Миранда Джеймс - File M For Murder

“Why do people involve themselves with such obviously toxic relationships?” I was still puzzling over that. I just couldn’t understand it.

“Beats me.” Helen Louise massaged the sides of her neck with both hands. “Sorry, neck and shoulders are a bit tired.”

“No wonder, with all the baking you do.” She worked very hard, six days a week, plus long hours that started at five A.M. and didn’t end until seven in the evening when the bakery closed. “You need more help.”

“I know.” She sighed. “I keep meaning to advertise for someone, but there never seems to be enough time to get to it.”

“Plus finding someone who can meet your exacting standards.” I smiled at her.

“Some people do.” She smiled, a distinct twinkle in her eyes.

“The added benefit of having more help here and more time off means you could spend more time with friends, you know.”

Helen Louise nodded. “I do know. That’s certainly a powerful inducement.” She paused for a moment. “It sure would be nice to have something remotely resembling a personal life for the first time in years.”

I leaned forward and grasped her right hand. The strong, capable fingers rested lightly in my palm. “I couldn’t agree more.”

A faint flush appeared in Helen Louise’s cheeks, and she squeezed my hand. She started to speak, but the voice of her part-time helper interrupted. “Miz Brady, there’s something wrong with the cappuccino machine.”

I glanced to my left to see Debbie, an adenoidal high school senior, staring avidly at her boss’s hand, still in mine.

Helen Louise flashed me a wry grin and pulled her hand away as she stood. “All right, Debbie, I’ll come take a look at it.”

I stood also. “I’d better pick out dessert for tonight and head back home. They’ll all be wondering where I am.”

“Debbie, help Mr. Harris.”

The girl nodded at Helen Louise’s command. “Yes, ma’am. What would you like?” She headed behind the counter to the display case.

I walked over and stared at the contents for a moment, then pointed out one of the two remaining chocolate cakes. “I’ll take that one.”

While Debbie extracted the cake and prepared it for me to carry home, I watched Helen Louise fiddle with her cappuccino maker. “I’ll see you soon, I hope,” I said.

She turned to smile at me. “Definitely. And before I go to bed tonight, I’m going to have an ad ready to run in the paper.”

“Good.” We grinned at each other until Debbie called out to me that my cake was ready to go. I went to the cash register to pay and was soon on my way out the door, with one last glance back at Helen Louise. She was once again absorbed in her task while Debbie lounged at the cash register and stared into space.

On the brief drive home, I thought mostly about Helen Louise. We had known each other since childhood, and through high school and college she had been a good friend to both my late wife, Jackie, and me. We gradually lost touch when Helen Louise moved east to attend law school and Jackie and I married and moved to Texas for me to enter library school. The letters and cards dwindled to a trickle over the years, and on the increasingly infrequent occasions when I brought my family home to visit we never seemed to have the time to connect with many of our classmates. Helen Louise spent some of those years in Paris, and, with few family members of her own still in Athena, she’d rarely visited either.

She came back permanently and opened her bakery about three years before Jackie and my aunt Dottie died and I decided to move back myself. Getting to know her again after so many years helped ease some of the pains of transition into my new life, but I never expected our friendship to develop into something more. Sean and Laura appeared to be happy that I was seeing Helen Louise, and somehow I thought Jackie would be happy for me, too.

I woke from my happy daze as the car turned into my driveway. I blinked. I had driven home on autopilot, I supposed. My stomach did a little flip at the thought of what I might have done in my distracted state, but fortunately the traffic in Athena was never heavy in the late afternoon. I resolved to be more careful as I parked in the garage.

In the kitchen I stowed the cake in the fridge, and when I shut the door I felt pressure against my legs. I glanced down to see Diesel looking up at me. He chirped a couple of times, and I scratched his head. “Hello, boy. Are you glad to see me? I sure am glad to see you.” He chirped again, his way of saying yes, I supposed.

“How is Laura doing? Did you take good care of her?” I realized how foolish it was to ask the cat questions like that, but that never stopped me. Besides, he almost always responded when I did ask him something. Like now, when he meowed several times, almost as if he were giving me a report.

“You and that cat.” Sean chuckled.

Startled, I whirled around to see him in the doorway. My response was a little tart. “You should be used to it by now.”

“Oh, I am, I am.” He grinned at me and arched one eyebrow as he continued. “I’m keeping the butterfly net handy, just in case.”

I had to laugh at that. Then I noticed a sheaf of papers in his hand. “What have you got there?”

“Stuff from Lawton’s thumb drive.” Sean stepped forward into the room and pulled out a chair at the table. “Laura’s still resting, far as I know. So I decided to go ahead and have a look at the contents. I picked a few things to print.”

I took a seat to Sean’s left, and Diesel came to sit by me. “What kinds of things?”

“Mostly letters and e-mails.” Sean fanned the pages out on the table between us. “There’s more upstairs in my room, including the play he was working on. But I thought starting with his more recent correspondence might be a good plan.”

“Have you found anything of interest yet?” I glanced down at the pages in front of me. Ralph Johnston’s name leapt out at me from the page on top.

“Read that one.” Sean indicated the page I had noticed. His smug tone as he continued piqued my interest. “Wait till you see what’s in that letter.”

I scanned it quickly, and my eyes widened as the contents of the letter sank in. “If Ralph knew about this…” My voice trailed off.

Sean nodded. “He’d want to kill Lawton for sure.”

TWENTY-SEVEN

I read the letter again, this time more slowly, to absorb every detail. Addressed to the director of the American Academy of Drama, it offered Connor Lawton’s review of a play submitted in consideration for the Laurette Taylor Fellowship in Dramaturgy. Lawton was apparently a member of the judging panel for the fellowship.

The author of the play in question was Montana (aka Ralph) Johnston. Lawton’s comments savaged the man and his work. Phrases like tediously derivative and staggeringly boring made me wince on Ralph’s behalf. Lawton closed the letter with the complaint that he couldn’t understand why he was expected to waste his time on work that was so manifestly substandard .

I set the letter down and looked at Sean. “Connor made it plain he didn’t like Ralph’s play. But if he knew Lawton had written that , he would certainly be furious. I know I would.”

“A simple no would have been enough, I’d think.” Sean shook his head. “Looks to me like Lawton went out of his way to be a jerk about it. Even if the play was as bad as he says, he didn’t have to say it like that.”

“No, he didn’t, but in my experience some critics can’t resist the temptation to be as nasty as possible. I suppose it feeds their egos somehow to tear other people down so viciously.”