Elaine Orr - Jolie Gentil 02 - Rekindling Motives (8 page)

He nodded, but he was already scanning the aisles for the owner, whom he said was named Mr. Markle.
We found him in the back of the store, near swinging doors that led into a warehouse area. Mr. Markle held a clipboard and had been making checkmarks on a list, apparently making sure the pile of boxes next to him held all the products he had ordered.

He regarded me over the top of his reading glasses and did not look at all friendly.
“So,” he said, staring at me for several seconds, “you’ll be taking over the food pantry.”

“With a lot of help,” I said, not wanting to imply that I knew what I was doing.

“All right then.” He turned slightly, “Hey Jimmy, get these diapers to the front. Mrs. Nodaway’s coming in at two.” He turned back to us. “Twins. She’s in here every other day. Had to order extra.”

He set the clipboard on one of the boxes.
“Now, all I ask is if you need to buy give me as much notice as you can.” As a clerk walked up, he pointed to a huge carton of diapers, and turned back to us. “See, there’s a couple of distributors will give me a better deal if I’m selling direct to you, and I can pass the savings to you. You need stuff already on the shelves, I can’t go as low ‘cause I already paid more for it.”

I nodded.
“That’s very generous of you.”

“You aren’t competition.”
He turned back to his clipboard.

“Not so friendly,” Scoobie said in a low voice as we walked toward the exit, “but…”

“Scoobie,” yelled Mr. Markle from behind us, “there’s a box of dented cans back here.”

Scoobie grinned at me, “Get a cart.”

Scoobie loaded it and pushed the cart of cans across the now slippery parking lot and I held on to the edge of the cart and focused on keeping my balance.

“What I was going to say was he’s kinda grouchy, but then he saves dented cans and stuff that’s not selling well and sends over boxes of stuff.
For example,” he pulled a can of black bean soup from the top of a box, “there’s a ton of these in here. The fart club didn’t buy enough, I guess.”

I giggled as I popped my trunk and he loaded the first box.
“The fart club?”

“Yeah, I think Sgt. Morehouse chairs it, he…” There was a ripping sound as the lightweight box he was loading into the trunk tore in the middle and cans cascaded across the parking lot.
I stooped to grab one and Scoobie grabbed me by the elbow. “In the car. Your Aunt’ll kill me if you fall.”

I didn’t argue.
Telling myself I was doing us both a favor by getting the car warmed up, I slid into the driver’s seat and flipped the heater knob as soon as the engine turned over. Two minutes later Scoobie opened the passenger door. “Dang,” he said, brushing water off his coat. “I like the beach, but why the hell can’t I like it as well in Florida?”

The weather had made it clear we should not be on the roads much, so we scratched the idea of going to do any more work in the attic, and I decided the food would sit in my trunk overnight.
I invited Scoobie to come back to the B&B but he said he was up to his “people quota” for the day, so I dropped him at the library before heading back to the Cozy Corner.

I thought I’d take a pain pill and curl up on the couch and
take a closer look through some of the photos or ledgers we had taken from the house. Since normal people don’t usually end up with a skeleton in the attic, I hoped the ledgers or pictures would show some of the abnormalities in the Fisher family.

PETER FISHER’S LEDGERS contained ingredient lists, what seemed to be portions of recipes, and notations about prices
, and places where he bought items. I had started with what I judged to be the oldest ledger, since it had been held together with twine and had a rotted cover. The first few pages were a hodgepodge of lists and numbers, but eventually he became more methodical. He seemed to buy large quantities of sugar, flour, molasses, yeast, cornmeal, rye, and lard, so I assumed his store was a bakery of some sort. Why hadn’t I thought to look in some of the old city business directories when I was in the library?

Aunt Madge was leafing through a magazine about home repair, but she looked as if she could stand an interruption.
“Do you know what kind of business Peter Fisher and Richard Tillotson had?”

She looked up and stared at a spot just above my head.
“I saw something in the antique store just off the boardwalk that had their name on it. A child’s rolling pin. Bakery at the Shore.” When she saw my blank look she continued. “They must have sold a toy with their name on it. Why?” she asked, suddenly suspicious of my motive.

