The Skeleton Stuffs a Stocking Page 16

  So while I was thinking murderous thoughts on my drive home that evening, they had nothing to do with Annabelle. That changed when I got to the house and found a text from Sid on my phone.

  sid: We have a problem.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  I’m sure Sid expected me to immediately run up to his attic, but other obligations prevented me from doing so. First off, as soon as I came in the front door Madison grabbed me because she was having an issue with her friend Samantha and wanted guidance on how to handle it. By the time I’d helped her, Phil had dinner ready for the family and the seemingly ever-present Andrew. Once we’d eaten, I had to help clean up.

  When I finally got upstairs, Sid was tapping his foot loudly. “It’s about time!”

  “Good evening to you, too. What’s wrong?”

  “Lauri came through with some names of people from her dorm a little after midnight last night, and while some people were snoring away—”

  “I don’t snore. Do I?”

  “You both snore and drool. Sleep is a disgusting habit.”

  “Coccyx, you’re a Scrooge tonight. Who stole your sugarplum?”

  He sighed heavily. “I’m just exceedingly annoyed at Lauri, who would be getting coal in her stocking if I had anything to say about it.”

  “But you said she sent you a list of names.”

  “She did, and I spent most of the day doing research, but this afternoon I realized how she got that list. She posted a request on the Bostock alumni Facebook page. That wasn’t too bad, if not as discreet as I would have liked, but when somebody asked why she wanted to know, she said she was looking for information about Annabelle Mitchell. She didn’t say it in a private message, Georgia. She posted it publicly.”

  “Oh my spine and femur!”

  “I know! For all we know, the killer saw the post. Now he or she knows we’re on the case.”

  “They know somebody is on the case, anyway. Thanks to your thinking ahead, Lauri doesn’t know about me, and you didn’t give her your real name. ‘Art Taylor’ can’t possibly be tracked back to us.” Not that knowing Sid’s real name would be a huge danger, since he wasn’t exactly listed in the phonebook, but there weren’t enough Thackerys in the area to make tracking us down impossible.

  “I guess,” Sid said, “but I hate having so much of the investigation out of our control. Not just Lauri but…other things, too.”

  I thought I knew which other thing was bothering him. “Are you unhappy about Brownie sticking an oar in? I swear, I never asked him to.”

  “I know you didn’t, but—”

  I gave him a minute to figure out what he wanted to say.

  Unfortunately, either he didn’t know what he wanted to say or wasn’t ready to say it because he waved it aside. “Anyway, Lauri gave me a couple dozen names to start with, and since she made it so public, I’m keeping an eye on the Bostock alumni Facebook page as people add more.”

  “Isn’t the page private?”

  “It is, so just call me Liz Kent, Bostock Class of 1967. I rambled to the moderators about how my grandkids just talked me into joining Facebook, and I found this page hoping to reconnect with old classmates because I’ve never been able to make it to a reunion because of living overseas, and so on and so forth. I think they approved my access request so I’d quit telling them the story of my life. The upshot is that I have authorization to lurk, and since my persona is so old, chances are against any members of the real Class of 1967 challenging me.”

  “Very clever. Have any of the alumni said anything about Annabelle? Like maybe having accused her of theft?”

  “Not yet, but at least we’ve got suspects. I told you we deserved that dance party.”

  “I guess,” I said.

  “You don’t sound excited.”

  “I’m mostly confused. All we have is a list of names of people who were in Lauri’s dorm.”

  “Right. The people who accused Annabelle of theft must be among them.”

  “I get that, but I don’t know how that makes them suspects.”

  “You still believe Annabelle is innocent, don’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  “Why would anybody have accused Annabelle of theft if they weren’t framing her?”

  “So somebody steals a few items from dorm rooms, successfully frames a custodian for it, and then hunts her down to kill her?”

  He frowned somehow. “That does sound stupid when you put it that way.”

  “Come to think of it, Sid, how do we know the accuser is the framer?”

  “You’ve lost me.”

  “We’ve been assuming the students who accused Annabelle of stealing were lying. What if things really did go missing from their rooms, and they honestly thought it was Annabelle?”

  “You’re right. It could have happened that way.” He drummed his finger bones on the desk. “How about this? I create a new profile and post that Annabelle has passed away and that I’m the executor of her estate. I say that after she left Bostock, she struck it rich, but always felt guilty about stealing from students, so on her death bed, she tasked me with finding her victims so I could give them reparations. If nobody steps up to say they were a victim, we’ll know there were never any thefts.”

  “Or that the victims aren’t on Facebook or in that alumni group. Or if they are, that they don’t believe you. Like you keep telling me, everybody lies on the internet.”

  “It does kind of sound like a Nigerian prince scheme, doesn’t it?”

  “Plus people might claim to be victims just to see if they can make a quick buck.”

  “People can be very dishonest.”

  I looked at him, waiting for him to recognize the irony in his statement, but when he didn’t, I went on. “I don’t want to be a downer, Sid, but I don’t know what to do next.”

