High Desert Detective, A Fiona Marlowe Mystery (Fiona Marlowe Mysteries)

by Thelen, Marjorie

  He nodded. “Right. Someone very precise wouldn't accidentally overdose in normal circumstances.”

  “The key words are normal circumstances.”

  “Right.”

  “Did Opal say who she suspects?”

  He shook his head. “No one specific, but she's convinced it’s family. Problem is there's so many of them, and they are all over the globe.”

  “What do you mean there are so many of them? I thought there were no children. And there's only Opal, the sister.”

  “Opal and Albert had eight brothers and sisters, and she is the only one left. But there are lots of nieces and nephews. Mrs. Lodge's brother in South Africa is still alive and has three children, plus the grandchildren. There's a sister in England who has a child. I'm doing background on all the nieces and nephews.”

  “But, wait, couldn't you narrow it down to the ones who live around here? After all, they'd have to know Albert pretty well to know about his blood pressure medication and what would kill him and when to do it.”

  “Here's the thing. They always had relatives visiting. Mrs. Lodge loved to have people around. She was a lot younger than Albert and had the money to entertain.”

  “And Opal made her money in ranching?”

  “She married a wealthy rancher. No children. There's money at stake and not all of the family is wealthy. There'll be the usual money scramble now that Albert and Olivia are both dead. The question is who gets the money.”

  “What does the will say?”

  “I don't know. Opal’s meeting with the lawyer on Tuesday.”

  “Opal doesn't look like a rancher's wife somehow.”

  “She is. Has a real pretty spread in Harney Valley, Oregon. God's country out there. That's where I met her.”

  Jake and Opal had God’s country in common. There was an interesting twist.

  The food arrived and I savored the tabbouleh. I considered another glass of wine and decided not to get too wild and crazy this early in the evening.

  “Are there any relatives in McLean?” I asked.

  “There is a married niece living in Arlington. She has one daughter. She was a frequent visitor after Mrs. Lodge died. She looked in on Albert to make sure he was okay though Hudson took very good care of Albert.”

  “So the niece is suspect. Is Hudson a suspect?”

  “Everyone is until I determine who had the motive.”

  “I'm still on the list.”

  “Pretty far down. Motive is weak.”

  “That’s comforting.”

  At that point, my cell phone vibrated. I looked at the caller ID. My romance writer friend, Olympia. I remembered we had made plans to go to a movie this evening. I checked my watch. We had decided on the late show of the latest Viggo Mortensen movie. My favorite fantasy man.

  I finished my wine, arranged my knife and fork on my plate, and smiled over at Jake. “I've got to be going. I've got a date tonight.” Of course, I wasn't going to tell him it was with a woman friend.

  “Okay,” he said. He didn’t seem at all disappointed.

  “But let me ask again. Who do you think did it?”

  Jake puckered up his lips and thought. “I suspect Albert took an overdose.”

  “What?”

  “I don't think he was as happy as Opal seems to think. But I got to follow all the angles first.”

  “But why?”

  “Albert was still working, granted in a Washington think tank. Don't you think a man of his wealth would've retired by now?”

  “What's that got to do with anything? Maybe he worked because he liked to work and didn't have any hobbies. And some people get off on power.”

  “I think he was in financial difficulty.”

  Three

  I had to update Olympia on the case. She’s one of my oldest friends, and I could tell her anything. Like Kathy the waitress, she immediately had me romantically linked to Jake Manyhorses. Olympia was a bestselling writer of romances. Need I say more?

  The coming attractions exploded across the movie screen. We talked in whispers, which disturbed the solitary man in front of us with the bent up baby Huey cap. He turned around and said, “Hey, if you broads don't shut up, I'm going to beat the snot out of you.”

  Olympia leaned forward and stuck her face in his. “Just who do you think you are, mister? It's a free country and the movie isn't on yet. We have important business to discuss.”

  “Hey, take your business somewheres else, lady. This is a movie house.”

  He had a point.

