The Wolfe Widow (A Book Collector Mystery) (9 page)

“Oh thanks.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yes, Kev.”

He prattled on. “Well, if she’d tried to kill you and she was seen and then the police could tie her to the vehicle that hit you, she’d be arrested and we’d be rid of her.”

“I can’t believe I’m agreeing with you. Did she talk to anyone—?”

The door was flung open at that minute and Uncle Mick made sure that Kev was out of the room.

“For the last time, Jordan needs to rest. You know what they said at the hospital, Kev. Out. Now.”

I wanted to protest that Kev’s presence was less of a disaster than usual as we were in the middle of an important conversation, but instead I slipped off to dreamland instantly.

*   *   *

WHEN I AWOKE,
I stared around at my room. I lay there trying to think clearly, although my thinker was kind of messed up. Still, I could feel a glimmer of intelligence trying to assert itself.

I was clinging to a thought that had finally bubbled up from my subconscious. I fumbled for a scrap of paper and a googly-eyed troll-haired pencil and scribbled it down. I was afraid that it might vanish forever otherwise. I knew it was important. My subconscious had made a breakthrough. I wasn’t the first person linked to Muriel to suffer a hit-and-run collision. So I wasn’t going to call it an accident or being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The timing told me it was deliberate and I was the target. Muriel had to be behind it. Her stepfather had died that way. I called that a pattern. Muriel’s alibi was a smokescreen. She had confederates and I knew it.

I managed to scrawl something down before sleep descended.
This is getting boring
, I thought before dropping off yet again.

When I woke up, I was still clutching the paper. It said
STEPFATH
before the letters trailed away. Not too helpful. But on the upside, my head felt much clearer. Too bad the note wasn’t that meaningful.

I knew that I had to find out what was going on, and there was probably no way to do that without talking to Audra and the Snows. A small voice in my head asked if perhaps they were the same people who had been responsible for alerting the person who hit me. After all, I didn’t really know anything about any of the people on Maple Street. They seemed nice, but appearances can be deceiving. Certainly Clarissa Montaine was proof of that. I pondered that and thought back. The Snows had been with me all during my visit and they hadn’t known I was coming. So I didn’t see how they could have made the contact. Audra was a possibility, I supposed. But she had saved my life. That didn’t match up. If she had contacted someone to let them know that I was asking about the Delgados, why wouldn’t she have stayed in the house and pretended to know nothing? Why would she have come to my aid? She’d called 911 and stayed with me until help arrived. Then she’d picked up my phone to reach someone who knew me.

No. It was a pretty sure bet that Audra wasn’t involved. She had asked her husband about who had owned the house after my first visit and before I was hit, so he was a possible link. Or he may have mentioned it to someone else who picked up on it. But that was getting a bit unlikely. Logic told me that the source was probably the couple back on Lilac Lane. That angry older woman who’d been on the phone when I was leaving had been hostile right from the beginning, unlike her mate, if that was who he was. What was that about?

She’d really had no good reason to take such an instant dislike to me. But they knew Muriel. Perhaps they were still in touch. Could she have called Muriel to tell her that someone was asking questions about the Delgados? If so, Muriel could have found someone to follow me. Of course, I hadn’t stayed on Lilac Lane long enough after her call for anyone to arrive to shadow me. Unless the person was already there? But that didn’t make sense either. What were the chances that I would have taken that approach, based on a few old city directories in the library? Who even knew that I’d done that? Somehow it didn’t seem right.

So what was possible?

I drew a mental map. I had gone from Maple Street to Lilac Lane to Willows Road and then back to Maple Street. After my alarming visit to Lilac Lane there was plenty of time for someone to tail me to Uncle Rick’s and then to Maple Street. And who knew if anyone had seen me on Willows Road, where they don’t answer their doors.

Muriel had intended to get me out of Vera’s life. That much was obvious, starting with my sudden firing. Now there were the instructions to Kev and the signora to have no contact with me. For some reason, Vera was doing her bidding. Why? The thought that anyone could intimidate Vera was, well, intimidating. Muriel was one scary lady.

