A Willing Murder (Medlar Mystery 1)

She paused. “Daryl knows about my son’s dyslexia. They play...” She gasped. “Played basketball together. Daryl read the scores to my son.” She looked at them. “Do you think Daryl knows that Dan didn’t—didn’t do that to himself? Do you think that’s why he made sure I knew you’d been working this case? That he’s somehow trying to ask you for help?”

“Yes,” Sara said. “I do think that and we’re going to do what we can.”

“Thank you,” Mrs. Bruebaker said. “I have to get back. You can’t imagine what my family is like. My daughter-in-law. My grandchildren—” She broke off when she started crying again. When she stood up, she swayed on her feet.

Jack caught her. “I’m driving you home.”

* * *

After Jack left, Sara said, “When he gets back, he’ll be hungry.”

Her tone was heavy and Kate well understood. Just this evening she’d told herself that there could be an explanation about everything, even the failed brakes on Jack’s truck. But this was murder. They were all murder.

She went to the kitchen to make one of the cheese-and-fruit plates that Jack liked so much and was glad for something to occupy her hands.

She didn’t want to think what it meant that Alastair had lied to her. Maybe he said that about Dan because he didn’t want to be embarrassed in front of her. It would have been uncomfortable to hear about his rich mother trying to rip off a small local business.

She wondered if Henry Lowell had given Alastair’s mother a forty-percent discount? Was that why she went to his funeral? To say thank you?

When Jack returned, he didn’t say anything, just sat down on the couch across from them and began to eat from the tray Kate had set out.

“I didn’t tell you everything,” Sara said. “When I was at the hospital with Heather, I visited Mrs. Boggs.”

“The landlord’s wife,” Jack said. “She remember anything?”

“She remembered everything.”

“Tell us,” they said.

Earlier that day...

Mrs. Boggs was in the hospital bed hooked up to tubes and beeping machines. Sara was old enough to know not to ask the woman what was wrong with her and what her prognosis was. That was what young people did. Sara might not know the details but she knew the woman was near her end.

Sara said that she and her two friends were investigating the deaths of Verna and Cheryl Morris and wondered if she could tell her anything.

Mrs. Boggs seemed glad to think of something other than her own pain. She even scooted up in the bed a bit. “I remember all of it.” Her voice was raspy but clear.

“The rent check didn’t come in Saturday’s mail, so Lester went over there on Sunday morning to get it. He came back in a rage. He said they were moving out without paying. The house was empty, and the doors and windows were open. He closed the place up and put padlocks on the doors, then he took the van he’d traded to them. It was full of household goods and he said he’d give it back to them when they showed up with the rent.”

“But they didn’t show up,” Sara said.

“No. We never saw them again. The van was parked beside the garage for months. Lester was so mad that he was going to take everything to the dump, but I liked Verna. I thought she got a raw deal in town. I never could figure out who spread all the gossip about her. I never saw any man at their house except that cranky old Arthur Niederman. He used to brag to everybody that he and Verna were lovers but nobody believed him. One time I saw that she was giving him a massage.”

Mrs. Boggs’s energy was fading. “Somebody was that poor woman’s enemy. I don’t understand why she stayed in Lachlan.”

“Your son sold us the contents of the garage.”

“Did he?” She gave a smile of irony. “Couldn’t wait, could he? He always was like his father.”

“Is what we bought from the Morris house?”

“Yes. Everything that was in the van is in there. I wouldn’t let Lester throw it away because I knew he’d fill up the garage with more rubbish anyway. At least what those girls had was clean.” She closed her eyes. “I think that now I need to...”

“Of course. I wish you well.”

Mrs. Boggs didn’t open her eyes. “I just hope that those books about Heaven are wrong. I don’t want the first person I see to be Lester Boggs.”

“I know what you mean.” Sara squeezed her hand, then left the room...