Chapter 10

Enid Carmichael watched Julia Blackwell and the child walk down the front steps and out of sight. That boy must have been upstairs for his practice visit with Frances Noonan and Alma Gordon. She hadn’t seen them come in!

Enid grabbed Sarah’s arm and led her to the elevator. “We’ll find out all about the visit. See if they learned more about the killing.” Sarah tried to disengage her arm, none too discreetly, so Mrs. Carmichael held firm. The girl might be able to remember more details from the resort. Mrs. Carmichael knew a sugar coating when she heard one. She wanted the juicy details, not just the bare minimum. Why didn’t Sarah just tell them everything?

Mrs. Carmichael paused before she knocked on Mrs. Noonan’s door. Her good hearing could pick out Fog Ladies voices from inside. Frances Noonan and Alma Gordon, even Olivia Honeycut. What were they all doing here?

“I wanted Julia to meet Mrs. Honeycut, in case she is needed to watch Ben,” Frances Noonan said, holding the door open wide. Sarah slid in ahead of her, but Enid made sure to get to the living room first. Mrs. Noonan had a very comfortable wing back chair, and Enid needed a comfortable chair much more than young Sarah.

“You didn’t call me,” Mrs. Carmichael said. “I had to go to the lobby to meet her myself.”

“I thought you made it clear you didn’t do babysitting,” Olivia Honeycut rasped.

“Hmph.” Mrs. Carmichael searched around for something to eat. Usually Mrs. Noonan had a tart or a pie or cookies at least. An empty plate held crumbs, nothing more. The tot must have eaten everything.

“Tea?” Frances Noonan asked.

It was no use asking for coffee, especially with Sarah here. Frances didn’t drink coffee. More importantly, Sarah thought Enid had given it up due to severe heartburn and palpitations. Well, she had given it up. She’d given up those luscious Starbucks lattes. They were too expensive anyway. And Enid’s own drip coffee didn’t count. She’d had her allotted cups this morning, and Sarah need not know anything about it.

“No, thank you, Frances. No tea.” Mrs. Carmichael relaxed back. She would like a chair like this. She sniffed, “Even if I don’t babysit, I still would have liked to meet her. So, tell me everything.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Noonan, lowering herself to the edge of her flowery couch, “things do sound dreadful.”

“The man is guilty, that’s all there is to it.” Olivia Honeycut slid over to make room for Mrs. Noonan.

“Oh, do tell, do tell.” Mrs. Carmichael clapped her hands in excitement. How had she missed this?

“Olivia, we don’t know anything. You’re jumping to conclusions,” said Frances Noonan.

“We know he lied about where he was,” said Olivia Honeycut. “And that he has no alibi. If Harriet Flynn were here, she’d say his goose was cooked.”

“Where is Harriet?” Mrs. Carmichael peered around.

“She’s not much into babysitting.” Alma Gordon spoke from the corner, where she sat with that baby. He dropped clothes pins into a glass milk bottle. Clank, clank, clank. How did Alma stand it? If she had a plastic milk jug like the rest of the world, the noise wouldn’t be so jarring.

Mrs. Noonan’s cat, Camouflage, sat near them, seemingly oblivious to the obnoxious noise. Mrs. Carmichael’s dog would never be so placid. That cacophony would rile him up, deservedly so.

Mrs. Carmichael turned back to her ally, Olivia Honeycut. “Well, tell me more. If he wasn’t at yoga, which would be a ridiculous place to be anyway, where was he? And why did he pretend to be at yoga? Couldn’t he think up a more manly place to be? Couldn’t he say he was at a bar? Shooting pool? Doing things men do?”

“I’m so sorry you missed the discussion with his mother so you could have asked her yourself,” Mrs. Noonan said. Mrs. Carmichael saw her wink at Sarah, who stood by the couch.

“I’m sorry too,” Mrs. Carmichael huffed. “Wasn’t invited. So, did you pin her down?”

“Gracious, Enid, you’d think we were the police. We are trying to help, remember?” said Mrs. Noonan.

“If he’s guilty, he’s guilty. Not much we can do about that. Just help out with the boy, I guess,” said Mrs. Honeycut.

Sarah spoke quietly. “Is it pretty clear, then? Does it look like he did it? What did his mother say?”

“Well, to start with, Paul is pretty distraught,” Mrs. Noonan said. “His wife is dead and he found her. He says the screams the neighbor heard were his. The scene was gruesome.”

