by Sandra Balzo
‘Why did you tell Dad?’ I asked, trying not to sound whiny. Or petty. Or immature. It was a tough bill to fill, since I was all three.
‘Before you, you mean?’
I’d heard there comes a time when the child becomes the parent, and the parent becomes the child. I just didn’t know it was going to be so soon. ‘OK, yes. Before me.’
Eric shrugged. ‘Stupid, I guess.’
‘I guess.’ The two of us laughed and stood up. ‘Should we go back to Goddard’s?’
Eric pointed to the newspapers on the reception desk. ‘Should we take those for the fire?’
Since Way was dead, and I’d never seen a receptionist occupying the desk, I doubted anyone would miss the papers.
‘Why not?’ I said, gesturing to Eric to grab the top half of the stack.
As Eric complied, I eyed the desk.
‘Don’t get any ideas,’ he warned, sliding the papers under his arm. ‘We’d need an axe to chop it apart.’
I sincerely hoped there wasn’t an axe around. A meat cleaver was bad enough.
I went to pick up the rest of the newspapers and stopped.
‘What?’ Eric asked, already at the door.
I was still looking at the desk. ‘This drawer,’ I said. ‘It looks broken.’
‘So what?’ Relieved of the burden of his secret, Eric seemed his old self again. ‘You figure it will burn?’
I shook my head, and pointed to the splintered wood poking out of the top of the drawer. ‘It looks like somebody forced the lock.’
‘You think someone broke in?’
I slid out the drawer. ‘If they did, they took anything worthwhile. Nothing but an old phonebook left.’
Eric was looking around. ‘Mr Benson’s desk drawers are open, too. And the file cabinet.’
He was right. While a couple of the drawers were closed tight, one had papers hanging out. The remainder were open an inch or two. Just the top drawer, the only one with a key lock, had been forced.
By whom?
Naomi Verdeaux had been in Way’s office earlier to ‘use the bathroom’. Had she been looking for something? And if so, what?
And, perhaps most importantly, had she found it?
Chapter 18
When we re-entered Goddard’s, things were much as they had been. Mostly cold and mostly dark, with puddles of neon colors from lanterns hung here and there. The thunder was still sounding overhead and the snow was still coming down outside the window.
Even as things change, they stay the same.
My son is gay.
The reaction I’d had when he told me was genuine. But another feeling was starting to creep in, too. Guilt. How long had he been carrying around this secret, worried that the people he loved most would stop loving him because of it? And why didn’t I sense his fear? Why couldn’t I have helped him?
‘Help me stoke the fire,’ Eric said, with the enthusiasm for fire-making of every guy I’ve ever met.
‘You got it,’ I said, following him over to the wood stove with my stack of newspapers. Mrs G, Sarah and Oliver were still asleep on the lounge chairs.
I opened the door of the stove and Eric started crumpling individual sheets of newspaper. Then he rolled maybe six pages worth into a baton, bent the result in half and tied it into a tight knot at the center.
‘Why are you doing that?’
‘The sheets alone burn too fast, Mom, and just stuffing whole paper in the stove won’t let them burn at all. This way -’ he pointed to the flared corners at either end - ‘the edges catch like kindling and the knot acts like a little log, or maybe a brick of charcoal.’
‘Great.’ I was amazed, both at the process and the fact that Eric, a child of the backyard gas grill era, knew what charcoal was. ‘Where did you learn all this?’
‘Boy Scouts.’
‘Of course,’ I said, remembering. ‘You got a merit badge for camping, didn’t you? I found a whole bunch of those patches in the kitchen drawer the other day.’
Eric looked at me. ‘You know you were supposed to sew them on to my Boy Scout tunic, right?’
‘Sew?’
‘Whatssup?’ Sarah’s voice interrupted from under her coveted tablecloth.
‘We’re just stoking the fire,’ I said, happy to have Eric diverted. If God wanted merit badges on shirts, he would have made them iron-on.
‘You find Eric?’ my friend asked, groggily. ‘He OK?’
