Fast Women (19 page)

Gabe thought of Margie, playing tea party at The Cup with Chloe. "She still isn't."

"She still married to that son of a bitch?" Robert said.

"No," Gabe said, interested. "Stewart was a son of a bitch?"

"Arrogant asshole," Robert said. "Dumber than snot. If I could have pinned it on somebody, I'd have pinned it on him, but I'd never have made it stick. He couldn't have planned a picnic, let alone a murder."

"So who did it?"

"I don't know," Robert said. "There was nothing there, I mean, there were even powder traces on her hand. My only real hope was the diamonds, and they never turned up. So the daughter divorced the creep, did she? Good. I liked her."

"Margie?" Gabe said. "No. He embezzled close to a million from Ogilvie and Dysart and left, seven years ago."

"That dumbass embezzled?" Robert said. "I don't think so. He couldn't have embezzled from his own checking account."

"Really?" Gabe said. "That's interesting. Because OD was sure it was him."

"Not unless he had help," Robert said. "And he'd have needed a lot of help. Did he have an accomplice?"

"Not that we know of," Gabe said. "OD didn't hire us for that one."

"You look into it," Robert said. "There's gonna be somebody else standing behind him, telling him what to do." He sat back. "So your interest is personal, huh?"

Gabe thought about ducking it, and then said, "My dad was Trevor's best friend."

Robert nodded, waiting.

"I think he knew something," Gabe said. "But he died in '82, so it's gone with him."

"McKenna," Robert said. "We didn't question anybody named McKenna."

"I think he might have been called in after the shooting," Gabe said. "I don't know."

"Maybe you don't want to know," Robert said.

"He deserves better than that," Gabe said.

"If you don't look, it's because you think he's guilty."

"Something like that," Gabe said and felt like hell. When Gabe had thanked Robert, Scott walked him back to his car. "Listen, if you need any help, give me a call."

"Thanks," Gabe said, surprised.

"Hey, if something turned up about my old man, I'd want to know."

Gabe nodded back toward Robert's apartment. "He's a great guy."

"The best." Scott stood back and gazed at the Porsche with envy. "Great car. What year?"

"1977," Gabe said, and watched Scott's eyes narrow a fraction.

"Year before the suicide. Any connection?"

"Trevor sold it to my dad for a dollar two weeks after the shooting."

Scott whistled. "When'd you find that out?"

"A week ago."

"Bad week," Scott said as Gabe got in the car. "And it's not getting better," Gabe said.

That evening, Suze helped Nell and Margie finish the unpacking, while Riley and Gabe tore apart the kitchen. "So what are they looking for again?" Suze asked Nell.

"They're not sure," Nell said, handing her another piece of bubble-wrapped china to untape. "They figure they'll know it when they see it."

"I think they're exciting," Margie said. "Detectives."

"Ha," Suze said and unwrapped the china, only to stop and stare. It was a small, round white china cup, but it had feet, honest-to-God people feet with blue spotted socks and black shoes. Margie had another, with black striped socks and yellow shoes. "What is this stuff?"

"Walking Ware," Nell said. "Novelty china from the seventies. I forgot I had it until we had everything appraised, but then when it came time to divide the china, I couldn't part with it."

"I've never seen anything like it," Margie said over Suze's shoulder. "And I was around in the seventies."

"It's English." Nell unwrapped another piece, a long-legged sugar bowl, the spindly legs crossed at the knees and the feet shod in huge yellow shoes. "My mom was English. We'd go over there to spend a couple of weeks every summer. These made me laugh, so my aunt and grandmother started sending pieces to me for birthdays and Christmases."

Suze unwrapped another little round cup, this one with longer legs, stretched out as if they were running.

"That's called Running Ware," Nell said and then looked up startled when something thudded in the kitchen. "Where's Marlene?" she said, and Marlene picked up her long, narrow head on the daybed and looked to see if food was involved. "Just checking, baby," Nell said, and Marlene sighed and put her nose into the chenille again.

Suze put the running cup on the floor beside her. It looked as though it was covering ground. "I love these. Do they all look like this?"

