Ready, Scrap, Shoot (A Kiki Lowenstein Scrap-N-Craft Mystery)

by Joanna Campbell Slan

  “Did you come down for the May Day ceremony?” I managed through gritted teeth. “I don’t remember seeing you there. Of course, everything is a blur now.”

  “Got here a few days before,” he said, and then he stopped. “Is this a social call?”

  Maybe I was born mean, but I took a seat even though I hadn’t been offered one. I sank back into a large chintz wingback chair. I competed with two overstuffed pillows, festooned with yards and yards of silk braid and tassels.

  Derrick Roper moved over to stand behind his sister, with one big hand on her shoulder. Meanwhile, Deanna turned to stare at me, seeming as silent and judgmental as that carved statue of Lincoln inside his monument. Her huge diamond splashed rainbows across the walls.

  “I’ll try not to take long, but as Lane Carlée probably told you, CALA wants me to make a memorial album commemorating your late mother-in-law’s life.”

  Derrick coughed softly into his hand.

  Deanna’s face stayed expressionless.

  “The school gave me access to their archives, but I don’t have any candid pictures of Mrs. Fitzgerald,” I said. “I hoped to get one or two as well as a few family portraits.”

  “How come?” asked Derrick. “How come you can’t use what they give you?”

  “I’m sure those will work fine,” said Deanna.

  This was a tussle of wills. Logic suggested they were mourning and I should bow to their wishes. But I was tired of giving in to other people. Besides, I wasn’t about to return to Lane Carlée and explain I had no materials to work with. Not after I’d gone out of my way to convince her that I knew what I was doing.

  “No, it won’t be fine. I need family photos, candid shots of you all interacting as a family. The school commissioned this as their way of saying ‘thank you’ to your family.”

  “That school—” started Derrick, but his sister cut him off.

  “That’s totally unnecessary. My mother-in-law did what she did because she loves—loved—CALA more than anything else in her life.”

  Did I detect a note of bitterness? Yessirree, I sure did.

  “I know. I heard she was very generous to the school, and we all appreciate it.”

  Her face flickered, the way a candle blinks in the wind.

  “Look, I realize this is a difficult time for you,” I continued. “I know you’ve been through a lot. If you have family albums, just let me borrow those. I’ll copy the photos I need, and return everything intact. Then I won’t bother you anymore.”

  Deanna considered this. A muscle flickered in her jaw. “You are Sheila Lowenstein’s daughter-in-law?”

  “Yes.”

  “How is she as a mother-in-law? Is she nice to you? Does she accept you?”

  This strange question took me aback. “Um, she’s very good to my daughter. She and I get along fine.”

  “Really?” Deanna raised an eyebrow. “She’s a perfectionist. Mrs. Fitzgerald was, too. People like them can be hard. You can’t please them.”

  Her syntax hinted at her rural roots. She pronounced “can’t” like “cain’t.”

  I nodded. “You’re right. It can be—trying.”

  “Does she help you out? With money and all?” Derrick’s eyes pinned me down like I was a butterfly on a bulletin board.

  “On occasion.” Was it that obvious? Did I look that shabby? The weather still cycled rapidly from chilly to warm and back again. After checking the forecast today and learning it would be coolish, I put on a brown skirt I’d found at Goodwill, a cream knit sweater, and a large beaded necklace that I’d made myself. Brown tights and low shoes completed my outfit.

  In contrast, the slub silk of Deanna’s black dress screamed expensive designer.

  What prompted Deanna’s question? Had she heard how Sheila paid for Anya’s tuition, books, and clothes? Sheila often shared more than I thought prudent. Certainly, she didn’t seem to consider what might embarrass me. Her focus was on how she looked. Not my feelings.

  I amended my answer. “A lot, actually. Sheila helps me a lot.”

  “You get paid for this?” asked Derrick. “This playing with pictures?”

  He pronounced the word “pit-churs.”

  “Yes,” I said. “This is my job. I’m a single mom.”

  Deanna came to a decision. “Can you make up large photos of Mrs. Fitzgerald? I mean for tomorrow, to display at the funeral home? I’ll pay you.”

