A Tale of Two Biddies (11 page)

“There are four of us,” I chirped, then added, “well, there will be next week when Luella’s not so busy with charters. And like I said, we won’t even try to start anything tonight.”

“Except to make lists,” Kate chimed in.

“And make sure the place is locked up nice and tight when we’re done,” Chandra added.

“By next week . . .” As if the job was already finished, Chandra brushed her hands together. “We’ll be done with it lickety-split.”

I couldn’t argue with the lickety-split. Lickety-split, before Margaret could either change her mind or realize we had more on our minds than simply neighbor helping neighbor, we took the keys and left the shop, and within just a few minutes we arrived at our destination.

The old Defarge family home was situated on the northwest corner of South Bass, about as far from downtown Put-in-Bay as it was possible to get on an island that is only four miles long to begin with. With the distance to the knitting shop and the thought of a daily commute in all sorts of weather, I could see why Margaret and Alice had decided to move into the cottage behind the store. Still, there was a certain charm to the setting and I imagined the Defarge sisters as little girls, long before the big-ticket summer home had been built across the street. I pictured them playing in the apple orchard next to the white Victorian farmhouse with the date 1867 painted over the front door.

We let ourselves in through that front door, and while Kate and Chandra hung back, clearly put off by what looked like a couple month’s worth of accumulated pizza boxes and unopened mail in the living room where we found ourselves, I took a look around.

Brown plaid couch.

Brown recliner.

Flat screen.

Nintendo Wii.

It was all pretty basic.

And none of it was especially clean.

“Ew!” With thumb and forefinger, Kate nudged a paper plate perched on a pile of magazines on the coffee table in front of the couch. There was a piece of petrified pepperoni pizza on it. “Maybe we shouldn’t have lied about why we wanted to get in here. Margaret and Alice shouldn’t have to deal with this mess. They really are going to need help getting it cleaned up.”

“We really do have to help them,” Chandra piped in. “We can’t let Margaret and Alice—”

“No worries,” I assured them, and since I’d been thinking the same thing, I knew exactly what I had to do. I took my cell phone out of my pocket and let my fingers fly over the keyboard. “I’m telling my cleaning crew I’ve got a big job for them and a big bonus if they’re willing to get it done fast.”

It was a mighty generous offer on my part, if I did say so myself, but even that wasn’t enough to make Chandra look any happier. She sniffled. “But even once everything is cleaned up . . . even when it’s all organized and packed in boxes . . . do you think there’s anybody who would show up to claim Richie’s stuff?”

“Would you admit it if you were related to Richie?” Kate asked, but she didn’t wait for the answer. “So . . .” She glanced around. “What do we do first?”

Before I could change my mind (or have it changed for me by the sight of the black garbage bag filled with empty beer cans that I saw next to the couch), I decided on a plan.

“We try to find something that will tell us what Richie’s been up to,” I said. “Anything that looks strange or unusual or out of place.” When both Chandra and Kate gave me you’ve-got-to-be-kidding looks, I threw my hands in the air. “Well, it’s the only thing I can think of,” I admitted. “How about if we each take a room. Kate, you go into the kitchen and poke around. Chandra, you take the living room. I’ll go upstairs. If you find anything, yell.”

Kate took a tentative step toward the kitchen. “You mean like anything interesting, right? Or do you mean anything alive, like a mouse or something?”

Rather than tell her I thought the latter was a real possibility, I took the steps two at a time and started my own search with Richie’s bedroom.

It came as no surprise to me that Richie wasn’t much of a decorator. Or a housekeeper, either.

The room at the top of the steps contained a bare mattress with a beat-up acoustic guitar on it, another TV, and a dresser with open drawers. It was dingy, dirty, and all pretty basic. There was a purple Sharpie on the dresser right next to an unopened carton of Dunfield cigarettes. I am not a smoker, never have been, but I’d seen enough ads to recognize the blue logo on the box. Next to the cigarettes was a photograph in a gold metal frame that showed a young boy standing between two women.

“Margaret and Alice!” Surprised by the sentimental memento, I grabbed the picture and took a closer look. No doubt, the boy was Richie and I’d guess he was twelve or so. As for the Defarge sisters . . .

The color of Margaret’s trim suit was faded by time and sunlight, but there was no mistaking its pinkness, just like there was no mistaking how the women in the picture felt about Richie. Both Margaret and Alice had an arm looped around the kid’s shoulders, their hands touching and the smiles on their faces were identical. The women looked . . .

