When Gladys continued that childish posture, I asked, ‘Might we go back to your office, dear?’
‘Oh, certainly!’
As we walked along, passing identical cubicles, I engaged in small talk – how was she? How did she like her new job at the bank? Wasn’t the weather beautiful? Anything to avoid specifics about a new thespian challenge for the girl. This I did all the way to our destination.
Gladys claimed her spot behind the L-shaped metal desk, and I took one of two chairs facing her.
‘Have you decided upon one?’ she asked eagerly.
‘One what, dear?’
‘What play you’re going to direct next. What my role will be!’
‘Oh.’ I shifted in my seat. ‘I am strongly considering The Brothers Karamazov.’ Which I of course had no real intention of staging, as – even with the Vivian Borne touch – it would go over in Serenity like a lead balloon.
Confused disappointment clouded the shiny eyes. ‘I’m going to play a man?’
‘Oh, no, dear. Grushenka.’
‘Gesundheit.’
‘I wasn’t sneezing, dear. That was a name.’
‘Is it a good part?’
My little smile teased and promised. ‘Marilyn Monroe seemed to think so.’
‘She did?’
I leaned back, tented my fingers. ‘It was Marilyn’s dream to play Grushenka – one unfortunately never fulfilled before her untimely death.’
‘Tell me about this … Grushilda.’
I didn’t bother to correct her. ‘Well, dear, the character is young, beautiful, proud, fiery, headstrong, sexually alluring. Right up your alley.’
Glady’s eyes sparkled like dull diamonds. ‘Oh, my! Do you think I’m up to it?’
‘No actor is better suited for the part than you,’ I lied.
The woman sat back, giddy with the news, patting her hands like Eddie Cantor (unintentionally, since the Whoopee! man was well before her time, and maybe yours).
I leaned forward. ‘And now, dear, first things first – I must get down to business.’
Which brought Gladys out of her euphoria.
‘Business?’ she asked, blinking.
Hadn’t the girl learned yet there was always a price to pay? Even for the promise of a part in a play that would never happen?
‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘I need to know if Tiffany Wallace had a money market account with the bank, in her name alone, and if so, the amount and the beneficiary.’
Gladys frowned. ‘Oh, I don’t know about that, Vivian. You aren’t sheriff anymore.’
‘I’m an Honorary Sheriff, dear, with all the rights and privileges that go with the title.’
Which she wouldn’t know amounted to very little.
‘Would you like to see my badge, dear?’
‘No, no. That won’t be necessary.’
‘Good. Now … the information?’
Gladys turned to her computer, the keyboard clicking under her flying fingers. In seconds, she said, ‘There is a money market account in Tiffany Wallace’s name.’
‘And the amount?’
‘Two hundred and fifty thousand.’
‘And the beneficiary?’
‘Michael Hughes.’
Well, dear reader, you could have knocked me over with a feather – I had been expecting Skylar James! Apparently, Michael had ‘tagged’ Tiffany for more than a percentage of the tag sale.
‘Thank you, dear,’ I said, masking my surprise, as if the information she shared had zero import. ‘I’ll let you know when I finalize the decision about the play.’
I stood.
Gladys looked up at me. ‘Would it be helpful if I told you that Tiffany had changed the beneficiary from her husband to Mr Hughes … just a few days ago?’
Helpful indeed!
‘Good to know,’ I said off-handedly. Then I smiled, said, ‘You will make a simply wonderful Grushenka,’ and left.
Perhaps yours truly should have felt at least a tiny amount of shame for misleading the young actress regarding the play – but who’s to say I wouldn’t produce The Brothers Karamazov? The wheels were turning. I could cut it from five acts to three – add some original music. Russian dancing. Hey!
Besides, this was no time for self-recrimination; I had a killer to catch.
By around noon, feeling hungry, I decided to grab a bite. Rather than go to a busy bistro, where I would run into chatty acquaintances, I needed somewhere quiet to think.
At this hour of the day, not a soul was in Cinders except Renny, who was up on a ladder behind the bar removing a string of lights that had lost their twinkle. I knew the feeling!
