Chapter 50
After the class Annie approached Cora. “Hey, how’s it going with the murder case?”
Cora filled her in.
“Interesting,” Annie said. “Do you have a minute?”
“Sure, why?”
“Let’s go research Jo,” Annie said, pulling her by the arm.
The two of them walked up the stairs to Annie and Vera’s room.
“I found her so odd,” Annie said. “The way she was mooning over her kids.”
“Funny, I didn’t think that at all. I felt sorry for her. I figured she was genuine,” Cora said.
Annie opened her laptop. “We all miss our kids,” she said. “We just don’t go around wearing it on our sleeves. And most of us realize how important it is to get away from them from time to time.” She switched the computer on, and a blue screen came up. Annie’s fingers glided over the keys, and within minutes, she pulled up some information about Jo.
“President of the PTA, who’d have thought?” Annie said wryly.
“What are you two doing in here?” Vera asked, walking into the room.
“Looking up Jo.”
“She certainly was an oddball,” Vera said.
“She has an arrest record,” Annie said with excitement.
“What?” Cora said, leaning in closer.
“I don’t believe it!” Vera said.
“Assault and battery,” Annie said. “Her husband charged her with it. Well, ex-husband it looks like.”
“Assault and battery? What does that mean?” Vera said.
“It means she tried to beat someone up,” Annie said. “It looks like it was her ex-husband.”
Cora immediately thought of Jane and how, on paper, she looked like an attempted murderess, when, in reality, she was defending herself. “Let’s not get carried away. Who knows what happened there.”
“That’s right,” Vera said. “She may have been pushed, and she pushed back harder.”
“Or she could be a domestic abuser,” Annie said.
“But she’s a woman,” Vera replied.
“Women can be abusers, too,” Annie said.
“How? I don’t get that, at all. Men are stronger than women,” Vera said.
“Yes, but some refuse to fight back,” Cora said. Those cases tugged at her heart. She remembered them. Men who had been abused. Could Jo be an abuser? On the face of things, she didn’t fit the profile. Cora had been around long enough to know how easily people were fooled. Often abusers were the nicest and friendliest folks to everybody but their spouse.
“I find it hard to believe,” Vera said. “I mean, if you say it happens, okay, but how odd.”
“Odd and sad,” Annie said. “But not any sadder than the other way around.”
“No,” Vera agreed.
“So we know she has a problem with violence of some sort,” Annie said. “Could she be the killer of Stan Herald?”
“Well, what we know is that Zee and Roni are not the killers,” Cora said. “That’s all we are confident about. And now we know that Jo has attacked her ex-husband, whether it was in self-defense or not.”
“Also, she seems to be on the run, right?” Annie asked.
“For all the world she looks guilty,” Vera said.
“Fighting is one thing, but killing is another thing. I won’t believe it until someone has the proof,” Cora said. No, she wouldn’t believe the doe-eye woman, who missed her children and had been staying in Kildare House, was a killer.
“Always a good policy,” Annie said.
“Oh! I just thought of something! What if she is a killer and is psycho or something? What if she comes back here?” Vera said.
Cora’s heart started racing.
“You and that imagination,” Annie said. “You should write novels.”
“Oh no, that would be so boring,” she said. “I’d have to sit in front of that same computer for hours and hours like you do.”
“No way around that if you’re a writer,” Annie said, trying to lighten the mood, Cora supposed.
Vera’s words rolled around in Cora’s mind and lodged there. While it was best to leave the chase to the police, it wouldn’t hurt for them to be extra careful, locking the doors at night, even the guests’ doors, which sucked. This was supposed to be a retreat, a relaxing break for mothers who had spent the entire summers being moms on overdrive.
But still, she wouldn’t want to see them harmed. If Jo was disturbed, she might come back to Kildare House. Unlikely. Cora shivered. But then again, none of what was going on was likely at all. Stan Herald was murdered. Roni figured she killed him when she shoved him and he fell back, hitting his head. But somehow, he ended up at the theater, where someone did kill him. Where Zee found him and tried to yank the blade out from his chest. There was a link missing.
“I think we need to figure out what happened,” Vera said.
“Maybe,” Annie said. “Or maybe we should let this one go. After all, we’re supposed to be relaxing and crafting, right?” She glanced at Cora.
“Oh, c’mon. What could be more fun than tracking down a killer?” Vera said, grinning.
“We don’t have a stake here,” Annie said after a minute. “I don’t think it’s a good idea. The police are on it, right?”
“Yes,” Cora said, but she was thinking about how the police had muddled things up so badly. Cora wondered if there would ever be justice in this case.
“You look as if... are you okay?” Vera said.
Cora bit her lip. “I am. Sorry, my mind is racing. I’m just wondering what we are missing. How did Stanley get from point A to B, bloody and with his head throbbing?”
“Was Jo in town then?” Annie asked.
“If she was, she hadn’t checked in here. The only two people who were here were Lena and Roni.”
“They seem pretty tight,” Vera said.
“They just met,” Cora said. “Hit it off immediately.”
“It seems like they’ve known each other for years,” Annie said.
“Sometimes friendships happen like that, right?”
“Not for me,” Annie said, and went back to her computer.