Make, Take, Murder (9 page)

Bama gasped, “Then you
think that leg was …”

“Oh, my, gosh!” I sat my mug down so hard the tea splashed across the desktop.

Detweiler and Hadcho exchanged smoke signals with their eyes. Detweiler’s face softened as he directed his comments to me. “We don’t know whose leg you found. Ross Gambrowski didn’t report his wife as missing. However, he can’t account for her whereabouts. We have a BOLO—that’s Be On the Look Out—for her car. The last time he saw her was Friday night. He claims he came home late, found the bedroom door locked, and fell asleep on the sofa. Says the next morning, Saturday, there was a note on the kitchen table from Cindy. Said she was off bright and early for a Bible study group. That night he got a text message from her phone.” Here Detweiler flipped to a page in his notepad and read, “Be home late. Went to a scrapbook crop.”

“Did you have a crop here Saturday night?” Hadcho asked.

“No, we didn’t.”

“Who did?” Detweiler’s voice turned staccato. For the first time, I examined him more carefully. His eyes wore a tired, careworn expression. A few gray hairs mingled in with the brown hair at his temples. Most telling, his shirt sported wrinkles across the chest. This, a seemingly insignificant personal tidbit, surprised me. He was a total nut about ironed shirts. Did them himself. Used spray starch. He liked to press the yoke on the back from one side and then the other so the fabric would lie down neatly. We had a good laugh about how anal that was.

“I like what I like,” he grinned. “Since I’m willing to do them myself, why not? I find ironing therapeutic. Too bad you can’t iron all the wrinkles out of life.”

That preference must have fallen by the wayside.

“Are you serious?” Bama dropped all pretense of nice. “Any one of a dozen groups could have held a crop on Saturday. There are Creative Memory crops here all the time. We have a lot of active representatives in the St. Louis area.”

“As well as other private crops,” I chimed in. “But the Creative Memories folks are very well-organized. You could check with them. They all know each other.” I wrote a phone number on a card. Our store had a wonderful relationship with the local CM reps. More than once I suggested folks check out their classes, crops, and products.

Another idea occurred to me. “Just a sec.” I popped up and hurried to the front of the store. With any luck, we could send the two detectives on their way and get cracking on the day ahead.

Positioning the small ladder against one of the side walls of the store, I steadied it against the wall and started to climb.

Detweiler braced it from below. “This doesn’t look safe. Get down and let me up there.”

I ignored him. Focusing on one of the pages pinned to the wall, I dug a thumbnail under the tacks. Moving carefully, I backed down the ladder. Detweiler didn’t step away. An inch, maybe less was all that stood between us.

His lips touched my ear, and the sweet scent of soap tickled my nose. “I heard about what Brenda did. You should have reported her.”

“Excuse me?”

He set his hand over mine, as it lingered on the ladder. “Kiki, don’t do me any favors. Not like that.”

A blaze of anger started, hot and slow. “Favors? What makes you think I did you a favor? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The heck you don’t. She shook you. And you let her get away with it. Out of some misguided allegiance—”

“Excuse me?” Detective Hadcho’s voice called over from a fixture. “What did you find?”

Detweiler and I broke apart like two guilty teenagers. I suspect my face pulsed with fury because Bama rounded the corner immediately after, and she stopped in her tracks at the sight of me. “Wha …?”

I waved the page at the two of them. “This is Cindy’s entry for our All about Me Contest. I thought it worth looking at more carefully.”

But before we could take the layout to the cropping table where the light was better, Detweiler and Hadcho’s cell phones rang in tandem. Both men clapped their mobiles to their ears.
Sotto voce,
they grunted in unison. It would have been funny, but a frisson warned me the news wasn’t good. Hadcho clapped his cell closed and abruptly stood up.

Detweiler put out a staying hand. “No need to hurry. Let’s look this over first.”

“I’ll make you each a color copy,” I said. I walked to the copier and loaded the page face down on the scanning bed. Detweiler appeared at my elbow.

“Listen,” he whispered. “I’m not upset with you. I’m furious with her. I know you let it slide to be nice. But don’t ever do that again.”

“I don’t intend to,” I said. On one level I understood my emotions. Embarrassment, desire, and anger all roiled within me. On another, I simply didn’t care how mixed up my feelings were. So what if I let anger rule? Wasn’t that better than seeming like a victim?

“Good.” He reached over and gave my hand a small but tender squeeze. The gesture was fast, intimate, and nearly brought me to tears. “It makes me sick that anything happened to you while you were helpless. She had no right. I wish …”

That half-sentence didn’t add up to much. It certainly didn’t shed any light on what happened. In my mind, it was simple: Brenda had been angry and I had been helpless. What was he going on about? The copier finished its scan and spit out the warm duplicate images. “I hope these help,” I managed.

“I do, too,” he said. “But right now, I can’t imagine how. I have a bad feeling it’s too late for Mrs. Gambrowski.”

Detweiler and Hadcho were
nearly at their cars when Mert’s truck jumped the curb and headed straight toward them. Hadcho shot her a dirty look, hopped in his Impala, and burned rubber in his way past her. Not that Mert noticed. She almost sideswiped him on her way into a space. Her driving had taken a decided turn for the worse over the past thirty days. She had a lot on her mind, I’ll grant you. A client accused Mert of breaking expensive décor items while housecleaning. Rather than argue, Mert let her insurance pay the first claim. But the second time, she stood her ground. “I ain’t taking it no more. I didn’t break that there vase. Or that serving bowl. Iff’n I had, I’d a said so. But I didn’t. This’ll jack up my rates, and I won’t stand for that.”

