"No s.h.i.t. I just turned mine on. Do you know how many messages Dwayne left? All about you?"
"He"s worried about me."
"Why?"
"I"ll tell you later." I practically grabbed the thing from her hand. Violet rolled her eyes and got behind the wheel.
Dwayne picked up with a sharp "Violet?"
"It"s Jane. My phone broke."
"Jesus. How?"
"Gravity. Violet"s driving me home. I"m fine. I took your advice and left when you thought I should."
"Is Violet right there?"
"Close enough. I"ll call you when I"m back at my cottage."
I got in the pa.s.senger seat. I really wanted to go back to his place. Really, really wanted to. I clenched my teeth, fighting a wave of longing.
"What"s wrong?" Violet asked.
"Nothing a lot of straight liquor couldn"t cure."
I woke up the next day feeling the pain of every piece of sheared skin. I don"t know. Sometimes this job is just really a lot of work.
In the afternoon I drove myself and The Binkster to Dwayne"s. Binks ran onto the deck and had a bark-fest with the dog next door until I hauled her inside and the perturbed neighbor did the same with her dog. Across the way Lobo, the Pilarmos" dog, started baying in an eerie, mournful tone as if he were about to morph into an undead being.
"I thought they only turned to werewolves during a full moon," I said. "It"s not even night."
Dwayne smiled. I had a diet A&W root beer and Dwayne had a beer as we sat down on the couch together, discussing all aspects of the case.
Dwayne said at length, "So, what do you think? Was Dante telling the truth about calling Roland?"
"I don"t know. I left before I could ask."
"I still think it"s a good thing you did."
I didn"t argue with him. "Dante likes to play with people. He could have been lying, just to have power, to get me to do what he wanted."
"So, who"s at the top of your list for the doer?" Dwayne asked.
"Neither Gigi nor Sean. They"re both self-involved, but kind of pa.s.sionless. Gigi may have angered Roland...she might even have pushed him into saying he would disinherit her...but she was all about that wedding. I"m sorry, she just wouldn"t screw it up by having her father killed. And Sean"s just too disinterested. Honestly, I think he used the fight he had with Roland as an excuse to skip the rehearsal dinner. No one"s even mentioned him at the wedding. I"m sure he was there or Gigi would have had a fit about him being missing, too. Those two o"clock pictures could not be missed."
"I agree," Dwayne said.
"Emmett...maybe..." I thought it over. "He found the body around three-thirty? Is that too late for the time of death?"
"Violet hit him around noon. Three and a half hours later?" Dwayne was dubious. "I"ll check with Larrabee, but I think that"s too late. Doesn"t mean Emmett couldn"t have had him killed earlier," he said.
"He would hire someone rather than do it himself," I said positively. "But what"s the motive? Gigi"s inheritance?" I shrugged. "Maybe."
"The man had three ex-wives. Any reason any one of them would want him dead?"
"Violet"s an ex-wife. The last I heard, you thought she was innocent," I pointed out. Dwayne gave me a smile. "What about Melinda? Violet was with her husband, and she wanted him back. She said if it weren"t for Violet, she and Roland would have resolved their differences. And she really wants Violet to go down for this. But then she really wanted Roland. She would be more likely to kill Violet."
"What about Renee? She was disinvited to the wedding by Roland. Sounds like the rehearsal dinner was one big fight."
"Who"s at the top of your list?" I posed back at him.
Dwayne stretched, lifting his arms over his head. "There was pa.s.sion involved. No premeditation."
"The killer didn"t bring a weapon," I agreed. "Just used the tray."
"Roland was upset and coming off a fight with Violet. Someone else came to the house, possibly fought with him as well. It escalated. The tray was there. Bam."
"Roland received two phone calls," I said. "One from Sean. One from the Columbia Millionaires" Club."
"Apparently Larrabee went to see Sean." Dwayne"s eyes narrowed. "That"s the avenue he"s pursuing. Not the club. At least not at the moment."
