by J. C. Eaton
I yelled back, “Okay. Catch you later. Have fun!” and then turned my eyes back to the Maricopa County police report.
There was absolutely nothing suspicious about Marilyn Scutt’s tragic death. She had just moved into the far left-hand lane of RH Johnson Boulevard in her golf cart when she was struck head-on by a car that was perpendicular in the intersection. The driver failed to see the median and instead of turning left into his left-hand lane, he turned into her lane. Apparently, the eighty-one-year-old man was from out of state and not familiar with the area. Or familiar with reading signs, for that matter. No alcohol. No drugs. No texting while driving. No book curse. Simple confusion. Simple confusion that resulted in death.
Of course, my mother and her friends would say the man’s confusion was caused by the curse and not the fact he should have given up his license years ago. There was no sense pursuing this particular death as far as I was concerned. I had enough on my plate with my suspicions about what was in Minnie Bendelson’s salad. Not to mention what I’d seen at the pool and in Edna Mae Langford’s driveway.
I felt as if I were up to my nose in clues and up to my ankles in mud. Mom had already returned from the nail salon by early afternoon. Burnt sienna. At this point, I was getting restless. The only exercise I’d had was moving my rear end back and forth in the computer chair and stretching my neck. Unless you counted shaking your head and muttering, “This is getting me nowhere.”
As I glanced at the computer screen, I realized it was the same time yesterday when I had the conversation about Thelmalee with those ladies at the pool. Then, of all things, I saw one of them with the librarian at the Italian restaurant last night. What if they were in cahoots to commit murder? Shouldn’t there be a motive?
Yeesh. My mother’s bizarre scenario about the possible wife of Jeanette’s boyfriend was starting to make more sense. Still, I couldn’t dismiss the fact something unnerved me about the librarian. It went beyond the typical stereotype schoolmarm like Marian in The Music Man. No, Gretchen Morin was more Mrs. Danvers from Daphne du Murier’s Rebecca than Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, blond hair notwithstanding. I had a bad feeling about this and needed to act on it.
“Mom, I’m heading over to the pool for a while. It’s hot out, and I could use a swim.”
“Now? In the middle of your investigation you’re going to stop and go swimming?”
“I didn’t want you to make a scene at the restaurant last night, but I didn’t leave in a hurry because of the librarian. Not totally, anyway. The librarian was with three other people, and one of them looked familiar. I didn’t realize who it was at the time. When I got in the shower before bed, it dawned on me. It was a woman who frequents the pool where Thelmalee was stung. And that sting was no accident. That woman might know more than she was willing to say yesterday.”
My mother’s eyes lit up. “Good idea, Phee. Get her to talk. Maybe she’s the wife of Jeanette’s boyfriend.”
“Mother, we don’t even know who Jeanette’s boyfriend is, let alone the remote possibility that some sunbather from the recreation center pool is his wife. If the guy even has a wife! I just thought the woman might have seen something suspicious around the time of the incident.”
My mother draped a dishtowel over the sink and pulled up a chair. “Do you want me to go with you? Maybe we can both get her to talk.”
The blood drained from my face. Get her to talk? More likely, it would be get my mother to shut up. I could just picture it—my mother going on and on about something until the woman in question was forced to dive into the water to get away from us.
“No, I can handle this. Besides, there’s something else that I need you to do.”
“What? What? Anything.”
“Find out who Jeanette’s boyfriend is. You once said there are no secrets in Sun City West. So . . . someone is bound to know.”
After a brief pause, my mother stood as if she were watching a winning horse cross the finish line. A horse she had bet on.
“Herb Garrett! Her next-door neighbor. If Herb doesn’t know, then no one does. I’ve got to go look up his number.”
I threw my swimsuit into a large tote bag, grabbed a towel, and headed out the door. The minimal traffic on the road didn’t translate into a quick drive. I found myself muttering awful phrases under my breath like, “Move it, you ancient fossil” and “The sign says Stop, not Park.” I blamed it on the heat. I swore it was affecting my brain and making me irritable and impatient.
