Preserving Peaches

by Pamela Burford

  “The heater was going full blast in that attic,” she said. “Obviously either Peaches or her killer turned it on when they went up there.”

  “And the killer didn’t bother to turn it off when he, or she, left,” I said.

  “It was pretty cold right after Thanksgiving,” Cookie said. “I remember it snowed then.”

  “So that old, uninsulated attic would’ve been freezing,” Sophie said. “Still, why bother to heat the place if you’re not planning to hang out for a while? Did she go up there to meet someone?” I assumed she didn’t expect an answer. If so, her expectations were fulfilled.

  “Okay, I have to mention something,” I said.

  Howie gestured expansively. “Why hold back now?”

  “Now that I’m thinking about that rope... well, I mean, yellow nylon rope isn’t exactly uncommon, which is why I didn’t think anything of it at the time.”

  I now had both detectives’ full attention. “Where did you see rope like that?” Cookie asked.

  “In Zak Pryce’s house.”

  “You were in his house?” Howie scowled. “I thought you said you just bumped into him. What does Zak have to do with the knickknacks?”

  Quite a lot if he was to be believed. “It’s complicated. Can I just tell you about the rope?”

  Cookie gave her partner a quelling look, and said, “Go ahead, Jane.”

  “Well, Zak is renovating his house,” I said, “so he has a lot of tools and supplies and stuff lying around. Including yellow nylon rope.”

  “Same thickness as the rope Peaches was tied with?” Cookie asked.

  “Maybe. I mean, it’s hard to say, but it looked like the same kind.” I shrugged. “It’s pretty common, though, right? That kind of rope.”

  The detectives exchanged an unreadable look. “Yeah, pretty common,” Cookie said.

  “Zak Pryce is another one you’d do well to keep your distance from,” Howie said. “I never did believe his alibi.”

  “Wait.” I shook my head to clear it. “Since when is Zak a suspect?”

  He paused with his beer glass halfway to his mouth. “I figured you knew all about the guy.”

  “And how can he, or anyone, have an alibi for Peaches’s murder?” I asked. “We don’t know when she died.”

  “Not Peaches,” Sophie said. “Zak’s wife. Right, Detective?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Happened ten or twelve years ago, as I recall,” she continued. “Stacey Pryce drowned in her bathtub.”

  “I was the first responding officer,” Howie said. “Zak claimed he came home and found her that way. It was clear she’d been dead for some time.”

  “Where did he say he’d been?” I asked.

  “Right across the street,” Howie said, “with his good pals Peaches Gillespey and Carter Moretti. Said he spent several hours over there that day, drinking gin and tonics and watching tennis. It was early September. The U.S. Open was going on.”

  “Stacey didn’t join them?” I asked.

  “Tennis bored her to tears, according to him. She stayed home.”

  I was shaking my head. “It doesn’t make sense. I mean, Zak told me he never socialized with them. Said they didn’t run in the same circles. That’s the way he put it.”

  “That was my impression, too,” he said. “But Peaches and Carter both vouched for him, claimed he was there most of the day. They said Stacey waved to them from the doorway as Zak crossed the street to their house.”

  “Didn’t they eventually find sedatives in her system?” Sophie asked.

  “The tox screen showed Xanax and alcohol. She had a prescription for anxiety, and was known to sometimes mix it with vodka.”

  “According to the husband?” Cookie said.

  Howie gave a bleak nod. “According to the husband. He said he warned her repeatedly about the dangers, and she kept promising to stop. We spoke to all her friends and relatives, and no one else ever saw her mix pills and booze.”

  Martin said, “But isn’t that the kind of thing only a spouse might know about? I mean, who goes around advertising something like that?”

  “In any event,” Howie said, “it was finally declared an accidental death. That case has bugged me for eleven years.”

  It occurred to me that if Stacey’s death had been more recent, the toxicology lab might have found Zenaproche, the new sedative Evie was hawking, rather than Xanax in her system.

