This Old Souse

by Mary Daheim

  “Why is that?” Judith asked.

  Teresa’s face grew solemn. “Don’t ask. It’s a scary place.”

  “Emeralds!” cried Elsie from inside the house.

  “Sí, señora,” Teresa called back. She lowered her voice and spoke to the cousins. “I’m not joking. Something strange is going on across the street. It’s best that you forget all about it.”

  For Judith, the advice was worthless.

  EIGHT

  DOES TERESA KNOW more than she told us?” Renie asked as they headed back to Heraldsgate Hill.

  “Yes,” Judith said. “If she didn’t, she wouldn’t have warned us. We’re going to have to get back to her. Meanwhile, our original mission has been thwarted. We may have learned a few things about the Blands, but except for Lynette, we still haven’t met any of them.”

  “I have a feeling,” Renie said, “that we never will. If it weren’t for what those detectives told you about interviewing them, the Blands might not exist.”

  Judith, who had just turned onto the main thoroughfare that led across the bridge, darted a glance at Renie. “That’s an interesting idea.”

  “Interesting, but unlikely,” Renie said. “The cops wouldn’t lie about it, and Mrs. Bruce sees them every now and then.”

  “She sees somebody,” Judith allowed. “Damn!” she burst out halfway across the bridge.

  “Watch it, coz,” Renie said in alarm. “You’re almost in the other lane. What’s wrong?”

  Judith focused on her driving until they reached the turnoff to Heraldsgate Hill. “I’m an idiot,” she declared as they reached the six-way stop. “Why didn’t I look at the customs declaration slip on that UPS box? All I checked was the postmark, from Kopfstein in Austria. The form would have told me what was in the box.”

  “Which,” Renie said dryly, “would have solved the entire mystery.”

  “Okay, maybe it wouldn’t have,” Judith said as they crossed the little bridge above the gully, “but it might have been a clue. Isn’t it odd that UPS delivers to the Blands only once a year and always at the same time?”

  “Odd?” Renie looked aghast. “It’s unthinkable. If I didn’t get a delivery from one of the stores or catalogs every week, life would have no meaning.”

  Judith had turned down Renie’s street. “Oh? And who delivered that outfit you’re wearing now? The Pony Express? It looks like it’s been on the road a long time.”

  “You know I don’t wear my good clothes except for business and social purposes,” Renie countered. “I bought this tee for eight bucks ten years ago. As for the pants, somebody gave them to me.”

  “Who? Noah?”

  “Funny coz,” Renie murmured as Judith pulled up in front of the Joneses’ Dutch Colonial. “I’m going inside and tend to my sickly spouse.”

  As she headed back to Hillside Manor, Judith’s spirits plummeted. It wasn’t likely that a doddering trio of senior citizens would kill a milkman. Or someone pretending to be a milkman. The real Vern Benson was a pleasant young man with a wife and baby. So why did the murder victim dress up like a Dairyland employee and make a stop at the Blands’ house?

  It made no sense. Had the Blands been younger, Judith would have considered that they could be involved in drug dealing.

  But the Blands had been younger fifty years ago. Maybe they’d bought the Spanish-style house for that purpose. The city was a Pacific Rim seaport; drugs had been a problem for much longer than in other metropolitan areas. Renie recalled seeing a deal go down when she was barely in her teens.

  Austria, however, seemed like an unlikely source. And what did the Blands do with the money they’d made? Not much, judging from the house and their reclusive lifestyle.

  Judith was still mulling after she got home to find Gertrude in the kitchen, ransacking the refrigerator.

  “Why did you get this great big stainless-steel piece of junk?” the old lady rasped. “It looks like a spaceship, and I can’t find anything! Where’s the dill pickles?”

  “There’s a big jar inside the door,” Judith informed her mother.

  “Where?” Gertrude leaned forward in her wheelchair. “Oh. Now, why would you put dill pickles there?”

  “All the condiments are in the door,” Judith pointed out. “Mustard, mayonnaise, olives, capers—”

  “Capers!” Gertrude snarled. “Who wants to eat something that looks like dried-up dingleberries? Ugh!”

  “I use them with lox and cream cheese,” Judith explained. “They’re really delicious.”

