Chapter 32
Chapter thirty-two
Itook a nice, long soak in the bathtub. I'd poured a generous amount of bath salts into the water.
"Five minutes," I told myself. "Five minutes of nothing, and then I will start the thinking process." Half an hour later, I climbed out of the tub with shriveled skin and more questions than answers.
I left Cosmo behind with instructions to think back to the time between Jake's death and my aunt's passing.
If we were right, that was the crucial period when somebody had sneaked into her private quarters and put the poisoned capsule into her pill container.
Whatever Cosmo had seen or heard during that period might be crucial.
I dressed carefully in jeans, a nice sweater, suede ankle boots, and a pale blue coat that set off my hair. The footwear alone should save me from being recruited on the spot by the Belles. Pretending to twist my ankle was an old ploy that had served me well before.
My friends would all be at the game.
Harper had promised to leave her staff in charge for a couple of hours. With the Belles playing against the big league—whatever that meant—half her regulars were sure to be at the bowling alley. It also boasted a bar and table service for pizza and burgers.
This combination guaranteed a slow night for the Blue Moon.
A small crowd had already assembled when I turned up. Ange waved at me from a table in full view of the lanes. Harper and Reina shared a bowl of cheesy fries.
Mimi and her garden club were also out in full force. On another table, Linda was sitting together with her husband, next to Jimmy and Louisa.
Only Detective Stone was nowhere to be seen.
Instead, Louisa chatted with a man around my age who could easily give the policeman a run for his money in the looks department.
Dark hair streaked with silver and a tan, broad shoulders, and horn-rimmed spectacles made for an unexpected mix of outdoorsy and intellectual.
Nick turned up with a couple of beers in his hand. He handed one to his wife. She waved it away. "After I've worked my magic," she said.
I hadn't noticed before, but she wore bowling shoes. Of course, she was a team member.
The big league consisted of a women's team from a town 30 miles away.
They certainly seemed fearsome, with a six-foot-tall who could easily have been a fashion model as their leader. The others were almost as impressive. There was nary a flabby body part or a gray hair in sight.
Louisa tore herself away from the conversation and pushed through to the edge of the lane.
I looked at the scoreboard. The Badger Belles were behind.
"Go, Ange," Louisa said. "You've got this. One strike and we're back in the game."
"No pressure then," my friend said. She flicked back her hair, rubbed her hands, and strolled ever so slowly to the lane, after taking her ball from a large bag with her initials.
Nick snickered.
"What's she doing?" I asked him in a low voice. "It's not like her to dawdle."
"It's as much of a mental game. She's trying to throw them off."
"Does it work?" I asked.
"Not often. But once in a while."
Louisa fidgeted while Ange inspected her ball, slid her fingers into the holes, frowned, and inspected the ball closely .
"The way it goes, I think she's unnerving her team captain more than anyone else," I whispered.
"That’s the problem,” he whispered back. Then he stood up. “You've got this, babe!" he called.
Ange nodded and finally got ready to throw her ball.
It barreled down the lane in a straight, sweet line, only swerving a tiny bit at the end.
A hushed silence fell.
The last pin wobbled. We watched with bated breath as it teetered.
"Fall," Louisa screamed. "Fall, you stupid thing!" Everybody was looking at her. "Sorry," she mumbled.
"It's down! It's a strike!" Mimi jumped up and clapped enthusiastically.
Linda followed suit. It was as if they were both trying to outdo each other.
Ange strolled back to our table. "It was nothing," she said.
I grinned at her. "That's the impression that I got."
"Louisa’s up next," she said. "Why don't you take her seat?"
I found myself next to the handsome stranger. "We haven't met yet," I said to him, for want of anything original. "I'm Bex Merriweather."
"I know who you are. Don't you remember me?" He grinned at me.
I stared at him in confusion. "Umm, should I?"
Jimmy chuckled. "That's my boy. Sam hasn't changed that much."
That was Jimmy's son? I remembered him as a gangly teenager. I hadn't seen him often because, when I moved in for good with my aunt, he was already in college. We were just far enough apart in age to not spend a lot of time together.
"My dad's been telling me a lot about you,” Sam said.
Jimmy twinkled at me. It dawned on me that all along he hadn't tried to offer his son’s assistance on me for nefarious reasons. The sly old fox was trying to play matchmaker.
"Do you still live around here?" I asked Sam.
"I returned a couple of years ago. I'm a conservation biologist, so when an opening in Cannon Hill County came up, I jumped on it. I'd spent enough time as a rolling stone."
"Wow." I couldn't think of anything else to say.
"He's been working everywhere," his dad said. "Even in the forests."
“That’s amazing.” I couldn’t help an envious note in my voice. I’d always longed to see the world.
