Drizzled with Death(67)
“I heard about that from Mother. She said Myra was spreading it all over town. What was it you hallucinated again? A Sasquatch?” This is why it was impossible to like Knowlton. As soon as you started to feel the least bit softened toward him, he said or did something that crusted you all over once more.
“It was a mountain lion and I did not hallucinate it. I saw it being walked on a short lead by your fiancée.” That snapped his jaws shut like a leghold trap on a fox. “And yes, I did have business to discuss with Knowlton that didn’t involve his athletic sex life.”
“Okay, what was it?”
“Are you sure you didn’t see either Jill or Hanley on Friday night?”
“I’m sure. Neither of them was up at the camp. It’s black as the inside of a bull moose out there when there’s no moon and it’s overcast. Even with the distance between camps, you can see lights winking away and the noise travels, too. There weren’t none of either one on Friday.” But if he didn’t see anyone, then no one could say they saw him either.
Seventeen
I caught up with Felicia at the library, where she volunteers at the GED program during off-hours. I waited around a corner listening until I was sure I wasn’t interrupting someone then let myself into the quiet space.
“The library’s closed,” Felicia called over her shoulder automatically, her attention focused on packing a tote bag with books and papers.
“I came to see you,” I said, feeling strange at how loud my voice sounded.
“Dani, I would have thought you’d be out at the Black Friday sales getting some Christmas shopping done.” She smoothed a stack of papers with a small hand and gave her attention to me. I caught myself wondering if that same hand had twisted the top of one of my syrup bottles and slipped in poison. It made me sick to my stomach to wonder such a thing about a woman so long a friend of the family. But wonder it I did. When you watch the news or read the newspaper and become aware of a crime, you don’t really give much thought to the ways it impacts a community. Sure, you think of the victim and their immediate family. If they left young children behind, it is easy to consider how lives are changed. If the murderer is revealed to be someone close to the family, everyone understands the sense of betrayal.
But what you don’t know, until it happens in your own town, is how small things shift and feel tainted. How the offhand comments of long-term acquaintances take on shades of meaning you would never before have assigned them. How quirks and habits suddenly look like something potentially fraught with malice. Before Alanza took a plunge into her pancakes, I never would have wondered if a mild-mannered innkeeper who helped increase her fellow community members’ chances of job success would bop someone off.
Standing there with Felicia, I felt angry that someone would do something in my town so terrible I would change the way I looked at my friends and neighbors. So far, I had been looking for ways to slide my questions into conversations as nonconfrontationally as possible. The anger I was feeling prompted me to plunge ahead with my queries without apology.
“With everything going on with Greener Pastures, I didn’t feel much like shopping, no matter how good the deals.”
“I’d be upset, too. What brings you by the library?”
“I wanted to ask you about last Friday night.”
“What about it?”
“You said you were at the quilting group but you weren’t. Tansey said so at Thanksgiving dinner.” It was hard to do but I kept my eyes locked on hers instead of staring at my shoes, which would be my usual inclination when embarrassing someone. Felicia remained quiet for a moment, her hand frozen in mid smooth across the stack of papers. Then her eyes dropped and her shoulders sagged. She sank into the seat beside her.
“You caught me. I didn’t want anyone to know.” My hearted bounced around in my chest. I tried to remember where all the exits were in case she decided to bolt, or worse, if I needed a quick escape route of my own.
“So where were you really?”
“Out at the Loon Lodge with Jim Parnell.” A tear rolled down her pink cheek. Her sagging shoulders started shaking. I looked over at the librarian’s cluttered desk and spotted a box of tissues. I grabbed them and handed the box to her. I could understand why she would be upset. Maybe she wasn’t going to confess to murder after all.
“So Roland doesn’t know about it?” Loon Lodge was a grubby motel and coffee shop on the far side of town. To be there with someone other than your husband spoke volumes about the state of your marriage.
“Of course he doesn’t. He was off practicing his music with Dean and the other guys like he does every Friday night.” I tried to imagine Roland’s blood pressure readings if he had been privy to his wife’s goings-on. Felicia started sobbing even harder. I wondered how best to comfort her but, given my limited experience, didn’t feel competent to advise her on things marital or extramarital. And really, I was here to find out if she had killed Alanza, not to hear a confession about anything else. Her choice of bedmates had no bearing on my syrup-making business. Time to get back on track.