1 Catered to Death (14 page)

Claudine didn’t seem to notice. Tears welled up in her eyes, making them luminous and quite lovely. I really could see how twenty-five years earlier Claudine must have been quite a knock out, although I wasn’t sure if she could have given either Cybill Shepherd or Christie Brinkley a run for their money in the super model sweepstakes. “Yes, you could say that Frank and I had a special bond. A very special bond that I’ll never forget. None of the other teachers at the Academy ever seemed to truly understand him.”

“I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

Claudine looked down at her wine glass and played with the stem. “Well, Frank could come across as somewhat bombastic and maybe a little bit rude on occasion but he really wasn’t like that.”

 
“What was he really like?” I questioned, keeping my fingers crossed that Claudine didn’t ask me why the hell I wanted to know.

“What was Frank really like?” Claudine’s lower lip quivered. “He was kind and sensitive and brilliant on so many different topics. That man knew more about surviving in the wilderness than Daniel Boone and yet he had all the gentleness of Walt Disney cavorting with some of his tiny, animated friends.”

“He sounds like quite the outdoorsman.”

“Oh, yes. Once a year he’d take a select group of students on a wilderness weekend up north. He’d teach the kids to live off the land, to really be able to fend for himself.”

“Did he take the kids up there by himself? Wasn’t he worried that might seem inappropriate?”

“Oh, no. He always took another teacher with him for propriety’s sake.”

“Did you ever go?”

Claudine looked uncomfortable. “No, I didn’t. I wanted to but I have so many allergies, it just wouldn’t have worked out.”

I wondered if that was Claudine talking or if it was Frank’s voice, convincing Claudine that she’d be much happier staying at home while he took another teacher out into the wilderness with him. “That’s too bad.”

“Frank told me more than once that knowing how to survive in the woods was a great proving ground for surviving in academia.” She chuckled softly. “He was so witty too.”

I was almost feeling embarrassed by Claudine’s open affection for the late Frank Ubermann. It was like watching someone moon over a teen idol from their childhood and it made me squirm inside. “Was Frank married?” I asked even though I already knew the answer. “If he was, it would be nice if his wife went on one of his camping trips with him.”

The icy mask returned to Claudine’s face and she lifted her chin and shook her head backwards so that her red hair cascaded over her shoulders. “Yes, I suppose you could call what he had a marriage.”

“I’m not sure I follow…”

“Frank was married but it was only because he didn’t want to upset his dogs.”

“His
dogs?
”

Claudine nodded. “Frank had two prize beagles and he said they were so sensitive and so attached to him that he could never leave them.”

“Why couldn’t he take them with him?”

“His wife would never have allowed that to happen. Sylvia is a very selfish woman. Only thinking of what she wants. She never gave Frank the things he needed.”

I watched as a satisfied smile passed over Claudine’s face. I didn’t need ESP to know what Claudine was thinking: that
she’d
given Frank everything he wanted that his wife was unwilling to give. “How sad for his widow—to lose her husband the way she did. It would be awful to lose your husband no matter what but to have him murdered. That must be especially tragic.”

Claudine looked disgusted. “I wouldn’t waste any time feeling sorry for Frank’s widow. That woman was never good enough for him. She was so—pedestrian while Frank was a cut far above her.”

Meow
. “I still feel sorry for anyone who loses a spouse. I don’t know what I’d do without my husband. We’ve been married for over thirty years and I can’t imagine life without him––”

Claudine didn’t bother pretending to be interested in any aspect of my life. “You have no idea of how that cow treated Frank over the years. Always at his side, always supporting him—it was sickening!”

“Isn’t that what a wife is supposed to do—stand by her husband and support him? Isn’t that what a marriage is?”

“Maybe in the Dark Ages but not now! She didn’t even work. Just stayed home and waited for Frank to get back to her so she could give him one of her high calorie, high fat meals and fill him in on the details of her dull little day, tales about her
book club
and her dreary trips to the chiropractor. Really, Sylvia Ubermann is simply pathetic. Always has been and always will be.”

I looked down and studied my fingernails. It was pretty clear who Claudine had gotten the details of Frank’s marriage from along with all the little footnotes about his obviously long-suffering wife. Although I had been raised never to speak ill of the dead, I was having a hard time not thinking ill of the late Frank Ubermann, a man who had obviously trashed his wife to his mistress on a regular basis. And I had no doubt that Claudine had been Frank’s mistress at one time or another, or at least an on again, off again affair that probably meant a lot more to her than it had ever meant to Frank.

