by Amy Vansant
Charlotte heard her suck in air as if trying not to cry. No matter how questionable Shawna’s relationship with Bucky, it had to be a shock to see someone you’d been talking to a moment before pinned to the end of a sailboat mast.
“And on your way back to the apartment, you didn’t see anyone else heading for the roof? Or pass anyone else in the stairwell or the halls?”
“No. I told the police there was nobody. That place was like a ghost town during the week.”
“Did you know anyone who wanted Bucky dead?”
There was a pause.
“Shawna?”
“What’s that?”
“Did you know anyone who might have wanted to hurt Bucky?”
“Oh, no. He was a nice man. Maybe his wife?” She chuckled, but in a sad way, not with malicious joy.
Charlotte recalled the pictures she’d seen on Shawna’s Instagram and decided she had to ask about the young man.
“Do you have a boyfriend?”
Shawna scoffed. “I did. He’s dead, remember?”
“No, I mean someone other than Bucky.”
“What? No. I loved Bucky. I know it seems crazy with him being so old, but he was so nice to me. I never had anyone take care of me the way he did.”
Charlotte considered how to ask her next question and then plunged ahead. “As, uh, part of routine detective business, I, uh, happened to notice a young man in a picture with you on your Instagram. He’s not your boyfriend?”
Charlotte winced. There were so many things wrong with her question. Routine detective business? What was that? And if it really was standard practice, how did it happen to happen?
I really need to work on my investigator-ese.
Shawna hemmed, as if trying to imagine what Charlotte had seen. “A man in a picture? I mean, I have all kinds of pictures on my Instagram...”
“Sorry. It was you and a young man standing next to a pile of sports equipment? I think he had a college shirt on. FIU?”
Shawna laughed. “Oh. That’s my brother, Dallas. He’s staying with me because he needed to make more money to go back to college. What a joke. He’ll never leave my house. He’ll be sixty before I ever see my guest room again.”
Charlotte chuckled. “I know someone like that. I feel for you.”
So much for the jealous boyfriend theory.
“Hey, why did you ask me that? You don’t think we had something to do with it, do you? Are the police looking into us?”
“No. Not at all. Like I said, standard investigatey stuff. Covering my bases.”
“Okay. Because that would be messed up. I’m the only person who really loved him. He said his wife hadn’t slept with him in, like, twenty years or something crazy.”
Whoops. Too much information.
“Okay then. Don’t worry and thank you. You’ve been very helpful.”
“Could you call me if you find or hear anything?”
“I will. I promise.”
Charlotte disconnected and slipped her phone back in her pocket.
Still holding the sheet of paper in her hand, she stared at the railing.
Dead ends. I hate them.
She used the paper to scoop up the smelly goo she’d found on the wall, carefully folding the note into a little box shape she wished was airtight.
Chapter Fourteen
Charlotte made herself a liverwurst sandwich on rye and gobbled it down. Retirement-community-living influenced some of her life choices, and she knew her affinity for liverwurst was one them. She never saw young people on television or in movies clamoring for liver paste and mustard. She even buttered the bread, like Mariska had done for her when she was a child.
She threw in some laundry and puttered around the house straightening.
What next.
Waiting for Stephanie and Cora’s next challenge infuriated her, so she was left with nothing to do but work on determining if Bucky’s death had been an accident or not. She still didn’t feel like she had anything good to share with Cora. Nothing that would seal the win.
I need to jumpstart my brain.
She retrieved a piece of chalk from her kitchen utility drawer and stood in front of the wall she’d painted with chalkboard paint. It served as a catch-all for lists, doodling and problem solving.
Rolling a piece of chalk in her palm, she stared at the blank, black wall.
Start somewhere.
She scrawled Suspects in large print, starting as high on the wall as she could reach. Bucky didn’t seem like a stand-up guy, and the last thing you wanted to do was run out of space for suspects.
Her number one suspect remained Shawna, if only due to her proximity to Bucky at the time of his death.
She chalked it on to the board.
Shawna Taylor
She thought about the girl. The police report noted Shawna had been seen on the elevator camera heading down from the roof deck about the time she said she left Bucky to get dressed for dinner. She didn’t appear again in the elevator, but she could have taken the stairs. There were no cameras in the stairwells.
Who else would want Bucky dead?
She stretched to add number two.
Cora Bloom
According to the cardinal Dateline rule, spouses were always top suspects. Bucky repeatedly cheated on her, giving Cora plenty of motive. It was hard to imagine little Cora jogging up the marina building stairs and shoving big Bucky over the edge, but she had to remain a suspect. She could have hired someone to do the dirty work.
With that thought, Charlotte edited Cora’s entry on her board.
Cora (hired killer?)
She wondered if the police had checked Cora’s bank account for unusual withdraws. Probably not; they didn’t consider Bucky’s death a murder.
I need a hacker. A friendly hacker—not to do anything evil, just to take itty-bitty peeks at things.
She started a new list.
TO DO
Befriend a hacker.
Okay. Back to business.
Who else could have wanted Bucky dead? Deadly sins were always a great source of murderous intentions. She started with envy-jealousy:
Shawna - secret boyfriend?