  Vigorous pounding on the door made us all jump. Martin got up and engaged in a short, shouted conversation with the tipsy couple on the other side of the glass. When “Closed!” failed to convince the pair, who could clearly see us sitting in our booth drinking beer, the padre said, “Private party!” and turned his back on the couple, who gave the door one last, frustrated thump before staggering away to locate a bar that would serve them.

  “I for one am really enjoying our private party.” Cookie raised her glass to the group.

  “Can’t remember when I’ve had such a good time,” Howie grumped.

  Martin sat back down next to me, giving my jeans-clad thigh an affectionate squeeze as he did so. I stopped breathing. Then I figured I’d better start breathing again because it would be awfully embarrassing to collapse in a dead faint and end up with scone crumbs plastered to my face.

  “Where were we?” Martin asked.

  We were squeezing my thigh. Do it again.

  “You know,” Sophie said, “if Sean had a motive in the form of inheritance, then so did Evie.”

  “And she’s no fan of her dead mom,” I said.

  “Yeah, that came through loud and clear when we interviewed her,” Cookie said. “But nothing else raised a red flag, and it’s not exactly unheard-of for a mother and daughter not to get along.”

  “You know,” I said, “Audrey Moretti hosted Thanksgiving. The whole family was there.”

  “I see where you’re going with this,” Martin said. “Anyone who was present that day could’ve made off with some of that rope.”

  “Including Evie,” Cookie said.

  “Do you know if she got in touch with Sten?” I asked Sophie, who used to be a paralegal in Sten Jakobsen’s law office and still seemed to know everything about his practice.

  She nodded. “He’s tracking down her grandfather’s will.”

  “Audrey’s late husband?” I asked.

  “No, Peaches’s dad,” she said, “the one who left her the house when he died four years ago.”

  “I didn’t realize there was an issue regarding his will,” I said. “Evie didn’t mention it when we spoke.”

  “She was told he left one,” Sophie said, “but she never saw it, and she can’t find it in her mom’s papers.”

  “Let me guess,” I said. “She thinks Peaches might not have been straight with her about what it said. Like who’s supposed to inherit what.”

  “Doesn’t seem like there was a lot of trust in that family,” she said. “Also, Sten’s helping her apply to the Surrogate’s Court to become the administrator of her mother’s estate. Of course, that’ll take time.”

  “Speaking of her mother’s estate,” I said, “where exactly did Peaches’s money come from?”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “Well, she enjoyed a pretty comfortable standard of living, despite having no regular source of income aside from her advice column. And for sure that couldn’t have paid much.”

  “Maybe she inherited it,” Martin said.

  I shook my head. “Her dad left her just the house. According to Evie, her mom did some modeling when she was young, and it earned her enough so she never had to work again.”

  “Huh,” Sophie said. “Never knew that.”

  “Probably because it’s not true,” I said.

  “Evie lied about the modeling?”

  “Well, it’s not all made up,” I said. “I researched the heck out of it, and all I could find was a few print ads for a local department store. No fashion shows, as Evie claimed.
No commercials or magazine covers or anything else that might’ve brought in the big bucks. And she was never signed by a major agency.”

  “So maybe Evie exaggerated,” Sophie said, “or maybe Peaches did. To make herself appear more glamorous.”

  Martin said, “But then, where did the money come from?”

  I looked at the detectives, who’d remained silent during this exchange. “I know you must’ve gone over her bank statements after her body was found.”

  This was too much even for Cookie. “Jane, you know we can’t share that kind of information.”

  “I’m not interested in how much money she had, just where it came from. Like, for instance, did she receive electronic transfers from an investment firm?” Which, if such transfers were regular and substantial, would indicate there was some truth to Evie’s story, after all. “Or maybe you found something more, I don’t know, intriguing?”

  Not that I expected them to budge, but I had to try, right? Oh, don’t tell me you wouldn’t have done the same thing.

  “Okay, forget about her bank statements,” I said. “What about her computer? Any stunning revelations there?”

