Chapter 30

New stainless steel appliances will scream new kitchen.

The next morning, Aunt Kit sat at the kitchen table while I prepared breakfast for us, wholegrain pancakes with ground almonds. While I cooked, I filled Aunt Kit in about my meeting with Monica.

“I don’t know if there is any hope for her,” Aunt Kit said, shaking her head.

I worried about the same thing. After serving Aunt Kit, I took two pancakes and poured a small amount of maple syrup over them, skipping the butter in an attempt to eat somewhat healthy. I took a bite, enjoying the crunch the almonds provided.

“What do you have planned for today?” I asked Aunt Kit.

“Anne Williamson and I are going to see an art display in the lobby of the medical center. They are supposed to have some nice pieces done by local artists.” Aunt Kit dug into her pancakes. She enjoyed anything that resembled dessert.

“You and Anne have been spending a fair amount of time together.” I reached for more maple syrup, thinking I should have added the butter.

“It’s nice sharing my interest in art with someone close to my age—someone who can understand where I’m coming from.”

My sense of guilt for not spending more time with Aunt Kit during her visit made me cringe. Could her statement have been aimed at me? “Why don’t you stay longer so we can visit some of the places you haven’t been to for a while.”

“That would be nice. What about you? Do you have a place to stage today?

Just then, I heard a knock on the door and went to answer it, finding Nita standing there with an arm full of folders and a laptop. We had planned to work on several things that morning, including updating our webpage. We decided we would have far fewer distractions at my place than at Vocaro’s.

A surprise to us both, Nita had turned out to be a wiz with the technological things that were supposed to help us with our business. I was thankful that she had taken right to it since the devices that were supposed to save us time took far too much of our time. With my background in IT, I could have handled it but was happy not having to.

“Hey, Nita. You’re just in time for breakfast.”

“You fixed breakfast? That’s a new one.” Nita put her things down.

“It’s a special treat for Aunt Kit.”

Aunt Kit called from the kitchen. “Nita, I’m glad you’re here. Laura and I have been talking about Monica’s situation.” Situation was definitely a euphemism or polite way of saying she was in jail and accused of murder.

When we reached the kitchen, Nita hugged Aunt Kit and then leaned over to pet Inky. He had positioned himself under the table ready to snatch a piece of bacon if someone, namely Nita or Aunt Kit, offered it to him.

After Nita sat down, I handed her a plate of hot pancakes and bacon I took from a warm oven. She accepted it with relish. Everyone seemed to love pancakes.

Sitting down again, I eyed my now-cold breakfast. “I was about to tell Aunt Kit about my visit to see Monica yesterday and that we haven’t discovered anything that could remotely help her. It’s so frustrating. With us finding her over Damian’s body, it’s hard to prove someone else could have killed him.

Nita poured syrup liberally over her warm pancakes. “Sister Madeleine will be happy if we can discover anything that could point to someone other than Monica. She truly believes Monica is innocent.”

“Let’s think about it.” Aunt Kit seemed to be mulling it over as she put English breakfast tea into a warmed teapot, poured boiling water over it from the electric kettle, put the lid on the teapot, and covered it with a tea cozy to keep it warm. She was a stickler for making sure the tea was made properly. “Doesn’t anyone think it’s strange there were two murders in town within a few days of each other—both murdered similarly. Monica looks pretty guilty about the one, but is there anything connecting her to the other?”

I shrugged. “Monica said she didn’t know Ian. I don’t know much about him myself. Poor guy. He comes to town to settle his aunt’s estate, which we all assumed to be a modest one, and then is murdered. For all we know, his aunt could have been the millionaire next door no one suspects of having any money.”

“Could that have been the case?” Aunt Kit sounded almost envious. I wondered again about how she was doing. Could she be having financial troubles?

“You never know,” Nita said. “She could have been left a fortune by her parents and never spent much of it.”

“Let’s be realistic.” I reached for the last piece of bacon that I wasn’t going to share with Inky. “It would be somewhat improbable that the motive for Ian’s death was related to a huge inheritance. But even if she had been as rich as Andrew Carnegie, who in town could benefit from Ian’s death? Ian didn’t have any other connections here other than his aunt and a few friends he hadn’t seen in twenty years—Warren being one of them. It’s unlikely anyone here would have benefitted from his death.”