Maybe Shawna had a boyfriend after all? She’d liked Shawna during their brief conversation. She had some daddy issues, dating a man forty years her senior, but she’d been nothing but polite and helpful on the phone. She didn’t want to find the girl guilty, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t covering for a lover who didn’t like sharing her with grandpa Bloom.
Bucky’s other mistresses?
As a serial cheater, she knew that Bucky didn’t restrict his extracurricular activities to Shawna. Perhaps previous mistresses didn’t appreciate being replaced? Other women had to accept the existence of Cora, but they didn’t have to tolerate the existence of Shawna. Maybe one of Bucky’s mistresses decided if she couldn’t have him to herself, no one could.
Charlotte tapped her fingernail on her teeth, trying to remember another deadly sin.
Ah. Wrath was always good for a murder or two.
Boyfriend/Husband of another mistress.
Who said Bucky was the only one cheating? If Shawna’s imaginary boyfriend could work himself into a murderous rage, couldn’t the boyfriend or husband of one of the other mistresses?
Friend or business partner.
Maybe a greedy partner stood to inherit a shared asset? Or his or her pride couldn’t take Bucky’s success?
Not every deadly sin fit. Lust wove itself into many of the other ideas on the list. Gluttony didn’t work—no one killed Bucky because he stole the last piece of pie. He did have a gluttonous appetite for other women though, that worked.
Sloth didn’t work at all. Indolent people didn’t work up the urge to murder people. Murder was a lot of work.
Unless Bucky was too lazy to walk down the stairs and took the shortcut over the rail instead...
She giggled to herself and then sobered.
That’s terribl
e. Stop that.
She stared at her list. She didn’t know enough about Bucky’s personal life to know if any of her other ideas might be true.
The competition would be over before she had the time to trace all possible leads. She couldn’t count on solving Bucky’s death. She had to be ready to win the next competition.
She was about to walk away from the board when she felt compelled to backup and add one more possibility to the list.
Stephanie
Charlotte couldn’t decide if Stephanie’s involvement with Cora was another way for her to mess with her and Declan, or if she was up to something more sinister. Now that they knew about the bugs in Declan’s apartment, it was easy to imagine she’d overheard about the competition between Penny and Tabby, but still, in her heart she knew Stephanie was more dangerous than anyone suspected.
As she glared at Stephanie’s name, she realized visitors to her home who saw Stephanie on that list would think she was out to blame Declan’s ex for anything.
But her suspicions had nothing to do with spite or insecurity.
Did they?
She rubbed Stephanie’s name away with the side of her hand, but left the number seven beside the smear.
I know what it stands for.
As she tossed the chalk back into her drawer, her phone rang and she answered.
“Charlotte, you have to come. This is terrible. Meet me at Juggs right now. I’m already in the car.”
It was Penny, and she sounded somewhere between furious and terrified.
“Meet you at...where?” Juggs was a restaurant and sports bar known for its top-heavy waitresses. It made similar male-oriented restaurant chains look like five-star dining, and was not the sort of place she expected Penny to spend a lot of time.
Penny moaned. “Juggs. Cora’s lawyer just called me. She wants Tabby and me to arm wrestle. In public.”
“What?”
“She said I had to be at Juggs in twenty minutes. Meet me there.”
Penny hung up and Charlotte bolted for the door.
Chapter Fifteen
Charlotte ran across the street to borrow Mariska’s car once again, intending to do so this time with a heartfelt promise to buy her own car as soon as possible. It was finally sinking in that not every case could be solved by golf cart.
She knocked on Mariska’s door and explained why she needed the Volkswagen. Mariska’s expression registered no surprise, as if her friends arm-wrestled at sports bars every day.
“If you think you’re going to Juggs to watch Penny arm-wrestle against her sister without me, you’re crazy,” said Mariska, slipping into her shoes.
“Did you say Juggs?” called her husband Bob from the living room.
“You shush, dirty old man.” Mariska called back.
She took a moment to write a text on her ancient phone and then grabbed her keys before leaving.
Charlotte hopped into the car and Mariska pulled from the driveway and stomped on the gas. A moment later she slowed down again.
“What are you doing?” asked Charlotte.
“I’m picking up Darla. She’ll kill me if I didn’t.”
Ah. That’s who she texted. I should have known.
Darla came rolling out of her home. “If you two had gone to this without taking me along I would have killed you both.” She grunted, pretending to try and squeeze into the back seat of the cozy VW Bug.
Charlotte hopped out and motioned to the passenger side.
“Darla, sit up front.”
“Are you sure?”
She nodded and slipped into the back, which was a little like crawling into a leather coffin. Charlotte was glad she’d picked up on Darla’s distress cues. With her bad knees, they would have had to use a crowbar to get Darla back out of the Bug.
Something on the radio caught Charlotte’s attention and she asked Mariska to turn it up.
“...so come out to Juggs today at one, where they’ll be holding an old lady arm wrestling competition featuring arm wrestling champion Ricky “The Python” Richards as the referee. Beers will be half price—”
“Stephanie notified the radio stations? How is that possible?” asked Charlotte.
