Beware False Profits (17 page)

“And you think you can waltz in there and just ask him? And he’ll tell you everything he knows?”

“I’m hoping for some hint gleaned from body language and eyebrow position.”

“You could take me with you to get my impressions.”

I tilted my head. “Why? The man isn’t your type.”

“And my type is?”

“Rich guys who do what you tell them to.”

She didn’t deny it. “That doesn’t seem to be working out so well.”

“I told you I’d make a list.”

“Put Roussos on it somewhere.”

I wondered if Lucy was kidding. I wondered how much more information I could get out of him if he was dating my best friend. Then I wondered how quickly the information would dry up once they broke it off. Lucy always broke it off.

“I’ll leave your business card on his desk,” I promised, “and a map to your condo. “Is that subtle enough?”

“Remind me again why we’re such good friends?”

“There aren’t enough hours left in the afternoon.”

The next morning I felt perky enough to get up early and greet the girls with banana pancakes. As an apology for sleeping late the day before I even topped them with butter and real maple syrup.

I was also anxious to talk to Teddy. Starting about three yesterday afternoon chaos had reigned in the Sloan–Wilcox household. Deena’s transportation to her riding lessons fell through. Since I much prefer she hang out with horses than boys, I dragged myself to the car and drove my daughter and three friends out into the country.

The trip back might have been a good time to quiz my youngest daughter about her long face, except Teddy asked me to drop her off at the Victorian with Junie to help plant the hardiest annuals in the front beds.

By the time I picked up Ed at the college and everyone else got home, ate dinner, and began homework, our washing machine hose sprang a leak and flooded the basement. Unfortunately, thirty minutes before, Ed had headed for the hospital to make a pastoral call. The girls, Junie, and I bailed and mopped and by then, nobody was in the mood for a serious conversation.

Maybe it was Junie’s tea, but this morning I was up for doing some gentle probing. And I was hoping a bit later I might be up for a tête-à-tête with Roussos, too. I wasn’t at all sure one subject would be easier to crack than the other. Teddy keeps a lot to herself. If she isn’t ready to share, neither thumbscrews nor promises of her very own pony can make her talk. Not that I have direct evidence. Since I have no teenagers, thumbscrews aren’t at this time part of my parental repertoire.

Deena arrived first. Today she wore turquoise, a sparkly T-shirt with a bold orange Z blazed across it, and knee-length pants with the same Z on the pocket. Sid sent the outfit for her birthday, and Deena likes it so well I’ve been afraid she might never risk putting it on.

“I like your hair that way,” I said. She had twisted shoulder-length locks on both sides and fastened them in the back with a gold barrette. Last month she asked to have her ears pierced, and we agreed that if she still wanted this at Christmastime, that would be one of her presents. I imagined there were a thousand similar queries in my future, most a lot more troubling.

“Can Tyler come over and do homework with me some time?”

There it was, out in the open. I couldn’t believe my luck. “You seem like good friends.”

“Not
good
friends. Friends.”

I heard the warning note in her voice. If I went any further, the conversation would be shut down.

Teddy arrived to defuse the tension. Unlike her sister, Teddy looked as if she had dug through Junie’s rummage sale finds for her outfit. She wore purple corduroy pants that were too short and an old flannel pajama top. The only shoes downstairs were chartreuse rubber rain boots. I was afraid they were part of the wardrobe plan.

“Is this Cinderella before the ball?” I asked, debating whether to send her upstairs for another try or to tough this out.

She promptly turned around and left. I heard her retreat up the stairs.

“Well, you said the right thing.” Deena poured too much syrup on her pancakes.

“What do you mean?”

“She doesn’t want to be Cinderella anymore. She’s trying not to dress like Cinderella. So now she’ll change into something better.”

I thought this might be a compliment. I felt an urge to run upstairs and scrawl it in my journal. Except that I don’t have a journal and the pancakes would burn.

“You can certainly have Tyler over,” I said. “But he probably has to go home first to check blood sugar.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that!”

