<14>
Hannah approached the table with reluctance. She really wasn’t looking forward to dealing with Winthrop again, but perhaps she could spirit her mother away for a private talk. “Mother?”
“Why, hello!” Delores called out, greeting Hannah and then reaching out to take Winthrop’s hand. “This is quite an experience for Winthrop. He’s never been stuck in a blizzard before.”
“Right, dear girl.” Winthrop patted her hand and then pulled his away. Either he’d read the disapproval in Hannah’s eyes, or he was of the opinion that holding hands in public was tacky.
Hannah resisted the urge to tell him that the only way to experience a blizzard was to get out there alone and walk a couple of blocks, and she turned to her mother instead. “Could I see your for a moment, Mother?”
“Of course. Sit down, dear.”
“No. I mean . . . I need to see your privately.”
Delores frowned slightly. “Whatever it is, you can talk about it in front of Winthrop. We have no secrets from each other.”
“Maybe you don’t have any secrets from Winthrop, but I do.”
“That’s only as it should be,” Winthrop said, and then he turned to Delores. “Go have a little coze with your daughter, dear girl. I’ll be perfectly fine here.”
“Coze?” Hannah repeated, as her mother got up and followed her to an unpopulated spot near the Christmas tree that Andrea had decorated.
“Comfy coze. I know they used the term in Regency England, and I assume it’s still in use today. It means an intimate chat. Oh, dear!”
Hannah glanced in the direction her mother was gazing and had all she could do to keep from grinning. The moment Delores had left the table with Hannah, three women had converged on Winthrop. Carrie Rhodes was now seated on one side of him, Bertie Straub was on the other, and Florence Evans had taken the chair directly across from the British lord.
“Sharks in a feeding frenzy,” Delores muttered. And then she turned to frown at Hannah as her eldest daughter gave a startled laugh. “Well, they are.”
“You could be right.” Hannah saw Carrie give Winthrop her sweetest smile, and she pulled her mother around to the other side of the Christmas tree where she wouldn’t be distracted.
“What’s so important?” Delores asked a bit sharply.
“Murder, Mother.”
“Murder?” Delores whirled to face Hannah instead of attempting to see Winthrop and the three women through the branches. “Here?”
“Yes.”
Delores rolled her eyes toward the angel at the top of the tree. “Don’t tell me you found the body!”
“Shhh!” Hannah cautioned, putting her finger to her lips. “Mike doesn’t want anybody to know about it yet.”
“You have got to stop finding dead people, Hannah! Winthrop’s going to get the wrong impression of you.”
“Right,” Hannah said, biting back several additional comments that would have assured her mother’s immediate defection.
“Well, who was it this time?”
“Martin Dubinski’s new wife. She was stabbed in the parking lot.” Hannah’ knew that discretion was the better part of valor and she decided not to mention that her mother’s antique cake knife was the murder weapon.
“Good heavens! Do they know who did it?”
“Not yet. That’s the other reason nobody can leave.”
Delores was nothing if not perceptive. Her eyes narrowed and she bent forward to stare at her daughter. “You mean . . . the killer could still be here?”
“That’s what Mike thinks. Anyway, I need your help with the mayor. Bertie overheard them fighting. She told Michelle that Mrs. Bascomb was accusing her husband of knowing Brandi in Vegas.”
“Knowing? As in the Biblical sense?”
“I think so. And that could be the reason Mrs. Bascomb was so upset.”
“Poor Stephanie,” Delores said with a sigh. “With his track record, she’s probably right. And you want me to ask him if it’s true?”
“Yes. I know you two go way back, and I think he’s still a little afraid of you.”
“He should be. Fear was the only thing that kept him in line the summer I worked for his mother. I’ll do this one on one. It’ll work better that way. You wait here and keep an eye on Winthrop. If he looks desperate, go rescue him.”
Fat chance, Hannah thought, taking a peek through the branches. Winthrop looked as happy as a clam to have three women doting on him. “Okay, Mother. Good luck.”
“Luck has nothing to do with it. Intimidation is an art form, and don’t you dare forget it!”
Hannah was just thinking about going over to spill some coffee on Carrie, who was definitely poaching in her mother’s absence, when Delores came up smiling broadly.
“You found out?” Hannah guessed.
“Of course I did! I had him completely on the defensive from the very start. Ricky-Ticky was all set to spend a few intimate hours with Brandi when he went to Vegas last October, but he had a few too many and passed out in his hotel room before he could meet her in the bar for their date.”
“Date? That’s a polite way of putting it.”
“That’s exactly what I said. And then I asked him if he had to pay her anyway.”
“Mother!”
“I was curious.”
“So am I. Well? Did he pay her?”
“Only half. That was the up-front part. He was supposed to pay the other half later.”
“Do you think he was telling the truth?”
Delores nodded. “I’m almost positive he was. It would have been less embarrassing if he’d lied and said he’d been with her.”
“You’re right. Good work, Mother. It’s too bad Mrs. Bascomb doesn’t know she has nothing to worry about on the Brandi front.”
“I’d tell her, but Ricky-Ticky deserves a rough time for his past flirtations.”
“Nicely put, Mother.”
“Yes, wasn’t it? And speaking of flirtations, I think I’d better get back to Winthrop before my partner and the woman I hope might be your future mother-in-law does something I can’t forgive.”