I figured it might take a while for me to figure out what Muriel would get out of it. But there was also a “how,” as in how could I prove that the hit-and-run was not a random event? Could I convince the police that the driver had targeted me? To the average cop, I would sound like a nutcase. Maybe I was wrong, but the odds were I was right. In fact, it didn’t seem that the cops were taking this at all seriously. I would have expected to give a statement. The cops should have asked many questions to establish links between me and whoever had hit me. Or maybe they had and I just couldn’t remember.

My memories of the collision were non existent and my time in Emerg still flashed in my brain like a fragmented nightmare. My impact points throbbed.

Back to my problem: It made sense that there was something to uncover, something about Muriel and her family. Something that she didn’t want uncovered. And that something had to do with Vera.

Questions kept rocketing around in my poor sore brain.

Whatever the connection was, it must be serious business. We all have small scandals, things we regret in our lives. But face it, in our era, there’s not much that people would kill to conceal. Politicians brazen out sex scandals. Wall Street cheats never see the inside of a jail. Predatory mortgage-debt packagers ruin lives and walk free. Whatever Muriel had to hide would have to be hugely damaging to merit a murder. Muriel had been a child when she lived on Lilac Lane and Willows Road and a young woman when she left Maple Street after her mother’s death. What could she need to hide? How bad could it be? I remembered my note about
STEPFATH
and pictured a young Muriel scowling as she pumped herself higher on the swings.

My subconscious had been telling me something. Was it to do with her stepfather’s death? That had been another hit-and-run. Coincidence? Hit-and-run deaths happen, but both of these had a close link to Muriel. But what would she have to gain from killing me? If she hadn’t gotten me fired in the first place, I never would have been snooping into her past. I couldn’t believe it was my bad luck to get hit by a truck the day after I got fired.

Back to Muriel. She gave me a sour taste in my mouth. I knew little about her beyond the fact that her mother and stepfather were dead. But I was convinced she was behind my dismissal and the fact that her mother and stepfather were dead. The Snows had been evasive when talking about her mother, although at times Mindy Snow’s face gave a clue that she tasted something sour too.

I needed to get back to Maple Street to talk to them. That was where I would find the answers I needed. Of course, that would involve explaining why I had lied to Audra and to the Snows and worn a disguise. Mind you, after I’d been almost killed right under their noses, I could easily claim that fear of an attack had been my motivation. Just a scared, vulnerable woman in disguise asking too many questions. Most people would believe that. Even though it wasn’t true, it could have been. And I had left the Pucci scarf at the Snows’, so that gave me a reason to visit them again. I was prepared to apologize to everyone.

I decided to get dressed and get going, deciding not to let a minor setback keep me down. I stood up, ready to go. Yikes. Pain city. My knees buckled and I collapsed on the bed. Maybe I wasn’t one hundred percent yet. “Quite the bump on the head,” the doctor had kept saying, or maybe he hadn’t been repeating himself. Everything continued spinning as he gave me his little pep talk. No sleeping for longer than three hours. No drinking, no driving, and I guess no juggling chainsaws either. The deep bruises were going to hurt for a while. Keep massaging them to prevent blood clots. Lovely. He had basically sentenced me to house arrest, but that didn’t mean I had to tell my uncles that.

Fine. It was hard to stay put, but I didn’t want to make any of my injuries worse. The sooner I was better, the sooner I could really get digging at this Muriel problem. For sure, it would be a few days before I’d be functioning normally. But maybe I had people who could take care of some of the research for me. Turned out the usual suspects were not available. I had already texted Lance and Tiff after my accident and had no response.

Nada.

None.

Not so much as a <3.

Somehow that complete silence hurt worse than being hit by a truck. What was going on? Maybe the impact of the truck had dislodged the memory of an argument? I tried to think. But thinking hurt and now it was accompanied by a ringing in my ears. I told myself,
All right. Buck up, lady.
I’ve had a lot of bad stuff happen to me in my life and I’ve learned not to expect life to be fair or easy. Like so many other times, I chose not to waste energy on useless emotions. That was what my uncles had taught me. And according to Uncle Danny, that’s a philosophy that’s worked for the Kellys ever since our Viking ancestor Olaf first arrived on the banks of the Liffey around about the ninth century. My uncles claim they get their ginger hair and matching wild eyebrows from him and also their ability to cope when times get tough or someone’s in the slammer for a while. The Olaf factor usually worked for me, if only because Uncle Danny’s family history “facts” always made me smile. And speaking of smiling, I did try Smiley wherever he was. No answer. I left a message. I did my best not to snivel. I knew he wasn’t in charge of his schedule and he had no way of knowing what had happened to me.

