“If you call a week and a half a few days.”
“So . . . Richard Byrd’s wife kicked him out the Saturday of the reunion?” Bad night for marriages.
“Yep, that’s the shindig that he was gonna take me to, then chickened out at the last minute and took her.”
“You mean Monique, right?”
“I call her Moaning Mona, but that’s the same person. He still doesn’t know what she did with all his clothes. Why couldn’t she dump ’em in the front yard like other wives do?”
This woman obviously had had some experience at breaking up marriages. She wondered if Monique and Mrs. Snelson attended the same class on getting rid of husbands, including their clothing. She wouldn’t suggest he look in the dump.
“Here you go.” Chase handed her the change. “Would you like another kind for yourself?” She felt something warm and fuzzy rub on her leg. She glanced down.
Quincy! She had forgotten to put him in the office. Maybe her head wasn’t as clear as she thought it was.
It was lucky for the cat that no one had remembered to close him into the office. Enjoying the full range of the Bar None shop, he kept out of sight and meandered through the kitchen, finding delectable crumbs along the way. When his main human went out to the salesroom, he slipped through the swinging doors behind her. Ever curious, he found a paper that had fallen to the floor and began to play with it, batting at it and extricating it from under the counter where it had lodged.
“What are you doing out here?” Chase said it more for effect than to ask a question. She knew full well that she hadn’t secured him in the office when she came downstairs. Spending the morning dozing had thrown her out of her routine. She bent to scoop him up and a paper clung to his claw.
“Oh, there’s Richard’s poster. Aren’t you supposed to have that in your window?”
“This is your Richard, isn’t it?” Chase knew it was, but had to tack this down. If he had spent the night of the reunion with this woman, he couldn’t have killed Ron North. Chase had been relying on him as a suspect.
“Of course.”
“What time did he get in the night of the reunion?” Quincy squirmed in her arms after she unhooked the poster from him. She needed to get him out of the salesroom, but she also needed to be certain whether or not Dickie could have killed Ron.
“It was before midnight. Maybe around eleven thirty or so. He left the party and went home. Then he came to my place because he was locked out.”
He probably wouldn’t have had time enough to kill and transport Ron. Chase wasn’t even sure he could have lifted him into a car trunk. Dickie wasn’t very strong. Chase gave up trying to indict Dickie Byrd, said thank you to his mistress, and went to lock Quincy in the office.
Were there any other suspects left besides her best friend?
TWENTY-SIX
When a fit of coughing took Chase by surprise, she turned away from the counter.
“You know what you need to do?” Mallory leaned in close to talk so the customers wouldn’t hear. “Take a damp washcloth and heat it in the microwave for about minute, then put it on your face. It’ll clear your sinuses right up.”
“Thanks,” Chase managed to say, although her cold seemed to be in her chest by now, not her sinuses. “Gotta go.” She was horrified to think she might have infected Mallory, to say nothing of the customer she’d been waiting on.
Inger was done with lunch when she made it to the kitchen. Anna said she would relieve Mallory so the girl could eat. “But you go upstairs and rest,” Anna told her. “I’ll bring some more soup over right after we close.”
Chase remembered her cat through her haze and took Quincy upstairs with her. She collapsed into her stuffed chair and sucked a cough drop until her fit subsided.
She was sick, for sure, but she felt worse about being discouraged that she couldn’t find anyone to take Julie’s place as the number one suspect for Ron North’s murder.
Who else was there? The real estate crooks had seemed the most likely. Van Snelson, her former principal, for whom she had lost all respect, had spent the night at the high school. His actions were strange, but it didn’t seem that he killed anyone. Completely separate from the murder and the real estate scam, how could he go to work every day and be in charge of teenagers when he couldn’t stand them?
Langton Hail, the funny little vest-wearing guy, had been too drunk. Eddie Heath had seen him in his car the next morning, preparing to leave the parking lot hours after the reunion ended. She hoped that those two would be punished for bilking people like Hilda Bjorn, at least.
She admitted that Dickie Byrd had been a distant third choice. She wanted him to have killed Ron to avenge his wife’s honor after she was accosted. But now the Byrds were on the outs. He probably wasn’t interested in defending someone who had kicked him out. He hadn’t spent the night with his wife, but with his mistress, the short, stacked woman who bought him Peanut Butter Fudge Bars.
Who else was there?
Wait! Maybe Dickie Byrd didn’t want to avenge his wife’s honor, but who said she couldn’t avenge it herself? She was fuming mad at Ron, even threw her drink in his face.
Chase stumbled to the kitchen drawer where she had stashed the copied pages of Ron’s notebook. She spread them on the kitchen table and turned to the part that she and Julie assumed was about his serial stalking victims. J was Julie and M was Monique. He had been making the rounds of his old victims at the party. He’d tried Julie, had mashed his face into hers for a kiss. Jay had come to her rescue and nothing else had happened after that. No, Julie had not killed him.
But he had confronted Monique, too. She’d been piled on that night. First, her husband got stewed to the gills at his own campaign rally, which, Chase assumed, Monique had orchestrated exactly as she’d run all his campaigns in the past. He had ruined the night for himself and, most likely, for her. Then maybe Ron’s attack was the last straw. She had left early, even slightly before her husband. She would have had plenty of time to kill Ron. Julie’s scarf had been in Ron’s pocket, so it was convenient for her to use as a weapon as her anger boiled over in the parking lot.
Maybe she started out merely accosting him, perhaps berating him. Ron was so annoying that things could easily escalate. Monique could get madder and madder. She would start yanking at her hair. Fire would come from her eyes. Her anger would overwhelm her and she would lose control and strangle him. As inebriated as he was, he wouldn’t be able to put up much of a fight. Ron wasn’t very large. If Monique were fueled by adrenaline and hatred, she could have gotten him into her car and driven him to the park while it was still dark. She could overcome her touching phobia in a blind rage, couldn’t she?
“Yes,” she said, pumping her fist into the air. Quincy scampered away and jumped onto the couch. “Didn’t mean to scare you, little guy. But I think I have this figured out.”
She followed Quincy to the couch and dialed Detective Olson’s number, but quit halfway through when another coughing fit overcame her. As she sucked yet another cough drop, she had second thoughts. What would she tell the detective? She had no evidence to support her conclusion. There were no clues. It was all supposition. If he searched her trunk he might find blood. Could she convince him to do that?
Maybe Monique would come into the shop again and she could ask her some questions. She tucked one foot underneath herself on the leather couch. Quincy sat in her lap and they both dozed.