Deadly Reunion

by Mary Bowers

  “She drank from his glass,” Bruno said, suddenly very calm.

  “Uh huh.” Coco was still focused on the flirtation methodology. The fact that there may have been poison in the glass at the time whizzed right over her head.

  But the cops got it. “She lives here at the Resort?” Bruno asked.

  “Yes. She has the condo next to Fred’s, across from the swimming pool. Good location. Right on the main road through the development.”

  Bruno gave Carver a slow glance, and the younger man got up without a word and walked back to where the forensics team was working.

  “I’m sorry about the glasses,” I told Bruno, talking to him but watching his partner leave with a couple of the scientists. “I didn’t know he’d been . . . you think he was poisoned? I didn’t know. Nobody knew. We thought he just got sick or had a stroke or something. We were just cleaning up for Patty and Coco to be nice, and to have something useful to do. People do things like that when something bad happens. You know?”

  Bruno watched me without reacting in any way.

  When he was finally convinced that this was just another instance of the crazy cat lady stumbling into something unfortunate, and that my presence had been purely coincidental, he startled me by telling Michael and me (firmly) that we could go.

  “They’re my friends,” I said, gesturing to where Coco and Patty were sitting. “I’d like to be here for them.”

  “I’m sure you’ll have plenty of time to be there for them while they’re visiting. You’ve got the condo for the week?” he said, turning to ask them.

  They nodded unhappily.

  He turned back to me. “See? It’s late, and they’re all right. We didn’t bring the whips and chains with us tonight, ha ha. You two go on home now. Tomorrow you can all get together and do fun things and forget that this ever happened.”

  His mouth was talking and his voice was bouncing along, but his eyes were steady. He wasn’t fooling me.

  “Well,” I said with great dignity, “if you have any more questions, you know where to find us.”

  Chapter 5

  I had never known Coco to be an early riser, but Patty always had been, and either she got Coco up before dawn or the two of them hadn’t been to bed at all, because they were back at Cadbury House the next morning right after breakfast. Myrtle had been in the kitchen wiping down the counter, but when she heard the doorbell, she suddenly thought of something to do upstairs and made a break for the back staircase. Whoever it was, she wasn’t cooking breakfast for them.

  Michael had an early tee time and had already left for the golf course. I’d remembered to ask him to scrounge around for dates for my friends, but it wasn’t the right time to mention that to Coco and Patty. Figuring they’d come to our house instead of calling me to come to the condo because they hoped to see Michael again, I felt kind of sad. A personable male can be a nice distraction when you’re upset. Back in high school, I would’ve scratched their eyes out, of course, but as a grown woman I wouldn’t have scratched their eyes out unless they actually laid hands on my man. I’m mature, not dead.

  I embraced them silently, then ushered them into the house, fussing over them and offering them everything from coffee to whiskey, but all they really wanted was me.

  “I’m so sorry your party turned out like it did,” I said when we were all seated at the breakfast bar. “Did the cops stay late?”

  “They arrived late,” Coco said bitterly, “and they kept on asking us questions until I was ready to confess and let them take me away, just so they’d leave me alone.”

  Coco logic. I’d learned to just roll with it. I didn’t even blink.

  “Well, at least let me put on a fresh pot of coffee. And you need to eat. Have you eaten?”

  “I don’t need food. I need a Regency and I need it now,” Patty said. “And not just any old Regency. This is an emergency; I’m going straight for something written by the Queen of the Regency: Georgette Heyer.”

  She’d said it with tears glistening in her eyes and a tremor in her voice. My poor Patty. I knew exactly how she felt. In my darkest days working away in downtown Chicago, there were times when only an Agatha Christie would do. I was about to suggest we head into Tropical Breeze and hunt down a Heyer immediately when Coco went sideways on us.

  “We had no idea you were famous around here,” she said. “The cops knew all about you. After they got done with all the serious questions, they loosened up a bit, especially that nice man, Burt.”