  “I never,” said Olympia and sat back. In a whisper close to my ear she said, “If Viggo Mortensen weren't in this movie, I'd leave now.”

  I admired Olympia’s courage and thought to say something equally daring, but the guy was mean looking. “We'll be quiet,” I said to the back of his head. “We don't want to miss Viggo Mortensen.”

  “Ha,” he said without turning around. “What a fairy.”

  Olympia and I exchanged glances and watched the movie without a peep.

  It was raining when we left the theater. At the movie's end the tough guy had hustled out of the theater before the credits were over, lucky for us. We decided to visit the coffee house next door to the theater. It was crowded with late night theatergoers.

  “Great movie wasn't it?” said Olympia. She was dreamy-eyed. Viggo had once again lived up to expectation.

  “Too violent for my taste, but his nude fight scene in the steam room was superb. There isn't enough male nudity in films these days. I don't know why Viggo does such violent films. I wish Hollywood would stop making them.”

  “Mmm,” said Olympia, ignoring my riff on violence. “What buns. But tell me more about Jake. Think he'll ask you out, I mean, on a real date?”

  Interesting that Viggo's buns led to Jake. Olympia could get romance out of a turnip, complete with sexy hero, fainting heroine, riveting plot and happy ending. Turnips, and I'm not kidding.

  I lifted a shoulder. “He bought me dinner this evening and didn't ask me to be dessert.”

  Olympia guffawed. She has this deep, ridiculous laugh that I loved and that usually got me going. I snorted along with her.

  “What's he look like?”

  “A mix between Morgan Freeman, George Clooney, and Graham Greene.”

  “What kind of a mix is that?”

  “Just that. He looks like a big mix of something, emphasis on the big. He's a husky guy. He wouldn’t look good in a suit. They wouldn’t fit him right. He looks like he should be out riding the range.”

  I frowned.

  “What?” said Olympia, anticipating the next plot point, I’m sure.

  “I bet he worked for her on the ranch. He should be on a horse, not driving around the suburbs.”

  Olympia arched her exquisitely penciled eyebrows. “Oooo, the plot thickens.”

  * * * * *

  Saturday morning I slept late. About noon I started making phone calls to get the library job going. I called a superb carpenter and painter and left a message to call. I called Hudson about moving the furniture out of the library, taking down the drapes, and rolling up the Persian carpets and left a message to call me back. He probably was polishing silver and didn't hear the phone. I called Colony Furniture Gallery on Lee Highway to make an appointment for tomorrow afternoon. Yes, interior designers work on Sunday. Last, I called my favorite drapery store on North Harrison. The proprietress, my good friend Judith Brooks, employed the most divine seamstress, a Vietnamese woman who was a genius when it came to drape design. All I had to do was give her the faintest sketch of what I wanted and presto she'd whip up something perfect.

  Judith answered. She was a working woman after all. “Fiona? What’s up?”

  “I need some drapes.”

  “Come over. Kahn is coming this afternoon, and we'll have you fixed up in no time.” Judith was a woman of action from New York City, replete with long frizzy hair, dyed red.

  Happily, the sun was shining when I finally hit t
he road. I love Arlington, but a friend who lives in Northwest D.C. won't come here. She says she gets lost if she ventures over Key Bridge. For the same reason she won't come, I delight in living here. Small community neighborhoods abound like Roslyn where I live -- Westover, Ballston, Shillington, Clarendon -- each with little strip shopping centers with diverse restaurants and shops from every corner of the world. And I’m not kidding.

  Judith's store was in one of those cute strip malls off Lee Highway. She saw me pull in, waved and met me at the door.

  “Hey, you,” she said and gave me a big hug. “I thought you were out of town.”

  “No, I'm working this redo on a library over in McLean except I found the guy dead in the library.”

  Her hand flew to her wide open mouth. “Oh, my gosh. I read about that in the Washington Post. You mean that was your job? They didn't say who found him.”

  “I did, believe it or not.”

