“I don’t know. I really thought he’d stopped. For a while.”
“Did you know about Reverend Hessel blackmailing Reverend Wilkie and Sue Langtree in order to get their positions?”
“No. I… this is the first I’ve heard of it. I suppose I should have guessed.”
“Do you think he could have been blackmailing someone for money?”
“I suppose. It makes sense.”
“Did you try to poison me?”
She blushed before she said, “I’m afraid I did. I hope you’ll forgive me.”
“That’s really up to my grandmother. She’s the one who ended up in the hospital.” I fidgeted for a moment and then said, “You should tell all this to Detective Lehmann. I think your lawyer was wrong to tell you not to.”
“Oh, well, in that case…” she said, sarcastically.
Maybe it was the wrong advice, I don’t know. It was free though. So, there’s that.
Driving awayfrom Ivy Greene’s I was fairly convinced that Reverend Hessel had tried to blackmail someone else for money and they’d killed him. By the time I got to Masons Bay Village, I’d decided that the best way to find out who Reverend Hessel had tried to blackmail was to talk to someone who’d been blackmailed by him before.
I turned off Main Street and cut over to Murdock. When I pulled up in front of her house, Sue Langtree was on her hands and knees in the front yard. Weeding. Seeing me, she stood up and waved.
“I know why you’re here,” she called out when I stepped onto the sidewalk.
“You do?”
“Of course. And the answer is yes. I’ll happily give you singing lessons.”
“Um, no.”
She looked confused for a moment and then seemed to decide not to be. “You missed choir rehearsal again. Are you here to apologize?”
“I’m not joining your choir.”
“Is there something wrong with Emma?”
“I’d like to ask you some questions about Reverend Hessel. I know he blackmailed you into stepping down as choir director.”
Her smiled didn’t break. She said, “I suppose you should come inside. How about I make some lemonade?”
“That sounds nice,” I said, following her up the walkway and into the house. She stopped at a coat rack and took off the men’s flannel shirt she’d been wearing to garden.
“It was my husband’s,” she explained as she brushed it gently with one hand. “I still have most of his clothes. They make me feel close to him.”
As she walked through the living room toward the kitchen, she said, “I’ve been wondering if you’d come around. People tell me you’ve been asking questions about Reverend Hessel. I was beginning to feel left out. Make yourself comfortable, I’ll be back in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”
Without a room full of people, her décor seemed even more combative. After she left, I focused on small areas, one at a time. I looked over her figurines and then the blue-and-white vases.It was when I was looking at her collection of paperweights kept in a glass table in front of the window—one filled with a flower, another with bits of glass that looked like candies, one filled with a rocking horse—that I realized… that I knew something was wrong.
I picked one up. It was as wide as my hand, clear glass, heavy, inside it held musical notes. Had I seen it before? Was it in the photograph of Reverend Hessel sitting at his desk? Was it the same paperweight or one just like it? I thought back to the box of Hessel’s things in his old office. I didn’t remember seeing a paperweight in there, so maybe this was the same one.
Sue came into the living room with a tray of lemonade and cookies, setting them on the coffee table. As she did, I wracked my brain trying to remember her alibi. And then I realized something I should have known all along.
“Dawson’s Creekis on Wednesdays.”
“Yes, I know. I watch it with my granddaughter, Bekah. We just love it.”
“She told me that’s what you were doing the night Reverend Hessel was murdered. He was killed on a Thursday.”