  “You mean Detective Bruno?” I asked. “Don’t let him fool you. He wasn’t loosening up. He was trying to loosen you up.”

  “Oh, don’t be such a cynic. He’s a nice old thing. And underneath that smile he seems so sad you just want to cuddle him.”

  “I have never wanted to cuddle him.”

  She ignored me. “Do you remember my Uncle Jimmy? Burt reminds me of Uncle Jimmy. You got the feeling that he was kind of sad and lonely underneath, because he never married, but he would just light up when the family got together.”

  “Yeah, I remember him being lit. Is that why he needed that lampshade on his head?”

  “Stop it. He only drank enough to get happy. And he just loved all of us kids. You remember him at parties – once he got a few under his belt, he was the best dancer. He didn’t even dance with anybody. He’d get up and dance all by himself. He used to call it his snake dance.”

  “He was a nice guy,” I said, really remembering now, and feeling the warmth. He’d been just an average Joe, working his life away at the steel mills, the kind who’s a clown at parties, but who can rise to the occasion when duty calls, as it did for so many men like him in World War II. And when the warrior came home again he went back to being just a guy, and to make the children laugh, he’d do his snake dance. Any other time I’d have been happy to reminisce about old Jimmy because I’d liked him, in spite of his dancing, but just then I wasn’t going to be sidetracked. Detective Burton Bruno was nothing like Uncle Jimmy and I knew it, even if Coco couldn’t tell the difference.

  “What did Detective Bruno say about me?” I asked.

  Coco and Patty shot glances at one another and suppressed smiles. I gave a little groan.

  “It was positive, mostly,” Patty said. “Really.”

  “I never knew you were psychic,” Coco said, quite serious and interested.

  “I’m not. It’s this friend of mine who keeps getting me into –“

  “Burt said his name. It’s something funny,” Coco said. “Ed . . . Eddie . . . .”

  “Edson Darby-Deaver.”

  “Right, “Coco said. “Edison Whatever-it-is. He wrote a book about this pet of yours that’s like a goddess or something.”

  “Nobody thinks my cat is a goddess,” I said shortly. “Not really. It’s an inside joke among the Tropical Breezers. It’s all because of that guy, Ed. He went and wrote a book about her. Us. You won’t be meeting him.”

  “Why not?” Patty said. “He sounds interesting.”

  “Is he single?” Coco asked.

  “You especially won’t be meeting him,” I told her. “You’d terrify him.”

  “What kind of a book is it?” Patty asked.

  “The weird kind. Self-published, of course. Ed is a paranormal investigator. Can we get back to what went on after Michael and I left your condo?”

  “They took away everything,” Coco said. “All the food, even what we didn’t serve at the party, all the stuff in the garbage, they even took that lovely Niagara you brought, and Fred never had a drop of it. Oh, I can’t believe what happened. It was going to be such a nice party,” she said wistfully. “This vacation started off being so much fun, first surprising you like that, and then having a party.”

  “Note to both of you for the future: I don’t like surprises.”

  “Oh, don’t get all stern. We’re in enough trouble already.”

  “Maybe he was allergic to something,” Patty said. “At least we stayed away from the F
rench cookbook for the party, or I’d really wonder if it was something he ate. French cooking takes a lot of ingredients that Americans aren’t used to. We have to be careful which recipes we pick, in case some fancy-sounding ingredient turns out to be the suction cups off an octopus or fish lips or whatever.”

  “What else did the cops say?” I asked, steadfastly ignoring the trivia.

  “Oh! That you’ve solved murders before. Lots of them. Do you have a lot of murders around here?” Coco asked, wide-eyed.

  I got defensive. After all, these two came from the south side of Chicago. “No more than any other place.”

  “Well, Burt made it sound like you’ve got some kind of a gift. Like he consults you on every case.”

  “Hardly.”

  It was at that moment that Bastet chose to emerge from her cat condo and perch herself on the top tier, looking intelligent and interested. She elongated her neck and inclined her head, gazing steadily with emerald-green eyes.

  “Is that the cat?”