“Young and pretty,” I told myself, glancing over their smooth complexions and the blond hair they both wore in the same beehive style that I’d bet hadn’t been popular for at least a dozen years before the picture was even taken.

I remembered what Alice had told us about how she and Margaret had tried to make Richie a part of their family once his parents were gone. He’d never allowed the sisters to get that close, and yet something about the careful way the photograph was displayed told me he would have liked to try.

“Better watch it, Bea,” I warned myself, but not until after I’d cleared away the lump in my throat. “Or you’ll be getting as sappy as Chandra.”

Rather than risk it, I decided to take the photograph and give it to Margaret and Alice. Something told me the sisters might be comforted by knowing that Richie treasured their friendship even if he’d never been able to let them know it.

From the bedroom I moved down the hall to the next room that was obviously used for storage. One look and I knew this room was a job for another day. There were so many dilapidated cardboard boxes jammed in the doorway, I knew I’d never get past them and into the room, and if I did, I feared I would need a trail of breadcrumbs to lead me back to safety.

Instead, I peeked into a middle bedroom where the only piece of furniture, so to speak, was a treadmill draped with dirty clothes. This side of the house faced east, and already the daylight was fading and throwing gray shadows on the walls. I flicked the switch near the door and the ceiling fan started a slow, steady turn. I needed to pull the chain on it to turn on the light, and as soon as I did I caught sight of something on the far wall and pulled in a sharp breath.

“Kate! Chandra! Get up here,” I called.

Something told me they were only too happy to get away from their duties downstairs. Or maybe my voice had more of an edge of desperation in it than I imagined. They joined me, as Chandra would say, lickety-split.

“What’s wrong?” Chandra asked.

“What’d you find?” Kate said, hurrying into the room on Chandra’s heels.

I pointed to the wall to my right, at a flyer that I’d seen all over the island these past couple weeks, one with a picture of the Boyz of Guillotine on it.

Except when I’d seen it before, the picture didn’t have a wicked-looking butcher knife stabbed through it.

“Oh.” Kate took one look at that knife and her voice wobbled. She pressed a hand to her stomach. “Something tells me this is not a good thing.”

“Or maybe it is,” I reminded her. “No matter what Dino says, Richie was obviously mad at him. This proves it. I wonder what the cops thought when they saw this.”

“Probably that Richie was just being Richie,” Chandra said.

“And it doesn’t mean Dino’s not right,” I told them and reminded myself. “If Richie mistook Dino for someone else—” I clamped my lips shut before Chandra could start in on another body-double theory, and while I was at it, I took out my phone and snapped a picture of the flyer.

It is best if I don’t describe the bathroom. Trust me. I told Kate and Chandra we’d have to come back another day for a look through the storage room, and the three of us headed back downstairs.

I was nearly to the bottom of the stairway when my foot caught on a frayed corner of the beige carpet. I lurched and threw out a hand to catch myself. Good move as far as defying gravity went, but while it kept me from doing a header down the stairs, I couldn’t hold on to that photograph of Alice and Margaret. As if it were happening in slow motion, I saw the framed picture pop out of my hand. It arced through the air and over the bannister, and the metal frame caught the light from a nearby window and flashed at me. Even before the photo hit the table next to the recliner, I had a bad feeling about the outcome.

The sound of cracking glass only served to reinforce my worries.

“Dang!” I made a face and clomped down the rest of the stairs. “I wanted to give that to Margaret and Alice.”

“You still can.” Kate jumped into action. There was an empty plastic grocery bag on the coffee table next to an open bag of potato chips. She retrieved it and, one by one, carefully picked up the pieces of the broken glass. “We’ll buy a new frame and we can even get it matted. What do you think?”

I retrieved the picture and shook tiny bits of glass over the bag that Chandra held open.

“Hey, look!” She pointed to the back of the photograph. “There’s something written there. In purple marker no less. Chocolate Alice and Vanilla Margaret. It’s amazing, isn’t it? Even back then, people were calling them that.”

“Were they?” Thinking about it—and that purple marker I’d found up in Richie’s bedroom—I turned the photograph over in my hands. “What good would a marker be after sitting around for something like forty years?” I asked no one in particular. “And why would someone keep it?”