“Hey, your dog misses you and, oh by the way, I’ve been hit by a truck. No worries, I am still in one piece, but I thought you should know.” My voice cracked. Way to buck up. “It’s that woman Muriel Delgado. Anyway, hope your week is going better. I’m at Uncle Mick’s in case you feel like saving me from an overdose of relatives.”

At least he had an excuse for being unavailable, unlike my so-called best friends, wherever they were and whatever they were up to. At that point, the painkillers were making me groggy and once again I dozed off. My injured state was nothing if not boring, I said to myself as sleep descended like an anvil in a Wile E. Coyote cartoon.

M
Y
EYELIDS
FLUTTERED
open to see Vera’s library. It was more cheerful than usual because every surface had a potted orchid perched on top. Deep fuchsias and blues danced among white and yellow blossoms, making the library seem alive and even more of a paradise. One of the yellow blossoms in the corner grumbled at me. I tried to focus on it. It got bigger and shinier. It sprouted two large wheels out of the side of its pot.

“Crunch, crunch, crunch, Miss Bingham,” it said, dryly.

Now I could see that it was in a wheelchair being pushed toward me by a dark swirling shape. The yellow orchid glowed and grew in front of me, until it turned into a pair of yellow satin pajama bottoms, with Vera and a shabby greige sweater sticking out of them.

“I clearly said, ‘crunch, crunch, crunch, Miss Bingham.’” The words matched Vera’s gravelly voice. I tried to make out the face of the black specter that was now propelling Vera away into the corridor. A low dark laugh floated through the open door.

“You’re not welcome here anymore, Miss Bingham.”

As the two left the room, all the orchids started to wilt, flowers drifting, colors draining away. Spaces began to appear on the shelves, until all the books were gone and I was standing in a room of dead flowers and dust.

I lay there shaking and had just gotten my postdream breathing under control when a large figure loomed at the end of the bed. I gasped and grabbed the Care Bear lamp to defend myself. The figure put its fingers to its lips.

Kev.

Behind him, the door to the closet stood open. The secret passages through my childhood home had been repaired. They were working fine if you knew how to use them. I did and so did Uncle Kev. This was one way to get into my room without passing Uncle Mick downstairs.

I was glad to see Kev again. He would keep my mind off my nightmare, for one thing, and I figured he could do me a favor. But first, I needed to know how he was getting away so often without attracting Vera’s notice, or worse, the Malevolent Muriel’s evil eye.

“It’s okay,” he said. “We’re making a big deal about going out to get food that Muriel will eat since she doesn’t eat Italian. And I need to get parts for some of the equipment that seems to have broken down.” He grinned. Kev can be resourceful as well as totally frustrating.

“I don’t want you to lose your job or get into any trouble because of me.”

“Jordie. It’s me. Kev. I’m in trouble no matter what I do or what you do. Just chill.”

He was right, of course.

I laughed. Have I mentioned it only hurt when I laughed? In fact, it hurt plenty, but it hurt even more when I laughed. Worth it, though.

“Fine. Be careful.”

As usual, he paid no attention. “And the other thing is, she’s got me doing things you used to do.”

I sat up. “Ouch.” I yelped, and lay back on the bed, closing my eyes. “What kind of things?”

“Shhh!” Kev said. “You know. Book things.”

“Saints in heaven save us!” I found myself channeling Grandmother Kelly. “Book things?”

“Yes.”

It was the end of the world as I knew it. But it was about to get worse.

“I’m arranging to sell some of them. We’re putting them on the Internet.”

I didn’t care how much my body screamed. I sat up again. “Sell some? Of Vera’s books?”

“Don’t yell. Mick will hear you!”

“But I don’t understand. Are you actually saying that Vera has you selling some of her books?”

Uncle Kev was now wearing that hurt puppy face that he does so well. “Yes. Like you used to do.”