I suddenly felt shabby and more than a little dirty, sitting on Claudine’s white couch and pumping her full of cheap chardonnay while trying to get details on who might have killed Frank Ubermann. After talking to her, I didn’t think Claudine was a suspect. The woman was still in love with the man so why would she have killed him?

Unless he recently dumped her for someone new.

 
Getting to my feet, I said, “I should be going. I’ve taken up too much of your time already. I’ll just put my glass in the kitchen and take off.”

Claudine gestured toward a door at the back of the living room with a shaky hand. “Kitchen’s back there.”

I carried the glass through a miniscule dining area into an even more miniscule kitchen. Glancing around the room that was so small that I was sure that if I stood in the middle and reached out both of my arms I could touch opposite walls at the same time. I was very grateful for my own spacious kitchen back at home, a kitchen that was large enough to hold a table and four chairs and had plenty of counter space.

 
I rinsed out my wine glass and left it next to the sink. I was about to return to the living room when something stuck to the stainless steel refrigerator caught my eye. Taking one and a half steps to cross the room, I scanned the cover of a brochure that Claudine had secured to the refrigerator with a magnet shaped like a martini glass.

Newton’s Apple Archery School! Learn How to Excel at the Sport of Kings!

I studied the photograph on the brochure intently. It showed a model dressed up in an Olde English style outfit with her breasts half exposed and an oversized fake apple on top of her head. Standing a few feet away from her was a male model, bow and arrow in hands and his eyes glued firmly to her breasts instead of the apple as he drew the bow back.

 
Interesting. Claudine had apparently at some point been interested in pursuing the ‘sport of kings.’ Why hadn’t Frank ever taught her how to shoot an arrow if he was such an expert at all things outdoors? Was it possible that the relationship that Claudine was waxing so sentimentally over had existed only in her own head? Was she trying to make that relationship more real by taking archery lessons so she’d have more in common with Frank? Was she simply looking for one more way to bond with him?

Still, the fact remained that Frank Ubermann had been killed with an arrow through his heart. It also looked as if somewhere along the line Claudine had taken archery lessons. If I added two and two together, I had just come up with a fairly good suspect in Frank’s murder.

 
“Thanks for the wine,” I said to Claudine as I walked back into the living room. “I hope you enjoy the cupcakes. If you would like me to cater an event or if you know of anyone who needs a caterer––”

A soft snore interrupted me. Looking at the sofa, I saw that Claudine had fallen asleep, her empty wine glass laying across her chest. I tiptoed over, removed the glass and set it on the coffee table and then covered Claudine with a black and white crocheted afghan that was on the couch. I felt a splash of pity for Claudine, all alone in her small, ugly apartment with only a box of wine to keep her company. Even if her relationship with Frank Ubermann had been nothing but a figment of her imagination, it was better than nothing.

Silently, I tiptoed out of the condo, making sure the door locked behind me.

Chapter Twelve

One week later, I stood at my kitchen sink peeling red potatoes for potato salad for my next catering job but my mind wasn’t fully on the task at hand. It was incredibly frustrating not to be any closer to either getting paid or to finding out who had killed Frank Ubermann. My mind kept going back to the photograph at Claudine’s condo, the one with the clearly male hand wearing the tacky ring. If that had been Frank Ubermann’s hand in the picture…I frowned. If it had been Frank Ubermann’s hand in the picture, so what? It was hardly evidence that Claudine had shot Frank with the arrow that killed him. Still, Claudine was a lot more of a suspect than I had ever expected her to be.

After leaving Claudine’s house, I dropped by Newton’s Apple Archery School on my way home and learned that yes, indeedy, Ms. Markham had been a star pupil there just a few months ago. Which proved that Miss Smarty Pants excelled in whatever she set her mind to learn, a nugget of information that didn’t really surprise me. Someone like Claudine
would
have to excel in everything she did or she wouldn’t be able to live with herself.

I nicked my finger. “Ouch!”

“What is it?” Steve asked from his seat at the kitchen table where he was reading the newspaper.

“Oh, nothing. I just nicked myself. Sometimes I think it would be much easier just to buy potato salad from the deli at the supermarket.”

Steve looked up at me through his bifocals. “I hope you’re kidding,” he said in a mock-threatening tone.

I grinned. Steve takes my potato salad very seriously. “Remember when we were dating and I made potato salad for you for the first time? You said you’d marry me just to have it on a regular basis.”

“I meant it too,” he replied. “If we marketed your potato salad, you could forget about being a caterer and we could probably retire early.” He went back to reading the paper, starting with the obituaries and moving his way through the local news, classifieds and ending with the wedding announcements.

