by Misty Simon
“Nothing wrong with watching the stories.”
Max laughed at Mama Shirley’s words, until I glared at him.
“There is something wrong with trying to speak ill of the dead when it comes from two women who love to make waves,” I continued. “Did Betty Ann show you the flyer? Maybe she was just trying to get me to cut my prices. She did mention last time that I was too pricey and might want to think about lowering my prices.”
I bit my lip, because I knew I was wrong about Audra. Something had clicked when Mama Shirley told me about that flyer and about the undercutting. A bunch of my clients had recently been telling me what a great job I was doing and how they’d never leave me. As if assuring me of something that I hadn’t known was wrong. I had thought they were all just incredibly grateful for my services and happy that I was doing a good job. Instead, they had been telling me that they weren’t falling for another cleaner’s shenanigans.
A cleaner that I had been going all over the place for, asking questions for, and defending endlessly. A cleaner whose murder I had been investigating tirelessly and whose demise had me wringing my hands. A cleaner who I had thought was my friend, or at least had the potential to be my friend, and instead had been badmouthing me not only to my clients but to anyone who would listen.
Instead of bursting this time, I felt like I was boiling. Of course she still hadn’t deserved to die, and she definitely had not deserved to have her dead body wrapped up in a carpet, but come on! Why did I keep believing people were inherently honest? When was I going to stop believing that people were naturally good until I was proven wrong? Had Audra gone after my cleaning service to build her “side business,” as Caleb had called it?
“I’m not going to apologize for setting you right, Tallie, but I will say that it’s a shame you weren’t told earlier. I just thought Audra was being a pain. And I know those two ladies enough not to believe every word out of their mouths, but both told me unsolicited information, and I just keep seeing you exhaust yourself to get justice for someone who was out to gut you.”
“I understand, and I appreciate it. I guess I should start thinking about going to all my customers and thanking them for staying even through the slander campaign.” I shifted in my chair again, not sure how I wanted to go about that. I’d come up with something, though. Maybe little tokens of gratitude I got from my friend Monty at the florist.
“Pshaw. You’ll do no such thing. They know they’re getting a good deal and that you have the best crew out there. They would have left if that wasn’t true. But maybe you can back off from trying to find this girl’s killer. Leave it to Burton. He might be a pain, but he does know his job, too.”
“But I promised Letty. Her nephew is under suspicion, and he’s just trying to start over. He really loved Audra, no matter what she was after. Plus, you wanted me in this.”
Max played with my fingers on the counter as I drummed them next to the untouched coffee. “You could back out.”
“I could, but Burton is so overworked, and the whole police department is understaffed. She still deserves justice.” And wasn’t that a full one-eighty from what I used to be like as Mrs. Waldo? Then I had been as cutthroat as the next person, always looking to get ahead, be bigger, be seen more, have the best of everything. I was not proud of that time, but I had been in it up to my eyeballs with Waldo as a husband.
Now I had finally arrived at a place where it was about what was best in general, where things like lives and justice mattered more than anything, and where I could look outside myself to find what had to be done, instead of what I wanted to be done.
Talk about growth! Go me!
But that was for another time. For now, I was going to take the night off, hope that Letty didn’t hear these stories about Audra’s wrongdoing, and have dinner with my boyfriend. I was going to relax and think only if I wanted to. Tomorrow was soon enough to get back into the race for whodunit. Until then Burton could possibly solve the whole thing, and I would be completely unneeded. Wouldn’t he just love that? Maybe this time.
Chapter Thirteen
I groaned after eating a bowl full of the best beef and broccoli I’d ever had. Max had even taught me how to use chopsticks, or at least he’d tried. I could run a vacuum like I was waltzing with it and use a squeegee like a baton girl, but chopsticks were not my forte. They never had been. He still got points for trying.
I glanced at my computer over on the coffee table and then quickly glanced away. I did not need to do any searches on Audra or on the nephew of Mrs. Petrovski or on Mrs. Petrovski herself. I was no longer in the game, at least for tonight, and I wanted to spend time with my boyfriend.
“You know, I did a search on the whole family today, but I don’t know if now is the right time to talk about it or if we left that over at Gina’s for the night. Some interesting stuff there.” He played with the wrapper of a fortune cookie he’d bought at the store to go with our dinner.
I stared at him until he looked up, with a smile.
“You know you want to know, and I wanted to know, too. Can I be John Watson this time? I don’t really think I’d make a good Shaggy or Fred.”
I laughed and laughed. “You will always be my Watson, but doesn’t that make me Sherlock, who was a self-professed high-functioning sociopath?”
“Never that. Just brilliant and good at putting the pieces together when you have them. So let’s start laying them out on the table.”
I rubbed my hands together and wiggled in my seat with glee. “So what do we have?”
“Well, first there are Mrs. Petrovski’s properties, and there are a lot of them. It seems that almost every single one is either on the market or going on the market soon. I know you originally thought that maybe she was going to keep you on to clean the mansion on a continual basis, but she wants them all gone. I haven’t been able to find out why she wants them all sold. The guy I asked to look into her bank accounts didn’t see any outstanding debts or deficits in the cash flow. I don’t see any way in which she needs a bunch of money.”
