twenty-two

Francine tilted her head to one side. “Why would he do that?”

“Why, indeed?” Joy asked, mocking herself in a conspiratorial manner. “Coincidence?”

Charlotte closed the refrigerator door. “Are you drawing a link between Camille’s murder and his meeting with the Council members, or are you saying we need to find out what they talked about?”

“Either is good,” she answered. “If his meetings caused the murder to occur, then we need to find out what was said so we can trace it back and figure out who did it. But in any event, it’s kind of suspicious, isn’t it? As Francine asked, why was he meeting with them in the first place?”

The women mulled that over in their minds. Charlotte spoke first. “Where did you get this information?”

“It started when I stopped at Hilligoss Bakery this morning to pick up some donuts to take to a meeting. You know how long the line can get? Well, I was at the back of the line and got into a discussion with Chief Cannon. Imagine that, cops and donuts. I don’t like to stereotype, but it was classic. Of course, I didn’t bring it up.”

“I hope you brought up something about Camille’s death,” Charlotte said. She sounded anxious for Joy to get on with the story.

“Naturally. I tried to make it seem like I was interviewing him off the record, but he wasn’t buying. In fact, he wasn’t saying much of anything. He kept looking at his wife to bail him out.”

“His wife was there?” Francine wasn’t sure she’d ever seen the chief’s wife before. She tried to remember if he’d been accompanied at the benefit. It didn’t seem like it, but then she hadn’t remembered seeing him at all until after Camille had been stabbed.

Joy nodded. “I think it was his wife. Although now that you mention it, I didn’t look to see if he was wearing a ring. I guess it could have been someone on his staff. He bought three dozen donuts and she helped him carry them out to a police vehicle. Anyway, I kept chattering away, figuring sooner or later one of them would break. The line was pretty long. Finally, the chief excused himself and went to use the restroom. She said to me, kind of slyly, ‘Why don’t you ask Eric Dehoney why he met with each of the Council members individually before the benefit? No one seems to be interested in that.’ I was pretty shocked.”

“I bet she wasn’t with the Police Department,” Charlotte said. “They wouldn’t be so free with information like that.”

“I asked her where this had happened. She laid it all out for me. She’d seen Eric meet with Fuzzy Carter at Hilligoss, then with Janet Turpen at Bob Evans, Dick Raden at Flap Jacks, and finally Vince Papadopoulos at Starbucks. Then she turned and faced front—she was ahead of me in line. Chief Cannon came back, and they ignored me. But I hung in there until they picked up their donuts and left, hoping they might say something. They didn’t.”

“From a detective’s standpoint, I would say this woman eats breakfast out too often,” Charlotte said. “But it could be a lucky break if it’s true.”

“When I was buying a couple of their chocolate iced yeast donuts for myself,” she held up the bag for evidence, “I asked the guy at the counter about Fuzzy meeting with Eric Dehoney there, and he said it was true. He knew who Fuzzy Carter was—Fuzzy is apparently a regular—but he hadn’t known who Eric was until after the benefit and the story hit the media. Mind if I have some tea? I stopped at all three of the other places and talked to everyone until I had confirmation.”

Charlotte put the kettle on. “You don’t have to eat the donuts now. It’s lunchtime. I’m making grilled cheese. Want one?”

“Are you kidding? I’ve been dying to eat these all morning. There’s nothing like an old-fashioned Hilligoss yeast donut.”

“Agreed,” Charlotte said. “Say what you will about those hoity-toity artisan donuts with strange ingredients they sell in Indianapolis at Fountain Square, Hilligoss is the best. But what did you learn, other than he met with them?”

Joy extracted a donut from the bag. It had been fried to a perfect golden brown and sported a thick ring of chocolate icing around the top. Joy daintily held it between her index finger and thumb and took a small bite. She practically glowed when she chewed and swallowed it. She licked the sugar off her lips. “Sorry I didn’t bring any to share.”

“Just get to the point,” Charlotte said. Francine noticed Charlotte was studiously avoiding Joy eating the donut by buttering pieces of bread for the sandwiches.

“Here’s the thing,” Joy said. “Neither the waitress at Flap Jack’s nor the waitress at Bob Evans could recall any exact words, but they both were under the impression it was about money.”

“Were any of them upset? Was it like they were arguing about money, or was it more like a contract negotiation?” Francine remembered Eric saying Camille had brought him into the business as a partner. She knew, too, that all of them had some kind of financial connection to Camille’s firm, Jacqueline Consulting.