  “Of course.” Lane had asked me to meet her at the funeral home with the memorial albums so she could present one to the Fitzgerald family right after the service. I would have to arrive a little earlier than I’d planned to set up the photos, but that wasn’t a big deal. Besides, I could use the money. So I added, “I’ve done this before, and I know just what to do. You’ll be very pleased with the result.”

  “Derrick, take her to Peter’s office. Get her the albums.”

  I followed him into a masculine room with a big desk and walnut paneling. To cover my awkwardness, I tried to make conversation. “How’s Peter handling the loss of his mother?”

  “What do you expect? He’s sad, of course.” Derrick grabbed a handful of leather-bound albums and held them out for me.

  “Of course.” Who are we fooling? I thought to myself.

  Thirty-six

  I spent the rest of the afternoon touching up photos, designing, and creating Edwina’s memorial album. Since we stocked albums in all the local school colors, I selected a royal blue and gold leather binder. Next I started on the interior design work.

  Every fifteen minutes, Margit would come and stare over my shoulder. She would mutter to herself in a discouraged tone. At one point, Margit clucked her tongue. “What a Schlamassel.”

  Whatever.

  Nietzsche said, “One must have chaos within one’s self to give birth to a dancing star.” I know from experience that negative thinking can douse the spark of creativity. I kept playing, letting the child within me explore different combinations, until finally, I happened upon one that worked beautifully.

  We carried a calla lily image that I stamped, hand-colored, and duplicated onto nice paper. To add dimension, I twisted paper coffee filters into the shape of the flowers. When glued to the stamped and colored images, these created 3-D blossoms.

  I also selected a shield shape, representative of the CALA school shield, and made multiple journaling boxes from it.

  Finally, I devised a border. After sewing a gathering stitch down the middle of a wide piece of royal blue ribbon, I drew it taut. This yielded a puckered satin ruffle that worked perfectly for the bottom of the pages.

  To pull these items together, I matted the photos of Edwina and family on a subtle royal blue print, and then on gold paper. My background paper was a royal blue and gold print. The resulting base pages were both classic in their simplicity and yet complex enough to hold your attention.

  “Wunderbar!” Margit said, startling me. I had been so wrapped up in my work that I hadn’t noticed her peering over my shoulder. “Das beste, was man sich nur denken kann.”

  “In English, please.” I stepped away from my work table to study the title page. I always add a title page to the front of any album. Besides listing the contents in order, it also details why the album was made, who commissioned it, and finally it documents me as the creator and gives the date finished. Without that elementary information, no one knows the vantage point of the assemblage, and yes, we all see the world differently so that’s important.

  “That means ‘the best one could possibly imagine.’ That’s what you have done. It’s simply wunderbar.” She clasped her hands to her chest, her round face aglow with delight. “Dodie told me you had a talent. I could not see it. I wondered if she was mistaken. Now I know she was quite correct. This thing you do, with paper and trinkets, it is quite nice. This woman is dead, is she not? What a tribute to her. Her family will cherish this.”

  “That’s the general idea. These other photos will be on display at the funeral tomor
row. They’ll serve as a reminder of her life.”

  “Tomorrow? What time?”

  “I need to drop this off tomorrow around two-thirty. I’m scheduled to work all afternoon, so you’ll have to switch shifts with me.”

  “Nein, I told Dodie, I must have Monday afternoons, Wednesday afternoons off. Sunday also.”

  Brother. Why was I the only person who had to be flexible? Huh?

  “Hey, I’m not asking for myself. The client requested that I set up the photos, and Lane over at CALA asked me to bring these albums to her before the memorial service. Dodie told me to make this happen. Surely, you can switch with me just this once.”

  “Absolutely not!” Margit gave her head such a violent shake that her glasses slipped down her nose. She smacked her fist on the desk top. “I was very clear on this. I will not work on Monday or Wednesday afternoon or on Sunday.”

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Blah, blah, blah. I was just too tired to care.