Fifteen or so minutes later, I showed my visitor’s pass to the monitor. It was a different man from the one on duty yesterday. This one was taller, younger, and incredibly tanned.
“You missed the excitement,” he said as I walked inside the pool area.
“Oh no. Not another fatal bee sting.”
“Nah, just a senior citizen who had to be escorted out by the sheriff’s posse. Screaming something about a book curse. A book curse. Of all things. The guy had to be drunk or suffering from heatstroke. Honestly. What will they come up with next?”
“Yeah, that’s something.” I smiled to myself. I now had the perfect opener to a conversation I intended to have with the librarian’s friend. All I needed to do was spot her wide-brimmed sunhat and go from there.
The group of women from the other day was considerably smaller but still lounging in the same area. I approached them as if I were the newest member of their clique.
“Hi! Nice to see all of you again. I really enjoyed that swim yesterday and came back for more. Heard I just missed quite the scene a few minutes ago. What was that all about?”
By now I had placed my towel lengthwise on a lounge chair and started to sit down. My rear end barely touched the chair when one of the women explained.
“I only caught the tail end of it, but some guy walked over to a woman who was reading a book by the shallow end and all of sudden started yelling at her and wouldn’t stop. The woman’s gone now, and I don’t blame her. That guy was something else. Waving his arms in the air and screaming about a cursed book. At one point he tried taking her book and throwing it into the water. That’s when a few people stopped him and the monitor called for the sheriff.”
“Have any of you ever seen that man before?” I asked.
The ladies looked up from their assorted devices, books, and magazines and shook their heads.
The woman kept on talking. “Men that age all look alike. Balding heads, sunglasses, and beer bellies.”
“So, um . . . he was bald and not in the best physical shape?”
“That pretty much describes him.” She adjusted her floral sunhat. “And do you know what else? I’ll tell you what else. As the deputy was escorting that man out of here, the lunatic gave Peg the finger. The finger!”
A buxom woman with a white sunhat removed her dark glasses. “He didn’t give me the finger, Joanne, his hands were waving all around.”
“Actually,” another one of the women said, “it looked more like he was trying to give you a thumbs-up.”
Peg seemed to start getting irritated.
“Ladies, please. He didn’t give me any fingers or thumbs. Let it go.”
I changed the subject quickly and Peg looked relieved. “I don’t suppose any of you ladies know what book that person was reading?”
“No, it happened at the other end of the pool,” Joanne said. “The guy probably had one too many before he got here. And I still think he was flipping the bird, or whatever you call it, at Peg.”
Before Peg had a chance to respond, I continued with my version of Twenty Questions. The woman who was with the librarian at the restaurant wasn’t with the sunbathers today, and that was a bummer. Still, I wasn’t about to give up. “Gee, I thought your whole crew from yesterday would be here. It’s even hotter today.”
Peg nodded. “Sandra and her sister, the redheads, had a luncheon somewhere, and I don’t know why my sister-in-law, Josie, isn’t here. She must have gotten tied up at the office. Too bad. She would have
gotten a good laugh out of that guy screaming about the cursed book.”
I did it, Mom. I found out who that lady with the librarian is—Josie. Josie something. The one without the red hair. And Peg from the pool is her sister-in-law.
“Oh.” I tried to sound as innocent as I could. “I thought I saw a Josie Martindale signed up for the book talk at the library when I was in there. Is that her? Your sister-in-law?”
“No,” Peg said. “My sister-in-law’s Josie Nolan. She and my brother, Tom, are Nolan and Nolan Realty. And I’m Peg Nolan. Nothing to do with realty.”
“Ah,” I said. “Nice to meet you, Peg, and everyone else, too. I’m Phee. Well, I’d better get into the water. Glad that’s not cursed.”
A few of the women chuckled, and I grinned as I made my way to the shallow end, grabbing the metal stairs as I walked down the steps into the water. A man and a woman were standing a few feet from me.
“Hi!” I said, using my cheeriest voice. “Did either of you notice what book that lady was reading when the man started screaming at her?”
“I didn’t know she was reading a book,” the man said.
