"Me, either," Cindy said. "You don't believe me, but I did call, too. I wanted to help."
"Why do you ask that now?" Ellen asked.
Leave it to Murphy to cut through etiquette. "Nobody offered to get your ex-husband permanently out of your hair if you'd just keep quiet, did they?"
Ellen opened her mouth. She dropped her arm, dragging her coat on the ground. She paled so badly Timmie thought she was going to have to pick her up.
"What are you talking about?"
Timmie couldn't manage an answer. Neither, evidently, could anyone else. Ellen came up with it anyway. Her mouth closed, then opened again for another abortive attempt at speech. Her eyes filled with tears.
"I'm going home now," she said in a hush. "I don't think I want to hear about this anymore."
The worst part of the conversation was that when Timmie watched Ellen sweep out the door, she couldn't decide whether Ellen's reaction had been one of surprise, relief, or shame.
And then, inevitably, Cindy added her two cents' worth. "You just don't get it, do you?" she demanded, bristling and teary.
Timmie was still watching Ellen. "Get what, Cindy?"
Cindy was shaking her head, quivering with fury. "You think this is what, a game? She's your friend. She's just starting to feel better now that that asshole's dead, and you blame her for it? What's wrong with you?"
"That asshole was murdered, Cindy."
"And, so what? You think it's the same person who killed Jason? I'd say you shouldn't get mad. You should say thank you. I sure would."
And then she stalked off, too.
"Well, that was a success," Murphy said.
Timmie didn't say anything. She was too busy regretting her impulse. Thinking how it had ended.
Wondering, suddenly, about what Cindy had said.
"Murphy?"
He scowled at her. "I don't think I like that look."
Timmie didn't answer. She just walked through the thinning ranks of mourners until she reached a quiet corner back in the Florida room, where potted palms defied the frost outside.
She should have thought of it before. She might have if she wasn't still dreaming of trying to wash her husband's blood off her hands.
"Leary?" Murphy asked, close by.
Timmie kept looking out the window into a yard that had managed to maintain its elegant tailoring after the ice storm of the decade. "What if we've had it backward?" she asked.
"Backward? Is this going to make me itch?"
Timmie looked down to her glass, but she was out of water. As if that would help. "Well, think about it. If we use the theory we've been working on, Billy's murder doesn't fit."
"Not that we know of right now," he amended.
Timmie almost closed her eyes to better focus on imperfect logic. "Think about what Cindy just said, Murphy. I should be thankful. Well, if you think about it on the surface, I should. So should Ellen and Barb. And every family who buried an old relative." She opened her eyes, turned on him. "What do all those murders have in common?" she asked. "Billy Mayfield was abusive. He stopped hurting Ellen and the kids when he died. Victor was not just fooling around, he was going to try and sue Barb blind. Barb doesn't have to worry about that or his white-trash girlfriends hurting her little girls anymore. Each and every relative of those Restcrest patients was going broke trying to take care of their loved ones. They've been saved from that."
"And you have the insurance policy."
Timmie blinked. "I have what?"
Murphy squinted, as if testing her honesty. "Your ex-husband's insurance. You won't have to worry about affording your father's care anymore."
Now it was Timmie who opened her mouth without effect. Suddenly she couldn't breathe. She just kept staring at Murphy, waiting for him to laugh. "Murphy," she finally said. "What the hell are you talking about?"
Murphy's eyebrows slid up fast. "You can't tell me you don't know. I heard it from Micklind during the funeral mass. He said he heard it from one of your friends."
It took her a second to find her voice. A second or two more to have the courage to ask, "How much?"
Murphy was getting as quiet as she. "Quarter million?"
Timmie thought she was going to pass out, and not just from surprise. "He canceled that policy. I swear he did. He had to. He hated me!"
Heads were turning. Timmie barely noticed. She couldn't seem to look away from Murphy, who was, oddly, smiling. "He didn't hate his daughter."
Timmie should have said something. She couldn't quite manage it. Instead, she found herself stalking through an untidy cluster of mourners to get to Micklind, who was quietly standing with his back to the dining room wall, watching the crowd.
"Where did you hear about this fictitious life insurance policy?" Timmie demanded without preamble.
Micklind didn't react. "Not fictitious. And impressive enough to almost make me reconsider that alibi of yours. I heard about it from your friend over there."
Timmie turned to see him point at Mattie. She headed that way, trailing Murphy as she walked.
"Where did you hear about this life insurance policy?" she asked her friend, her hold on her glass tight enough to leave dents.
Mattie smiled, then frowned, then cast looks at both Murphy and Micklind. "From Barb."
Timmie repeated the pattern, now trailing Mattie behind as well. They all saved time, though, because Barb was standing by the front window with a predictably crying Cindy.
"Cindy," Barb answered when asked.
Cindy looked up, eyes red-rimmed and watery. "But his parents told me," she said. "Yesterday, at the wake."
At least they all didn't follow Timmie in when she confronted her ex-in-laws.
"But we naturally thought you knew," Betty Parker said in her perfectly modulated voice, the only hint of real grief tucked way at the back of her eyes. "Actually, we paid the premiums for him while he was... well, so uncertain of everything. He paid us back, though. Every penny. And, of course, his will was never changed. You're still executor for Meghan, who gets everything else he has." She shook her head apologetically. "But we thought you knew, dear."
Timmie couldn't do much more than shake her head. "No. And you told my friend Cindy about it yesterday?"
"We talked about it, I guess. Yes. People should know that Jason would never really desert you or Meghan, you see? I talked to Jason the night before... the night before it happened, and he wanted me to know that he'd talked to you. That he was going to see you. I thought... I hoped..."
Timmie nodded, mute with shock. She had lived a long time on self-righteous indignation. It was just too much to ingest the concept that Jason had been trying to grab her security with one hand and hand it back with the other.
"Which meant that his death really was a benefit to me," Timmie finally managed to admit to Murphy fifteen minutes later as the two of them stood with Micklind and Mattie in the Florida room. "Is it possible that this isn't about Restcrest after all?"
Mattie just kept shaking her head. "This is all way beyond this poor girl's head."
"If it's not about Restcrest, what's it about?" Murphy asked.
Timmie wished like hell she hadn't heard about the insurance policy. The will that would see her daughter safely educated and raised, when Timmie had been worried about affording peanut butter and jelly. It was confusing her, distracting her from the original question.