Never Buried: A Leigh Koslow Mystery (14 page)

"This evening?"

"Dinner at your Mom's? Surely you haven't forgotten. I hear she's planning on Yankee pot roast again."

Leigh's stomach roiled. She hated Yankee pot roast. And she had, blissfully, forgotten about the dinner. Not to mention the fact that she was supposed to have invited the Polanskis.

The doorbell rang. Conveniently enough, it was Maura. "Thought I'd be conventional this time," she grinned.

Leigh, also being conventional, invited her into the parlor. Maura entered to the tune of a hiss from Mao Tse, who, having just decided the coast was clear, was now forced to flee to the kitchen.

Cara laughed. "What did you ever do to her, Maura?"

The policewoman shrugged. "I'm a dog person." She squeezed with some effort into one of the antique wingbacks. "I can't stay long, Koslow" she said, looking distinctly uncomfortable. "I'm on duty. But I wanted to see what you two were up to."

"
Library-type
research," Leigh said proudly. "And I'm doing a great job. It's looking more and more like these problems we're having are related to 1949."

"The double deaths?" Maura asked.

Leigh nodded. "You knew about that already?"

"Sure. The Fischer story was legend at Avalon Elementary. With a few variations, of course. The most popular one had old man Fischer throwing his wife down the stairs, then her ghost coming back and shooting his eyes out."

Leigh grimaced. "Charming. Do you know what really happened?"

"Of course." Maura's tone implied the question was ridiculous. "What makes you think there's a link between those deaths and these threats?"

"Mrs. Rhodis"—Cara pointed next door—"says that Paul Fischer told her he had a will." She summarized her neighbor's story, and Maura listened with interest.

"My dad never told me any of that," she said, sounding disappointed. "I wonder if Mrs. Rhodis ever told him about the will, or seeing the other papers." For a moment, she was lost in thought. "If Fischer did have a will, and notebooks filled with poems, either he hid them before he died, or someone got to them before the police did. I remember when Fischer's belongings were auctioned off—and there weren't any writings. If there had been, people would have fought over them. A lot of people thought Paul Fischer knew more than he let on."

The room was silent. Maura stood up. "Thanks, guys. You've given me a lot to think about." She headed for the door.

Cara looked at Leigh as if she were supposed to be doing something.
What?
Leigh feigned.

Dinner!
Cara mouthed back.

Oh
. Leigh followed Maura to the door. "By the way, my mom wants to invite you and your mom to dinner tonight. You don't have to come if you don't want to."

Maura laughed. "You're a hard sell, Koslow. I'm not sure about Mom—depends on her mood—but I'd love to come. I haven't seen your Mom in ages. I don't get off until six, though. What time?"

"Whenever you can get there," Leigh sighed. "She's making Yankee pot roast."

"Well, hot damn."

"You're a sick woman."

Maura saluted. Leigh shut the door and looked at her watch. She'd better eat a big lunch.

***

When the doorbell rang at three, Leigh was glad. Ever since lunch she had been climbing and crawling over every inch of the downstairs, knocking on walls and measuring the depth of cabinets while Cara took notes and made sketches. She was bored stiff. Since any visitor could be considered an improvement, she jumped to answer the door. It popped open before she could reach it, however, and a glowing Adith Rhodis pushed her round body inside.

"I've got a lead!" She bustled past Leigh and hurried to Cara. "Irma Sacco," she exclaimed, "on Howden. She may be the answer!"

Leigh had visions of a diabetic cat with a killer left hook. She dismissed them. "You're going to have to slow down a bit, Mrs. Rhodis," Cara said politely. "Won't you have a seat?"

"No time, my dear! I told Irma we'd be right over. You see, I've been thinking about all this hiding-place business, and it occurred to me that Paul might not have hidden his will in the house itself. He could have hidden it in the furniture."

Leigh looked at the older woman with new admiration. She might be nuts, but she had her moments.

"Anyway," Mrs. Rhodis continued, "everything he had went at auction. I got a few pieces—chairs, nothing special—and I know who bought a lot of the rest. And I started thinking: where would I hide my will? And then it hit me! My writing desk!"

Leigh and Cara exchanged glances.

"Irma Sacco has Paul Fischer's writing desk?" Cara asked.

"Yes, dear. For forty-five dollars. She got taken, but that's not the point. I called her this morning and asked if there was anywhere anyone could have hid something in it, and right away she says yes, there's a stuck drawer she's never been able to open!"

Leigh tried to contain her enthusiasm. A locked desk drawer seemed too easy.

Mrs. Rhodis apparently sensed the skepticism. "Well, come on, then—I've got Bud's toolbox. Let's go see!"

Chapter 13

Irma Sacco must have been waiting for them; her screen door opened the moment Adith's car turned down the street. By the time the women had parked and gotten out, Irma was already deep into a monologue.

"Now, you be careful coming up them steps, doll!" she directed to Cara. "They're slick!"

Why concrete steps should be slick on a dry summer day, Leigh wasn't sure, but she stayed close to her cousin anyway.

"I always wondered what was in there," Irma prattled, continuing the story they hadn't heard. "But I didn't figure it was too much to fuss about. Some buttons, maybe. Or coins. It ain't big enough to hold much else. It's got a key hole in it sure enough, but there never was no key with it, and I figured it just didn't matter, you know."

