Denise Swanson - Murder of a Small-Town Honey

She nodded.

"It looks to me like Honey was blackmailing four peo­ple. Four identical sets of letters and numbers appear re­peatedly. The letters must refer to who and the numbers to how much. Do the columns refer to monthly payments?"

"Probably. It looks like she started blackmailing the first person about sixteen years ago. Maybe just before she left town. She added another cash cow six months after that. The next was six years later, and the fourth started to pay only about two years ago."

"I'm surprised anyone would or could pay as long as those first victims." Simon tapped the pages in front of him.

Leaning forward, Skye pointed to her notes. "If I figured this right, she demanded very small amounts, only fifty dol­lars a month to start with, and the increases were small, too. So, as the person grew older and made more money she upped the ante, but only a little at a time. She made sure they never felt the pinch."

"Are you figuring that the numbers in the address book should be multiplied by ten to get the actual cash value? How did you come up with that?" Simon got up again and turned his chair back around.

Skye cocked an eyebrow at him. "Bored?"

"No, I've just always had a lot of nervous energy. Go on."

"I'll explain my reasoning if you promise not to tell any­one what I tell you."

"Hey, I've already sworn not to tell on your mom." Simon took Skye's hand and squeezed it reassuringly.

Taking a deep breath, she squeezed back before gently removing her hand. "Okay, we have four sets of two letters, obviously initials of some sort. But OH, NB, EW, and WY fit no one's name who is involved."

"How do you know? Couldn't it be people from her city life that you aren't aware of?"

"Possibly," Skye conceded, twisting a strand of hair around her finger. "But the truth is, my brother was one of her victims, and since I know that and the amount of the last demand..."

"You worked backward."

"Yep. He was supposed to pay her twenty-five hundred dollars the week after the parade. So, I looked for the latest entry after each initial. Two, NB and OH, had a hundred and fifty written next to them, and WY had a fifty after it. But EW had two hundred and fifty in its column. And the one before that was one hundred.

"EW had to be Vince because he was supposed to pay twenty-five hundred and he was asking to borrow fifteen hundred, which is the difference between the prior month's payment and the current month's."

Simon got up and strolled over to the refrigerator. He took out a can of Diet Pepsi and waved it at Skye, who nod­ded. "Why did the payments go up so much the last month? And who are the others?"

Skye retrieved two glasses from the cupboard. She filled them with ice and, taking the can from Simon's hand, split the contents between the tumblers. After a healthy swallow she took a clean sheet of paper from the pad and wrote the alphabet. On top of those letters she wrote it backward.

She put her pen tip on the bottom E. "If Vince Denison equals EW, then the letter on top of this V should be an E and the D's letter should be W, which they are. Who else on my list of suspects has a V or a D in their name?"

"Darleen Boyd," Simon said after thinking briefly.

"Right, and in this code B equals Y, so WY is Darleen. Using the same logic, OH is Lloyd Stark and NB is Mike Young," Skye finished with a flourish.

Simon ran his long fingers up and down his glass of soda. "There's only one thing," he said hesitatingly. "This makes Vince look even more guilty. He was paying more than anyone else, and he was supposed to see her the day of the parade."

"I don't care. We are operating on the premise he is in­nocent. If you can't agree with that, you should leave now."

For a few minutes Simon silently made interconnecting water rings on the table's white tile top. He sighed. "I can live with that for now, but if we find insurmountable evi­dence against him, I'll have to turn it over to the police."

"You won't do it without telling me first?"

"Okay. It would be better if we did it together."

"We'll see."

Simon finished his drink and put the glass in the sink. Not looking at her, he asked, "What was Vince being black­mailed about?"

"Honey claimed to have had his baby fifteen years ago. She called it child support."

"Did Vince ever see this baby or have visits?"

Skye started gathering up the papers. "Only once, right after it was born. But he's seen pictures. Why?"

"Because according to the autopsy report, Honey Adair never had a child."

"Just as I thought. She aborted the baby and still put Vince through the wringer."

"No. Honey never had an abortion either. She was ster­ile. The medical examiner hypothesizes that she had a sexu­ally transmitted disease that caused an infection in her fallopian tubes."

"That's interesting. She claimed to be pregnant to try to get Mike Young to marry her, but he found out she was

lying. So, next time, when she told Vince she was pregnant, she demanded money instead of marriage and then conve­niently disappeared." Skye pounded the table with her fist so hard her glass trembled.

"The real question is, what was she blackmailing every­one else about?"

"Lloyd is easy. It has to be about his affair with her when she was his underage student."

Simon nodded. "How about Darleen and Mike?"

"I have no idea about Darleen. Her only connection was dating Mike before he hooked up with Honey." Skye tapped her finger against her lip. "Mike, on the other hand, was heavily involved in drugs at that time."

"Didn't he serve prison time for that already?"

"Yes, but maybe he did something awful while under the influence, and she was holding that act, not the drugs them­selves, over his head. From the dates, it looks like she didn't start blackmailing him until after he got out of prison and was trying-to turn his life around."

"That makes sense," Simon agreed. "And having experi­enced prison once, Mike might not have been willing to take any chances of returning."

CHAPTER 20

Monday, Monday

After a restless night, Skye rose early on Monday. She dressed in a black linen A-line dress, black hose and shoes, then put her hair into a French twist, spraying it until she was sure no curl would escape at an inopportune mo­ment. Adding the string of pearls her parents had given her when she graduated from college, she was ready for Honey's funeral.

On the way to the funeral home, Skye noticed that the Labor Day sky was drab and cloudy. A pall draped Scumble River like a mantle of shame and made it seem that the town had been singled out as degenerate and corrupt. It was a perfect day to bury someone who had been murdered.

May wanted them to walk in together as a family, and she had instructed Skye to meet them at eight-thirty outside of Reid's. Skye arrived a few minutes early, only to find her parents' white Oldsmobile already parked in the nearly full lot.

She got into the backseat of her parents' car. "Where's Vince? He usually beats all of us."

Twisting in her seat, May looked back at Skye. "I don't know. Right before we left, I tried calling him, but no one answered. We thought he must be on his way already."

"Could he have spent the night somewhere else?" Skye was proud of herself for wording her question so delicately.

May didn't answer, but Jed caught Skye's eye in the rearview mirror and winked.

Her head rested against the back of the seat, and she let her mind wander. The car's dark-red-velvet interior re­minded Skye of an old sofa that had been in her grand­mother Leofanti's parlor. She must have been hovering between wakefulness and sleep, because the sound of a car door slamming made her heart skip a beat. Her father was standing outside the car.