  Something shifted behind Howie’s eyes. Cookie shot him a quick glance before lifting her beer glass, only to discover it empty.

  “What?” I said. “What surprises did you find in Peaches’s computer?”

  Sophie was studying them like a lioness studies a lame gazelle. “The surprise is that you didn’t find her computer. It’s missing, isn’t it?”

  “Dammit,” Howie said.

  My jaw unhinged. “Her computer is missing? That’s big news.”

  “What about her cell phone?” Sophie asked.

  “It must’ve been in her purse,” Cookie said, while pointedly ignoring her glowering partner. “We can’t locate that either.”

  I said, “So the killer made off with both her computer and purse.”

  “You’re assuming the same person has both,” Cookie said.

  Dang! There I was, making another assumption. I hate it when that happens.

  Howie knocked back the last of his beer and plunked his glass on the table. “Time to call it a night.”

  “I just have one more question,” I said.

  “No.” He started to rise.

  “Burke Fletcher.”

  Howie sat back down and pointed that finger at me again. “Do not go bothering any more private citizens, Jane.”

  For the record, the only private citizens I’d “bothered” both happened to be murder suspects. Well, one had kind of been considered a suspect years earlier, before the authorities decided his wife had gotten herself too doped up to stay alive in her own bathtub.

  “I have no intention of bothering Mr. Fletcher,” I said, although that might have been a lie, considering I was still dying to know how a “Peaches Preaches” column had tanked his marriage. “All I want to know is whether he’s on your radar.”

  “He’s on our radar,” Cookie said, “in the sense that we know who he is and have spoken with him.”

  I said, “Back when he was harassing Peaches, you mean? After she reported him in November?”

  “No, Fletcher lives in Rego Park,” she said, naming a section of Queens located about twenty-five miles west of Crystal Harbor. “A detective with the Hundred Twelfth talked to him back then.”

  “And before you ask,” Howie said, “it’s no state secret that we questioned him about Peaches’s murder. We questioned a lot of people about Peaches’s murder.”

  Howie was a swell guy and he liked me, but clearly he’d run out of patience. I resigned myself to the fact that I could expect no more information from the detectives.

  As it happened, I was wrong.

  I helped Martin clear and wipe down the table. He’d moved into the apartment over the pub eight months earlier, yet had never invited me up for the proverbial nightcap. I sensed that invitation was imminent, but it wouldn’t happen that night. The padre was too much a gentleman to get frisky in front of the others.

  But, Jane, you say, didn’t he get frisky during your birthday party when he implied that the two of you were headed upstairs for some hanky-panky? True, but I’m pretty sure everyone knew he was just having fun tweaking me. When and if he finally got around to asking me up to his place, it would have nothing to do with fun.

  That didn’t come out right. Certainly it wouldn’t not be fun. Oh, you know what I mean.

  Once we were out on the sidewalk in the chilly night air, Martin locked up the pub, bade everyone good night, and unlocked an adjacent door in the building. I watched through the glass panel as he took the stairs two at a time.

  Sophie was parked in front of the place, so she was soon on her way. As the detectives and I strolled the half block to where our cars were parked, Howie asked me, “You like dogs, right, Jane? You know anything about a breed called a cheer, cheer something?”

  “Something about Mount Etna,” Cookie said.

  “Cirneco dell’Etna?” I said, correctly pronouncing the first word cheer-NEH-koh.

  He snapped his fingers. “That’s it. This guy Fletcher, he has three Cirnecos.”

  “Actually,” I said, “the plural is Cirnechi. It’s a pretty rare breed.”

  “I guess so,” he said. “I never heard of it before.”

  “He showed off their glamour shots,” Cookie said. “Nice-looking little dogs.”

  “Get this,” Howie chuckled, as he beeped his car. “The guy’s on a dating site for dog lovers. You ever heard of such a thing?”

  Why, yes, I thought, with a sly smile. Yes, I have.

