Death Comes to a Retreat (Book 4 Molly Masters Mysteries) Page 20

  While she spoke, I happened to spot her impressive set of keys on the end table. That reminded me. “Okay. Celia, something else has been bothering me for a long time. Somebody told me they saw you with your keys after you claimed they were missing.”

  Celia snorted. “Julie.” She studied my face. “That’s true. This is embarrassing.” She took a deep breath, but otherwise showed no physical sign of embarrassment. “Whoever stole my keys actually did return them to my purse at some point. I pretended they were still missing, so that I could find out who took them. It backfired on me. They stole them a second time, then apparently stuck them in your purse. I thought it was you, at first. Otherwise, I would have admitted this to you sooner.”

  None of that made any sense to me, but I asked, “And why are you admitting it to me now?”

  “I don’t know who killed Allison. Up until I saw what you’ve been going through lately, I couldn’t believe it really was murder. Allison had been so miserable, I was sure she’d taken her own life. But now, it’s pretty clear somebody is after you.” She opened the door for me. “Take care, Molly.”

  Jim was just circling the block as I stepped out. He waved and grinned as he saw me holding Betty. He reached across the seat and opened the passenger door for me. “All right! You found her!”

  “She seems fine. I just hope she doesn’t prefer her former owner to us.”

  “She’s going to have a great life with us,” Jim said, stroking BC’s soft red-gold fur. “She’s got Karen to dote on her. Nathan, too, once he gets used to keeping his door shut.”

  I stared at Allison’s deserted house. There were only two reasons I could think of that could explain Maria Chavez’s seemingly erratic and nocturnal visits to Allison’s house. One of those explanations might just go a long way toward solving Allison’s murder. If I could just get her to talk with me, maybe I’d get some answers. Betty was licking Jim’s hand. “Can you watch her for a moment? I need to leave somebody a note.” I grabbed one of my business cards from my purse that was still in the car and wrote:

  Maria-Please call me as soon as you read this. It’s urgent.

  Molly Masters

  (the skinny lady who was chased up the tree)

  I put the number for my portable phone-and-fax at the bottom and left the note in the doorjamb, and we headed home. We had an uneventful dinner and evening. At eleven thirty-four, my phone rang. I was still awake and answered.

  “Is this Molly Masters?” asked a female with a trace of a Spanish accent.

  “Yes. Maria?”

  “Are you okay? Did the dogs bite you?”

  “No. Julie got her dogs back under control in time. Thanks for calling her. Why did you take off like that?”

  “I…can’t talk to you. I don’t want anything to do with the police.”

  “I won’t mention this to them.” I asked her the first of my theories that could explain her nighttime visits: “Are you living at Allison’s house?”

  “No.”

  “Then you must be looking for something.”

  Her pause, I thought, spoke volumes. “You said it was urgent that I call you.”

  “I need your help. I was in a cabin in the mountains with Allison and five of her friends the night she was killed. The police found my fingerprints on the murder weapon, and I never touched it. I’m trying to find out who killed Allison and why I was set up.”

  “I cannot help you. I’m sorry.”

  “Yes, you can. Tell me whatever you can about Allison’s relationships with her female friends.”

  “I do not know anything. I know some of her friends, but not well. I used to work for someone who knows Allison. Nancy Thornton. She helped me get this job.”

  I was very surprised by this but asked calmly, “What can you tell me about Nancy?”

  “She had many strange calls and messages,” Maria said. “I think she was having trouble with one of her patients. One day, several months ago, I heard on her recorder a few strange calls from some man. Next day, I am out of a job. She told me she had changed her mind about needing a housecleaner.”

  “What do you mean by ‘strange calls’?”

  “He would say things like, ‘So, Miss Nancy. You had better show up tonight. You know exactly what I’m going to do to you if you don’t.’ And like that. They were threats.”

  Chapter 15

  When Dogs Dream

  The next morning, I took a shower and came down the stairs, feeling the effects of my sore muscles more than ever. A snail with a brisk tailwind could move faster than this. BC raced over to greet me, giving me an excuse to catch my breath while petting her. It felt so good to get such an enthusiastic greeting that I knew Charles Schulz had it right when his Peanuts cartoon claimed that happiness is a warm puppy.

