Chapter Forty
“What are you thinking about?” Clara asked me.
We sat in the waning sun while the dogs played at half-speed in the back yard.
“Nothing that helps us. I was thinking of something Willow said about the Swindells not having a run for Lucifer because it would ruin the view of their house from the golf course. Most homeowners are concerned about the view they have, not the view other people have of them.”
“That’s Damon, don’t you think? Image.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Zoley seems the same way, too. Worried about what people think of her. She wouldn’t like people knowing Damon dumped her — and for an older woman.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
She gave a short, impatient huff before saying, “I’m saying that makes her a strong suspect. And don’t mmm-hmm to that.”
“Why not? It signifies agreement and I do agree she’s a strong suspect. Assuming we’re right about their relationship and Damon cooling off, with Blanche the new favorite, Zoley certainly has a motive.”
“Also if he hit her.”
“That would add to her being a strong suspect. There are others, though. Bryon, for starters.”
She pursed her lips. “Maybe.”
“Why only maybe?”
“Zoley hit those words possessive and volatile so hard. She must have told the sheriff’s department, too, because Teague had heard them. That felt like she was pointing the finger at Bryon.”
“She might be right,” I said.
She grimaced. “Who else?”
“Pammy.”
“Okay, the wronged wife motive.”
“Alsup.”
“Uh-huh. Multiple choice motives.”
“Oscar.”
“I don’t—”
“And Willow.”
“She’s a kid. Zoley and Bryon are— Sheila?” She gave me that intrigued head tip. “You have an idea?”
“Too strong. There was something else . . . Something about Pammy . . .”
I don’t know how long my mind meandered or what path it took to get there, but I came back to the present and my back yard to find the dogs meandering and Clara staring at me expectantly.
“Well? That’s not your figured-it-out face, but you’ve got something. What?”
“Questions. At least, one question for Linda. Can we get her on the phone?”
“Video call, so you can read her reactions.” She tapped away. “Linda? Hi. It’s Clara. Turn on your video. Sheila has a question for you.”
“Hello, you two.” Linda smiled from the screen. “What’s your question, Sheila?”
“You said you saw Pammy Swindell—” I had to focus to not pronounce it swindle. “—in a drug store last week. Do you remember exactly when?”
“Oh, my. Let me think. I’d been to the bank and the post office first and so that would have been .
. . Yes, it was a week before Damon Swindell was murdered, because I remember Ira was reading a paper that had the weather forecast for that torrential rain we had the next day and that was the weekend before he was found out at Gallows Path.
Because I remember thinking if it had been a week earlier, that whole crime scene would have been flooded.
The rain’s why I did all those errands that day in the first place. ”
She smiled, delighted she’d pinned that down.
“Do you remember what she was buying?”
Her smile dropped into a frown of concentration. “She had a basket with a number of items. I only took note of Vitamin C, because it reminded me to pick up some during their buy-one-get-one free sale. And I did, right after we separated.”
I couldn’t mask my disappointment.
But then Clara jolted upright. “Linda, where were you when you saw Pammy? What section?”
“Cosmetics. I’d stretched my mascara to being more a rumor than a color and needed a new one. When I turned around, there was Pammy, dropping an item in her basket.”
“Do you remember what item?”
The older woman’s brows popped up. “Why, yes, I do. Because I couldn’t imagine what she’d want with such garish colors — yellow and purple and green and . . . something else. I know women wear eyeshadows like that, but not Pammy Swindell.”
* * * *
“Not eye shadow,” Clara crowed after we’d ended the call. “I’ll bet you anything.”
“We can’t know for sure . . .”
“We will soon,” Clara said confidently.
She’d confirmed which drug store — the one closest to the center of town — and asked Linda to describe as precisely as she could where she’d been standing and where Pammy had been standing.
In ten minutes — five to get the dogs squared away inside and five to drive — we were in the cosmetic section in the front corner of the drug store. We located where Linda found her mascara quickly, because she’d pulled it out to show us during the video call.
We experimented with distances from there to Linda’s approximation of Pammy’s location.
“There it is.” Clara’s voice went low and excited. “Right there. It’s actually called the concealer color wheel.”
“Wait.”
Clara froze before her hand reached it. “You think there might be fingerprints?”
“No. Not after more than a week. But . . .” I’d pulled out my phone and took a few pictures of the makeup in the rack, then I went back to where we’d found the mascara and took a picture from there, showing Clara standing in front of the concealer, pointing to it, to show how readily Linda could have seen what Pammy had.
