by Lois Winston
“He’s invited us over for a barbecue Friday evening to meet his wife. I checked Alex’s and Nick’s work schedules for Friday. Neither of them is working that night, so I accepted for all of us.”
“Mom!” Alex groaned.
“Do we have to go?” asked Nick.
Mama jumped in before I could respond. She patted Nick’s hand and said, “Don’t be silly. Of course you’re going. Ira is family, and you have little enough family as it is.”
“And what if I had plans for Friday evening, Mama?” Like a date with a bubble bath, followed by one with my pillow.
The added stress since settling Lucille in at Sunnyside last Friday—not to mention the unending heat wave—had totally zapped me. I’d give anything for just one lazy, stress-free day, but I’d settle for a few hours Friday evening. Which is what I had planned. Now I wouldn’t even have that.
“Don’t worry, dear. Ira invited Zack, too. He even suggested springing that batty Bolshevik for a few hours, but I talked him out of that. Why ruin what promises to be a delightful evening, right?”
My mouth dropped open. I literally did not know how to respond to this ambush from my mother. I turned to Zack for help and found his mouth hanging open, too.
_____
Whether Zack thought he was humoring me or protecting me, he stuck around after dinner and helped me pore through Lyndella’s journals yet one more time. Alex and Nick were much smarter, accepting an invitation to swim at a neighbor’s pool. Mama joined them. I thought about sneaking down the street and hiding in the bushes to see if she hooked up with a special someone while there, but my work ethic got the better of me. Besides, I could always cross-examine my sons about their grandmother later that night or tomorrow.
My eyes grew gritty from the strain of reading Lyndella’s miniscule script, but I continued to read every word, this time concentrating on the last six weeks of her life. At one point I found a single tantalizing inscription—found a golden ticket—but no clue as to what the phrase meant. I doubted it referred to Willy Wonka.
I had previously created a list of all Lyndella’s clients from her accounts ledger and matched them to names I found hidden in her crafting journals from corresponding time periods. Zack decided to go over the names from the last ten years that The Savannah Club for Discerning Gentlemen had been in business, hoping to spot someone currently making a name for himself in politics.
“If only we were more familiar with Georgian politics,” he said. “None of these names is jumping out at me.”
“Do you think it’s worth searching further back, beyond ten years?”
“Pointless. What are the chances that someone old enough to frequent a gentleman’s club over thirty years ago would just be getting into politics now?”
“Slim to none?” Neither of us had heard of any potential national candidates from Georgia or elsewhere older than their early sixties.
“If I never see another handcrafted sex toy in my life, I’ll die happy,” I said at one point after reading through directions for dildos made of every conceivable medium known to the arts.
“It’s a shame Sunnyside’s director destroyed all of Lyndella’s artwork,” said Zack.
“Oh?” I bemoaned the loss of such fine craftsmanship, even given the subject matter, but I questioned Zack’s interest in the vandalized pieces.
“She was Lyndella’s only living heir, right?”
“As far as either of us knows.”
“I’ll bet the Museum of Sex in Manhattan would have paid a fortune for that collection.”
I’d braced for some prurient comment, and Zack handed me a goldmine of an economic one. I laughed in spite of myself. Or maybe I should be crying. If only I’d had room in my car for additional cartons Sunday afternoon, I might now find myself out of hock and firmly planted back in middle-classdom.
After hours of reading with not a hint of a suspect, I finally stumbled across something I’d missed earlier from one of Lyndella’s last craft projects. “Look at this.” I pointed to a cryptic line written within the directions for a pair of cloisonné nipple clips. The letters were so tiny that at first I’d mistaken the writing for a wavy underline. Had Lyndella written her comment with the aid of a magnifying glass? I certainly needed one to read what she’d written.
“Ouch!” said Zack. “I wonder who modeled those for her.”
“I don’t want to know.” The body in the photo was way too young by half a century or more to be Lyndella. One of Sunnyside’s staff perhaps? I slapped my hand over the photo so that Zack would instead concentrate on the writing on the page. “Take a look at what she wrote at the end of the list of supplies.”
Zack squinted at the print and read aloud, “Disturbing. I never used to forget a face.”
“Now look what’s buried within the fourth step in the directions, between the second and fourth lines.”
I pointed to another wavy line that was actually a sentence. Zack read, “Why can’t I place him? Not much to go on,” he said.
“But there’s more.” I showed him the last clue, the coup de grace sentence I’d found between the fifth and seventh lines of the ninth step in the directions. My cheeks infused with heat as Zack stared wide-eyed at Lyndella’s words: A good fuck should refresh my memory.
seventeen
“Well,” Zack finally said.
“Yeah.”
“So you’re thinking—”
“The killer had to be someone fairly new to Sunnyside. Someone Lyndella thought she recognized but couldn’t place. He certainly wouldn’t have used his real name if he came to kill her.”
“And luring him into her bed would clear the cobwebs from her mind?” Zack laughed. “Sex usually acts as a soporific on the brain, not a stimulant.”