"If it wasn"t Dante who called him, then who?"
"None of the women reacted to the mention of Roland"s name?"
I shook my head.
"What did the men say? Anything?"
"Mostly what a shame it was to lose such a great guy."
"Did you bring up Emmett?"
"Some. They think his last name is Miller."
"Anything about him? Anything someone said?" Dwayne questioned.
I went back over it again in my mind. "Emmett mentioned that Dante had asked him about a particular woman. Emmett wasn"t interested. It"s almost like Dante"s pushing these women on the men. Like..."
"A pimp?"
"Sort of. But then I don"t know what the rules are." I"d already told Dwayne about Tamara, but now I added, "I think Tamara was referring to Dante when she said the devil"s always there. Maybe she was the one he was pushing on Emmett?"
"Maybe she"s worth talking to again."
"I know where her parents live. She acted like she"s there some of the time. Either way, I could find her and ask her about Dante."
"It"s worth a shot."
I got to my feet. "No time like the present. You mind keeping Binks?"
"You could leave her with me permanently."
"Fat chance," I said and headed for my car.
The town of Brewster Hill was about forty minutes south of Portland. The freeway exit offered nothing other than a truck stop and a faded homemade sign stuck in the ground at the end of the exit ramp that let me know I was ON THE RIGHT ROAD TO BEAUMONT FARMS. Beaumont Farms apparently sold various produce as there were pictures of apples, pears, corn, squash, tomatoes and the like. I followed the signs to a weather-worn white farmhouse, a gray, hulking barn, a number of shorter outbuildings and fields and orchards along a rolling landscape as far as the eye could see.
The sky was a bright, light gray as I pulled to a stop beside the farmhouse, and I had to shade my eyes as I got out. I glanced at the sun, which was a fuzzy bright disc in a bowl of overcast gray. A man of about fifty-five in mud-splattered jeans, heavy work boots and a plaid shirt, a semicircle of white undershirt showing at his throat, walked up to me, a smile on his face.
"Hullo, there," he said. "We got some pumpkins left, but winter"s comin", ain"t she?"
"Are you Mr. Beaumont?" I asked.
"Ron Ernsten," he said, wiping a hand along his pants and examining it before holding it out to me.
"Jane Kelly." I shook his hand with care. Didn"t want to seem impolite when I was trying to make him my new best friend, but I had a mental picture of cow pies and general farm glop. "I met Tamara the other night," I told him. "She gave me your address."
"Did she?" His face shuttered. "Beaumont"s my wife"s family"s name. Kept it "cause it"s so well known," he said, as if I"d asked.
"Is Tamara here?" I asked.
"Oh, she"ll be around, I s"pose." He headed toward the back door and sat on a step, unlacing his boots. When I didn"t move, he gave me a look from the top of his eyes. "You plannin" on waitin" for her?"
"Sure," I said, a little worried on how long that might entail.
"Come on in, then."
I followed him through the back door, wondering if I should take off my shoes, too. We entered a walk-through kitchen crowded with boxes of apples, pears and pumpkins. The cupboards were painted white, worn around the edges from age, not as some decorator"s idea of current style, and the laminate was chipped and broken out in a six-inch section near the refrigerator, which appeared to have been replaced at one time. The cabinets had been roughly redesigned to make room for the bigger, newer version.
A middle-aged woman, her straight gray hair collected at her nape with a bejeweled clip, was chopping celery with abandon, not bothering with a cutting board. There were thousands of slice marks in the laminate and I imagined a host of germs congregating within.
She looked up when I entered, a large-bladed knife pausing in midair. "h.e.l.lo," she said in surprise.
"Janet, this here"s Jane Kelly. She"s waitin" for Tammie."
"Oh." The knife swooshed down and she hacked away at the remaining celery spears. She dropped the knife with a clatter and scooped up the pieces, tossing them in a huge pot. "You could be waiting awhile," she said dourly.
"That"s okay. You"re her parents?"