Wearing a purple cold-shoulder top, pink crinoline skirt, and black leggings, the hostess had heard the door open, and twisted her head toward me.
‘Hello, Vivian,’ she said warmly. ‘I’ll be done in a minute.’
‘No hurry.’
The menu at Cinders was limited to frozen pizza, frozen chicken tenders, and frozen pork sliders. Well, they weren’t frozen after the microwaving. But Renny usually also had soup she would bring from home.
‘What’s the special today?’ I asked, nodding toward the crockpot behind the counter. ‘A delicious aroma is wafting!’
Renny descended the ladder, saying, ‘Chili con carne.’
‘Sold – con brio!’ Renny’s notoriously spicy homemade concoction might mean certain aftereffects would be left in my wake, but that would be Brandy’s problem.
I filled a red-bucket chair at the center of the bar.
‘Anything to drink?’ the proprietor asked, facing me.
Since the air conditioner was going full blast, I replied, ‘A hot toddy. But hold the toddy.’ Which was pretty much hot water, honey and lemon juice.
While Renny was preparing my repast, I asked, ‘How are Nona and Zelda getting along?’
Ladling a generous serving of chili into a Styrofoam bowl, she responded, ‘Fine, fine. Only …’
Renny placed the bowl in front of me, along with a plastic spoon, a few crackers and a napkin.
‘Only …?’ I prompted.
She leaned forward conspiratorially, the left half of her generous bosom nearly dunking itself in the soup. ‘Zelda’s been coming in here by herself.’
Worried that Renny had lost her marbles, I kept my expression neutral. ‘You don’t say.’
She nodded. ‘As a matter of fact, Zelda’s here right now. I think she followed you in.’ Renny’s eyes went to the end of the bar. ‘She’s right down there.’
Well, what did I have to lose? I swiveled in that direction. ‘Zelda, would you like to join me?’ Then to Renny I said, ‘Some chili for Zelda.’
Before Renny could react, the front door opened and Nona came in, the Goth-dressed young woman exclaiming, ‘Oh, there you are!’
I thought Nona was looking at me, but she strode to the adjacent chair, and addressed it.
‘One moment we’re waiting for a table at Salvatore’s,’ Nona said with exasperation, ‘and the next you’re gone!’
Silence.
Nona nodded. ‘Oh.’ She glanced at me, then back at Zelda. ‘Well, what did you want to tell her?’
Longer silence.
Nona looked at me. ‘It’s about that man who had that accident last night.’
‘Skylar James,’ I said.
Nona nodded. ‘Zelda says that when we left here yesterday evening, she saw him talking to a woman.’
‘When? Where?’
Nona consulted Zelda.
‘About six-thirty, in his store across the street,’ Nona said. ‘He was closed, but the lights were on, and when we went by, Zelda noticed them through the front window.’
I asked the empty chair. ‘What did this woman look like?’
Again I waited for Nona to relay the response.
‘Zelda only saw her from behind,’ the woman said. ‘She had dark hair. And they seemed to be arguing.’
That could be Angela! Had she suspected Skylar of ha
ving an affair with Tiffany, who she poisoned, then hours later dispatched her cheating husband after an argument? Had the wronged wife already played Ben-Hur chariot race with her husband before we’d come calling last night, giving her the opportunity to play concerned and distraught for us?
If so, where did Michael Hughes fit in?
I began to address Nona, but then remembered to query Zelda herself: ‘Can you tell me anything else about what you saw?’
A moment.
‘Not really,’ Nona said, then turned quickly to the empty chair, listened, and added, ‘but there was a fancy car parked in front of The Trading Post.’
‘What kind of fancy car, Nona? I mean, Zelda?’
Another moment.
Nona said, ‘A silver one.’
I knew someone who drove a silver Jaguar, and so do you, if you’ve been paying attention.
Lovely, dark-haired Colette Dumont.
Vivian’s Trash ‘n’ Treasures Tip
Money can be made in the buying and selling of antique office equipment, such as old calculating machines and typewriters, fountain pens, electric fans, wood file cabinets, and swivel chairs. Brandy bought an ancient, cracked-leather couch out of a psychiatrist’s office – I think she meant it as a joke (in very bad taste, I might add), but claimed she intended it as a place for me to collect my thoughts. I tried that, but always seem to fall asleep on it, which is not surprising, as I have often fallen asleep in psychiatrists’ offices.
