“I’m going to have dinner with my mother at the Assisted Living Center,” Bryan said.
Again I was surprised. Somehow, I couldn’t picture Bryan with his mother. “Your dad’s gone?” I asked.
“Nope, he’s living in Atlanta with his second wife, a very nice woman he met in his nursing home. He and my mother have been divorced for the past twenty years or so.”
“And he remarried. I guess you’re never too old for romance.”
“Definitely not,” Bryan said. “Now, what are we doing here?”
“The Wynns are in the house. They borrowed John David’s key. They were supposed to come by and get their bags and leave for their home. They told my mother they’d return when the funeral was definitely scheduled. They told John David they wanted to retrieve something of Sandy’s mother’s, some family heirloom Poppy had. I don’t believe he asked or cared what it was. They’ve been here much longer than that should take. And we’re almost certain that Sandy was in the area the morning Poppy was killed.”
Bryan considered for a minute. “So, am I here as John David’s lawyer or as your bodyguard?”
I smiled again, though I don’t know if he could make it out in the gloom. Poppy and John David lived in the middle of the block, and the streetlights on the corners didn’t really illuminate their yard. “A bit of both,” I said. “I’m worried about them. But if they’re okay, I plan on being mad at them. They’ve been here way too long.” I took a deep breath. “Mostly, this is just weird and needs to be looked into. John David asked me to do that for him.”
“Clear as a bell,” Bryan said.
We went up the flagstones to the front door, and after a moment’s hesitation, I opened it without knocking. This wasn’t the Wynns’ house, after all.
Bryan shut the door behind us, and we stood in the hallway at the foot of the stairs leading up to the bedrooms, trying to make sense of what we saw. Marvin Wynn was crouched by Poppy’s rolltop desk, in the small room to the right of the stairs, the room originally intended for a dining room. Both Poppy and John David used it as an office, and they each had a computer there. A large bookshelf covered one wall, and it was crammed with all kinds of books and knickknacks. Now the room was in an utter jumble. Half the books were on the floor. Marvin, crouched on the floor, was pulling the drawers out of the rolltop desk and turning them over to examine the bottoms.
He was so startled when he looked up and discovered two people observing him that he jumped, visibly. He gasped and dropped the drawer, which landed painfully on his thighs. He made another noise, this one surprising from a minister.
Poppy would not have taped a family heirloom to the bottom of the drawer.
“What are you doing?” I asked, and I didn’t sound polite.
“What is it, Marv?” Sandy called from the top of the stairs. She froze when she saw us. Her large brown eyes, magnified many times by her outsize brown-framed glasses, were wide and shocked.
“What are you two doing?” I said again, with even more of an edge to my voice now. Someone had already helped himself to searching the contents of Poppy’s closet and her bedroom. Now Poppy’s mom and dad were ransacking the house under the guise of parental love. I was very unhappy with them. I was also angry that people I’d always respected were making a mockery of that respect by their behavior.
The Wynns appeared to be groping for an answer to my abrupt question.
“We, ah, we were looking for something. We asked John David if he’d mind.”
“You told John David you were looking for an heirloom Mrs. Wynn’s mom had left her,” I said bluntly. ‘You’ve been here for hours, searching this house, as far as I can see. And I’m sure whatever precious heirloom it was, Poppy wouldn’t have taped it to the bottom of a drawer, or stuffed it into a book!“
The Wynns didn’t seem to be able to come up with a response. Finally, Marvin said, “Who is this man with you?”
“I’m Bryan Pascoe, John David’s attorney.”
Sandy Wynn came farther down the stairs, the first time she’d moved since she’d called to her husband. She exchanged glances with Marvin.
“Surely you didn’t need to bring a lawyer” Marvin said in his best ministerial voice. “After all, we’re family here.”
He could not have said anything more calculated to make my neck crawl.
“We are not family,” I said clearly. “Please explain yourselves.”
“Listen, missy,” Sandy said. “We are thirty years older than you are, and you will treat us with some respect.”
“When you deserve it.”
Sandy’s face sagged on its bones, making her look much older in an instant. “We were just looking for some old family things,” she insisted. “We haven’t found them. Since you’re in such a snit, missy, we’ll just leave.” She said this as if it was a big threat. “We’ll stop by your house and get our bags and go home. You’ll excuse me, under the circumstances, if I don’t write a thank-you note.”
“It’s very late for you to start home,” Bryan said, sounding irritatingly reasonable. “Why don’t you check into the motel here in town, instead, and start back in the morning?”
“No, young man,” Marvin Wynn said. “I’m not too old to drive at night, and we want to get out of this town. The day I retired from my job here was one of the best days of my life.”
I’d learned, years ago, that being a pastor is a job-a difficult and stressful one at that-but nonetheless, I found it shocking to hear the former Reverend Wynn speak in such a vicious way.
Bryan didn’t respond, which was a relief. I didn’t want to hear any more discussion. I just wanted the absence of the Wynns. I nudged an open book with my foot. The house was in a terrible state now. I sighed, already guessing whose task it would be to set it to rights.
Sandy and Marvin took some time getting their coats; with Bryan and me standing there, there was little opportunity for them to take anything. I hated being so suspicious, but I knew I had to be alert. This situation was completely fishy. Sandy had seemed so broken up on Monday night, but now I knew she’d already been in Lawrenceton that morning. Marvin, too, had appeared grief-stricken and miserable, at least to my eyes. And yet here they were, trashing their daughter’s home.
Finally, they were at the door. Swaddled in all their winter gear (pretty much not necessary, for the night was in the fifties), the older couple looked harmless and beneficent with their silver hair and glasses.
Sandy opened her mouth to say something else insulting, but I preempted her. “What were you doing out at the Grabbit Kwik getting gas Monday morning? Have you told the police about your little trip to Lawrenceton before Poppy’s body was found?”
“We never came here Monday morning,” Marvin said with dignity. “I went to get my annual physical, and Sandy went to do some comparison shopping for a new stove.”
“Good cover story,” I said to Sandy. “Something you could spend a long time doing, with no tangible results.”
If Sandy had looked tense before, she looked beleaguered now. But her lips stayed pressed together. I couldn’t have wiggled one bit of truth between them.
“Key,” I said tersely, holding out my hand. Sandy fished in her pocket and dropped the key on my palm, which closed around it instantly. But then I had a thought, and I opened my palm to compare this key to the one John David had loaned me. They matched.
The Wynns gave us twin glares as they left.
I sat down on the stairs when the door shut behind them. This had shaken me more than I’d realized. I was actually surprised at how much the week’s events were depleting my normal energy. I’d had several of these shaky spells. Bryan sat by me. He put his arm around me, which I could have done without, but it was okay. It didn’t feel sexual, not until his fingers started playing with my hair, that is.