I couldn’t even fathom that, so I didn’t dwell on it.
The Delphinium was packed, and I squeezed my way through the crowded entryway and made my way back to the bar. It was loud, the lighting was dim, and something smelled fantastic.
Sitting, I looked for Doug but didn’t see him around. When the bartender approached, I said, “Is Doug working tonight?”
“He is,” the young man said, “but he stepped out a minute ago. He’ll be back soon. You want a drink while you wait?”
“No, thanks.” I was already wound up enough without adding alcohol to fuel my fire.
“He’s driving Hyacinth home,” someone said as she slid onto the stool next to mine. “I passed them on my way here.”
“She’s been drinking again?” I asked.
“Still,” Mayor Barbara Jean corrected as she ordered a vodka tonic and glanced my way. “She hasn’t stopped since Haywood died. She was bad off tonight. Her grief is killing her.”
I didn’t think it was the grief so much as the booze.
A second later, Barbara Jean asked, “Why are you looking for Doug?”
“No reason in particular,” I said, evading like a pro.
The mayor slid me a dubious glance. “PJ told us how you’re trying to investigate Haywood’s death to help clear her name, bless your heart. But don’t you think stalking all her friends—and their husbands—is taking it a bit too far?”
“That depends.”
The bartender set her drink in front of her and she picked it up. “On what?”
“On whether one of you killed him. If one of you did, then no, it’s not too far.”
“You’re not serious?” she said, sipping her drink.
“Deadly.”
A group at a table nearby erupted in laughter, and it seemed so at odds with the conversation I was having that it almost made me smile.
Leaning back, Barbara Jean draped one arm over the back of the stool. “Why? Why would one of us kill a friend?”
“The blackmail.”
“Not that again,” she said. “I heard how you peppered Hyacinth and Patricia. Ridiculous.”
“Is it? And how about your blackmail letters?” I asked, suddenly exhausted. “How did you feel about someone threatening to expose your gambling addiction? Ridiculous?”
Her mouth dropped open, but she didn’t say anything. She just kept staring.
I sighed. “Look, I don’t care what you do in your free time, as long as you do it with your own money. You’ve never used Harpies’ or town funds to gamble, have you?”
Through clenched teeth, she said, “Never.”
A lie.
Dang.
I could practically feel the time slipping away. I pushed harder. “Okay, let me run this theory by you. Let’s say your wife’s a gambler. Maybe she’s racked up some debts, and you’re having trouble paying them off . . . You need cash quick. Your friends are loaded but you just can’t ask for a handout straight-out. Pride’s on the line. So you concoct a plan to use some secrets you know to bring in some money. No harm. No foul. Except what if one of the people you’re blackmailing suddenly stops paying? And threatens to track you down and expose your identity? Your house of cards is about to collapse. You panic. And you kill him.”
Barbara Jean set her glass down and started clapping. “That’s not a theory. That’s a wonderful work of fiction. You get your storytelling skills from your mama.”
Anger surged through me, and I forced myself to calm down. It had been a low blow, bringing my mama into this. “Why were you breaking into Haywood’s house on Sunday? At first I thought it was because you were looking for the papers that proved Haywood was an Ezekiel, but that couldn’t be. You didn’t know.”
She stared at her fingernails, cleared her throat, and said in that beautiful voice of hers, “Let’s theoretically say I might have been looking for evidence that Haywood was in fact the blackmailer.”
I understood. She’d have wanted to get rid of any proof he might have had against her. “But he wasn’t the blackmailer.”
“Then who was, Carly?” she asked.
It was a good question. One I didn’t have an answer to.
I glanced toward the door, wondering what to do next, and saw a bald head bobbing through the crowd, the light glinting off the bare skin.
At first I thought it might be Doug returning, but it wasn’t. Just a man passing by to use the restroom.
“You’re forgetting one thing, however,” she said.
“What’s that?” I asked, distracted by what I’d just seen. The bald head. The glare.
It sent me back to yesterday when Virgil was talking about the man who’d hit him. A bald man in a black SUV.
The Ramelles had a black SUV. I’d seen it myself parked yesterday at the Ezekiel house. And their house was just a block from where Virgil was killed. It was nighttime, and he’d been wearing dark clothing while out walking Louella . . .