Fool's Puzzle (17 page)

“Me? Are you crazy?”

“Does ‘You are dead meat, buddy. I’m holding Dack and Cassandra hostage. You know who this is’ sound familiar?”

My message on Eric’s answering machine. I felt my face turn red.

“Who’s Dack and Cassandra?” His tone was off-hand but the question wasn’t.

“It was just a joke,” I said, laughing uneasily. “You don’t really believe I killed him.”

He let me squirm for a minute before answering. “You’re not my first choice. But I can’t say the same for your brother-in-law.”

“Wade would never kill anyone.”

“Everyone has the potential for murder.”

“Is that the cop or the philosopher talking?” I asked.

“Depends.”

“On what?”

“What kind of day I’m having.”

“So who wins today?”

“It’s still early. I’ll have to wait and see.”

“Well, Friday,” I said. “As always, it’s been just the greatest fun talking with you, but I need to get back to the festival. Make yourself useful. Buy something.”

“I want that napkin,” he said. “And I want you, the man says like a broken record, to stay out of this investigation.” He reached over and pushed down the brim of my cap, a slight smile on his face. “And I told you, the name is Gabe.”

“Whatever.” I irritably pushed my cap back up. Everyone thinks they invented the wheel. “Why don’t you find someone else to bug, Ortiz?”

“Whether I bug you or not is entirely up to you. I’ll stop when you get out of this investigation. It’s that simple.” He gave me a serene look, then walked away.

I’d begun climbing the steps to the museum when Carl called to me. He ran up the steps and fell in beside me.

“I saw you talking to Ortiz. Anything new on the Eric Griffin murder?”

“I don’t know one bit more than what I told you at six o‘clock this morning and, for your information, I was being given a lecture, not a progress report. You, of all people, should know that.”

“Sorry,” he said, holding up his hands. “Just trying to do my job.”

“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry I’m so grumpy. I just haven’t gotten much sleep these last few days. And Ortiz just has a way of getting under my skin. Really, I’ve told you everything I know.”

“Good enough.” He put his arm around me. “Don’t worry about the chief. He’ll quit harassing you once these murders are solved or shelved.”

“He’d better,” I said, telling myself that wasn’t regret I was feeling, just relief.

“I’m still waiting for you to come down to the paper for lunch,” he said. “You need some fun in your life. Maybe we should make it dinner and a movie.”

“Carl Freedman,” I said, laughing. “If I didn’t know better, I’d swear you were asking me for a date.”

He smiled crookedly, his blue eyes serious. “Is that so hard to imagine?”

I looked at him in surprise. I didn’t want to say it had never crossed my mind. He was Jack’s best friend. One of my oldest and dearest friends. I’d never even considered him in that context. Since his divorce four years ago, Carl had entertained me and Jack more times than I could remember with hilarious reenactments of some of his unbelievable dates. I couldn’t imagine being one of them.

“What’s wrong, you need some new joke material?” I asked, not entirely sure if he was kidding or not.

“Benni,” he said in a pained tone. “You know it would be different with you. You’re not just some bimbo. Give me a break. Just think about it and call me.”

“I will,” I said to his back as he turned and ran back down the steps.

Sitting at my desk, I thought about the complicated path my life had taken. A week ago, I was coming home to a lonely chicken pot pie and chocolate no-bake cookies and now I was involved up to my ears in two homicides and my brother-in-law’s affair with one of the victims, was contemplating dating my dead husband’s best friend and having uncomfortably erotic feelings for a blue-eyed Hispanic man from Kansas, of all places, whom I couldn’t be around for ten seconds without starting a fight. So I did what most women do when faced with a life too complex to sort out. I decided to clean out my purse.

I discovered at the bottom of my saddlebag-style purse, one of the parking tickets I’d forgotten to pay. It was only five months old. That cheered me. I thought it had been much longer than that since I cleaned out my purse.

Also down at the bottom, next to a paperback book I was looking for a few months ago, lay a small red-labeled computer disc. Eric’s book. I swallowed hard. We’d never know what happened to Dack and Cassandra now. I knew I should give it to the police. It was possibly evidence, but the thought of a bunch of cops sitting around laughing at Eric’s writing made me feel sad and a bit protective. I wasn’t sure what family he had, but this really belonged to them. Out of curiosity, I flipped on my word processor and slipped it in.

