by Lois Winston
Either he possessed innate talent, or he’d had some training. However, although Savannah was home to the renowned Savannah College of Art and Design, how many hit men have attended art school? Dirk seemed an unlikely assassin.
Murray, on the other hand, was a royal pain in the ass. He, too, camped out in the arts and crafts room most of the day but confined himself to the pottery area. A real skinflint and conniver, he absconded with anything not chained down. On more than one occasion, I’d seen him pocket items others accidently dropped or inadvertently left behind—mostly magazines, packs of cigarettes, or candy bars. I was lucky I carried around cheap Bics in my tote and not more expensive pens. He also refused to divulge any information about himself and had encouraged the others not to, either.
Murray’s paperwork listed him as having last lived in Bridgewater. Who moves from out in Somerset County into a retirement home in Westfield? Especially someone who complains so vocally about his lack of money? Surely, he could have found an equally nice and less expensive retirement community near Bridgewater.
Then again, I could imagine someone with a penchant for skydiving being a killer. Both activities involved adrenalin junkie behavior and both risked life and limb.
A lot of circumstantial evidence seemed to point to Murray being the hit man.
I saw one major flaw in my reasoning, though. If Murray was the killer, wouldn’t he be getting paid well for the hit? Murray, more than anyone else I’d come across at Sunnyside, openly complained about his lack of money. Then again, Murray might have a huge stash somewhere and his grumblings were just another part of his charade. For all I knew, Murray had never lived in Bridgewater, and Murray Seibert wasn’t even his real name.
So how did I out him?
_____
The answer to that question kept me tossing and turning most of the night. As Mephisto and I headed over to Sunnyside Saturday morning, I still had no idea how to prove a connection between Murray and Lyndella.
As soon as I arrived, April greeted me with a warning. “That woman is definitely off her meds. Stay as far away from her as you can today.”
“Shirley?”
“The Queen of Bipolar herself.”
“Did something happen?”
“She’s had one serious stick up her ass ever since she returned yesterday afternoon. Chewing everyone out nonstop. Notice anything different?”
I did. For the first time since I’d met her, April wasn’t wearing a New Jersey billboard plastered across her chest. Instead, she wore what I suspected might be her grandmother’s Sunday go-to-church dress, a modest pastel blue and lavender calico print shirtwaist with a white Peter Pan collar and elbow-length sleeves. Instead of her usual dangling chandelier earrings and nose stud, she wore one small white pearl in each ear and nothing piercing her nose. “New look?”
She grimaced. “I was told my wardrobe didn’t meet Sunnyside standards. No more T-shirts. I’ve worked here two years, and she never once said a word. Then yesterday afternoon, she’s all over me like she got picked up by the fashion cops for the way I dress.”
“Sorry to hear that. I’ll heed your warning and stay hidden in the arts and crafts room all day.”
April called after me as I headed down the hall to deposit Mephisto in Lucille’s room. “Won’t help. She knows where to find you.”
And she did. Shirley Hallstead was waiting for me when I entered the classroom. She wore her navy power suit, a Hermes scarf tied around her neck, and a huge scowl. Several of my students were already at work on their pottery and sculpture projects. Dirk had taken up his usual station at his easel.
I sensed a tension in the room that explained the lack of socialization which normally accompanied everyone’s crafting.
Deciding to play dumb, I graced Shirley with a huge smile and said, “Good morning, Shirley. Is there something I can help you with?”
She raked her gaze from my pale blue and white striped T-shirt to my chambray skirt, to my bare legs and sandals. “From now on, Mrs. Pollack, you will dress in suitable business attire while working here. That means a dress or business suit, stockings at all times, and absolutely no T-shirts or sandals under any circumstances. Do I make myself clear?”
I know my mouth opened to speak, but no words came out. Was she out of her freaking mind? Stockings in this heat wave? Stockings when she kept the Sunnyside thermostat set at eighty-two degrees? And a dress or suit in an art room? I wondered if she made the same demands of her nurses and nursing aides.