  My business phone rang, but in my slo-mo state, the automatic-answer function on the fax machine kicked in before I could get to the kitchen. Nathan was standing in front of the machine, watching as the fax emerged. “Hey, Mom. Somebody is faxing you a picture.”

  “A cartoon?” I asked, wondering if this was my lone new prospective customer, faxing me somebody else’s cartoon to show me how superior my competition was.

  “No,” he said slowly, watching as the picture emerged. “It looks like a photograph.”

  That announcement alarmed me into some semblance of speed. I grabbed Nathan by the shoulders and gently but firmly shoved him aside. “Sorry, mister, but I’m not sure this is something that’s okay for you to…” My voice drifted off as I caught sight of the faxed photograph. My worst suspicions had been verified. I snatched it off the tray and shoved it into a drawer, saying, “What do you want for breakfast?”

  “I already. got my own bowl of Lucky Charms. Why was that lady wearing a cat mask?” he asked, staring at the closed drawer where I’d stashed the pornographic photograph.

  “It must have been Halloween,” I answered, feeling my cheeks grow warm.

  “What was that man doing to her?”

  Shoot! He’d seen too much of the picture! I needed him out of the room so I could get the thing put away before he found a way to get a closer look. “That’s really a better question for your father. Where is he?”

  “In the bathroom,” Nathan answered, which I could have surmised for myself, had I stopped to think about it.

  “Well, knock on the door and tell him Mom says it’s time he had a talk with you about the facts of life.”

  While Nathan trotted down to the bathroom, I retrieved the fax. The top margin showed the current date and time, followed only by the user tag: COLO_U_. Great. This could have been sent by any of the hundred or so fax machines on the C.U. campus. Including Katherine Lindstrom.

  I folded and stashed the picture in the pocket of my shorts. Until I could hand it over to the police, this needed to be someplace the kids wouldn’t find it. The photograph was of the late Richard Kenyon, in bed with a woman naked except for a cat mask.

  Nathan knocked on the bathroom door and shouted over the noisy fan, “Dad? Mom wants to talk about sex.”

  My jaw dropped. At only eight years old, Nathan had already made the leap from “the facts of life” to “sex.” I suddenly felt like the world’s worst mother for failing to monitor—what? his TV viewing? external influences?—his upbringing better. The fan shut off. Jim, looking very startled, emerged, sports section in hand. He looked at Nathan, then at me. “What did Nathan just say?”

  “Nathan, I need to talk to your dad alone for a minute. Why don’t you go check the mailbox for me?”

  Though Nathan knew as well as I did that mail didn’t come this early, he slipped his sandals onto his bare feet and left through the garage.

  “Nathan saw this on our fax machine and asked what they were doing,” I explained, handing Jim the picture. “That’s Allison Kenyon’s late ex-husband in what, judging by the wallpaper, looks like the bedroom of Allison’s house. I don’t know who the masked woman is.” One thing was certain, though. It wasn
’t Celia Wentworth. Catwoman didn’t have Celia’s blobby upper arms. I craned my neck around Jim’s shoulder, tilting the picture to get a better look. “The woman’s quite a contortionist. It looks like Julie.”

  “The Zumba instructor?” Jim let out a low whistle.

  I snatched the picture away, now wishing I hadn’t allowed my husband to see it, either. “It’s time you had a talk with our son about the facts of life.” Jim grimaced, and I added, “I already had my first talk with Karen.”

  “Isn’t eight years old too young?”

  “Maybe when we were eight. Not anymore.” I gave him a friendly jab on the arm. “You can make it age-appropriate. I have complete confidence in you.”

  Jim grumbled, “Said General Custer to his troops.”

  Lauren emerged from the basement. Without makeup and wearing wrinkled tan cotton shorts and a camouflage T-shirt, she looked as though she’d just rolled out of bed. She said in a gravelly voice, “Morning. What sucks so far?”

