by E J Cochrane
“They would love that,” Esther raved. “Are you sure you don’t mind coming up?”
“Not at all,” Maddie said, falling into step behind the adorably trusting Mrs. Snodgrass.
Chapter Sixteen
Maddie’s first impression of Esther’s home was that it was in dire need of a renovation. The space, not much more than a studio, was crammed with ornate (some might say tacky) décor, including several vases of varying sizes and matching lamps on either side of a tufted, floral-print couch that had been hermetically sealed in clear plastic to preserve (Maddie assumed) its elegance. The lamps’ output barely put a dent in the gloom created by heavy maroon drapes covering the windows. Nevertheless, Maddie’s vision snagged on the golden silk tassels dangling from the valance of each window as well as from the lampshades. An imposing, intricately-carved coffee table (burdened by a wealth of doilies strewn across its dark surface) occupied the middle of the blue shag carpet. And though she had never felt claustrophobic before, Esther’s wallpaper—a cream background obscured by a profusion of peonies—gave Maddie the sense the room was closing in on her. The whole experience was like stepping inside a miniature time capsule.
Stockpiling static electricity as she shuffled toward her avocado green kitchen, Esther cooed lovingly at two tiny, yapping balls of ruddy fluff. Needing to focus on something other than her garish yet mesmerizing interior design choices, Maddie squatted to greet the perpetually barking Thelma and Louise. The dogs yipped and spun furiously as she doted on them. She didn’t know what kind of dogs they were, but if she had to guess, she would say someone had managed to breed Persian cats with Pomeranians.
“Would you care for some tea, dear?” Esther’s reedy voice barely reached Maddie over the noise of the dogs and Esther’s flat-screen television, the one concession to modernity she appeared to have made.
“You don’t need to go to any trouble for me, Mrs. Snodgrass.”
“It’s no trouble at all.” The sharp whistle of a teakettle added to the commotion of her tiny home. “The water was still warm from my visit with Mr. Fitzwilliam.”
“Does Mr. Fitzwilliam stop by often?” she asked, relishing the minor revenge of calling him “mister” even though he wasn’t around to hear it. “Is he a friend of yours?”
“Heavens no, Matilda. He’s a policeman. A detective,” she announced proudly, like she was in some way responsible for his career path.
“A detective?” She feigned astonishment. “I hope you aren’t in trouble.”
“Not me. My neighbors. I probably shouldn’t say anything.” She lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “He’s investigating a murder.”
Maddie supplied the appropriate surprised gasp (hopeful that it would spur Esther on to sharing more confidences). Her counterfeit alarm soon turned genuine as she watched Esther totter into the room carrying a silver tray laden with an ostentatious tea set and two slabs of coffee cake on delicate filigree plates, all of it atop the requisite bed of doilies. Esther executed a complicated dance around the attention-seeking Thelma and Louise, and Maddie (alternating between awe and concern) wondered if Esther would respond to an offer of help with the same independent irritation as Granny Doyle.
Unaware she’d been holding her breath, she exhaled once Esther’s cargo had landed safely on the coffee table, and the threat of disaster had passed.
“Both of my next-door neighbors have died in the last month,” Esther continued her illicit tale. “Under suspicious circumstances.” They sat on the grandiose sofa at the same time, producing a thunderous crackling from the plastic cover.
“How awful that must have been for you.” Maddie worried she was overdoing it a little, but Esther didn’t seem to notice.
“I don’t like to think there’s a killer on the loose, but Mr. Fitzwilliam will catch whoever is responsible. He’s very smart.” Esther scooted one of the plates in her direction. “I made it myself,” she informed a smiling Maddie.
She took a bite of the coffee cake and instantly regretted it. Forcing herself to swallow the glob of sawdust (guessing by the texture), she attempted to wash the overwhelming taste of salt from her mouth with a swig of weak, scalding tea. No wonder Fitzwilliam had seemed so disappointed at receiving the gift of Esther’s baked goods.
