Murder Can Rain on Your Shower (29 page)

phone rang.

‘‘What are you doing?’’ It was my neighbor Barbara.

‘‘You mean this minute? I was about to take some

thing to eat.’’

She adopted her most imperious tone. ‘‘Forget it.

I’m treating you to dinner.’’

‘‘Why would you do a thing like that?’’

‘‘Because I won a raffle.’’ Her attempt to conceal it

notwithstanding, a hint of excitement managed to

sneak into her voice when she added, ‘‘First thing I ever won in my life, too. Anyhow, the raffle entitles me to dinner for two at the Reel Thing, this new sea

food place on Seventy-ninth.’’

‘‘Lucky you! And I thank you for thinking of me,

Barbara. I’d love to go, but I have an awful lot of work to do tonight, and—’’

‘‘The work won’t run away. It’ll be there when you

get home. I promise.’’

‘‘Gee, I don’t know. I—’’

‘‘I’ll make you another promise, too: I won’t even

mention calories.’’

Now, Barbara has this habit of counting calories.

Only not hers—mine. And let me tell you, it’s pretty

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tough to enjoy your meal when somebody—particu

larly somebody who’s no thicker than a matchstick—

is sitting there, scrutinizing every morsel that winds up behind your lips. ‘‘We-ll . . .’’ I was weakening, but I still hadn’t been completely won over.

Barbara, however, sensing victory, closed in for the

kill. ‘‘I understand they have wonderful scampi.’’

Sold.

The food turned out to be very good—better than

very good, really. Barbara had the grilled tuna, which,

while not exactly my cup of tea, she pronounced ‘‘ex

quisite.’’ I ordered the scampi, and it was, as Barbara had indicated in her pitch to me, ‘‘wonderful.’’ It

wasn’t until dessert (fresh fruit salad for her, cre`me bruˆleé for me) that my devious host confessed the

truth: Actually, she’d never heard a thing about the scampi here.

At any rate, we talked pretty much nonstop through

out the meal.

Barbara, who’s a grade school teacher, told me how

much she was looking forward to the start of the new

semester—solid proof of that old adage about absence

making the heart grow fonder. I mean, almost every

time I see her during the school year, she’s carping about her little charges or their parents or the admin

istration. And sometimes she takes aim at all three

at once.

After this she reported on her matchmaking Aunt

Theresa’s latest offering. This one was the stockbroker

nephew of Aunt Theresa’s new neighbor. It seems that

Aunt Theresa had met the nephew by chance, just as

he was leaving Mrs. Murray’s apartment—she’s the

new neighbor. And Staten Island’s version of Dolly

Levi had, naturally, managed to wheedle a few crucial

statistics out of the fellow’s relative. According to Mrs. Murray (who, it goes without saying, was com

pletely unbiased), Barbara’s prospective soulmate

was intelligent, kind, generous, personable, and the

earner of large bucks. Aunt Theresa’s contribution

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was that he was also extremely handsome. ‘‘As hand

some as Tyrone Power, even,’’ she’d declared to Bar

bara. (This comparison to the long-dead movie star

in lieu of someone slightly more contemporary we

attributed to Aunt Theresa’s being close to ninety.)

She did have to admit, however, that there
was
a slight impediment to the coupling—actually, two.

The man was almost certainly past sixty. Plus, it had

somehow slipped her mind to establish whether he

was married or single. ‘‘Well, after all, I am going on ninety,’’ she’d reminded Barbara in defense of

the oversight.

‘‘Just minor details,’’ I put in at this point, laughing.

‘‘So your advice would be to wait a while before I start shopping for my trousseau?’’ Barbara inquired,

straight-faced.

‘‘
I
would.’’ Suddenly I could feel my cheeks burn

ing, as my own clumsy attempt at playing cupid for

my friend here came to mind. And, the thing is, I

should have realized that it was a lousy idea to begin with. I mean, Barbara’s not what I’d consider a snob—

honestly. But in some areas—like men, for instance—

she does have champagne tastes. What I’m getting at

is that she’d no doubt prefer a stockbroker (or a doc

tor or a lawyer) to a policeman. Even if he was For

sythe’s
chief
policeman.

‘‘So how’s the Bobbie Jean thing going?’’ she

asked then.

‘‘Don’t ask.’’

‘‘I assume this is the work that’s awaiting you

tonight.’’

‘‘Yup.’’

‘‘No luck yet, huh?’’

‘‘I’m afraid not.’’

‘‘You haven’t forgotten what I told you, have you?’’

‘‘Uh, what was it again?’’

‘‘Shame on you, Desiree Shapiro! Quite obviously

you don’t place much stock in my opinion. Which, if you’ll recall, is that it was that annoying little camera freak who poisoned the woman.’’

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Once again I managed to avoid bursting into laugh

ter at this ludicrous suggestion.

‘‘Listen, I’m very intuitive,’’ Barbara said, intense

now. ‘‘And I get this creepy feeling at the back of my

neck just thinking about that girl.’’

Her
neck?
Really!
This time I wasn’t quite able to keep the beginnings of a grin from putting in a brief appearance on my face.

‘‘Go ahead, laugh if you want to,’’ she muttered

irritably. ‘‘If you had any sense, though, you wouldn’t dismiss the possibility out of hand like that.’’

I made what I considered a very reasonable obser

vation. ‘‘But Ginger had never laid eyes on Bobbie

Jean until the shower.’’