“Oh Penny is going to die,” said Darla, barely containing her glee.
Mariska clucked her tongue. “I can’t believe Cora is making Penny do all this for that cow-patty covered patch of grass. I wouldn’t pay fifty cents for that land.”
“I’m pretty sure arm wrestling wasn’t Cora’s idea. This has Stephanie written all over it,” said Charlotte.
“I used to arm wrestle for drinks. Got pretty good at it, too,” said Darla in a dreamy voice.
When they reached Juggs, the small parking lot was overflowing with cars. They spotted Penny pacing at the entrance and pulled into the back to park. They were half way across the lot when Penny lifted her hands into the air and began jogging towards them.
“What took you so long?” Penny glanced at Mariska and Darla. “And why would you bring them?”
“I needed Mariska’s car and—”
“You still don’t have a car?”
“No, I didn’t really need one until—”
“Nevermind. What am I going to do?” Penny grabbed Charlotte’s hand and squeezed it.
Charlotte winced and gently pulled free her hand. “How badly do you want Cow Town?”
“I have to get Cow Town.”
“Then I guess you’re going to arm wrestle your sister.”
Penny dropped her head into her hands. “This is so humiliating.”
Charlotte frowned. “The good news is that I don’t think there’s any trick to this that we’re missing. I can’t think of a way that this could be anything but what it seems to be—an opportunity to embarrass you both.”
Penny’s head popped back up. “Pussy Galore does Pilates. What is that? Does it build muscles?”
Charlotte patted her client on the back and guided her towards Juggs’ entrance. “It will all be over in an instant. If you want, let your arm drop and give this one to her. We’ll win the next one.”
“But she already won the landscaping challenge.”
Charlotte grimaced. “That’s true. You might want to put a little effort into it.”
Penny reached toward Mariska and pinched her beefy arm.
“Ow! What is wrong with you?” Mariska pulled away from her.
“Can I use a proxy?” asked Penny.
Charlotte shook her head. “I doubt it.”
They slowed as Tabby approached the door from the opposite direction. She wore a blue, neoprene brace on her wrist and stretched her shoulders as she walked, dancing like a prize fighter on her way to the ring. A man Charlotte recognized as Edmundo from the landscaping challenge walked beside her.
“That’s illegal,” said Penny, pointing to her sister’s wrist brace.
Tabby jerked her hand behind her back as if to hide it. “It is not.”
“We’ll see. There are rules. There has to be rules.”
“Come dear, don’t waste your energy talking to this riff-raff,” said Edmundo, opening the door and ushering Tabby inside. He paused and held out a hand to Charlotte.
“I’m Eddie. You’re Charlotte, I presume?”
Charlotte shook his hand and nodded.
“Lovely,” said Eddie, winking before he turned and followed his client inside.
“Riff-raff? I’ll show you riff-raff,” said Darla, holding up a fist as Edmundo retreated.
“He’s kind of suave, isn’t he?” asked Mariska.
Penny huffed. “I bet Pussy’s sleeping with him. She always liked those exotic types.”
The four of them entered together, like a gang preparing to take the bar by force. Inside, they worked their way through the crowd gathering around a tall bar table roped off in the center of the room. Tabby had taken her spot on one of the stools.
Stephanie stood beside her.
The blonde bombshell grinned upon spotting Charlotte a
nd waved toward the empty stool, inviting Penny to take a seat across from her sister. A neoprene mat resembling a giant mouse pad covered the table to provide cushion for the women’s bony elbows.
Penny looked at the other three, her eyes wild with fear.
“I can’t do this. She’ll break my arm, look...”
She pulled up her short sleeve, revealing what looked like a twig wrapped in crepe paper.
Charlotte attempted to console her client. “You’re twins, Penny. Look at Tabby. She’s built like a bird, too.”
“A bird at the end of a hard winter,” mumbled Darla.
“You’ll be fine,” continued Charlotte, gently turning Penny and easing her towards her stool. She sat, and Stephanie elbowed Charlotte back before re-clipping the velvet rope.
“Watch it,” said Charlotte.
Stephanie locked eyes with her as the crowd chanted for the competition to begin. “Glad you could make it.”
“This is ridiculous and you know it. You should be ashamed of yourself creating this spectacle.”
Stephanie shrugged. “I’m just carrying out my client’s orders.”
“Right.”
Stephanie offered one last unctuous smile before pointing to the sky with one hand. “Bring out the costumes.”
A man burst through the throngs of people with what looked like dresses draped over his outstretched arms. Stephanie spun on her heel and yanked the dresses from him, throwing one to Tabby. The other she held up for the audience to see. The dress unfurled to the ground and the crowd burst into cheers and a smattering of laughs.
“What is that? Why do they have to wear a dress?” asked Darla.
“It’s that book. The Scarlet Letter,” said Mariska.
The costumes were black and white puritan-style dresses with a large letter A on the chest. Unlike the scarlet letter worn by Hester Prynne in Nathanial Hawthorne’s famous novel by that name, this A was in the center of the chest and as large as Superman’s famous S.