“Both,” Libby replied. “And we did promise him.”
“To state the obvious, we promised Dad we wouldn’t chase anyone. We’re not chasing anyone.”
“That’s rather disingenuous, wouldn’t you say?” Libby protested.
“No, Libby. I would say that’s what we call a loophole.”
Libby frowned, annoyed at being one-upped. “You know, Bernie, sometimes you’re too smart for your own good.”
Bernie turned and faced her sister. “Funny, that’s what Mrs. Pimplé said before she sent me to the principal’s office.” Actually, it was one of many times, but she didn’t say that. “But if you had a name like that, wouldn’t you change it? Especially if you were a teacher. All I did was ask her why she hadn’t. After all, you don’t hear Crapper being used as a last name since he invented the flush toilet, do you?”
“There was an actual person named Crapper?”
“Thomas Crapper, to be exact. He was a plumber.”
“Wow,” Libby said. “Who knew?”
“I think he was even knighted or something.”
Libby was about to ask another question about Thomas Crapper, realized her younger sister was trying to divert her, and got back to the matter at hand. “That’s very interesting but what will we say if someone calls the police?” she demanded. “Or if Linda Sinclair comes home early?”
“I told you. We’ll say we came to pick up a pan that we forgot.”
“And if we’re in Peggy Graceson’s house at the time?” Libby asked.
“We’ll say we thought we heard someone and that the door was open so we went in because we were concerned that there was a robbery in progress.”
Libby snorted. “And you’re going to say that with a straight face?”
“Yup. That’s my story and I’m going to stick with it,” Bernie told her. “Say something enough and people will believe you.” Bernie reached out and patted her sister’s arm. “Come on, Libby. Are you coming or staying? The longer we sit here like this, the more suspicious we look.” When Libby didn’t answer right away, Bernie said, “Hey, you can stay in the car if you want. In fact, maybe you should. That way you can warn me if anyone comes home.”
Libby thought it over and shook her head. She was tempted but two people could go through the house faster than one. And then there was the fact that she couldn’t talk her way out of things as well as her sister could. She didn’t have the gift of gab. “That’s okay. I’ll come.”
Bernie shrugged. “Suit yourself. Just remember I made the offer,” she said as she got out of the van and quietly closed the vehicle door behind her.
Libby did the same. “Why are you always so confident everything is going to be okay?” she demanded of her sister as she zipped up her parka once she was outside. The wind had started to pick up, making it seem even colder than it already was.
Bernie grinned and put her hood up. “My natural charm and grace.”
“Really.”
“Okay, then let me ask you something. Why are you always so sure that things won’t work out?” Bernie countered.
“I don’t know why,” Libby answered truthfully. “It’s just the way I am. It’s the way I’ve always been.”
“I could say the same thing,” Bernie replied as she turned and started walking up Linda Sinclair’s driveway. Libby followed.
The sisters were just getting to the end of the driveway when they heard the sound of a truck coming up the street. Bernie stopped and turned. It was a UPS truck. Damn, she thought as it stopped in front of Linda Sinclair’s house. Libby gasped as the driver emerged with a package a moment later.
“Relax,” Bernie told Libby out of the side of her mouth as she watched the driver start up the driveway.
“Hey,” the driver called, catching sight of the two sisters. “I’ve got a package for a Linda Sinclair.”
Bernie faked a smile. “We’re old friends come to surprise her,” Bernie said, trotting down the driveway to meet the driver. That seemed like the safest explanation. She held out her hand. “I can take it for you.”
The UPS man smiled in return and held out his clipboard.
“We just drove in from Buffalo,” Bernie improvised as she scrawled the name Evita Horowitz on the line the driver had indicated and took the package he was holding out to her.
“Snowy up there,” the driver noted.
Bernie laughed. “Tell me about it.”
“Well, have a nice visit,” the driver told Bernie, touching his hand to his hat before he turned and hurried toward his truck.
“And you have a nice day,” Bernie called after him.
The driver waved, indicating he’d heard her, jumped in his vehicle, and drove away, the noise of the truck receding as the driver headed toward his next stop.