  Judith led me to the big design table she had in the back room away from the yards of fabric in the sales room. “Sit. Talk. I want to know all about it. I can't believe you found a dead man on the job. You don't think this is a new trend in interior design, do you?”

  I filled her in and she, a woman of some expertise, immediately said, “The butler did it. They always do in the mysteries I read.” She’s quite a connoisseur of the genre.

  “No, it has to be one of the nephews.”

  “Why not a niece?”

  “Or a niece.” I shrugged. “Jake the PI is running all that down.”

  “Is he married?” she said.

  Driving back to my condo, I thought about Hudson. Maybe he did do it. I mean, fifty million mysteries can't be wrong, can they? Maybe he was broke. Maybe he was ready to retire and needed the money. He'd know Albert's medications. Surely, Albert would have provided for the loyal butler in the will.

  I pulled into my parking space in the underground garage. I loved having a sheltered space for the Legend. Then I didn't have to try to find a parking place in a neighborhood that never had any. As the elevator whirred up to the top floor, I envisioned a quiet evening finishing the oil painting I had started of the marina basin near Alexandria in the spring. Popcorn and a beer sounded good for dinner.

  The message machine blinked and chirped at me, so I pressed the play and listened as I emptied the grocery sack. Six pack of the latest microbrew, jar of popcorn, two cans of canned chopped clams, celery, and carrots, two bottles of Tabasco, and a dozen eggs.

  The great carpenter said to call him back this evening, he'd be home. Shirley at Colonial Furniture Gallery said to come tomorrow around two P.M., she could help me. Dear Shirley, she was a hustler and liked to push what made her the best commission. I'd have to watch her, but she knew her stuff. Last message was from Jake. “Call me” was the message. He was talkative this evening. No message from Hudson.

  I dialed Jake's cell phone. He picked up on the first ring.

  “You were expecting my call,” I said.

  “Right. Have you seen Hudson?”

  “No, why would I have seen Hudson?”

  “You go out there, don't you?”

  “Sure, but not today.”

  “He seems to have left town.”

  “You mean as in disappear?”

  “That's right.”

  “I called earlier today and left a message for him to call me, but had no call back.”

  “Opal hasn't seen him since he served dinner last night. When she went down to the kitchen this morning, he wasn't there. She checked the garage for his car, and it's gone. She thought he ran an errand, but he still isn't back as of an hour ago. I thought maybe he was with you, doing the library thing.”

  “Nope, haven't seen him. So it was the butler in the library with an overdose.”

  “What?”

  “My friend Judith said it is always the butler that commits the crime. So it couldn't have been Colonel Mustard. Hudson murdered Albert with an overdose in the library.”

  “Fiona, you have a very active imagination.”

  “You're not the first person who's told me that. Have you called the police to report Hudson missing?”

  “Not yet. We'll give him a day to show up. But it’s very unlike him to disappear.”

  I hung up and stood looking out the windows across the Potomac at the lights of D.C. The monuments stood stark white against the black of night. Light reflected off the river. Red lights blinked from atop the Iwo Jima Memorial.

  Hudson gone missing. Now there was an interesting plot twist Olympia would like.

  * * * * *

  Shirley at Colonial Furniture was delighted to see me on Sunday afternoon. She always saw dollar signs when I walked in. After a tussle over a number of high priced offerings, I ordered two great off white loveseats with a chicken wire bas relief pattern in the same color. I know, it doesn’t sound haute coteur but trust me, it will look great. Working a deal with Shirley is always exhausting, so I took the rest of the day off.

  All afternoon I worried about Hudson and couldn't resist a call to Jake that night.

  “Find Hudson yet?”

  “Yes, he came back late last night. Opal said he’d gone to his sister's again in West Virginia around Harper's Ferry. She’d had a relapse. He forgot to tell Opal he was leaving. Or Opal forgot that he told her he was leaving.”

  “Don't you think that’s strange?