"I could tell you more over dinner," Sam suggested. "If you're interested in maybe joining us? There are a couple of projects, and we can always use interested volunteers."
“Right.” Was that a pang of disappointment I felt?
Had I been wrong about the matchmaking and Jimmy had simply been trying to pull me in as muscle for his son?
On the other hand, I did love wildlife, and it wouldn't hurt to explore the great outdoors with someone like Sam, who knew what he was doing.
"I'll keep you posted about when I'm free," I said. "At the moment, as you can imagine, with me taking over from my aunt, I have a lot on my plate."
His face grew solemn.
"I couldn't believe it when my dad told me. And the police don't seem to be much further."
Louisa had just returned to overhear this last sentence. Her smile slipped.
“It was an accident,” one of the garden club ladies insisted. “Everyone knows that.”
"The police are working every angle and following every clue,” Louisa said.
“I bet," I muttered. "I'm quite sure that they will listen to every snippet of gossip that comes their way."
Did her face grow pink? I didn’t look, but I assumed so.
Linda dropped her fork. Mimi shot us a startled gaze. "Let's not talk about these unpleasant things," she said, signaling toward me. Mimi was trying to spare me because of the things being said about my aunt.
I gave her a grateful nod. She couldn't know that the last thing I wanted was for the chatter about the murders to stop. Every little bit of information might be the one thing that helped put all the puzzle pieces into place.
But I was out of luck.
For tonight, the bowling match was all that mattered to the rest of them.
That, and a little bit of showing off, I thought, when I noticed Ange looking at Linda and giggling.
"That woman hasn't had an original thought in 20 years—down to copying Mimi's perfume and Reina's manicure,” she whispered to me.
The Badger Belles lost the match by two points.
It didn't matter, at least not to me.
For the last half hour of the game, when everything was still in play, and Ange managed another strike, I had forgotten all my worries.
I was so caught up in cheering, laughing, and waiting for the pins to drop that it felt as if all my worries—and the investigation—were just a tiny niggle.
Nothing mattered but being here with my friends.
We'd all called it a night but I still basked in that warm, fuzzy feeling when I returned home. I sang under my breath as I reached my room.
Cosmo was already asleep, which meant no more discussions, no more brain-wracking thoughts. Everything could be shelved until the morning.
I woke up to the sound of rain lashing against the windows. The shutters rattled, and Cosmo's fur bristled as he stretched.
"Good morning, sleepyhead," I said.
He glanced at me but, for once, was silent.
Thunder growled. His fur bristled even more.
"You're not afraid of a little thunderstorm, are you?"
He turned his back to me.
"We all have weaknesses."
"It's giving me a headache," he said.
"Oh. Do I need to take you to the vet?"
He growled. "A nap will do."
I felt sorry for the little guy. I'd never seen Cosmo admit to any weakness since he started talking to me. It must really hurt his pride.
"You take your time, and I’ll prepare your breakfast. Your usual, all right?"
The poor cat twitched with every rumble in the sky.
Yet, he devoured a can of tuna with a healthy appetite.
"You are pretty chipper this morning," he observed.
"I am," I admitted. "I had a good night out."
"Working the case."
"More like enjoying my life."
"As long as you're prepared for your appointment."
I clapped my hand over my mouth. I'd almost forgotten—the Reiki session.
"Thanks for reminding me. I assume you've been busy doing your part?"
He sat up, curling his tail around his legs. "I was indeed. And may I say, my considerations appear to be more fruitful than yours. Maybe because I'm more focused?"
I ignored his smugness. "Do you care to enlighten me?"
“The very last evening, after we’d closed the library, we took our usual trip to the old folks' home. I spent a few hours there every week, cheering up the elderly, and Violet took them some reading material. For some reason, they really like it spicy."
"They do?" I’d only visited twice, because Harper’s grandmother had moved there.
"Oh yeah. Western romances with cowboys or young women marrying billionaires."
"I didn’t know that my aunt even stocked racy literature."
"She didn’t, until she saw what these people liked to read. Well, you know your aunt always tried to make everyone’s life better."
"And that’s where you went that night?"
"Yes. Everybody who knew her routine would have been aware of that.”
“That would have created the perfect opportunity to break into her house."
"Exactly. I also figured out an important question for you. When exactly did you decide to go periwinkle?"
I stared at him. "It was spur of the moment."
"Think, Bex," he said. "It's really important."
"Why?"
"Because if you hadn’t toyed with the idea of changing your hair color for a long time—"
"No," I said. "Like I told you, it was just spur of the moment."
"That means, if I’m right—which I usually am—that the moment you made the decision was when the killer had decided to get rid of your aunt."