My mother cried the entire ride back to her rented house while I did my best to comfort her. I offered to spend the day with her, but she told me she’d be fine and I should go to work. I was upset that she was upset but glad that for once she was sharing her feelings. Her statements were all over the place and often contradicted each other.
“I never should have married Tom,” she said between sobs. “We’re too different. When we first met, the age difference didn’t matter. He enjoyed being the focus of my attention. But lately it’s become clear to me that he wants a much younger woman.”
Like Ilana, I thought but didn’t say.
She blew her nose loudly, then went on. “I thought he loved me. No, I know he did. But now I wonder if he’s been pining for Ilana all these years.”
“She’s some piece of work,” I said. “Too bad she ended up doing this movie playing opposite Tom.”
“Dirk originally wanted Ilana for the role, but she was tied up.”
“I see,” I said, as I drove down my mother’s block. “Would you have tried to stop Tom from taking the role if you’d known Ilana was in the movie?”
“Of course not! Tom was elated when he got this part. I was happy for him. I had no idea that Ilana would behave this way.” She turned to me. “You saw for yourself—she’s all over Tom, like he’s a bowlful of rocky road ice cream she wants to devour.”
Tom? A bowlful of rocky road ice cream? “She’s unbelievable, I agree. But it’s up to Tom to tell her to cut it out. What does she hope to gain from her behavior?”
“Isn’t it obvious? She wants Tom.” My mother sniffed. “Although he claims she’s just acting that way for fun. Sometimes I can see his point. Other times I worry that he wants to get back together with her.” She shook her head in frustration. “I’m not sure what’s real and what isn’t anymore.”
I rubbed my mother’s back. “I’m sorry you’re going through this. She has no right to humiliate you.”
“I shouldn’t let her get to me. I blew up in front of everyone. Now I’m so embarrassed.”
That realization brought a new bout of tears.
As I pulled into the driveway of their rented house, my mother met my gaze. “Ilana’s ruined my relationship with Tom. She ruined my life. If only someone made her disappear.”
I left my mother sipping tea and watching a soap opera on television and drove to the library, surprised that despite all that had transpired since my visit to the movie set, I was going to arrive at work on time. I felt bad for my mother. I’d truly thought she had found happiness with Tom, but after seeing him with Ilana, I doubted there was much hope for their future together.
But maybe I was being too pessimistic. After all, what did I know about marriage and how much stress one could endure? The question was, did Tom still love my mother?
I turned on the radio to a local station that played soft rock. At the end of a song, the announcer came on.
“There’s no update to report on the homicide we told you about earlier. All we know is the victim is a woman named Daphne Marriott, age thirty-seven. She was found strangled inside her rented apartment in Clover Ridge.”
“Daphne!” A chill snaked down my spine.
“As we reported earlier, a neighbor—Andy Fazio—said his dog started acting strangely—whimpering and pawing at the door—when they passed the victim’s apartment early this morning. Andy knocked several times. When Miss Marriott didn’t respond, he turned the knob. The door was unlocked. He walked in and found the body lying on the living room floor.
“Lieutenant Mathers said the police are investigating and asks anyone with information to call the following number.”
My hand shook as I switched off the radio. Daphne was dead. Murdered. I pulled over to the side of the road and gulped down gallons of air. Tears welled up at the horror of it all. I had just lost someone who, with time, would have become a close friend.
Underneath my sorrow I was beset with guilt. The last time I’d seen Daphne had been Saturday afternoon when she was being manhandled by that awful ex-husband of hers, Bert something-or-other. That was days ago. I should have called to find out how she was. To make sure she was okay instead of taking her at her word.
Could Bert have killed her? He could very well have hung around Clover Ridge. Perhaps they had argued. He’d been angry. Was he angry enough to choke her?
I parked in the library’s lot and entered the building.
“What? No Smoky Joe today?” Max asked as I pulled open the door.
I shook my head. “I went to watch a scene being filmed this morning.” It seemed so long ago. “Max, did you hear? Daphne Marriott, the psychic who came to speak here last week, was murdered.”
“I heard as I was driving over,” Max said. “A real shame. She seemed like such a nice lady, too.”
Surprised, I asked, “Did you get to talk to her?”
“Just for a minute or two after her program. But I told my wife about her, and Dolly made an appointment to see her.” He grimaced. “Her mom died last summer, and Dolly misses her terribly.”
“Did Dolly think it was worthwhile, going to see Daphne for a reading?”
“Oddly enough, she did—not that the psychic lady had much to say about her mother.” Max smiled. “But she told Dolly that she and I have a sound marriage and that she’s doing a fine job with our two boys.”