“See,” Bernie said to Libby, once she had walked back up the driveway. “I told you. People see what they expect to see.” Then she put the package on the top of the steps leading up to Linda Sinclair’s back porch and proceeded to Peggy Graceson’s house.
Chapter 36
As it turned out, Bernie didn’t have to use her lock picks after all. For which she was extremely grateful. They required a sensitive touch. It was hard enough using them when her fingers were moving like they were supposed to, let alone using them when her fingers were stiff from the cold even with her gloves on. It would have taken her forever to open the door. Instead, she used Peggy Graceson’s spare key, which was where Bernie had hoped it to be—right under the garden gnome by the back door.
Here goes nothing, Bernie had thought as she’d bent down and brushed the snow off the gnome. Then she picked the gnome up and gently shook it. “Good heavens, methinks I hear a clink,” she observed as she straightened up. She looked at the gnome carefully and noticed a thin line separating the gnome’s hat and hair.
“Aha,” she said. “I do believe we’re in business.” She tried lifting the gnome’s brown hat up and when that didn’t work she tried unscrewing the hat, which did work. A couple of twists and Bernie took the hat off and handed it to Libby. Then she removed her glove and thrust her hand into the opening. A moment later, she came out with the key.
“How did you know there’d be a key there?” Libby asked Bernie as she handed the gnome’s hat back to her sister.
“My brilliant powers of deduction,” Bernie replied as she replaced the gnome’s hat and put the gnome back where it had been. “All garden gnomes contain keys. It’s what they were made for.”
Libby raised an eyebrow.
“Well, they are.”
Libby crossed her arms over her chest and snorted. “Try again, Bernie.”
“Okay. I overheard Peggy telling Linda that’s where she’d left the key for the cleaning service. I was just hoping that it was still there,” Bernie said as she climbed the two steps leading to Peggy Graceson’s back door and inserted the key in the lock. She twisted it and the door swung open. “And if the key wasn’t there”—she patted the right-hand pocket of her pea coat—“I brought along my . . .”
“. . . Brandon’s,” Libby corrected.
“Don’t be so literal,” Bernie chided.
“I believe accurate is the word you want.”
“. . . lock picks, just in case. Now that that’s settled, shall we go in?” asked Bernie, bowing and extending her arm.
Libby nodded and the sisters stepped into a small hallway, Libby making sure to close the door after herself. She looked around. Judging by the coats hanging off of hooks on the wall and the shoes neatly arranged on the mat on the floor, this space functioned as a mudroom and it led directly into the kitchen.
Bernie sniffed. The place smelled stuffy, as houses that aren’t occupied even for a short time have a tendency to do. A Styrofoam box half full of congealed Chinese takeout sat on the counter, while a couple of dried-out looking tangerines and a half-finished bottle of Coke Zero sat on the kitchen table next to a stack of five magazines and a small stack of mail.
“I wonder what�
�s going to happen to the house?” Libby said, looking around.
“I imagine it’ll go up for sale once Peggy Graceson’s estate is settled,” Bernie replied as she walked over to the kitchen table and went through the mail. Like the takeout, it was old. The postmarks on the envelopes were dated from a couple of days before the day of Peggy’s death.
Evidently someone had either stopped the mail or was collecting it. Otherwise, the mailbox would have been overflowing by now. To make sure, Bernie walked to the front of the house and peeked out the window on the door. Nope. The mailbox was empty. Which meant she was correct. The mail had been stopped or it was being collected. Probably by Linda Sinclair.
Or maybe Peggy didn’t get a lot of mail. That was a third possibility. A cursory glance showed there was nothing of interest in the mail from Bernie’s point of view. Just bills for Peggy’s car insurance and utilities, and some junk mail, mostly fliers for upcoming sales.
