“You think she killed my father?”
“What are you two whispering about?” Grams asked. “Why all the cloak, dagger, and bank parking?”
“We may have a visitor. I didn’t want to discourage her with the sight of our cars.”
Grams smacked her palms together. “Her? It’s Irma! I knew it.”
“Irma told me she and that Cosmos fellow were going to make one more try at sending Nelson’s celestial being to the planet Karma,” I said.
All of Grams’ nonagenarian energy was back. She was ready to rock ‘n roll. In her tan leggings, brown feather-printed dress, and brown orthopedic shoes she looked like a little wren but I’d learned not to underestimate the lady. More hawk than wren, she turned on her heels, fists at her sides and marched between the parked cars.
“Wait up!” I took off after her. WonderDog and Pam scrambled to catch up with us.
We converged at the elevator. I said, “If Irma shows up I need some private time with her. We have no real evidence. If she feels we’re ganging up on her she’ll clam up.”
“You’re the shrink,” Grams said, patting me on the back.
We rode up to the sixth floor. The yellow tape was now double-taped to the door. Kal was going to go ballistic no matter how this turned out.
Grams fought her way through the yellow tape lacking only a machete to clear a perfect path. I locked the door behind us.
Someone had been in, dusted, and picked up the broken pieces of the crystal vase.
If we were going to spy on Irma we needed to hide. The furthest room from the foyer was the master bedroom. I herded Grams’ gang in and pulled the door halfway closed.
Chapter 33
Grams flipflopped about Irma. “Looks like a bedroom, feels like a prison. I’m not too sure I should have agreed to this. Let’s wait for her out there and grab her when she comes in.”
“Please,” I said, “let’s get back on track. Did you notice the key around Irma’s neck?”
She rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Can’t say that I did. What’s it look like?”
“Small. Old. Antique. She wears a couple of charms on the same chain. She described it as the key to her journey to the planet Karma. Any idea what that key might open? Did Nelson have any hidden panels in the apartment?”
“Not that I know of but my son was a need-to-know person. He could have an elephant hidden behind the walls. It would be pretty smelly by now.”
“It would have to be more valuable than an elephant to entice Irma,” Lizzy said.
Pam pushed up the sleeves of her Nurses Rule! sweatshirt. “Should we start hunting?”
I shook my head. “We have to be careful not to scare her off. If she comes to the door and hears us she’ll run. I’m guessing she’ll try for an early start and then head back to wherever. Let’s be patient.”
The clock on the nightstand read eight-twenty. We settled in, Grams lying on Nelson’s bed with Pam sitting at the foot. Lizzy took an armchair while WonderDog sat at her feet. I paced.
The deactivated intrusion alarm binged and then binged again indicating the front door opened and closed. I put my finger to my lips as the Dingler ladies and WonderDog perked up.
I tiptoed to the bed and whispered, “Let her snoop. Maybe she’ll find whatever that key fits.” I looked around the bedroom—there was no place for us to hide if Irma opened the door. With a double hand flip I shooed the gang into the master bathroom.
WonderDog gave me a quizzical look. What new game were we playing? Ever so silently we stuffed our party of four plus a hound into the huge master bathroom. Huddled together trying not to breathe, I felt like a kid playing hide-and-seek.
The sounds coming through indicated Irma had help—probably Cosmos.
The searching continued with banging on the walls and drawers slamming shut. The sounds got louder as they started on the master bedroom.
Steam came out of Grams’ ears. Her late son’s home was being violated and she was having none of it. She uttered a low growl.
WonderDog glanced up at her and then at me—his expression conveying if she can why can’t I?
Before I could rein her in, Grams reached the bathroom door at the exact moment Cosmos pushed it open. It was with a combination of her momentum and anger that she reached up and yanked at the cultist’s long blond hair.
Cosmos yelped from surprise and pain as WonderDog, protecting Grams, bit him somewhere in the middle of his caftan. He kicked out sending WonderDog reeling backwards as his blond hair came off in Grams’ hand revealing a shaved noggin.