She spoke once she’d recovered from the assault on her taste buds. “What a tragedy to lose friends so abruptly.”
“Oh, they weren’t my friends, dear.”
“No?”
“I’m afraid we didn’t get along very well.”
“Why is that?” She shifted in her seat, yielding another clamorous report from beneath her. She hated to consider the horrors of visiting Esther on a sweltering summer day.
“It wasn’t because they were lesbians, if that’s what you think.”
Maddie choked on her second sip of tea and gave up hope of ever ridding her burned mouth of the lingering taste of Esther’s confectionary offerings. “Of course not.”
“Because I have no problem with you gays.”
Never sure how to greet such proclamations, she offered a tentative, “Thank you,” and wondered briefly what about her had set off Esther’s surprising gaydar.
“It’s just that they weren’t very nice people.”
“In what way?”
“I baked them cupcakes when they first moved in, and they never thanked me or returned the favor.” For which Maddie thought Esther should be eternally grateful.
“Was there anything else?”
“My goodness, yes. Visitors coming and going at all hours. Their children were unruly and disrespectful. No wonder, considering their role models. They had drunken arguments, even with that nice man Ray. He was Lindsey’s ex-husband, and he wanted to raise the children himself, give them some discipline.”
“For people you didn’t get along with, you know a lot about them.”
“Thin walls, dear.” She gestured over her shoulder at what must have been the adjoining wall to Lindsey and Terry’s home. “And they had the nerve to complain about Thelma and Louise barking. I know they get a little excited every now and then, but they aren’t maniacs like those awful women said in their complaint.”
“They filed a complaint?”
“They were trying to get us kicked out.” Her voice rose in her indignation. “I’ve lived here for forty years. Where would I go?”
Maddie clucked her tongue in sympathy but didn’t dare suggest the sacrilege of choosing any of the thousands of other available living spaces in the city.
“But then they died and the problems all went away. Mind you, I’m not happy that my next-door neighbors were killed, but it did work out for me and the girls.” She shrugged and sipped her tea, apparently oblivious to the fact that she’d just revealed a motive for killing her neighbor. Though Maddie found her blasé attitude about murder somewhat troubling, her other comment deserved more attention in the moment.
“They were both killed?”
“Not exactly,” Esther admitted. “Lindsey took her own life, but I wonder…”
Maddie waited half an eon for her to finish her statement but then gave up hope that she would ever pick up where she left off. “What do you wonder, Mrs. Snodgrass?”
“I heard Lindsey talking with someone just before she died, and I do wonder if that person maybe said something that sent Lindsey over the edge.”
Maddie cringed at the unfortunate pun. “Who was it? Do you know?”
Though there wasn’t automatically a connection between Lindsey’s final conversation and Terry’s death, Maddie hoped this bit of gossip would at least give her a lead to follow—something other than Terry’s obituary. She swore she would choke down an entire cake of Esther’s making if she helped her prove Leigh’s innocence.
“Oh no, dear. It was time for my walk with the girls, so I left. When we came back, the police were here, and I guess Lindsey was dead.” Maddie slumped in her seat.
“So you have no idea who it might have been?�
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“It could have been anyone, I suppose. Ray or Deborah or maybe one of those other women who came over all the time.”
“Who is Deborah?”
“One of our door people. She flirted with Lindsey regularly, right in front of Terry even. Terry didn’t care for that of course, but Deborah kept on flirting, and Lindsey ate it up. Not a nice girl.” Esther sipped her tea again and then paused, her cup halfway to the table, “Pardon my asking, dear, but why are you so interested in all of this?”
Maddie took that as her cue to leave. “Well, it’s a fascinating story, don’t you think? And I was enjoying your company so much, Mrs. Snodgrass. I rarely get to sit and chat with people, but it looks like Jeopardy! is starting.” She rose noisily and pointed to the television. “I should leave you to enjoy it. Thank you so much for the tea and the coffee cake. It was incredible.”
“But Matilda, we never discussed what it was you wanted to talk about.”
