Deception

by Lori Avocato

  Jagger did have a way with women. But I was talking about my mother! Ick!

  “It was great, Mom. I’m afraid I need to get going so let’s clean up.”

  Mother leaned over, cut another slice of cake and put it on Daddy’s plate. He started eating without saying a word. Guess that’s what being married over forty years was all about.

  Being married. It gave me pause. Babies. Was I waiting too long? Should I be actively seeking a husband and not be so into my career? As the thoughts bombarded my head, I looked up.

  Jagger stared at me...as if he could read my mind.

  And he probably could so I mentally thought, La, la, la, la.

  Mother poured more coffee into Daddy’s cup and looked at Goldie and Miles who waved it away. “What’s your big hurry, Pauline?”

  “I have work tomorrow.”

  “Work as in nursing—a job you should get back into? A real job?” Mother never had accepted my leaving nursing. She also never understood my investigative work.

  “I have a real job, Mom. And I need to get working on it.”

  She shook her head. Not in a Jagger-like shaking way, but more in a Stella-Sokol-everything-that-comes-out-of-her- thoughts-comes-true-sort-of-way. I hated when that happens.

  Quickly I jumped from my chair and started to clean up. Goldie and Miles helped. Jagger sat and ‘chatted’ with my parents. What the heck did they have in common? I didn’t stay around to hear. In the kitchen, I turned toward Goldie. “Hey, would you give me a ride to pick up my car?”

  “I brought you. I’ll take you back.”

  I swung around to see Jagger leaning against the doorframe.

  Goldie busied himself with the dishes. Not that he was afraid of Jagger, but no one wanted to cross him. No one.

  “It’s out of your way,” I said, knowing full well that I had no idea where Jagger lived. So much about him was a mystery. A delicious mystery.

  “I’ll manage,” was all he said, turned and walked out.

  Miles and Goldie looked at each other. “Shoo. You go, Suga. We’ll handle the clean up.”

  I kissed them both on the cheeks then turned. “What the hell am I getting myself into now?” I said, louder than I thought.

  “Oh, Lordy,” Miles and Goldie said at once.

  “That doesn’t make me feel any better, you guys!” I ran out after a quick kiss to Daddy, Uncle Walt and my mother, who rebuked me about something, make that several somethings as I flew past her.

  Jagger sat waiting in his SUV. No great surprise. I let myself in and shut the door. “Okay, take me to my car.”

  Without a word, he drove out, headed toward the medical office where Dr. Dupre had his clinic and pulled into the driveway. It had taken us a good forty minutes to get here, and I was anything but looking forward to driving home. My mother’s dinners always tired me out and not even the caffeine from the cake could make me wake up.

  I yawned, shoved open the door and said, “Night.”

  Before I could step out, Jagger was in front of me. “Not so fast, Sherlock. We have work to do.”

  Oh, geez.

  The lot was so dark, I could see Jagger held something, but wasn’t sure what until he held one out toward me.

  Overalls.

  We were going undercover as janitors once more. Déjà vu all over again. When I went undercover with Jagger, I either ended up locked in an embrace with him or mortified or nearly killed.

  Hopefully not the latter tonight. I was too damn tired to deal with nearly being killed.

  I followed Jagger to the back of the building where he produced a set of tiny instruments and before I knew it, yet wasn’t surprised, we were inside, pushing brooms and a janitor’s cart, headed to the fifth floor and one Dr. Adrian Dupre’s office.

  Even his name sounded harsh, although the guy was a looker. I’d give him that.

  When the door opened, a security guard stood there.

  I gasped.

  Jagger turned. “Cut it out, Shirley. It wasn’t all that funny.” He looked at the guard, shook his head and said, “Women.”

  The guard nodded.

  Pissed, yet thankful for the quick-thinking Jagger, I got out, gave the guard a dirty look and walked ahead. Down the end of the hallway, we approached the office of the suspect.

  Jagger produced his little instrument once again and I watched down the hallway while he clicked the lock open.

  Silently, we went inside, left our cleaning stuff in the waiting room and walked past the reception desk. Low lights kept the place visible enough to move about. I half expected to see the lazy woman, but thank goodness, the place was empty.