Say good-bye to your scrubs, ladies and gentlemen. From here on the women will change catheters and take blood dressed in Pierre Cardin suits and Nine West pumps. The men will wear three-piece Hugo Boss suits and Cole Haan oxfords.
Was this Shirley’s way of punishing everyone for her deceit over her relationship with Lyndella? I’d love to know exactly what happened yesterday down at the police station. Too bad I had no way of finding out.
I don’t know how long I stood there with my mouth gaping, but it was definitely well after Shirley had departed. I snapped out of my stupor only when Murray asked, “Want us to take out a contract on her?”
My head whipped around to where he stood at the glazing table. Had he just let an important piece of evidence slip? “You have connections, Murray? Are you a made man?”
“Me? Hell, no.”
“Then how would you go about orchestrating a hit on Shirley? Or anyone?”
He laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
“This is New Jersey, chickie. There’s bound to be someone at Sunnyside with connections.”
“He’s right,” said Estelle. “My old next door neighbor was a DiNapoli, and her daughter married a Gambino.”
“My George worked for a Bonanno until we retired,” said Sally.
I raised my eyebrows but decided to keep my mouth firmly shut. I’d ask April what George Strathower did for a living before moving to Sunnyside.
“I went to school with a Colombo son and two Genovese cousins,” said Jerome. “You can’t spit in New Jersey without hitting someone connected to one of the five families.”
So I’d heard, but rumor was one thing. I certainly didn’t have any such connections, and I’d lived in New Jersey all my life. Then again, Erica Milano, American Woman’s former assistant fashion editor, now in Witness Protection, was Joey Milano’s daughter. And Ricardo, the loan shark who’d tried to kill me, had worked for Joey. So in a way, I, too, had loose ties to organized crime. Not connections I could call upon, though.
Having all these people mention their ties to the Mafia turned rumor into reality. It also considerably widened the pool of suspects. Anyone with a grudge against Lyndella may have paid to have her snuffed out.
Maybe that’s why so many of my crafters were in dire financial straits. What if they’d all pooled their money to have someone knock off Lyndella Wegner? It might sound like something out of an Agatha Christie novel, but hey, this was New Jersey, and not far removed from the realm of possibilities in a state that had an intertwined history with organized crime. Had Mabel been killed because she suffered from buyer’s remorse and threatened to spill the beans?
However, before I started generating additional murder scenarios, I had to eliminate the ones I already had. Once everyone went back to his and her projects and chatter filled the room, I sidled over to Murray.
After watching him dip the top half of a vase in glaze, I asked. “Hey, Murray, what’s it like in Savannah this time of year? Hotter than here?”
I had hoped to startle him, but Murray didn’t startle, didn’t skip a beat. He set his vase down to dry and turned to me, a puzzled expression on his face. “Why ask me about Savannah? Never been there.”
“Really? I could have sworn I heard someone mention you once lived in Savannah.”
“Wasn’t me.” He picked up a bowl, poured
some glaze into it, and swished the glaze around to create an abstract pattern. “Never been south of D.C. Can’t stand those Southern rednecks. Lincoln should’ve let them all quit the Union when he had the chance.”
That was certainly more information than I’d pried out of Murray since meeting him. Too bad it didn’t help me. Was Murray Seibert that good a liar, or were my Sherlocking skills that bad?
Since I didn’t know how else to keep the Savannah conversation going without raising Murray’s suspicions, I decided to ponder my next move as I began collecting the remainder of the pieces for the Creative Hearts & Hands exhibit. Given Shirley’s mood and her wholesale destruction of Lyndella’s crafts, I had decided against a staging area in the arts and crafts room. Each day I’d been to Sunnyside since Clara picked the items she wanted, I’d brought some of them home with me. Clara and Ronnie would pick them all up at my house later this afternoon.
