Shadow Notes by Laurel Peterson (cool books to read txt) 📗

cans of soup. The fresh ready-made casseroles weren’t out yet, but frozen lasagna beckoned. I added two packages to my purchases. As I got into the line for pastry, a familiar voice called my name. I turned. Wendy Hankin, her hands on her hips, swayed slightly by a table in the café.

“Why are you here?” she demanded.

Startled, I said, “Why shouldn’t I be here?”

“You’re everywhere!” she exclaimed. “I see you at restaurants, on the street, at my country club bar, now here. Isn’t anywhere safe from you? Stop stalking me!” she shouted.

Embarrassed. I pushed my cart out of line and walked over to her. I l­owered my voice. “Wendy, I’m not stalking you. The last time I saw you was at the country club.”

“That’s not the last time I saw you. You were at The Peak last night. You rode with Mary Ellen yesterday. I was at the stables, too, and I know you know it. You need to stay away from me.” With lightning speed, she moved in close and grabbed my coat sleeve. People stared at us as though we were an exhibit in the Natural History Museum: Neolithic Women Fighting. “I know you’re trying to pin Hugh’s murder on me.”

I tried disengaging my coat from her fingers, but she was locked on like time-release vault doors. “Why would I do that?”

“You know why.” She stabbed a finger at me. “So yeah, I had a little drug problem. So yeah, my husband shouldn’t have helped me out from time to time, but just because Hugh threatened to report us if Gary didn’t clean up his act, and Gary had to move his practice into the city and be supervised and go to anger management classes because of that time he hit Hugh, and I had to dry out at Betty Ford, which nearly bankrupted us even though some people think we’re made of money, well, that doesn’t mean I’d kill him.” She shook my sleeve a little and my arm bones rattled.

Sounded like a pretty good motive to me.

“Besides it was years ago, and you’re not going to prove anything following us around. Oh, and,” she snapped her fingers in my face, “that sorry story about your mother and her medical records and what not, she’s out of jail now, so you can cancel that appointment with my husband. Your mother has to ask him. He’s not going to give it to you.” She spat this last at me. “Besides,” she muttered, almost to herself, “I know she kept a copy. Don’t think you’re going to blackmail us, too. There’s nothing left.”

She suddenly became aware that her behavior was attracting attention and picked up her coffee, but her hand shook so badly that she couldn’t get her lips and the edge of the cup to meet. I wondered if she had raided her husband’s stash this morning.

“Someone is blackmailing you? Who? And there’s a copy of Mother’s ­medical report?”

“Don’t play innocent with me. I know Hugh told you about the DNA tests at your mother’s Christmas party. It’s all over town. Why do you think all this is happening?” She gave up trying to drink and put the cup down. The front of her blouse was decorated with little brown splatters. Her other hand was still locked onto my coat. Again, I gently attempted to disengage it.

“Wendy, I don’t know anything about DNA tests.” My mind was racing. I needed to get back to my mother. “Hetty Gardner was murdered this morning, and I have to take food to the family. You need to let me go.”

She backed into a table, then sat down so fast I thought she would miss the chair and land on the floor. “Not another murder.” At least she’d freed my sleeve. “You came here to ask me if I did it, right? That’s why you’re here. I know that’s why you’re here.”

“Why would you kill Hetty?”

“I wouldn’t kill Hetty and I don’t know anyone who would. Gary certainly wouldn’t. He doesn’t have a motive either, and anyway, he was with me.”

“He was with you when?”

“When Hetty was killed.”

“Do you know when Hetty was killed?”

“No, but it doesn’t matter because Gary is always with me.”

I looked around. No Gary anywhere. “Where is he right now?”

“At work.” She seemed to realize what I was saying. “Except when he’s at work and then his tarty little nurse is his alibi.”

That likely explained her affair with the podiatrist. “Gary’s having an affair with his nurse?”

“Who told you that?” She nearly shrieked it.

“Calm down.” I stepped back to my cart, grabbed a bottle of expensive water, and tried to get her to drink a little. “I inferred it from what you said.”

“Oh.” She sipped like a compliant child. “You’re not a cop!” She crowed it loudly.

This was a revelation? “No, I’m not.”

“I don’t have to answer any of your questions.”

“You never did.”

“Leave me alone.”

“Are you going to be okay? You seem a little agitated.”

“Agitated, smagitated. I’m fine. Skedaddle.” She waggled her fingers at me like anemone on a coral reef.

Maybe she still had that drug problem.

It would be a motive to kill Hugh, especially if he’d discovered Hankin was still dealing drugs to his wife. Maybe he was passing out “free samples” to other women, too.

I dropped off the food and headed out again. I had one advantage no one else had and it was about time I used it, before anyone else got hurt. Maybe actively engaging the intuition would make the dreams stop—an added plus. Having physical contact usually sparked an image, but I hoped the intuition might activate from being at the murder scene.

Levittown Road was several miles northeast of Mother’s place, almost at the border with the next town. The acreage there used to be cheaper, which is why Hetty’s not-enormous inheritance from her father had been sufficient to buy her farm. Levittown Road ran a couple miles west of the farm road and didn’t connect directly with it: she could