Lurleen and I sat on the couch waiting for Stephanie and Josephine to arrive.
“Should we see if the boys want to join us?” I asked.
Just then we heard a loud roar from the family room. I opened the French doors and stuck my head inside.
“Last two minutes of the game,” Danny said. “Georgia pulls it out, but I want to see how they do it. You need us?”
“No, I’m just giving you fair warning. Stephanie from the book club and her aunt Josephine will be here in a few minutes. They want to clear the air, and they’ll probably feel better about doing it if you two stay put.”
“Done,” Mason said. “We’ll stay for the wrap up, but just make sure I get all the information I need to pass on to Kevin.”
“Does that mean I shouldn’t yell when Georgia wins?” Danny asked. “It’s my alma mater.”
“We know,” Lurleen called from the living room. “You can yell all you want, but don’t shout any unacceptable words if they lose.”
“Ah, Lurleen,” Danny yelled back. “You are the love of my life, but you don’t always seem to hear me when I talk about football—these are highlights and Georgia wins.”
I closed the door.
“Why would Danny want to see highlights from a game that’s already happened?” Lurleen asked.
“It’s kind of like my watching the Maltese Falcon over and over,” I said.
“Yeah, but that’s Humphrey Bogart—totally different ballgame so to speak.”
“We better take Stephanie and Josephine to the kitchen,” I said, and Lurleen nodded.
The doorbell rang, which sent Hermione into a barking jag. I quieted her before I opened the door.
“Don’t mind her,” I said. “She likes to announce everyone’s arrival, but she’s a sweetheart.”
“No problem,” Josephine said. “I’m not intimidated by dogs, although I am more of a cat person.”
That was an odd statement. I seemed to remember Stephanie telling us that Josephine claimed to be allergic to cats, and it was obvious she and Big Tom, Stephanie’s cat, hated each other.
I suspected Josephine wasn’t particularly fond of cats or dogs or even people, but I swallowed that thought.
Majestic appeared from nowhere and Lurleen scooped him up.
“Now, that’s a handsome cat,” Josephine said. Majestic purred, I’m sure in response to the compliment.
I led the way to the kitchen, nodding to the closed family room door. “We have two men in there who are watching a repeat of the Georgia-Auburn game, so we’ll have more privacy in the kitchen.
We settled around my large island and I set out cups for coffee and a plateful of my Magnificent Sevens.
“If these are anything like your pumpkin spice cookies,” Stephanie said, “I’ll want the recipe.”
“Too late for coffee, even decaf,” Josephine said. “Water will be fine.”
Lurleen poured her a large cup of water and made decaf for the rest of us.
“Let’s get to it,” Josephine said. “I wonder what you thought of the book club—I mean before the tragedy happened last night. Did you spot anything unusual among the guests?”
Stephanie jumped in before either of us could answer. “You can’t accost them like that, Auntie. I said we were here to clear the air, so let’s do that.”
“You always have to move so slowly, Stephanie,” Josephine said. “Very well, we’ll move slowly. As you know, I decided who would be in the group. I selected everyone except for Nate. Nate simply showed up. I’m sure it was to be with Nicole, and I’m also sure they were having an affair.”
“Aunt Josie, you don’t know that,” Stephanie said.
“Please don’t act like a fool, Stephanie. You saw how they looked at each other or at least how he looked at her.”
“We wondered the same thing,” Lurleen said, “but what about the others, the ones you did invite?”
“It’s a long story,” she said, glancing at her Rolex, “and I have an early meeting tomorrow morning.”
“We could set up another time to talk,” I said, “although you were the one who asked to come over tonight. And you were the one who wanted me to look into things.”
“True, true,” Josephine said. “The sooner you know all the facts, the sooner you can get on with your work to find Nicole’s killer as well as uncovering what happened to Luke and my brother.”
“I beg your pardon?” I said.
“You heard me,” Josephine said. “I wanted you to investigate the deaths of two other people I loved, Luke and my brother, Stephanie’s father. Nicole will simply be a third.”
“But you didn’t love Nicole,” I said, “you suspected her of murder.”
“Obviously, I was wrong about that,” Josephine said.
“What are you talking about, Auntie?” Stephanie asked. “You can’t ask Dr. Brown to investigate Nicole’s murder.”
“What’s the difference, Steph—old murders or new ones?”
