Definitely Dead (An Empty Nest Mystery) (9 page)

Her grandmother scowled at her. “I believe in giving people the benefit of the doubt, young lady.” Charlene turned back to us and continued. “He made a huge show of patting his jacket and pants, checking all his pockets. Then he turned beet red and apologized profusely.”

“So you paid for dinner,” said Blake.

She nodded. “Luckily, when I was a young girl, my mother insisted I always take some pin money with me on a date. Just in case, you know? The habit was so ingrained in me that in all my forty-eight years of marriage, I never left the house with my dear George without a stash of bills in my purse. Never had to use them, though. Not until my date with Sidney Mandelbaum.”

“And he didn’t offer to reimburse you?” I asked.
 

“Oh, he offered, all right. Suggested we go back to his apartment, but I wasn’t buying the likes of that excuse. I’m not a loose woman, I’ll have you know.”

I took that to mean Charlene believed in playing hard-to-get—or at least waiting until the second date—because I definitely remember her asking about Sid’s plumbing. Everyone asked about Sid’s plumbing.

“You should’ve taken him up on it, Gram,” said Tiffany.

Her grandmother shot her a menacing look. “In my day nice girls didn’t enter a gentleman’s apartment without a chaperone. Besides, he promised to reimburse me on our next date.”

“But he didn’t,” said Tiffany, speaking to us. “The jerk stiffed her again.”

“Not quite,” said Charlene. “He did remember his wallet on our second date.”

“Yeah, too bad he didn’t remember to fill it,” retorted her granddaughter.

“Anyway, fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me,” said Charlene. “I wasn’t going to get suckered a second time. I’ve heard all about these geriatric gigolos.
Modern Maturity
had an article about them just last month. I’m not trading my pension and Social Security for a little male companionship, only to have the man up and leave after he’s run through my savings.”

“You tell them, Gram. Men are such jerks.” Tiffany bit her lip when she noticed Blake glaring at her. “Present company excepted, of course, Professor.”

“Professor?” Charlene turned to her granddaughter. “You know this man?”

Tiffany jutted her chin in my direction. “Seems Yenta the Matchmaker here is married to one of my profs. Small world, huh?”

Charlene didn’t answer her, but she did knit her brows together in a way that made me squirm.

“What did you do when Sid didn’t have any money again?” I asked, wanting to steer the conversation back to our reason for coming.

“I walked out. Figured if he had to spend a few hours washing dishes, maybe he’d learn his lesson.”

Blake burst out laughing. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. “How much did he owe you, Mrs. Koltchefsky?”

She waved him away. “You don’t have to do that.”

“I insist.” Blake removed a wad of bills. Have I mentioned what a gentleman he is?

“Take the money, Gram.”

Charlene hesitated for a moment before holding her hand out. “With the tip, dinner came to sixty-eight dollars. He ordered two highballs for himself, and I had a glass of Chablis. And we both had dessert.”

“No need to explain.” Blake handed her three twenties and a ten.

“I’ll get you change,” said Charlene, turning to leave the room.

“No need.”

She hesitated. “You’re sure?”

When Blake nodded, she shoved the money into the pocket of her dress and finally sat down, crossing her slightly angled legs at her ankles and clasping her hands in her lap. Charlene had prim school marm posture down to a science, despite her slightly gnarled fingers and not-so-ramrod-straight back. She looked like a woman who refused to let arthritis and osteoporosis get the better of her.

I can take a hint even when it’s not given. Trying not to appear obvious, I reached into my purse, quietly unwrapped a chocolate-flavored Viactiv and surreptitiously popped it in my mouth.

Tiffany cleared her throat and speared me with an intense grunge-like sneer. “So if you didn’t come to apologize for that creep taking advantage of Gram, why are you here?”

SIX

I turned to Blake, my eyes pleading with him to take over as I worked my teeth free of the chewy calcium square filling my mouth. He gave me
The Look
, but what was I supposed to do? Talk around the sticky glob and chance chocolate drool running down my chin? Swallow the Viactiv whole and risk needing the Heimlich Maneuver? He could at least show some appreciation. After all, I chomped calcium for him. He didn’t want me to wind up with a dowager’s hump, did he?

By the time Blake had explained Not-Sid’s death and the subsequent events, I’d chewed my way through the Viactiv. I hoped both my husband and my bones appreciated the sacrifices I made for them.

Charlene’s expression hadn’t changed when Blake mentioned Sid’s untimely demise. No gasp. No flinch. No cringe. I thought that was rather odd, but some people don’t believe in showing emotion, especially in front of strangers, and maybe Charlene was one of them. On the other hand, maybe the loss of sixty-eight dollars was enough of an incentive for her to commit murder. A lifetime of reading the daily newspaper had convinced me that people kill for all sorts of bizarre reasons. And often a lot less than sixty-eight dollars.

However, I dismissed the idea of Charlene as a murderer as quickly as it had entered my mind. If nothing else, I doubted she’d have had the physical strength to bash in Sid’s brains. Charlene was half his size.

Instead, I turned my attention to her granddaughter. Tiffany seemed rather indignant over the way Sid had shafted Charlene. Enough to kill him? Tiffany was one buff, tough babe. Definitely a kid who spent more time working out than hitting the books, which would explain why she lifted papers off the Internet. From the looks of her biceps, she certainly had the strength to whack Sid over the head before piercing his aorta. I wondered if Charlene was missing any kitchen cutlery.

I watched as Tiffany hung on Blake’s every word. Was she weighing her options? Figuring out how much we knew? Wondering what we weren’t divulging? Or was her intense interest in my husband for reasons that had little to do with murder and lots to do with Blake’s sexy good looks?

I’m not sure which possibility bothered me more. Either way, despite her myriad tattoos and piercings, Tiffany was too much a femme fatale for my liking.

