Bookplate Special: A Booktown Mystery Part 5

"Yes. It's a variation of smashed. Smushed is when what used to be a solid becomes almost a liquid. Human flesh can be smushed when it's contained in crumpled steel and gla.s.s."

"Smushed," Baker said once again. "I don't think I've ever considered that."

"Well, you ought to. I'm sure the State of New Hampshire has invested thousands of dollars in your training. If you were killed or maimed in an accident, you'd be costing taxpayers like me a lot of money."

"Smushed," he murmured again, turning left onto Hanson Lane.

Tricia kept her gaze riveted out the windshield. "I'm sure your family wouldn't appreciate the call telling them their husband and dad was now the consistency of tomato puree."

"As it happens, I am no one's husband or dad, so you don't have to worry on that account."

Tricia glanced at her companion. "Your loss." Or someone else's.

The scanner crackled, reporting an accident on Route 101. Tricia frowned. She couldn't stand the sound of a dispatcher dispa.s.sionately reporting trouble. Too often Russ insisted on allowing his scanner to act as the background noise on their so-called dates. It wasn't the most romantic backdrop.

Baker pulled up behind a parked car with Connecticut plates. Another Hillsborough County deputy stood alongside the vehicle, apparently guarding it. His thumbs were hooked onto his Sam Browne belt.

Baker opened the car door.

"Wait," Tricia blurted, reaching out to touch his arm. Should she trust him? So far he hadn't given her a reason not to. "There's something I didn't tell you."

He settled back in his seat, waiting for her to go on.

"There's another reason I asked Pammy to leave this morning."

Why didn't he look surprised, she wondered.

"She . . . stole from me. She took one of my checks, made it out to herself for one hundred dollars, and cashed it."

"When was this?"

"Several days ago. I was online going over my account this morning and found out. It was the last straw, and I asked her to leave."

"And her reaction was?"

"She left."

"You didn't argue about it?"

"Pammy freely admitted it."

"Why didn't you tell me this sooner?"

Tricia sighed. "Because it's been my experience that Sheriff Adams likes to blow insignificant events out of proportion, trying to make them look like motives for murder. With that in mind, I figured you'd probably think I killed Pammy. Believe me, Captain, it wasn't the money, it was the breach of trust that made me ask her to leave. And as you continue your questioning, you'll find I didn't have the opportunity to kill her. As I said, I've been with people the entire day."

His green eyes bored into her. Was that disappointment reflected in them?

Without a word, Baker got out of the car. Tricia unbuckled her seat belt and did likewise.

"The tech team should be here when they're finished at the cafe," Deputy Bracken said.

Baker nodded. "Ms. Miles, would you care to take a look?"

Tricia moved to stand over the opened trunk, taking in its contents. "Those are Pammy's suitcases all right." They'd both been forced open, their contents dumped. Pammy's scrunched-up, dirty clothes mingled with old magazines, copies of their college yearbook, an old, colorful granny-square afghan, ca.s.sette tapes, photo alb.u.ms, and a lot of wrinkled papers. A ripped-open envelope was addressed to Pamela Fredericks, General Delivery, Stoneham, New Hampshire.

Remorse flushed through Tricia once again. Could Pammy have been living in her car before she came to Stoneham?

The guilt intensified. Perhaps if she hadn't asked her to leave, Pammy might still be alive.

Might: a word that held a lot of power.

Tricia sighed, her eyes filling with tears. Maybe Pammy had left on an extended trip and intended to eventually return to whatever she considered her home base. But she hadn't mentioned that. In fact, whenever the subject came up, Pammy had been evasive.

"Are you okay, Ms. Miles?" Baker asked.

Tricia nodded, trying to blink away the unshed tears. "Pammy's dead. I guess it didn't hit me until right now. The stuff in her trunk may be all she had. She's really dead, and then someone tried to rob her. Is there anything more despicable than stealing from the dead?"