  Jagger led us to the doctor’s office. I nearly gasped again. It seemed such an invasion of privacy to break and enter. Then again, this was a job. Our job. And the guy was a crook.

  All crooks needed to be caught.

  We started to open desk drawers, read files and snoop about. The top drawer of the desk was locked. “Jagger,” I whispered. “Locked.” I pointed to the desk.

  “Look for the key, Sherlock.”

  “Can’t you just...you know?”

  “Don’t want to leave a mark on a personal item.”

  Damn it. Made sense. So, I used my logical mind and

  thought, where would a criminal hide a key. Several items were on the desk. One was a marble carved woman. Naked. Bingo. I lifted it up and there was the key!

  Jagger winked at me.

  Heat rose up my cheeks since the damn statue was naked, but I took the key, opened the lock and lifted out some papers. Along with papers were receipts. “Jagger, look at this.”

  He came around the side and read over my shoulder. “Damn!” He was scamming the insurance company, collecting from the husbands, and making the wives think he was doing them a favor.”

  He took various pictures with his pen camera.

  “Why would he do that? I mean, why would the women...”

  Jagger grinned.

  “Men! He was making them so grateful that they’d sleep with him! The cad! The jerk! The—”

  Crash!

  From down the hallway came a god-awful sound. Then, to my horror, and Jagger’s probable amusement, came... footsteps.

  The door started to open!

  Jagger grabbed the papers, shoved them back in the desk and as soon as we heard a deep voice say, “What the hell are you two doing in here?” instantly, Jagger had me laying across the top of the desk and his lips were on mine!

  The kiss was rough at first, in the haste of the moment. But soon Jagger’s hands were on my face, softly.

  “Go for it, buddy” the voice said, then the door closed.

  And for a fleeting second, I thought of babies, Jagger, marriage and...hopefully that I wouldn’t be killed tonight and never get those opportunities.

  And the kiss lasted for several minutes longer...

  ~ * ~

  “Well, dol...Pauline, you get your damned ten percent. The doc was arrested and if convicted, will have to pay back the insurance companies along with face some jail time,” Fabio puffed on his cigar although I’d asked him numerous times not to smoke in front of me. Then again, this was his office and Fabio did what the hell he wanted to.

  “Great. Stick it in my next paycheck.” I coughed and left the room.

  At the end of the hallway stood Jagger, looking down at a paper in his hand. Maybe his next assignment? Maybe ours? I paused and stared. I could feel his arms around me, his lips on mine...and prayed there was a spark, a tiny spark of reality in that moment for him too.

  Cane Fu Grannies

  A HARMONY HILLS MYSTERY

  Teryl Oswald

  1

  Most residents at Harmony Hills Retirement Village want to expire quietly, without fanfare or struggle, like time on a parking meter. The electrical cord around her strangled neck, coupled with her bulging eyes indicated that wasn’t how Norma Fairbanks had died a few months ago.

  Not that I’d seen the senior citi
zen’s corpse in person. After all, the murder had taken place in Chicago, five hundred miles from my home in Omaha, Nebraska. There hadn’t even been a photo of it online, but I have a vivid imagination. Besides, I’d seen a murdered body before, when I’d fixed the hair and make-up for a slain, middle-aged hooker. It was 1965, and I’d just dropped out of beauty school. The funeral home director had promised to overlook my lack of a cosmetology license if I could prove my stuff on the recent homicide victim. I’d copied my own hairstyle modeled after Twiggy–ratted high at the crown and tight at the jaw line. The sky-blue eye shadow and feathery, Maybelline lashes had made the poor woman look positively virginal. No one ever would have guessed she’d had twenty-seven stab wounds aerating her torso.

  Of all the jobs I’ve ever had–and there have been dozens–that one was at the top of the ‘heebie-jeebies’ scale. But the paychecks had funded my passion of the moment–skydiving. There’s nothing like the feel of the wind in your face as you free fall from ten thousand feet, pulling the rip cord to float peacefully onto a grassy knoll. The experience is a balanced mix of thrills and bliss.