Charlene stood. “Sounds to me like Sidney Mandelbaum tried to scam one person too many. Did I mention he started talking about a real estate deal during our first dinner?”

“No,” I said. “What sort of real estate deal?”

“One where he was getting in on the ground floor and asked if I was interested. I told him absolutely not. I don’t invest my money in anything other than blue chip stocks.”

“Do you believe he was trying to lure you into an investment scam?”

“You tell me.”

When my jaw dropped over the implication that I was somehow involved in Sid’s dirty deeds, she waved her hand to dismiss any defense of my good name. Then she brushed her hands together, as if ridding herself of any Sidney taint that still clung to her. “I appreciate your coming to warn me,” she said. “I certainly won’t be letting those two imposters into my home. However, I’m surprised the police haven’t contacted me.”

“They will,” I said. “I gave Detective Menendez a list of all the women Sid met through Relatively Speaking.”

Charlene’s very thin, penciled brows arched toward her hairline. “All? Exactly how many other women were taken to the cleaners by that would-be gigolo?”

I cringed at the unspoken insinuation. “Mrs. Koltchefsky, I can assure you I’m not running a gigolo service. I operate an honest business. Sidney Mandelbaum always paid his fees to me on time. I had no reason to suspect he was trying to con you or anyone else. And as far as I know, he didn’t behave that way with any of his other dates.” Although I was beginning to have serious doubts in that regard.

She didn’t comment but nodded as she ushered us to the front door. As we were about to leave, she stopped me with a hand to my arm, “A word of advice, Mrs. Elliott?”
 

“Yes?”

“You seem like a decent young woman. Perhaps you should consider a different line of work.”

I didn’t need to look at Blake to know what he was thinking.

“Don’t say it,” I told him after we settled ourselves in the car.

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” He started the engine. “But she’s right.”

I glared at him. “I told you not to say it.”

Blake opened his mouth to speak but was cut short by a pounding on the driver’s side window. Tiffany stood beside the car, motioning with her hand for him to roll down the window.
 

“Thanks for not saying anything to Gram about you-know-what,” she said after Blake depressed the window button.

“You’re an adult,” he said. “What happens in my classroom is between you and me, no one else.”

She nudged her chin toward me. “She knows.”

This kid was getting under my skin. I decided to disarm her with a smile. Since she didn’t know me, she wouldn’t know the difference between a beatifically innocent smile and the smirk which crossed my lips whenever I fibbed. It usually took people several lies on my part to figure that out about me. Or so I’d always thought until my conversation with Sylvia Schuster.

“Sorry,” I said. “I have no idea what the two of you are talking about.” I patted Blake’s thigh. “And we really do need to get going. Nice meeting you, Tiffany.”

“Wait!” She leaned into the car. “How about I do an extra credit project to erase that F?”

Bull’s eye. Blake was a sucker for students who wanted to do extra work. “What did you have in mind?” he asked.

She cocked her head and smiled in far too seductive a way to suit me. “What’s it worth to you if I find this guy’s killer?”

“I think we need to leave that to the police,” said Blake. “This isn’t some game.”

Tiffany inched her face closer to Blake’s and lowered her voice to a husky whisper. “Then why are you playing it?”

“What do you have in mind?” I asked.

Tiffany’s eyes glittered like a little kid who’d just gotten away with filching the last of the Oreos from the cookie jar and managed to lay the rap on her kid sister. She answered my question but kept her attention focused on Blake. “I’m cool around computers. I bet I can dig up all sorts of stuff on this dude.”

“I’m sure the police have equally savvy computer investigators,” said Blake. “If you’re serious about erasing the F, I’ll assign you another paper.”

Tiffany sighed. “Won’t be as much fun.”

Or as productive, I thought. At least once a week I read stories in the newspapers about hackers entering government and industry computers. These kids seemed to have skills the professionals lacked. Putting aside both my dislike and suspicions of Tiffany’s motives, I asked, “What harm could it do? Why not see what she can find?”

Blake stared at Tiffany. “Because whatever she’s thinking of doing is probably illegal.”

She backed up a step and raised her arms. “No way. You think I’d risk going to jail for some dude who suckered Gram? I’d rather live with the F.”

Blake wavered. “Promise?”

She leaned back into the car and crossed her heart with her index finger. “Swear.”

I stared at her. Hard. Why did I get the feeling she had the fingers of her other hand crossed behind her back?

 
“I don’t know,” said Blake, wavering back in the other direction. “A man is dead. Even if you don’t do anything illegal, you could wind up in serious trouble.”

“So could you,” said Tiffany.

Blake cocked his head in my direction. “My wife is already involved. I don’t want anyone else getting dragged into this mess.” He shook his head. “No. If you want to erase the F, write me a paper on television censorship in the nineteen fifties.”

“Sounds boring as tofu.”

“Then live with the F,” said Blake.

“I can’t. I need to keep my GPA up to maintain my scholarships.” When Blake didn’t budge, she sighed, her shoulders slumping. “Fine. How many words?”

“Five thousand.”

“What! The other paper was only twenty-five hundred.”

“Which took you all of five minutes to download, splice together, and print.”

“Fine. Five thousand words,” she grumbled, turning to leave.

Blake called her back. “Tiffany?”

She stopped but kept her back to him. “Yeah?”

“Don’t bother trying to find some obscure paper on the Internet. I’ve read them all.”

She threw her hands onto her hips and spun around, a smirk on her vermillion lips. “You really are a hard-ass hunk, aren’t you?”

Without saying a word, I nestled against Blake’s shoulder and placed my hand on the back of his neck as I stared at her. I wanted to make sure Tiffany got the message that he was
my
hard-ass hunk. And totally off limits to her.