"Yes," Baker said. "Killing them in the first place."

Tricia had to agree with that.

More letters lay scattered among the junk, as well as a sagging, empty s...o...b..x that sat on a pile of old clothes. Their former home? Baker poked at the letters and clippings with a pen. The yellowing envelopes bore twenty-two-cent stamps, indicating their age. "Mrs. Geraldine Fredericks. Who was that?"

"Pammy's mother."

"What would Ms. Fredericks be doing with a bunch of old letters?"

Tricia shrugged.

Baker waved a hand to take in the trunk. "Does there appear to be anything missing?"

Tricia's gaze wandered over the contents. "I don't know. Pammy didn't seem to have much with her. From what I could see, she had clothes and maybe a few toiletries." Very few toiletries. She'd used nearly an entire bottle of Tricia's favorite salon shampoo. "I'm sorry I can't be of more help, Captain Baker."

He frowned. "So am I."

FOUR.

Tricia'sloft apartment seemed especially empty that night. Miss Marple's happy purring, scented candles burning, and even soft music playing in the background couldn't fill the void that Pammy's absence had left.

Under other circ.u.mstances, Tricia would have felt elated to have her living s.p.a.ce all to herself again. But now . . . her once warm living room seemed chilled by a death pall.

Curled on the couch, her winegla.s.s within reach, Tricia had read the same opening page of Frances Hodgson Burnett's A Little Princess, her favorite childhood book--a story without a murder--for the eleventh time when Miss Marple's ears perked up. In seconds, the cat jumped from the couch and trotted toward the kitchen.

"Tricia? You there?" came Angelica's voice.

Angelica's drop-in visits had diminished over the past few months, as her relationship with Bob Kelly had become more serious. Thanks to Pammy's untimely death, this was one night Tricia welcomed her sister's presence.

"I'm coming," she called, and set her book aside, grabbed her winegla.s.s, and headed for the kitchen.

Angelica had already hung up her coat and was unpacking a picnic basket of comfort food. Good French bread; sweet b.u.t.ter; a thermos no doubt filled with what was left of Booked for Lunch's soup of the day; a quart of vanilla ice cream; and a jar of chocolate sauce.

"You didn't have to bring me dinner," Tricia said, although she was supremely grateful Angelica had done just that. Homemade soup and b.u.t.tered bread always seem to hit the emotional spot at times like this.

"We both need to eat, and you need the company." Angelica put the ice cream in the freezer, and paused. "If I'm honest, I need the company, too." She shuddered. "I'm so glad it wasn't me who found Pammy."

"And I suppose you think I jumped for joy at the prospect," Tricia snapped, and instantly regretted it.

"Don't be silly," Angelica said, taking no offense. She opened one of the cupboards and took out a saucepan. "Of course it's upsetting to me that you had to find her. But don't you see, I don't have an alibi for killing her."

"Why do you need one? Although you may have been the last known person to see Pammy alive, you certainly didn't have a motive to kill her."

Angelica emptied the thermos of soup into the pan. "That's true. But the Sheriff's Department hasn't always let facts like that stand in the way of naming someone a 'person of interest.' Once they do that, you might as well have a tattoo on your forehead that says 'I killed fill-in-the-blank. ' And today that would be Pammy Fredericks."

"Captain Baker can't seriously think you killed her. He seems a lot more reasonable than Sheriff Adams."

"Yes, and wasn't it a stroke of luck the sheriff decided to delegate this investigation instead of taking it on herself? We might just see justice served." Angelica removed the paper sleeve from around the bread. "Do you want plain bread, or would you rather have garlic bread?"

"Definitely garlic bread."

Angelica knew where everything was located in Tricia's kitchen--better than Tricia herself, if the truth be told--and she went straight for the correct cupboard, removed a baking sheet, and began to a.s.semble everything else she'd need: garlic powder, dried parsley, and grated Parmesan cheese.