Ivy had described the soap buyer as a young guy with a shaved head. The soap on the rope was yet another question to be answered during my upcoming confrontational analysis session.
Irma didn’t know it yet but I was about to dig into her delusions, glue together her disjointed justifications, and find out if she killed Nelson.
I’d come to like Irma despite my instincts. I needed to understand how she got around me—I was supposed to be good at reading people. Where did my mojo go? I don’t like being conned and she’d either tricked me or hypnotized me. I wasn’t turning her over to Kal until I understood how I’d been fooled.
Outraged, Cosmos grabbed his wig from Grams. “Hair like this doesn’t grow on trees!” He rubbed the spot where WonderDog had given him a souvenir.
“You’re the dude who bought all our soap, aren’t you?” I punched my finger into his chest.
“The Irma said to buy enough soap to coat a rope. How much soap does it take to coat a rope?” He shrugged. “Do you know? I don’t. There’s no shame in buying a couple of cases of soap. Not like I stole it. I paid cash. What’s your problem lady?”
Irma stood behind his shoulder, looking surprisingly tranquil considering the situation. “We came back for my purse. I left it here.”
“The front door was locked. Breaking and entering,” Lizzy said as she, Pam, and Grams stepped toward Cosmos and Irma.
I pushed my way out of the bathroom and looped my arm under Irma’s. This first round was all about winning her trust.
Cosmos bolted to the front door. “See you back at the commune!” He waved as he made his exit.
Pam and Lizzy were out the door after him in a flash.
“Let’s sit in the living room.” I said to Irma. “It’s more comfortable there.”
I escorted the cultist to the sofa and sat across from her. The muscles in my legs cramped as I held myself ready to nab her if she tried to escape.
Within minutes, the Dingler sisters returned without Cosmos. They looked flummoxed. “He’s gone!” Pam said.
“He’s not in the elevator or on the stairs,” Lizzy appeared bewildered.
“Maybe he slipped into one of the doctors’ offices downstairs?” I said. “He should be easy to find in a gynecologist’s office.”
“Maybe he’s just a hologram.” Irma said.
“We’ll check out the offices. If he’s there we’ll grab him.” Pam pushed up her errant sleeves.
Grams gave me a look laced with caution. “Take care, Olive.” She picked up a brass candlestick from the sideboard, bouncing it in her hand as if to feel the weight of it.
“I’ll stand outside this door,” Grams said, still gripping the candlestick. “It doesn’t take three of us to search for a guy wearing a caftan in a gynecologist office.”
The Dinglers strode out of the apartment leaving me alone with The Irma.
Chapter 34
Professional pride demanded I get to the bottom of how Irma duped me. But I couldn’t let that sidetrack me from learning about Nelson’s death.
In truth, I didn’t have enough evidence to connect her to the killing. Soap and an apartment key? Weaker than a third cup on a single teabag. This was going to take every rabbit I could pull out of my psychologist’s hat.
“Your blue caftan conveys such peace. I can understand why you wear it. It makes you look like an angel. I see the little key on your necklace is differe
nt from the other charms. You said it unlocks your opportunity to journey to the planet Karma. That key almost brings something back to me from my childhood. It’s calling to me. May I feel it?” I extended my hand expecting her to resist.
With a beatific smile, she said, “Of course.” Irma unhooked the key from the chain and without hesitation handed it to me. Her cooperativeness made me uneasy. Was I the mouse and she the cat, allowing my silly requests until time to pounce?
I held the key in my hand avoiding a direct look into her eyes—not that I believed she had the power to use some sort of hypnosis. “It feels very warm. How will it enable you to travel to the seven planets—to Karma?”
“That is not clear to me yet. I just know it will.”
“Where did it come from?”