I felt my eyelid twitch. “That’s not exactly what I used to do, Kev. I used to acquire books for her and sell off the previous ones at a profit to fund her acquisitions. It was all carefully managed so she could gradually improve her collection without spending a fortune. How are you going about that?”

“You know. Craigslist. Notice boards. That kind of thing.”

I swallowed. “What have you sold? Not the Nero Wolfe books?”

I had worked hard to arrange for sales of some titles in order to upgrade to more desirable copies.
Craigslist?
We dealt with private collectors as well as dealers and I had been busy building a solid contact list. Selling directly to the collectors meant we, that is to say, Vera, kept a bigger chunk of change. We could apply that to the next purchase, which invariably involved more money. I couldn’t believe that Vera was selling any part of her collection. Maybe the painkilling drugs were causing me to hallucinate.

“The what?” Kev said.

“The Nero Wolfe books. You know she loves them. They are Vera’s current obsession.” Mine too, but that was a different story.

“I never saw those.”

“Rex Stout,” I said.

“Oh right. I’ve seen lots of them. No, these were some really old books. I mean, really old. You could get them as e-books now and be way better off.”

I stared at him. I could not understand how Vera—for all that she thought the world of Kev—could trust him with any part of her collection. She didn’t even let him vacuum the library, after that regrettable incident with the air freshener. So what was going on here?

“Let’s see if I understand this. Vera asked you to sell some of her ‘old’ books?”

“Well, not Vera directly.”

“Explain what ‘not Vera directly’ means, please.” Despite my condition, the shock of what Kev was saying had sharpened my thinking.

Kev said, “Huh?”

“What do you mean by ‘not Vera directly’?”

“Well, Muriel, of course.”

Of course? “So Muriel asked you to—?”

“Told me. Muriel doesn’t ask. She tells you. You can’t even ask a simple question. She’s like a fire-breathing dragon in a woman’s body.”

“I get that. And so she
told
you to sell some of Vera’s books.”

“That’s what I’m trying to explain, Jordan. You’re being kind of slow to understand.”

“Indeed I am. So then what does Vera say about this?”

“About what?”

I massaged my temple. It had begun to throb. “About Muriel telling you to sell some of the books. What does Vera say about that?”

“Nothing. Or I didn’t hear anything.”

“She sat there in silence?”

“Well, no. What could she say? She wasn’t even there.”

“All right, then. So Muriel gave you these instructions behind Vera’s back and you followed them. Do I have that right now?”

“Not exactly behind her back. Vera told me to do whatever Muriel said around the house.”

“Aha. Did she mention books?”

“Not as such.”

“Not as
such
. Right.”

Kev gazed at me, puzzled.

I said, “Is it possible that Vera has no idea that you are selling some of her collection?”

He blinked. “But I think Muriel must have gotten the idea from her and then—oh.”

“
Oh
is right.”

“But why would Muriel do that?”

“The first thing that comes to mind is to milk money out of the household. Those books are worth a fortune. And she can get away with it because the person who would have noticed is no longer there.”

Kev goggled. “Who?”

I lay back on the pillow once again, closed my eyes and took a deep breath. “Me, Uncle Kev. I’m the one who knows about the books and how to make money reselling and how to get the best bang for the buck when buying. I’m the one who Vera trusted to do the right thing.”

I lay there thinking there might be another reason: Muriel would do that just to hurt Vera. I shuddered.

Kev gasped. “I try to do the right thing.” That hurt puppy was back.

“I know you do. But this is a specialized business. The same way the garden requires specialized knowledge. You wouldn’t let me blunder in there with some weed killer, would you?”

Uncle Kev, no stranger to catastrophe, turned white. “You wouldn’t do that!”

“Right, I wouldn’t. I’m just making a point with a comparison.”

“I think I get your point.”

Maybe he did. Maybe he didn’t. But anyway, I soldiered on. “Here’s my idea. Anytime Muriel wants you to do something with the books, you say yes, of course. Tug your forelock if you must.”

“Jordan!” Kev exclaimed, as though I’d said something dirty.

“Figure of speech. It means be extremely deferent or obsequious.”

“What?”

“Defer to her. Be humble and obliging. And then, you bring that task to me. I’ll see to it and you can pretend you did it.”

“Nothing could go wrong with that, right?”

