Chapter 9

Soon after that the search was finished, and Aunt Nettie and I both went home. I was feeling really down, deeply worried about Bunny.

At home I found Joe’s truck in its parking spot, and Joe himself waiting in the kitchen.

“I talked Bunny into staying for a night or two,” he said. “She’s in the south bedroom. I hope that’s all right.”

“Sure. But things don’t look good for her, Joe.”

Keeping my voice low, I quickly ran over the results of the search of TenHuis Chocolade, at least as far as I knew them. When I got to the part about the bloodstains in the rarely used stairwell, Joe whistled.

“Bunny admits she saw Abigail through the window,” I said. “And she had access to the keys. Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if Hogan showed up here this evening with an arrest warrant. I’m almost surprised they haven’t issued one already.”

“Instead of coming out and arresting her, Hogan would probably ask Bunny to turn herself in,” he said. “There are a lot of unanswered questions still.”

“Did Bunny tell you anything new today?”

“Not really. She still says that the door between the buildings was standing open. She says Dolly gave her her own keys and told her to leave them in the office.”

“But I’m still surprised that there’s no warrant out.”

“One reason they won’t arrest her—yet—is that they have no motive. And I convinced them Bunny was unlikely to simply go berserk and kill an aunt-in-law.”

“No motive?” I thought about it carefully. “I guess you’re right. I suppose that I was thinking about Abigail’s threat to change her will and leave her entire estate to Bunny. That would definitely be a motive.”

“But not for Bunny. That would be a motive for Beau. Abigail hadn’t had time to do anything about her will. So it was to Bunny’s advantage to keep Abigail alive.”

A load lifted from my tiny brain. “Whew!” I said. “I knew that, but hearing you say it makes me feel better.”

“It doesn’t make me feel much better,” Joe said. “But I’ve got to hang on to something, so I’ll grab hold of that idea.”

I went upstairs to talk to Bunny, clinging to that information all the way up.

Of course, I told myself. Abigail had been in my office as late as four o’clock on Friday, headed for Holland. I had surmised that she was going to make a new will.

If someone told me about a lawyer who agreed to turn out a will after four o’clock on a Friday, I’d find a bridge I could sell them. Lawyers usually don’t work that late. Certainly their clerical staff doesn’t want to. Abigail simply hadn’t had time to change her will before she died.

I ignored the likelihood that Abigail might have been a very important client, one a lawyer might stay late for. If that were true, Hogan would have already tracked that lawyer down.

Besides, when it came to the will, I had thought that Abigail had announced her plan to change her will mainly as a threat. She wanted to whip Beau into line, not disinherit him. She might well make the new will, then never sign it.

Upstairs I greeted Bunny and assured her that she was welcome to stay. After making sure she had towels, soap, and other things guests need, I went downstairs, ready to cook dinner. I had stopped for ground beef on the way home, and I dug out macaroni, onions, tomato sauce, and other stuff. It would serve to make that immortal American dish Joe calls goulash, even though no Hungarian ever saw anything like it. In my family it was known as Mom’s Quick Hamburger Skillet Mess. That and a salad would get us to the table fast. I’d pull out some misdecorated Strawberry Cheesecake truffles (“white chocolate ganache enrobed with dark or white chocolate and embellished with pink and white chocolate stripes”—only these had milk chocolate stripes). We’d be eating in forty-five minutes.

Why the rush? To be honest, mostly because of the discovery of Dolly’s keys, I felt we had to eat in a hurry. Maybe we could get the dishes done before Bunny was arrested.

But she wasn’t arrested. Not that night.

The next morning was Monday, and all three of us got up and got ready for work, pretending to be normal people. At breakfast Joe told Bunny he’d talk to Hogan, then report anything he found out.

When I looked questioning, he mouthed the name “Dolly.” Apparently he meant that he expected Hogan to question Dolly before he came back for another round with Bunny.

So I drove Bunny by the house where she was living, and dropped her off to change clothes before she went to work. Then I drove by the post office, parked, and went inside, my usual way to begin the working day.

And there was Beau.

He was his usual beautiful self—long, pale blond ponytail shining in the winter sun, handsome, tall, a regular sun god. He made me want to upchuck.

I was extremely angry with Beau, which led me to do something tacky. I stopped and spoke to him.

“Hi, Beau.”

Beau turned toward me with a gracious bow. “Hello, Lee.”

“I’m terribly worried about Bunny. Are you going to be able to do something to help her?”

“Bunny? Help Bunny? Why?”

“She certainly seems to need help.”

“What for?” Then he gave a little gasp. “You haven’t had to fire her, have you?”

“No.”

“Thank God. She’s so incompetent.”

“I was talking about her legal problems.”

“The divorce? Why should she need help with that?”

The clouds were beginning to clear for me, and I was starting to catch on. Beau apparently knew nothing about the murder of his aunt.

I gave a short sniff. “Beau, haven’t you heard about Bunny’s new problems?”

“What problems?”

I didn’t answer, and for the first time I realized we had the attention of the entire post office. Since it was the time of the morning when about 80 percent of the town’s businesspeople emptied their boxes, that was a sizable proportion of the Warner Pier population.

Beau was still frowning at me, his eyebrows knitting hard enough to produce a pair of mittens.