Irma smiled. “The oddest thing. As I readied Nelson’s Remington painting for the buyer, my hand was pulled to the corner of the frame. I lifted the protective backing and found the key taped to the canvas. Power emanated from it but with a sense that I could convert that power to achieve the journey to the seven planets and Karma.”
I wasn’t about to debate the pros and cons of being beamed up to a planet that may not even have the basic necessities like dental floss and dark chocolate. “Do you think Nelson knew about the key?”
“I’m certain the monster put it there. It wasn’t the painting he valued but this key. It’s the key to a fortune and power here on earth and to me the power to complete my mission of getting my people to Karma.”
“What fortune?” I tried not to look in her eyes—but felt my guard slipping.
“That’s what I’m here to find out. I’m entitled to whatever it is.” Irma leaned forward. “The fortune will support us here until the power sends us on our ultimate journey.”
Not asking for the return of the key told me she felt she held the upper hand, that she could take it whenever she wanted. Had she forgotten about Grams with the candlestick?
“Tell me about your marriage to Nelson.”
“First, what do you see in my eyes?” She said in a whispery voice.
I took a chance. My willpower had to be stronger than hers—for one thing I could never be tempted to wear a sky-blue caftan. Her eyes turned the color of clouds—soft and harmless. I said, “I see you’re about to tell me the truth.”
“You can be trusted, Olive. I knew it from our first meeting.” She closed her eyes and shuddered as if drawing on memories. When she opened them, her cloud-like eyes had turned to dark storms.
“Nelson was a monster. The two years we were married were hell on earth. I was a virtual prisoner of his moods. Sometimes I feared for my life.”
“How long after you were married did he turn ugly?”
“The day after the ceremony he went into one of his dark states—it was as if he needed to unburden himself. He told me about his career in magic and how he was hated at the Magician’s Hat because all those second-rate magicians were jealous of his abilities. In the midst of his tirade he revealed he was the Masked Dangler.”
That floored me. He must have been having a breakdown. “He told you that deep dark secret?”
“He bragged about how he got revenge on his enemies by blackmailing them. Then he threatened me with his supposed mystic powers. It was as if once he confessed his sins, he needed to destroy me.”
She locked eyes with me. “Does that make sense?”
Normally patients become emotional when revealing something so distressful, but aside from the one shudder, Irma remained calm.
“It’s not uncommon for a confessor to resent the confessee,” I said.
The storms in her eyes morphed into an indistinct redness. “He told me how he collected magicians’ secrets in a journal.”
I refrained from reaching out a comforting hand. That would have placed the key within her reach and the change in her eyes worried me. “You should have told someone and extricated yourself from that perilous situation.”
“Eventually I did. It took one final menace to launch me into action. Nelson threatened to hang me by my feet from the chandelier and that he’d golf while I hung upside down. I’ll never forget the vicious expression on his face when he said he’d play thirty-six holes.”
In spite of my growing unease, my heart went out to her.
“I played the obedient wife waiting for my chance. That chance came with the arrival of the Cosmic Travelers.”
“How did you come to be connected with them?”
“How does it go? When the student is ready, the teacher will arrive? The Cosmic Travelers found me. They taught me all they knew, and then I founded the Seven Planets. I became the woman you see before you.”
I kept any sign of judgment from my expression. “You mentioned something about the cot?”
“That was where I was forced to sleep whenever I didn’t do Nelson’s bidding—whenever I was a naughty little wife. Only fitting that when I took all his possessions I left him only the cot.”
“So the cot was symbolic,” I said. “And when you dangled him from the chandelier, that was symbolic also?”
The redness in her eyes intensified. “Trippy poetic justice! Cosmos and I caught the monster by surprise. Stupefied, he let us in when we rang. Maybe he thought I was returning to his warm embrace.”
The key cut into my palm as I tightened my fist around it.
“I showed Nelson the key and asked him what it was for,” Irma said. “He refused to tell me and threatened instead to dangle me if I didn’t give it back. He grabbed for the chain. Big mistake.”
