“And I don’t mind telling you.” She rips open two pink packages of sweetener and pours them into her coffee, stirring carefully. “My Linda Sue was not happy when Dorie and that CC were crowned prom king and queen. My Linda Sue had practiced wearing a tiara, you know? Had her hair done just right, so the queen’s crown wouldn’t slip.” She taps her spoon against the rim of her glass, puts it on a napkin. “That CC, though, he was a slick one. Charmed the pants off everyone-teachers, Principal Webb, coaches. He was used to getting anything he wanted. He wanted to be quarterback, he got it. He wanted the lead in the school play-Romeo and Juliet-and he got it. And when he wanted Dorie, he got her, too. She was the cutest little thing, I’ve got to admit. What we always called a good girl. Never smoked, never drank. And her poor mother, of course.”
She looks between us, confirming. “Well, I can tell you this. Dorinda was pretty enough, smart enough, but she’d never have been prom queen without CC. That’s what I say.” She makes a tsking noise. “It would have been Linda Sue.”
“You said ‘her poor mother,’” I begin.
“So why’d she marry-” Franklin says at the same time.
Both our half questions hang in the air. Myra Matzenbrenner absently pats her pepper-and-salt curls, finding the fuchsia-framed glasses on the top of her head. She pulls them off with a look of surprise, as if she’d been looking for them and had forgotten where she put them. Flapping the glasses closed, she points them at Franklin, then me.
“Well, it’s the same answer,” she says. “When Dorie’s father died, that left Colleen on her own with Dorie. They didn’t have much.”
Colleen. I make a mental note. I’ve left my reporter’s notebook in my bag, keeping it casual. I’m hoping whatever I don’t remember, Franklin will. But my increasingly unreliable short-term memory (did I pick up the dry cleaning?) is still pretty solid when it comes to research and reporting.
“Colleen worked at Bay State Insurance. It’s still there on King Street? And Ray Sweeney, of course, ran the place. Took over from his father.” Myra narrows her eyes disapprovingly. “Ray was a piece of work. Piece of work. All bluster and no brains. Just waiting to take over from his dad. Sniffed around Dorie when her mother brought her to the office.”
She stops, then frowns. “Dorie must have been fifteen when he started paying attention to her. Fifteen. Ray was what, twenty-five? You catch my drift? But he had money, no doubt about that. The Sweeneys had money.” She points to me with one pink acrylic fingernail, making sure I understand. “Money.”
“So Dorie’s mother-how do I put this-arranged? Pushed? Convinced? Allowed her daughter to marry Ray Sweeney?” I ask.
“Whatever word you choose,” she replies. “The prom. Then graduation. And before you could say, ‘oh promise me,’ Dorie was Mrs. Ray Sweeney. And before you could say ‘Uncle Sam wants you,’ CC had signed up for the Navy.”
I glance at Franklin, remembering his words in the Red Rock. I like the boyfriend. Maybe Franklin had something. Or maybe Colleen Sweeney, in a fit of remorse over pushing her daughter into marrying a sleazy local pol, had bashed her predatory son-in-law with an iron and pushed him down the stairs. I like it.
And for a moment, I almost believe it. But a grandmother in her sixties is not the likeliest murderer, no matter how unhappy her daughter might be. Of all the suspects, I sadly realize, the most predictable murderer is Dorinda herself.
Myra looks away. I see she’s checking the green numerals of the clock on the stainless steel microwave. Our time is up.
“Mrs. Matzenbrenner, you know them both. Knew,” I say. “Do you think Dorie Sweeney killed her husband?”
Myra Matzenbrenner slides off the padded chintz cushion of the stool, one foot hitting the floor, then the other, not looking at me or Franklin. She picks up her coffee, then wipes the counter with her napkin, back and forth, back and forth.
“Why do you think Dorie worked the overnight shift, all these years?” she asks, still focused on her shredding pink napkin. “To stay as far from Ray Sweeney as she could. That’s what I think. He had money, she wouldn’t have to work. She was getting out of that house. A man like that, catting after teenagers. Colleen should have realized Dorie wasn’t Ray’s first and wouldn’t be his last. She died years ago, in some nursing home. Dorie never forgave her. She told me once she swore she’d never allow her own daughter to end up like she did. Trapped. Ignored. Like I tell Linda Sue, money can’t buy you a loving family.”
Crumpling up the last of the napkin, Myra looks at Franklin and me. “Did Dorinda kill Ray Sweeney? Who knows. If I were Dorie? I certainly would have.”
This is not what I was hoping to hear. We’re on the trail for evidence to exonerate Dorie. Myra isn’t even skeptical of her guilt. We’re getting nowhere. My brain races through possibilities while Myra shows us out. I hand her my card. What did I forget to ask her?
“CC Hardesty,” I say, turning back to Myra as we reach the front door. “Where can we find him?”
Myra has one hand on the doorknob. She pushes it open, letting in the still bright afternoon. “Arlington National Cemetery, I would think,” she says.
“AND SO MUCH FOR the boyfriend theory,” I say, as we dump our newly collected files on our desks. At least, I’m dumping. Franklin is using a sharp-pointed black marker to make labels to put on a set of manila folders.
I stare at my phone, willing the red message light to go on. I wish Will Easterly would call to tell me the story-saving news that Dorinda has agreed to talk to me, that she’ll go on camera and spill the real saga of Ray Sweeney’s death. If she even knows it. “Should we, maybe, call Will? See whether he’s gotten anywhere? And aren’t Rankin’s people supposed to be coming up with evidence, too? Or do they just think the tape is enough to get Dorie exonerated?”
Franklin adjusts something in his file array. “Maybe we should-”
“Yes, absolutely,” I interrupt. “We need to hit that nursing home, the one where Dorinda worked. See how the surveillance tape system operates. See why no one checked it out.”
“Go to the bar,” Franklin continues as if I hadn’t interrupted him. “Is what I was attempting to say.” He turns away from his files to look at me. “We need to track down the customers and the bartender, don’t you think?”
“Good idea,” I agree. “Try to get some sense of that night, perhaps someone overheard what Ray was saying. Better yet, find someone who can positively identify who Ray was with, and not just from seeing a photograph. If Dorinda was at the bar, arguing with Ray, it’s likely she wasn’t at work. Which makes that surveillance tape incredibly suspect. And the murder-”
Poison. I’d know it anywhere. My nose wrinkles, testing, as a plume of fashion’s equivalent of toxic waste announces a visitor to our office. I know it’s oh-so au courant, and most people adore it, but to me, the perfume smells like bug spray. I sneeze once in involuntary olfactory protest, then again, as the clack of stilettos comes to a stop in our doorway.
“This is no time to get a cold, Charlie.” Susannah waves a French-manicured finger at me. “Be sick in August, if you must, or at least not until after we get your story on the air. Now look.” She flips open her lizard-bound clipboard. Two interlocking capital letter C’s look like an advertisement for something Chanel. “Here’s my little surprise for you and Frank.”