The lady with him made some sort of chortling sound and poked him. “You don’t notice anything, Harold. She was reading Shakespeare.”
“Wow,” I said. “That’s pretty heavy for summer poolside reading.”
“I’m pretty sure it was Shakespeare. I saw part of the title, The Twelfth . . . it had to be The Twelfth Night.”
I felt like jumping up and down. If this were Vegas, I’d bet my entire stash she wasn’t reading Shakespeare. No one reads Shakespeare in triple-digit weather at a pool. It had to be The Twelfth Arrondissement. The cursed book rumor was spreading faster than head lice in a kindergarten class.
Chapter 9
Still exhausted from the day before, my body reacted to the alarm clock going off by jolting me with one big, muscular spasm. I wanted desperately to turn over and go back to sleep when I remembered I had to be at the dog park by six to find Cindy Dolton again. Why couldn’t she walk Bundles at nine like a reasonable person?
I had gotten the routine of stumbling into the bathroom down to a science and was out the door and on my way to the park before my mother and Streetman even got up. Herb Garrett had gone on the all-day bus to one of the casinos yesterday, so my mother couldn’t find out about Jeanette’s boyfriend from him. Not yet, anyway. She said she was lucky she tracked Herb’s whereabouts down from the mailman, who happened to run into Herb the day before. At least it would give my mother something to do this morning while I picked Cindy Dolton’s brain for more information about Minnie Bendelson’s Asian chicken salad.
The dog park was a veritable hotbed of activity when I arrived. At least nine or ten small, mostly white dogs were running all over the place and peeing on the fence. Some apparently didn’t bother to hold it before getting into the place, and I had to watch for puddles by the concrete entrance.
Cindy Dolton was seated on one of the benches underneath a palm tree. Suddenly, the man she was speaking with made a mad dash to clean up after his dog, and I used the opportunity to take his place.
“Hi! We spoke the other day and—”
“Yes, of course. You’re Harriet Plunkett’s daughter.”
I nodded as I moved myself out of range from a small black dog that was about to use my leg as a fire hydrant. Cindy looked down at her feet, presumably to make sure the dog hadn’t gotten to her. Satisfied she wouldn’t have to wash her clothing, she continued to speak.
“You know, sweetie, I felt so badly about that poor woman’s death. And it must have been quite a shock for her nephew.”
“Her nephew?”
Now we’re getting somewhere.
“He was the one who brought in her tray with the salad. Always so helpful. He was on his way to visit her when the kitchen delivery staff was making its rounds. Gave them a hand by bringing in her tray since he was going that way anyhow.”
I tried to think this through before I spoke. It was crucial. “You mean he walked over to her bed and plunked the tray on her bedside table?”
“Not at first. He put the tray on the dressing table by the door, behind the screen. Came over, gave his aunt a kiss on the cheek, then went to get the tray. Said he only popped in for a minute and had to leave. Work, I imagine. Said he’d be back in the evening to visit and that he hoped she enjoyed her lunch. So sad. She died minutes later. After he had gone.”
Cindy let out a long sigh while I absorbed everything she had said. If this nephew of Minnie’s had indeed found a way to put a small bit of tuna or other whitefish into her salad, how did he know she’d be eating salad in the first place? I bit my lip as Cindy yelled out something to Bundles about not eating stuff from the ground. Not that Bundles bothered to listen.
“Did the nephew ever tell you his name?”
“Gary. Minnie called him Gary.”
“It must be so terrible for him. It sounded like he was there often.”
“Why, yes. Yes, he was. In fact, he was the one who filled out her food selection card and put it on the door when he left. He put mine there, too, so the night nurse didn’t have to bother with it.”
“Food selection card? I thought you ate whatever they prepared.”
“Oh, honey. You must not have been in a hospital recently. It’s like room service at a hotel. Costs as much, too, if not more.”
So that’s how he knew what she’d be eating.
Out of nowhere a voice bellowed through the dog park. “HEY, CINDY! Your dog is pooping!”
“ALL RIGHT. ALL RIGHT.” She turned to face me.