Hannah ducked into the kitchen to see if she could find an empty spot to gather her thoughts. Earl Flensburg had obviously finished eating and left, because the circular booth the builder had put in to accommodate the kitchen workers was empty. Hannah carried Earl’s plate to the sink, rinsed it off, and slipped it into the hot soapy water that Edna had left for dishes that came in after the load in the industrial dishwasher had been started. Then she grabbed a mug of coffee from the kitchen pot, slid into the booth, and pulled her stash of crumpled napkins out of her sweater pockets.
Once she’d straightened out all the napkins and placed them in order, Hannah surveyed the results of the investigation so far. They’d eliminated two suspects, Martin and Shirley, and although Babs didn’t have an alibi, her motive was weak. Babs had been prepared to get along with Brandi for her son’s sake. She might have hoped that Brandi would leave Martin, but it was unlikely that Babs would have killed her new daughter-in-law just to get her out of the way.
Mayor Bascomb’s name was under Babs Dubinski’s. Hannah had written it down when Michelle had told her that Lake Eden’s first couple was fighting about Brandi. But Delores had found out that nothing happened between the mayor and the stripper-turned-bride. Hannah picked up her pen and drew a line through Mayor Bascomb’s name. If nothing happened between them, the mayor had no reason to kill Brandi.
Way down at the bottom of the napkin was a name that appeared on every suspect list that Hannah had ever written. Someone Unknown was the name, and Reasons Unknown was the motive. And in order to figure out who Someone Unknown was, Hannah needed to know more about Brandi’s life.
Hannah was sure there were people in Las Vegas that she could interview, but they were there and she was here at the Lake Eden Christmas party in the middle of a blizzard. Perhaps she couldn’t learn anything about Brandi’s recent past, but she could certainly find out more about Brandi’s school days at Browerville High.
The moment Hannah thought of it, she was on the move, stuffing the napkins back into her sweater pockets and heading out to talk to Marge Beeseman. The Lake Eden Journal had reported that the community library, run by Marge, had been designated as the tri-county repository for school documents.
Marge was sitting at a table with Lisa and her dad. Hannah greeted them all and then she turned to Lisa. “Where’s Herb?”
“He’s helping Mike with something or other.” Lisa leaned closer and spoke in a barely audible voice, “They don’t know.”
Hannah turned to Marge. “Congratulations about the tri-county repository designation.”
“Thank you. It’s a lot of work going through all the documents, but we et a very generous stipend for storing the material.”
“That’s great. I was just wondering if that school material included high school yearbooks.”
“Yes, it does. I just finished shelving them yesterday.”
Hannah smiled. Her hunch had paid off. “I know this is an imposition, but do you think you could open the library for me so I could take a look at some of them?”
“Of course I can. I was about to go up there anyway to show Lisa and Jack the new magazine racks that the Jordan High shop class built for me.”
Once Hannah, Lisa, Marge, and Jack had climbed the stairs and gone down the hall to the library, Marge unlocked the door and flicked on the lights. “The yearbooks are against the back wall in the center sections. There’s a stepstool there if you can’t reach the top ones. What are you looking for, Hannah?”
“Um . . . it’s nothing, really. I just wanted to see if someone I know has changed a lot since high school.”
Hannah crooked her finger at Lisa, and her partner followed along. They found the proper section and Lisa asked, “What are we really looking for?”
“A picture of Mary Kay Hinklemeyer in one of the Browerville High yearbooks. It would have been about ten years ago, because she left home at sixteen.”
“And Mary Kay Hinklemeyer is . . . Brandi’s real name?”
“You got it.”
“And she’s from Browerville?”
“You got that, too.”
Lisa took down one of the Browerville yearbooks and flipped to the back. “This is going to be easy. Each book has an index listing names and photos.”
With both of them sitting at a library table, looking through the yearbooks, it didn’t take long to locate a photo of Mary Kay Hinklemeyer. There was one picture of her as a junior varsity cheerleader jumping up, legs spread, arms akimbo, with the other cheerleaders at a basketball game. Lisa stared at the photo for a long moment without speaking, and then she passed it to Hannah for a similar silent perusal.
“Do you think that’s Brandi?” Lisa asked.
“I think so.”
“Okay, but you couldn’t prove it by me. She really changed a lot since she was in school.”
“That she did,” Hannah commented, biting back a quip about the wonders of nose jobs, hair coloring, and other surgical enhancements. “Let’s go through the whole yearbook together and see if we recognize anyone else.”
They turned the pages in silence for a few moments until they came to a photo of a pep rally in the school gym. Brandi and the other cheerleaders were in front of the crowd and the band was seated behind them.
“Is that who I think it is?” Lisa asked, pointing to a boy with dark-rimmed glasses who was holding a trumpet.
“Kirby Welles?” Hannah guessed, flipping back to the index. “Here’s his name. I didn’t know he went to Browerville High.”
“Neither did I.”
Lisa started paging through the yearbook again, looking for anyone else she might recognize. Hannah was silent, barely looking at the pages. She was too busy going over the conversation she’d had with Kirby. He’d claimed he had just met Brandi tonight and that was clearly a lie. He’d known Brandi since she was Mary Kay Hinklemeyer, junior varsity cheerleader. And that explained why Kirby had been so upset to hear that she was dead.
“Thanks for your help, Lisa,” Hannah said, pushing back her chair.
“You’re welcome. You’re going to see Kirby Welles?”
“Oh, yes,” Hannah said, heading out of the library at a fast clip. By virtue of his lie, Jordan High’s bandleader had just become her prime suspect.