  “They can’t be.” Having taken two dill pickles out of the jar, Gertrude resumed rummaging in the fridge. “Where’ve you been? You forgot my lunch.”

  “Oh, Mother, I am sorry!” Judith apologized. “I’ve got too much on my mind.”

  “And not enough room for most of it,” Gertrude snapped. “Somebody brought my lunch. Somebody didn’t forget a poor old crippled woman. Somebody cares.”

  “Who?” Judith inquired.

  “Al and Mike and the grandkids, that’s who,” Gertrude replied, adding a couple of cheese slices to the plate in her lap. “They showed up about one with fish and chips. They’d been to the lake to feed the ducks.”

  “So that’s where they were,” Judith murmured. “Why are you eating now? It’s only a little after two.”

  “Because I’m still hungry. Aha! Cantaloupe. Can you slice this for me?”

  Judith complied. To her daughter’s dismay, Gertrude shook at least two tablespoons of chocolate sprinkles on the cantaloupe. She was wheeling herself out the back way when the doorbell chimed. She stopped in the hall while her daughter answered the front door.

  “We’d like you to come downtown,” Glenn Morris announced without preamble.

  “I can’t,” Judith protested. “I have guests coming in a couple of hours. In case you haven’t noticed, this is a B & B.”

  “What’s that stand for?” Trash put in. “At our house, it’d be Bed and Boredom.”

  “I’ll bet it would,” Judith retorted. “Really, if you don’t mind, I’d prefer answering your questions here. I honestly don’t know what else I can tell you.”

  “Don’t cause a problem,” Glenn said without inflection. “You should know this is police procedure.”

  “Police?” Gertrude rolled into the entry hall. “What now, terrorists blowing up Rankerses’ hedge?”

  Judith put an arm around her mother’s shoulders. “No. These two detectives think I killed a bogus milkman.”

  “Ridiculous!” Gertrude scoffed. “We don’t have a milkman here. And what do you mean, ‘bogus’?”

  “The victim was posing as a milkman,” Judith explained.

  “Why would anybody do that?” Gertrude demanded. “That’s hard work. Why not pose as a lawyer—or a policeman?”

  Glenn was trying to ignore Gertrude. “Come along, Mrs. Flynn. We can’t waste time arguing about this.”

  “Come along?” Gertrude snapped. “She’s not coming along with you. She has to get my supper. If she goes, I go with her. She’s my daughter. She does what I tell her to. You want two for the price of one?”

  Clearly, the ultimatum gave Glenn pause. “It’s not up to you to decide, Mrs….?”

  “Grover. Gertrude Grover. I’m part of the Greatest Generation. You’d better not tangle with me, buster. We beat the pants off of Hitler.” She turned in Trash’s direction. “And stop looking at my pickles.”

  Glenn glanced at Trash, who seemed to be enjoying the confrontation immensely. “All right,” Glenn said with a sigh. “But I don’t like making exceptions. The living room or the parlor?”

  “The parlor,” Judith said. “But let me help Mother back into her apartment.”

  “Oh, no you don’t!” Gertrude exclaimed. “I’m staying right here. I know about police brutality. I wouldn’t abandon my little girl for anything.”

  Glenn didn’t argue. Judith led the way into the parlor. Glenn positioned himself as before, in front of the fireplace.
r />   “Now,” he began, “I want you to go over everything that happened yesterday from the time you left this house until you finished your shopping at Falstaff’s Grocery.”

  “I’d kind of like to hear this myself,” Gertrude put in, casting a reproachful eye at Judith. “Sometimes my daughter keeps things from her mother. ’Course she couldn’t stop me from seeing the dead gangster lying outside my door.”

  “Is that so?” Glenn remarked with indifference.

  “Or the fortune-teller who dropped dead at the dining-room table,” Gertrude went on.

  “Really.” Glenn didn’t bother to look at Gertrude.

  “Having that movie big shot drown in the kitchen sink was a blessing in disguise,” Gertrude declared. “Some of the people who worked for him are making a moving picture about me.”

  Glenn’s facial muscles had tightened. “I’m sure they are,” he said through gritted teeth.