I blew out a breath and pulled a notepad and a pencil on the table toward me. “So nothing except that she wants cash, instead of the properties that have been in her family for years. That’s not a crime in any way, and there’s nothing wrong with not wanting to have a bunch of places, for which you have to pay taxes and upkeep. She might get snubbed for deciding to be cash rich instead of land rich, but I’m pretty sure she can handle that. She’s older, she’s high up on the scale as far as upper-crust society around here, and she’ll be fine.”
“However, there’s a brother.”
“Really? I thought her only brother was dead.” This I wrote down on my notepad.
“It’s a half brother, and the money came through the father they don’t share, not the mother they do.”
“Hmm.” I crossed through the half brother.
“However, there’s an issue with three of the properties.”
“Oh?” This could be good. I wanted it to be good so that we could start down a solid path to the killer.
“Yes. Word is that there’s an issue with the titles. I wasn’t able to get more than that through the grapevine, because I was working.”
“Oh. Can we do more to find out about that?” I felt like this might be something. “What if someone wanted the properties and thought they belonged to them? What if he or she was at the mansion when Audra was there, did something he or she shouldn’t have done, and Audra saw the whole thing, and so this person killed her and tried to get rid of her before anyone knew about it.” I was rambling in my excitement, and my imagination was getting away from me.
“I’m already on the fact-finding. As for the scenario, I don’t know. Do you think that makes sense?”
I sank back in my chair. “Not really. Why would killing someone get you the three properties or even one? That doesn’t make sense at all, Watson. Thanks for pulling me back to reality.” I laid my hand on top of his, and he turned his pa
lm up to lace our fingers together.
“We can keep thinking about it. In the meantime, my information is that the aunt pays for everything for the nephew but has removed the majority of the money from that account and has opened another one.”
“When did she do that?”
“Today.”
“Interesting.” I rubbed Peanut’s head. She’d just come over to see if I had any food to drop on the floor for her. “Could he be bleeding her dry, and that’s why she has to sell everything? He said he wanted money for some kind of investment that he needed to make right now. Maybe he thought if he killed Audra, then his aunt would sell the house for whatever she could get so he could have the money now.”
“I don’t know if that makes sense, either. He’d have to wait for the investigation to be over. And he had to know that Mrs. Petrovski would give the cleaning job to you, which he was adamantly against.”
“But when it happened, he didn’t think there would be an investigation. He’d called the truck to come pick up that Dumpster before anyone knew that someone had been killed. He might not be big, but he could have moved Audra from the house. But how did he kill her, and why a carpet? It was so big and bulky. Why not a big black trash bag? As for me and the job, maybe he had someone else lined up already. After he sabotaged me, there was a very good chance that Mrs. Petrovski could have been swayed to hire someone else.”
“Carpet to be able to hide the body. And you’re right that he did think no one would be at the mansion when the truck arrived to pick up the Dumpster. As for the cleaning job, I don’t know what would have happened. She did choose you, though. Maybe she realized that you were more reliable than she had thought.”
We both sat in silence for a moment.
“You know, I promised myself that I wouldn’t let this case mess up my time with you, that I was just going to be the concerned citizen, not the vigilante that Burton accused me of being. And yet here I am,” I said.
“Vigilante looks good on you. Maybe we should get you one of those long leather dusters and a pair of cowboy boots.”
I burst out laughing. “Yeah, I think if I put that on my résumé or in my work queue, my dad would have a fit for sure.”
He held my hand across the table and massaged my fingers. His warmth was everything I’d ever need. “Are you that worried about what your parents think?”
I remembered that his parents had not wanted him, had, in fact, shipped him off to live with his stern and unforgiving grandmother when he was a teenager. This issue with my parents could be a tricky quagmire, and I did not want to drag him back into it.
“Not worried so much as I appreciate my parents and love them, no matter how much they annoy me. They’ve been there for me from the beginning.” I watched his face to see if it would go blank at my admission. But he just smiled at me. He loved them, too, he’d told me when I’d caught him pretending to be a flower delivery guy all those months ago.
“They’ve been there for me, too. It’s hard not to want to please them.”
I shrugged. “It’s also hard to please them sometimes. I got married to get away from this place.” I really meant the two floors below me, where the dead bodies were kept and then displayed for their loved ones to say good-bye.
“And do you still feel that was the right decision?”
I gave that one some serious thought. My marriage had been a disaster from pretty early on, and yet I hadn’t left until it was leave or go down with him. I hadn’t been happy for years. Now I could honestly say I was happy, but was that in spite of having to work at the funeral home part-time? Was I happy because I was back in the arms of my friends and family and with Max? Was I still putting up resistance to the funeral home because I always had? Or did I really hate working there that much?