Evidently Peggy shopped at Macy’s, Lord & Taylor, and Kohl’s. But, realistically, what did you expect? A letter that said: Prepare to die? Bernie asked herself as she put the mail back where it had been and looked at the magazines. Two were shelter magazines, while the others dealt with travel. She picked them up and leafed through them one at a time. The shelter magazines looked as if they hadn’t been touched, but the travel magazines were dog-eared and food stained. As Bernie paged through them, she noted that Peggy had dog-eared articles about New Zealand and Australia.
“I wonder if Peggy was thinking about taking a trip to Australia and New Zealand?” Bernie mused while Libby picked up a couple of travel guides that were lying on the kitchen counter and went through them.
“From these guides, I’d say it certainly looks as if she was,” Libby observed, not bothering to glance up.
“I wouldn’t mind going there,” Bernie commented.
“Me neither,” Libby replied. “I just don’t know if I could sit on a plane for twenty-four hours.”
“Twenty-two hours,” Bernie corrected absentmindedly.
“Because at that point two hours is going to make a big difference,” Libby said as she began reading the notes Peggy had scrawled in the margins of the travel guides. The notes dealt with visa and currency regulations, citizenship requirements, names of people to get in touch with who were currently living in New Zealand and Australia and had moved from the States, ways to mail packages abroad, health care, and work requirements for noncitizens.
“It looks as if Peggy was planning on moving there,” Libby observed as she showed Bernie the notes in the margins.
“Interesting,” Bernie commented after she’d read them. “How old do you think Peggy was?”
Libby thought for a minute. She’d never been good at guessing other people’s ages. “I don’t know. Midforties, early fifties maybe. Why?”
“I just didn’t figure her for someone to pick up and move to Australia, that’s all. Especially at her age. Maybe buy a better house in Westchester or a second home in the country, but that’s it. When is the IPO coming out?”
“Soon,” Libby replied. “Like in the next month or two. Obviously, she was planning ahead,” Libby said. “Maybe living in Australia and New Zealand was her childhood dream and now that she was getting some money she could quit her job and move there.”
“I don’t know.” Bernie thought back to her conversation with Peggy Graceson on New Year’s Eve. Nothing about her had suggested a person who wanted to uproot herself and start all over again. At least not without a good reason. “She just didn’t strike me as the adventurous type.”
“Me neither,” Libby agreed, thinking back to that evening as well. “But it looks like we’re wrong. Or she could have just been planning on taking a long vacation.”
“But if that was the case why find out about citizenship requirements?” Bernie asked.
“Curiosity? For a friend?”
“Or because she was afraid something was going to happen to her if she stayed here and she wanted to get as far away as possible from Westchester,” Bernie posited. “And she was right. Something did happen to her. The question is, why did she feel that way?”
“Why indeed,” Libby said as she put the travel guides back where she’d found them. “I didn’t see any sign of anything at New Year’s Eve. Did you, Bernie?”
Bernie shook her head. “No. She didn’t seem nervous.”
“Maybe she thought she’d taken care of the problem,” Libby suggested. “She had to have thought that, because if she was scared, why didn’t she leave sooner? Unless she was waiting till after the IPO offering before heading out.”
“Wire transfers work all over the world.”
“Maybe there was some sort of agreement in place saying she had to be here to collect her share of the money,” Libby speculated. “Or we could just be reading things into this, making it more complicated than it is.”
“Considering someone poisoned her, I don’t think that’s the case,” Bernie observed as Libby turned and studied the refrigerator.
The door was covered with magnets, most of which held up a variety of reminders, business cards, and ads. According to the reminders, Peggy was supposed to have had a manicure in the coming week, and a hair appointment for a trim and color tomorrow. For some reason, the thought made Libby feel sad. Then Libby’s eyes fastened on a torn piece of paper with some writing on it. She took the note off the refrigerator and read it. Then she read it again and tapped her sister on the shoulder.
“It looks as if our Peggy was in love,” she said, handing the note to her.
“This is a flight confirmation number,” Bernie said after she read it. “She was going to Sydney from JFK.”
“I can read,” Libby said, as she pointed to the writing on top. Peggy had written “Peggy and Red” and drawn a heart around them with an arrow next to it. “She was going with someone,” Libby surmised.