“You mean—” Kate’s words dissolved on the end of a little squeal. “Did you hear that?” She grabbed my arm with both hands and held on tight, her voice rising along with her panic. “Did you hear that scratching? There’s a mouse in here. I know there’s a mouse in here!”

“Shhh!” I gave my arm a shake to get her attention. I’d heard the noise, too, and with Kate mewling and Chandra looking like she was about to start, too, it was impossible to pinpoint where it had come from. “Quiet!” I said again when my first attempts fell on deaf ears. “Listen.”

We did.

The noise came from somewhere close, but Kate was wrong about one thing. It wasn’t as much a scratching as it was a scraping. As if someone had taken a piece of metal and was tapping with it. Like at the door.

I swung my gaze that way just in time to see a shadow darken the window in the front door.

“Shhhh! Quiet.” I hoped my harsh whisper was louder than my suddenly hammering heart. “Don’t move! Somebody’s trying to break into the house!”

I
’ve been called a lot of things in my life.

Cautious
has never been one of them.

Oh, it’s not like I didn’t want to stand there holding my breath and afraid to move, just like Kate and Chandra. In fact, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was the smart thing to do. My drumming heartbeat told me so. My quick, shallow breaths confirmed it. Grabbing Kate with one hand and Chandra with the other and heading for the back door also crossed my mind.

But hey, what can I say? Anger poured through my bloodstream like lava off a Hawaiian volcano, and I knew exactly why. Whoever we saw silhouetted against the curtain-covered glass on the front door window was working hard at jimmying the lock in order to violate Richie’s personal space, not to mention Margaret’s and Alice’s. By trying to break in, that person was also threatening me and my friends.

Cautious? I don’t think so.

Not when I had the element of surprise working in my favor.

Before I could talk myself out of what I probably shouldn’t have talked myself into in the first place, I marched over to the door, grabbed the knob, and yanked.

I’m not sure who was more surprised to see who.

My mouth open, I stared at Boyz ’n Funk’s number one fan, Tiffany Hollister.

Her mouth open, she squealed and tucked her right hand behind her back. Yeah, like I hadn’t already seen the metal rasp she’d been using to work on the lock.

Since I was pretty sure she was all set to turn tail and run, I grabbed her arm, hauled her into the house, and slammed the door closed behind her.

“You should have checked, Tiffany. The door wasn’t even locked. Explain what you were up to,” I demanded.

“I . . . but . . . I . . .”

I am not a violent person, but I will admit that the thought of giving her a good, hard slap in the face crossed my mind. Like a scene in a black-and-white noir detective flick. Maybe then, like in those old movies, she’d start singing like a bird instead of flapping her jaws and stammering.

“What are you doing here, Tiffany?” I asked again, and when she didn’t answer quickly enough to satisfy me, I adjusted my glasses on the bridge of my nose and stepped forward so that my sneakers were toe-to-toe with her pink jelly shoes. “Why were you trying to break in?”

“Me?” Tiffany squeaked the word and glanced from me, to Kate, to Chandra, and back to me. Whatever else I thought about the woman and her questionable taste in clothing and music, I had to admit that after the initial shock she was pretty fast on her feet. “I . . . I could ask you . . . you guys the same thing,” she said, her voice rough with false bravado. “What are you doing here? Why did you break in?”

I reached into my pocket for the kittycat keychain and dangled it in front of Tiffany’s nose. It was kind of fun to see her have to look cross-eyed at it. “Permission,” I said, and yes, I will admit I allowed myself the superior little smile that should have told Tiffany she was messing with the wrong woman. If she was smart, she’d pay attention. “Permission from the homeowner. Which, since you’ve still got that file in your hands . . .” Before she could decide to do something with it that she shouldn’t, I reached around Tiffany, snatched the metal file out of her hand, and tossed it on the coffee table. “I’m thinking you don’t have the same permission.”

With her head high, Chandra stepped forward. “We’re here helping with clean-up.”

“Because we’re personal friends of the women who own this place,” Kate added.

Not to be outdone, Tiffany lifted her chin. It might have been a more effective and far more defiant stance if not for the fact that her bottom lip wobbled. “I . . . I just had to see the house, that’s all. I had to check things out. You know, on account of how Richie Trayton Monroe lived here.”

“Trayton. Yeah,” Chandra said. “Yeah, that was Richie’s middle name. Back in elementary school, we used to tease him about what a weird name it was. He always said it was a family name, that he was named after some great-great-grandfather or something.”