I stood and walked the few feet to where she was sitting and showed her the ledger.
“I figured it had to do with food. They must have baked a lot of bread – look at all the yeast they bought.” I pointed to the neatly inscribed list of ingredients, which included twenty pounds of yeast.

Aunt Madge laughed.
“Yeast was also used to make whiskey you know.”

“Oh, right.
Prohibition.” I looked at the ledger again. “A bakery would be a good cover, wouldn’t it?”

“Sure,” she said, picking up her magazine again.
“Almost everything on there except the lard and molasses could go into hootch.” She looked down at her magazine and then back at me. “And some rum recipes call for molasses.”

As I settled back onto the couch I decided to forgo asking her how she knew what went into the recipe for hootch.

CHAPTER SEVEN

WHEN MY FANNY
DONUT and I joined Scoobie in the library the next afternoon he was intrigued by the seemingly nonsensical lists of numbers on some of the back pages of the ledgers. I had given up on these, figuring that if they were income from an illegal moonshine business they would be deliberately obscure.

Scoobie’s eyes lit up.
“I’m going to play some of these.”

“Play…”?

“The lottery.” He pulled a small notebook from his knapsack and began writing down several lines of numbers.

I left him to his copying and went to the reference section to look at some of the business directories from the
1920s. I plopped them down on the table next to Scoobie and opened the directory from 1928. Bakery at the Shore was at 227 C Street. I thought for a minute. The 200 block was between Main Street and Seaside Avenue, but it seemed unlikely that the building was still there.

I placed the directories back on the shelves and, after saying goodbye to Scoobie, I drove slowly across
C Street. The building at 227 C Street looked old enough to have been standing in the 1920s. It was vacant, and a sign had been covered in white paint. Still visible were the words “Little Mamas Café.” Sitting in the window was a for sale sign for none other than Lester Argrow’s real estate firm.

After parking in the Burger King lot I walked over to the First Bank
building and climbed the side stairway to Lester’s small office on the second floor. The last time I’d visited him there cigar smoke had wafted down the hallway. Given its absence, I figured he was out, but as I moved down the narrow hall I could see the light under his door. I knocked.

There was a very loud sneeze and he said, “Come in” as he concurrently blew his nose.

Charming
.

I opened the door and he gestured me in.
“Hey, Jolie! Good to see you.” He moved a pile of newspapers off the client chair and pointed that I could sit down. “What’s up?”

“I wondered about the building you have listed at 227 C.
Is it…”

“Hey, you gonna break away from the geezer and set up your own shop?
That’d be great. We could really go to town…”

“First, Harry is not a geezer.”
I took a breath, not wanting to antagonize Lester. I like getting business from him. “I wondered who owned it and if you knew the history of the building.”

He studied me for a couple
of seconds, then grinned. “You’re investigating, ain’t you?”

Coming here was a mistake.
I had forgotten for a moment how painfully awkward Lester’s amateur detective methods were. “Not investigating. Just interested in the Tillotson family since I seemed to have met one of its older members.”

He barked his distinctive laugh.
“You know Mary Doris Milner? She owns it.”

Why did I know that name?
Then I remembered this was the name of Richard Tillotson’s seeming girlfriend. “I think Aunt Madge knows her.”

“Funny broad.”
At my expression he added, “Mary Doris, not your aunt. After she retired from teaching she ran the bingo down at the Catholic Church. Here I am, a Jew, and I still donate to the Catholics.” He blew his nose again. “Can’t shake this cold.”

My mind was going in circles.
Why did Richard’s girlfriend of so long ago own that building? Had he left it to her?
I gave myself a mental slap to the head, reminding myself that Richard likely was murdered long before he thought to make a will, and he probably didn’t own the building anyway. Why was I talking to Lester when I could go to the courthouse and trace the building’s ownership? I stood, “Gee, I should leave you and your cold alone.”

“Hey, you just got here.”
Lester stood, all 5 feet seven inches of him. I noticed he had trimmed the hair in the mole on the side of his face.

