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I spent all day Saturday in Marsha’s cottage, finishing up the painting job I was supposed to have completed days ago.
I applied myself to useful labor partly because the task had to be done in order for Marsha to move in before the housewarming party scheduled for Sunday afternoon and partly because I’d reached an impasse on what to do about the murderer in our midst.
At noon, I gave the Bird Cage Café a miss—Jason wasn’t going to be there anyway since he was working through the lunch hour to catch up on things he should have been doing the previous day instead of tracking down the real Rex Popov.
I sat at my little kitchen table and ate a ham and cheese sandwich while I attempted to sketch out what I knew and didn’t know about the case.
Was it really Duke who hit Reba in the back of the head?
How did Crystal’s bloody boots end up in Duke’s possession?
Did Duke really steal Crystal’s purse?
Was it really Jimmy who broke into the medicine cabinet the day Reba was attacked?
Did Jimmy really steal Hank’s map of the mine?
How did the map end up in Duke’s pocket?
Where did the ‘diamond detector’ found with Duke’s body come from?
How did Duke’s cabin end up in such disarray?
Is there any chance Duke did go down in the mine on his own?
If he didn’t, who took him there? Was he dead before he ended up down the mineshaft?
There were probably more questions worth asking, but I pondered the ones I’d written down all afternoon while I rolled and brushed the walls in Marsha Ledbetter’s new abode until my arms ached and my skin and hair were speckled with flecks of “whisper white” and “Adirondack blue.”
By five, I’d decided there was no more avoiding having a chat with Dr. Bagley. I’d come clean about the activities of her ex-husband, but I’d avoid like the plague any suggestion that her son was possibly homicidal prior to his own death.
The thing was, I couldn’t be completely sure that Duke had intended to kill Reba. It was possible that his primary target was either Crystal or Blake or both. I was 98% sure that Crystal had been framed for the attack on her best friend. Or at least that was the only logical conclusion I could come to.
As I was washing up my roller and brushes under the spigot at the edge of the trailer court, Maxwell materialized at my elbow with Earp and Hercules in tow.
“You look like a Smurf sneezed on you!” he said.
“Ha, ha!”
“Are we still going to see the Music Man tonight?” Maxwell asked.
It was the eighth time that day that he’d confirmed our plans for the evening. To say that the kid was looking forward to it was an understatement. I hoped I hadn’t oversold the experience.
“We are leaving at six,” I said.
“Does Earp have anything sparkly?” Maxwell asked.
“Probably, although you would know better than I. Why do you ask?”
“Because I want Earp and Hercules to sparkle during the entertainments.”
“What entertainments?”
“Mrs. Ledbetter’s housewarming tomorrow evening.”
“Oh, of course.”
How could I have overlooked the inevitability of Maxwell and his menagerie taking a star turn at Marsha’s housewarming?
“You can come up to my apartment and rummage through the boxes of Earp’s costumes while I take a shower and try to get all this paint out of my hair, but you’ll have to hurry because we have tickets to the early showing.”
As soon as I’d finished showering, I called Phyliss and asked her to put Hank on the line.
“Do you have a picture of Rex Popov?” I asked.
I hadn’t yet broken it to Hank that we’d tracked down the imposter who’d swindled him out of $50,000. With no plans for recourse, it seemed cruel to tell him.
“I have a brochure he gave me when we first met,” said Hank.
“Was it like the one you had printed up and sent out?”
“Yes, except Rex’s picture was on it.”
I blessed my lucky stars and sprinted next door to the Curio Shop to collect the handbill.
“I’ll take good care of it,” I said as I snatched the glossy brochure out of Hank’s hand.
“Where are you going?” Hank asked.
“To try and get your money back,” I told Hank.
“How?”
I had no idea.
“I’ll think of something,” I said.
Had the circumstances been different, I’d have taken that brochure straight to Roberta Bagley and confirmed that her ex-husband and the huckster going by Rex Popov were one and the same, but I couldn’t bring myself to intrude on her grief.