  “But I’m glad I missed that killer Easter Bunny up at church,” Gertrude said. “Hop, chop, hop—”

  “Mrs. Grover!” Glenn was getting red in the face. “Please. We’re trying to conduct an investigation here.” He moved a step closer to Judith, who was seated next to Gertrude. “Could you please make your mother stop talking nonsense?” he requested in a low voice. “I realize she’s elderly and delusional, but she’s impeding our interrogation.”

  “She’s elderly, but she’s not delusional,” Judith said softly.

  “Then you both must be crackers,” Trash asserted. “Is that part of your alleged disease, Mrs. Flynn?”

  “No,” Judith said, then turned to Gertrude. “Mother, you’d better let me tell these detectives what happened or we’ll never get rid of them.”

  Seeing the wisdom in her daughter’s words, Gertrude shut up. Judith began to recount the events that had led to the discovery of the ersatz milkman in the trunk of her car. Sweetums wandered into the parlor just as she was getting to the part she hadn’t mentioned the previous day.

  “The UPS man told me that the parcel for the Blands was a once-a-year delivery,” Judith explained. “Naturally, I was curious. I went on the porch to look at the box. It came from Kopfstein, Austria.”

  “Why didn’t you mention that yesterday?” Glenn demanded as Sweetums wove between his feet.

  “I didn’t want you to think I was a snoop,” Judith replied.

  “But your whole story involves snooping,” Glenn pointed out, trying to sidestep the cat.

  “I know,” Judith admitted. “It was stupid of me. But it didn’t seem important at the time.”

  “Are you certain you’re telling everything now?” Glenn asked, taking a couple of steps away from Sweetums.

  “Yes.”

  Sweetums was undeterred. He rubbed up against Glenn’s neatly pressed trouser leg and purred loudly. The detective jumped, knocked over the fire tools, and stepped on Sweetums’s tail. The cat growled and took the offensive, clawing the fine trouser fabric. In an instant, Sweetums had torn four six-inch rents, from midcalf to cuff. Glenn swore out loud as he tried to grab the cat, who eluded him by ducking under Gertrude’s wheelchair.

  “This is an outrage!” Glenn shouted. “That animal ought to be put to sleep!”

  “I could use a nap myself,” Trash said, feigning a yawn. “Are we done yet?”

  Glenn examined the rips in his slacks. “We are now,” he huffed. “I’ll send you a bill for this,” he added, pointing to Judith.

  “If you do, I’ll report you to the SPCA,” Judith shot back. “You deliberately stepped on Sweetums. No wonder he got upset. And what was the point of all this anyway?”

  “To learn those details you conveniently forgot or omitted yesterday,” Glenn asserted, trying to ignore the growls and hisses coming from Sweetums.

  Judith had gotten to her feet, though Trash still lolled about in the window embrasure. “You have the whole story now,” she said, annoyed. “Tell me who I was carrying around in my trunk. I don’t like giving rides to strangers.”

  “You wouldn’t know him,” Glenn responded. “He’s nobody, just some lowlife.”

  “But he’s got a name, and I want to know it,” Judith argued, “especially if you think I killed him.”

  “You killed somebody?” Gertrude asked. “That’s a switch.”

  “You heard what I just told the detectives,” Judith retorted. “Somebody put the body in my trunk while I was looking around the house and grounds.”

  Gertrude grunted. “Is that why you’re cruising around in Lunkhead’s jalopy?”

  “You promised not to call him ‘Lunkhead’ anymore,” Judith admonished.

  “Okay, Knucklehead, then. So where’s your car? At the mortuary?”

  “Later, Mother,” Judith said impatiently. “I’ll fill you in after these detectives have gone. But,” she continued, turning to Glenn, “I insist upon knowing the victim’s name. I also insist on knowing whether I’m still a suspect.”

  “A person of interest,” Glenn replied. “How’s that?”

  “Dumb,” Judith declared. “If you really thought I murdered the guy, you’d probably figure out that I knew who he was. Come on, give me the dead man’s name.”

  Glenn sighed. “I’ll tell you because the name won’t mean a thing. The man was Frank Purvis, address unknown.”

  Glenn was right. The name meant nothing to Judith.