Irma Sacco was somewhere between sixty and ninety—a birdlike creature with a hook nose and long fingers. Leigh recognized her at once as the owner of a certain obese orange tabby which, though long dead, still made appearances in an occasional nightmare. "Peaches" hadn't wanted her blood sugar taken, and Leigh hadn't wanted a quarter-inch gash across her knuckles. Peaches had prevailed.

Moving quickly but with a slight stoop, Irma led her guests through an aisle in the floor of the cluttered living room. Curios, boxed and unboxed, were everywhere. The windows were hung with decorative string lights—pumpkins here, Holsteins there. Christmas ornaments abounded, but no tree was in sight; the most likely location held a foot-high pile of boxed panty hose. Irma shuffled through a narrow hall flanked with photographs of unattractive children, then turned into a bedroom that could have doubled for a sale bin at Goodwill. Dolls, macramé plant hangers, religious figurines, pin cushions, plastic trinkets, and a wide assortment of light fixtures covered every surface.

"Sorry about the mess," Irma apologized offhandedly, "I got a bunch in this week." She turned to the cousins with a saccharin smile. "You girls interested in any decorations? Less than half what you'll pay at Kmart."

"No, thank you," Leigh said quickly. "We really can't stay long." Her eyes rested on an area where the debris was roughly rectangular in shape. "Is that it?"

"Why, yes!" said Irma happily, beginning to pick away at the surface. "I don't really use it for writing, you know. I was going to paint it up, but I never did..."

"Here, Irma," Adith announced proudly when the unearthing was complete. "This is the drawer, right?"

The desk was a heavy contraption of dark wood, with drawers on either side of a narrow writing surface and cubby holes along the back. Most of the cubbies were open, but three small drawers were solid and bore tiny keyholes.

"These are open," Irma demonstrated, pulling out the top two drawers, which, amazingly, were empty. The fact must have disturbed her—before closing them she popped a marble in one and a nail file in the other. "The bottom one I've never been able to get to," she said with regret. "Didn't seem worth bothering about."

Cara stepped forward with the tools Adith had brought. "I can see someone's tried before," she said, peering at the stripped hole. "But I think I can get it."

Leigh was confident that Cara would. Lydie was the handyman of the family, and Cara was a good pupil.

"I think it's been broken and jammed," Cara explained. She fiddled with the drawer a few minutes, her belly resting awkwardly on the desk top. "Okay," she said finally. "I've got it."

Leigh held her breath and pushed forward to see. The drawer space was small, about an inch and a half wide, and barely an inch deep. It contained a thin gold wedding band, one grimy cufflink, and a folded piece of paper.

Adith and Irma both dove for the jewelry, but Adith was closer. She snatched up the pieces with a look of triumph, then held them close to her face and frowned. "Naw," she said derisively. "Cheap stuff. Probably Paul's mother's ring. And this," she said, tossing the cufflink back in the drawer, "had to be Norman's."

Irma grabbed up the cufflink and shook her head in agreement. "Garbage. Just garbage." She held her hand out for the ring. Adith handed it over reluctantly.

In the meantime, Cara had carefully pulled out and unfolded the yellowed slip of paper. Leigh looked over her shoulder. It was a small sheet, the size found in a pocket notebook or diary, and it was covered with faint handwriting in pencil.

"Oooooh Lordy," Adith exclaimed, reading over Cara's arm. "That's his writing; that's Paul's. He used those same short little phrases in the poem he wrote about Bud."

"What does it say?" clamored Irma, squinting.

Cara read the poem aloud.

Adith clucked her tongue. "Norman didn't commit suicide. See, I told you. Right there in black and white. Or pencil, anyway." She grinned. "And Paul knew who did kill him, too. My, my."

"Yes, that's the way it looks," Cara said, sounding distracted.

"The day when I see you crooked smile," Leigh quoted. "He means when he dies. He's going to reveal Norman's killer when he dies."

"We suspected that already," Cara said. "But look at this—he
looks
into the killer's eyes. Present tense." She flipped the paper over. It was not dated. "If Robbie killed Norman," she hypothesized, "he must not have stayed away. He must have come back at some point, when Paul wrote that poem."

"That's the implication," Leigh agreed.

Adith shook her head stubbornly. "Robbie wouldn't have come back. Paul could have turned him in, made terrible trouble for him. There was no love lost between those stepbrothers, I can tell you."

Irma cleared her throat and grinned through cigarette-stained teeth. "Well, I'm glad I could be of service to you girls. And since you seem to like my poem, I'm willing to make you a real good deal on it."

Adith scoffed. "Irma Sacco, you hussy! Nobody's paying you a dime. This is part of an official police investigation. If you don't let these girls turn this thing in, you could be charged with aiding and abetting!"

Irma bristled.

"I think it's withholding evidence," Cara correctly gently. "But Mrs. Sacco has been most helpful." She turned to Irma with a smile. "I'd like to thank you for helping us. Would you accept a Ballasta scissor basket as a gift?"

Irma's eyes gleamed. "With one of them little garter things?"

Cara nodded.

"I'd love it," Irma smiled. "You just take that little paper right on home with you. But before you go, can I interest either of you girls in a pair of panty hose? Only fifty cents a pair—can't beat it."

After declining several other bargains, including a close-out on cat clocks with swinging tails, the women managed to escape with their prize. Heartened by their success, Leigh was even beginning to look forward to dinner. Not only would she have the chance to ask Mary Polanski about 1949, she was going to impress the heck out of Maura.