  Jim muttered that he was going to check on Nathan and exited through the garage. I told Lauren, “I just got an obscene fax regarding Allison’s ex-husband, but otherwise, everything’s great.”

  “Great? Hah!” Lauren shuffled into the bathroom.

  She must be really upset not to even react to my mention of the fax. I wished I could offer some cheery comeback, along the lines of, Okay, so you’ve split with your fiance and are spending your hard-earned vacation dodging a homicidal maniac. The weather is lovely, and I’ve got a great puppy.

  And yet, there truly was a bright side for Lauren. This fax was a reasonable excuse to get Tommy over here. Not a great excuse, since he obviously had no jurisdiction and therefore the fax actually should go to the Boulder police. However, I was willing to appear dense in order to help my two acting-even-denser friends get back together.

  With Lauren still in the bathroom and out of earshot, I dialed Tommy’s cellular phone. He answered immediately. I could tell by his eager tones whose voice he’d been hoping to hear. I said, “Tommy, can you come over? I’ve got a fax here I’d like you to see.”

  “Be right there,” he said, and hung up.

  Out the kitchen window, I saw him round the corner. He had to have been just up the street. Maybe he hadn’t even bothered to keep his room at the Regency and simply planned to stay in his car. The doorbell rang as Lauren was coming up the stairs from the family room.

  I quickly stuck my hands in the sink and called to her, “My hands are wet, Lauren. Could you answer the door, please?”

  A moment later, I heard the sound of the door creak open, then silence. Tommy’s first words were, “‘Scuse me. I’m here to speak to Molly.”

  Yeesh. I dried my hands, grabbed the fax, and marched into the room with it. “Tommy. This was just faxed to me anonymously.” I handed him the picture. “There was no note or anything. The man’s Richard Kenyon.”

  Tommy furrowed his brow as he studied the fax. “Boulder cops had better see this. Might not tell ‘em much, but you never know.”

  “The woman might be Julie from Zumba, or Professor Katherine, or Nancy the therapist, but I can’t say for certain. I’m relatively sure it isn’t Celia or Lois. Their body types are completely different from the masked woman’s.”

  “Uh-huh. Could also be none of the above.”

  “At least we know it was sent from the C.U. campus, where Katherine Lindstrom teaches. I can’t imagine why she—or anybody else, for that matter—would send this to me.”

  “Uh-huh. I could take it down to the station for you, but they’ll probably want to talk to you in person.”

  That plan would not allow for me to get Lauren and Tommy alone together. Lauren had already wandered out of the living room and was now in the kitchen. I was having trouble keeping the three of us in the same room, let alone the two of them. I took it back from him and returned it to my pocket. “I’ll just take it there myself after breakfast. Since you’re here, have a seat. I’ll get you some coffee.”

  “But I—”

  “Sit!” Betty Cocker promptly sat down, and so did Tommy, though the latter did so with a snarl. I muttered an apology to both of them for my tone of voice, then called, “Lauren, while you’re in there, could you please bring me a cup of coffee?”

  “Moll,” Tommy grumbled, “do you ever even consider mindin’ your own business?”

  “Yes. I considered it and dismissed the idea.” The moment Lauren entered, a cup in her hand, I rose and said, “You two stay and talk to each other. My favorite daytime TV show is on.”

  “What’s that?” Tommy asked.

  I never watched daytime TV; not counting football games. “Uh, All My Children. Excuse me while I go watch downstairs.”

  “Show was cancelled years ago,” Tommy called after me.

  “In that case, I have a lot of catching up to do.”

  To block out the sounds of their conversation, I flipped on the set, but made no pretense of watching it. BC followed me downstairs and was soon asleep by my feet. I smiled as she lapsed into REM, her feet flicking as if she were running. “Chasing rabbits in her dreams,” was how my mom always described it when our family’s dog did this.

  That gave me an idea for a cartoon. I grabbed my pad. I drew a man asleep on a couch, a sleeping dog by his feet. The thought bubble from the man shows him chasing after a rabbit in a field. The thought bubble from the dog shows the dog in a T-shirt and striped pants sitting at a desk, surrounded by human classmates staring at him in disgust as the teacher says, “Fido, today is your final exam! Did you wear your pajamas to school?!”