Dack’s carnal capabilities were impressive, though I doubted the technical accuracy of six times in less than an hour. Eric had obviously overestimated what women who read romance novels were expecting. His writing was overdone and superficial, but there was something humorously appealing about his abuse of almost every basic writing rule I’d learned in the one creative writing class I’d taken in college.

Write what you know. The words of my professor flooded back to me. There was an elaborate subplot threaded through the eight finished chapters, concerning a blackmail scheme Dack and Cassandra had going. No hint about who they were blackmailing. Just someone with a very nasty secret.

Write what you know.
Eric seemed to know a lot about blackmail. Too much. Or maybe, it suddenly became apparent to me as I stared at the words on the screen, just enough to get himself killed.

IT STARTED RAINING again Monday morning, but I lay in bed and enjoyed the sounds of the whooshing river running through the gutters.

The festival turned out to be a bigger monetary success than we’d hoped, with the co-op’s cut being over a thousand dollars and most of the artists getting enough orders to keep them busy for a few more months. Though the studios were open, the museum was closed for the day, so I intended on catching up on some of the sleep I’d lost in the last few days. However, something niggled at the back of my semiconscious mind and kept me from drifting back to sleep.

Then it dawned on me. Today was Marla’s funeral. I groaned out loud and hit my pillow. My dramatic response was wasted on an empty room. The clock-radio on my oak nightstand read nine o‘clock in cheery red numbers. The funeral was at eleven and I still had to get to the florist, so I dragged myself out of bed and headed for the coffee maker.

An hour later, I was dressed in what was my most respectful funeral garb—a narrow navy blue wool skirt, white linen blouse and navy cardigan. An idea slowly took shape as I dressed. Maybe I would be able to talk to Marla’s mother alone and find out something. Wade’s relationship with Marla pricked at me, though I knew better than anyone that he certainly didn’t have the resources to pay her blackmail.

After a quick trip to the florist, I pulled up in front of the mortuary wondering why they always looked like miniature versions of Tara. Though it couldn’t have been more than fifty degrees outside, the temperature dropped ten degrees in the spacious pink foyer, pink being the operative word. It was like being trapped inside a bottle of Pepto-bismol.

The lobby’s fuzzy brocade wallpaper mirrored the upholstery on the slightly darker pink French provincial love seats. The freshly vacuumed rose carpet was marred only by the tracks of Marla’s friends and family.

A black-suited man with surprisingly robust skin seemed to appear out of nowhere and took my raincoat and the wet, bulky spray of yellow roses. Handing me a cream-colored program, he directed me toward the double doors of the small chapel.

A dozen or so people were scattered throughout the chapel. No one looked familiar to me. I chose a seat two pews behind a tall woman with skin as weathered as an old piece of harness, whose resemblance to Marla was unnerving. Two women flanked her, protective arms encircling her narrow shoulders. They were of such similar size, age and puckered complexion, they had to be her sisters.

The service was brief and, thankfully, the coffin closed. The minister ended with an announcement that a luncheon was being served at Mrs. Chenier’s house and all in attendance were invited. He ended the service with a tape of what he claimed was Marla’s favorite song— “The Impossible Dream.” Marla’s mother broke into sobs during the song and was patted and cooed at by her sisters while the rest of us picked at our hands or studied our printed programs. I wondered if anyone was thinking what I was: that Marla, in a manner of speaking, wouldn’t have been caught dead with that song being sung at her funeral. “Let’s Give Them Something to Talk About” by Bonnie Raitt would have been more her style.

There was no opportunity to question Mrs. Chenier at the funeral, so I decided to go to the house. Maybe it would happen more naturally there. I walked up to Mrs. Chenier, extended my sympathies on behalf of the co-op and picked up a photocopied map with directions to her house. When I walked out into the cotton-candy foyer, I ran into Detective Cleary.

“I thought the police only attended the victim’s funerals in the movies,” I said.