‘‘You know this for an absolute fact? Besides, even

if you’re right, how can you be sure she didn’t commit

the murder to avenge somebody?—her mother, for

example. Or someone else she was close to whom the

dead woman might have wronged.’’

It seemed prudent to tell Barbara I’d look into it. So that’s what I told her.

I’m not sure she believed me, but she left it at

that. ‘‘By the way,’’ she brought up right after this,

‘‘I received a call from the Forsythe police last week

end. This detective—or whatever he was—asked if

I’d ever met the victim before, if I’d noticed anything

of a suspicious nature that Sunday—the usual.’’

And now I permitted myself a full-wattage smile.

‘‘ ‘The
usual?
’ You make it sound as if you’re grilled by the police on a regular basis.’’

‘‘Yeah. I head up the list of
America’s
Most
Wanted
.’’ But she smiled back at me.

About an hour later we were standing in the hall

of our mutual building, only a few feet away from

our respective apartments. I thanked Barbara for

the lovely dinner and the thoroughly enjoyable

evening.

‘‘Anytime,’’ she said. ‘‘Any time I win another raf

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fle, that is. And look, be sure you question that pesky

little girl with the camera.’’

We said good night and I was already at my door

when I heard: ‘‘And remember whose neck it was that

helped you solve this case.’’

Chapter
30

I didn’t have a prayer of doing any work that night. Mostly I think this was due to that bottle of pinot grigio—my contribution to the meal. The waiter had

poured with such a generous hand that I’d exceeded

my one-glass limit—although only by a fraction, really.

Still, it was enough to induce me to head for my com

fortable bed instead of that ubiquitous manila folder.

I didn’t go near my notes the next day, either, since

I was completely occupied with getting ready for my

company that evening. I was, however, fully commit

ted to devoting all of Sunday to studying Wes’s infor

mation—a commitment that, as things turned out,

would soon evaporate.

Anyhow, by ten thirty on Saturday morning I was

at the greengrocer’s. From there I headed over to the

cheese store for some Brie and a chunk of Port-Salut.

Then came the bakery and following this, our local

Haägen-Dazs. My final stop was the supermarket,

where I picked up the rest of the ingredients for my dinner with Ellen and Mike.

Since I hadn’t allowed myself any time for advance

preparation, the menu had to be simple—and, believe

me, it was. In fact, the entreé was such a cinch to make that years ago a friend of mine had labeled it

‘‘Moron’s Chicken.’’ At any rate, after I finished shop

ping, which was the most time-consuming element I

had to contend with, I mixed up this tangy sweet-and

sour sauce and poured it over the chicken parts. Then

as soon as the chicken was sitting in the refrigerator awaiting its stint in the oven, I fixed the salad and

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cooked up some wild rice with mushrooms and onions.

The hors d’oeuvres were no problem at all. In addition

to the cheeses, there were, fortunately, some wild

mushroom croustades in the freezer. (You might say

I have a thing for mushrooms.) Dessert was equally

effortless: store-bought cookies and Haägen-Dazs.

The kitchen chores tended to, I permitted myself a

lunch break. After which I straightened the apartment

a little and set up the folding table in the living room.

And now I could relax for a while—in a nice, fra

grant bubble bath.

I’d gotten as far as sticking one big toe in the tub when the phone rang. I made a grab for the towel—

and it ended up in the bathwater. Swearing in a totally

unladylike manner, I hurried into the kitchen au na

turel and snatched up the receiver.

I was greeted with ‘‘Hi, Jo baby.’’

‘‘You again,’’ I seethed.

‘‘Rotten bitch!’’ the caller retorted.

I won’t even repeat what
I
had to say to
him
—but only after he was no longer on the line.

Ellen and Mike arrived about five minutes early.

Mike was looking fit and attractive in slim olive chi

nos. And Ellen might have sashayed down the runway

in her beautifully tailored rust pants outfit.

They had obviously put the recent tragedy aside, at

least for the moment. I mean, it didn’t take any eagle eye to see how happy they were. Ellen’s cheeks were flushed, her eyes were shining, and her smile could

have blinded you. Mike had to bend practically in

half—which he did in order to kiss me—before I was

able to make out that his cheeks, eyes, and smile were

likewise. (Ellen’s intended is about eight feet tall. Or so it seems from down here.)

Now, it’s a real imposition on my Lilliputian kitchen

to expect it to accommodate more than one person at

a time. So when Mike went in there to open the wine

they’d brought, I stayed in the living room with Ellen.

My niece didn’t waste a second before plopping down

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on the sofa, directly in front of the mushroom crous

tades. ‘‘It would have been kind of gauche to reach,’’

she explained with one of her infectious giggles as she

helped herself to an hors d’oeuvre.

‘‘Mbe we shd wt ntil ltr before lkn thr ta pctrs,’’

she told me with puffed-out cheeks. After which she

held up an index finger and swallowed. She flashed

me a guilty little grin. ‘‘Sorry. But I just love these. Anyhow, I was suggesting—’’

‘‘I know what you were trying to say: that maybe

we should wait until later before looking through the pictures.’’ (There are instances when I think I must be a truly amazing woman.) ‘‘I was about to suggest that myself.’’

Dinner was relaxed and pleasant.

If Mike had any idea of his mother’s current diffi

culties with the police, you couldn’t tell from his