Tiffany nodded. “I wouldn’t have known it was him. I mean, how could I? I wouldn’t have made the connection except that the name was in the newspaper. You know, in the story about how he got murdered. They didn’t just say Richie Monroe. That wouldn’t have meant anything at all to me. They used his full name, Richie Trayton Monroe. And I mean, really, how many of those can there be in this world?”

She waited for an answer, and when none of us could give her one, Tiffany raised one pad-enhanced shoulder. She was wearing a white T-shirt with a picture of the Boyz on it, and even thirty years ago, fifty pounds lighter and with hair that didn’t look like the color had been poured from a bottle, Dino was not my type. Her gesture made his face fold in on itself.

“I’m not getting it,” I admitted, and I thought about inviting her to sit down and explain, then remembered this was Richie’s place and we might encounter something we didn’t want to on the upholstered furniture. “So Richie is Richie Trayton Monroe. So what?”

Her eyes wide with disbelief, Tiffany leaned forward. “So what? You’re kidding me, right?”

I guess my blank expression said it all.

She sighed and I expected a wrist flip to go with it. Instead, Tiffany messed with one of the earrings she wore. It was shaped like a record and had five little metal people dangling from it. I can’t say for sure, but I think she tugged Paul’s leg.

She eyed us with suspicion. “None of you know the name Richie Trayton Monroe? You live here on the same island where he lived and you don’t know the story?” She
harrumphed
, and something told me it wasn’t as much a criticism of our grasp of the topic as it was a confirmation of something she thought she already knew. “Well, that proves it, doesn’t it? That proves my theory. The creep was lying about everything the whole time!”

Which creep and what he’d been lying about remained a mystery.

And my head was starting to pound, besides.

I massaged the back of my neck with one hand. “Maybe you’d better start at the beginning,” I suggested. “You heard about Richie’s murder.”

She nodded.

“And read that his middle name was Trayton.”

Another nod.

“And that made you want to come here to his house because . . .” It was my turn to lean forward, silently urging her to finish the sentence.

“Because of the legend, of course!” This time, Tiffany provided the wrist flip to go with what was, apparently, a monumental statement, and when none of us got it, she screeched her frustration. “Come on outside,” she said. “That’s where I’ve got the scrapbook. That will explain everything.”

I let Tiffany, Kate, and Chandra go first, then locked up the house before I walked out to where they waited near the golf cart Tiffany had parked in the driveway. There was a tote bag on the floor (need I mention it had the words Boyz ’n Funk written across the front in purple glitter?), and she reached inside it and pulled out a scrapbook with a picture of the band taped to the front. Underneath the picture in black magic marker were the words
Volume 12, The Dark Days.

“It’s all in there,” she said, poking the scrapbook in my direction. “Go ahead. Take a look.”

I did.

I flipped through the pages, scanning rather than reading, and not sure if I was getting the message I was supposed to be getting, I looked up at Tiffany. “Richie Trayton Monroe, the guy they talk about in some of these old newspaper articles, he’s the same as our Richie?”

One corner of Tiffany’s mouth pulled thin. “Like I said, unless there are two . . .”

Kate had been reading over my shoulder. “And according to these articles, our Richie claimed he was the one who wrote some song called ‘Ali, Ali, Free Bird.’”

“Some song?” We were, apparently, the three dumbest women on the face of the earth. At least that’s what Tiffany’s expression said. “‘Ali’ just happens to be the most popular song the Boyz ever recorded. The album it was on went platinum in less than a week, and ‘Ali’ was number one on the charts for a month.”

Call me cynical, I could barely get the question out of my mouth. “And Richie wrote it?”

As if she’d bit a lemon, Tiffany’s face puckered. “Richie claimed he wrote it. Don’t you see?” She grabbed the scrapbook out of my hands and flipped through the pages, and when she found the one she was looking for, she tapped her finger against a yellowed newspaper article. “That’s what the court case was all about. See, Richie and Dino, they were roommates at Bowling Green.”

“Then they did know each other!” The words whooshed out of me along with a gasp of surprise. “Dino said he had no idea who Richie was.”

“Well, what did you expect?” Tiffany emphasized the question with a click of her tongue. “After Dino’s faith in mankind was destroyed by the evil ways of that slug, Richie Monroe—”

“Wait a minute! Wait a minute!” To get Tiffany’s attention, Chandra waved her hands. The sun nearly brushed the horizon and it bathed the scenery around us with a soft, pink glow that boded well for next day’s weather. Still, Chandra’s face was as pale as a marshmallow. “Are you telling us that Richie was some kind of big-time songwriter? That he was . . .” She nearly choked on the word. “Famous?”