“Marrying Waldo might not have been the best decision, but I think I had to go through all that to understand where I am now and appreciate it. I can’t deny that I wouldn’t be sitting here with you, that we wouldn’t be talking all this out over delicious beef and broccoli, if the rest hadn’t happened. Even if he were alive, I don’t think I would be able to thank Waldo for being a jerk just yet, but I can look back and see the path that got me here. And I am extremely thankful for it.”
He squeezed my hand. “I’m obviously happy to be where I am with you right now, too. The answers for the rest of it will come later, I’m sure.” And he smiled at me, not one of those beaming smiles that made you feel like you had to go do some rainbow dance or something, not even one that made me feel like he was patronizing me, until I got my stuff together and decided that I had been wrong all along. No, it was one that made me feel that he was here for the journey with me and that whatever I decided would be right.
I couldn’t help myself. I got up, went around the table, and sat on his lap to snuggle into his chest. Of course, Mr. Fleefers did not want to be left out, so he jumped on my lap and proceeded to climb up my chest to get to Max’s shoulders, where he draped himself, with his back paw stuck to my nose. Then Peanut came over and rested her head on my knees.
Max and I looked around at the animals, which were making sure they were noticed, and then back at each other and laughed.
“We might need better chairs,” I said.
“Or maybe more room.”
Maybe. I wanted him up here, but I kept going back to the fact that I’d have to move to Washington, DC. I couldn’t ask Max to move to my tiny town in central Pennsylvania when his work life was based in DC. But I didn’t want to leave my small town. As much as it could be a pain to have everyone know me to the point that I couldn’t get away with anything, as a call would be placed to my mom, and as much as I balked about working at the funeral home, I’d started building a life here, one I really loved, finally, after all these years. I just wasn’t ready to let it go yet.
Although I did wish people would stop killing each other in our area so that I could retire my deerstalker hat.
“We can discuss that later,” I finally said and snuggled back in, removing Mr. Fleefers’s paw from my face. He put it right back, but at least I’d tried. “Right now we need to figure out this murder thing and get to the place where we can point a finger at someone, with evidence to back it up.”
“I thought you were leaving the finger-pointing to Burton.”
“Well, yes, of course, but he’s so busy with everything that if I can help, I’d like to. If you still want to do that.” Oh, I so hoped he was going to say yes, but I wouldn’t press if he didn’t.
“I find it fascinating, to be honest, and a whole lot more interesting than running numbers every day sometimes. I love my job, but recently, it’s been getting to the point where I’m asking for the more in-depth things, because it’s getting old.”
Could Max want to change careers? Oh, that would open up the possibility for him to move up here! But I wasn’t going to press that issue, either. We had all the time in the world, unless you listened to my mother, who had recently started lamenting that my biological clock was ticking so loud it kept her up at night.
I jumped off his lap and got our computers. After placing his in front of him, I grabbed my notepad. “Okay, we need more information on business dealings and current life situations for the family. Background checks are good, but I think we need to know more about them at this moment instead of in the past. I feel like I need a filing cabinet to keep everything together.”
Looking around the tiny apartment, he frowned. “I don’t think you have room for one, unless you’re planning on becoming a private eye.”
I’d had that thought when Matt mentioned Burton wouldn’t be able to shut me out if I was licensed, but I shuddered to consider all the people I’d have to interact with, people with secrets or bad deeds in their past. It was one thing to complain about picking up dirty socks, but sifting through people’s emotional dirty laundry would break something in me if I did it on a permanent basis.
“Nope, no private investigator stuff. I might
be curious and not know what I want to be when I grow up, but I’m pretty sure it’s not that.”
“Still, we need to do more research.”
“Yes, why don’t we take tonight off, and tomorrow you take the computer stuff while I go ask some questions? If I run into Burton and get the lecture about the concerned citizen again, I’ll just tell him I’m asking after people’s well-being. He can’t argue with that.”
After our discussion, we went to bed, but I was up early the next morning. I gathered my purse and my notepad, then headed toward the door.
“Don’t let Burton deter you, unless you’re not going to be safe,” Max said as I exited the apartment. “I’m sure he’ll try.”
“No doubt, but that’s part of the game. I’ll be fine.”
“Just make sure you’re safe.”
“Will do. See you later.”
I had left my laptop on the kitchen table, just in case Max wanted to run two searches at the same time, and then I went looking for the pool of people I usually asked for dirt.
Mama Shirley was the first one who popped into my mind, but I had tapped her already, and she might not have anything new. There was my uncle Sherman, but I wasn’t sure what he might know or if it was worth having to listen to him berate Burton yet again for not doing his job fast enough.
Trotting down the stairs, I listened for sounds of my mom. In two hours I had a funeral to drive for again. Letty and the rest of the crew were already at Mrs. Petrovski’s house and were making good progress, and the mansion wasn’t open for cleaning just yet, so I wasn’t needed for the next two hours.
Perhaps I could go back to the mansion and look for more clues, not that we’d found any yet, but anything was possible.
However, my phone rang before I made it all the way down the stairs. It was Matt. What had we done without phones before now? They were both a curse and a blessing, but lately I felt like my whole life depended on this electronic device in my hand.