"Different-colored shoes and socks," Nell said. "I think I'm going to have to keep them in the kitchen, assuming I still have a kitchen when they're finished in there." She was unpacking a teapot with striped socks and black Mary Janes. "The hutch is full of Clarice and Susie."

"Do you have room in the kitchen?" Margie said.

Nell frowned. "I don't know. Maybe if I put up a shelf-"

"Chloe has the most darling shelves in The Cup," Margie said. "She edged them with the plastic stuff that looks like crochet…"

While Margie burbled on about the teashop, Suze unpacked the rest of the pieces, matching teacups to teapots and sugar bowls and creamers. At the bottom of the box, Suze found Nell's family photo album and passed it over to her, and Margie took it and began to leaf through it as Suze lined up the running egg cups in a line and laughed. There were nine of them, some with striped socks and some with checked and some with dots, all running hellbent for leather someplace else.

"I have to have copies made of all those pictures," Nell was saying to Margie. "Jase should have an album, too."

"Where do you get these cups?" Suze said, breaking into the conversation. "I want some."

"England," Nell said. "Antique and secondhand stores mostly. Or e-Bay, the online auction site. They show up there pretty often."

"How much?"

"Plain egg cups are about thirty or forty dollars," Nell said. "The running ones come a bit higher. Maybe fifty."

"Fifty dollars for an egg cup?" Margie said.

"I want these in my china cabinet," Suze said, tracing the fat, smooth edge of the nearest cup. "It's full of butt-ugly Spode."

"You can have them," Nell said. "Early birthday present."

"No, they're too much," Suze said, and thought, If I got a job, I could pay for them myself. In the kitchen, something else thudded. Detective work. Nell had told her that the McKennas could use her as a decoy, but she'd known Jack would have a fit, so she'd said no. But now there were these cups…"Can I buy these one at a time? Pay for them as I go?"

"Sure," Nell said, looking a little taken aback. "Or take them now and pay me later."

"No," Suze said. "I want to earn them. One at a time."

"The Dysart Spode is beautiful," Margie said, sounding a little grumpy. "I don't see why-"

"You want it?" Suze said. "It's yours."

"I have my Desert Rose," Margie said. "But that beautiful blue-"

"Have you ever looked at those plates?" Suze picked up the cup with the mauve shoes, and her heart beat faster. It had thin blue lines around the top of the socks. It was going to look great running amok among the Spode. "They're from a series called the British Sporting Set, and the pictures on them are awful. There's one called 'Death of the Bear.'"

"You're kidding," Nell said. "I've been eating off it for years at holidays, but I never looked at it."

"There's another one called 'Girl at the Well,' " Suze said. "She looks like she's going to throw herself in. I get very depressed looking at my china."

"The running cups are yours," Nell said.

Suze put the mauve cup down and felt immeasurably lighter. She was going to have to get a job now. She had a future that didn't involve going to school and waiting for Jack to get home. She was doing something.

"Thank you. I will." She took a deep breath. "So Margie, how many days a week is this shop open? Budge is going to go nuts without you on the weekends."

"Just on Saturdays," Margie said, her face clearing. "And only in the afternoons all week. It's a darling job…"

Suze stared at the egg cups while Margie burbled on. They strode across the floor, confident and sure. On the move.

"You know, Margie," Nell said, and her voice sounded so odd that Suze looked up to watch her. "If you have a photo album, I could take it in when I take this one in to get the duplicates. You, too, Suze. That way if anything happened, you'd have a spare."

Suze stared at her, and Nell's eyes slid away. She put that album in the bottom of the box on purpose, Suze thought.

"Is it expensive?" Margie was saying. "I'm sort of broke. Budge says I should declare Stewart dead and collect his insurance since Stewart spent all my inheritance, but that doesn't seem right. I'm not even sure he's dead."

Suze shifted her surprise from Nell to Margie. "You need money?"

"I don't need it," Margie said. "Yet. And he could be dead. Of course, he could not be, too."

"The photo place might give me a deal if I took two in," Nell said, her voice overly bright. "You could pay me later, like Suze. It's no trouble."

"Well, okay," Margie said. "It is a good idea. I'll bring it in to work tomorrow."