“Anything about the murder in there?” I questioned. I tend to avoid reading the
Kemper Weekly Times
since there are seldom any interesting stories in it. In spite of the editor’s often touted claim to be “super localized,” the
Weekly Times
usually consists of wire stories about people living in places like Walla Walla or Los Alamos or if there are local stories, they are about Kemper’s elite—not my favorite crowd under any circumstances.

 
“Just a brief that says the police don’t have any leads.”

Darn it. No leads meant I couldn’t expect a check from Monica any time soon. “That’s amazing to me. How could they
not
have any leads yet?”

“I guess whoever did it is either really good at murder or just plain lucky.”

“Maybe both.” I shook my head. “I can hardly point any fingers since I haven’t had any luck either other than with Claudine and that wasn’t really all that lucky. She didn’t tell me anything I could use.”

“You haven’t been able to talk to any of the other teachers?”

“Nope.
 
Whenever I’ve gone to one of their houses with my cupcake samples either no one is home or they aren’t answering their doors.”

“I think I might take that as a hint if I were you.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning maybe they don’t want to see you, DeeDee.”

“I don’t particularly want to see any of them either but I
do
want to know what happened at Eden Academy last Friday.”

Turning the pages of the newspaper, Steve sighed. “I wish you’d give up on this detective idea of yours, honey. I’m sure the police will figure it out. Just because they haven’t caught anyone yet doesn’t mean they aren’t trying.”

“Well, I think it’s a good thing that I’m doing what I can, even if it isn’t all that much.” I began chopping celery. “Just because I didn’t go to school and get professional training doesn’t mean that I can’t do a little investigating on my own. I don’t think Nancy Drew ever went to detective school and look at all the crimes she solved. And how about Jessica Fletcher and Miss Marple?”

“Nancy Drew was a fictional character. So were Jessica Fletcher and Miss Marple and all those other detectives you’ve read about or watched on television. They weren’t real. You are and I don’t want to see you get hurt. You mean too much to me.”

I understood what Steve was saying. In his way, he was telling me how much I meant to him. “I know that, Steve, honestly I do. And I promise you that if I ever feel like I’m really and truly in danger, I’ll stop. But these people are schoolteachers. They aren’t desperate criminals.”

“One of them must be feeling pretty desperate about now.”

“Or pretty smug. They are probably thinking that they’ve gotten away with murder.”

“They might be feeling smug until you poke your pretty nose into their business,” Steve replied. “Then they will start getting ticked off.”

“Don’t worry. If I ever catch one of them home again, I’ll be so careful that they won’t even know I’m questioning them. I did pretty well with Claudine. She didn’t suspect a thing. Of course,” I added reflectively, “the wine was a huge help.”

“From what you’ve said about the people who are employed at Eden Academy, none of them sound like the kind you’d want to get trapped in a stuck elevator with.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it. Those people are as elusive as winning lottery tickets. Now sample this potato salad, please. I have my second catering job today and I want everything to be just right. I especially don’t want any murders to take place.”

Steve obediently tasted the potato salad but the worried look didn’t leave his eyes. “Delicious. You’re catering that book club, right?”

“Yes. A perfectly safe, normal event where no one will die. I hope.”

“Will you be late?”

 
“I doubt it. I’m guessing it will last until around nine or ten but all that matters to me is that they hired me which means I don’t have a reputation around Kemper as a caterer who kills people.”

“Oh, DeeDee, I’m sure most people don’t even know that you catered Frank Ubermann’s last lunch. The paper didn’t mention Classy Catering and neither did the news.”

Steve was right about that, although I wasn’t sure if that was because the
Kemper News
had such a lackluster news team or if because they didn’t think mentioning the caterer was an important element in their investigation. Either way, I was glad to be ignored.
 

“What did you make besides potato salad?”

“Turkey sandwiches with chutney, crudités with a wonderful hot pepper sour cream dip and a fabulous deep dish apple pie for dessert. Plus coffee and tea and lemonade. Veronica wanted to keep it simple which was fine by me because I didn’t have a whole lot of time to pull everything together. She called yesterday afternoon.”

“How’d she hear about you?”

“She saw a flier that you put up at the college. Thank you again, by the way.”

“You’re welcome. Is Veronica Jack Everly’s wife?”

 
“Yep. She sounded very nice on the phone. I hope this job goes well. I should be able to pick up some more word-of-mouth advertising if the members like my food.”

“You’ll knock them dead,” Steve predicted.

I shuddered. “I hope not!”

