"I dunno. I thought maybe I'd go see if I can talk to the redheaded guy—Panelli, right? You know, the captain of the big bad bowling team? If Mae Petersen could believe I'm a reporter, I'll bet I can make him believe it, too."
"All right, I guess. Just be careful. We already know somebody thinks you're being too nosy. At least now, pretending you're a reporter, it makes your nosiness explainable."
"No problem-o, Maggie. I just hope we don't crack the case too soon. I want to get my go-cart repainted, and that doesn't come cheap."
"Glad I can help," Maggie said as Novack pushed his way out of her father's sedan. "As long as you're not stalking me anymore, I'm happy."
Chapter Twenty-Four
Saint Just opened the car door and slid onto the front seat, feeling very much the conspirator. "She wants to talk to you," he said without preamble as he reached over to turn up the heat, as he'd been standing at the windy corner for more than ten minutes, and had begun to feel the chill. "Now."
"Who wants to talk to me now? Lisa? Lisa wants to talk to me?" Maggie's eyes were wide. "She hates me. She never talked to me in school. She didn't even know who I was until the day I unstuffed her, for crying out loud. Why on earth would she want to talk to me?"
"She didn't confide that information to me, but I think you should see her, Maggie. She's one of the ghosts from your past, isn't she?"
"Ghosts? Like I'm haunted or something? Don't go all Doctor Bob on me now, Alex."
"Lisa Butts is a very unhappy woman, Maggie. And, I believe, a considerably frightened woman."
"Lisa? She ruled the world, Alex. Well, our world."
"Time moves on, and the world changes. When I first arrived, introduced myself, she seemed wary, unwilling to talk. But I'd had the happy coincidence of arriving in the midst of a small meeting for refreshments—Lisa called it a coffee klatch? At any event, two of the women there were on our list of W.B.B. members, although the third was not. Still, the topic of conversation was, as one would expect, the murder of Walter Bodkin."
"Hold it. Back up a minute, okay? How did you introduce yourself? You never told me how you were going to get through the door."
Saint Just smiled. "Why sweetings, I took a page from our books, you might say. I told them I was an author friend of yours in town with you for the holidays, and planning on writing a recap of the murder for my next true crime anthology."
"You're kidding. You have got to be kidding. You and Henry, both using variations on a theme? And they swallowed that?"
"I have no idea if any of them even know the definition of anthology. I have found, much as you dislike hearing such things, that once I've bowed over a woman's hand and complimented her eyes, there is nothing all that difficult about having myself invited in from the cold for tea and biscuits."
"It's a damn good thing you're no Ted Bundy."
"And now I have no idea what you mean. However, if I might return to what I've learned?"
"My irresistible perfect hero. I should give you a wart on the end of your nose in your next book, and maybe it will show up on your face here and—no, forget that. That would mean I'd have to look at the wart, wouldn't I? I'm not a masochist. Who were the other two women?"
"Jeanette Bradley and Brenda Kelso. As I said, both on the list of W.B.B. members. Not that anyone volunteered that particular snippet of information. They both seem fairly innocuous women with uninspiring husbands, and I believe we can cross them off our list. In any event, we chatted about the murder for some minutes, Mrs. Butts lending very little to the conversation, as she seemed fully occupied in shredding her paper napkin and keeping her eyes downcast. It was only when the others left that she asked about you, asked me to bring you to her."
"And you said yes," Maggie said on a sigh. "Why? Do you think she knows something? Because of the way she was acting?"
"I do, yes. I know the good Left –tenant Wendell would remind me that feelings are not evidence, but as Steve is not here with us, I think we can go with my powers of observation and the conclusions I draw from those observations. At least for the nonce. Now, are you willing to face your ghost?"
"I really wish you'd stop saying that," Maggie told him as she put the car in gear and executed a very neat U-turn, heading back down Second Street to the gray two-story house sadly in need of fresh paint. "And, before we go in, I've got some information for you. Well, not exactly information, but something Carol said started me thinking that maybe we've missed something."
"Indeed," Saint Just said, looking at her in some interest. "How depressing to believe we are not infallible."
"I'm not writing this story, Alex, so get used to it—it's not like we're following some outline I've already gotten the bugs out of, plugged up all the plot flaws so you can look good."
"Ah, then it's not me that's no longer infallible, but you. Just so that we're clear on that."
"Bite me," Maggie said, turning off the car's motor. "Carol said, wondered, who Dad's enemy is. Not Bodkin's enemy—Dad's."
Saint Just reached inside his topcoat and extracted the grosgrain ribbon that held his quizzing glass, began swinging it idly back-and-forth at chest level as he considered Carol's question from every angle he could muster. "Hmm, an interesting twist on the thing, isn't it?"
"Right," Maggie said, unbuckling her seat belt and turning toward him on the seat. "The murderer could have set up anybody, well, nearly anybody, if we stick to our theory that the killer is married or was married to a W.B.B. member. Or he—the murderer—could have just bopped Bodkin with a hammer or a tree branch, or any number of weapons, and not tried to frame Daddy or anyone else at all. Right? But he didn't. He went out of his way to break into Dad's car, steal his bowling ball, use it as the murder weapon. So why, Alex? Why did the murderer do that? And why Dad, just about the last person in the world anyone would think capable of murder?"
Saint Just lifted the quizzing glass and began tapping its edge against his chin, cudgeling his brains for an answer to that question as he looked toward the vast ocean, the water gray and cold with winter. "We had thought it could be because of that contretemps your father and Bodkin partook of in the parking lot outside of the bowling establishment a few weeks ago. There were witnesses, correct?"
"Yeah, I thought about that one. And I ran into Henry—not literally, not this time—and he talked to Mae Petersen this morning, and he said that what she told him about was seeing the fight. There probably isn't anyone in town who doesn't know about the fight."
"If I were to murder someone," Saint Just said, still tapping the quizzing glass against his chin, stopping only when he realized what he was doing, and how Maggie had written that affectation into their books, "I might consider it prudent to find a way to cast suspicion on someone else and away from me. Prudent, and plausible. Indeed, I might even first discover that idea after observing the man I wanted dead and another man rolling about a parking lot, beating on each other for all to see. But that would only be a theory, one not easy to prove."
"So you think Dad didn't have any enemy, that Bodkin's murder wasn't a two-for-one shot—kill one, convict the other and send him up the river and, bam, two enemies gone with one blow? I'm finding that scenario pretty hard to believe, myself. So, bottom line here, you think that the fight with Bodkin just gave the murderer the idea to try to pin the blame on Daddy?"
Saint Just considered this for a full minute. "Yes, the latter theory seems more logical," he said at last.