I bristled silently, testing and discarding responses until Deena was ready for a second helping. By then I realized that although I was the only person in the room, my daughter wasn’t talking to me.

“So who’s been telling you there’s something wrong with Tyler taking care of his diabetes?” I slid another pancake on her plate.

Before Deena could answer Teddy came hurtling downstairs again. This time she wore brown cargo pants and a short sleeve sweatshirt with butterflies appliqued on the front. I beamed. She could pass out literature for Ida Bere.

“So, Teddy,” I said, glancing at the clock, “how are things at school?”

She flopped down across from her sister and rested her chin in her hands. “Will you talk to Miss Hollins and tell her I don’t want to be in the play?”

“No.” I set her plate in front of her. I’d created a Mickey Mouse pancake to make her smile, but Mickey didn’t do the trick.

When she didn’t reach for the syrup, I passed the pitcher. “Teddy, if you don’t want to be in the play, you have to talk to your teacher yourself.”

“Nobody’s been
telling
me,” Deena said. “But some of the other Meanies think it’s sick, sticking himself like that.”

“She won’t listen to me,” Teddy said. “But she would listen to you.”

One weighty conversation at a time was a lot to handle. With two coming at me from different ends of the table, I felt like I was at Wimbledon.

“I hope they’re not giving Tyler a hard time,” I told Deena.

“It’s not fun. It’s supposed to be fun.” Teddy hadn’t picked up her fork.

“Why isn’t it fun?” I asked.

Deena finished her last pancake and stood. “Everybody acts like they’re going to catch it. Like I’m going to catch it if I hang out with him.”

“Surely they know enough—”

“It’s not fun because it’s dumb.” Teddy picked up her fork and stabbed her pancake. “Do I have to do dumb things just so I’ll grow up and be a good person?”

I needed help. “Ed!” I went to the bottom of the steps. “Breakfast is ready. Right now!”

“No, it’s like a test,” Deena was telling her sister when I dragged myself back into the kitchen, head pounding. “That’s how the whole school thing works. You do stuff you don’t want to do until they flatten you. Then when you’re, like, the height of that pancake, they let you graduate.”

“You’re making that up.”

“Nope. You’ll find out.”

“Teddy, your sister
is
making that up.” I faced my older daughter. “Are you worried about the way people look at
you
or the way they look at Tyler? Because you don’t want other people’s immature perceptions to influence your choice of friends.”

“Half the Meanies are treating me like I’ve got some fatal disease.”

The Green Meanies are an informal group of the more popular girls in Deena’s class. It still mystifies me that Deena has so easily fallen in with them, without social climbing, angst, or tears. Most of the girls are normal, good kids, a few are lifelong friends material, and a few will probably do something they’ll pay dearly for before they graduate from high school. I like them all, although I’m less certain about some of their mothers.

“Imagine how they treat Tyler,” I said.

“When I’m a teacher, nobody will have to be in a play.” Teddy held up the entire pancake and bit off Mickey Mouse’s ear. I winced.

I needed to know more, was about to insist on it, when Ed made an appearance.

“Girls, you’re running late,” he said. “I have a meeting across town, I’ll drop you off if you want.”

Chairs scraped the floor and both girls took off upstairs to brush their teeth and get books.

I grabbed Ed by the shoulders and shook him. “Where were you when I needed you?”

He kissed my head and wrapped his arms around me. “You’ll always need me, Ag.”

An hour later I was dressed and in the van. Late last night I’d gotten a telephone report about Hazel Kefauver’s funeral from Yvonne. I called Yvonne when most people were already in bed. Now that she’s trying to quit smoking, I knew she was getting little sleep. She was so grateful to talk she gave me a play-by-play that probably lasted as long as the service. The hymns, the readings, the sermon, which had praised Hazel as a dutiful child of God who spent her all too short life in service to others.

With the funeral behind him, I hoped I would find Brownie at home this morning. I swung by his house on my way to the police station, but once again the cream-colored Lincoln wasn’t parked in front of the house. On the off chance the car was in the shop, I got out, walked up the herringbone brick path to the door, and rang the bell. No one was home. Since my phone call hadn’t been returned, either, I wondered if I was going to spend my time hunting the mayor when I should be hunting the murderer of the mayor’s wife.