  Thirty-seven

  By the time I pulled into Sheila’s driveway, my head pounded like a scrapbooker setting eyelets with a hammer. I dragged my sorry self up the walkway, through the back door, and into the kitchen. Gracie rose from her bed, a soft cushion that Linnea had insisted she have.

  The sounds from the TV in Sheila’s room drifted down through the ceiling. I figured that she and Robbie were having a private moment. I hoped they were. Between their upcoming wedding, the sniper attack, and my darling mother’s visit, my mother-in-law and her intended were coping with a lot of stress. But they made a good couple. Robbie exuded a manly steadiness, and Sheila provided a generous helping of zing. They complemented each other. More and more I noticed how they turned to each other for support.

  I envied them. To me, the best part of being married is knowing that someone is there for you. Even though George and I had our problems, I could always depend on him. He was always in my corner. He never spoke ill of me in public, he took my side, and he listened to my opinion. With a few notable exceptions, we treated each other with great courtesy. Perhaps because we weren’t in love, we didn’t fall out of love. We were partners in almost every aspect of our lives.

  My stomach rumbled. I needed food. There were cups, plates, dinnerware, and glasses on every surface. Pots and pans littered the granite countertop. Empty cans tilted precariously in the recycling bin and tattled that dinner tonight had been soup. An empty bag of Payday candy bars sat in the sink. Those must have been Mom’s snacks, because she loves Paydays.

  I missed Linnea. She would have left the kitchen spotless and a meal for me warming in the oven. She would have made me a fresh batch of Snickerdoodles, too.

  The refrigerator shelves held nothing but a carton of cottage cheese. I grabbed that, opened a can of peaches, and ate the impromptu fruit salad for dinner. As the nourishment flowed through my system, my energy rebounded. I began to feel almost human again.

  I text-messaged Clancy, “Need help tomorrow afternoon at store. Can u come at noon?”

  Halfway through loading the dishwasher, I felt my phone vibrating. “See you then. C.”

  Slinging my backpack over one shoulder, I trudged up the stairs with Gracie following closely behind me. After a quick shower, I settled onto the big, comfortable bed and glanced through the Fitzgerald family albums Deanna had loaned me.

  Like most albums, the pictures followed a chronological order. Someone had taken the time and care to slip photos into photo corners. That was good, because it would make removing photos easier.

  I stared at old baby photos with names and dates under them. Two sour-faced people held a baby in a white christening dress that draped over the woman’s arms. Beneath them, a thin script labeled the photo as, “Edwina Rose Lichbaden,” and offered her date of birth. Later shots of Edwina showed her arm-in-arm with her CALA chums. In one picture, she wielded a field hockey stick while wearing a fearsome expression of concentration on her face. In another, she wore the traditional white bridal gown that senior girls wear for the May Day celebration. Even though the foxing blurred the image, I saw the pearls and gems covered the bodice. Belatedly I realized she was holding the huge bouquet given to one special girl, the Queen of the May Day celebration.

  A few pages later on the occasion of her own wedding, she wore a simple silk gown with tiers of lace. Sad to say, it seemed somehow anti-climatic.

  Another album held photos of Edwina’s husband, Gergen Fitzgerald. While this volume was considerably thinner, it still chronicled his life. Gergen must have come from a modest background. There were no pony rides, no fancy clothes, no formal events. But he did appear quite dapper wearing an Army uniform.

  So Edwina fell for a man in the service. With that in mind, the timeframe of photos of the couple made more sense to me.

  Peter’s birth occasioned another scrapbook. Formal photos were interspersed with candid shots. Evidently Peter had a sister, Elsa, a beautiful girl with the round face and almond eyes that signal Down syndrome. Elsa appeared briefly on pages, but around the age of five, she vanished.

  The thinnest album told Deanna’s life story. School pictures were the only formal photos here. When Deanna turned eleven, her grandparents bought her a Brownie camera for her birthday, or so the scrawl below a photo of Deanna with a lopsided cake explained. From that day on, boxy photos with white deckle edges dominated the pages of her album.