  “Apparently there a serious case of memory loss in the Lodge household.”

  “But that is strange. Opal seems pretty sharp to me. Unlikely to forget the butler was leaving for the day.”

  No answer.

  “Jake?”

  “Yeah. There's some things not making sense to me. Maybe it's because there's a boatload of relatives descending on the house, and everyone is stressed out. This is traumatic for all of them. Plus Hudson’s sister is going downhill, and he’s worried about her.”

  “He runs the household.”

  “Right. They hired a maid and a cook through a temp agency to help with the relatives. There’s a relative a minute showing at the front door. Everyone’s running around like coyotes after sage rats because the memorial service is tomorrow afternoon, and the reception is at the house.”

  “Are you going to the memorial service?” I asked.

  “You bet.”

  “I'll look for you there. We can sit together and you can point out the cast of characters.”

  “I can't wait.”

  End Chapter Three, Designer Detective.

  If you like what your read, you can purchase the entire e-book on Amazon and other online retailers.

  If you enjoy mystery and romance in exotic places, try

  The Hieroglyphic Staircase

  Chapter One

  Another carved stone was missing.

  Elena ran her finger over the cool, lifeless limestone and checked the pattern against the computer drawing she had made of the Hieroglyphic Staircase. She was not mistaken. A gap separated a frowning face from a stylized flower. This was the third stone gone missing since she started the project three weeks ago. The Mayan gods definitely had it in for her. They must not like her poking into their secrets.

  She perched on the narrow step of the steep stone staircase that led to the top of the pyramid and stared at the space where yesterday a finely etched head with bulbous Mayan lips had resided. A crowd of vacant eyes stared back at her along the facing of the step, refusing to share their knowledge of who had stolen another stone.

  This theft could tarnish the name she was trying to build in the world of Mayan epigraphy, the study of ancient inscriptions. The disappearance of valuable pieces of an intricate puzzle did not bode well for her career. How could someone steal the stone carvings right out from under her?

  Two fieldworkers in battered straw hats imitated her posture and sat on the narrow steps below her, looking at the empty space and muttering to each other. But their conversation in Spanish had to do with Raul’s eldest daughter who was to be
married the coming weekend. They didn’t seem to share her concern.

  “Do you know anything about these missing hieroglyphs?” she asked them in Spanish. Her question came out with a suspicious edge. The two men flinched, as if the words were knives.

  “We do not know, doctora Palomares,” said Raul, throwing up his hands, straight black eyebrows moving skyward with his hands. “Only the tourists come during the day, and we have kept careful watch.”

  The younger worker, Francisco, new to the project, mimicked Raul’s gestures.

  “Maybe not during the day,” said Elena, softening her tone, “but someone could slip by the guard at the entrance during night.”

  Calm down, she thought. She had to maintain her professional attitude and not take her frustration out on these poor workers. She stood and brushed the seat of her khaki shorts.

  “I’m going to notify the Museum director. Please watch the site while I’m gone. I shouldn’t be long.”

  “Sí, doctora. Cómo no?” Raul tipped his hat and continued his conversation with Francisco about the wedding, the theft forgotten.

  Folding the computer drawing, she stuffed it in one of the many pockets of her field vest. She picked her way crab fashion down stairs so narrow her work boots would only fit sideways on the uneven steps. Summer sizzled at Copan in western Honduras, and Elena had risen before dawn to work the site before the heat became unbearable. Not that heat bothered her much. Nothing could be as bad as a hot, humid Houston summer day, where she grew up.

  Near the bottom of the Staircase, she peered at the point halfway up the steep incline of stairs where she had discovered the missing stone. She hoped the thieves were not her field worker assistants. Surely, they wouldn’t be tempted to supplement their meager incomes with contraband from Copan, the Florence of the Mayan world. Surely, they wouldn’t, though Raul had been complaining about the expense of the wedding. A small stone Mayan head would bring an enormous price on the black market. He could pay for the wedding and retire on the money he’d make on the sale.