  I abandoned the sport after my seventh solo jump when a sudden updraft had carried me off course, over pastureland, dragging me through a barbed wire fence. My momentum snapped the wire from the fence post. As I tumbled to a stop, the wire wrapped round and round me, binding my arms and legs tightly. I lay trussed like a link sausage roasting in the July sun until an Angus bull and his harem took a little too much interest in the red parachute billowing in the breeze. A cow’s head looks gigantic when looming inches from your face. I wriggled out of my suit, dislocating both shoulders. Hey, that’s how Houdini used to get out of his strait jacket. My boots remained tangled in the wire as I marched barefoot two miles to the rancher’s house, wearing nothing but my Vanity Fair matching bra and panties. The rancher had been none too happy to meet me after discovering his prized bull and twenty-nine wannabe mama cows roamed loose.

  Today, I was sweating for a different reason–the murders of Norma Fairbanks of Chicago and Florence Bailey of Des Moines. My intuition told me the cases were connected and I had to discover whether the police had captured a suspect yet. Just call me Kay Powers, amateur sleuth.

  Vita stood behind Audrey, glancing over her shoulder as the headlines displayed on my computer. Vita tipped her head to read through her bifocals. The blue frames complemented her coral sweater and flowered culottes. At five feet, three inches, Vita is as petite as Tinkerbelle. And just as ornery.

  “Slow down, Audrey.” Vita’s brown eyes flashed. “You’re flipping through the screens so fast I’m going to have an epileptic seizure.” She pushed back gray curls sweeping her brow.

  Vita Orsi has been my best friend for fifty years, but I have to admit, she’s prone to exaggeration. At age seventy-five, she’s never been sick a day in her life.

  I met Audrey Campbell two years ago when Vita moved into the apartment next to Audrey’s at ‘The Village.’ Now my sister and I occupy a two-bedroom unit three floors above Vita.

  I choke when people call Harmony Hills a nursing home. It’s the most upscale retirement community in the Midwest. It offers a full range of residential options, from independent living to skilled nursing care. You can live care-free in the tower of apartments, as we do, or in the villas encircling the sixty-acre lake. The amenities are endless. Our gym is staffed with a score of personal trainers. We have indoor and outdoor pools, tennis courts, a luxury spa, gourmet restaurants, even a full-service travel agency. And there’s even a cute little ice cream shop. That’s my older sister’s favorite spot. Marilyn is the reason I moved to The Village last year. She has Alzheimer’s and Harmony Hills has the best Memory Unit in the area.

  Marilyn has adjusted to the staff and routine, which is a comfort to me. At 71, I’m one of the youngest residents in ‘The Tower,’ but I’m the only family Marilyn has, and I don’t regret giving up my house, my lifestyle to enjoy whatever time and memories she has left.

  “It says here the victim knew her attacker.” Vita pointed to the screen.

  Now that Vita had another date scheduled, Audrey had searched the internet for the article about Norma Fairbanks.

  Although seventy-nine, Audrey is heavily influenced by her fourteen-year-old granddaughter. The relationship makes my friend as techno-savvy as James Bond and as classy as Jackie Kennedy. Today, Audrey wore a turquoise, cotton sweater which showcased her lean frame and sparkling, gray eyes. She’d spiked her short, silver hair. Audrey could have been Jackie’s twin except for the ever-present iPod clipped on the waistband of her tan, linen slacks, the ear buds dangling on a cord around the back of her neck.

  I turned off her music, stopping the screeching of The Rebel Monkeys.

  Audrey let out a sigh. “I know it’s a tragedy, but I don’t understand why you’re concerned about something that happened three weeks ago, over two hours away in Des Moines, Iowa.

  “Because,” I said, “the police think the woman met her murderer online.”

  Vita’s newest date was due any minute and she’d met him online. And as everybody knows, fiends can travel.

  “How do you know?” Vita asked. “The article doesn’t mention how the killer met his victim.”

  “Margaret Fuller told me,” I answered.

  Vita crinkled her nose and I could tell she was trying to place the name.