After the fiasco at Eden Academy, I was highly appreciative for any catering job that went smoothly and so far—I reached out and lightly knocked on the wooden cutting board—this job was going as smooth as silk.

“Tell me what you need and I’ll try to get it for you,” Veronica had instructed while I was getting everything set up in her large modern kitchen. Veronica was a slender brunette with snapping brown eyes and I liked her right off the bat. Since Veronica’s husband also taught at Metropolitan State College, I had seen her at various faculty functions but we’d never met. “If you need more bowls, serving platters, whatever, just say the word.”

“I think I brought everything along but I’ll let you know if I need anything,” I assured her. What a different reception Veronica was giving me than the one I’d gotten at Eden Academy. There I’d felt as if I had been invading someone’s boudoir during an illicit rendezvous, but at Veronica’s house, I felt completely welcome and totally at home. That feeling made setting up for my catering job about a thousand percent easier.

I began to fill my twenty-cup coffee urn with cold water, admiring Veronica’s granite countertops as water splashed into the urn. I’ve always wanted to get granite countertops even though Steve says they remind him of a science lab and he doesn’t want to feel like he’s dissecting something every time he makes a ham sandwich. Plus, we’ve never been able to afford them. But if business continued to pick up, maybe we’d be able to afford any kind of countertops we wanted. I was sure Steve would give in on the granite if I pestered him long enough.

“We want today’s luncheon to be extra special,” Veronica explained from her position at the kitchen table. She was dressed in navy blue Capris and a pink cashmere turtleneck that looked both feminine and upscale. Horn rimmed glasses gave her an intellectual look and I remembered that Veronica was an adjunct in the English department at Metropolitan State.

“Why is that?” I asked. “Are you celebrating someone’s birthday?” Oh, please let it be a real birthday this time and not a retirement party.

“I wish. No, one of our members lost her husband recently and we’re trying to cheer her up.” Veronica laughed shortly and shook her head. “Although I doubt our book selection for this month will do that. We’re reading
Valley of the Dolls
and I’m not sure if that could cheer anyone up.”

I was a little surprised to hear what Veronica’s book club was reading. I always thought that book clubs stuck either strictly to the classics or to current best sellers. “I remember reading
Valley of the Dolls
a long time ago. I had to read it under the covers at night because it was so scandalous and my mother would have killed me if she knew I had taken it out from the library. As I recall it was very entertaining.”

“Not to me.” Veronica made a face. “I think it’s depressing—mainly because it ever got published in the first place. Pure unadulterated trash in my opinion but one of the members chose it so we have to play fair.”

“Is that how it works—you take turns choosing the title every month?”

Veronica nodded. “We pick out twelve books during our annual Christmas party and everyone gets a turn. Actually,” she said, tilting her head to one side, “Sylvia was the one who chose
Valley of the Dolls
.”

My heart started to thump a little harder. “Sylvia?”

“Sylvia Ubermann. She’s the one we’re trying to cheer up. Her husband Frank died last week.” She lowered her voice. “He was murdered.”

I almost dropped the bowl of potato salad I was holding on the floor. Of all the dumb luck—I was going to get to meet Sylvia Ubermann without having to put any effort at all into it. “Yes…I was there the day it happened. It was really awful.”

Veronica’s perfectly shaped eyebrows shot upward over the rims of her glasses. “You were there? How did that happen?”

“I was catering a lunch at the school when Mr. Ubermann was—when he died,” I explained. “It was actually my very first catering job.”

“Oh, my.” Veronica lowered her voice. “How awful for you.”

“It was awful for everyone.”

“Of course. You know, I can’t believe the police haven’t caught anyone yet. It’s scary to think of a murderer walking around town.”

“I’m making sure all the doors are locked at night, that’s for sure.”

A thoughtful look passed over Veronica’s face. “I think I’d be even more scared if I didn’t know that whoever killed Frank did it on purpose. At least it wasn’t random.”

“What do you mean?”

Veronica shrugged. “Well, Frank had a reputation that was bound to catch up with him sooner or later.”

“You mean his playboy reputation?” I questioned.

“You got it. I’m guessing an irate husband snuck into the school and killed him. I can’t say anything in front of Sylvia but we all knew the man fooled around more than—I don’t know what. He was an insatiable, incurable flirt.”

“It doesn’t sound like you were too crazy about him.”

“I wasn’t. He hit on me every time I saw him in spite of the fact that his wife and I are friends. He was a creep. My heart goes out to Sylvia. She’s been having a terrible time and I really feel sorry for her but a part of me wants to scream ‘
Can’t you see that you’re well rid of him?’”