A Grid For Murder Part 17

"That's interesting," I said. If it was true, she was right. That kind of timeline would give Greg plenty of time to kill Joanne and get back to Parson's Valley to open up for the afternoon.

"Is there anything else?" I asked after taking another sip of coffee.

"Oh, we're just getting started," she said. There was a tone of joy in her voice that was unmistakable. Barbara was having the time of her life. No wonder she was being so nice to me. I was sure she was just about to the bursting point with all of her information, and she had no one to tell it to who could truly appreciate it but me.

"Okay, go on," I said.

She looked around the room a second, and then added, "I understand you've been trying to figure out what Joanne stole from Sandra."

That caught me by surprise. How good were her sources, anyway? It had been the right decision to come to her in the first place for her knowledge and her contacts. "How could you possibly know that?"

Joanne grinned at me. "I can't really divulge that information, but I've got a good idea what it means, if you're still interested."

"You know I am," I said eagerly. "I'll take whatever I can get. I'm not that choosy."

"Good. Two years ago, Sandra was seeing a married man in Edgemont. No one was supposed to know about it, but I heard through the grapevine that he offered to leave his wife and marry her. Joanne got wind of it and went to the man's wife first. In the guise of doing the right thing, she told her all about the affair. The woman confronted her husband, and then threatened to go after sole custody of their children if he followed through with his plans. He couldn't handle that, so he dumped Sandra and ended up staying with his wife. Sandra was furious when she found out what had happened, and she hasn't softened her position of wanting Joanne dead ever since."

"So she didn't steal anything material," I said. "Joanne stole Sandra's future, at least in her mind."

Barbara looked deadly serious as she said, "Think about it. Is there anything worse you could take from someone else?"

"Hang on a second," I said. "I heard them talking the day Joanne was murdered. Sandra was cool to her, but she was still cordial. It's hard to believe that there was so much bubbling just beneath the surface."

"Think about it, Savannah. What would she have to lose by being gracious if she planned to kill Joanne later? I'm surprised she wasn't grinning from ear to ear."

That definitely gave me something else to think about. "Okay, I'll look into that as well."

One of Barbara's employees came over to us and said, "Sorry to bother you, but that machine is on the fritz again."

"I'm busy, Juney," she said.

"It's going to mean that we'll lose some business," the woman said.

"Then we'll just have to deal with it. This is more important."

Juney clearly had a hard time believing that was possible. After she returned to the counter, I said, "We can do this later if you'd like."

"Savannah, it's not going to get any slower in here than it is right now. I've got two more things to tell you before you go, but I'll have to make it quick."

"I appreciate it."

"Happy to help." Barbara lowered her head a little as she added, "Laura has been acting like she didn't realize that Joanne had money, hasn't she?"

"That's the impression I've been getting, yes," I admitted.

"I've got a feeling that she knew exactly how much Joanne was worth, though I can't say whether or not she knew that she was going to inherit everything. I'm pretty sure she knew that she was getting something. I just don't have any hard evidence to support it."

"What else have you got?" I asked as I saw that the place was starting to really fill up.

"I know he's been helping you dig around, but I also know for a fact that Rob Hastings always blamed Joanne for his wife's death."

"What are you talking about? I haven't heard that before."

"n.o.body ever wanted to say it, but it was true then, and it's still true today. Watch your step. You might have more on your hands than you realize by taking him into your confidence." She looked back at the counter, where Juney was waving frantically to her. "I'm sorry, but I really do have to go, Savannah. I hope I helped."

"More than I can say. Thanks again, Barbara."

She was beaming as she left me, but I was more troubled than ever. If I accepted everything she told me as fact, it raised some serious questions about the people I'd been talking to about Joanne. The real question was if I could believe everything she'd said. Was Greg's barbershop really closed longer than he'd admitted, giving him ample time to kill Joanne and get back into town? Did Laura know Joanne had money? It could be an excellent motive for murder. Could Sandra have blamed Joanne for ruining her life with her lover? And the most disturbing question of all was whether Rob blamed Joanne for his wife's death. I knew he thought about her all of the time. If what Barbara had told me was true, it would give Rob the perfect motive: avenging his wife's death.

That brought another question to mind.

How had Rob's wife, Becky, died?

I had to find out before I spoke with him again. If it was true that it was something he could blame Joanne for, it could be time for some hard questions soon.