  He looked back at his computer. “We’re missing something, aren’t we?”

  “We are, and I have no idea what.”

  “Me, neither,” he said, his bones loosening.

  I patted him on the scapula. “This is our process, Sid, as weird as it is. We come up with ideas, we shoot ’em down, and we come up with more.”

  “Which we also shoot down.”

  “Repeat as necessary until we find one that’s bulletproof.”

  He sighed, but then sat up straight and tightened his bones. “I’m on it. I’m going to Google the names Lauri sent and put together a spreadsheet. There’s nothing like a spreadsheet to get the brain pumping. Am I right?”

  Most of the time, spreadsheets put me to sleep, but I said, “You be you, Sid.”

  I offered to help, but he let me off the hook to go grade papers, and he was still at it when I went to bed.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  I left for work early Tuesday in case the strike was going to make it harder for me to get to class on time. That turned out to be a good thing because traffic started backing up a quarter of a mile away from the campus. When I finally inched closer, I saw the strikers were out in force, with people holding signs on both sides of the main entrance road. Though they weren’t actually blocking access, people were slowing down to look.

  I didn’t like crossing a picket line, but I’d made my decision rather publicly, so I was stuck with it.

  I was about to turn in when I saw something in the church parking lot across the street, and went that way instead.

  There were two food trucks set up directly facing Bostock’s entrance and a quartet of porta-potties. Or rather, two grub joints and a row of donnikers, which is what Treasure Hunt would have called them. The carney slang was relevant because I recognized the equipment as being from Fenton’s Family Festival. Both trucks were doing land-office business.

  I parked a few spaces away and went to tap at the back door of the busier truck.

  An unfamiliar man in a purple Fenton’s Family Festival polo shirt answered. “What?”

  “Is
College Boy around?”

  “Yeah, sure.” He went back inside, and a minute later Brownie came to the door. When he saw it was me, he stepped outside and gave me a quick kiss.

  “Brownie, what’s going on?”

  “Your talk last week inspired me.”

  “Funny, I don’t remember saying anything about bringing food trucks to Bostock.”

  “Not explicitly, but you did talk about us adjuncts being true to our own consciences. Well my conscience wanted to support the strikers, but it also wanted to be close by in case you need me for your investigation. So I met with the union people to point out that if they were going to have people marching in the cold, they’d need food and bathroom facilities or they’d be losing a third of their picket line at any given time to make Dunkin’ Donuts runs. As an alternative, I suggested that I help arrange for coffee and food, plus use of porta-potties. They’re subsidizing my setup, so coffee and food are free for any faculty member with a union card, and after I insisted, to any adjunct as well. Assuming any of them want to come all the way out here to get it, of course, but I figured it was at least a symbolic gesture on the union’s part.”

  “You are brilliant, and given the amount of coffee you’re handing out at the moment, you’re going to make a hefty profit.”

  “Nope. I’m operating at cost, plus pay for my workers and a donation to the church for letting us use their lot. I’m not even charging for my time.”

  “Wow. You’re brilliant and generous. What did your parents think about this plan?”

  “Dad used so much carney slang that even I lost track of his meaning, but I don’t think he entirely approved. On the other hand, he didn’t try to talk me out of it. Mom just said I better make sure the trucks are back at the zoo and ready for business by opening time this evening. I’ll count that as a win.”

  I accepted coffee and a muffin, courtesy of the union, and headed onto campus for class. It was a good day. Papers came in on time, classroom discussions were lively, none of my students asked for extensions, and I didn’t see a single helicopter parent. When I stopped back by Brownie’s food trucks on my way home, I even got a free lunch, again thanks to the union, and Brownie took a few minutes to keep me company.

  There was no progress on the case, but all in all, I was feeling pleased with life until I got home and climbed to the attic.

  Sid was staring at his screen, tapping his finger bones on his jawbone.

  “How goes the spreadsheet?”

  “Never mind the spreadsheet, Georgia. I want you to look at something and see if I’m nuts.”

  “Okay.”

  “You know I was feeling discouraged last night, right?”

  “It happens to the best of us.”

  “Working on the spreadsheet didn’t help. I mean, I got data on forty former students, but it just seemed like a waste of time. I kept thinking that we had to be missing something that would narrow the suspect pool. Since we got our best info from Charles and Sue Weedon, I went back through my notes on them and dug some more.”

  “Did you find anything?”

  “Nothing from Charles, other than the fact that his PhD dissertation is surprisingly readable, but then I checked out the web site for Sue’s show painting business. Confirm something for me, would you? Didn’t she say she hadn’t been in contact with Annabelle for a long time?”

  I nodded. “She said that the two of them had mostly lost touch after college, though obviously Annabelle knew that Sue had been working with a carnival.”

  “That’s what I thought. Now look at this.” He got up so I could sit at his desk to see his laptop screen better, leaving his right hand on the desk to manipulate the mouse while he stood behind me. “This is her web site.”