Plenty could go wrong, but not nearly as wrong as having Kev decimate Vera’s collection. That would be the end of Vera as well as the collection. With his track record it might not take long. Whatever Muriel was up to, she probably had no inkling of Uncle Kev’s more catastrophic abilities. I might have been really upset about my firing and at some level angry at Vera, but I didn’t want her to suffer. Muriel was there to cause trouble of one sort or another. No question. But why would Muriel want Vera to experience heartbreak over her books? Was that what she was up to? At first, I’d thought she wanted to come in and take over the good life at Van Alst House; now I had to wonder.

I closed my eyes and thought about the kind of motives that Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin were uncovering in the books I was reading. Revenge was one solid motive. Money, of course, was another. I couldn’t see that sex would figure into this particular scenario.

Uncle Kev interrupted my musing. “Could it, Jordan?”

“Nah. Nothing could go wrong. It will be all right, Kev. Just keep me informed.”

“I’ll pretend that I’m going to the post office or whatever. I’ll let you know.”

“Excellent idea.”

“And you’ll call me from your burner if you need me so that no one at Van Alst House sees you’ve been in touch with me.”

“For sure.”

“I’ll come by again too, Jordie. Keep you posted.”

“Great. Thanks. I appreciate it. I’ll have to do a bit of work myself. I’m pretty sure I won’t get much from the police, although it’s worth a try. I’ll go see the Snows again and fess up about my disguise and all that, and I’ll talk to Audra. I wonder if any of them could describe the truck and driver.”

Kev paled. “You’d better not go anywhere until you’re over this. Mick will hold me responsible. You stay here. I’ll bring food. The signora’s going to slip me some more to take to you. She’s worried about what you’ll get here, I think. Vera never pays any attention to anything in the kitchen, but this Muriel has a long nose and she sticks it into everything to do with the house, housekeeping, maintenance, whatever. So when the Delgado’s asleep, if she ever sleeps, the signora’s going to whip up some of her special meals that will help you get over your accident. She’s fussing about what you’ll eat for Thanksgiving especially. And she hates Muriel with a white-hot passion.”

I didn’t bother to respond, as I could hardly raise my head. I tried to smile at the thought of the signora’s white-hot hatred of Muriel and the memory of disastrous Kelly Thanksgiving meals in the past, many involving giblets. Maybe we could all go out. Maybe we could get dinner delivered. Maybe the signora would send enough for all the Kellys, even though they’d prefer fried baloney. But I was too tired to talk. What was wrong with me? I couldn’t imagine Archie Goodwin being in a fix like this. Knocked out and down for the count. No. Archie would bounce right back, suave as ever, and wisecrack his way out of the scene. His clothing would be immaculate too. Of course, Nero Wolfe had his back as a rule, even when Archie was slipped the knockout drops that time. Vera was my Nero Wolfe, although she not only
didn’t
have my back, she was the reason I was in this situation in the first place. Cast out and cut off.

And Wolfe would never let Archie eat Alphagetti or Kraft Macaroni and Cheese or beans and franks. Vera had abandoned me. No yellow silk pajamas for you, madam.

I wasn’t even sure why I wanted to bail her out of the trap she’d found herself in. If I could keep awake long enough to think my way through this huge problem, then . . .

Later, Kev told me I was snoring when he took the hint and left, and here I’d been thinking Kev wouldn’t know how to take a hint if you wrapped it up in a big red bow for him.

*   *   *

IT WAS MORNING
when I opened my eyes again. I was still in my childhood room and not back in my attic at Van Alst House. I had not dreamed all the things that had happened since the doorbell first rang to admit Muriel Delgado and disaster. That was the bad news. The good news was that my head felt a lot clearer. My aches and bruises would be fine with a bit of Tylenol. I got out of bed and headed for the shower.

A wobbly half hour later, I looked a lot better and felt like I could face the world.

A sleepy Uncle Mick pounded on my bedroom door.

“You got company, Jordan. At nine o’clock in the morning. Who visits this early? Are you up for it?”

“I’m back on the horse, Uncle Mick.”

“Not too soon,” he said. “You took quite a slam, my girl.”

“Who’s here? Tiff?”

A pause. “No.”

“Lance?”

His forehead furrowed. “Not Lance.”