“Really, you’re busy,” I almost stammered.
“I told Aunt Madge I’d help fix dinner.” I started out the door.

“Don’t you even want to know what she’s asking?” he called after me.
I turned back toward him and he said, “Only $127,500. It’s a steal.”

That stopped me.
“That is a steal. Why so low?”

He stood outside his office, hands in his pockets, jiggling his loose change.
“I think her niece, the attorney, wants to buy it.”

“Annie Milner?
What could she want with a run-down building?”

He shrugged and turned to go back into his office.
“That’s what I heard is all.”

I walked slowly down the steps and back toward my car.
If Annie did want it, wouldn’t Mary Doris sell it to her without a real estate agent? Then again, sometimes people put a house on the market just to see what it could bring before they sold it to a family member. Maybe that’s what Mary Doris Milner was doing.

I STARED AT THE NOTES I’d made when reviewing the former bakery’s ownership history at the courthouse.
Peter Fisher sold the building in 1939. I assumed a true bakery did not bring in as much money as a bakery that was a front for liquor sales. During the 1940s, the building changed ownership several times, for less money each time. A couple of times I had a clue what it was used for because ownership was in a business name rather than an individual’s. My personal favorite was The Teatotaler’s Cup. This was in 1946. It sounded as if someone was sorry Prohibition ended. And maybe needed a spelling lesson.

It had the same owner from just after World War II and into the mid-1950s, a man named Joseph Sloan.
Mary Doris Milner bought it from him in 1956 for $17,000. That was the last sale on record. A visit to the Assessor’s Office showed 227 C Street was appraised at $171,000. The retired schoolteacher had it for sale at almost $50,000 under its assessed value. I was surprised Lester was letting her get away with this; it would lower his commission. “Why would she do that?” I mused to myself.

“What are you muttering about?” Aunt Madge called from her kitchen table where she writing in the notebook that serves as her accounting records.

“Mary Doris Milner has owned that building on C Street since 1956, and she has it for sale way less than the assessed value.” I looked at Aunt Madge. “Why do you suppose she’d do that?”

“Maybe she just wants to be rid of it.”
Aunt Madge looked thoughtful. “I haven’t seen her in some time. I don’t know what her mental acuity is.”

I DECIDED TO CHECK
MARY DORIS MILNER’S mental acuity myself. She lived in the senior living center that I had first visited a couple of months ago. One wing is assisted living, another more a nursing home, and a third is for people with dementia. The small foyer had the same smell of disinfectant, but it was now festooned with Christmas decorations. I signed in at the front desk and got directions to Mary Doris’ room from a bored-looking volunteer. She was in the nursing home wing. I knocked gently, not sure what to expect from a 94-year old woman.

“Come in if you’ve got chocolate,” came a much stronger voice than I expected.

“I don’t have any today, but I could bring you some tomorrow.”
What I had brought was a canning jar with some carnations from the grocery store, which I had clipped to fit into the jar. I took in her small room, which had a hospital-style bed and wheeled table but also a large flat-screen TV that sat on an antique bureau, and a tall set of shelves that was crammed with books, photo albums, and several boxes of various kinds of chocolate candy.

Her gaze was direct and not altogether friendly.
Mary Doris was sitting in a recliner, and she muted the TV as she spoke. “I don’t believe I know you, miss.” She looked me up and down, and her eyes met mine when she was done. Though she looked too frail to do much walking, unlike the loose-fitting housecoats most other female residents wore she had on a sweater of deep purple, slacks with an elastic waistband, and a pair of tennis shoes, giving the impression that she was about to go out.

“You don’t, but I know your niece Annie Milner.” I sat the jar of flowers on a small table next to her bed.
My name is Jolie Gentil, and Madge Richards is…”

“Your aunt.
I haven’t seen her for ages. You’re the appraiser who found Ruth Riordan’s body.” She leaned forward, and I realized that she had a cataract in each eye and probably could not see me very well.

I pulled a small card-table chair close to her and sat.
“Yes, that was me.”