  Well,” Gertrude huffed after the detectives had left, “it looks like you got yourself into another big mess.” She cocked an eye at her daughter. “You can tell me—did you really bump off the milkman?”

  “Of course not, Mother,” Judith replied. “And he wasn’t a milkman. I never heard of anyone named Frank Purvis.”

  “I did,” Gertrude asserted, wheeling herself back to the kitchen. “He worked for one of the lumber mills. He was a Freemason and had a glass eye. I went to school with his wife, Charlotte. Carrie, she was called. Homely girl. She got to that gawky stage and never left it.”

  “Did they have children?” Judith asked.

  “I hope not.” Gertrude had retrieved her snack and was about to take a bite out of a dill pickle. “The results would have been fearsome.” The old lady loudly crunched her pickle and swallowed it before speaking again. “I lost track of Carrie after she got married. I think they moved away during the Depression.”

  The tiny speck of hope was snuffed out. Gertrude’s recognition of the name was a coincidence. But someone must have known the Frank Purvis who had ended up dead in Judith’s trunk. The “address unknown” troubled her. The bogus milkman she’d met on Moonfleet Street didn’t look homeless. He’d appeared well nourished and well kempt. If the police knew the victim’s name, there must have been some kind of identification on his person.

  “It could have been a Social Security card,” Renie suggested when Judith called her half an hour later. “Or credit cards. They don’t list addresses.”

  “But the credit-card company would know where to send the bill,” Judith pointed out.

  “Yes,” Renie said in a sour voice, “they always know where to find you. I changed our address once to Buckingham Palace, but it didn’t work. The queen said she wouldn’t be caught dead in a Notre Dame sweatshirt. She especially hated the Fighting Irish logo.”

  “But no driver’s license, no checkbook, no voter’s registration,” Judith said, ignoring Renie’s flight of fancy. Or possibly, reality. Sometimes it was hard to tell with Renie. “It’s as if Frank Purvis didn’t want to be traced.”

  “Then why have any ID at all?” Renie queried.

  “That’s my point,” Judith said, holding the phone between her jaw and shoulder as she sliced cucumbers. “I wonder if Glenn Morris didn’t make up a name just to shut me up.”

  “Why would he do that?” Renie asked.

  “Just because,” Judith said. “I looked Frank Purvis up in the phone book. Like the Blands, there was no listing. I even called directory assistance to see if someone by that name lived in the suburbs. No luck
.”

  “Did you try the Internet?”

  Judith sighed. “Yes. I found three men named Frank Purvis. One in Baton Rouge, another in Sherman Oaks, and the third in Duluth. I’ve hit the wall.”

  “Maybe it’s an alias,” Renie suggested.

  “The police must have taken his fingerprints,” Judith said. “Glenn referred to Purvis as a ‘lowlife,’ which indicates some kind of criminal record. Maybe they know more than they’re telling us.”

  “I assume they’ll release his name to the media,” Renie remarked. “It’ll be interesting to see if there’s an obituary in the paper in the next couple of days. Maybe we should visit the morgue.”

  “To do what? Go through Frank Purvis’s meager belongings?”

  “I meant the newspaper morgue,” Renie clarified. “And not for Purvis, but the Blands. You can go back only a few years into the archives on the Internet.”

  “I suppose it could be helpful,” Judith allowed. “Were you thinking of marriage, births—that kind of information?”

  “Yes, but I also wonder if they haven’t made the news in a less mundane way,” Renie said. “I’m thinking feature articles, like an unusual hobby or rescuing a child from a vicious dog.”

  “They don’t strike me as publicity hounds,” Judith noted. “I picture them as going out of their way to avoid the limelight.”

  “Except sometimes people can’t escape it,” Renie pointed out. “It’s up to you. I could go tomorrow morning. After ten, of course.”

  The cousins agreed on the time. The rest of the day passed swiftly. Besides her guests, Judith had to prepare another meal for Mike and the boys, as well as Uncle Al. The group seemed in high humor, having gone to the zoo after their trip to the lake and visit to Gertrude. Judith was put off by Mike’s attitude. It seemed to her that he should be wallowing in misery. She also felt that Mac and Joe-Joe didn’t seem to miss their mother very much.