“I used to do that when I was in high school,” Bernie reminisced.
“Or, she was meeting someone in Sydney.”
“Also a possibility,” Bernie said. “In either case, I’d say it’s fair to state she definitely had a thing going with Red.”
“Whoever that is,” Libby said.
“Who indeed,” Bernie said as she carefully folded up the piece of paper, and tucked it in her jean’s pocket. Then she opened the refrigerator door. The only thing in it was a six-pack of soda, a container of orange juice, and half a loaf of raisin cinnamon bread.
“I wonder what she planned to do with the house?” Libby asked Bernie as she turned toward the cabinets and began to open doors and pull out the drawers. Except for a few dishes and plates and a couple of boxes of cereal and tins of tuna fish, they were empty. “Maybe Peggy was like your friend Penelope,” Libby suggested.
“Perhaps,” Bernie said, remembering.
Penelope was a friend of hers who had lived on the West Side in New York City in a small one-bedroom apartment and stored her sweaters in her oven and had her coffee delivered from the diner down the street. The only eating-related things Penelope had had in her kitchen were a set of silverware, five mismatched plates, four mugs, and a single small saucepan, just in case, as Penelope liked to say.
“Or she could have been moving,” Libby said.
“You wouldn’t ship your kitchen stuff to Australia,” Bernie objected. “Too expensive . . .”
“Or she could have been getting ready to put her house on the market,” Libby countered.
“Makes sense,” Bernie agreed. “Or she could have been getting her kitchen remodeled.” She nibbled on her lower lip while she thought. “Linda Sinclair would have known,” she declared a moment later.
“Known what?” Libby asked, turning toward her sister.
“That something was happening. Linda Sinclair’s house is practically on top of Peggy’s. She would have seen Peggy dragging in packing cartons. She would have seen stuff in her trash can.”
“So?” Libby asked.
“So she would have figured something was up,” Bernie said, playing out the scenario in her mind.
“Or Peggy could have told them she was getting the kitchen painted,” Libby replied. “Or remodeled.”
“And what if Linda didn’t believe her? What if Linda thought she was heading out of town?”
“You’re saying that Linda killed Peggy?”
“Possibly. Or Linda could have told people at work.”
Libby raised an eyebrow. “And her murderer—whoever that is—decided to kill Peggy before she left?”
“In a word, yes.”
“Why?” Libby asked.
“Maybe whoever killed her wanted to stop Peggy from doing something,” Bernie hypothesized. “Maybe she had threatened them or maybe they found out she was going to do something to stop the IPO.”
“Why would she?” Libby asked. “Then she’d be out the money, too.”
Bernie brushed a lock of her hair off her face. “This is true.”
“And what about Henry?” Libby added.
“Let’s concentrate on Peggy for the time being,” Bernie suggested. “We have enough stuff to sort out as it is.”
“Agreed,” Libby said as she stood there trying to put herself in Peggy Graceson’s shoes. “Did she know she was in danger or didn’t she? If she did, why didn’t she throw some clothes in a suitcase and get out of town?”
“Obviously, because she was waiting to go to Australia,” Bernie said. “Love will get you every time.”
“You should know.”
“Ha. Ha.”
Libby looked at her watch. “We should speed things up.”
“Yeah. It’s getting close to the witching hour,” Bernie agreed and they headed upstairs. “Maybe we can find out who Peggy’s secret admirer was.”
But they didn’t. There was nothing on the second floor that told the sisters anything they didn’t already know. The three upstairs bedrooms were painted a pale blue. All of them had white lace curtains and area rugs in different shades of blue. The two guest bedrooms had twin beds. The first one also had a sewing machine, a large work table piled high with scraps of fabric, and a half-finished quilt lying across the bed, while the second bedroom contained a treadmill, a set of weights, and a TV. Peggy Graceson’s bedroom was furnished with a double bed; a dresser, which was piled high with Peggy Graceson’s clothes; a wooden rocking chair, also piled with more clothes; and an empty closet.
A Catered New Year's Eve Page 23