So Mert was prepping to appear in Small Claims Court. “You would just know it had to happen during the holiday season when ever’one and her sister needs housecleaning right here, right now.” She thumped around in my kitchen as she explained her situation.

I wished her luck.

She didn’t need it.

Mert’s a lot smarter than people credit her. There’s that book about the many types of intelligence. I figure “people smart” must be on the list. Mert has that covered twenty ways to Sunday.

Now she muscled the truck into a space, slammed the Chevy S10 into the parking curb and tossed open her door. The sound of dogs barking followed her out onto the pavement. She waved down Detweiler. The two put their heads together.

A sick feeling started in my gut. I had a hunch Mert was the person who told him about Brenda shaking me. Now the two people I loved most in the world next to my daughter were in cahoots, plotting against me. Drat, drat, double drat. Like I needed that! What was Mert on about? She knew I’d decided to keep my distance. So why was she chatting him up? Did she hope to snare Detweiler for herself ?

I shifted my weight from one foot to the other and back again.

I chastised myself for the unworthy thoughts.

Detweiler nodded a goodbye to my friend. She waited for him to back out before unloading three dogs.

Detweiler pulled into the traffic on Brentwood.

“This here Chihuahau’s name is Izzy, ain’t he cute?” Mert reached into her cab and handed me a tiny black and brown fellow with bat-shaped ears. Izzy and I gave each other the once-over. He must have decided I passed muster because he yawned. “I got you this springer spaniel named Fluffy. I expect someone ought to shoot his owners for violation of the Stupid Pet Name Code. Then there’s Jasper, and he’s part poodle, part Bichon.” She dragged Jasper and Fluffy toward me as they pulled on their leashes in two different directions.

Fluffy was a buff-colored, spring-loaded, bouncy toy of a dog. White-and-peach-spotted Jasper cocked an eyebrow at me, promptly sat down, and scratched behind his right ear. That’s when I noticed that Jasper was short a leg.

“He’s only got three legs!”

“Dang it. He had four when we left the house!” Mert hurried over to look at him. I stepped up next to her and stared hard, too.

My jaw dropped. I only counted three legs.

“I was just fooling. Got you good, too.” Mert started laughing. “Jasper’s a rescue pup. Poor thang. His old owners left him outside till the fur wrapped around his left leg and cut the circulation off. Had to be amputated. You’d never know he’s missing it, would you?”

No, I wouldn’t. Better yet, Jasper didn’t seem to care. “He’s pretty perky.”

Mert squatted down and loved him up. “I love this here dog. He’s a walking reminder to take life in stride. He don’t fret none about the past, about what he don’t got, or what people done to him. Ever’ day he just wakes up eager to see what good news the Lord hath wrought. A person could learn a lot from good old Jasper.”

I was not as willing to leave the past behind. I waited until we were near the doggy playpen to pounce on Mert. “You told Detweiler, didn’t you? About what happened in the hospital? With his wife?”

Mert didn’t miss a step as she stooped down to give Petunia and Gracie a little loving. “You betcha. After I tole him what happened, I called up that wife of his and explained a few facts of life to her. Said if she ever, ever, ever touched a friend of mine again—or your child—she better hightail it for the North Pole ’cause I planned to run her feet first through a blender and turn her into chowder. Then I’d feed her to the crocodiles or alligators or whatever it is that lives down there in the Everglades.”

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Mert’s startling ability to turn violent always caught me by surprise. Coupled with her hardscrabble style of talking, I envisioned us in some creepy Cohen Brothers movie. A St. Louis version of
Fargo
, maybe. “Mert, give me space. You can’t go charging in after people on my behalf. What if she reports you to the authorities? You’re already on the court docket.”

“Yep, I am. Guess what? Mr. Hunky Detective said he’d check the pawn shop records for me.”

“For what? A gun?”

“No, ma’am. I’m thinking that my former employer Mrs. Springer done broke those things to get some spending money.”

“So?”

“Maybe she also pawned stuff and just says it’s broke. She could be lying.”

“But isn’t her husband that super-rich attorney? Handles all those big corporations over in Clayton. Why would she need money? They’re supposed to be loaded.”

“There’s loaded his style and loaded her style,” my friend carefully delineated this with two unequal portions of air divided by her palms.

“You lost me.”

“See,” Mert made a big distance between her hands. “He’s got all this money, right? But he don’t share none with her.” Next she made a tiny sliver of airspace with her hands. “So iff’n she wants something or needs something he don’t want her to have, she’s stuck.”

“Why not charge it or write a check?”

Mert snorted. “’Cause she don’t got no credit or checking account. He gives her cash for everything. I seen this list in their kitchen. She had to write down everything she bought. Turn in the receipt, too.”

“You are kidding me.”

“No, sirree, doggies. Some of these men think they gotta keep a wife on a real short leash. I suspect old Mr. Springer’s one of them. I mean, look at him. Ever seen his photo? He’s just a tiny little squirt of a man. Wears his pants up around his boobies. Got this yellow hair sticks out every which way. Ugly, too. Don’t you think he worries about what she sees in him? Can’t be his charming physique. Or his noble chin. Cause he ain’t got one.”

“Isn’t that a form of abuse?” I wondered.

“Being chinless?”

“Withholding spending money. I mean, especially if you have it. I think of marriage as sharing. For one person to dole out pennies seems pretty mean to me.”

“It sure qualifies as abuse in my book. I wouldn’t put up with it. In fact, my first husband was abusive and I didn’t put up with it.”