‘He’s great,’ I assured her, as Eric poked the fire with a yardstick. ‘Go back to sleep.’
‘Okey-dokeeey.’ The last syllable morphed into a snorty snore.
‘Sarah can sleep anywhere,’ Eric observed.
‘You should talk. Remember that photo of you when we came back from the fair? You couldn’t have been more than four. You were so exhausted that you fell asleep with your legs in the hallway and your head, one step down in the living room.
‘Like Frank sleeps now.’ Eric grinned.
‘But not as furry.’ I touched my son’s arm. ‘I think you should try to get some sleep.’
‘I think I want to tend the stove for awhile,’ he said. ‘You try, though.’
I agreed and, leaving him playing happily with fire, returned to the party aisle to scavenge.
As I feared, all the really good stuff was gone. Picking through the party favors, I came up with a flashlight that looked like a miniature rip-off of the Star Wars light saber (2 for $4.99) and Sponge Bob tablecloths ($7.69 each), but only paper, no flannel lining.
Which wouldn’t be such a big deal if somebody hadn’t appropriated my Milwaukee beach towel.
Sponge Bob would have to do. I thought about getting Eric one, too, but since it was paper, I figured he’d just burn it anyway.
I shook out the tablecloth and Sponge Bob stared back at me. I looked around for a quiet place for us to settle down and think.
And where better than the aisle I was in? Stripped of everything anybody could want, and it had only one way in and out. I sat down on the linoleum floor at the end of the aisle, my back against the stationery display. I’d be facing toward anybody approaching and I could keep an eye on Eric beyond the end of the aisle at the wood stove.
When Way was killed, I was content to keep a low profile. I didn’t even want to think about who had taken his life, because...well, frankly, I didn’t really care much. Besides, the murderer was likely somebody I did like, and I didn’t want to be in the position of pointing fingers.
Again.
But then I’d been attacked in the hallway and now Aurora was dead, too, leaving me with two more questions: who was the Bensons' killer, and why?
The most tempting suspect would be a stranger - the man in the hallway. But it didn’t feel right to me. Why would he kill Way and Aurora in separate locations and by different methods, but spare me?
Yes, maybe Frank had saved me, but now that I’d had some relatively stress-free time to think about it, it seemed that Luc was right. The guy had just been trying to get away, making me more of a hindrance than a target.
But get away from what?
If my attacker was also Way’s killer, why would he hang around outside in the snow, lying in wait to ambush Aurora hours later? It couldn’t be a coincidence. Way and Aurora were ex-spouses and business partners. I didn’t think this was just some madman, killing people in an unexpected storm. It didn’t make sense.
On the other hand, what if all this violence was directly related to Benson Plaza? After all, both victims had been Bensons, leaving only one member of the family alive.
Did that put Oliver Benson in danger, too?
I looked down the aisle to where the poor kid was sleeping, safe for now. Eric was still sitting cross-legged on the floor, watching the fire, and Frank, who had been nosing around the store most of the night, had settled in next to him.
Eric was nineteen. An adult, legally. Oliver was two years younger and now alone.
Who would Oliver tell if he were gay? Or had just a
ced a test, or gotten a new job?
I tried to stop the thought fragments spinning through my head like lemons in an old slot machine.
All right. Assuming it was an inside job, Naomi Verdeaux was my top choice as suspect. First of all, I didn’t like her. Secondly, she’d been in Way’s office and had been uncooperative when I’d asked her for the key to its door.
Verdeaux also hadn’t mentioned the break-in to me or anyone else, so far as I knew. It was possible she hadn’t noticed if, indeed, the woman had gone in there only to use the bathroom. After all, Eric and I been in the office for quite awhile before we noticed the disarray.
As for motive, Aurora had threatened to back out of the Gross National Produce project. That certainly would have ticked Verdeaux off. So maybe she decided to search the office, looking for documents that would tell her just how far Aurora had gone to stymie the plans.
Then, finding none, Verdeaux had killed Aurora before the surviving co-owner of Benson Plaza could do anything official to prevent Gross National Produce from moving in.