I'D HAD ENOUGH HEARSAY AND INNUENDO. GOSSIP SEEMED to be all my investigation was fueled by, with an errant fact thrown in here and there. It was time to ignore what people were telling me and focus on what solid and provable information I could collect. I considered going to Zach for help in finding the cause of death for Becky Hastings, but I knew he was already skating a thin line with Captain North. Since I couldn't access police records, it might be time to tackle the local newspaper's archives to see what I could find there.

When I got to the office of our branch of the main newspaper, it was dark inside, and there was a sign posted on the door.

It read, "Sorry for the inconvenience, but due to budgetary cutbacks, this office has been absorbed into our parent newspaper in Asheville. Parson's Valley News will now be consolidated into one section of the Asheville Daily News until further notice. Thank you."

It appeared that we no longer had a local paper. Given the state of the newspaper business, it was a sad statement, especially for me, since that was the exclusive method by which my puzzles were delivered to the world. I'd been considering trying to branch out into other means of distribution, but so far my tentative inquiries had been met with stony silence.

If I couldn't dig into the newspaper's archives, I knew another place I could go. I headed over to the library to see if I could get some information there.

And when I walked up the steps, I saw that the hours it was open to the public had been reduced as well. Its doors were locked and its stacks darkened, and I wondered what that said about our civilization when our access to information seemed to be solely controlled by a blind and uncaring Internet that many times presented fact and fiction in the exact same light. Content generated online could be from learned professionals with decades of study and experience in their field, or from one lonely guy sitting in a bas.e.m.e.nt somewhere wearing a tinfoil hat to protect him from thought-rays from outer s.p.a.ce. The problem was, at times it was difficult, if not impossible, to tell the two sources apart.

There was one place I could go where I still had hope. If it turned out to be another dead end, I'd have to find Zach and get his help after all.

The County Hall of Records was on the opposite side of the building as the Register of Deeds. One dealt with property and chattel, while the other covered the people who inhabited our county. There was a great deal of history there, if the searcher only knew the right way to gather information.

At least they were open. I studied the computer terminal for a few minutes before a gruff middle-aged man with a salt-and-pepper beard approached.

"You know what you're doing?"

"I haven't got a clue," I said with a smile.

He stopped and grinned at my confession. "At least you admit it. They say that's always the first step. What exactly are you looking for?"

"A death certificate for someone who died several years ago."

"Yeah, we have those on file in the system." He tapped a few keys until a new screen came up. Instead of asking me for my information so he could enter it himself, he said, "Type the name here, and anything else you know about the person. That will do a search of our stored archives."

"I'm afraid that the name is the sum total of my information."

He nodded. "That should still be good enough, unless it's a variant of John Smith you're looking for."

I started to tell him Becky's full name when he held up one hand. "Keep it to yourself. I don't want to know."

"You seem to have a remarkably low sense of curiosity," I said.

He shrugged as he replied, "I've learned over time that the less I know, the better off I am."

"So, you're trying to achieve a state of blessed ignorance, is that it?" I said it before I realized how it must sound to someone else. I had that problem sometimes, saying things before the gatekeeper in my head could act to shut them off or let them on through.

He wasn't offended at all. "You've got it. Let me ask you something. Do you have flotsam and jetsam of useless information from life floating around in your head? Something like your eighth grade locker combination, or the telephone number of your best friend from high school who moved away from home decades ago?"

"Of course I do. Everyone does, don't they?"

He looked around the room at the ledgers and the computer monitors. "Now multiply that by a thousand, and you'll see what I'm up against. I was genuinely interested in every search that was made here at first, but I soon learned that if I was going to survive this job, I'd better learn to block most of it out."

It was the most curious personal philosophy I believed I'd ever heard. "If you feel that way, why do you continue to work here?" I wasn't being nosy; I was actually interested in his answer.

"It's a great job," he said with a smile, "as long as I can keep not caring about the results."

I finally got it. "You know what? I believe I understand."

"Good for you. Now type in the name you're searching for, and hit the print b.u.t.ton if you have any luck. I'll get the printouts at the desk, but I can promise you, I won't look at the results."

"I didn't think for a moment that you would," I said.

I didn't even wait until he was back at his desk before I typed Becky Hastings's name into the search engine. There were no hits at all, which puzzled me until I realized that Becky was most likely just a nickname. I tried Rebecca Hastings, and this time I hit pay dirt.