  “Right.” The header said Sue’s Show Painting: Specializing in Ride Decoration and Restoration. The site was crammed with photos of Sue painting rides and carousel animals. I was particularly impressed by a black horse wearing gold battle armor that was labeled as being a stander from a 1917 Muller carousel. She also sold matted photos of some of her most spectacular work and some original watercolors of carnivals. “She does good work.”

  “Agreed, though irrelevant. I learned today that when you restore a carousel, you don’t just repaint the animals and chariots. You redo the scenic panels, which are those big panels in the center of the carousel that hide the motor and other machinery, and the rounding boards, which are on the canopy. The paintings can be of anything, but a lot of them are landscapes of forests or castles or English manor houses.” He used a pull-down menu to switch to a page of examples. “These are scenic panels from carousels Sue has painted.”

  “Okay.”

  “Now look at this one.” He clicked on a photo to enlarge it.

  It was a picture of a white house with a dark green front door and shutters, and a pair of bay windows, with a forest scene behind it. The light made it seem almost magical, but without people, it also felt a little melancholy.

  “Very pretty,” I said.

  “Now look at this.”

  He brought up another window with a photo of a white house with a dark green front door and shutters and a pair of bay windows. It wasn’t in front of a forest, though, and the car parked in front showed it was modern.

  I looked from one to the other. “Is that the same house?”

  “You tell me.”

  I leaned forward to compare the details. “Same color door, and the windows are in the same place. Look, there’s even the same cast iron mud scraper on the stoop. It’s got to be the same house.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “Why is that important? Was Sue working from a photo of this house?”

  “She could have been,” Sid said, “but that still begs the question. Why was Sue so interested in the Nichols house?”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “Wait, that’s the Nichols house?” I asked. I must have seen it at some point since I’d lived in Pennycross for most of my life, but I didn’t have strong enough memories to recognize it.

  “That’s it. This photo was in the Pennycross Gazette when the whole hoarding thing came out.”

  “That makes no sense. When did Sue paint that panel?”

  “According to the caption, six years ago.”

  “If she hadn’t seen Annabelle since college, then she would never have seen this house.”

  “That’s right.”

  “So she was lying to us.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Coccyx.”

  “That’s right.”

  I ran my fingers through my hair. “Now I don’t know what to believe.”

  “I believe we’ve got a viable suspect for Annabelle’s murder.”

  “But why would Sue have spoken to me if she was the killer?”

  “The Fentons. They connected her with Annabelle, and if she hadn’t come up with some explanation, they’d have been suspicious.”

  “Yeah, okay, but why would Sue have killed Annabelle?”

  “It could have been anything. Charles said Annabelle had cash. Maybe it was a lot of cash, and Sue wanted it. Or how about our hidden MacGuffin theory? Maybe Sue wanted the MacGuffin, and either Annabelle wouldn’t sell it to her or wanted too much money.” He shrugged noisily. “I confirmed that they went to the same college, but we don’t even know that they were really friends. We only have Sue’s word for it.”

  “Would Annabelle have put an enemy down as a job reference?”

  “That’s a fair question.” He drummed his fingers noisily on the desk. “Okay, say they had a falling out back in college, which is why they lost touch, and maybe Annabelle had gotten over it, but Sue hadn’t.”

  “After all these years?”

  “Don’t you still have a grudge against your college roommate? What was her name?”

  “You mean Jean? You bet I hold a grudge! She stole from me, and when she wore my best earrings witho
ut asking, she lost one and threw out the other to make me think I’d misplaced them myself.” I took a breath. “But I wouldn’t kill her for that.”

  “Maybe Annabelle did something really bad to Sue.”

  “But Charles and Lauri said she was so nice.”

  “And other people said she stole from them.” He held up a hand to stop me from continuing my rebuttal. “I’m just speculating. All we know for sure is that Sue Weedon lied to us. We just don’t know why or how much of what she said was false.”

  We went back and forth about whether or not we should call Dana and Treasure Hunt, but finally decided against it. Either they didn’t know Sue was lying, so we wouldn’t get anywhere with them, or they did, which meant they’d been lying to me, too. Moreover, if the Fentons had lied, then they’d had a reason, and I didn’t like where that thought led. Getting back together with Brownie had already been touch–and–go. Accusing his parents of being involved in a murder would not lead to wine and roses.

  That meant I needed to talk to Sue, and since it didn’t seem like the kind of conversation we should have by phone, that left going to see her in person. Needless to say, Sid insisted that I was not to be alone with her, and I was entirely in agreement with that.

  Sid had the business card she’d given us, and after he did a little Googling for more information, I called her cell phone number.

  “Sue Weedon, Sue’s Show Painting.”

  “Ms. Weedon, this is Georgia Thackery, the Fenton family’s friend.” At least I hoped I’d still consider them friends after this revelation. “We talked about Annabelle Mitchell the other day.”

  “I remember. What can I do for you?”