“The waitress at Flap Jack’s remembered Dick Raden turned purple several times, but that could have been from the cream cheese–stuffed French toast slathered in maple syrup he ate with a double helping of sausage patties. She may not have remembered the conversation, but she remembered what he ordered. She said she couldn’t watch him eat it.”

Francine made a gulping noise. No wonder the man had a heart attack. She tried to rid herself of the image, now burned in her head, of Tricky Dicky eating the French toast breakfast. “Did you find out anything about anyone else?” She hoped none of the other reports came with graphic scenes.

“The baristas at Starbucks said Vince Papadopoulos was very nervous,” Joy answered. “And they said he rarely came in.”

“What about Eric?”

“He’s a regular, but he usually comes in late, right before they leave at ten thirty, they said. But that day he came in early. And he was all dressed up, compared to normal.”

Charlotte had finished assembly of the sandwiches and was now pressing them into a panini maker. “So let’s see,” she said, leaning on the handle. “Eric got up early four mornings in a row for meetings with his aunt’s supporters and detractors on the Council. He dressed up for the appointment with Vince and made him nervous. He gave Tricky Dicky a case of indigestion. Or he accelerated it, at any rate. No word on his effect on Janet or Fuzzy?”

“They seemed more cordial, I guess.” The teakettle whistled. Joy headed for it. “I’m freezing. A cup of tea will warm me up.”

“I’ve got something that will warm you up even better,” Charlotte said. “How about a little Jack Daniels in that tea?”

Francine was aghast. “What is it with you and hard liquor all of a sudden? You get a taste of Prunier cognac and suddenly you’re buying brand-name liquor?”

Joy perked up. “She has Prunier?”

“You want some?” Charlotte asked. “I could put it in your tea or give you a snort.”

“Where did you get it? I’m not sure where I would buy Prunier around here,” Joy said.

“Camille gave it to her,” Francine answered.

A light bulb went on in Charlotte’s head. “Are you saying it’s not readily available?”

Joy poured water into a teacup and added a tea bag. “I’m fairly sure it’s not.”

“Then, if we can find out where Camille bought it,” Charlotte continued, “we might have an idea of when she got it and why.”

Francine asked Charlotte, “How will that change anything?”

“It won’t, but it’s a good bet she didn’t buy it for me.”

“Maybe she regifted it,” Joy suggested. “Although, who would regift Prunier?”

Francine shook her head. “That’s the least of our mysteries.”

“What’s the most of our mysteries?” Joy asked.

Charlotte reached for the pile of photos, which were still sitting on the table from earlier in the day. “The next order of business, in my mind, is to get back out to this cemetery and find out why Camille had so many photos of it.” She passed the photos to Joy, who had moved back to the table with her tea.

Joy sorted through the photos. “Where is this cemetery?”

Charlotte and Francine caught her up on the morning’s events.

“Tricky Dicky had a heart attack?” Joy said, aghast. “Did you cause it?”

“I would like to say he had a Big Mac attack,” Charlotte cracked, “but it was actually White Castle. A whole sackful.” She told Joy about his indigestion comment.

“Between that and the cream cheese–stuffed French toast he had at Flap Jack’s, no wonder he had a heart attack. He must eat like that all the time. Is he okay?”

“Francine gave him CPR. He was alive when the paramedics showed up.”

“I’m pretty sure he’ll be okay,” Francine said. “But they’ll likely have to do surgery to bypass his blocked arteries.”

“I guess we can scratch another person from the list of funeral attendees tomorrow.”

Charlotte finished making the grilled cheese sandwiches. She served one to Francine and the other to herself.

“I’d like to go with you to the cemetery,” Joy said, sipping the hot tea. “It’s strange, isn’t it, how little we really knew about Camille? And she’s lived here for a long, long time.”

Charlotte took a seat. “She was a guarded person for so many years. I think it wasn’t until Eric moved in and started high school that she had to connect with people.”

Francine agreed in part. “She was starting to come out of her shell a little before that. According to the clippings I was working on for the funeral, she had already helped the police nail that child pornographer right before Eric came to live with her. But there’s no denying it all seemed to happen about the same time.”

Charlotte bit into her grilled cheese and had to deal with a long gooey string that wouldn’t let go from the sandwich. Francine took a smaller bite. She thought about Eric’s influence on Camille.