  8

  Daddy Issues

  “AUDREY, PLEASE DON’T go to any trouble.” I sat in her cramped living room, made all the more cramped by a motley assortment of tchotchkes cluttering every horizontal surface. And yes, of course I checked. No peaches. I occupied half of a love seat whose floral chintz upholstery had seen better days.

  My hostess was still on her feet. “Since when is it trouble to take some cookies out of a box?” she said. “I have to apologize, dear. I haven’t had time lately to do any baking, but the good news is, I still have one box of Girl Scout cookies left.”

  She’d had time to throw something in the oven, though. I tried to identify the mouthwatering aroma that wafted from the kitchen. Baked ziti? Chicken parm?

  Audrey had already pressed a cup of coffee into my hands, and I didn’t want her scurrying back into the kitchen to arrange Thin Mints on a doily, or to fuss with whatever was in the oven. I wanted her right there where I could have a few words with her before her son appeared. Carter was upstairs in his room, making himself presentable. It was about two in the afternoon. I couldn’t help wondering whether he routinely spent the day in his pajamas until and unless a visitor showed up.

  I patted the seat next to me. “Please sit down. You deserve a rest.” When I’d arrived, she’d been moving heavy furniture to vacuum under it.

  “Oh, I’m not tired, dear,” she said, but she obediently sat, smoothing the wrinkles out of her lime-green slacks. “I always say, the key to a long life is keeping active. My mother was a dynamo, let me tell you. She lived to a hundred, and that’s my goal.”

  “Something tells me you’ll make it. You have a lovely home, by the way,” I said, to be polite. Audrey’s house was on Tulip Lane, the flower-named streets being the least desirable section of Crystal Harbor.

  “Why, thank you. Aren’t you sweet. It’s not fancy like a lot of homes in this town, but I’ve been here since I was a young bride of twenty-two, and I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. This place holds too many special memories for me to even consider moving.”

  Then keep your fingers crossed, Grandma, I wanted to say, and pray to the patron saint of slacker druggies, ’cause somewhere out there is a bail bondsman with a lien on your little dream house.

  If I were Sean’s grandmother, I’d keep him chained up in the basement until his court date.

  “Oh, but
you should have seen the way those police officers left it.” She tsked.

  “You mean after they served the search warrant?” I asked.

  “I understand they have a job to do, but do they have to be so harum-scarum about it?”

  If they weren’t so harum-scarum, they’d risk missing important evidence, such as the yellow nylon rope they’d found in her utility room. I did not point this out.

  Several framed family photographs were clustered on the coffee table. A Sears studio portrait of Audrey’s grandchildren as adorable toddlers, before Evie developed Stick Up Butt Syndrome, and Sean learned how to sneak into homes that were not his own and help himself to their contents. There were a couple of candid snapshots of the two during their teen years: Evie at the podium during a high school debate tournament; Sean gleefully squirting charcoal lighter on an already flaming grill.

  I squinted at a picture of a young couple, before picking it up for a closer look. “Is this Carter and Peaches?”

  “Oh yes,” Audrey said. “That was taken shortly after they started dating. She was his first serious girlfriend, you know.”

  In the picture, Carter wore a football uniform, the helmet tucked under his arm. He was a good-looking kid, with green eyes and appealingly shaggy light brown hair. Peaches was nearly as tall as he was, slim and pretty in a fuzzy pink jacket and snug jeans. A gentle breeze lifted her gleaming dark hair. They were grinning, arms around each other’s waists, by all appearances in the full blossom of young love.

  “How old are they here?” I asked.

  “Twenty, both of them. He played football for Fordham.” Her proud smile faded. “Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to keep his grades up, and, well, there went the football scholarship. He never graduated.”

  I wanted to ask if his relationship with Peaches had anything to do with his plummeting grades, but I suspected I already knew the answer.

  “Her hair was so pretty back then,” I said. “Did she have a problem with it later in life?”

  “Why, no,” she said. “Of course, she started getting it touched up a few years back. Dark hair shows gray so readily, but hers always looked perfect. I guess she was a little vain that way.”