“A new one might put Dr. Brown in danger, and you can’t do that, Aunt Josie. Even the old ones could put her in danger, although we don’t have evidence that Luke or Father was murdered.”
“Enough,” Josephine said. “As to why you two were invited to the group, here’s the real reason. Stephanie told me about both of you. She said Lurleen had a nose for murder and that you, Dr. Brown, used your logical brain to come up with the culprit. Initially, I wanted you to check on the old deaths that I told you about. Now, I think it’s your responsibility to find out about all three murders. Perhaps they’re connected.”
Was this a joke? “There is an active investigation into Nicole’s death,” I said. “We aren’t a part of that and can’t be.”
“When Nicole was nearly frightened to death by whatever she saw,” Josephine said, “I wondered if she might be in danger. I have to say I’m disappointed you didn’t figure what that was all about in time to save her.”
It takes a lot to make me angry, but I could feel my temperature rising. Apparently, Lurleen could see it as well.
“Vraiment,” Lurleen said. “You are out of line, Ms. Strout. Ditie and I were invited as mystery lovers to a book club. No one told us we were supposed to be on the lookout for some murder in the making.”
“I told you, Auntie,” Stephanie said, “that you couldn’t steamroll these people. I told you that you should be honest with them from the beginning.”
“If I’d done that, you think they would have come?” she asked.
“I think Lurleen would have come,” Stephanie said, “and I think she would have convinced Dr. Brown to attend.”
“Well, it’s too late for second-guessing,” Josephine said. “We’re in the thick of it, and Nicole Ash is dead. What are you two going to do about it?”
Lurleen put a hand on my arm and I managed to stay quiet.
“You came here to clear the air,” Lurleen said, “and all you’ve done is muddy the waters. Why don’t you start at the beginning and tell us why you wanted to form this book club in the first place?”
“Very well,” Josephine said. “If we must start at the beginning, we will start at the beginning.” She sighed. She grabbed a cookie and took a large bite. “It looks as if it’s going to be a long night. Perhaps, you should begin, Stephanie.”
Lurleen and I turned to Stephanie who looked uncomfortable. “It’s a hard story to tell,” she said. “It’s not only about me. My husband, Jonathan, is involved as well. He’d be angry if he knew we were sharing his private issues with others.”
“Get on with it, dear,” Josephine said. “If he didn’t keep secrets, none of this would have happened.”
“I think I might need something a little stronger than decaf coffee,” Stephanie said.
“Would Irish coffee do?” Lurleen asked.
“That would do nicely.”
I brewed fresh coffee while Lurleen got out the whiskey, sugar and heavy cream. “Anyone else?”
“No,” Josephine said and seemed to be speaking for all of us. “Stephanie may need to fog her brain to tell this sordid story, but the rest of us need clear heads to hear it.”
Lurleen continued with the preparations as if she hadn’t heard Josephine’s comments. But I wondered who this woman was, this woman that Stephanie called Auntie? Maybe she had a soft side, but I hadn’t seen it yet.
Lurleen served the Irish coffee to Stephanie, and I put more cookies on the plate.
“That’s far more than I can eat,” Josephine said.
Lurleen rolled her eyes. “They are meant for all of us, Ms. Strout.”
“Of course. Please call me Josephine. I believe you find me overbearing, Lurleen. I’m only overbearing when the situation calls for it, and this situation, I assure you, does call for it. Now, Stephanie, are you ready to begin?”
“Ready as I’ll ever be.” Stephanie took a big sip of coffee. “My husband, Jonathan, works at the Centers for Disease Control as I told you. He’s a sweetheart in a lot of ways and clueless in others. He’s your typical scientist I suppose.”
“I’ve already told Stephanie he might not be as clueless as she’d like to believe.”
“Please, Auntie, let me tell my own story the way I want.”
Josephine huffed but said nothing.
“We moved here from Wisconsin several years ago so Jonathan could take a job at the CDC in the special pathogens department, the viral division. It’s mostly been a good decision for us. For me, it felt nice to come back home since I grew up in Atlanta. I have a few good friends here, and of course my aunt lives here. She’s been like a mother to me, since my own mother died while I was in Wisconsin. My mother suffered greatly from scleroderma, but we didn’t think she’d die from it. It was a terrible blow to my brother Luke who was five at the time.”