“Infamous,” Tiffany insisted. “He wasn’t famous for anything but being a no-good thief. See, Dino always swore he was the one who wrote ‘Ali’ during his first semester at Bowling Green. You know, when he roomed with that Richie.” Her eyes narrowed to emphasize the
that
. “I mean, really, why would Dino lie about a thing like that? Have you seen the guy? He’s hotter than a wildfire. And handsome. And the best singer on the entire planet. He doesn’t need to lie about anything.”

As much as I wanted to point out the flaws in her argument (the heck with logic, the thing about Dino being the best singer on the planet nearly sent me over the edge), I stuck to the subject. “So Dino says he wrote this song and—”

“And the band recorded it,” Tiffany said. “The rest is music history. ‘Ali’ was an instant hit, and all of a sudden, Richie crawls out from under a rock and says Dino stole it from him.” She snorted. “As if! Dino is hotter than a wildfire and—”

“And let me guess,” I ventured. It was better than hearing the litany of Dino’s superhero qualities one more time. “All this happened the fall when Richie was a freshman at Bowling Green.”

“Awesome!” Tiffany gave me a thumbs-up. “Maybe you’re not the cultural loser I thought you were. You actually know something about the history of the band.”

“I know something about Richie,” I said, and I didn’t even bother to look at Tiffany when I did. Chandra and Kate were standing to my left and I glanced their way. “That explains why Richie came back from school.”

“And why he was so upset when he did,” Chandra added. “Even before his parents died.”

“He was a changed person,” Kate said. “That’s what everyone says. He used to be fun and bright, and then when he came back to the island—”

“It couldn’t have happened that way,” Chandra chimed in. “Not unless something really big happened to change him. Something really bad. He might have been embarrassed if he tried to pull a fast one on Dino. He might have even felt a little guilty. But he wouldn’t have become a hermit. He wouldn’t have completely given up on life.”

“Not unless he was bitter and depressed.” I said. “But if Richie was telling the truth, if Dino stole the song that Richie wrote and Richie was disgraced and deeply hurt by what happened . . .” I thought of the guitar I’d seen upstairs on Richie’s bed, and of the poster of Guillotine with the knife thrust through it. “No wonder Richie looked so upset when he saw Dino and the other guys get off the ferry the other night. He never dreamed he’d run into Dino again, especially not here on the island. And when he confronted Dino at my place the next day—”

“Dino claimed he didn’t know who Richie was,” Kate said.

“Well, of course he would say that.” Tiffany plunged back into the conversation and slapped the scrapbook shut. “Richie and Dino were best friends back in college. You can imagine how Richie’s betrayal broke Dino’s heart. He’s still psychologically scarred by the whole experience, poor darling. He had to say he didn’t know Richie. To protect his psyche. He couldn’t face the painful truth.”

“That argument only works
if
Dino was the one who was betrayed,” I suggested.

Tiffany went as still as stone and her voice was no more than a whisper. “If you’re suggesting that Dino is lying, think again. Like I said, the case went to court. Richie lost.”

“Beaten by the mega-group that made millions off the song he wrote.” No, I didn’t know this for a fact—at least not yet—but I followed where the logic led. “That would be no big surprise. Richie was a nobody. He didn’t have the clout. He didn’t have the pull. He didn’t have the money it would take to hire some crackerjack team of attorneys to plead his case.” Just thinking about how Richie might have been railroaded sent a chill across my shoulders and I shook it away.

“If you’re so convinced that Richie lied and that Dino is as innocent as the driven snow, why do you care?” I asked Tiffany. “Why show up here at Richie’s place and take the chance of being caught breaking and entering if you think Richie was just some kind of no-good scumbag?”

Tiffany’s bottom lip trembled. “Don’t you see? This whole story about Richie and how he tried to steal Dino’s work and be as famous as Dino . . . it’s been a stain on the Boyz’s reputation all these years. Sure, Dino won his case in court, but there are still people who hear the story . . . like you”—she glared at me—“and question what happened. I thought if I looked around Richie’s place, I might find something that would prove the truth once and for all, that Richie’s been lying all these years, that he would do anything to hurt Dino and the boys.”