"Good," Nell said, her voice so chirpy it broke.

Suze tried to catch her eye again, and Nell said, "We should have coffee," and stood up.

Suze stood up to follow her, but then Gabe came out of the kitchen, and she pulled him aside. "Listen," she said as he looked at her, startled. "Nell said once that you might need some help on your decoy work. Is the job still open?"

"Sure," he said, a little wary. "We've got one Thursday night."

"Where and when?" Suze said. "I'll be there."

Nell kept an eye on Gabe and Suze from the kitchen doorway. If she knew Gabe, he was pumping her for something. "Hey," she called out to him and heard Suze say, "Thank you," before Gabe came over to her, and she drew him into the kitchen. "What are you to talking to Suze about?"

"She was talking to me," Gabe said. "She wants to do decoy work."

"What?" Riley said, from behind them.

"Jack's not going to be happy," Nell said.

Gabe shrugged. "That's Suze's problem."

"And mine," Riley said. "I do most of the damn decoys. Why-"

"Ignore him," Gabe told Nell. "He's frustrated because we have found exactly nothing. We had high hopes for the basement, but the door to it has been nailed shut since World War II."

"I asked about that," Nell said. "Doris likes the basement to herself. She makes wreaths down there."

"Wreaths," Gabe said, as if he wasn't sure what to do with that. "Okay. You're sure Lynnie didn't leave anything that you threw out?"

"If she left anything, Doris took it," Nell said. "The place was empty when I moved in.

"Doris," Gabe said and looked at Riley.

"Oh, thank you very much, no," he said. "Make Nell do it. It's her landlady."

"Ask Doris what she found," Gabe said to Nell.

"Sure," Nell said. "And then when she evicts me for suggesting she stole from Lynnie, Marlene and I will come live with you."

"Good idea," Gabe said, and he sounded serious. "You should come back with us, just in case your prowler comes back to search again. Chloe's place has locks that'll keep out anybody, and she'd love to have you."

Nell looked around her apartment. Her apartment. "I ust moved in. My china's unpacked. Really, I'm fine."

"You'd be safer next door to us," Gabe said. "If anything happened, we could get to you in a minute."

That did sound appealing, but it wouldn't be her place. "No," she said. "Thank you, but no. We don't even know that the guy who broke in here knew I was here."

"I'd still feel better with you next door," Gabe said, but Nell wouldn't go.

Later that night, when Budge had collected a reluctant Margie, when Suze had climbed into her yellow Beetle with a parting shot at Riley and a fishy look at Nell, and when Gabe had tried one more time to talk her into moving to Chloe's and then left, Nell patted Marlene and said,

"Okay, puppy, anybody who comes through that door, you go for the throat."

Marlene sashayed her butt deeper into the chenille. "Unless it's Gabe," Nell said. "He's on our side."

With her china unpacked and her apartment livable and her midnight invader foiled, Nell turned her attention to the office. Gabe had been grateful when she'd brought him Margie's photo album since it had several good pictures of Helena wearing her diamonds-earrings, necklace, bracelet, brooch, and ring-and even more grateful when she started organizing the freezer full of files. Unfortunately, he wasn't grateful enough to give her a free hand with the office, so she took matters into her own hands and painted the bathroom walls a pale dove gray with gold trim along the ceiling. "Very fancy," was all Gabe said, so she went on, surprising him one afternoon when he came back to find her on a ladder and Suze underneath, painting the reception room walls a soft gold. She braced herself, but all he said was, "If you fall off the ladder, you're on your own," and went into his office. "Not chatty, is he?" Suze said, and Nell said, "He's depressed about a case that's not going well." She did her damnedest to cheer him up, keeping his business running seamlessly and his coffee cup filled, playing Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra in the outer office and swiping almond cookies from Margie for him in the afternoon, but he didn't seem to notice, ignoring her if she worked at something he asked her to do, yelling if she changed something without checking with him first. "I could dance naked for that man on his desk," she told Suze at Halloween, "and all he'd say is, 'Damn it, Nell, you're stepping on the reports.' Not that I want to dance naked for him. That's just an expression."