She looked at us. “Jonathan thought of Luke as the son he never had. I think that’s one reason he wanted to move back to Atlanta, so he could be closer to him. He was also eager to work at the CDC, a place he considered the best in the world for researching infectious diseases.”
“Really, Steph, you are taking forever; please move it along.” Again, Josephine looked at her watch.
“Luke died six years ago,” I said. “When did you and Jonathan move back here?”
“A year before he died. As I said, it was mostly a good move. I’d grown up here and Jonathan liked the hospitality of Southerners as well as the work he was doing. Don’t get me wrong. I left some wonderful friends in Wisconsin, and those folks would do anything for a neighbor in trouble. But they are not as effusive as Southerners for the most part, and Jonathan has always been reserved. He needed people who would reach out to him. So, all in all, we’ve been happy here. That is until six months ago when Jonathan started getting more and more distressed.
“I asked him if it was something I’d done. He said no. I asked if he had a new assignment he didn’t like or had someone breathing down his neck at work, and he denied that. At first he wouldn’t tell me anything was wrong. He said it was my imagination, but when he stopped eating and sleeping I knew that wasn’t true.”
I looked at Lurleen. I felt as if we’d been moving along one track with three unexplained deaths and suddenly we were on another that focused on Jonathan’s unhappiness.
Lurleen asked the question I was wondering about. “We want to hear this story, all of it, Stephanie, but does it relate to the deaths of Luke, your father or Nicole?”
“I don’t know, but I think it might,” she said and for once Josephine didn’t interrupt her.
“When did you notice something was really wrong with him?” I asked.
“Two or three months ago. I wondered if he was sick. I asked if there was something he wasn’t telling me, but he said I was imagining things. I finally said he needed to see someone, either his internist or maybe a psychiatrist if he was depressed. Jonathan has a history of feeling down at times, but he’d always snap out of it in a couple of days or a week at the longest. This time it went on for months, and it’s still going on.”
“Stephanie, I am trying to be patient,” Josephine said, “but you will take all night to tell the story. Jonathan refused to see anyone. He finally said it was a problem at work, a personnel issue and he would handle it. That’s when Stephanie came to me. I thought we should stage a confrontation with him—you know like you sometimes need to do with a drug addict or an alcoholic—in order to find out what was really going on.”
“You mean an intervention,” Lurleen said.
“Yes, that’s what I said.”
“You had plans to send him to a hospital for treatment of his depression?” I asked.
“Of course not,” Josephine said. “I simply wanted Stephanie to hear the truth about what he was up to, and I thought if I were there I could get it out of him.”
“What did you suspect he was doing?” Lurleen asked. “Did you think he was having an affair?”
“I didn’t know,” Josephine said, “but I knew we needed to find out. Stephanie was suffering terribly.”
“But we didn’t find out anything,” Stephanie said. “Jonathan wouldn’t say a word. He was furious and felt I’d gone behind his back.” She turned toward us. “He and my aunt have never gotten along.”
“It’s ironic really,” Josephine said. “Here we are both in the medical field, and we can’t speak to each other. I can’t imagine why that would be true.”
I could.
“So,” I asked, “what did you do after the intervention?”
“Jonathan started sleeping in the guest bedroom,” Stephanie said. “I did everything I could to apologize to him. He finally said he needed to move out for a while. He claimed it would be temporary until he could sort out the problem. Jonathan said he had some new information about my father’s death and possibly Luke’s that he needed to look into.” Stephanie appeared close to tears. “I asked him why it was bothering him now, and he told me he’d found out something that suggested my father might have been murdered and that Luke might have died unnecessarily in the hospital.”
Stephanie started to cry, and Lurleen put an arm around her.
“I was upset about my father but even more disturbed about Luke. He was a young boy, and Jonathan always acted as if Luke were his son. They had so much in common, their love of science and their awkwardness with outsiders. Luke was a dear boy and very shy but around Jonathan he blossomed.
“Jonathan wouldn’t tell me anymore, only that he had to get some answers and he couldn’t do that while living at home. He said there were too many distractions. That’s when Aunt Josie had the idea about a mystery book club. She thought we should invite people who were around at the time of Luke’s death and see what you two thought about the people in the room. It wasn’t fair to you, and I’m sorry I agreed to it.”
I turned to Josephine. “How did you decide who should be in the group?”
“At last I can clear up all the confusion,” Josephine said. “You’ve done your part my dear, and you’re not in any shape to tell the rest. I’ll tell it.”