  “Margaret is my hair stylist,” I explained. “Her daughter’s husband is a detective with the Omaha Police Department. He told his wife, who told Margaret that there was a similar case in Chicago six months ago. Followed by the case in Des Moines last month.” The grapevine is strong at The Village and more accurate than CNN.

  I continued, “Apparently, there’s a serial murderer loose who targets wealthy woman our age. Both women met their murderer online. And both had their expensive jewelry stolen. Ripped from their cold, dead bodies.”

  My friends gasped, then shuddered.

  Audrey swallowed. “Yikes. That’s some nasty dude.”

  “We’re the next big city heading west on the I-80 corridor.” I squinted for emphasis.

  I couldn’t put too fine a point on my warning. Jessica Fletcher always laid out the facts without sugar-coating them. She is my detective heroine. Jessica and I are a lot alike, except I’m taller–five feet, nine inches–and I stopped coloring my hair before the turn of the millennium. I think Jessica has blue eyes, while mine are brown, but we are both logical and very observant.

  “Online. That means you could be in danger.” Audrey tapped Vita’s collarbone.

  Precisely the reason for our internet sleuthing.

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” Vita protested. “I thoroughly screen all my suitors before we meet in person.”

  “Your strong vetting was how you discovered that Russian gigolo was an illegal immigrant, married, with six kids?” I asked.

  Vita dismissed me with a wave of her hand. “At least we found out the justice system works. Within two months, immigration found him using a fake social security number.”

  “Yeah, yours,” I said. “You do have to be more careful. Identity theft is the black plague of our times.”

  Audrey raised an eyebrow. “I thought herpes is the black plague of our times.”

  “Did you read that on Web MD?” Vita asked.

  “No.” Audrey shook her head. “The latest edition of Cosmopolitan. It was in an article about how to spice up the sex life in your summer romance.”

  Good to know my friend keeps up with the current societal scourges. Although, I don’t worry about Audrey. Despite her immersion in all things that interest her granddaughter, Audrey holds fast to the morals formed throughout her marriage that had lasted nearly sixty years.

  I resumed my admonishment of Vita. “You can’t go out with every man that might smile at you at the gas station, or any stranger who wants to ‘friend’ you on Facebook.” Her latest date had been with a man who’d been behind her in line at WalMart and had s
truck up a conversation with her–ultimately leading to a date. What she didn’t know beforehand was that he expected her to pay for everything. Including his Viagra prescription.

  That fiasco had led to the institution of our strict courting policy. Thanks to suggestions taught in our senior safety class, we require Vita to have her introductory date somewhere on the campus of Harmony Hills.

  They can meet at the soda fountain, tennis court, or at our social hall for the weekly dance. They can work out in the gym or spend a quiet afternoon in any of the dozen libraries with internet café service. Our retirement community has it all. Kind of like a landlocked Club Med.

  The second encounter has to be in my apartment, so Audrey and I can meet the man. We are going to take no chances with the safety of our best friend.

  Surprisingly, Vita has agreed.

  “Margaret Fuller’s son-in-law, the detective, said they believe it’s the same killer in both murders,” I said. “He picks a wealthy woman, gets her to put on her most elegant outfit and jewels, to take her to a public event. For Norma Fairbanks it was supposed to be the opera. But no one saw them there. The police don’t have a description of the man. He stole her diamond necklace, earrings and bracelet. Then vanished without a trace.”

  “Seems like a lot of trouble for some diamonds,” Vita said.

  “You’ve married for less,” Audrey said.

  We blame Vita’s multiple marriages on her age. If she’d started dating during the Sexual Revolution of the sixties, rather than post World War II, she probably wouldn’t have racked up five divorces. In her defense, she’d outlived her last two husbands. She has my admiration, though. Anyone who can put up with the shenanigans of seven men is one tough macadamia nut cookie.

  The timer on the oven dinged. “The coffee cake is ready.” Audrey signed off the computer. Using her aluminum cane, she barely limped as she walked to the kitchen. She only needed the aid for another week, having recovered remarkably well from her knee replacement last month.

  We followed. Vita transferred the brewed tea to my mother’s china pot. “Did the murderer leave fingerprints?”