"This would really taste better with real garlic and fresh parsley, but I know better than to look for it. You never buy the good stuff," she said judgmentally.

"Garlic would sprout before I could use it. If I had any plants, they'd die a lingering death, which would be cruel."

Angelica gave her sister a withering stare. "For someone as careful about her diet as you are, you'd think you'd have learned that the fresher the ingredients, the healthier the food."

"I don't eat a lot of fat or red meat, or drink hard liquor, and I intend to live forever."

"That'll be a lonely life," Angelica said as she unwrapped a stick of b.u.t.ter. "Seeing as everybody you love or care a whit about will be long gone."

Everybody long gone. Like Pammy Fredericks was gone . . . Tricia glanced at the kitchen clock. Pammy had been dead for less than five hours. Already it seemed a lifetime.

"You're probably right," Tricia admitted. She settled on one of the stools at the kitchen island. "I guess at our age, we're still lucky to have Mother and Daddy. Not that we see them all that often. Where are they now?"

"Rio. I expect they'll stay until summer. They didn't want to come back for Christmas to be with us last year. I'm not holding my breath for this year, either," Angelica said, creaming the b.u.t.ter and the dry ingredients together in a little bowl with unnecessary force.

"I thought we had a lovely Christmas together."

Angelica paused in her a.s.sault on the contents of the bowl. "Yes, we did. I'm surprised at how many people came for Christmas dinner last year. How many of us were there around my dining room table?"

Tricia thought back. Ginny and her boyfriend, Brian Comstock, had come, as had Grace Harris and Mr. Everett, and Russ and Bob. "Eight of us."

"Well, we'll have to invite Frannie this year. And maybe Nikki--if she doesn't go to visit her new family in Canada. And--"

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves. It's only October."

Angelica sighed, and set the bowl aside. "I guess I just don't want to think about what happened today."

Tricia frowned. Neither did she, and now Angelica had brought it up again.

"Here we are thinking about our little family of friends in Stoneham, and today you lost a friend of many years, even if Pammy was a pain in the b.u.t.t--almost just like family."

Tricia was sure Angelica didn't count herself as being a pain, but she kept her silence.

"That didn't mean in your heart of hearts you didn't love her in some capacity," Angelica continued. "You've got to give yourself time to mourn her, just like everyone else you've ever lost."

"I suppose right now I'm Captain Baker's chief suspect." Tricia told Angelica about the forged check. Somehow, she didn't seem surprised. "Why did I have to choose this morning to ask Pammy to leave? Why couldn't it have been yesterday--or why didn't I put it off until tomorrow?"

"Just one of those unanswerable questions," Angelica said. "But don't think you've got the market cornered on being chief suspect. If Captain Baker takes after Sheriff Adams, I'm probably his chief suspect. I don't even know if I can reopen tomorrow."

"Why shouldn't you? The murder happened outside the cafe. Did they seal the premises? Put up crime scene tape?"

"Not out front."

"Then I don't think you have a problem." Tricia sighed. "d.a.m.n Pammy anyway. Why did she have to be so secretive about her life?"

"Obviously she was in some kind of trouble," Angelica said.

"She could've confided in me."

"Would you have listened?"

Tricia didn't meet her sister's gaze. "I listened to what she had to say."

"How hard?" Angelica pressed.

Maybe not as hard as she could have, Tricia admitted to herself. "It's difficult to be a loving, caring friend when you feel put upon and your generosity is abused."

"Did you ever ask her why she stayed so long?"

"I a.s.sumed it was because she'd run out of money. You know she could never balance a checkbook. And she never worked much. She depended on the generosity of friends and relatives."

"Which was about to end," Angelica said.

"How do you know?"

"Pammy told me. She was expecting a windfall that would set her free for life."

"Did you tell Captain Baker that?"

Angelica thought about it. "I don't think so. I mean, cops aren't always interested in witnesses volunteering information."