He made a clicking sound with his tongue. “Such a pity. Who would want to kill someone like her?”
“I don’t know, Max, but I intend to do my damnedest to find out.”
Max chuckled. “Don’t let Lieutenant Mathers hear you say that.”
“I intend to call him the minute I get to my office to tell him everything I know about Daphne.”
My message to John’s direct line at the police department went to voice mail. Next I called his cell phone. He picked up immediately.
“Hi, John, it’s me, Carrie. I just heard the news about Daphne on the radio.”
“Terrible business. I was going to contact you—soon as I finish talking to a person of interest.”
“Her ex-husband Bert, I suppose.”
“I wish. Herbert Lutz is in the wind. I’ve got an APB out for him.”
“Do you know about Daphne’s history?”
“I know Lutz was abusive.”
“Further back. Daphne’s originally from Clover Ridge.”
“She told you all this?”
“Actually, someone here in the library mentioned it.” That part was true. “I can’t seem to remember who.”
“Carrie, I’ll be over in fifteen minutes.”
John appeared at my office twelve minutes later. He kissed my cheek, pulled out the desk chair Trish and Susan shared, and sank into it. He rubbed his eyes then, elbows on knees, he hunched forward and looked pensively at me.
“Carrie, please tell me why, though you’ve been living in Clover Ridge less than a year, you somehow manage to have a connection with every homicide victim?”
I shrugged. “I get to meet a lot of people through my job in the library. That’s how I met Daphne.”
“And her history?”
“Her maiden name is Harper, not Marriott.”
“Is that so?” I could see the wheels spinning in his head.
“Someone recognized her when she first came into the library a few weeks ago and told me about her family’s history.”
“Which is?”
“Her father was an abusive drunk. He was murdered—stabbed with a knife, I believe. Daphne told the police she heard her brother Billy arguing with her father. Her brother was arrested for the crime. Later he was exonerated.”
I looked at John. He was rubbing his forehead and deep in thought. Finally, he met my gaze. “Chet Harper. I remember the miserable SOB. He was a mean drunk. Took his anger out on his family. I went to the apartment more than once when neighbors called.”
“What I don’t understand is why Daphne accused her brother of killing their father. The way I heard it, she and her brother were close. He protected her from their father as best he could.”
John grimaced. “That was the work of my predecessor. Good old Mitchell Flynn. He wanted to close the case ASAP and didn’t give a damn how he did it—as long as he could provide a viable suspect and help get his friend elected commissioner. Once Daphne said Billy finally gave their father a bit of his own treatment a week before the murder, Mitch worked on her until she admitted the two men might have argued that evening.”
“Even so, saying they argued the night of the murder is a far cry from committing a murder,” I pointed out.
“I know. Unfortunately, Billy Harper had a lousy lawyer. The jury saw him as a sullen young man who had had his share of beatings and was probably no better than his father. I’m glad he managed to prove he was innocent and was released from prison.”
“Where was Daphne’s mother when all this was going on?”
“Good question.” John nodded reflectively. “At the time her husband was being stabbed to death, Pattie was at work. Afterward, she just seemed to fall apart. It was as if she’d run out of whatever it was that had given her the strength to work two jobs. She left town a few days after Chet was murdered. As far as I know, no one’s heard from her since.”
“So she couldn’t have murdered her husband since she was at work.”
“We checked. Her alibi held up.” John shot me one of his penetrating looks. “Why all these questions, Carrie? Are you thinking Daphne’s murder is related to her father’s all those years ago?”
“I have no idea,” I admitted. “But why would anyone want to kill her?”
“You mean, besides her ex-husband?”
I shuddered. “I wouldn’t want to run into him in a dark alley. But if Billy didn’t kill his father, that’s an unsolved murder.”
“Don’t I know it. But getting back to the present, tell me how you got to know Daphne.”
“She came to the library because she was interested in doing a program. She told me she’d acquired psychic abilities after a near-death incident. We liked each other and went out for dinner, which was when she told me that the near-death experience was when her husband pushed her down the stairs.”
John scoffed. “Big surprise that she’d pick an abuser for her husband.”
“At least she had the good sense to end the marriage,” I said.
“Uh-huh, and a lot of good it did her. As you saw for yourself, her husband found out where she was living and came to hound her.”
“Last Tuesday evening he showed up at Daphne’s library program as well.”
“Interesting,” John commented.
“After you sent him away, I asked Daphne if she wanted me to stay with her, but she took off. Maybe if I’d—”
“Carrie, please don’t go there. You’re not to feel guilty. You couldn’t have prevented this.”