There were three hits from the search, and in them, the collection appeared to sum up her life with important dates: her birth certificate, a marriage certificate, and the final death certificate. I had the outline of her existence in three doc.u.ments, the broad strokes of a portrait that wouldn't tell me much about who the woman had been but that might shed some light on what had eventually become of her.

I skipped the birth certificate and the marriage license and went straight to the death certificate.

It took a few seconds as I scanned the doc.u.ment, but then I found the entry I'd been looking for: the cause of death.

I couldn't believe it.

It appeared that Becky had died from accidental poisoning.

The coincidence that it matched Joanne's murder was too big to ignore. It appeared that whoever killed Joanne might have done so to avenge Becky Hastings's murder, and there was no one in the world who had more incentive for that than my partner in crime, Rob Hastings.

It was time Rob and I had a serious conversation.

"Rob, I know it's not your favorite expression in the world, but we need to talk," I said as I confronted him at his hardware store ten minutes later. He was waiting on Myron Feeney, a white-haired senior who had the biggest garden I'd ever seen in my life. That fact alone wouldn't have been odd, but Myron was a widower with no children. He donated nearly all of his produce to some of the poorer mountain folks who lived on the edges of Parson's Valley, which made him a saint in many people's eyes.

Myron laughed after I said it. "That's never a good sign when a woman tells you that, Robert. Look at the storm clouds brewing on her brow. You must have done something wrong."

"I usually do," he said. "Myron, will you excuse us for a minute?"

"I'm just about finished shopping, anyway. If you'll take a bit of advice from an old man, it has always been my experience that whatever you've done, it's best if you apologize up front and get it out of the way."

"Bye, Myron," I said. I tried to match his smile with one of my own, but I could barely bring myself to do it.

After Myron went up front so Lee could check him out, Rob asked, "What's wrong, Savannah? You look upset."

"I get that way when people withhold information on me," I said.

"What are you talking about?"

I looked around the store, and saw that it was fairly crowded. "I don't want to have this conversation in front of everyone here," I said.

"I'm sorry, but I can't just leave Lee here all by himself. Can this wait?"

I didn't like it, but there was nothing I could do about it. "I guess it's going to have to. When can you talk?"

He glanced at the people in his hardware store. "If we don't get another rush, I should be free in about fifteen minutes. You can wait in my office until then, if you'd like."

I had no interest in staying there. What had once been a warm and inviting place now felt cold and detached from me. "No thanks. I'll be outside."

I walked out, and Myron said good-bye to me in the parking lot as I pa.s.sed him. He was fumbling with his truck keys as he said, "Take it easy on him, Savannah. You might not know it, but this is a hard time for Robert."

"Why's that?" I asked as I stopped beside him.

"Two days ago was the anniversary of his wife's death," Myron said softly. "He always gets a little sad this time of year."

"Did you know her?" I asked.

He nodded, and I saw a wistful look in his eyes. "Rebecca was a charming woman. She's been missed by a great many folks over the years, I can tell you that."

"Then you knew her well," I said, pushing him.

"As a matter of fact, I did. Why do you ask?"

Maybe it would be easier getting the information from Myron than probing Rob about the circ.u.mstances of his wife's death. "It might seem like an impertinent question, but trust me when I tell you that I have a reason to ask."

As Myron stowed his goods in the back of his pickup truck, he asked, "What can I help you with?"

"How exactly did Becky die? I know it was accidental poisoning, but that's all the information I have. I was going to ask Rob about it, but it might be too painful for him to discuss, especially given the time of year."

Myron shivered a little. "It's always been a source of distress for him. What was so sad was that it could have been so easily prevented."

"What do you mean?"

Myron leaned against his pickup, and I could really see his age in his hands and his face, but most of all in his eyes. "Rebecca believed in everything natural long before it became a fad or a trend. She made her own soap, would always rather walk than drive, and did just about everything she could to leave a small footprint on the planet. One of the things she prided herself on was her herbal tea. She used to go to the Botanical Gardens in Asheville and pick out plants for her brews. While she never had any formal training, she'd become quite an accomplished botanist."

I was starting to see where this was going. "Until one day she collected the wrong plant?"

Myron nodded. "She and a friend had been out gathering all day, and they made a tea with some leaves from the wrong plant. Her friend got sick, but Rebecca reacted more violently to the chemicals in the brew, and she died before they could do anything to help her."

"It must have been horrible," I said.

"It wasn't pretty." Myron scratched his chin, and then added, "It's odd that you'd ask about Rebecca this week."

"Because of the anniversary of her death?" I asked.