  I flipped through pictures of Deanna with her dog, a mixed breed of beagle and chow; Deanna fishing with Derrick; Deanna and her family standing proudly beside a young Derrick in uniform holding a medal; Deanna and her mother in their Easter finery; and Deanna with her father and brother standing over an eight-point buck.

  When I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer, I carefully stacked all the albums at the side of my bed. I fell asleep dreaming up layouts that featured four candid photos of Edwina, including the radiant picture of her as the May Day Queen. It would be a fitting, if ironic, tribute to what had clearly been the one great love of her life: CALA.

  Thirty-eight

  Wednesday, May 5

  Sheila woke me at six by rapping on my door. I stumbled out of bed and tried to remember where I was. I tripped over Gracie and apologized for stepping on her paw.

  “Yes?”

  “Today is National Take Your Mother to Work day.”

  “It is?”

  “Yes. Either you take your mother with you to work today or I will kill her.” Sheila leaned against my door jam and held her fluffy white bathrobe clutched closed. A tremor in one eyelid caused it to jump around weirdly. With a twitchy eye and no makeup, she sure didn’t look like the Sheila we all knew and feared.

  “What happened? What’d she do now?”

  She shook her head and walked into my room. “You don’t want to hear about it.”

  “Oh, yes, I do.”

  “She put Anya’s cat in the microwave.”

  “What!”

  “We had that vet appointment for Seymour’s six-month check up. I put the cat carrier on the kitchen counter. Anya and I went looking for Seymour. Your mother sang out, ‘I’ve got him,’ and by the time we made it into the kitchen, Lucia was stuffing Seymour into the microwave oven. She turned and told us, ‘That should make it easier for you to take him to the vet.’ Fortunately, Seymour is okay.”

  I groaned. The gray and white tabby had won all of our hearts. His tiny pink nose would tickle your ear as you sat watching TV. He and Gracie had become the best of buddies, and often Seymour slept curled up between the Great Dane’s big front paws.

  “She’s also been incredibly mean toward Anya. Picking on her. Finding fault with her hair, her nails, her clothes.”

  I sank down onto the bed and tried to fend off unhappy memories. Sheila joined me. “Was it like this for you when you were a kid?”

  “No cats were harmed during my childhood.”

  “She must have Alzheimer’s. Or another form of dementia. You need to get her medical records together, get her an appointment with a spe
cialist, and have her diagnosed. Maybe there’s a program that can help.”

  “There is. Euthanasia.”

  “Right. Until then, we can’t leave her here alone. It’s too dangerous. I can’t babysit her. Today I meet with the floral designer to go over plans for how I want the tables decorated for our wedding dinner at the Ritz.”

  “Yes, of course.” I nodded. No use whining to Sheila that Amanda still refused to take my calls. I’d have to break through my sister’s wall of silence. I just wasn’t sure how.

  “I’m going to Edwina’s funeral. I can take her along. That should keep Mom occupied.”

  “Better keep your mom on a short leash. Lucia could get into plenty of mischief at the service. You’ll be there representing the store, and everyone from CALA will be attending. Your mother has to be on her best behavior.”

  Thirty-nine

  I set Mom to counting sheets of paper while I worked at our computer station scanning and enlarging the photos of Edwina Fitzgerald to display at the funeral. I also scanned Fitzgerald family photos and newspaper clippings for the memorial album. A few of them I color-corrected, and on one I repaired a small rip.

  “I knocked over my coffee,” Mom said.

  The strong smell of vanilla in the air surprised me. I swallowed hard and tried not to retch. I reached into my pocket and grabbed a Saltine. Chewing it settled my stomach.

  Sure enough, her floral polyester skirt bore a spreading stain from her vanilla latte. I hopped up from my work and raced to the work table. A stack of paper floated on a sea of brown java. I grabbed the top layer of paper and moved it, but the liquid ruined hundreds of sheets.

  I mopped up the mess and helped Mom blot her skirt. Luckily it was floral, so the coffee didn’t show.

  “Mom, remember how I asked you not to put your coffee on the table?”

  “Phoo,” she waved a hand at me. “That paper is fine. It’s still in one piece.”