twenty-five

It was well past dinnertime before they left the police station. Francine thought the questioning had gone well. No one really suspected her or Charlotte of killing anyone, of course, but the police felt the women were somehow connected to the murderer, and they needed desperately to figure out what that connection was. After getting all the information they could, the police let them go.

Jud took them back to Friederich’s garage where Francine had left her car. He made a big production of warning the press, now numbering four cars, to stop following the ladies around.

“I thought you wanted them to follow us,” Charlotte said.

“I do. I’m making you irresistible by chasing them away. Just don’t do any interviews, okay?”

After Francine dropped Charlotte off and returned to her house, she noticed the gaggle of press had reassembled outside her house. She pulled the car into the garage and again lowered the door before any reporters could assail the breach.

Inside Jonathan was there to give her a hug. But she pulled away. “You knew about Larry’s secret basement. You played poker there.”

“It was never my idea to keep it from you women.”

“But you went along with it. And you kept it secret for a long time.”

“It’s not like we had high-stakes poker games. It was our version of your Bridge Club. We even had it on the same nights.”

“But why not tell us?”

“It was Larry’s idea, and we all just went along with it. He loved having secrets, and the staircase into the basement was a doozy.”

“Having secrets is coming back to haunt him.”

“While I agree with you it was wrong, don’t pretend the Bridge Club hasn’t been guilty of keeping secrets. I believe you told us you were having a slumber party, not going skinny-dipping.”

“The slumber party part was true. Or was going to be, until Friederich’s body fell out of the pool shed.”

“You know what I mean.”

She sighed. “More little secrets.”

“We’re all guilty.” He tried to hug her and this time she let him. “Are you okay? Tell me what happened.”

She told him about the events of the afternoon, the discovery of Kramer’s body, and the interrogation at the police station.

“You found another body?”

“Jud found it at the same time. We didn’t go looking for it. Don’t start!”

“You have been through a lot.”

She put her head on his chest. “I don’t want to sound cold, but the sight of Jeff Kramer’s dead body didn’t bother me nearly as much as Friederich’s did. I’m afraid I’m becoming immune.”

“How did Kramer look?”

“Like he was sleeping, except his face was white. Just like Friederich, there was no blood to indicate how he died. Charlotte thinks it was another blood choke.”

“What do you think?”

“I think someone needs to wrap this up quickly,” she said, thinking of Charlotte. “Did you learn anything at the lawyer’s?”

“Not much. I think Larry wants to tell me more information than the lawyer wants me to know. All I can figure is there was some kind of clause in the grandparents’ will that made Larry do what he did. Not that we know what Larry did, other than spend the money.”

“Alice told me she’s considering throwing him out of the house in the hopes it will make him talk.”

“The sooner he tells her what’s going on, the sooner it’ll be off his conscience.”

Francine’s stomach grumbled. “Are you hungry?”

“Famished. I haven’t had dinner. I kept hoping you’d be home soon. Want to go out?”

She shook her head. “The press.”

“I’ll get take out. Mexican? Chinese? Pizza?”

“Chinese sounds good.”

Jonathan left and Francine poured herself a glass of white wine. It wouldn’t go well with the Chinese food but she’d be done with it before Jonathan got back. She started a light jazz playlist on the stereo and sat back in the recliner. Her cell phone rang.

It was Joy. “Good news. Marcy was able to cancel The View. They decided if you didn’t want them, they didn’t want you. But I don’t think Marcy’s taking your no very well. I think she’s got something else in the works. In the meantime, the Food Network is warming up to the idea of using Mary Ruth.”

“That should make her happy.”

“I don’t know if she knows yet. And I saw the news report about you and Charlotte and Jud finding another body.”

“Already?” But then, the reporters had been right outside Larry’s building and likely saw the medics pull the body out of the house. “I haven’t seen it. I just got home.”

“You can probably find it on one of the stations’ websites. Or catch it at eleven. You might be the lead off story at eleven.”

“I might use the DVR. But I think I’ll just go to bed early and read about it in tomorrow’s paper.”

“Do you know who the dead person was?”

Francine decided it was best to toe the police’s party line and not speculate. “I can’t say.”

“Do you think the same person killed him who killed Friederich?”

“I think it’s likely. But I don’t think it’s Larry.”

“I should hope not. Have you talked to Alice this afternoon?”

Francine didn’t want to recount the trip she and Jonathan had made to Alice and Larry’s house. “I’ve been kind of busy this afternoon …”

“Of course. I’ll give her a call. I just wanted you to know about The View, so you wouldn’t worry.”

Oh, I wasn’t worried, Francine wanted to say, I was never going to do it. Instead, she said, “I’m glad you’re getting what you want, Joy. But it may not be what the rest of us want. I’ll see you tomorrow for the luncheon.”

They hung up. Francine leaned back and tried to make sense of what was going on. Friederich had been killed, likely Saturday night. The killer had used a choke hold that kept the blood from reaching his brain. He then stored Friederich’s body in Alice and Larry’s pool shed. Why? In all likelihood, because it was close. The women had their skinny-dipping party the next night. Mary Ruth sniffed out the odor and traced it to the pool shed where they found the body.