“Beau,” I said, “I’d better shut up, but I feel sure the police are looking for a statement from you.”

“From me? What is it? What’s happened? Is something wrong?”

I kept quiet. And to my surprise, so did everyone else in the post office. I walked away. In a minute Beau dropped out of the line and skedaddled out of the post office and down Peach Street.

And I saw expressions of satisfaction on every face in the room.

I hadn’t realized how disliked Beau had become. Now I realized that public opinion was firmly on Bunny’s side. By divorcing the meek little thing, he had—well, we Texans would say he had shot himself in the foot. Maybe we Michiganders would say the same thing.

I grabbed envelopes from the PO box, stood in line for a package, then put my mail in a tote bag I carried in the van for that purpose. I headed to the office, where Janie told me Joe was there and talking to Bunny. So I headed to the little office in the back.

There I found Joe busy with a measuring tape and Bunny behind her desk picking up paper clips from the floor. Apparently she’d dropped a box of two hundred back there.

“What on earth are you up to?” I asked Joe.

“I was wondering if we could put a small door between your offices, so that you and Bunny could communicate face-to-face, instead of sending e-mails and text messages through this wall.”

“Ahem,” I said. “I’m sure you recall that—once we get the other building in operation—this whole area will be expanded into a real office. There will be room for two more clerical workers, as yet not hired, and even an office for Aunt Nettie.”

“Still, that will be several months, Lee. And I could come down one night this week and put a door in right here. Easy.”

“No. Bunny and I will just run down the hall to see each other. Or use the intercom. Or, I’ll bang on the wall.”

Joe’s face fell. He loves a good construction project. “Oh well,” he said.

Then he grinned. “Anyway, Hogan says he’s got to question a lot more people about Abigail Birdsong’s death before he has any more questions for Bunny. So let’s try not to worry today.”

“Okay, Mr. Cheery,” I said. “Whom does he have to question?”

“Dolly, for one. Apparently she got back from her mother’s Saturday afternoon, then left her apartment early yesterday afternoon, and hasn’t been seen since.”

“I noticed she wasn’t around.”

“Right. Also missing are Beau, along with Anya and Andrew Hartley. The three of them apparently went someplace late Friday or early Saturday, and they haven’t showed up since. I don’t know if they’ve flown the coop . . .”

“Oh no!” Bunny’s voice was distressed. “Beau would never run away!”

“Maybe not, but he needs to make a statement. Plus, as Mrs. Birdsong’s closest relative, he needs to take charge of the funeral plans. And he hasn’t shown up to assume that duty.”

“Beau is back from wherever he went,” I said. I described the scene in the post office, ending with, “I gather Beau isn’t the most popular guy in town just at the moment.”

“Poor Beau,” Bunny said.

I thought I caught an echo of pity in her voice.

The woman was unbelievable. How could she feel pity for a rat like Beau?

“I guess I should call Hogan and let him know Beau is around,” I said.

Bunny spoke again. “As soon as I realized that he wasn’t in town, I called and left a message on the answering machine at the house.”

Bunny was still taking care of her ex, the most undeserving jerk in Michigan.

I told Joe to go away and do whatever he needed to do. Then I sat down to explain Bunny’s new job to her. I started with the form for the e-mail orders. A large majority of our orders come in that way. And you’d be surprised how many of them need a confirming phone call or message before the order can go back to be shipped.

We worked at that for a couple of hours, and I was very pleased at how quickly Bunny caught on to the whole thing. During this session, her pencil rolled off the table four times, she ran her office chair over her toe once, and she knocked her coffee cup over twice. Luckily it had a tight lid. She was still our accidental Bunny, clumsy as ever.

After that session Bunny went for an early lunch, and I went to my own desk and started sorting the mail.

Three envelopes, I was sure, held orders for Easter items. I put those aside for Bunny to handle. Another was an order for wedding favors. I recognized the return address of the bride. I’d handle those. In the remaining stack I had a letter from the Michigan State Chamber of Commerce, telling me about a workshop they planned; a begging letter from my alma mater, the University of Texas–Dallas; and similar letters from a health research organization, a museum, and an arts organization. I put all those in their proper place and then picked up the final envelope.

It was plain white, the kind sold nearly anyplace. It was hand addressed to me at the TenHuis street address, not at our PO box. So it was lucky I got it.

And the return address read, “Abigail Birdsong, 112 W. Lakeside, Warner Pier, MI.” It ended with the zip.

I stared at it dully for a moment. Then I stood up. I think I intended to yell, but I was so startled that I whispered.

“Oh! My! Gosh!”

I was extremely tempted to rip it open. What had Abigail Birdsong sent me?

But I behaved as a proper citizen should and called Hogan. He’d need to examine it for fingerprints and other evidence when it was opened.

After my call, Hogan took no more than five minutes to show up and take the letter back to the police department for scientific examination. I went along, and I paced the floor until he could allow me to see the mysterious missive.

When Hogan finally opened it, wearing rubber gloves, its pages were covered with small, tight handwriting. But the first paragraph gave the whole thing away.

“Last will and testimony of Abigail Joan Birdsong,” it read.

When I saw it, I yelped. “Oh, ye gods! But why’d she send it to me?”