During lunch, before walking Mephisto, I carted the remaining artwork out to my car, keeping my fingers crossed I wouldn’t bump into Shirley. When April had suggested Shirley was off her meds today, perhaps she wasn’t being sarcastic. A bipolar Shirley would certainly explain her roller-coaster personality.
I contemplated the possibility as I tried to coax Mephisto out into the blistering midday heat. “Don’t make me lift you up and haul you out,” I told him as he dug in his paws at the entrance. “Shirley’s already on the warpath. If you pee on her floor, we’re both toast, and I need the extra income to keep you in Kibble.”
He lifted his head and presented me with the most pathetic doggie-eyed expression I’d ever seen. “Save it. I’m not that much of a pushover. Now, march!”
Mephisto let out a long-suffering doggie sigh, but he exited the building, found a small spot of shade under a tree, and did his business in record time. I had to run behind him as he made a beeline back to the entrance and the relative comfort of eighty-two degree air conditioning.
We found Lucille waiting at the reception area. “Why are you making my darling run in this heat?” she demanded, yanking the leash from my hand. “Have you no common sense, Anastasia?” With Mephisto dragging behind her, she shuffled her walker back to her room.
“Looked to me like you were running to keep up with the mutt,” said April. “You should stick up for yourself, girl. That mother-in-law of yours needs a good talking to. She’s as bad as Lyndella was, just in a different way.”
“Have at her, April. I’ve given up trying.” Thanks to Dead Louse of a Spouse, I was stuck with Lucille until death do us part. At this point in my life, I only hoped the Grim Reaper came for her first. Until then, I’d continue to try not to let her get to me. Try being the operative word. I didn’t need an ulcer on top of all my other problems.
My painting and drawing class started filing into the room as I finished my last spoonful of yogurt. The seniors had previously made it abundantly clear to me that they neither needed nor wanted instruction. However, I felt I should be doing something beyond proctoring to earn my thirty-five dollars an hour.
Over the course of the week, I’d accumulated a box of interesting objects, everything from a chipped conch shell to a broken locket to a bent wire whisk and more. I added a few balls of yarn, lengths of ribbon, and buttons from the arts and crafts room supply closet and placed the box in the middle of one of the tables.
“For those of you looking for new subject matter to draw or paint, help yourselves to some of the items in the box and arrange them to form a still life.”
A few of the men and women wandered over to the box and pawed through it, helping themselves to some of the items. I felt useful for the first time. The others headed for the circle of easels to work on their current still lifes.
“Any chance you could talk Shirley into coughing up money for a live model?” asked Estelle. “I’m getting sick of still lifes.”
“Me, too,” said Berniece. “Kara used to take some of us over to Mindowaskin Park to work on landscapes, but it’s too hot to paint outside.”
“Preferably nude models,” said Murray from the pottery table where he’d begun to knead a lump of fresh clay.
I raised my eyebrows at that. “Are you planning to move from pottery to painting, Murray?”
“Hell, no, chickie. I just like to look.”
This produced a titter from some of the women and chuckles from the other men.
“Don’t hold your breath,” I told him. “Shirley doesn’t strike me as being in the giving mood lately.”
“Unless she’s giving grief and aggravation,” said Sally, apparently referring to my dressing down this morning over the new staff dress code edict.
I gathered up the box of found objects to make room for those who might want to use the table and placed it on one of the shelves under the windows. “Help yourselves to any of the remaining items at any point,” I told them. “I’ll leave the box here.”
“I’d rather help myself to a nude model,” said Murray.
“Enough with the nudes, Murray. Not going to happen. Not now. Not ever. Shirley would have a cow at the mere suggestion, and I’m already persona non grata with her.”
Before anyone else responded, we heard a rap at the door. Detective Spader, accompanied by Officers Harley and Fogarty, stepped into the room and headed straight for Dirk. Harley nodded to me as he and Fogarty took up positions slightly behind and to either side of Dirk.