“I’ve got to get this before Phil over there has a stroke. It was nice talking with you. Say hi to your mother for me. Lovely lady.”
We stood and I thanked her as I headed back to the concrete entrance. The puddles that were left earlier had dried in a matter of minutes. Still, I paid attention to where I stepped until I was safely in the car. As I started the engine, I realized a small piece of the puzzle might be making sense.
Gary, the nephew, knew what his aunt had ordered for lunch. He must also have known she was allergic to finned fish. It wouldn’t have been that difficult to sneak a piece of tuna or something in some tinfoil or plastic wrap and then dump it into the chicken salad while the tray sat unseen behind the screen in Minnie’s hospital room. I wanted to jump up and down screaming, “I found the murderer. I found the murderer,” only I knew it was pure speculation on my part. The only salient point was knowing speculation wasn’t the same as imagination. I really believed I was on to something.
Anxious to share my revelation with my mother, I wasted no time getting back to her house. I was about to say something as I stepped into the kitchen, but I never got a chance.
“Herb doesn’t know who the boyfriend is,” my mother announced as soon as she saw me. “And that beige SUV isn’t the boyfriend’s.”
It took me a second to process what I was hearing before I responded.
“How do you know? I mean, how does Herb know?”
“Because he’s never seen the beige SUV before. He has seen a blue Mazda on more than one occasion, and some occasions were longer than others.”
“Really?” For a split second the image of that nosy neighbor from Bewitched came to mind. I pictured Herb spying through Venetian blinds and bit my lip. “If we see a blue Mazda, we’ll take a look and find out who’s getting out of it.” My God! I was just as bad as Herb and the lady from Bewitched.
“Good idea, Phee. And when he leaves, you jump into that rental car of yours and follow him!”
“What? I’m not going to tail some guy like Hawaii Five-O.”
“Then how are you going to find out who he is? You have to find out who he is so we can find out if he’s married.”
“Mother, I’m putting this one on the proverbial ‘back burner,’ so to speak. I’ve got another lead to follow.”
“You do? What? What is it?”
I told
her about my conversation with Cindy Dolton and my suspicion about Minnie’s nephew.
“No wonder he was in such a hurry to have her cremated and buried. Had to remove all of the evidence.”
“I tend to agree, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. It’s a suspicion. A good one, but nonetheless, a suspicion. It still doesn’t explain the other deaths. I’m going to look over the few notes I’ve taken and try to make sense of this.”
If this were one of the many accounting nightmares I run into, I’d do a quick spreadsheet and work backward, but I wasn’t dealing with numbers, just relationships. I was tempted to give Nate a call, but I thought I’d hold off a bit longer.
Making myself comfortable at the kitchen table, I looked at the notes from my date planner, as well as my mother’s notes and other information I’d jotted down on scraps of paper. It was a hodgepodge of names, occupations, and causes of death with nothing that linked any of the people together. What I really needed was one of those large whiteboards that every crime show touted from Castle to Criminal Minds. For a minute, I seriously considered making a quick trip to Office Max but changed my mind. I was only here for a week or so, not a change in careers. Besides, this one didn’t come with a salary or benefits.
I did the next best thing. I took six pieces of white computer paper and taped them together to form one big poster. Then I set up all the names in columns with their information written underneath. Minnie Bendelson, one surviving relative—nephew Gary, at hospital the night before her death, brought food tray next day, had her cremated—fast. My fourth-grade teacher would have been proud. The only thing I was missing was the timeline. Detectives always had a timeline. I needed five, if you counted Jeanette Tomilson.
More white computer paper. More tape. I stood and walked to the drawer where my mother kept that stuff and glanced out the window. The beige SUV was backing out of Jeanette’s driveway. I hurried over to get a closer look. The license plate was too small to read, but the white sign on the rearview window was as clear as could be: WEST VALLEY HOME MORTGAGE SOLUTIONS. If it said MARY KAY COSMETICS or SCENTSY, I wouldn’t have given it another thought. But mortgage solutions? It was the first thing I wrote down when I started the timeline.