Or, Verdeaux found what she was looking for, destroyed whatever it was - maybe even in the wood stove - and then killed Aurora so no one would be the wiser.
But even if Naomi Verdeaux had killed Aurora, why kill Way?
I thought about that.
Despite her denial, maybe Verdeaux had discovered that Way was back with Aurora and wasn’t as nonchalant about the relationship as she pretended. She might not be sentimental, but Verdeaux sure as hell was competitive. If she believed she had been betrayed both personally and professionally, was she capable of murder?
Perhaps, but I didn’t see her as a woman who would sacrifice business for pleasure. And from a purely financial point of view, killing Way and Aurora would accomplish less than nothing. It could only mean that Oliver would inherit and likely keep the mall as-is.
Unless Naomi Verdeaux planned on romancing the seventeen-year-old to get what she wanted, as she had his father.
I shivered at the thought. Hell, I didn’t know what I was thinking half the time, how could I know what was in other people’s heads? Especially one crazy enough to commit murder?
Motive getting me nowhere, I turned to opportunity. Two murders, plenty of people around. If I could figure out where everyone was when each crime was committed, I might find that one of us was nearby - but not accounted for - when both Way and Aurora were killed.
Pushing Sponge Bob aside, I stood up and commandeered a fifty-pack of ‘Hi! My name is...’ name badges and a Hannah Montana pen. I didn’t check the prices first. This was, after all, an emergency.
Settling back down, I wrote the name of each of my snowbound mall-mates on a separate badge and aligned them in a column along the left side of the aisle. Next to each, I placed two more name badges, one with that person's whereabouts at the time of Way's death, and the other, Aurora's.
Two packs of badges later, I finished and sat back to survey my improvised spreadsheet - thirty rows of possible suspects deep, by three columns wide and running the length of the greeting card aisle, from the ‘Happy Easter’ close-outs to the timeless ‘Congratulations on your Batmizvah’.
I reviewed the array for maybe a count of ten before cuffing myself in the head and adding ‘Mystery Guy’ to the bottom. Tempting as it might be to put him at the top of my list of suspects, my mysterious assailant's identity and whereabouts - not to mention possible motives - were nothing but Hannah Montana-penned question marks at this point. And I just didn't have the necessary information to change that.
So I turned to what I did know.
For example, I could rule out Caron - and not just because she was my friend. God knows that hadn’t stopped me from putting her on different suspect lists before. Fact was, though, we’d been together for both murders. First, when the snow-blower was stopped, apparently by Way's head, and later, when Aurora was killed. That was good enough for me.
Aurora, herself, was next on the chart and also in the clear. For all the good it did her.
Bernie Egan couldn’t be involved, either. He’d snow-shoed in and, with Eric, unwittingly passed right by Aurora’s body.
And, no, I hadn’t put Eric on my list and didn't intend to. So sue me.
Next up, Naomi Verdeaux: she'd excused herself to wash her hands just after Aurora had gone out.
‘I was in the bathroom.’ Yeah, like we hadn’t heard that excuse before.
So, had Verdeaux gone to Way’s office looking for something? And then, as a result of what she’d found - or hadn’t found - set out after Aurora?
That brought up the question of murder weapon. Whoever had killed Aurora likely took something along that was deadly enough to cause the blow. Finding it outside, considering the two feet of snow on the ground, would be awfully tough.
Moving further down my array of cards, I saw that there were question marks next to Luc and Tien’s names, too. I had no idea where they were when Way died. Tien, at least, had been in Goddard’s the entire time Aurora was gone so she had an alibi for that murder. Luc, though, had returned to An’s to get more fixings for the old-fashioneds. Or so he said.
Then there was Oliver.
I had to be honest. In addition to being a potential victim, he also had to be considered a suspect. With his parents dead, Oliver presumably would inherit the mall and everything else that Aurora and Way had.
I didn’t know where Oliver was when his father was killed, but I needed to find out. As for Aurora’s murder, Mrs G had said Oliver was making egg salad sandwiches and I had no reason to doubt her.
Except...
