Book Clubbed (A Booktown Mystery) Page 13

  “Where?”

  But they had no time, because a voice from the kitchen doorway demanded, “What the hell are you doing here?”

  TWELVE

  Tricia felt her mouth go dry, but managed a nervous laugh. “Hi, Joelle. What a surprise to see you here.”

  “It’s an even bigger surprise to find the two of you in my sister’s house. Did you kick in the back door?” she demanded.

  “No, we found it that way,” Tricia said.

  “We were going to use Betsy’s keys,” Angelica said and pulled them out of her jacket pocket, dangling them for Joelle to see.

  “You have no right to be here. I’m going to call the cops,” she said, and began to dig into the purse hanging from her shoulder.

  “Wait—please don’t,” Tricia said. “We came here tonight to try to figure out why Betsy was killed.”

  “That’s a job for the police,” Joelle said.

  “Did you know that Tricia has assisted the Sherriff’s Department and the Stoneham Police Department in solving several local murders?” Angelica said.

  “Yes,” Joelle grudgingly admitted. “After Stan was killed.”

  “You do want your sister’s murderer to be found sooner rather than later, don’t you?” Angelica asked. “I know I would.”

  Tricia shot her an annoyed glance. “All we want to do is help. I assure you, we had no intention of taking any of your sister’s things.” Except for three CDs’ worth of data from her computer, she silently amended.

  Joelle waved a hand before her, taking in the mess. “As you can see, Betsy really had nothing worth stealing.”

  “When did she start hoarding?” Tricia asked.

  “Betsy never was a neatnik, but she didn’t start collecting papers, clothes, and other junk until after her daughter, Amy, died. That was ten years ago. In the last five years—since her husband, Jerry, left—she became much, much worse.”

  “She accumulated all this in only five years?” Angelica asked.

  Joelle nodded. “For the most part. Her collections, as she called them, became more important to her than any of the people in her life. She lost all of her friends, and her husband, because of them. I was the only one left who’d have anything to do with her, and sometimes she was so mean to me, I think she deliberately tried to drive me away.”

  “So you two were no longer close?” Tricia asked.

  Again Joelle nodded. “I guess I tried one too many times to get her some help, but she just got angry. She told me she was going to change her will. I had been her beneficiary since the divorce, but she said she knew I’d throw all her treasures in the trash before her body was cold.” She looked around the dump that had been Betsy’s living room. “She had that right.”

  “Do you have any idea who might have wanted her dead or why someone would have kicked in her door?”

  Joelle shook her head. “She kept to herself these past five years. She worked, she shopped, and she stayed home alone. It wasn’t much of a life.”

  “And someone took even that from her,” Angelica commented sadly.

  “What made you decide to come here tonight?” Tricia asked.

  “I . . . um . . . came to look for a nice outfit for her to be buried in.”

  “Then you’ve heard that the medical examiner ruled on the cause of death?” Tricia asked.

  “She was crushed,” Joelle said with a shrug.

  She hadn’t heard. And why hadn’t Grant Baker contacted her to tell her the official cause?

  “You said you came here tonight to look for something that would help you figure out who killed Betsy. And?” Joelle demanded.

  “And?” Tricia repeated dully.

  “What have you discovered?”

  Tricia threw Angelica a guilty look.

  “That the motive wasn’t robbery,” Angelica said.

  Tricia’s head snapped around to glare at her sister and could have cheerfully kicked her. “Sadly, nothing,” she told Joelle.

  Joelle scowled. “You’re supposed to be so smart when it comes to mysteries. You haven’t been able to come up with anything else?”

  Tricia shrugged. “Not so far.”

  Joelle scowled. “Then I assume your reputation as an amateur sleuth has been greatly exaggerated.”

  “I’ve always thought so,” Angelica muttered.

  Tricia gave her sister another annoyed glare, but Angelica seemed oblivious.

  “Look, it’s getting late. You two had better go,” Joelle said firmly. “If you give me Betsy’s keys and leave right now, I won’t call the police and report you.”

  “We were just about to leave when you got here,” Angelica said.

  “Yes. It’s getting late,” Tricia agreed, and she made her way through the piles in the living room and squeezed past Joelle to head for the back door.

  Angelica handed Joelle the set of keys as she passed. “Please let us know what you decide to do about the funeral. We’d like to come.”

  Speak for yourself, Tricia was tempted to say. “Good night,” she called as she went out the back door.

  “Good night,” Angelica echoed and tried to close the door behind her. It wouldn’t catch, and after a few tries she gave up.

  Tricia breathed in the crisp clean air. The odor in Betsy’s house had been so penetrating she felt as if she could taste it. She waited until Angelica flanked her, and then the sisters started down the driveway. “Do you notice what’s missing?” Tricia asked.

  Angelica looked all around her. “No, what?”

  “Joelle’s car.”

  “What are you saying—that she was sneaking around the same as us?”

  “It did take her a moment or two to come up with the burial-clothes excuse.”

  “So why do you think she really came here tonight?”

  “I have no idea. But if she’d been disinherited, then just like us, she really had no right to be there. Was she going to sift through the trash to find hidden treasure before the house is sealed for probate?”