“I,” she said.
When I gave her a puzzled look she added, “Not ‘that was me.’ It’s ‘that was I’.”

I smiled.
“Aunt Madge said you taught for many years. I take it your subject was English.”

She nodded.
“I’ve been retired more than 30 years, longer than I taught. I don’t believe Ocean Alley High has had a decent English teacher since. I base my judgment on the conversations I hear around here.” She smiled as she spoke. “Of course, if I correct them they tell me I’m old-fashioned.”

I was not sure how to broach the Tillotson family.
After all, the photos of her and Richard made it pretty clear they were boyfriend and girlfriend in her younger days. “Right now I’m doing an appraisal of the old Tillotson house.”

At my words she sat up straighter and glanced out the window at a bird feeder that was placed close to it.

I continued, “Gracie Fisher, she’s Gracie Allen now, inherited it from her grandmother, and she’s putting it on the market.” I paused, taking in her now-pursed lips.

She turned to face me again.
“Why are you coming to me?”

“I don’t know if you read about it, but when I was in the attic I opened an old wardrobe and…”

“You found Richard,” she said, in a matter-of-fact tone.

“The police aren’t certain, they’re doing some tests.”

“They may not be certain, but I am.” Her eyes filled with tears. “He would never have left me.” Her voice was almost a whisper. “Never!”

I reached over and touched her arm.
“I’m sorry to upset you.”

She cleared her throat.
“It was a long time ago, but I still think of him often.” She regarded me intently. “I supposed Madge has told you what happened?”

“She did, and I read a couple of the newspaper articles.
They’re on microfilm at the library.” I paused, uncertain how to approach the photo albums. “There were also some photo albums in the attic, and there were some pictures of you and…”

Her face lit up like the Christmas tree in the foyer.
“Audrey Fisher’s albums?” I haven’t seen those in, well, I don’t know when. Since before the war, I suppose.” She looked toward the bird feeder again, and for a few seconds we both looked at the small sparrow pecking at the bits of dried corn sitting on the birdhouse rim.

“Do you have them?
The albums?” she asked.

“Not with me, but I’d be happy to bring a couple of them over for you to look at.”

“She gave a firm nod, and pointed toward her bookcase.”
The only photo I have of the two of us is just over there.” As I rose to find it among several on the shelves she continued. “The Tillotsons had a fair bit of money, so they were always taking pictures.”

I retrieved the frame and studied it as I sat down next to her again.
It was one of the pictures commercial photographers took of tourists on the old Ocean Alley boardwalk. Back then, prior to the Great Atlantic Hurricane of 1944, the boardwalk was much wider and a pier extended into the ocean. A smiling Mary Doris and Richard Tillotson had their backs to the pier and the old wooden Ferris wheel was visible behind them. Richard’s arm was around her shoulder and her head was tilted slightly toward his shoulder.

I could feel her stare and looked up.
“Looks as if that was a happy day.”

“It was.
That was only about two months before he disappeared. I used to say “before he died,” but it upset Audrey. Of course, she’s long gone.” She sighed. “You should promise yourself you won’t outlive all your friends.”

I set the framed photo back on her shelf and turned to face her.
“So you were pretty sure he didn’t just leave.”

“Positive.”
Her strident tone seemed to surprise her as much as me. “Aside from the fact that we were talking about getting married, he and Peter Fisher were fighting like all get-out.” She paused.

“I never told Audrey, but I talked to the police about that at the time.
But Peter Fisher was an established man of business, and Richard was known more for tinkering with his old Model T and being a bit tipsy. People said he only had a job at the bakery because Peter dated his sister.” She frowned. “The police thought I was just a girl who’d been jilted and didn’t want to believe he’d simply left.”

“I thought Richard and Peter were in business together.”

“In a manner of speaking, yes.” She studied me critically. “You’re not writing some book or something, are you?”

“No ma’am.
I feel…” I thought for a moment. “I feel as if finding him, assuming it was him, makes me responsible for learning more about him. I know it’s too late to find out what actually happened.” I stopped and looked at her. “You probably think I’m just being nosy.”