my Teddy Bear and I was his Pussy Cat."

O-kay.

"Claudia, this might sound crazy, but have you considered the possibility that Ted's death was something more than an accident?" Billy asked tentatively.

"What do you mean?" she said, scrunching the folds of her face in confusion.

"You mentioned that someone from Ted's past was after him—at least according to him, right?"

"Yes."

"Well, is it possible that the person finally caught up with him? That whomever it was killed him at the jubilee by slipping him something to eat that would trigger a fatal allergic reaction?"

Claudia looked stunned. "But who would know Ted well enough to know how severe his allergy really was?"

Excellent question.

Just then Seth returned with the water. "There were no cups," he explained, faintly winded from all the stairs. "I had to wait for the custodian to bring some up from the supply room."

"Oh, great, thanks," Billy said to her assistant. "Um, good work." Seth smirked at her, and Billy turned back to Claudia. "Just one more question. On the night Ted died, did you see anyone hanging around him at the jubilee? Did he mention exchanging words with anyone?"

"I wish I could tell you," she replied, "but I wasn't at the jubilee. I had to work that night. Even though this place was practically deserted. There was just some old man asleep in a chair, and a girl using the computers." Sniffing, Miss Dibbs added bitterly, "If I hadn't had to work that night, I could've been with Teddy when he got poisoned. He could've died in my arms. Just like
Romeo and Juliet."

* * *

"Now, what do you take away from that?" Billy asked Seth after recapping her interview with Claudia Dibbs.

"More than I ever wanted to know about Ted's competency in the sack?" he said dryly.

"True," Billy replied with a giggle. (She could tell Seth was getting out of his funk and she was relieved.) They'd left the library ten minutes ago, and now were walking toward the town square.

"By the way, I thought we were
both
supposed to be writers," he said. "When did I become your research assistant-slash—water boy?"

"Oh, sorry, I just got lost in the role, I guess," Billy apologized, looking sweetly sorry as a glint of amusement danced in her pale blue eyes.

"Why, what did you take away from it?"

"I don't know; it just doesn't make any sense," Billy said, pulling her crocheted mittens out of her coat pocket and slipping them on. Already she felt her nose and cheeks burning a little from the cold. "If Ted was really concerned that someone from his past was after him, like he told Claudia, why would he just show up at the town square, getting stupidly drunk, like he didn't have a care in the world? Why wasn't he more careful? More guarded?"

"Maybe he didn't expect whoever was after him to be at the jubilee," Seth said. "Or maybe the line he fed both Claudia and your aunt was complete shit; no offense."

"But if he was murdered, then
someone
had to be after him," Billy countered. "The same person who's after me now..." She shuddered as she said the words, and dark worries swam in the back of her mind, but this was nothing new, because mortality was her albatross. Seth put his hands on her shoulders affectionately, and when Billy looked up into his face, her eyes searched his. "And that's another thing. I keep thinking about what Joe said. That the person threatening me is probably someone I know, like a friend or a coworker...."

Her voice trailed off as a sudden, jarring thought occurred to her. One that was just too crazy. "Oh, my God," Billy mumbled. "Oh, my God!"

"What?" Seth said anxiously, his eyes sharpening as they bored into hers. "Billy, what are you thinking?"

"Oh, Seth," she mumbled, dropping down onto a park bench to get her head straight. Her mind was frantic with thoughts that didn't make sense, yet made perfect sense. "I think I figured it out." He sat next to her, leaning forward, waiting for her to explain. "First of all, I think you were right. I think that the person from Ted's past—the person who killed him—was someone he never expected to be at the jubilee. Someone who lied to him about the foods he could eat. Someone who conveniently disappeared right before Ted dropped dead, and resurfaced only after the commotion settled. Someone who works at Bella Donna, and could easily find out my address and phone number from the employee files in Donna's office."

"Wait a minute...."

"Georgette," Billy said, clutching her mittened hands together, desperate to grasp all the implications of what she was thinking. Memories came flooding back to her, fast and sharp. Georgette was married many years ago to a man who'd left her. At the Kenmore Pub she'd shown Billy a photo of herself back then, and it matched Claudia's description of Ted's first wife to a tee. When Georgette had spoken to Ted at the jubilee about the menu, she hadn't looked him in the eyes—in fact, she'd barely even turned around—and now it made sense why. She hadn't wanted Ted to recognize her after all these years.

Seth expelled a breath and said, "So Georgette Walters is really Gertrude Swain."

* * *

"There must be some way we can find out for sure," Seth said later, as they rode in his car toward the city. "Can't you just check her driver's license at work when she's not looking?"

"She doesn't drive," Billy said, remembering that Georgette had mentioned on more than one occasion that she'd let her driver's license expire many years ago. "But she has to be Gertrude Swain. Think about it: After Ted took a payoff from her family, she disappeared—like Joe said—and started over with a fake name.
That's
probably why she never officially married Gary; it would involve legal documentation. And she must be the one threatening me."

"But how would she even know you're looking into Ted's murder? Did you tell her?"

"No."

"Unless..."

"What?"

Seth glanced over at her, and Billy noticed the color in his face from the cold outside, and the way it illuminated the glittering hazel of his eyes. "Maybe Georgette knows about Ted's relationship with Penelope, and your connection to her. Have you ever mentioned Penelope at work?"

"Sure, sometimes."

"Maybe Georgette's been following Ted for years, watching him, waiting to get her revenge. And maybe she put it together that your aunt Penelope was the same Penelope Ted had been involved with. Who knows, maybe she knew you'd talked to Penelope about Ted." That had been the same night that Billy had found tomatoes on her window. But did that mean Georgette had been following her? If so, was she following her
now?

"So, what, you think that everything that's happened has all been part of some elaborate scheme?" Billy asked nervously, checking out her foggy window to see if any white pompadours were in the distance.

"I don't know," he said, sighing with frustration as he slid to a stop at the red traffic light ahead. He turned to her. "What should we do next? Tell Joe?"

"Oh, he'll just yell at us and blow us off. I mean, I know Joe's a great guy, but we're going to have to have a little more to go on before he'll take this seriously. He's never gonna believe that Georgette is Gertrude unless I come up with something more tangible than my own personal opinion." Which reminded her, the justice system really needed an overhaul. "I'm not sure how, but I have to try to find a link between Georgette and Ted. Someone is out there, someone who hates me—or wants me to go away—and I have to see this through."

"No,
we
have to," Seth corrected, smiling softly at her, leaning down as though to kiss her, but then he kissed her cheek, just brushing it quickly, and pulled back to put an appropriately platonic amount of space between them.

As the light turned green, Seth turned back to the road while emotion reached inside Billy's chest, and fervently gripped her heart.

Chapter 24

"Psst."

Billy leaned farther forward, trying again to get her mom's attention.
"Psst."

What, was her mother ignoring her? Billy had scored a seat directly behind the teacher's pet so she could grill her for information. Specifically, she wanted to see if Adrienne remembered anything Penelope might have told her about Ted's first wife. Anything that might help confirm Billy's theory about Georgette, so she'd have something to take to Joe.