They now knew Friederich had stopped paying Larry rent money. Larry had threatened to throw Friederich out, but never did. Why? Did he have a big heart or did Friederich have something Larry wanted? Could he have coveted the assets of the race car business? Friederich may have been working on some kind of technology for midget cars that could be valuable. It would seem so, since Jake Maehler had come back to Brownsburg in hopes Friederich could return him to his winning ways.

But how did the death of Jeff Kramer fit in? The same day Friederich was killed, Larry secretly returned from Las Vegas to meet someone whose name he wouldn’t reveal, to tell him/her private information. Alice had become suspicious of Larry before he left and hired a detective to follow him, but Larry’s sudden return surprised the detective and he was unable to catch the same flight. So the detective recruited Kramer as a last-minute replacement to follow Larry. But Kramer disappeared, only to be found dead three days later on a couch in the basement of the very building Friederich was renting from Larry. Kramer’s time of death was unknown too. It’s possible he was kept in cold storage until he was dumped on Larry’s couch. He may have been killed in the same manner as Friederich. It may even have been around the same time as Friederich.

If Larry wasn’t guilty—and he would have to be inordinately stupid to have planted evidence against himself—then who was guilty? Was it Jake Maehler, worried that Friederich had sabotaged his car in an earlier race? Although they had publicly made up, was Jake still concerned enough to just kill Friederich and take the technology for himself ? Would Jake have done that to his former mentor? If he thought Friederich wasn’t being loyal to him and was using his skills to help another driver, maybe. Kramer had authored articles about the Maehler/Friederich row. Perhaps Kramer had figured it out, knew for certain Jake had been betrayed, and that forced Jake’s hand. Jake needed to kill Kramer in addition to Friederich to keep it all quiet.

But how did Larry’s return from Las Vegas fit into that scenario? Kramer was alive to take the call to follow Larry, but no one knew what happened to him after that until he showed up dead. Jake didn’t have an alibi for the time of Friederich’s death, and neither did Larry. Maybe when the coroner decided the time of Kramer’s death, either Larry or Jake would have an alibi for that and it would eliminate one of them as a suspect. Not that Francine seriously considered Larry a suspect. So was it Jake, the only name left, or was it an unknown? It was still possible the two deaths weren’t connected, but no one, including Jud, thought it was likely.

Francine’s cell phone rang again. Charlotte. She thought about sending it to voicemail because she wasn’t finished ruminating. But the vision she’d had earlier flashed back again. Charlotte was her best friend. She needed to figure this out. Truth be told, Francine believed that Charlotte’s free-thinking ways would allow her to leap to the conclusion before any of the other women would get there, including her. Plus, there was still that other item: the Bridge Club members and their Sixty Lists. Despite the horror of two deaths, some kind of magic was at play here she couldn’t define. Even Alice, whose life was being affected most negatively by what was going on, seemed to be finding a strength no one knew she had. Francine couldn’t say why, but she felt that if Charlotte could figure out who was guilty, they all might come through this ordeal with rare gifts no one could have imagined just days ago when everyone was afraid to go skinny-dipping and Friederich’s body dropped out of the pool shed.

Francine answered the cell.

“That took long enough,” Charlotte said. “Do I even want to know what you and Jonathan were doing? I’ve read mysteries where murder incites conjugal passion and people do all kinds of crazy—”

She didn’t need her to finish the thought. “Jonathan has gone to get Chinese takeout. I was … busy. What do you need?”

“Your help. I’m sitting here looking at the pages of the magazines I got out of Friederich’s bathroom. You know, the ones with the corners turned down? I know there must be a pattern, but I don’t see it yet.”

“But when we were at your house with Jud, you said you gave those magazines back to him.”

“Please, Francine, I wouldn’t be a decent sleuth if I hadn’t already used my computer printer to copy those pages when I got home, just in case. The current issue I had to track down because it had too many pages I needed to copy, but fortunately they had it at the Barnes & Noble in Plainfield.”

“You devil, Charlotte.”

“So, can you come over?”

Francine thought a moment. She looked at the time. But more than that, she thought about her vision. “Why don’t you let your mind work on that overnight, and we can talk in the morning? By the time Jonathan and I finish eating, all I’ll want to do is go to bed. I’ll call you.”

“Okay.” Charlotte said good night and hung up.

She heard Jonathan pull the truck into the garage. She got up from the recliner and met him in the kitchen.

He put the bag on the counter. “General Tso’s chicken and beef with broccoli. I got fried rice. What are you smiling about?”

“I don’t know. I feel bad about Jeff Kramer, Friederich Guttmann, and Alice and Larry, but I have this irrational feeling that everything’s going to be all right.”

“That’s one of the things I love about you. Even in the midst of chaos, you refuse to give up hope.” He kissed her on the lips. “Let’s eat. If I knew how to use chopsticks better, some of this might not have made it home. As it is, there’s a deficit of fortune cookies.”

Francine looked in the bag and found one cookie still wrapped. Where there might have been others, she found crumpled cellophane and crumbs. Then she spotted a fortune at the bottom of the bag. She pulled it out. “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”

Jonathan put serving spoons in the takeout containers. “I guess if you knew who your enemies were, that would be sound advice.”

“With all that’s happened, I can’t help but feel they’re already closer than we know.” And for just a moment, Francine’s bright vision of hope flickered.