  “If so, naughty Joelle.”

  They turned the corner and walked along Nashua Street, heading back toward the strip mall and Angelica’s car. Angelica raised her arm to sniff her jacket sleeve. “I think I’m going to have to fumigate my clothes. Either that or burn them.”

  “Mine, too.”

  “Do you think the smell will transfer to my car seats?”

  “Not if you leave a window open overnight—and pray it doesn’t snow.”

  “Great idea.”

  “What do you want to do about the CDs?” Tricia asked and ducked her head, wishing the wind weren’t so strong.

  “You have more free time than I do. You can have them, look them over, and then let me know what you find—if you find anything at all, that is,” Angelica said, reaching into her pocket and withdrawing the CDs, and then handing them to Tricia.

  “It might be that Betsy only chronicled the junk she collected.”

  “And if that’s the case, I think you should look at the disks and then destroy them. As it is, we’re violating her privacy,” Angelica said.

  “But now she’s dead and beyond caring. And you can tell an awful lot about a person by the junk they collect on their hard drive.”

  “Which makes me want to purge my computer the minute I get home. That and change all my passwords. It really was far too easy for us to get into Betsy’s computer.”

  “And thank goodness it was,” Tricia said.

  “But only if something good turns up. I have a feeling you’ll find rummaging through her files to be a complete waste of time.”

  Tricia did, too. And if she didn’t, how on earth was she going to use the information without incriminating herself and Angelica?

  It wasn’t something she wanted to contemplate.

  Yet.<
br />
  * * *

  It was almost ten by the time Tricia had thrown her clothes into the washer and emerged lobster red from her shower, much too late to call Chief Baker. He was an “early to bed, early to rise” kind of guy, and she didn’t want to annoy him by waking him.

  Instead, she sat down in front of her computer with Miss Marple on her lap and went through the first of the three CDs. Not only did Betsy collect physical junk, she collected a lot of pictures. One of the files contained her user IDs and passwords to all her online accounts. Her Pinterest account had over forty thousand pictures spread over 252 boards. They ranged from recipes to vintage Christmas cards to do-it-yourself projects, and she had copied many of them to her hard drive.

  Tricia felt like a voyeur pawing through the dead woman’s virtual closetful of secrets, and like her home, nothing seemed to be of any real value.

  The buzzer on the washer sounded and Miss Marple jumped down from her lap, allowing Tricia to get up and put the clothes in the dryer. She’d have to stay up and take the clothes out when the cycle finished, or she’d be spending the next night or so ironing everything, which was a chore she absolutely loathed.

  With the dryer drum happily turning, Tricia wandered back to the computer, but this time Miss Marple did not join her. Tricia considered logging on to Betsy’s account at the Bank of Stoneham but figured the police might subpoena the computer records and possibly trace the inquiry to her home computer. She wanted to find Betsy’s killer, but not if she had to go to jail to do it.

  Tricia scrolled through a number of files, but nothing seemed relevant to Betsy’s death, and as Angelica suggested, she felt like a voyeur violating Betsy’s privacy. Finally a glance at the time listed at the bottom-right corner of her computer monitor told her that the dry cycle would soon be finished. She’d started closing screens when she noticed a Word document with the title of DIET RECIPES. Since she worked so hard at maintaining her own weight, she found herself double-clicking on the icon. The software loaded and the document opened. Sure enough, a recipe for makeover chocolate muffins appeared. Instead of oil, the recipe called for prune paste or applesauce. Instead of cane sugar, the recipe called for an artificial sweetener. Tricia was all for lowering calories, but she preferred food to be made of real ingredients, not something from a test tube in some chemical company’s laboratory.

  She scrolled down to the next page, and the next. More and more interesting makeover recipes appeared, including a low-cal version of Waldorf salad—something she’d always enjoyed. She hit the print button, specifying that page, and wondered if she could get Angelica or her short-order cook to make it for her. She was about to close the file, wishing Betsy had included a table of contents, when she stopped scrolling. Her heart began to pound when columns of names, cities, and numbers filled the screen. What did it mean? Did Betsy have bank accounts spread out all across the nation with money hidden in other names? How could she have accomplished it?

  Tricia sat back in her chair and pondered the implications. Had Bob looked into her background before he hired her, or had he offered employment to the first warm body he could find to fill Frannie’s empty chair? Was it possible the Chamber still had her employment application? Would that give a clue to the woman’s work background and her last several employers? If asked, would they give truthful answers, or would they fall back on the standard, “we can’t give out that information” and only reveal Betsy’s employment dates?

  Tricia sat back in her chair and considered her options. If she said nothing, would Grant Baker—or one of his officers—find the information buried in a word processing document containing recipes, or should she tell him what she’d found—or have Angelica, as Chamber president, do it?

  She glanced at the clock and realized just how tired she felt. It had been a long day and she was in no condition to make such a decision. She closed the files and shut down the computer. “Bedtime. Come along, Miss Marple.”

  The cat opened her sleepy eyes, got up, and stretched, then jumped down from the couch.