TEN
Carry On Cruising
Welcome back – Brandy speaking.
Foot traffic at the shop had been steady throughout the morning, easing up nearing noon, so I was enjoying my lunch break, seated at the boomerang-infested Formica table in the kitchen, having a cold turkey sandwich from home.
The bell above the front door jingled, signaling my repast was past, but before I could even rise, Mother came rushing into the kitchen.
Looking frazzled, she announced, ‘I need you to take me somewhere!’
‘Can’t you take yourself on your Vespa?’ I asked, adding, ‘It’s not raining or anything.’
She ignored both my question and statement. ‘Somewhere out of town. Right now!’
My eyes narrowed. ‘Where?’
She hovered. ‘Iowa City. I have an appointment with Michael Hughes, and he’ll only be available for another hour and a half.’
That was a forty-minute drive at least.
Mother barreled on, ‘And then I’ll want to speak to Colette. We’ll have to take Sushi – no time to drop her off home. No time to call your friend Joe to take the helm here.’ She turned toward the front and pointed, a sailor seeing an island on the horizon. ‘I’ll retrieve the flags. Chop-chop!’
Didn’t she mean, ‘Land ahoy’?
I growled, but Sushi didn’t, waiting patiently at my feet for the last bite of my sandwich and getting more than she’d hoped for, to her delight.
Soon all three of us were piling into the Fusion.
Knowing some time could be shaved off the trip by eschewing Interstate 80 for secondary roads, I headed west out of town, rather than north.
Along this more scenic route, Mother filled me in on the rather astonishing array of things she’d learned this morning: Tony confirming Skylar’s jeep had been forced off the road; Tilda revealing Tiffany’s impromptu will mentioned a money market account left to someone other than her husband; our ancient but astute lawyer claiming said will was valid; Gladys identifying Michael Hughes as the beneficiary of that surprisingly substantial account; and Zelda seeing a woman who was almost certainly Colette Dumont arguing with Skylar at The Trading Post shortly before the man’s murder.
‘You have been a busy girl,’ I remarked, genuinely impressed. ‘I assume you’re meeting with Michael to try to learn what’s behind this money market account Tiffany attached his name to.’
‘That and more, my dear. That and more.’
She had other thoughts to share and I took them all in.
Thirty minutes later, cruising through a lush Grant Wood-esque landscape, we were nearing the outskirts of Iowa City when Mother instructed me to turn off onto an asphalt road at the top of a hill. This I did with a squeal of the hybrid’s tires, as this guidance came typically last second.
Soon I was pulling into the gravel drive at an idyllic-looking farmhouse setting: white picket fence, white two-story with latticework, welcoming wide porch, red barn with wrought-iron rooster, and even a windmill, its silver blades turning lazily in the breeze.
Yet it was clear this was not a working farm. No crops were to be seen in the fallow fields, no cows, pigs, or chickens – free-ranged or fenced – and not even so much as a small vegetable garden. It would seem the fastidious Mr Hughes wanted all of the romantic bucolic trappings sans the backbreaking work that might put any troublesome dirt under his manicured fingernails.
The middle-aged man with neatly trimmed beard, wire-framed glasses and studiously casual attire – button-down shirt with rolled sleeves, dark jeans, and slip-on shoes with tassels and no socks – was waiting for us on the open porch.
We exited the Fusion and, since there would be no containing Sushi in these temptingly verdant surroundings, I allowed her to roam free, though she was neither cow nor chicken.
Hughes, his demeanor pleasant, descended the few wooden steps. ‘Why don’t we talk on the porch, ladies,’ he said. ‘I’ve made lemonade.’
Just right for this pastoral setting.
We followed him.
Among a grouping of wicker furniture including a table with a waiting tray of three glasses and sweating pitcher, we took two of the four chairs while our host settled into one opposite us.
Michael filled the glasses with the sweet and tart concoction; but neither Mother nor I partook of any of the drink until he’d had his first.