If Oliver and Mrs G were in it together, all bets were off. They could be lying for each other or, alternatively, one of them could have killed Way and the other Aurora.
Geez, I was suspecting kids and old ladies. What next?
Using the card display to pull myself up, I paused to wait for my right foot, gone to sleep from being tucked under me, to get feeling back. As I did, I scanned the area by the wood stove.
Eric was asleep - slumped forward, his head and arms draped over Frank, now sprawled across my son’s lap. It looked awfully uncomfortable. I hobbled down the aisle toward them, wanting to rearrange the pair so Eric wouldn’t get a crick in his neck. Like my nearly twenty-year-old was still a toddler, sleeping awkwardly in a car seat or a stroller.
However, knowing from past experience that both Eric and Frank would growl at me if I woke them up, I fought the impulse. Besides, other than the under-inflated beach balls, Frank was probably the best pillow in the place.
Mrs G and Sarah were still asleep in their lawn chairs, but when I turned to Oliver’s, it contained Caron, face up and snoring. I hadn’t seen Oliver leave or Caron arrive. Some sentry I was. I’d been so busy thinking about Oliver killing or being killed that I’d completely ignored him.
Even as I had the thought, though, I heard the hall door open. Oliver entered, carrying a book. As I watched, he slid it into the back of the book rack and picked up a magazine, flicking a cigarette lighter to try to read by its wavering light.
I went over and handed him my light-saber flashlight.
‘Stir Wars?’ he said, reading the side of it.
‘It’s a flashlight.’
He flicked the ‘on’ switch. ‘It’s a lighted swizzle stick.’
Oh.
‘Well, it beats burning the place down with a cigarette lighter anyway,’ I pointed out irritably. ‘Use the swizzle stick.’
‘You’re not my mother,’ Oliver protested, and then looked wounded.
‘I’m sorry about your mom,’ I said gently.
‘Thanks.’ He started to say something else but apparently thought better of it. He replaced the magazine on the rack, but backwards, with the rear cover facing out.
‘Listen, Oliver. Since your mom and dad were...’ I stopped, not knowing how much Oliver had been told by Sarah and the rest of the group while Luc, Rudy and I had been occupied moving the bodies.
&
nbsp; ‘Murdered?’ Oliver turned his attention back to me.
I cleared my throat. ‘Yes. Since they were murdered, we all need to be careful. Not go off by ourselves.’
He turned red. ‘I was just in the bathroom.’
Consistent with carrying the book as toilet reading. ‘I know. Just be careful, OK? Someone here...’
I let it hang to see what his response would be. If Oliver inherited the strip mall, Mrs G could keep her business - and her home. And Oliver would keep the only place he’d called home as well.
‘...is a killer,’ Oliver finished, like he was accessing my thoughts. ‘You think it was me?’ He tossed down the Stir Wars light and pulled his lighter back out, along with a pack of cigarettes. Tapping one out, he lighted it.
I pulled the cigarette out of his hands and stomped on it. ‘No smoking.’
He went to take out another and I grabbed the pack and stomped on that, too. ‘No smoking.’
He looked like I’d taken his ice cream cone away. ‘Jesus, Maggy. My parents are dead, can’t you cut me some slack?’
‘You don’t smoke, Oliver. You never smoked. And Mrs G would kill you if she saw you.’
‘True.’ He glanced uneasily toward the wood stove.
‘So where were you when your father was looking for you to snow-blow?’
‘Subtle.’ He said it sarcastically, but answered anyway. ‘I was here, helping Mrs G.’
Different time, but pretty much the same alibi. Sans sandwiches.
‘I assume when your father couldn’t find you, he started to clear the snow himself.’
‘He must have.’ Mrs G’s voice came from behind me. Oliver surreptitiously flicked out his foot, sending the crushed pack of cigarettes skidding under the edge of the counter.
‘I heard the snow-blower,’ Mrs G continued. ‘It started up just before I left for Uncommon Grounds. You were washing the parsley, remember Oliver?’
Hmmm. The parsley defense. Not that it mattered. The important time was not when the John Deere was started up, but when it stopped.