  Tricia grabbed a book from her living room shelves, and headed for her bedroom. She got undressed, climbed into bed, and opened Josephine Tey’s The Daughter of Time, but soon found she couldn’t concentrate on the words. She had far too much on her mind. She lay awake in the dark for a long time, trying to make sense of all the various threads of information she’d gathered that day, but it was no use. None of the pieces to the puzzle seemed to fit properly, and it was only exhaustion that finally took her to dreamland.

  THIRTEEN

  Tricia awoke late the next morning and only had time to take a quick shower, feed her cat, and grab some yogurt from the refrigerator before she made it downstairs to open her store for the day. On days like this, her exercise regimen was the first thing eliminated from her to-do list.

  Haven’t Got a Clue’s first visitor of the day wasn’t a customer, but Charlie the mailman, bundled up for the cold, his cheeks red from the vicious wind. “Hey, Charlie. You look frozen stiff. I’m just about to make a pot of coffee. Would you like to join me?”

  He sorted through the contents of his leather mailbag and came up with an assortment of circulars and bills. “I wish I could, but I really don’t have time for . . .” His words drifted off, and Tricia noticed the lines around his eyes seemed more deeply defined than they had the last time she’d spoken to him.

  “Is something wrong? Can I help?” she asked sincerely.

  “I’ve got a lot hanging over my head, Tricia,” Charlie said and sighed. He set the mail on the counter.

  “Why don’t you tell me about it?” she asked.

  Again Charlie sighed, his gaze focused on the floor. “It’s the police. They seem to think I might have had something to do with Betsy Dittmeyer’s death—and all because I happened to be in the Cookery just before it occurred.” He straightened and met her gaze. “What they failed to understand is that I’m there five days a week—and almost always at the same time.”

  “Chief Baker is only doing his job, although I can tell you from personal experience that it’s no picnic to be the object of his scrutiny.”

  “I’ll say.”

  “Why would the chief think you had some connection to Betsy?”

  “Because,” he said, his gaze turning downward once again, “I do.”

  Tricia’s eyes widened. “You and Betsy had a relationship?” she asked, taken aback.

  Charlie looked absolutely horrified. “Me? And Betsy? Oh, please.”

  “Then what?”

  Charlie sighed, still not looking Tricia in the eye. “Part of the twelve steps are that you don’t talk about it.”

  Oh, dear. “You and Betsy were alcoholics?”

  “Not ‘were.’ Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic.”

  That made sense. Betsy had a compulsion to hoard. Perhaps that had driven her to drink, as well. And what had compelled her to steal?

  “Where did the two of you meet?” Tricia asked.

  “At a meeting in Milford, although I hadn’t run into her at one for some time. I did see her on a regular basis when the Chamber of Commerce was located up the street.”

  “Does anyone else know she was an alcoholic?”

  “Just her immediate family and the others who frequent our meetings. But they’re not likely to talk about it, either. That’s one of the reasons they call it Alcoholics Anonymous.”

  “I hope you won’t think I’m nosy, but I can’t imagine you as . . .”

  “A drunk?” He laughed. “It’s okay to say it. I always did.”

  “Then how did you start drinking?”

  “Like most kids—stealing my parents’ liquor. Then finding friends and helping them steal their parents’ liquor. I worked, I earned money, I spent it on beer or whiskey. It was a vicious cycle. I was engaged, but my girl told me if I didn’t sober up, she would leave me. That di
d it. I joined AA and the rest is history.”

  “How many years ago was that?”

  “Thirty-five. And we’ve been happily married the whole time.”

  Tricia smiled. “Do you still go to meetings?”

  He nodded. “Several times a week. It’s part of our philosophy to help others get off the alcohol treadmill and regain their sobriety.”

  “Have you ever fallen off the wagon?” Tricia asked.

  “A couple of times,” he said sheepishly. “I’ve haven’t had a drink in almost eighteen years now.”

  “Good for you, Charlie.”

  “Honest, Tricia. I didn’t kill Betsy. I admit, I might be able to understand it if others had reason to do so—she had a heartless manner. I’m not sure she ever really embraced our philosophy, but as far as I know, she went to her grave stone-cold sober.”

  Someone had helped Betsy to her grave, and in quite a horrific manner. And one of the tenets of the twelve-step program was to ask forgiveness of those you’d wronged. Betsy was so busy stealing from her employer and goodness knows how many other people, she apparently had no time or inclination to do so.

  “I don’t suppose you know how I could get in touch with Betsy’s ex-husband.”

  “Jerry the welder?” he asked.

  “I didn’t know his name—or where he worked,” Tricia said.

  “Try Black’s Village Smithy. Do you know the place? It’s up on the highway.”

  “I know about it,” she said. More important, she knew the owner—although the last time they’d spoken they hadn’t been on good terms. In fact, they’d never been on good terms. “Thanks for the tip. I’ll see if I can track him down.”

  “Seems to me Betsy mentioned it to me the last time I spoke to her. She was angry that he’d be working so close to her. I guess their divorce was pretty bitter.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  Charlie looked down at his bulging leather mail pouch. “I’d better get going. My boss wasn’t happy when I got hauled off to the police station during my rounds—and he won’t like it if it happens again.”