“But maybe if you’ve had as much sex over a lifetime as Lyndella did, you come to realize that no two men make love the same way. If she’d previously slept with the guy, the way he performed might trigger a memory.”
Zack saw where I was going. “You’re thinking Lucille wasn’t dreaming Friday night, that Lyndella did have sex with someone, and that someone was her killer.”
“Given what she wrote, it’s a plausible theory. All I need to find out is which male residents and staff members were new to Sunnyside.”
“No,” said Zack.
“No?”
“What you need to do now is hand over those journals and your theory to the investigating detective. Let the professionals deal with this.”
“Party pooper.” Although I offered Zack my most petulant pout, I was relieved that I finally had enough credible evidence to take to the police. Maybe credible evidence was stretching it a bit. What I really had was a working theory and lots of circumstantial evidence, but it was credible circumstantial evidence that should cause Detective Spader to take me somewhat seriously.
At least, I hoped so. Having already suffered a close call with one quasi-hit man five months ago, I had no intention of deliberately putting myself in harm’s way again. I had one major problem, though. I still had to spend time at a place where a hit man either lived or worked.
_____
As soon as I arrived at work the next day, I phoned Detective Spader.
A woman answered. “Detective Spader’s phone.”
“Is he available?” I asked. “This is Anastasia Pollack calling. I’d like to speak with him about the Sunnyside investigation.”
“Are you a reporter?”
“No, I work part-time at Sunnyside, and I have some information for him.”
“One moment.” Instead of placing me on hold, she covered the phone’s mouthpiece, and I heard her shout a muffled, “Hey, Sam! Call for you.”
Sam? The guy’s name was Sam Spader? Once again the universe had punned me. Ever since Dead Louse of a Spouse died five months ago, I’d found myself
dealing with a series of law enforcement types whose superiors had to have smoked wacky weed when they partnered up their cops. So far I’d come in contact with Officers Simmons and Garfinkle and Detectives Batswin and Robbins in Morris County and Detectives Phillips and Marlowe in Manhattan. Now Detective Sam Spader in Union County. I had to add his parents to my wacky weed theory. So far only Westfield patrolmen Harley and Fogarty seemed to have escaped pun-free, unless Harley’s first name was Davidson.
“Spader here.”
Luckily, he’d taken enough time getting to his phone that I’d overcome my urge to giggle. When I spoke, I sounded like an intelligent adult. After introducing myself, I asked if he’d made any headway in solving Lyndella’s murder.
“I can’t discuss an ongoing case, ma’am.”
I knew he’d say that, but I figured it didn’t hurt to ask. “I think I may have stumbled across something that might help you,” I said. “Can we make an appointment to meet?”
“Are you at Sunnyside now?”
“No, I only work there on weekends. I’m at my full-time job up in Morris County.”
“How about if you come over to headquarters on your way home from work this evening?”
“Would it be possible for you to meet me at my home instead?” The last thing I wanted to do was lug all those cartons of binders from my house to my car and then from my car into Union County police headquarters, all in blistering heat, especially when collecting evidence fell under Detective Spader’s job description, not mine. I’d happily acquiesce the lugging to him.
After we agreed on a time, I hung up, ready to start my day. First up, I collated the crafts Clara had chosen with the questionnaires the residents had filled out for me. To my great relief, Clara had decided to feature at least three items from each of the crafters in the group and as many as half a dozen from some.
To my great surprise, most of the questionnaires remained empty aside from the crafters’ names. No one had even listed his or her age. Holy paranoia! It’s not like I asked for their birth dates. Most hadn’t even told me how long they’d been crafting. I suppose I’d have to wheedle the information out of them on a one-on-one basis. If they wanted to be part of the magazine article, they’d have to cough up at least some details of their lives.
By two-thirty I’d checked off the day’s must-do items from our various in-production issues. With an hour to spare, I should have no trouble arriving back in Westfield in plenty of time for the first of the interviews I’d scheduled with the Sunnyside crafters.
_____
Of course, I hadn’t factored in the overturned semi and resulting five-car pileup that ground traffic on Route 287 to a standstill. After being diverted off the interstate and through towns with twenty-five-mile-an-hour speed limits, I finally arrived at Sunnyside forty-five minutes late.
I expected to find Mabel cooling her rhinestone bedazzled heels and walker in the lobby and braced myself for a lecture on punctuality until I remembered Mabel would never lecture me about anything ever again. Instead, April greeted me.
“Girl, you work as much as I do. What’cha doing here today?”
“Me? What about you? I’ve never seen another receptionist sitting at that desk.”
April shrugged her shoulders, bouncing both her boobs and her mass of cornrows up and down. Today she wore a Kelly green T-shirt with a huge red Jersey Tomato stamped across the front.
“Shirley gives me all the hours I want. I’m saving to go to beauty school. Me and my cousin, we’re gonna open our own day spa some day. Already have a name picked out for it. April May, and June. Her name’s June. Cute, huh?”
“Definitely.”
She beamed. “Oh, I almost forgot. Sally Strathower was looking for you. She said if you ever showed up to tell you she’d be in the computer room.”