After that, we bought one of the kits and rushed out to the car for the privacy where we could express our sober and appropriate appreciation of tracking down this clue . . . Along with a few hoots and hollers.
* * * *
Clara brought down the mood as we sat at the tiny table in my kitchen, having finished our all-on-one-plate dinner of salad topped with slices of rotisserie chicken.
“I was thinking about the concealer wheel . . . What if Pammy bought it for herself because Damon hit her in the past? Or bought it for Zoley—”
“How could she have known Zoley would need it?”
“—because she’d been hit before. By Damon or Bryon.”
“All possible,” I acknowledged.
“So the concealer doesn’t get us anywhere?”
“It gets us one more piece of information.”
“You’re always so reasonable,” she groused.
“And it gets us dessert. Ice cream?”
Ice cream cheered us both up. Enough that when I said, “We never finished talking suspects and their motives,” she immediately offered a suggestion.
“William Alsup.”
“Motive, for sure. In fact we have our choice — his family business and/or knowing about his wife and Damon.”
She nodded. “Means is the same for everybody — Damon’s gun — so that’s covered.”
“Except what we said before about Damon being alert if a guy shows up and starts taking the gun out of his truck. He’d fight back or run away or something. But from the description from Ruby, Damon was shot where he stood. Like he was taken by surprise.”
“Unless he and the other guy were partners.”
My eyebrows climbed. “That would be interesting.”
“But unlikely,” she said morosely.
“Why do you say that? You raised the idea and we haven’t asked—”
“We can ask, but what do you think the chances are that nobody would have mentioned the possibility by now? Not Rich Chafford, not Urban, not Glenn Selka, not Gundy Vance, not Ruby, and—” Her tone announced her next words would be the clincher. “—the ladies. One of them would have known.”
I had to agree. In fact, I’d bet all of them would know.
“I wish,” Clara continued, “Blanche was a stronger suspect, but, honestly, do you see her having the brains or the guts to do this? Run somebody over in the street because she’s putting makeup on while she’s driving, yeah, but to take Damon’s gun .
. . Unless I’m underestimating her because of the cat shirt and her bad line manners. ”
“Don’t think the shirt and her bad line manners are leading you astray on her potential competence at murder. Unless she’s a great actress . . .”
“She’d have to be the best actress. I keep coming back to Zoley. If Pammy’s motive is being a woman scorned, Zoley was scorned more recently, not to mention her temperament compared to Pammy’s, so I still say she’s the strongest suspect of all of them.”
“All of them?”
She caught my caveat, which made her cautious as she said, “Yeah.”
“What about Oscar and Willow?”
“I don’t want it to be Oscar, but I do see he could have a motive.
Same argument as for William about why would they be meeting, except that no way was Oscar in cahoots with Damon.
Also same argument as for William about Damon reacting to him going into the truck at all, much less coming out with the gun.
“If Damon had the gun — I can’t imagine Oscar could have taken it away. William maybe, but not Oscar.”
No arguing with any of that, so I didn’t.
“As for Willow—”
I interrupted Clara. “Damon would have met her if he thought she’d have sex with him. And—”
“Why on earth would she let him think she’d have sex with him?”
“To protect Oscar, somehow. Maybe to get the money back. Damon wouldn’t react if she went in the truck. Plus, being around the Swindells’ house, she’d have had opportunities to know about the gun being in the truck.”
“But she’s a kid.”
“Doesn’t rule her out.” Neither did Willow loving dogs rule her out, which I believed was lurking in Clara’s subconscious. “Have you heard of moral injury?”
“Heard of it, yeah. Know a lot about it, no.”
I told her what I’d learned from Kit, ending with, “This could apply to Willow. As close as she was to Jean and is to Oscar, she could be feeling the injury of what was done to them and that they didn’t get the trip, didn’t get their money back, didn’t get justice.”
“But why now? That’s a favorite question of yours and it applies to Willow, too.”
“You’re right. That is something to think about. We have a lot to think about. But until we know more . . .”
From Clara’s expression I’d brought the mood way, way down.
* * * *
Teague messaged that he wasn’t going to make it home tonight.
Secrets weary of their tyranny.
I’d thought Kit was retroactively scolding me with that James Joyce quote. Retroactive, because I’d ended that tyranny when I told Teague my secret.
But Teague . . . Was he still under the tyranny of his secrets? Was our relationship?
I tried to push those questions out of my mind in favor of questions surrounding Damon Swindell’s murder. They seemed more restful.