“Maybe someone from New Zealand followed him here and murdered him,” Aunt Kit said.

Nita and I both laughed at that one. Aunt Kit, like Will Parker, enjoyed bizarre mysteries that were way out there. Next she would be on the lookout for a Chinese man to show up as a surprise suspect as they often did in movies from the 1930s—a device used so often that Ronald Knox in his Ten Commandments of Detective Fiction admonished writers not to use it.

“Don’t you think it was suspicious that Ian was murdered in Warren’s funeral home?” Aunt Kit added. She loved conspiracy theories.

“I don’t suspect Warren of killing someone he hasn’t seen in twenty years.” But I’d been wrong in my judgment of people before. In Warren’s case, I hoped not. “Warren would have been more likely to bore him to death telling him every detail about his upcoming stage production than to have stabbed him.”

Aunt Kit reached over and took another pancake, which surprised me since she usually ate so little. “Who else might have known Ian was in town—or would have remembered him for that matter?”

“Remember what my cousin Neil said about one of the calls on Ian’s phone records being to an old girlfriend? Maybe the girlfriend is worth looking into.”

Aunt Kit pondered that for a minute. Being a real fan of mysteries, she loved trying to solve the puzzles they presented. Perhaps I had inherited my sense of inquisitiveness after all. “I still think the police should continue looking at what could’ve connected Damian and Ian. Something they may have had in common?” Aunt Kit shared her piece of bacon with Inky.

“They both stayed at the B&B,” I said. “But at different times.”

Aunt Kit’s frown told me I wasn’t taking this seriously enough.

“Okay, let’s consider this,” I said. “Damian was about ten years older than Ian. Before coming to Louiston, Damian lived in California, Ian in New Zealand. To the best of my knowledge, neither had been in Louiston at the same time until recently. Damian was an artist and was teaching at the college. I don’t know what Ian did for a living, but we probably could find out.”

Aunt Kit sat up abruptly. “Maybe that’s the connection.”

“What?” Nita was wide-eyed and anticipating a revelation.

“Art,” Aunt Kit said.

“I never heard Ian was an artist,” I said. That was something else I needed to check into.

“No, but his aunt was.” Aunt Kit waved her fork at us as if for emphasis. “Maybe it’s far-fetched and a pretty weak link, but so far that’s the only link between the two men.”

That was a real stretch, but I didn’t want to tell Aunt Kit that. She looked as satisfied as if she’d just uncovered the solution to a major case and delivered it to Perry Mason in the courtroom herself.

Aunt Kit poured us cups of the brewed tea, which I was more than ready for. “All I’m saying is think about that connection,” she said.

“I will, I will. But if we are going to look into Ian Becker’s death, it might be important to talk to the old girlfriend he called.”

“And don’t forget his aunt’s attorney,” Aunt Kit added. “He could be hiding the money she left.”

“No, that won’t be the case.” Nita put down her cup abruptly. “Her attorney was my cousin Ted. He wouldn’t steal from anyone. You don’t know Ted. He is so straitlaced the family is still surprised he didn’t go into the priesthood.”

Aunt Kit was adamant. “I still think you need to look at the art link.”

Maybe Nita and I should turn our search for information over to Aunt Kit.

Nita nodded. “We should look for who might inherit Doris Becker’s money since Ian is no longer around. Maybe someone else was named in the will.”

“You have to see the will,” Aunt Kit said.

“I wish I knew how we could do that.” I refilled everyone’s teacups and sat back down.

“Let me think about it.” Nita scrunched up her face in thought. “I may have a way we can find out.”

Oh no, another one of Nita’s ideas. Her ideas once nearly put us in jail.

I couldn’t believe this. Now we were delving into two murders. It was difficult enough trying to make sense of one, but two separate murders with no obvious connection were enough to make me reach into the cupboard for the bottle of Harvey’s—and it was only breakfast time. How did I get myself pulled into these things?