My breath became ragged as the redness continued to darken.
“Cosmos is skilled in the martial arts. He can knock a person out in seconds by pressing on their carotid artery.”
She glanced over at the chandelier. “I guess you know that gaudy thing raises and lowers by a motor for maintenance access. Nelson was unconscious when Cosmos and I hung him by his feet.”
Kal had mentioned something about a button in the service closet—one to adjust the height of the chandelier.
Irma continued, “When Nelson came around—upside down—he was forced to inhale the sweet smell of Lizzy’s success. Your lavender soap. I taunted him with it. Knowing his daughter’s slippery creation stopped him from climbing upright on the rope—he went berserk. He held Lizzy back her entire life. Unbeknownst to her, she’d turned the tables on him.”
I couldn’t help but ask, “Why’d you need so much soap?”
“Cosmos is not the brightest star in the sky. He bought all the soap you had—just in case.”
“So Nelson was helpless and apoplectic?”
“The fool still refused to tell us what the key was for—just said it was his fortune. Chump that he was he said if he got his hands on me he was going to dangle me till I choked.”
She ran her hand around over her neck. “We never intended for Nelson to die. We just left him to dangle until he gave up and told us what we wanted to know.”
This time I detected a twinge of regret on her face as she studied the chandelier.
She sighed. “The Seven Planets rule in ironic ways. Cosmos and I split up to search the apartment for anything the key might fit. When we came back to prod Nelson—try again to get him to talk—he was dead.”
Irma didn’t intend to kill Nelson, but she did. And she had to pay. I had to delay her until Lizzy and Pam returned so we could hold her for Kal.
“Why did you marry him in the first place? You must have seen signs of his brute temperament?” How long before Lizzy and Pam returned?
“We’re all put on this earth to learn at least one lesson. Nelson was mine. I made excuses for his behavior before we married—certain my love could change him.”
She shrugged. “Strong as love is it can’t change a person. I don’t know where I’d be if I hadn’t found my calling with the Seven Planets. Now I must ask you to return the key.”
I was trying to come up with another delaying question when the redness in
her eyes changed to boiling cauldrons. Snapping from calm kitten to snarling tiger, she
lunged at me.
Chapter 35
Irma threw herself on me, knocking me to the floor. I brought my foot up to push her away. My shoe got tangled in the yards of blue caftan and brought her down on top of me. I was trapped under a cult queen.
If I screamed for Grams, she’d run in and bring the brass candlestick down on Irma’s head—killing her.
Worse yet, I couldn’t risk calling a nonagenarian to my defense. If something happened to Grams I’d never forgive myself. I kept my mouth shut despite
Irma having at least forty-pounds on me and being in a lunatic frenzy that made her even stronger.
Our almost silent tussle continued for what seemed like hours as she tried to wrest the key from my hand. Over the sound of my blood pounding in my ears, I heard scratching and crunching.
Aiming for Irma’s eye with my finger, I missed and stabbed her in the cheek.
She yelped and backed off.
“Sorry! I was trying to poke you in the eye.”
As she renewed her efforts to out-wrestle me for the key, a slightly-smelly, furry beast rammed her. WonderDog! He must have been trapped in the bathroom and managed to shred his way to freedom.
His momentum knocked her off me. I scrambled to my feet. She rolled away from the hero hound.
Recalling how readily he obeyed her command at the shop I couldn’t count on him to keep her at bay. The fingers of my right hand ached from clutching the key. My nails dug crescent-shaped welts into my palm.
Irma pushed herself onto her knees.
“No you don’t, Missy!” Grams burst through the door looking like a mini Statue of Liberty with the candlestick held high over her head.
“Grams, no. Don’t! You’ll kill her!”
“What’s your point?” she barked.
Irma stood and moved toward me, obviously not ready to give up on the key.
WonderDog chomped down on the hem of Irma’s caftan jerking his head back and forth like a rat-catcher.
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