Enid Carmichael was beside herself. “Oh, I can’t believe I missed this. You ladies should have called me!”

“Shh, Enid, please,” Alma Gordon said.

Mrs. Noonan continued. “The police can only determine the time of death to within an hour or two, partly because of the hot weather that night. Apparently they use a drop in body temperature to pinpoint things, but in this case it was not helpful. So they look at rigor mortis and a discoloration of the skin, but they can’t say for certain. So the police think Andrea was alive and screaming when the nine-one-one call was placed, and that Paul didn’t have time to set the scene up the way he wanted or to get his alibi in place.”

“Yep. That sounds about right,” said Mrs. Carmichael. Frances Noonan was deluding herself if she believed this guy was innocent. “That’s why he has that hokey yoga alibi.”

“That’s what the police think,” said Mrs. Noonan. “But, of course, Paul says she was dead when he got home. He told the police he was at yoga because that’s what he told his wife. He said he was so shocked he couldn’t think, and when they asked him where he was, he just told them what he had told her. He didn’t know they weren’t having a class that night.”

“Why would he ever say yoga? Especially if he didn’t go?” Mrs. Carmichael asked.

“Usually he did go. About half the time, at least. But sometimes he didn’t, and that’s what happened that night.”

“So where does he say he was really?” Mrs. Carmichael asked.

“In the park,” Mrs. Honeycut said. “He says he was sitting in the park and no one saw him.”

“Oh, come on. In the park? Is he kidding?” Mrs. Carmichael looked around for confirmation.

“He wasn’t just sitting in the park,” said Mrs. Noonan. “He was writing.”

“Writing?” said Sarah. “He was writing in the park?”

“Yes. He told his mother that he didn’t like to write at home because it made his wife mad. So instead of going to yoga, which he’d been doing every Tuesday night for years, he would go to the park and write. Especially now that it’s summer.”

“That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard,” said Mrs. Carmichael. “What a lame-brain alibi. He said he was sitting in a park in San Francisco on a sweltering evening? Writing? Couldn’t he come up with anything better?”

“Apparently not. And that’s the problem,” said Mrs. Noonan.

Mrs. Honeycut added, “Either he did it and he can’t think fast enough or he didn’t do it and no one’s going to believe him.”

“Wait a minute,” said Sarah. “How does he know no one saw him? Someone might have seen him.”

“Nope. He told his mother that he can’t think when it’s noisy, so he finds the most deserted area of the park and sits there. He said he’s never seen anyone,” said Mrs. Gordon.

“What a crock of a story,” said Mrs. Carmichael. “He did it. You’d think he could have thought up something better for a million dollars.”

“That’s another thing,” Mrs. Honeycut said. “He claims he didn’t even know his wife had the insurance policy. Said it was through her work and she never told him. Nonetheless, he’s the beneficiary.”

“Who else would have done it? Is there anyone else on the policy?” asked Sarah.

“Just the boy. Ben,” said Mrs. Gordon.

“No one else could have done it,” said Mrs. Honeycut. “The door wasn’t forced. There was no sign of a struggle. It’s not like she opened the door to a stranger at night.”

“You heard what Julia said. Paul doesn’t lock the door when he goes to yoga. He said the lock makes a loud noise when it turns, so they keep the door unlocked so he won’t wake his wife in case she goes to sleep before he comes back,” said Mrs. Noonan. “It sounds preposterous, I know. But that’s what he told his mother.”

“Oh, this gets better all the time,” said Mrs. Carmichael. “He left his wife and child in their unlocked home and went to sit in a park at night, and when he came back, he found his wife in a bloody pool in the kitchen. Is that correct?”

“I know it doesn’t look good,” said Frances Noonan. “But remember, I know his family. You’ve all met Julia. Sarah, you met the man. He couldn’t have done this, could he?”

Enid Carmichael watched Sarah intently. She was hesitating, that was for sure.

“You must have formed some type of opinion,” Olivia Honeycut persisted, “some judgment of the situation.”

Still the girl didn’t answer. How could she not have an opinion?

“I only met them briefly,” she finally said. “I honestly believe that man loved his wife and was trying desperately to change her mind about leaving.”

“Desperate.” Mrs. Carmichael latched on to the word. “What would a desperate man do?”

The Fog Ladies all turned to Sarah.

“I don’t know,” Sarah said. “I just don’t know.”