When Camille’s sister and her husband died—Francine couldn’t recall either name off the top of her head—Eric had come to live with Camille. The neighborhood knew about it because it was a fairly close-knit group, but Camille hadn’t participated much. So it was a surprise when she’d shown up at the freshman football games to cheer for her nephew. In fact, if Jonathan hadn’t reminded Francine who Camille was, she might have introduced herself, certain they’d never met.

Camille had been slow to get involved, but she’d done so. She proved to be adept at wrangling donations for the athletic booster club, a quality that everyone appreciated since only a few people seemed to like doing it. Once she was complimented on her handling of those duties, she began to be a better neighbor all around. She and Eric participated in the homeowners’ association block party, where he won the pie eating contest, out-eating even Francine’s sons—which was saying something, considering Eric was a good twenty pounds lighter. She’d also begun to take better care of her house, which lead to an escalation in curb-appeal wars, which lead Charlotte to the installation of the ill-fated irrigation system, which had started the cold war between them.

When Eric returned to Texas to attend Southern Methodist University, Camille focused her energies on the political system. She never outright accused anyone of wrongdoing, but she sat through each Council meeting like Carl Bernstein on the hunt in All the President’s Men. Everyone knew there was animosity between her, Vince Papadopoulos, and Tricky Dicky Raden, but no one knew where it came from or why it built. The next election cycle she ran for a seat on the Council from her district, defeating the incumbent in the Republican primary. Though Fuzzy and Dick backed the independent candidate they set up to run against her, she still won the general election. The perception had been that there was cronyism on the Council and that the good ole boys’ network was in charge. Under Camille’s opposition platform, she began outing some shady dealings.

The next election cycle, she’d been elected President of the Council. She was the first woman on the Council and its first woman President. She and her majority party installed a new town manager and cleaned up many undesirable business practices. Vince and Dick, amazingly, remained on the Council, having been re-elected with the solid support of the ole boys’ network and those who’d been around a long time and wanted Brownsburg to go backwards. At least, that’s the way Francine regarded it.

Brownsburg was a growing, influential suburb of Indianapolis, no longer a sleepy little town on the outskirts. To try to stick one’s head in the sand and turn back the clock to when it was a quaint village was not only impossible, but undesirable for the thousands of people who’d moved in for the excellent school system and quality of life. They weren’t going away no matter how hard Vince and Dick and the ole boys wanted it. That network was no longer running the town.

So yes, Camille had changed because of Eric, and she’d led the charge that changed Brownsburg. But how close was Eric to that change? He’d only been back a year, and though he was developing some notoriety because of his growing popularity as a stripper with the Royal Buckingham revue, that wasn’t affecting anything in the political realm where Camille was celebrated by most but feared and hated by a few. So what had he been doing talking to the other Council members? Mending fences or making deals?

“The cemetery photos are strange items to find in this pile of pictures,” Joy admitted. “For the most part they’re all about Eric and Camille, except these. Camille isn’t related to the Carters, is she?”

“Not that I know of,” Charlotte said. “Francine, you saw the family tree in the Ledfelter Bible, didn’t you tell me that? Did you see any Carters in there?”

“I didn’t study it looking for them, but I don’t remember that off hand. Carter is a common name, though.”

Charlotte got up from the table carrying her empty plate. “I like the grilled cheese made with part Asiago. It has a nice flavor. And grilling them panini-style makes them a little more special.”

“You licked your fingers clean enough you probably don’t need to wash your hands,” Joy said.

Charlotte walked over and snagged Joy’s empty donut sack. “I don’t see any traces of chocolate donut icing on your hands, either, dearie.” She tossed the sack in the garbage and placed the plate in the sink. “Let’s get to the cemetery. It’s not going to get much warmer than it is now, and I’d rather do this in the middle of the day, anyway.”

“I’ll drive if we can take your car, Charlotte,” Francine offered. “We drove yours back here from my house.”

Charlotte led them to the closet to get their coats. She grabbed her orange down coat, which might have been her way of saying she didn’t want to blend in with the dead in the cemetery. Charlotte was sensitive about getting older.

Francine helped Charlotte get her arms into the coat. Its cuffs were tight and could be difficult. “Did anyone grab the photos?”

“Good idea,” Charlotte said, zipping up the front of her coat. “We need them to check for the grave that’s in the center of this photograph, even if it’s taken from far away.”

Joy wrapped the wool scarf around her neck before putting on her coat. “I’ll get them.”

The thought of going to the cemetery again made Francine pause. “Let’s just hope the cemetery sheds some light on this case,” she said. “I keep going over and over what we know, and there are too many pieces missing.”