Murder at the Book Group Read online

  “And you said she was weird-looking?”

  “I think she was going for a Morticia Addams look.” When I urged her to tell me more, she said, “Yes, what’s now called Gothic—or is that an outdated term? Who knows, who cares. She had long black hair, looked like she’d dumped a bottle of ink on her head. Skinny. Dressed in head-to-toe black. Lots of makeup. Ben used to make fun of her—of her looks but also her lack of intellect, so maybe that’s why it’s hard for me to imagine her reading books, anything other than a tabloid.”

  I described the current Linda. “Her last name isn’t Miller. It’s Thomas. Tell me about Ben.”

  “He was terrifically sexy, had those bad-boy looks, real swaggery type. Dark, wavy hair, dark bedroom eyes.”

  “Hmm. This Linda’s married to a tall blond guy. At the memorial service she was with him and another guy with dark hair and sunglasses. I’m thinking she’s the same person based on your description. She just gained weight and highlighted her hair. And managed to get divorced along the way.”

  “All doable. Especially the change in body mass—don’t I know it!” Jeanette hooted. “It’s been years since I saw Ben or Linda. They moved away and I lost track of them. They could have split at some point—their marriage didn’t strike me as one made in heaven. I’m pretty sure that Ben had a thing with one of the Soyars receptionists. And that’s just the one I know about; there could have been others. And so, for Linda, it’s not a quantum leap to highlights and remarriage to the blond guy.”

  “Do you think Carlotta and Ben had an affair? Or, at the very least, a flirtation?”

  “Carlotta didn’t usually fool around with the guys at work. She had few principles, but that was one of them. But that doesn’t mean that she didn’t make an exception for Ben. He was pretty hot.”

  “Maybe he was the desk guy.”

  “Could very well be.”

  Jeanette laughed when I told her Hal’s account of the pool incident. “I never heard anything about that. I’m sure I’d remember something that dramatic. And funny.” Now Jeanette’s voice softened. “I do, however, remember Hal. Carlotta brought him to the office one day. Simply gorgeous. A bit scruffy, but a guy that good-looking can dress any way he wants.”

  “Does it seem plausible to you that Linda pushed Carlotta into the pool? Hal’s description of Linda is roughly the same as yours.”

  “Sure, it’s possible. Plus, the woman did say, ‘Stay away from my husband.’ But Ben was hardly Carlotta’s only lover, assuming they were lovers at all. Carlotta could have pissed off any number of wives and girlfriends.”

  Like she continued to do in Virginia, I thought.

  “You know something, Hazel, I think I have pictures from that Christmas party. Don’t worry, none of the desk incident,” Jeanette chortled. “But first I have to find them.”

  “Would one of them be of Ben? And Linda?”

  “Probably. I tried to include everyone. Give me your e-mail address.”

  I did. “How soon can you get them to me?”

  “Well, I’ll do it as fast as I can, Hazel. Gimme a break! I said I have to find them first. I’ve moved twice since that party. Then I have to deal with this friggin’ scanner; in fact I may have to get my mother over here to do it. She just lives next door. Do you believe it, she’s over eighty, and she’s a whiz with computers. It’s kind of embarrassing. But don’t fret, Hazel, I’ll get right on it. I know this is important.”

  “Okay, I appreciate your help, Jeanette,” I said, hoping to mollify her. Control freak that I am, I hated to wait for other people to do things. I hoped Jeanette was the follow-through type.

  “Is there anything else you can tell me about Carlotta? Anything about her other lovers?”

  “I never met any of her conquests and don’t remember any names, and I probably never heard last names in the first place. Way too many to keep track of anyway. I just listened to her lurid tales. There was this one guy—I never knew his name, so don’t even ask—who videotaped their trysts. She used words like trysts, can you believe it? But anyone who’d pick a name like Carlotta . . . Anyway, they got into some kinky stuff, according to Carlotta. Marty’s Hideaway closed down after she left town. Seriously.”

  “Marty’s Hideaway?”

  “Her after-work meeting spot—trysting spot I should say. One of those rent-by-the-hour places.”

  “Why not use her place?”

  “Her brother. He stayed with her for quite some time.”