“Another time, maybe.” She made her way to the door, Thelma and Louise a barking, whirling dervish in her wake.
“I’d like that very much, dear. Come by any time.”
“I really hope that’s not necessary, for so many reasons,” she said to the empty hallway before hurrying to her next appointment.
An hour into her scheduled thirty-minute visit with Stanley and Herbie, Maddie realized she would never make it back to the office in time to collect keys from her walkers and close up shop. Given the choice between upsetting the cats in her care and relying on her second-in-command, she opted for asking Patrick to tend to the end of day business in her absence, a request he met with a typically enthusiastic, “Will do, boss!”
Though Officer Murphy had requested (and paid for) significantly less of Maddie’s time, she didn’t mind the delay. The reason for her extended stay—a rare display of affection from Stanley, who (according to Murphy) had perfected the art of feline detachment—made it almost impossible to leave. If the large cat sprawled across her lap drooling and purring wasn’t enough to inspire her to tarry, the unexpected thunderstorm and her total lack of preparedness for it made lingering in Murphy’s home an irresistible option.
Having tended to her fair share of misanthropic cats, she was stunned when, halfway through their appointment, Stanley came out of hiding, hopped up on the couch where she sat playing with Herbie’s feather toy and settled on her lap. Certain this was a case of mistaken identity, she cautiously touched the top of Stanley’s head. Instead of swatting her hand away, hissing or finding some other way to make her pay for his error, Stanley immediately began purring and drooling. He even grabbed her hand when she attempted to stop petting him. How could she do anything but sit there, stroking Stanley with one hand while entertaining Herbie with the other? Eventually Herbie, tired of killing feathers on a stick, joined his big brother on her lap, and they refused to move for close to an hour. With little to occupy her mind as two cats slumbered on top of her, she soon replayed her interview with Esther Snodgrass.
It seemed somehow wrong to suspect an elderly woman of murder, like thinking that Granny Doyle could ever be guilty of more than being occasionally pushy or cranky. But Esther certainly had motive. Considering the nature of the crime, it wouldn’t be difficult for her to pull it off. True, she was a terrible baker, but it was possible she had feigned incompetence just to throw the police off (though that didn’t explain why she’d forced Maddie to choke down her arid brick of salt masquerading as dessert). As evidenced by Maddie’s current train of thought, it wasn’t much of a red herring. Beyond that, the brownies that killed Terry didn’t have to taste good. They just had to be deadly. She didn’t know how Esther would have gotten Leigh’s recipe or why she would have reason to know about Terry’s peanut allergy. However, given her talents at eavesdropping, neither was impossible.
More intriguing was Esther’s claim that Lindsey hadn’t been alone when she killed herself. Assuming an old woman’s ability to hear through walls and above the cacophony of her television and the steady output of Thelma and Louise could be relied upon, that meant someone was with Lindsey when she died, which meant maybe it wasn’t Lindsey who had taken her life. If that was the case, Maddie wondered how likely it was that two members of the same household were murdered by different people in a two-week span of time. It seemed highly doubtful, which most likely meant that whoever killed Terry also killed Lindsey, a questionable conclusion that didn’t look good for Leigh. Though she believed Leigh would never kill anyone, especially not the woman she loved, and there was no doubt in Maddie’s mind that Leigh, inexplicably, still loved Lindsey, she doubted that Detective Fitzwilliam would share the same certainty about her friend.
Since he may have already arrived at the same startling conclusion thanks to his earlier chat with Esther, Maddie needed to work fast.
Chapter Seventeen
No way could Maddie out-detect a veteran of police work like Fitzwilliam (as he loved to remind her), especially considering his sizable head start, but for Leigh’s sake she had to do something. For that she needed a plan, which meant she needed clarity, more than she could gain from sitting in a near stranger’s house, petting her cats and continuously reviewing the events of her afternoon. Having already successfully extracted her phone from her pocket without disturbing either dozing feline, she reached out to one of the least likely sources of clarity available to her.
