He stared at me wide-eyed for a long moment, then his face lit up in a mile-wide grin. “She’s pregnant?”
I gasped. “You didn’t know? Oh my God, Mal, I’m so sorry. I just assumed she told you. I didn’t mean to beat her to it.”
Mal chuckled, beaming. He patted my arm. “Don’t worry about it. She did the same thing with the other two, waited to let me in on it. She likes to do it just right—make a romantic dinner, set the mood, all that nonsense I couldn’t care less about.”
“Well, I feel like the biggest dope.”
“I won’t tell her you spilled the beans,” he said. “I just hope she doesn’t wait too long to give me the good news. I’m going to have a hell of a time keeping this asinine grin off my face.”
10
Motive for What?
“SO JONAH WAS right,” I said. “Irene really did die of a heart attack.”
Sten Jakobsen leaned back in his massive leather chair behind his massive mahogany desk which dominated his massive, wood-paneled corner office. He nodded. “That is what Joyce Huang reported.”
“But a heart attack can be triggered by all sorts of things, right? Like being poisoned?”
“I am no physician,” he said. “Joyce will let me know what, if anything, the laboratory tests reveal.”
Irene’s autopsy had been performed last Sunday, five days earlier. I’d set this thing in motion on the flimsiest of evidence, and I wondered what Sten would think of me if, when the lab tests came back, it turned out to be a simple case of an elderly woman with atrial fibrillation succumbing to a sudden and massive myocardial infarction.
Jonah was right. The respectful thing would have been to honor Irene’s wishes for prompt, direct cremation. No embalming. Certainly no postmortem.
Suddenly I felt like changing the subject.
“So,” I said. “Paperwork’s done. Does this mean I can move into the house anytime?”
He nodded. “This very day if it suits you.”
I shrugged. “I’ve got nothing else planned for today, and I’m mostly packed. My landlord offered his station wagon. I should be able to haul my stuff in one or two trips.”
Which was kind of sad, to think that all my worldly possessions could fit into Mr. Franckowiak’s battered old Chevy wagon. Although to be fair, I was leaving my furniture, such as it was, behind in the little basement apartment. Well, except for my precious antique student desk, which had sentimental value because of its connection with Dom. This despite the fact that even now, nearly a week after that little ass-grabbing display during the tournament, I was still indignant as hell. Dom had tried to call me twice since then. I hadn’t picked up and he hadn’t left a voice mail. Pushing him away was a novel experience, one I had to admit was long overdue.
I glanced at the heavy brass clock on Sten’s credenza. It was ten-forty a.m. Our meeting had lasted almost an hour. He’d provided the name of a good investment advisor to handle the upkeep money. “I’m sure you have had some concerns about estate taxes,” he’d said, and I’d restrained the impulse to respond, “Huh?” What did I know about rich people’s problems? He’d explained that the state and especially the IRS would take a big, juicy bite out of Irene’s estate, but that her will provided for the taxes to be paid out of Patrick’s portion of the inheritance. Even so, in the end he’d still be a very wealthy man.
It was Sten’s responsibility to monitor Sexy Beast’s welfare and the condition of the property. After SB eventually shuffled off to doggie heaven, I would be free to sell the house, should I so choose, and keep the proceeds. I could dispose of Irene’s personal possessions at any time, except for the furniture, rugs, artwork, appliances, and durable furnishings such as those hideously expensive ebony floors. All that stuff, or replacement stuff of equivalent value, had to remain in the house for the time being.
So much for my dream of gutting the place and turning it into a crack house.
“How does it feel,” Sten asked, “to go from renting a small apartment to owning a four-million-dollar home?”
“It feels kind of unbelievable, though technically it isn’t really mine yet.”
We turned in unison to look at Crystal Harbor’s latest millionaire landowner, who lay curled on the leather sofa in the sunlight streaming through the huge picture windows, lustily licking his nether regions.
“Did the groomer really have to do that to him?” Sten asked.