“Mr. Silver,” said the detective, “we’d like to ask you a few more questions.”
“’Bout what?” asked Dirk, continuing to focus his attention on his acrylic painting. “Already told you everything I know.”
“That may be true, sir, but based on some new evidence we’ve uncovered, we need to re-interview the entire staff and all the residents.”
“I’m busy. Start with someone else.”
“I’d prefer to start with you, sir.”
Dirk scowled. “You’ll have to wait while I clean my brushes. Can’t leave paint drying on ’em.”
I stepped in between Dirk and Spader and held out my hand. “I’ll clean your brushes for you, Dirk.”
He moved to hand me his brush, but instead, he grabbed my arm and twisted me into a chokehold. I have no idea where it came from, but the very sharp point of a knife pressed up against my jugular.
“Go for your guns, and the bitch dies,” he said.
twenty-two
This was no palette knife Dirk held against my neck. Not even an X-Acto knife. This was an I-can-slit-your-throat-with-the-flick-of-my-wrist sort of knife. Big. Pointy. And exceedingly sharp. To prove his intent, Dirk pressed the tip a fraction of an inch, pricking my skin. A trickle of blood flowed down my neck. Someone gasped, but I wasn’t sure if the sound came from me or one of my students.
My life should be flashing before my eyes, but all I could think of was where the hell did that knife come from, and how had Dirk managed to pull it out from its hiding place and press it up against my throat before Harley, Fogarty, or Spader reacted the way cops do on TV? Shouldn’t one of them have pulled a gun and shot Dirk the moment he flashed that whopper of a knife?
I also wondered how I could have been so wrong as to suspect Murray instead of Dirk.
This is why I shouldn’t be stumbling across dead bodies. I’m a lousy amateur sleuth.
Not that I had to worry about that for much longer. Given the current situation, I might not live to trip over another dead body. Worse, if I died, I’d saddle Alex, Nick, and Mama with all the debt Karl had racked up plus his mother. I couldn’t let that happen. Somehow I had to get out of this situation alive.
An eerie silence settled over the arts and crafts room. My students had frozen in place, looking like they were about to turn blue from holding their collective breaths. That or drop dead from fear. I knew the feeling.
I stared at Harley, Fogarty, and Spader, silently pl
eading with them for help, but they, too, stood like statues. Hopefully not from fear but because they were weighing their options and formulating a game plan that would result in keeping me alive while taking down the bad guy with the knife to my throat.
“This is how it’s gonna work,” said Dirk. “You three dicks line up facing the wall, about two feet away, legs spread. Place your arms behind your heads and bend forward until your heads touch the wall.” He waved the knife at everyone else. “The rest of you, face down on the floor.”
The seniors dropped to the linoleum, grabbing onto tables and chairs to aid in lowering themselves as their joints creaked and popped. The cops stood firm. Dirk poked the knife into a fresh spot on my neck, this time deeper and producing far more than a few trickling drops of blood. “Now!” he yelled at Harley, Fogarty, and Spader. “Or I slit her throat.”
“Please,” I whimpered through the pulsing pain in my neck. “He means it.”
The cops complied. Once they lined the wall in the awkward position Dirk demanded, he dragged me across the room toward them. He lowered his one arm from a choke hold to grasp me across my shoulders, trapping my back against his torso, then transferred the knife to that hand. The point now poked me under my chin in such a way that if I moved my head in any direction, I was a goner.
With his free hand Dirk removed the cops’ guns, shoving all but one into the pocket of his painting smock where they pressed painfully up against my lower back. He placed the barrel of the last gun against the side of my head.
“Murray!” he yelled. “Get your ass over here!”
Murray dragged himself off the floor. With a shaky gait he made his way across the room.
“Grab their handcuffs and cuff ’em together. Real tight.” Murray did as Dirk directed. “Now take the last pair of cuffs. Place one on Spader’s free wrist. Hold on to the other end.”
Murray stared at the three cops. “Which one is Spader again?”