Few smiles were more forced than hers when she asked, ‘Where were you last night, Michael?’
Smile or not, it was a verbal slap and his trimmed eyebrows rose. ‘Here. Why?’
‘Can anyone verify that?’
Hughes frowned, and he again said, ‘Why?’
Mother’s frown conveyed only curiosity. ‘You have heard that Skylar James is dead?’
His glass, headed to his lips, halted, sloshing a little. ‘Why no, I hadn’t. What on earth happened?’
‘Briefly, he wasn’t on earth at all. His jeep went through a guard rail on Colorado Hill during the deluge last night.’
He seemed to be over the shocking news already. ‘How unfortunate. The rain was bad here, too.’
Mother took a dainty sip of her glass. ‘Oh, the storm wasn’t the cause.’
‘Is that right?’
She nodded sagely. ‘According to Chief Cassato, someone deliberately forced Skylar off that cliff and into the river.’
Oddly, that got only a faint smile out of our host, who set his glass down. ‘All right, Vivian … I know you well enough to realize this is not a social call.’
‘Indeed it’s not.’
His grunt was not quite a laugh. Flatly he stated, ‘You suspect I had something to do with it.’
Mother arched an eyebrow. ‘I suspect you may have. I make no accusation.’
‘Glad to hear it.’
‘But did you?’
Hughes stared at her, as if perhaps she were an illusion that might fade. When she didn’t, he said, ‘Vivian, please. I barely knew the man. Why in God’s name would I do such a terrible thing?’ He sighed irritatedly and picked his glass back up, and took a defiant drink.
‘Perhaps because,’ she said, her tone triumphant, ‘both you and Skylar had been having affairs with Tiffany.’
He made a face like the lemonade was too sour. Seemingly unimpressed by her charge, he said, ‘That’s ludicrous, Vivian.’
‘In which case,’ Mother said, rolling right along, ‘you would also have killed Tiffany.’
Hughes looked at me. ‘Is your mother out of her mind?’
‘Figuratively or literally?’ I asked. It was always a question worth debating, if one had the time.
He went on, quietly indignant, ‘I understood Tiffany had a fatal heart attack.’
‘No, dear. That was merely the preliminary diagnosis. The autopsy concluded she was poisoned.’
Mother was bluffing – the report wasn’t in yet.
She went on, ‘With suicide unlikely, it seems probable her coffee had been doctored in a deadly manner during the tag sale. The poison was a slow-acting one, you see.’
He said nothing. His face might have been stone but for an occasional blink.
Staring him down, Mother continued, ‘You had ample time to slip something into Tiffany’s coffee … you may recall the cup she’d been drinking from – it had a kitten on it.’
Hughes scoffed, ‘So that means I killed Tiffany … why? Because I was jealous, due to this imaginary affair? Or did the bad taste demonstrated by that kitten cup drive me momentarily mad? A good thing I had some slow-acting poison along!’
Mother smiled sweetly. ‘No, neither jealousy nor an issue of taste was at the root of this evil – money was.’
This time his grunt was definitely a laugh. ‘What money?’
She gave him a patronizing look. ‘You expect me to believe you knew nothing about Tiffany making you the beneficiary of a money market account leaving you a quarter of a million dollars?’
Hughes appeared stunned, all the blood leaving his face. ‘Wh-what …?’
‘You heard me, sir.’
‘No, no, I didn’t know! If that’s even true.’
‘Oh, it’s true all right.’
I entered the fray. ‘In which case, why would Tiffany pointedly exclude her husband and make you the beneficiary, if you weren’t involved with her?’
He drew in a breath, as if about to respond. But he didn’t. For endless seconds, he just stared with even the blinking stopped.
We waited.
Finally, he spoke. His voice was soft now, nothing defensive in it, nothing at all indignant.
‘All right,’ he said, ‘I did have an affair with Tiffany … briefly. But even calling it an affair is a gross overstatement.’
‘What was it then?’ Mother asked.
His shrug was loose and kind of pitiful. ‘I don’t know what you’d call it. It just kind of happened when she came here to finalize the contract for the tag sale. She was an attractive young woman and I’ve been alone for … it’s been almost five years since I lost my wife.’
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