Our police station is downtown, in a disreputable building with twenty-four-hour parking meters and carpets held together by duct tape. Next month the station will move to the new service center complex on Gleason Road. I had hoped all murders within our city limits would cease until I had better surroundings in which to badger Detective Roussos, but that was not to be.

I parked on a side street and hiked over to the station, first stopping at Give Me a Break for their largest black coffee and a latte. The black coffee was for Roussos. I don’t think he’s a foamy milk, shot of vanilla syrup kind of guy.

I guess I’m getting something of a reputation. I walked into the reception area and the cop on duty, who I had never seen, lumbered to his feet and said he’d get Roussos. Before I even opened my mouth.

I perched on a hard plastic chair and slid my hands up and down the sides of the cups to make sure every inch of my palms suffered second-degree burns.

By the time Roussos came out, either the coffee had cooled or I’d lost all feeling in my hands. I stood and held out the appropriate paper cup. “The way you like it.”

“I can’t take bribes.” He took it anyway.

“Darn, now I’ll have to find another cop who’ll look the other way when I set up that roulette wheel in my living room.”

“You’re not here to chat, are you?”

“What would
we
chat about?”

“Anything except what I think you’re here for.”

“You could take me back to your desk and find out.”

“Let’s go for a walk. I need to stretch my legs.”

The area around the station’s not the most scenic part of downtown, but the day promised to be a pretty one. There was a small park just a block away, and we headed in that direction. Birds sang from telephone wires and pansies winked and nodded in sidewalk planters. The air smelled like spring, even if it still indulged in a nip or two every time the wind whipped around a corner.

“So, you came to see me for a reason?”

There was no beating around the bush with this guy. And there was a personal line we didn’t cross. I was very married, and he was very not. So that cut down on the banter enormously.

“I’ve heard through the grapevine—like almost everybody else in town—that Hazel Kefauver was poisoned. You’re treating the death like a murder?”

“You feel like you have to be involved in every suspicious death in Emerald Springs? For what reason? I forget.”

“I was there when she died, remember?”

“Yeah, well so were a lot of other people. And not one of them has asked me to share what I know.”

“How shortsighted. Aren’t you glad somebody’s on top of things?”

“Not one bit.”

“Aren’t you interested in what I saw that day?”

“I saw what you saw. And we talked to people at the scene, remember?”

“Did I happen to mention that I spoke with Mrs. Kefauver maybe forty-five minutes before she died, and I noticed she looked washed-out? I remember thinking maybe she was coming down with that flu that’s been making the rounds. My mother says her hands were like ice and as rough as sandpaper. So whatever killed her might have been ingested earlier in the day.”

“We’ll keep that in mind.”

“What did she ingest?”

“Nice try.”

“You can’t tell me? It’s a secret?”

“It’s an open investigation, is what it is. You aren’t family—”

“Then you’re telling family?”

“We’re keeping some details to ourselves.”

“Is there anything you can tell me?”

“Yeah, stay out of this.”

I glanced at him. “Don’t you need my help?”

“Don’t flash those dimples at me.”

“You weren’t even looking.”

“Been there, done that. If you keep trying to get yourself killed, we’re going to have to assign a cop to follow you around twenty-four seven. And the city budget won’t stand for it.”

I imagined Roussos slinking along behind me everywhere I went. I had to smile. “I don’t think
Ed
would stand for it.”

“Then do your hubby a favor and back off.”

I thought of Joe and I thought of Brownie. Even if Roussos’s advice was sound, I wasn’t willing to follow it. However, it didn’t sound like I was going to get any help from this quarter unless I told him why it mattered to me.

We reached the park. A mom and three preschoolers had taken over the swings, and two teenage boys were shooting hoops on the basketball court. I tossed my empty cup into the trash can.

“You know Joe Wagner’s a member of our church, right?”