“No! No!” Gloria was crying for real now and I almost felt guilty about it. Almost. She covered her face with her hands. “I wanted her dead, yes. But . . .” She raised her head and looked me in the eyes the way I figured a real perp never would. “I could never do a thing like that. Oh, in my dreams, maybe. But not for real! In fact, I came here that day to bring her brownies.”
This sort of bombshell deserved a shake of the head so that’s exactly what I did. Maybe when my brain settled again, the news would make sense. It didn’t. I had to resort to the old-fashioned way and talk things out. “You hated Marjorie so you brought her brownies because . . .”
Gloria’s eyes were rimmed with red. That didn’t prevent her from giving me a sly look. All she said was, “Ex-Lax.”
I swear, I would have burst out laughing if we weren’t talking murder. “You brought Marjorie brownies with laxative in them because—”
“Because I hated that Klinker woman!” Gloria emphasized her point by pounding her fist on the desk. “I was sick of trying to talk some sense into her. Nobody could do that. I wanted my revenge and the brownies were the only way I could think to get it. You know what?” She stood and threw back her scrawny shoulders. “The only reason I’m sorry she’s dead is because now I’ll never get even.”
I was too stunned by all this to say anything so all I did is stand there and watch Gloria march out of the room. Good thing the president popped up right before she walked out of the memorial. He was the one who reminded me that I was passing up a golden opportunity.
“She was here,” the president said. “The morning of the murder. Do you suppose she might have—”
“Did you see anything?” I jumped on the opportunity—and on Gloria, figuratively speaking, of course—before she could heft open the heavy front door. “When you came to give the brownies to Marjorie, was she here? Was anyone with her?”
She clicked her tongue. “If I had seen someone here, young lady, don’t you think I would have told the police? There was nobody around. Not a soul. Not that Klinker woman, not anybody. I didn’t hear anything, either, so don’t ask if there was any yelling or screaming or anything like that. The place was as quiet as a tomb.” Gloria thought about it for a moment before she chuckled. “Tomb, get it?”
I did, I just didn’t care. The president and I exchanged looks, and something told me that if he could, he would have asked exactly what I asked. “And the brownies?”
Gloria looked back at the office. “Left them in there. Right on the desk. Figured it was even better that way because then the Klinker woman would never know who brought them. Why? Is it important what happened to the brownies?”
I wondered, and wondering, I said, “Maybe. Because when I got here that morning, there were no brownies on the desk.” I did a quick shuffle through the mental notes about my case, sure that no one had mentioned brownies or chocolate or—
Gloria might have been too slow on the uptake to realize what was going on, but the president knew exactly when inspiration struck me like a bolt of lightning. An expectant look brightening an expression that was usually somber, he stepped closer.
“What is it?” he asked. “Have you discerned something important?”
Since I wasn’t sure what discerned even meant, I wasn’t sure about that. I did know one thing, though, and if Gloria thought I was weird talking to the empty air beside me, so be it.
“Brownies laced with Ex-Lax. Get it? That’s what we in the business call a big-time clue. It means I know who killed Marjorie.”
19
I was pretty sure I knew who the murderer was. But there’s this little thing called proof, see, and though I had suspicions aplenty and those brownies helping to point me in the right chocolately direction, what I didn’t have was proof.
I did have another thing, though. That was the heart-pounding, blood-thrilling, brain-buzzing certainty that I was one step ahead of Quinn. Oh yeah, I was jazzed, and so eager to wrap up the case before he somehow caught wind of what I was up to and scooped my suspect out from under me, I was ready to go all-out.
Which explains what I was doing in that conference room Ella had reserved for Marjorie and me to sort and store the Garfield memorabilia that would be displayed at the commemoration.
“There’s got to be something,” I mumbled, thumbing through a pile of old photographs and not caring if Ella knew what I was talking about or not. “We’ve missed something.”
Ella didn’t get it, but then, I didn’t expect her to. She had a normal life, and normal lives don’t include murder. Not routinely, anyway. It was a chilly September afternoon, and she was bundled in a cardigan that wasn’t exactly the same shade of green as her ankle-skimming, button-front dress. She poked her hands into the pockets of her sweater. “Something worth putting on display?”
“Something worth killing for.”
I knew I wasn’t imagining it—her face really did turn the same color as her sweater. She sounded just like I’d heard her sound on the phone when she offered one of her teenaged daughters advice. “If you think you know something that would help solve the case, Pepper, you should leave it up to the professionals. Why not call that nice detective friend of yours.”
I stopped just short of throwing her a look that would have caused her to implode. But only because I liked Ella, both as a boss and as a friend. My smile was sweet, but my teeth were gritted when I said, “First of all, Quinn is not my friend. Not anymore. And second of all, he’s not nice. Never has been.”
“Putting yourself in danger isn’t smart.”
I was holding a handful of photos of the Garfield family and I waved them in front of her face. “Does this look like danger to you? The only thing I’m in danger of is getting bored to death.” I plunked the pictures down on the table and looked around at the mess that was once the neat piles and stacks of memorabilia. “There’s nothing here,” I wailed. “It’s all so ordinary. So dull. I was hoping something that belonged to Marjorie might have gotten mixed up with all this stuff that belongs to the cemetery,” I explained. “But whatever I thought I’d find . . .” When I looked around, my sigh shivered through the room—and caught.
“What is it?” Ella was at my side instantly, one hand out as if she thought I was going to take a tumble and she’d actually have a chance of keeping me from hitting the floor. “You look surprised.”
“Surprised at how incredibly stupid I am,” I told her. I didn’t bother to explain. But then, I really couldn’t. I was already on my way out the door.
Of course I’d forgotten all about the stuff Marjorie gave me that night I visited her at home and I stowed in the trunk of my car. I mean, who wouldn’t? She’d pretty much come right out and told me none of it was all that valuable, so naturally after I dug out that newspaper page I’d shown to Ted Studebaker, I hadn’t bothered wasting any brain cells on what any of it was.
What it was, as it turned out, was exactly what Marjorie had promised: not much.
There were a few photographs of James Garfield the soldier and James Garfield the congressman and James Garfield the president. There were a couple postcards that showed the newly opened memorial. There was a poorly done watercolor of the log cabin where the president was born, a half-dozen or so shots of the canopy under which his body had been displayed when it was first brought back to Cleveland, and a couple ancient magazines, their covers promising “new and surprising information” about the president’s passing.
It seemed even after she was dead, Marjorie had gotten the last laugh: she said she wouldn’t trust me with anything important, and she hadn’t.