“No, ma‘am.” His coffee-colored face was impassive as he tucked a brown notebook inside his jacket.

“So, does anyone look like a killer here?” I flashed him an encouraging smile.

“I don’t know, ma‘am. I’m just following orders.”

“And doing a fine job of it.” I knew full well I wouldn’t get an opinion or a single piece of information out of him. Ortiz had probably threatened to demote him to parking patrol if he as much as breathed in my direction.

“Yes, ma‘am.” He folded his hands in front of him like a preacher.

“Well, it was nice talking with you again, Detective Cleary. You can tell your boss you successfully squeezed past me without letting slip so much as a smidgen of information.”

“Have a good day, ma‘am.” He smiled and gave me a wink before he walked out into the rain.

After a short, damp service at the cemetery, I drove to Mrs. Chenier’s lemon-colored stucco house. It was located in a small middle-class neighborhood north of the university. The forgotten tricycles and Big Wheels scattered across wet sidewalks and the neatly trimmed front yards gave testimony that the thirty-year-old houses were going through their second, or third, generation of enthusiastic young homeowners.

More people were at the luncheon than at the funeral, probably because of the neighbors stopping by with a casserole or pie, then staying to sample the buffet and whisper about the way Marla died. The clove-spiked ham, green bean casseroles and Jell-O molds so reminded me of Jack’s funeral, I almost gave up my plan to question Mrs. Chenier. But the thought of Wade being involved with Marla’s death made me stay.

I hung around longer than was socially acceptable, trying to manuever time alone with Mrs. Chenier. Finally, her sisters retired to the kitchen to clean up, everyone else had left, and Mrs. Chenier and I were alone in the musty, Early American living room, looking through calico-print photo albums showing Marla from birth to as late as three weeks ago.

“She was such a talented girl, my Marla,” she said. “She only worked at that bar until her ship came in. That’s what she always told me. Ma, she’d say, I’m going to buy you a mink coat when my ship comes in. That’s what she always said.” Mrs. Chenier’s tanned, shriveled face twisted inward and a single tear ran down a deep crease in her cheek.

“She was very talented,” I said. “I’ll bring the rest of her pots by later this week. Unless you want us to sell them. Her pottery was starting to develop a real following.”

“Go ahead and sell them.” She pulled a tissue out of the sleeve of her brown, lacy-necked dress and dabbed at her eyes. “Heaven knows I need the money. Marla helped me, you know. That’s why she had to work at that place instead of just doing her art. Her father was a drunk. Dropped dead and left me nothing but this house. And the taxes were three years behind when he passed on.” For a moment, anger flashed in her eyes.

“I’ll get the best price I can for them,” I assured her. “We’ll feature them in our museum gift shop.” If what Ortiz said about people was true, we could probably double the price and they’d sell like crazy.

“She was a worker, my Marla. She always had something going. Did I tell you what she said? She said, Ma, when my ship comes in I’m going to buy you a mink coat. A white mink coat. That’s what she said.” Her milk-chocolate eyes filled with tears.

This was not going as I intended. As I turned the pages of the album, scanning the pictures of Marla in all ages and moods, I tried to think of a way to get more information without being cruel.

“Have the police come up with any leads?” I asked.

“Hmph,” she spit out, her eyes angry again. “They haven’t done nothing. Plenty of questions. That’s about it.”

“Have they said why they think she was killed?” I kept flipping through the photo album, trying to sound casually curious.

“Crime of passion, they called it. They wanted to know who were her boyfriends. Was there anyone special she was seeing.” The angry look again.

“Was there?” I studied a picture of Marla at ten in one of those “sitting on a pony” pictures taken in grocery-store parking lots, her face scrunched into a scowl. She looked like she wanted to flip the photographer the bird. I smiled—that’s the Marla I remembered.

“My Marla had her share of boyfriends.” Mrs. Chenier sniffled and tucked the tissue back in her sleeve.

“But no one special.”

“She dated around, but like I told the police, she wasn’t about to settle down. She had a big project going that kept her busy most the time. She said that she’d be set by Christmas.” She touched her cheek tentatively. “Said our ship was only a few miles from shore.”