“I’m not sure I thanked you for your help last night.” Although she hadn’t known if she’d get Dottie rather than voice mail or the ever-attentive Carlisle, Maddie had decided that, no matter what, supplication would be her best opening.
“And you never did buy me a drink. Are you calling now to atone for your gross abuse of my good nature or to make more empty promises?”
“It’s not my fault your surprise guest bewitched the bartender into uselessness.”
“Don’t remind me of that fiasco, peaches. Carlisle has been bordering on chipper all day. It’s disturbing. I can’t believe you did this to me.”
Dottie’s long-suffering sigh penetrated the air for several seconds, but rather than pointing out, again, her sole responsibility for introducing Carlisle to Kittens, Maddie attempted to get the conversation back on track. “Well, I appreciate your help, and I promise to make the drink up to you.”
“Please tell me you managed to ferret out some information, or better yet, that you solved the crime. I couldn’t bear it if my great sacrifice proved unprofitable.”
“The only thing I ferreted out was extreme frustration. I left the bar with more questions than answers, I’m afraid.” Though she supposed she had, in a roundabout way, netted some information from their excursion. It was through Harriet’s chance encounter with Nadia and her subsequent conversations with Granny and Nadia that she ended up in Esther Snodgrass’s florid living room, so in a sense, the evening hadn’t been a complete waste of time and energy. Still, it hadn’t gotten her nearly as far as she hoped it would.
“If need be, I suppose I could be persuaded to return to that charming neighborhood oasis in our continued search for the truth. I told some of the girls to keep an eye out for me,” a pronouncement no doubt influenced by the generosity of Dottie’s new friends. “Do you think any of them can afford a trophy wife?”
“I think that’s an avenue best left unexplored.” She hated to think of the possible damage caused by Dottie dabbling in lesbianism.
“Which makes it all the more appealing to me. What time should I meet you there?”
“I’ll have to pass on bar-based truth seeking tonight,” she answered, a jolt of nerves surging through her as she considered how much she would rather accompany Dottie to a lesbian bar in search of a murderer than expose Nadia to Granny Doyle in the infancy of their relationship. Undoubtedly, she’d need a drink before the night ended, possibly before it even began.
“A murderer is on the loose, pet. What do you have going on this evening that’s more pressing than the hunt for clues? A little physica
l therapy with the love doctor, perhaps?”
“That’s highly doubtful,” she muttered before filling Dottie in on Granny’s expert finagling of a meeting with Nadia. “I may never have sex again.”
“I could come along and run interference for you.”
She imagined that would go about as well as using butane to douse an inferno. “Thanks, but I think I’ll just risk letting Granny run Nadia off with a well-intentioned interrogation and some aggressive doting.”
“Fine,” Dottie sighed again. “But I expect a full report.”
“Of course,” she said, though she had no intention of reliving whatever interpersonal horrors awaited her at Granny’s. It would be quicker to agree and move on than to argue with Dottie. “Anyway, after last night I’m rethinking my whole approach to helping Leigh.” As surprisingly enjoyable as Pi and Kittens were, both of her bar expeditions had thus far bordered on counterproductive. Her only other lead at this point was the phone book of Terry’s obituary. She’d rather elope with a serial killer than return to that never-ending list of names.
“What’s the new plan?”
“Instead of hunting for the real killer, I’m going to try to prove that a suicide wasn’t really a suicide.”
“So now you’re inventing crimes.”
“I’m not inventing anything.” At least not on her own, but she might too readily be spinning the hearsay of an old woman into solid evidence.
“What on earth makes you think that a suicide is anything other than self-slaughter?”
“A possibly murderous little old bird told me.” Herbie’s little head popped up at the sound of the word “bird,” and he ambled off to the window, possibly in hopes that her utterance could conjure up some enticing prey for his amusement. Stanley barely flinched.
“Intriguing and appalling at the same time. How do you plan to uncover this ultra-devious angel of death?”