  “Yes, Coco, that is a cat. Her name is –“

  “Bastet!” they said together.

  I groaned.

  “That detective told us all about your cat,” Coco said breathlessly. “He thinks she’s magic.”

  “He does not,” I said flatly. “He thinks my cat and I are extremely funny. He was pulling your leg, because you’re a couple of Yankees.”

  “I wondered about it at the time,” Patty said. “I mean, the man is a cop. They’re supposed to be all world-weary and jaded, and here he is telling us that he doesn’t know how you do it, but they’ve learned never to ignore you. Or . . . her. She really is beautiful, you know. She even looks special.”

  Through all this, Bastet had listened with that eerie sentience that made you wonder if she could understand every word. When I happened to catch her eye, she settled for a split-second, holding my gaze and looking amused.

  Coco was all-in with the magic cat theory, but Patty was looking at me like she wasn’t sure whether to take it seriously or not. “You’re not getting a reputation for being some kind of a nut around here, are you, Taylor?” she asked.

  “Oh, maybe.” I sat forward and rested my head in my hand, then covered my eyes. “I think we should go downtown now,” I said between my fingers. “You’ll love the shops.”

  “To that resale store first,” Patty’s voice said. “I need my Heyer, and I need it now.”

  Chapter 6

  They hadn’t made it all the way into Tropical Breeze yet, and they were already enchanted with the busy little town.

  “Is that the Atlantic Ocean?” Coco asked as we bowled along down A1A.

  Patty was less impressed. “It looks just like Lake Michigan from here.”

  “Trust me,” I said, “it’s bigger. Haven’t you guys gotten out to the beach yet?”

  “We’ve been kinda busy,” Coco said nasally.

  I stopped for a family of four that was jaywalking to the beach, carrying toys, coolers and folding chairs. As we got closer to town, we started passing rickety bars, tee shirt shops and venerable family-owned restaurants. They perked up. By the time we turned onto Locust Street and started down the main drag of the business district at 20 mph, they were reading off the name of every store like they were in a theme park.

  I turned left onto Sixth Street and headed down the alley behind Girlfriend’s. It looked like all the street parking up front was taken, and I like to leave space for the customers out there anyway. There was always room for me to park behind the store. Girlfriend’s’ manager didn’t drive to work, so the parking space behind the store was always open. Florence was 73, but she was spry. She always walked to the shop from her house on Palmetto, a couple of blocks away, and her pet cat Wicked always came with her, keeping right by her side as if he were on a leash. Their promenade to work had become sort of a Tropical Breeze tradition. People tended to say hello to Wicked before they nodded to Florence.

  We entered from the back, where there’s a small office with a shipping desk, a store room full of partially unpacked boxes, and stairs to a mid-level box room. Wicked was before us immediately, wanting to know who was there. He thinks he’s fierce. He’s also the Girlfriend’s resident practical joker. He likes to wait until people have forgotten he’s there, then launch himself right past their heads. He even catches me off-guard every now and then. He’s a black-and-white tuxedo cat, and he’s big enough to cause some damage.

  But this time, instead of yowling out his version of “Halt and be recognized,” he stopped, looked startled, then posed himself humbly next to the doorway and gazed past us.

  “What’s wrong with that cat?” Patty asked.

  I didn’t need to look down to know what was happening. I’d seen Wicked act that way before, and I knew Bastet had followed us in. She threaded her way calmly through our legs, ignored Wicked, and stepped through the curtains hanging in the doorway into the shop.

  “I didn’t know you brought your cat,” Coco said, looking at me a little wide-eyed.

  I hadn’t known it either. Bastet hates cat carriers, and she can be sneaky, but I hadn’t noticed her getting into my SUV. I was not pleased. Her sudden appearances and disappearances can be very disconcerting, if not creepy.

  “You did bring her?” Coco asked when I hesitated.

  “Of course I did.”

  “Because we didn’t let her out of the car. How did she get out all by herself?”