  “It’s hopeless,” Lauren announced to me half an hour later. Tommy had left, Nathan and Jim had returned, and all three kids were playing at a neighbor’s house across the street. “Tommy is absolutely convinced that I’m never going to marry him. There’s nothing I can do to change his mind.”

  “There is one thing you can do,” I answered. “Marry him.”

  “What, you mean here in Colorado? But we wouldn’t want to get married without his sons being present, and they’re at camp.”

  I gave a quick look at Jim, who nodded. Though we’d never as much as discussed any of this, I knew exactly what he meant. “Lauren, if this is what you want to do, Jim and I will fly Jasper and Joey out here as our wedding present to you.”

  “I can’t ask you to do that,” Lauren said, shaking her head emphatically. “With no advanced purchase? That’d cost you a fortune.”

  “I can’t think of any way we’d rather spend our money,” Jim immediately said. That was the honest truth for Jim, who got more enjoyment out of generosity than from spending his money on himself. A trip to Bermuda popped into my head. I’m not as selfless as my husband. But a Colorado wedding for Tommy and Lauren would also be nice.

  That afternoon, Jim had to return to work at his former office headquarters. Both Karen and Nathan had been invited to friends’ houses. Lauren and Rachel dropped me off at the Boulder Police station, where the police returned my rental car to me at long last. I gave them the obscene fax, neglecting to mention that I’d previously made a copy of it. If the police had drawn any conclusions regarding my—or anyone else’s—guilt or innocence, they were certainly tight-lipped about it.

  In case Professor Katherine Lindstrom had sent the fax, I wanted to check into the story behind her drug problems and relationship with her ex-husband, Julie’s brother. Remembering all of those get-right-back-in-the-saddle pep talks from my horse-riding lessons, I decided to begin by confronting my sauna-phobia with a return to Julie’s Zumba studio.

  When I arrived, Julie was seated behind the oak desk in her office. Judging from her glistening face—so far she’s the only woman I could truthfully say “glowed” instead of sweated—she’d just completed a class.

  Her first question upon seeing me was, “Is everything all right with Betty?”

  “Yes, she’s fine.” I took a chair in front of her desk. There were two framed photographs on he
r desk: one of her Golden Retriever and one of BC’s mother. None of her husband. Or her killer Dobermans.

  “You’re not here to talk lawsuits, are you? My boss said she wanted to meet with you in person to tell you how sorry she is, but she wants to consult with her lawyer first.”

  I had no intention of suing Julie or anyone else, but the looming threat of my doing so might put me in the driver’s seat now. “This is about something else. Katherine Lindstrom. Did you know she had a criminal record for drug abuse?”

  Her eyes widened and she tensed, but then nodded. “She got me and my brother John into drugs, too, unfortunately. I was living with her for a while, back east, while they were married.”

  That was the exact reverse of what Katherine had said. Katherine’s was perhaps the less believable story, since she, not Julie, was the one with the actual criminal record. “Where is your brother now?”

  “He lives in California. He’s remarried. He doesn’t do drugs anymore, but he thought it best that we not contact each other.”

  “I’m sorry. That must be difficult.”

  She nodded, still poised for flight. “I had problems, a long time ago. I’ve been clean and sober for years now.”

  “How did you and Katherine both wind up in Boulder?” I asked, wanting to compare the women’s stories. Somewhere within fact and fiction might lie a motive for murder.

  “I’d lost touch with her completely. I was barely out of high school when all of that was going on. I moved out here to go to C.U. Then one day I ran into her. We had coffee together. She didn’t recognize me at first, and she’d changed a lot, too. She used to have long blond hair, but she got it all sheared off and let it go its natural color.”

  “So you’ve gotten along with her pretty well? Despite what she did to your brother?”

  “It’s not like I blame her, Molly. I really don’t. You can’t turn somebody into a junkie by offering them drugs any more than you can get somebody off the stuff by offering them coffee. We make our own choices in life.” Her lip trembled as she took a halting breath. “I was simply glad and relieved to see she’d gotten her act together.”