  “What else can you tell me?”

  “What else—I don’t know . . . let’s see, Carlotta fled. I don’t know where she went, but apparently she ended up in Virginia. Literally ended up.”

  “I wonder about the order of all these events. Like, was the pool incident before or after the Christmas party? And how soon before or after?”

  “Who would know? Besides Linda, of course. Do you think Linda did Carlotta in at your book group?”

  “I’m inclined to think so. But there’s no proof that she did. No one saw her in the kitchen or anywhere near Carlotta’s tea. And there’s another suspect.” I told Jeanette about Annabel. “And let me tell you this . . .” I described the pre–book group visitor. “And then there’s this . . .” and I launched into the man-in-the-car scenario.

  “Sounds just like our Carlotta,” Jeanette said in a singsong voice. “That woman belongs in the pages of some lurid romance.”

  I said that Carlene was indeed inspiring me in my writing. Not wanting to get sidetracked by talk of writing, I said, “I’m puzzled about all her names.” I listed the names I’d learned to date: Carla, Carlene, Carly, Carlotta. “They’re not that different, just variations of the same name. Carlotta has a noirish ring.”

  “She got the name from an Agatha Christie character in Thirteen at Dinner. Carlotta Adams. That Carlotta died as well . . . I don’t know if that means anything.”

  “Well, she was a big Agatha Christie fan and probably liked the exotic sound of the name so she used it for a time.” I told Jeanette about the love fugitive subject of Carlotta’s next book, musing that Carlotta’s varying names and her becoming taciturn stemmed from her being a love fugitive.

  “Love fugitive. Oh, please.”

  “I know, I know, it sounds fanciful. But still.” Then, remembering my conversation with Vince, I said, “Maybe she was fleeing from Linda.”

  “Well . . . it’s possible. I thought her moving had to do with the broken engagement, but maybe not. I imagine if some wild woman threw me into a pool, I’d be a tad disconcerted. I’d have called the police.” After a pause, Jeanette said, “As for Carlotta’s name, I think she just changed it a lot, got bored with the same one for too long. I recall her using the name Carolina for a time.”

  “Yes, well, changing names is another way to hide.” I sounded like a country-song writer. “I wish I could locate Linda. She appeared and disappeared at book group and at the memorial service like a genie in a bottle.” Jeanette offered the usual suggestions like contacting the bookstore, Googling, or white pages. “We tried the bookstore with no luck. As for Googling or the phone book, we tried that, but her name is Linda Thomas. Linda Miller wouldn’t be much better. And no one knows her husband’s first name. Plus”—I remembered the unwelcome possibilities we’d bandied about earlier—“Linda may not even live around here. You said she and Ben moved away years ago. Any idea where they went? And did they move before or after Carlotta?”

  “I’m not sure about the chronology. Ben and Linda moved to Chicago. Or Cleveland. Some cold-assed place that started with a ‘C.’ ” I pondered the idea of looking for Linda Thomas/Miller in Chicago or Cleveland and shuddered.

  “And so, can we wrap this up, Hazel? I want to start hunting for these photos. Of course, I’ll expect an autographed copy of your book.”

  “You got it.” I thanked Jeanette for her input and she assured me that she’d send the photos ASAP. With that, we ended our whirlwind conversation.

  While dark
-haired men with dark bedroom eyes weren’t exactly in short supply, I felt confident that Ben Miller and B.J./Benjy were one and the same person—and a good contender for the man in the car. I felt equally sure that Linda Miller and Linda Thomas were different names for the same person. How did the two of them come to move from Chicago or Cleveland to Virginia? Was it to hunt down Carlene?

  As matters stood, I possessed more information. But I still had more questions than answers.

  CHAPTER 16

  AS SHE’D PROMISED EARLIER, Helen called, wanting to know how I felt about moving the next book group meeting up a week to the following Monday. She had to go out of town on the scheduled day and felt that we needed to discuss our future, the sooner the better.

  “As for me, I’m probably leaving the group. The fiction group, as well. I just have too much on my plate these days, Hazel. I can’t handle it all.”

  Surprised, I managed, “Oh, but—”

  Helen cut me off, saying that she’d e-mail everyone. Then she more or less hung up on me without getting my input about rescheduling.