  “You really ought to put her in a cage when you take her in the car,” Patty said. “I noticed you have all kinds of stuff in the back in case you happen to see a stray. The pet cage was right there.”

  “Yeah, I know. I’ll be sure to put her in there when we go back home. Let’s go meet Florence. You’ll like her.”

  I nearly shoved them into the shop, where Florence was gossiping with one of her customers over by the ladies’ blouses. She turned her head our way and before I could say a word, she exclaimed, “Taylor! Did you hear? Your old boyfriend is dead.”

  “Oh, she knows,” Coco told her. “She was right there when it happened.”

  “I was in the kitchen,” I said, giving Coco a hard look.

  “You were right there, at the party?” Florence said.

  She was with us by then, along with her customer, and she said, “Didn’t you used to date him, back when you first moved here? He fell madly in love with you, and you had to take out a restraining order on him or something. Had he been bothering you again?”

  I looked all around at staring eyes, shocked eyes, accusing eyes.

  “I hadn’t seen Fred Rambo in years. I didn’t even know he was going to be at the party. And I did not take out a restraining order, on him or anybody else. I didn’t even know there was any such thing as a restraining order in – what was it? – 1983? Wait.” I thought hard. “I moved here in ‘82, and I met him at a Civic Association meeting right after that. He asked me out for a drink right away, so it must have been ‘82 or ’83. But after two dates, I’d had enough of him. I haven’t seen him since, I swear. He’d probably forgotten all about me until he saw me coming in the door at the party.”

  There was a terrible silence.

  To my relief, Bastet suddenly distracted them. She jumped to the picture rail, took aim and deliberately knocked down an awful painting of a farmhouse, then settled above us like a queen, looking down upon us.

  I’d recognized Florence’s customer by then as one of her neighbors, a lady named Janet. She had a short, spherical body and hair like Andre the Giant. She was gazing at the Tropical Breeze magical cat with her mouth open. After a moment, she turned to goggle at me.

  “What happened?” she asked in a hoarse whisper.

  Anything I told this woman was going to be spread all over Tropical Breeze before we could even get down the street. I said nothing. When she continued to stare, I shrugged. She gave up on me and looked at Coco, who also shrugged, and said, “He just keeled over and died. Nothing we could do about it.”r />
  “They’re saying it was something he ate,” Florence said.

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” Coco said calmly. “Have you got any medium-size purses here? The one I brought along on the trip is just too small. Cute as a button,” she said, lifting it to show off the pretty denim-lace-and-velvet, hand-made creation, “but I can’t even get my sunglasses in there with all my other stuff. Also, I need a beach tote. I bet you’ve got something really cute – maybe with straw flowers . . . .” She wandered away, murmuring and looking all around.

  “Do you have any used books?” Patty asked. “I could really use a nice romance novel.”

  I waited, but Florence just stared.

  “Over here,” I said at last, and I conducted Patty to the racks of used books we had against the back wall. “Florence,” I said over my shoulder. “Purses.”

  * * * * *

  When nobody spontaneously confessed, Janet lost interest and left the store, and somebody infinitely better, from my point of view, came in: Bernie Horning. She was the writer, publisher, editorial staff and secretarial pool of our local weekly newspaper, The Beach Buzz. Though well into her eighties, she had one of the sharpest minds in Tropical Breeze. I introduced her to my old friends and then waited for her to give me the straight scoop, but she always listens before she talks. She’s an expert at interrogation. Where Janet had failed, I knew she was going to succeed, but I didn’t mind. Bernie was a pro, not a common gossip. She’d get her facts straight, and she’d keep the gory details out of The Beach Buzz. No point in scaring the tourists away. The local businesses wouldn’t like that, and without their advertising, The Beach Buzz would fold like a cheap suit.

  I introduced Coco and Patty as if the party had never happened, and Bernie responded conventionally, keeping her powder dry. Coco immediately made it worth her while.

  “By the way, Taters, I meant to ask you when I got the chance. Does Michael know about you and Fred?”

  “I keep telling you, there was no me and Fred!”