"That"s right, honey." Janet pulled up a sack of potatoes that had been sitting in the sink. "Might as well make yourself useful. Here." She rummaged through a door and found me a paring knife. "Just leave the peels in the sink. We need about eight of "em in the stew. You can wash your hands with this soap."
I was peeling potatoes before I could say, "I don"t know how to cook." I"m sure it wasn"t necessary anyway, as I wasn"t the swiftest at my task. But it did give me something to do. I concentrated hard, keeping a safe distance from Janet and her flashing chef"s knife.
Ron had gone off to clean up apparently, as he left the two of us alone in the kitchen. A medium-sized tan spaniel mix trotted into the kitchen and looked up at us followed by several gray and white cats, meowing and stroking our legs.
"Get lost, Fluffy," Janet said, shaking a cat from her ankle. Fluffy seemed to take this as a challenge as she pounced on Janet"s foot. The spaniel started barking madly. Fluffy hissed and got on her hind legs, claws extended. The other cat sat back in a corner, its tail twitching, watching the ensuing drama.
Janet slammed down her knife and turned to the animals. They all looked at her expectantly and her fierceness evaporated. "They"re like children. Well, like children should be. You got any kids?"
I shook my head.
"Tammie"s got two. She tell you that? Lost "em both to their daddies."
"That"s a shame," I murmured.
Janet slid me a look. "How do you know her?"
"We met at a club," I said.
"Oh, really?" She sounded as if she were almost sneering. "That escort place? Tammie"s been raving about it and raving about it. Like we"d believe anything she said. Is it really a place to meet a millionaire?"
"As I understand it."
She barked out a laugh. "You"re as gullible as her!" She shook her head. "Nothing ever changes with our Tammie. It"s all lies and cheap s.e.x. You been to the truck stop?" There was a mean glitter in her eye that I couldn"t quite fathom.
"On the freeway? I drove by it."
"Drove by it, huh?"
"On my way here."
She tilted her head and eyed me up and down. "You sure don"t look like a hooker. This some new male fantasy, or something?" She gestured to my jeans and anorak. "You actually look like you"re dressed for the weather."
"I am dressed for the weather."
"Huh." She gave that a long thought. "Tammie owe you money? "Cause, babe, you came to the wrong place if you think you"re gonna collect. My family has property, but we don"t have ready cash. Y"hear me?"
"I"m just here as a friend," I said. I was getting an inkling to the roots of Tammie"s depression.
"Tammie doesn"t have friends," Janet said. "You sure she knows you"re coming by?" When I didn"t immediately answer, she said, "You"d have better luck at the truck stop. Go on over there and get yourself some apple pie. Those are our apples they use. It"s good stuff."
Janet turned her shoulder to me, clearly dismissing me. I silently worked on my fourth potato before setting down my knife. I felt kind of sorry I couldn"t finish the task. "If Tammie stops in, will you tell her I was here?"
Janet suddenly put down her own knife, leaned down and grabbed Fluffy, pulling the cat into her arms. Fluffy instantly tried to scratch at her hair clip, but Janet held her tight. Fluffy looked stricken, meowing piteously. Janet closed her eyes. Bitterly, she said to me, "Maybe you should remind her that we"re here."
The truck stop was unremarkable-a rectangular box with a coffee shop on one end and a store of sorts on the other. I went through the coffee shop door and a little bell overhead announced my entrance. As it was my mission, I sat myself at the counter and ordered the deep-dish apple pie a la mode.
It came on a dinner plate, loaded with soft vanilla ice cream. I"d skipped lunch and my mouth watered at the monstrous portion.
"Wow," I said.
"I know," the young waitress responded, her hands stuffed into the pockets of her ap.r.o.n, her eyes smiling. "It"s humongous." She was probably in her mid-twenties and looked ready to give birth yesterday. The ap.r.o.n stretched over her round belly. "My due date"s Monday," she alerted me.
"Congratulations."
"It"s my third."
"Wow," I said again. "I just learned for the first time that a friend of mine has two children."