“Are you going to tell the sheriff?” She attempted to dam the tears with a crumpled Kleenex. “He might think I came here to blackmail Lance. I know that’s a crime, maybe even a serious one.”
Blackmail serious? Gee, do you think? I patted her on the back. “Go to bed, Krystal. It’s been a long day, and you have to be at work early.”
“H-h-how am I supposed to sleep, knowing the two of you hold my fate in the palm of your h-hand?” she blubbered.
Yikes! What melodrama. Krystal induced flashbacks of damsels in distress being tied to the railroad tracks by a mustachioed villain. But I wasn’t moved. Krystal was a player, manipulating the situation to her advantage-quite an accomplished little actress. She’s the type who’ll always land on her own two feet. “Take Tang with you,” I told her. “I spotted him prowling around the deck a little while ago.”
Bill and I watched as Krystal, sniffling theatrically, collected her shopping bags and headed toward the guest room.
Bill turned to me when the door clicked shut. “Well…? What do you think? Is she telling the truth or not?”
I rested my head back against the sofa. Krystal wasn’t the only one tired. It had been a long day for me, too. “I believe Krystal’s naive, even devious, but I don’t think she’s a murderer. If so, why didn’t she leave town after Lance was shot?”
Bill chuckled softly. “The fact that her car broke down might have something to do with it?”
I smiled wryly. “Leave it to you to find a gaping hole in my logic.” My logic, or lack thereof, seemed to have sprung a lot of leaks these days. Maybe it was time to hang up my detective shingle.
“Glad to be of service.”
I tried again to make sense of the night’s revelations. “Krystal’s pregnant, and Lance possibly is her baby’s daddy. Call me sentimental, but I don’t think she’d kill the father of her unborn child. Blackmail probably, murder no. And”-I sat up straighter-“if she intended to kill him, she’d have done it after he gave her the ten grand-not before.”
Bill gave me a smile warm with approval… and affection? “Has anyone ever told you, my dear Kate, that you’d make a fine detective?”
“Certainly not Sheriff Wiggins,” I said with a tired laugh. “That man might’ve told me many things, but that definitely didn’t make his top ten.”
Chapter 37
The previous night’s dress rehearsal had been a disaster of epic proportion. Think Titanic; think Hindenburg; think Katrina. Think opening night and sell-out crowd. Translated, think laughingstock. There’s good news and bad news about appearing before an auditorium filled with friends and acquaintances, folks you run into in the doctor’s office, library, post office, and the Piggly Wiggly. The good news is they’ll laugh at the jokes and applaud until their hands sting. The bad news is they’ll never let you forget if you make a fool of yourself.
Why had rehearsal been so terrible? Take Gloria, for instance, who was playing the secretary. She kept suffering “senior moments” and exiting stage left instead of stage right and stage right instead of stage left. For my big scene, I accidentally brandished a poker instead of a feather duster and nearly gave Gus a concussion. He was very gracious, considering the amount of bloodshed. He insisted he didn’t need stitches, but I’m not so sure. And last, but by no means least, Bernie kept missing his cues and muffing his lines while his buddy, Mort, snickered backstage. Bernie lost his cool, not that he has much to begin with, and threatened to punch Mort’s lights out. Bill had to physically interject himself between the pair to keep them from coming to blows. Things finally settled down after Eric Olsen reached for his handcuffs and threatened to arrest the two of them.
Krystal Gold, the former Miss Marty Maraschino, was the only one to remain unruffled. She assured us a bad dress rehearsal was a good sign, but I don’t think anyone believed her. Good or bad, the show had to go on.
Tonight Forever, My Darling would play to a packed house.
Seeing as I was out of bagels, I dropped a couple slices of cinnamon bread in the toaster and shoved down the lever. I suppose I should have felt excited-or nervous. But truthfully I felt… depressed. Two viable suspects, and we were still no closer to finding out who wanted Lance dead. I’d tried really hard to persuade myself that Nadine or Krystal could be our perp. But my gut feeling was that while both had fallen prey to Lance’s faux charm, I didn’t believe either of them capable of murder. Of revenge maybe, even blackmail, but not murder in the first degree. And where did that leave me?
Empty-handed without a single person of interest in sight.
No wonder I was feeling a little down, a bit discouraged. At this point, many people would resort to antidepressants. But I was made of sterner stuff.
When the toast popped up, I slathered it with butter. Typically I use low-fat substitutes, but seeing as how I was depressed, I opted for the real deal. If I didn’t watch it, I’d be hauling out rocky road ice cream for breakfast. I poured a second cup of coffee, then went out to collect the morning newspaper-and let out a shriek that could be heard clear across the street.
I’d nearly stepped on a snake. I hate snakes. I loathe and despise snakes. Snakes terrify me. What was the rhyme Rita once told me about how to distinguish poisonous ones from nonpoisonous? It had something to do with colors touching. Red and black or yellow and red? This was one heck of a time to have a senior moment.
As I inched backward, I realized the snake was either dead or sound asleep. Another observation struck me just then. The snake lay perfectly centered on my welcome mat, coiled as neatly as Great-grandma Elsie’s bun; too neatly to be one of Tang’s tokens of affection. It was almost as if someone had deliberately placed it there. A shiver raced down my spine. Could this be another warning for me to mind my own business? I shot a final look at the snake. It hadn’t budged.
Shuddering, I slammed the door and twisted the dead bolt. If the snake was indeed alive and woke up from its nap on my doorstep, it could slither away. In the event it was dead, I’d worry about disposing of it later-much later.
Between bites of toast and gulps of coffee, I answered the phone, which rang incessantly. Polly asked if I had a mink stole for Krystal to wear in the final scene. Connie Sue was rounding up every bit of blue eyeliner she could get her hands on. Who uses blue? I wondered irritably. Didn’t blue eyeliner go out with disco? Pam invited me to go with her and Megan for pedicures. Pedicures were the last thing on my mind. I decided to visit Claudia instead. She could use some cheering up, and maybe in the process, I could cheer myself up as well.
The Plexiglas separating us looked as impenetrable as kryptonite. Claudia, if anything, looked even worse than the last time I’d seen her. When this misunderstanding was resolved once and for all, I was going to urge her to book a week at a spa. She desperately was in need of a little pampering-manicure, pedicure, massage, aromatherapy, hydrotherapy, the works.
“Hey,” she said, greeting me with a wan smile.
“Hey, yourself.”
“You didn’t have to come. I know tonight’s the big night.”
“Thought you might like some company.” I mustered a smile of my own. “Besides, it was either visit you or hang around and watch Janine implode.”
“That bad, huh?”
“Actually, it’s worse, so I came here to get away from all that depressing stuff.”
She flung out a hand to encompass the dingy gray-green walls and dung brown floor. “Well, if this place doesn’t cheer you up, nothing will.”
Claudia’s feeble attempt at humor was almost my undoing. We lapsed into an uncomfortable silence. I blamed it on the ambiance. The visitors’ room of the county jail was a far cry from the cozy seating arrangement in Claudia’s four-season room. No cushy wicker chairs; no droopy ferns-just a droopy prison guard posted inside the door.