I released a deep sigh. “I suppose you’re right. I really liked Daphne. I felt that over time we’d become close friends.”
“Did she happen to mention why she’d moved back to Clover Ridge after all these years?”
I shook my head. “Since she’d never told me she was from here originally, I certainly couldn’t ask.”
John got to his feet. “Thanks for the info. Now I have another lead to check out.” He met my gaze. “Carrie, I know you liked Daphne and hate like hell what happened to her, but promise me you won’t go looking for her murderer.”
I fluttered my eyelids. “Would I do something like that?”
John wasn’t amused. “Let me hear you say it.”
“I won’t go looking for Daphne’s murderer.” Though I’ll find out what I can.
“Thank you.”
Evelyn appeared as soon as John closed the door behind him.
“Of course you’ll try to find the person who murdered Daphne. I told you that girl needed your help.”
“I should have gone home with her on Saturday after her ex showed up and practically assaulted her. But she brushed me off, and I was concerned about my mother—”
Evelyn exhaled a huff of exasperation. “Carrie, my dear. I didn’t mean you should have acted as Daphne’s bodyguard. But you do have a knack for finding overlooked facts and ferreting out secrets. And I’ll help you the best I can.”
“Do you think Daphne’s murder has something to do with her father’s all those years ago?”
“It wouldn’t hurt to look up old newspaper articles about Chet Harper’s murder. Maybe you’ll find a piece of information that will prove useful.”
“Did you know the family?”
Evelyn shook her head. “Not really. I knew the kids by sight and their mother Patricia just to say hello to. She seemed like a nice woman. Harried. Always in a hurry, probably because she worked two jobs. I suppose she had no time for any of life’s pleasures.”
“I think I’ll check out the old newspapers like you suggested. I’d love to go through old police reports, but I can’t see John letting me do that.”
Evelyn laughed. “Not after that warning he gave you. But cases that old might be available to the public—as long as they’re no longer active.”
“I’ll look into that.”
I quickly sat down at my computer, intent on doing some research. I clicked on the library’s database and started browsing through local newspapers dating back twenty-two years, a few years before Chet Harper was knifed to death. I wanted to see if there were reports of any fights he might have gotten into. I bit my lip when I came across an article about my father being arrested for a heist, though at that point he hadn’t lived in Clover Ridge for some time.
And then I found something. There was an article in the Clover Ridge Tribune, a weekly paper that was still going strong, from a few months before the murder. Chet Harper had been in a bar fight with a man named Lester Brown. The bar owner broke it up as the police came on the scene. No arrests were made.
Who on earth is Lester Brown? I’d never heard the name, though I knew a Priscilla Brown—a buxom woman in her sixties—who attended all the library’s musical events. I typed in her name, curious to see what came up.
“What are you working on so feverishly and intensely?”
I spun around. My part-time assistant Trish Templeton had entered the office.
“Hi, Trish. Did you hear that Daphne Marriott, the psychic who spoke here last week, has been murdered?”
“I did. Sorry about that. I know you liked her a lot. Is what you’re looking up related to her murder?”
My mouth fell open. “Am I that predictable?”
Trish laughed. “Carrie, I can read you as easily as one of my kids’ books. You want to find the person who killed your new friend.”
“I do. And I’m wondering if her death is related to her father’s murder here in Clover Ridge twenty years ago.”
Trish squinted at me. “What on earth are you talking about?”
I filled Trish in on Daphne’s background. Her eyes grew rounder with every fact I provided.
“Daphne Harper. I remember her. She was a few years ahead of me in school. A pretty, quiet girl. I’d heard that her father was a drunk and beat his wife and kids.”
My pulse quickened. Why hadn’t I thought to question Trish? She’d grown up in Clover Ridge and knew practically everyone in town.
“What do you remember about her father?”
Trish shrugged. “I never had a conversation with him, if that’s what you mean. But I think my dad might have known him—from work.”
I bit my lip as I thought of Roy Peters. The last time I’d asked him for information involving a murder, Roy had suffered a beating and landed in the hospital. “Do you trust me to ask him a few questions?”
Trish eyed me skeptically. “I suppose, since this goes back twenty years. I can’t imagine whatever happened then could have any connection to Daphne’s murder.”
“Of course Daphne’s killer might be her abusive ex-husband. He was bothering her on the Green last Saturday. I had to call over John Mathers to chase him off. But I just found an old article in the local paper about a fight her father had with a man named Lester Brown.”
“Lester Brown,” Trish repeated. “Call my dad. He’ll tell you all about Lester Brown.”