The men stopped talking as we came level with them. Maggie held out her key ring. “The silver-colored one is for the front door,” she said. “The gold one is the basement lock. You might have to wiggle it a bit. It sticks sometimes.”
Marcus took the keys from her. “Thanks,” he said. “I’ll talk to you both later.” His eyes slid briefly over to my face. I wasn’t sure whether I should say anything or not. Not getting the third degree from him felt a little strange. I settled for a slight nod and a tiny smile.
Maggie got in the passenger side of the truck. I checked the boxes we’d loaded into the back and then squeezed between the truck bumper and the side of the police car to get around to the driver’s side.
Once I’d eased the truck out from between the police cruiser and Marcus’s SUV and started down Main Street, I glanced over at Maggie. “Are you okay?” I asked.
She stared at me blankly for a moment. “What? Oh, yeah, I’m all right.” I watched the road and waited for her to find the words she needed for what she wanted to say. “It just doesn’t make sense,” she said finally. “There was no reason for Jaeger to be down in the basement. None.”
“It doesn’t have to have been a reason that would make sense to anyone else,” I said. “Just to him.”
“How did he end up down there?”
“The stairs were wet. He didn’t have boots on.” I pictured Jaeger’s feet on the steps. He’d been wearing leather shoes—black, with red laces and red stitching. Not gum rubbers or anything with a good tread.
She slumped back against the seat. “No, I don’t mean how did he end up in the water. I mean how did he get into the basement in the first place. The door was locked. I remember locking it after the meeting, Ruby was standing beside me, and”—she gestured with one hand—“you saw me unlock it before we found…before we found him.”
“Does anyone else have keys to the building?” I asked, turning into the narrow alley that led to the art center’s parking lot.
“Ruby. But I don’t see her giving them to Jaeger.”
Ruby’s truck, the twin to mine, was parked in her assigned spot. “Neither do I,” I said. “But she’s here. We can ask her.”
I backed up to the rear door of the building and got out to help Maggie unload, moving stiffly around the side of the truck. It showed how preoccupied Maggie was that she didn’t notice.
We piled the boxes at the bottom of the stairs and I pulled the truck into Maggie’s parking spot—she’d left her bug at home.
“I can carry this stuff up, Kath,” Maggie said, setting the roll of green bubble wrap on top of the stack of boxes.
“I’m okay,” I said. I was starting to sound like a broken record.
She frowned and looked pointedly at my left hand with the overbandaged thumb.
“I’ll take the bubble wrap and the brown paper,” I said. “Neither one of them is very heavy.” I wanted to make sure Ruby actually was in her own studio. I didn’t want to leave Maggie by herself to brood about Jaeger and I did need to get to the library at some point.
I grabbed the roll of paper and tucked it under one arm. After a moment Maggie surrendered the bubble wrap. She took the top two boxes from the stack and headed up the stairs.
Ruby must have heard us. As we came out of the stairwell she stepped out of her studio, holding a mug of what I guessed was herbal tea. It smelled like lemon and cranberries.
“Hi,” she said. She was wearing a paint-spattered denim shirt with the sleeves cut off over her jeans and long-sleeved T-shirt. She looked from Maggie to me, and her smile faded. “Something’s wrong,” she said. “Don’t tell me that there’s more water coming in at the store?”
Maggie sighed and set down her boxes. “No, it’s Jaeger,” she said.
“Good dog!” Ruby said, shaking her head, which made her little pigtails bounce. “What did he do now?”
I held up a hand before she said something that in another minute she might be sorry had come out of her mouth. “Ruby. Jaeger’s dead,” I said quietly.
Her mouth fell open. “Dead? But…but how? We were all just at the meeting. Are you sure?”
“Yes,” Maggie said.
I nodded.
For a moment Ruby didn’t seem to know what to do with her free hand. Finally she wrapped her arm around her midsection, like she was hugging herself. “What…what happened?” she asked.
I glanced at Maggie. Her face was gray and there were tiny, pinched lines between her eyebrows.
“He, uh, fell down the basement stairs.”
“You mean at the co-op?” Ruby shook her head slowly from side to side. “No. That’s not possible. I saw him come up the steps and…and…I saw him leave.” Her face had gone pale as well.
Maggie looked down at the floor for a moment. “He came back,” she said, finally. “I don’t know why. And I don’t know what he was even doing down there.” She bent and picked up the boxes again. “I’m going to put these in my studio.” She moved past us, fished out her key to unlock the door and then went inside.
Ruby was still shell-shocked. She took a couple of steps toward me. “Kathleen, did Maggie find…” She didn’t finish the sentence, but I knew what she was asking.
“We, uh, we both did.”
Her face softened. “I’m sorry,” she said. Then finally she noticed my scraped forehead. “What happened to you? Are you okay? You didn’t fall down the stairs too, did you?”
I shook my head. “No. I slipped out at Wisteria Hill. I’m all right.”
“Good.” She looked over at Maggie’s open studio door, and then shifted her attention back to me. “None of this makes any sense. What was Jaeger doing in the co-op basement? How did he get down there, anyway? I saw Maggie lock the door and put the keys in her pocket.”
She had the same questions Maggie had been asking and I still didn’t have any answers. I shrugged. “I don’t know. The police are going to have to figure all of that out.”
Ruby made a face, her mouth twisting to one side. “I wish I could remember where I know Jaeger from. I have the feeling it’s important.”
I couldn’t see how Ruby figuring out where she may have seen Jaeger Merrill before was going to turn out to be important, especially now that he was dead.
“I need to put these in Maggie’s studio,” I said, picking up the brown paper and bubble wrap again.
Ruby had been staring off into space, but she looked at me when I spoke. “Yeah, okay,” she said. “There’s something I need to check out on the computer, anyway.” She indicated her own open studio door. “Tell Maggie I’m here if she needs anything.”
“I will,” I said.
Mags had put the two boxes on her big worktable in the center of the room. She was just taking the last figure from a carved, wooden chess set out of the smaller of the two cartons.
I set the paper and bubble wrap on the end of the table.
“Thanks,” she said. “I’ll just go get the other couple of boxes.”
While Maggie went downstairs I put some water in her kettle and plugged it in. I waffled for a moment between the box of peppermint tea bags and the canister of dark chocolate cocoa mix. The chocolate won.
“Are you making tea?” Maggie asked when she came back in with the last three cartons.
“I was going to make hot chocolate,” I said. “But I can make tea if that’s what you’d like.”
She set the boxes on the table and rolled her head slowly from one side to the other. “No. I want chocolate,” she said. “Lots and lots of chocolate.” She stopped in mid-neck roll. “Look in there, on the bottom at the back.” She pointed to the old pie safe where she kept the mugs and the tea and the electric kettle. “I think I have some marshmallows.”
The marshmallows were in a little snap-top plastic container. I could smell vanilla when I popped the lid. “Hey, did you buy these at the market?” I asked.
She had one arm behind her head, stretching, pulling down gently with her other hand. Maggie was very flexible. “Dina made them,” she said.