  When Lucy came home the cats raced downstairs and accompanied her back upstairs. After recounting her dinner at Mosaic’s with Maxine, I told her about my conversation with Jeanette.

  “That Carlene . . . what a woman. Do you think she had the desk sex in a cubicle or did she have her own office?”

  “I couldn’t say. But with what we now know about her exhibitionist tendencies, I’d say a cubicle. It wouldn’t even have mattered if it was hers.” We laughed as we pictured the scene.

  Lucy got up and said she was going to bed. She planned to get an early start for Northern Virginia the next morning to visit her daughter and granddaughter, not returning until Sunday evening. When I said this trip was news to me, she insisted that she’d told me about it, just had forgotten to put it on the calendar. I suspected she’d hastily arranged it once she learned of my upcoming date with Vince and said as much.

  “I did nothing of the kind, Hazel. But it does work out nicely, doesn’t it? You and Vince will have the house to yourselves, and . . .” She trailed off, leaving me to end the sentence. Easy to do, with my imagination already working overtime.

  EARLY SATURDAY MORNING found me again at my computer, checking my mail every five minutes to see if Jeanette had come through with the photos. I knew it was unlikely that she’d be up at 5 a.m. Pacific time, but I persisted. I responded yes to Helen’s question about rescheduling the book group meeting. By the time I’d finished deleting an accumulation of junk mail, Lucy left for her trek to Northern Virginia, clad in a brown and black “weekend” outfit from Chico’s, saying as she carried her overnight bag down the stairs, “Let’s be thinking about finding Linda. Except, of course, when you’re with Vince.”

  I promised myself to limit e-mail checking to once an hour on the hour and use the in-between time for my writing. The week before I’d labored over a sex scene and given up in defeat. I hadn’t been going for Stepford Wife sex, but my characters had the same robotlike dimension as the ones populating the pages of that enduring tale by Ira Levin. But today, using my reveries involving Vince as a muse, I managed to produce a more than passable scene. Thinking of what I’d learned about Carlene’s exploits helped as well.

  Then my mind lit on images of a lifeless Carlene. I shook my head to dispel the unwelcome pictures. If I wanted to produce a book, I had to put this whole sorry mess behind me. And I wouldn’t, indeed couldn’t, do that until I had answers as to how she died.

  So much for my short-lived enthusiasm for writing. I’d have to be thankful for the one scene being so good that time had flown by and it was eleven. I groaned in disappointment when Jeanette persisted in being a cyberspace no-show. Resigning myself to being patient and resisting the urge to bug the prickly woman, I decided an early lunch was in order—the cats agreed and accompanied me downstairs to the kitchen. After feeding them, I fixed chicken salad for myself. When I went back upstairs, I forced myself to do something other than check my mail.

  The cats flanked either side of my monitor, sitting on their briskets. As they gazed at me with half-open eyes, I thought back to Monday and the cyanide discussion. Using the Dogpile search engine, I looked up cyanide, Tylenol murders, Seattle murders, and famous cyanide murders in general. Agatha Christie figured prominently in the results. Cyanide was often her weapon of choice, featured in And Then There Were None, A Pocketful of Rye, and The Moving Finger, among other works.

  I studied pages about the Seattle murders someone had mentioned during the book group discussion about cyanide. Stella Nickell had added a lethal dose of the poison to Excedrin capsules—not Tylenol—killing her husband along with another woman. She was nailed from the fingerprints in the library books she’d used as reference for her nefarious activities. The pages that detailed cyanide had the most fingerprints. I marveled that the police solved cases in this day and age using such Agatha Christie–ish methods of detection—fingerprints in books.

  I thought of Trudy’s friend Ronnie threatening to turn Annabel over to the police, citing knowledge of Annabel’s fingerprints in several library books. Two similar fingerprint stories in one week had to be more than a coincidence. I located the account of Stella Nickell’s case, Bitter Almonds, in the library database and reserved it online. More searching on the cyanide subject turned up accounts of Nazis, the Peoples Temple of Jonestown, and James Bond movies among others.