I didn’t know Sunnyside had a dedicated computer room. “Where’s that?” I asked.
“Four doors down from the arts and crafts room.”
I thanked April and headed in search of Sally, my first interview for the day.
I found her sitting at one of six computer terminals that lined three walls of the small room. Five other residents worked at the other computers. The fourth wall held a printer, a shelf of computer manuals, and several reams of paper. “You’re late,” she said when I walked over to her.
“Sorry. I got caught behind a pile-up on 287. Can we go somewhere private to talk?”
“Soon as I finish updating my Facebook page.”
Facebook? I glanced over Sally’s shoulder to study her page. For someone concerned about identity theft, she certainly wasn’t shy about posting all sorts of information about her private life for Mark Zuckerberg and the rest of the Facebook Nation to view.
While Sally typed away, I wandered around the confines of the tiny room, surreptitiously glancing at the other computer screens. Barbara was Tweeting, Estelle and Berniece were catching up on email correspondence, Jerome was surfing eligible women on eHarmony, and Murray was losing big at online poker. No wonder he needed extra cash.
“Okay,” said Sally, coming up behind me and grabbing my arm. “I’m done. Let’s go.”
She led me to the library. Glancing inside, we found the room empty. “This work for you?” she asked.
“Sure.”
After we settled in on one of the leather sofas, she asked, “How many of my pieces does the gallery want?”
I pulled out my paperwork on Sally and showed her copies of the photos Clara had chosen.
“Only six pieces? I was hoping she’d want them all since they don’t take up much space.” Sally had brought three dozen pieces of jewelry for me to photograph the other day.
“It’s a small gallery,” I reminded her. “You had more pieces chosen than many of the others, and no one had more than six items picked.” This elicited a smile from her. “Plus, if the pieces sell, the gallery owner will want more from you.”
Sally’s eyes sparkled with glee. Or were those dollar signs I saw dancing in her eyes?
“I noticed you didn’t fill out any information on your form,” I said.
“Murray convinced us not to. He said you never know where personal information will wind up and how it will be used against you.”
“When did he say this?”
“While you were taking the photographs.”
“I didn’t hear him.”
“He whispered it to each of us.”
I decided not to point out the hypocrisy of having a Facebook page. Becoming confrontational wouldn’t get my article written. I took out my notebook and pen and said, “I see, but that causes me a bit of a dilemma. So how about if we compromise?”
“In what way?”
“For starters, instead of me mentioning everyone’s age, what if you give me a range for the crafters? I don’t even need names, just how young is the youngest and how old is the oldest.”
Sally thought this over for a minute, a scowl on her face, her clear gray eyes focused on me throughout her thought process. “I suppose that wouldn’t hurt,” she finally said, “except I don’t know everyone’s exact age. Maybe late sixties through early nineties. Lyndella was the oldest, but she doesn’t count anymore.”
I made a note. “That works. And have you always done handcrafts?”
“I always knitted. My mother taught me when I became pregnant with my first child, but I didn’t take up any other crafts until I retired.”
“What did you do before you retired?”
She scowled again.
I sighed. “I don’t need a company name, Sally, just an occupation.”
“Why?”
“Because this is a human interest story. Our readers want to be able to relate in some way to the people they read about in our magazine.”
She nodded. “You can put down that I worked in the banki
ng industry.”
“Were you a teller?”
She squared her shoulders and puffed out her chest. “A branch manager, but don’t say that.”
If all my other interviewees were this close-mouthed, I’d wind up writing the most boring human interest story ever to grace the pages of American Woman. Naomi would pitch a fit, especially since the issue’s slant had been my idea. I tried a different approach. “What got you interested in making beaded jewelry?”
“One of the other Sunnyside residents.”
“Care to tell me which one?”
Sally shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. She died a few years ago.”
After pulling teeth with Sally for about fifteen minutes, I ended the interview, hoping I’d have better luck with some of the other crafters. Before I left, though, I changed the subject. “Sunnyside seems almost like a family to me. I imagine you all grow very close to the staff over the years.”
Sally pulled a face and waved my words away with a flick of her hand.
“No?”
“This place is like a revolving door. No one hangs around all that long.”
“Really? With jobs so hard to come by these days?”
“They don’t leave until they’ve lined up something else, but would you work for Shirley Hallstead longer than you had to?”
“So in the last month or so would you estimate there have been many new employees?”
“At least a dozen. Nurses, aides, orderlies, cafeteria workers, housekeeping staff. You name it. Hard to keep them all straight half the time.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “Why all the interest?”
I shrugged. “No reason other than curiosity.” And the need to form a list of possible killers.
“Odd thing to be curious about. You sure there isn’t something you’re not telling me?”
“Me? Sally, what reason would I have for withholding information like that from you?” I stood, thanked her for her time, said good-bye, and went in search of my second interview subject.
Barbara proved no more forthcoming than Sally. Neither did Estelle, Berniece, or Dirk. I’d set aside two hours to interview four people. Even with arriving forty-five minutes late, I wound up finishing early. I expected just as little cooperation with the remaining crafters I still needed to interview.