Chapter Twenty-Six
DAY SEVEN
SUNDAY
I eased into the day, padding around in my pjs and robe to care for the dogs and procure sustenance in the form of yogurt and blueberries. Then I opened the manuscript on my computer and stared at it. Scrolled. Scrolled more.
Until Clara called.
“I have people we need to talk to. I’ll pick you up.”
She made it sound like a meeting with crime kingpins.
“I need to take a shower and—”
“Hurry up. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
* * * *
Walking across the Historic Haines Tavern’s porch, I spotted familiar faces through the window.
“More like crime queenpins, who know their baked goods,” I muttered.
“What?” Clara asked, already entering the door ahead of me.
“Nothing.”
Since its nineteenth century beginnings, the Tavern’s been a private home, a tavern with rooms to rent for the night, and now is a restaurant with a terrific Sunday brunch. They do it up big, then close for the rest of Sunday and all day Monday.
The women around the large table in what originated as a front parlor already had an array of baked goods, as well as the other mainstays of a Haines Tavern brunch. They waved us over to join them.
Good thing I didn’t overdo it on yogurt and blueberries.
“This should help make up for not having the best friend as a good source,” Clara said under her breath as we approached them.
Smart.
With friendly greetings, they directed Clara to an empty chair. In the moments while they arranged another seat for me, I had an overview of the gathering.
It offered a classic Which one doesn’t belong? with Clara being the correct answer. She was a generation younger than the others. From their friendship with Clara’s late mother-in-law and their regard for Clara, they would share their knowledge gleaned from connections blanketing North Bend County.
“Heard you took baked spaghetti casserole to the Georgers’ house for Pammy Swindell yesterday,” said Violet. “Always loved that dish.”
Concurring murmurs swept the table.
“We did—”
I interrupted Clara. “Not we. Clara, alone. The casserole was all her doing.”
These murmurs were knowing and approving for giving the credit where it was due.
“Was your visit productive?” Linda asked.
Our investigating was well known to this group.
Clara looked around the table. “Not as much as we’d hoped. Naturally, we wanted to express our sympathies. We also hoped to find out more about Damon Swindell. You know, background, relationships, things like that.”
“Starting close to home,” Linda said wisely.
“Exactly. Understandably, Pammy wasn’t talkative. And with Zoley so concerned about her . . .”
None of the women contradicted the flattering sketch of Zoley Georger, yet I felt a resistance to it emanating from those around the table. Unanimously, I thought.
“See them together nearly all the time,” Linda said. “So much that I kept looking around for Zoley when I saw Pammy in the drug store last week. Surprised to see one and not the other.”
“We hope there might be other friends of the Swindells we could talk to,” Clara said. “Get background without bothering Pammy at such a terrible time.”
Looks zinged among the women, but all they produced were head-shakes and a few phrases about not being aware of any friends beyond the Georgers.
“Not so sure you could call the men close friends,” Linda added.
Violet said, “Damon Swindell was known for being a businessman.”
Something in the way she said it reminded me of the line in A Christmas Carol, where the best thing Scrooge can say about his dead partner was that Jacob Marley was a good man of business.
Damning with faint praise — in Marley’s case, literally damning, what with the heavy chains and all.
Clara was undistracted by such detours. “Or if you know other people who’d be familiar with them, if not actually friends. We only have our experience of Damon through two dog training classes and—”
“From talking to their dog walker, Willow Yost,” said Violet.
Clara smiled, as if delighted that the fact of us talking to Willow was known.
“Oh, yes, she’s a lovely girl.”
Several concurring murmurs came from around the table. One of them I caught was “And so good to Oscar.”
“Oscar? Who has a little black dog named Quasar? He knows Willow Yost?” I asked the murmurer, Willa.
But I knew the answer. Thanks to a sudden memory of the young woman talking to Oscar and petting Quasar outside the hardware store after Thursday night’s training. Even in memory the light wasn’t good enough to identify her, but that characteristic movement to sweep back her hair was.
Willa said, “He does have a dog. The name . . .? I know she told me, but I don’t remember.”
“She?”
Violet picked up the answering. “Oscar’s wife, Jean, adopted the dog last summer.
She passed away not long after. Quite a shock.
She was ill and they knew it was terminal, but expected to have more time.
She got the puppy to be a companion for Oscar.
She expected the dog to be trained before . . . before.”
Around the table, heads shook with sympathy.
“And Willow . . .?”
“Oh, yes. She was great about the puppy, with walks and started training right after Jean’s death, letting Oscar get his bearings a little and giving him confidence.”
“How does Willow know Oscar?” I asked.
“Long-time neighbors. Willow’s mother brought her up alone. Jean and Oscar stepped up as grandparents. Willow was particularly close to Jean. When she passed, Willow and Oscar leaned on each other.”
* * * *
We walked out with the group, pulling on jackets against a brisk chill that looked back to March, rather than forward to May.
We didn’t get far. Clara tugged me toward rocking chairs on the porch.
“Not that this isn’t pleasant,” I started after a few minutes of rocking, while more people left the Tavern, “but unless you think we’re out of ideas of what to look into, seems like we should get going.”
“No way are we out of ideas. All those parts of the elephant still to explore.”
“Uh-huh. Interesting about Willow’s connection to Oscar. That’s something to pursue.”
“Agreed. But while we’re here, we have things to follow up on. New areas of the elephant. Like what I said about the Swindells going out to dinner. And what you said about talking to people who interacted with them, observed them — especially observed Damon.”
And where would they go to dinner? The Tavern.
“Clara, you are brilliant.”
She grinned. “We have to wait a little longer for customers to leave.”
“Perfect.”
We rocked more.
After looking around, presumably to be sure we were alone, Clara said, “I was thinking about suspects. The spouse, of course.”
“Question would be why now.”
“Thought your question was why here? — that’s what you said at Gallows Path.”
“Both — why there and why now.”
“Well, if we interpreted the interaction between Damon and Zoley right, along with what Berrie said—”
I made a sound.
“I know,” Clara said. “But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t hear things that would add up to a jealous wife.”
“But does that give Pammy a motive now? Because Berrie said it had been going on for a while. Not to mention you spotting a likely new woman.”
“The new woman was the tipping point?” she proposed.
“She was okay with her husband messing around with her best friend, but not a new woman?”
“All right, all right. But if Zoley’s been replaced — woman scorned? Plus, the bruise on Zoley’s cheek. If that came from Bryon . . . Say he just found out.”
“Kind of slow on the uptake, if we’re relying on Berrie saying it had been going on for a while.”
“Mmm. Ruby, too.” She agreed, then hedged. “But some husbands are slow on the uptake and Bryon didn’t seem like the jealous kind. Or, really, the kind who noticed his wife a lot.”
She stopped rocking.
“What if Damon hit her? If she’s after him about the new woman — which would fit with him blowing her off at that first class — I could see him reacting that way.” She interrupted herself to ask, “Why are you shaking your head?”
“I’m not saying no, but there’s something wonky with the timing.”
I recapped what I’d learned about bruises, then followed up with Kit’s tutorial on concealing them with stage — and presumably regular — makeup.
“For her to need as much makeup to try to cover a bruise as she had on Thursday night,” I finished, “she would have had to acquire the bruise two to five days earlier, maybe stretch it to six. And the bruise starting earlier might help explain why she had so much less makeup on yesterday, yet no sign of a bruise.”
“But she had no bruise at the first class, two days before the one when she had on gobs of makeup,” Clara said.
“Exactly. There’s—”
Clara jumped up from her rocker as a gray-haired couple came out of the front door and started for the stairs. “The last customers. C’mon, before they lock the door.”