Candy Cane Murder (Hannah Swensen #9.5)(105)

Lucy held her breath, waiting for Miss Tilley’s reaction.

“Papa always was one for the ladies,” said Miss Tilley, smacking her thigh with her hand. “He was an old devil.”

Lucy exhaled. “So you’re not upset.”

“Not a bit. It just confirms what I always thought.”

“You thought he had an affair with Katherine Kaiser?”

“I thought he was a mean, selfish hypocrite.”

Lucy couldn’t help it. She was shocked. Not knowing quite what to say, she looked across the library to the children’s corner, where Toby was pushing a wooden truck across the floor.

“I suppose the affair could be a motive for killing your mother,” she finally said. “But why didn’t he marry Katherine Kaiser?”

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“I expect he thought it would be an admission that he wasn’t as pure as the driven snow.”

The baby kicked and Lucy rubbed her stomach. “I can’t quite imagine a man turning his back on his own flesh and blood like that and letting somebody adopt his child.”

“I don’t think men make the connection between the sex act and the arrival of a child nine months later. Not unless they’re married, that is.”

“Not even then,” said Lucy, laughing.

“Well, you would know better than I. I can only draw on what I’ve observed. And my experience as a child, but it seems to me that men throughout history have had remarkably little interest in assuming responsibility for their offspring, especially female and illegitimate offspring. My father always behaved as if Harriet and I were my mother’s hobby, like stamp collecting or knitting, and had nothing to do with him.”

Just then there was a crash and Toby began to cry, so Lucy jumped up and hurried over to the children’s corner, where she found Toby had knocked over a tower of blocks which came tumbling down on his head. She picked him up and kissed the boo-boo, a little bruise on his forehead, assuring him that he was all better. When she returned to the circulation desk, carrying him on her hip, Miss Tilley had a cookie waiting for him. She sat down with him in her lap.

Miss Tilley beamed at him, tickled his tummy and gave him another cookie. “So where do we go from here?” she asked.

“Well, I guess I better get Toby home for lunch before you spoil his appetite with any more cookies,” said Lucy.

“I was referring to the investigation.”

Toby leaned back against his mother, chewing on the cookie.

“Well,” said Lucy, “I think we can safely eliminate two suspects: Mrs. Sprout and Miss Kaiser. Your father sent Mrs.

Sprout home on Christmas Eve, so she wasn’t there when your 350

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mother fell. According to her daughter she always blamed herself for leaving, wishing she could have prevented the fall.”

“And it appears that Miss Kaiser, vain and wicked vixen that she most certainly was, was also out of town and otherwise occupied at the time of my mother’s death.”

“But both those facts tend to point toward your father,”

said Lucy, smoothing Toby’s hair with her hand. “But we also can’t eliminate the handyman, Emil Boott, and the nurse.”

Miss Tilley shook her head. “I knew Angela. I simply can’t believe she would have hurt a hair on my mother’s head. Or anyone else’s, for that matter.”

“Well, there is a link of sorts between Emil Boott and the glass cane. He worked in the office at the glassworks, but that’s all I’ve been able to find out about him.”

Miss Tilley leaned forward. “I never trusted him, you know. There was something about him, the way he looked at me, that made me afraid.”

Lucy tapped her chin thoughtfully. “The glassworks must have kept records about their employees. Do you have any idea what happened to them when it closed?”

“No, I don’t,” said Miss Tilley. “But I do know someone who may be able to give you some information about Emil Boott. His name is Sherman Cobb, he’s a lawyer here in town and his father was the sheriff who ran the prison when my father was on the bench.”

“I’ll talk to him,” promised Lucy, “but now I’ve got to get this little boy home for his nap.”

Toby’s eyes were drooping when Lucy buckled the car seat and she drove as fast as she could, hoping to get home before he fell asleep. She knew from experience that if he dropped off, even for a minute, she’d never get him to settle down for a nap.

But as she sped along the route that was already becoming so familiar to her, she found herself thinking about men and CANDY CANES OF CHRISTMAS PAST

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women. She and Sue had been joking when they made fun of their husband’s short attention spans but she sensed that Miss Tilley had a deeper antipathy toward men. Lucy remembered reading somewhere that a woman’s relationship with men depended on her relationship with her father. A woman like herself, who had a strong relationship with a caring father, generally had successful relationships with men. Daddy’s girls, who had flirtatious relationships with their fathers, rarely found men who measured up. And girls who were abused or neglected by their fathers had destructive relationships with men, or avoided them altogether.

It was all pseudo psychology, she admitted, turning into the driveway, but she thought there was some truth to it, especially in Miss Tilley’s case, but it did make her wonder if she could trust the librarian’s assessments of Judge Tilley and Emil Boott. She turned off the ignition and turned around to see if Toby was still awake and that’s when she heard the boom and felt the car shake.