  The ringing of the doorbell startled the cats and me. I went to the window and looked down at the front door, seeing only the back of a wheelchair and a long gray braid. That was enough to identify my two callers as Sarah Rubottom and her husband, Den. I couldn’t recall Den’s last name but it wasn’t Rubottom. I wondered what prompted their unexpected visit.

  When I opened the door, Sarah got right to the point. “I just know this shindig at Helen’s is going to be a memorial service. We had a memorial service. At the church. And I just know Helen will have a Bible at her side and want to read passages, lead us in prayer with our hands held.”

  I asked if they’d like to come inside. “No, no, no, no, no,” Sarah protested, waving her hand from side to side. “We just stopped to say hi. Your car was in the driveway so we figured you were home. Right, honey?”

  “Right, honey,” Den agreed, but his eyes didn’t leave mine. As usual, his mischievous smile hinted at sexual invitation. He was a man who loved women; regardless of age, race, size, hair color, he loved them all. No matter how unattractive a woman considered herself, she was bound to feel special when Den bestowed that smile on her.

  I doubted they stopped just to say hi. True, they lived down the street so their coming by the house wasn’t unusual. But Sarah’s need to vent was a more likely reason. Not wanting to let the cats out, I popped the latch and closed the door, standing on the front steps in my socks. “Please excuse my appearance.” Why did I need to ask unexpected visitors to excuse me for wearing sweats and no makeup in my own house? Sarah and Den’s sweatshirts and jeans fared little better on the classiness scale.

  “Why would we care?” Sarah echoed my thoughts. “Getting back to Helen, I have no idea why the woman even bothers to attend book group. Our politics just aren’t compatible.”

  “We’ve all wondered about that.” The rest of the group ran moderate to liberal. I considered myself to be moderate, but if I toppled off the political fence I’d land on the left side. “She might regard us as personal challenges.”

  Sarah went on, “Even though I’m a Republican too, Helen and I are light-years apart. We agree on fiscal issues, but we never talk about them. No point, I guess. It’s the social issues—I can understand her pro-life stance because I’m on the fence about that—but how can she think the way she does about stem cell research? And she doesn’t want to discuss her opinions, or defend them, just wants to make proclamations and that’s it. Period.” Sarah paused to take a breath. “Of course, I suspect she’s one of those women who doesn’t think anyone of o
ur gender knows anything. Likely she gets her opinions from men, like her minister, or from cable TV.”

  I remembered Art’s puzzling revelation that his mother had moved to Richmond because of Jerry Falwell. That spokesman for religious conservatives had an authoritarian manner. And maybe Helen’s husband had been a bossy sort, although I knew nothing about the man. Had she ever mentioned him? Had Art ever referred to his father?

  Aloud, I said, “Another reason it’s curious that she comes to our book group. Except for Art, we’re all women.”

  “Go figure.” Sarah rolled her eyes. “But getting back to politics, I was quite liberal in my youth, during my years at Berkeley. But somewhere along the way—”

  Thinking that if Sarah wanted to chronicle her political passage we could do it indoors over tea and maybe she’d reveal something useful about the investigation into Carlene’s death, I repeated my invitation to come inside.

  “Oh, no. We have to get going. Just wanted to get out and enjoy the beautiful day.”

  “Well, getting back to the praying, I wouldn’t worry about it, Sarah. We can suggest having a moment of silence and say our own prayers. Or not.” I wasn’t the most religious of persons, but I believed in the power of prayer, thought it a good practice. Sarah, on the other hand, branded herself an agnostic.

  When I said the meeting’s purpose was to discuss the group’s future, Sarah said, “Yeah, well, I doubt that we have a future.” I suggested that she forgo the meeting, reminding her that it wasn’t, after all, a command performance. She shrugged.

  Wanting to move on, I asked, “Was there anything in Carlene’s second book that hinted at suicidal thoughts?” Carlene hadn’t cared for critique groups, but trusted Sarah for thorough and constructive criticism and proofreading.

  Sarah touched her fingers to her forehead, a classic thinking pose. “I don’t think so, but I’ll give it some thought.”

  “Have you seen anything of Carlene’s third book?” At her no, I said, “I’m intrigued about the love fugitive idea.”