Murder Is Binding

'Four hundred dollars?' Tricia repeated, shocked.

'Not bad, huh? I think I'll send Deborah some flowers as a little thank-you.'

Tricia sank back in her seat. 'And you'll still have enough left for a Louis Vuitton key chain, too.'

A number of businesses hugged the road that approached the highway. Tricia spotted the old smashed-up Cadillac Seville sitting beside a service station. 'Stop the car!' she yelled, craning her neck as they whipped past.

Angelica slammed on the brakes, the car fishtailing onto the shoulder. 'What's wrong? Did I hit something?'

'Back up, back up!'

Angelica jammed the gearshift into reverse and hit the accelerator.

'Whoa-stop, stop!' Tricia called, unhooking her seat belt and bolting from the car. She charged across the sea of asphalt surrounding the closed gas station, halting in front of the mangled mess that had once been Winnie Wentworth's most prized possession. The front end was now a tangle of metal, already rusting from all the rain they'd had since Winnie's death. The windshield's glass had been reduced to a spider's web of cracks. No sign of blood. With no seat belt, she might have been ejected out the driver's window. The outcome was the same: death.

Angelica was suddenly at her side. 'This belonged to the woman who sold Doris the cookbook?'

Tricia nodded and leaned forward to try the rear passenger side door handle. It opened.

'Hey, wait a minute,' Angelica said and pulled Tricia's hand away. 'This is a crime scene.'

'The sheriff said Winnie's death was an accident. There's no crime tape. Poking around inside the car isn't trespassing.'

'Says you.'

Tricia waved her sister off and climbed into the grimy, damp interior. Various unpleasant odors assaulted her, and it was difficult to discern them: sweat, urine, and possibly mold? She rooted through the pile of gray clothes and blankets on the floor, coming up with a sheaf of yellowing newspaper clippings that had been stuffed under the driver's seat. She backed out of the car, shoving the papers toward Angelica, who stepped away in horror.

'I don't want to touch that. Think of all the germs!'

Tricia slammed the car door, shook her head in disgust, and set the fluttering papers on the right rear quarter panel. They were all the same: pages from the Stoneham Weekly News advertising section, listing tag sales, estate sales, and auctions, with a number of entries circled.

'There must be five or six weeks' worth here,' Tricia said, flipping through the sheets.

'So what?'

'Maybe we can find the address where Winnie bought that cookbook.'

Angelica frowned. 'What good will that do?'

'It might lead us to whoever killed her.'

'You just told me the sheriff said it was an accident.'

'And if you believe her, let me interest you in some swampland in Florida. Oh, Ange, it's obvious Sheriff Adams doesn't care about actually solving Doris's murder. She seems to spend all her time trying to pin it on me!' She gathered up the scraps and started back for Angelica's car.

'You can't take that stuff along,' Angelica said, struggling to keep up with her sister's brisk pace.

'Why not? The sheriff apparently didn't want it. It's just garbage now.'

'Then throw it away.'

Tricia stopped dead, turned, and faced her sister. 'Not until I map out where Winnie found her treasures in her last few weeks.'

Fourteen

Angelica started the car and pulled back onto the highway. 'You are in a mood today.'

Tricia clutched the papers on her lap. 'I have reason to be.' She let out a sigh and related her encounter with Mike Harris earlier that morning, feeling better for finally having unburdened her soul. 'I'm even wondering if he could've thrown that rock through my store window last night.'

'Hmm. Sounds more like you had a panic attack,' Angelica commented, steering the rental car through the countryside with amazing familiarity. 'My friend Carol used to get them whenever she had to face something unpleasant-like a visit with her in-laws. No wonder she could never stay married for more than six months at a time.'

'It's never happened to me before.'

'You're under stress,' Angelica explained reasonably. 'Who wouldn't be with the possibility of a murder charge hanging over her head?'

'I did not kill Doris Gleason, and I wish everyone would just stop saying that.'

'My, we are very, very testy today. Mind you, right about now I could go for a tight embrace with a handsome man. And so far I've liked every man I've met here in Stoneham. They seem like the marrying kind.'

'You'd be bored silly within a month and you know it,' Tricia grumbled.

The idea of Angelica living nearby-and the possibility of Bob Kelly as a possible brother-in-law-was enough to make Tricia physically ill, especially since she still wanted to believe he had a hand in Doris's death. Too bad she didn't have a shred of evidence to prove it.

Time to ask the big question that had been so much on her mind. 'Ange, isn't there any hope you and Drew can get back together?'

Angelica's mouth tightened, and she took her time before answering. 'No.'

'Do you mind if I ask what happened?'

'Oh, it's all so tedious,' she said, with impatience.

'You obviously haven't found someone else. Has he?'

Again Angelica's hands tightened on the steering wheel. 'If you must know, yes. And she's ten years older than me, with a face full of wrinkles! Some woman he works with. They talk about math and physics and bonsai, of all things. One thing led to another and…he asked me to move out so she could move in.'

And that's why Angelica had lost weight and come to Stoneham-to lick her emotional wounds. And Tricia had dropped all those snide comments about Drew in front of Bob the night before. 'I'm so sorry, Ange.'

'It was his house, after all,' she continued, her gaze riveted on the road. 'Drew isn't a beast. I'll get a good settlement. He paid for the trip to Aspen, and for storing my things until I find a place to settle. He's really been very kind.'

Except for tossing her aside like an old shoe. But then Christopher had been just as generous when he'd announced he'd wanted his freedom, too. Maybe the Miles girls were just doomed to be unlucky in love.

'It's taken me a few months,' Angelica continued, resigned, 'but now I'm ready to move on. I mean, what choice do I have?'

'There's no chance of counseling, or-?'

Angelica shook her head. 'Apparently he's loved that woman for years, but always thought she was unattainable. Then her husband died last year, and Drew figured he wasn't getting any younger. Not that he was unhappy with me, he later told me. But one thing led to another and…well, the rest as they say is history.'

Tricia let out a breath. At least Christopher hadn't left her for someone else. Freedom for him meant solitude, which he'd apparently found and savored.

'Ah, here we are.' Angelica slowed the car and turned off the highway onto a long gravel drive lined with decades-old maples. A little white cottage stood in a clearing, looking like something out of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, with its forest green shuttered windows, gabled, slate roof, its foundation surrounded by alternating pink and red rosebushes still in bloom.

'Oh, Ange, it's darling,' Trish said. 'Can we go inside?'

'I wish. But the agent who showed it to me this morning said she couldn't come back today. I just wanted