“You saw him before,” I said. “He was a hairball on legs. Rocky told me he had no choice but to shave him down.” Sexy Beast had been left with a fuzzy little cap and pompom tail. Unfortunately, the rest of him was now practically hairless. It was the canine equivalent of Martin McAuliffe’s ultrashort buzz cut.
“I understand that,” Sten said. “I am referring to the garment he is wearing.”
I sighed. SB’s doggie sweater was a pink chenille concoction covered with sparkly hearts and trimmed in fluffy pink boa-type feathers. “He needs something for warmth until the hair grows back—it’s still chilly outside. And this was the only thing Rocky had in the shop in SB’s size. I’ll swing by a pet store when I can and get him something more butch. Anyway, I think it’s a little late to worry about gender confusion in SB’s case. About two and a half years too late if you get my drift.” I turned my fingers into scissors and performed a midair snip-snip.
Sten crossed his legs. “How did you manage to secure an appointment with Rocky on such short notice? Penelope and Mister have been on his waiting list for ten months,” he said, referring to his two ragdoll cats. Speaking of hairballs.
“A, um, friend intervened for me.” Bonnie Hernandez could hardly be called a friend, but it was quicker and less awkward than saying, My ex-husband’s fiancée and don’t even get me started.
As it turned out, I couldn’t have been more wrong about Rocky. I’d walked into his shop expecting Rambo on steroids, only to find myself getting a reassuring hug from Richard Simmons on sequins.
Rocky—no last name, à la Cher and Madonna—had promised he’d be very gentle with Sexy Beast and what a fabulous name for such a messy little poodle and oh my goodness this matted stuff has got to go I’m sorry darling but it has all just got to go and how is Bonnie and I always make her show me her gun and it must make her boyfriend incredibly horny to come home to this sexy cop who carries this great big gun and isn’t her Frederick absolutely the most gorgeous dog ever and I mean talk about a sexy beast!
“Thank you for forwarding Irene’s mail to me.” Sten lifted a sheet of paper from a stack. “I am hoping you can shed light on this invoice. It is from Benjamin Ralston. Ben is a private investigator here in Crystal Harbor. I occasionally use him myself when a case requires the services of an investigator. I was unaware of Irene having hired him. She never mentioned it to me.”
No doubt because she didn’t want a lecture from her old friend, erstwhile lover, and attorney. “Oh. Well… I believe this may be connected with the election for president of the Historical Society. Irene… well, she was trying to, um…”
“Dig up dirt on her opponent,” he said.
“I’m afraid so.”
He examined the bill. “Ben is a good man and these charges appear in order, now that I know what prompted them. I shall add it to her other bills for payment.” He slid the paper into a folder. “It is just as well that Ben’s investigation was cut short when Irene died. It is bad enough that everyone in town now knows Nina Wallace is cheating on her husband. Well, everyone but her husband—I doubt the gossip has reached Mal. We do not need to know the identity of the third party.”
His matter-of-fact tone said he assumed Nina’s affair was old news to me. I bullied my features into a neutral expression and murmured, “I couldn’t agree more,” while a voice in my head screamed, Oh my God, who is Nina messing around with?
Sten removed his wire-rimmed glasses and massaged the bridge of his nose. “I will not waste my breath spouting platitudes about Irene McAuliffe. You knew her as well as I,
Jane. She was a mixed bag.”
I returned his sad smile. “She was that.”
Sten’s intercom buzzed. He put his glasses back on and pushed a button, and I heard his secretary tell him Dr. Huang was on the line. My heart stuttered as he lifted the handset and greeted the pathologist. He listened for a minute or two while I mentally rehearsed ways to apologize for wasting his time, not to mention Irene’s money and dignity, on a private autopsy and lab work. Actually, it was Patrick’s money I’d wasted since he was Irene’s major beneficiary, which, assuming he was innocent, added injury to insult. Sten had already received Dr. Huang’s bill, and it was a whopper. At last he thanked her and hung up.
He looked me in the eye. “You were right.”
The breath fled my lungs and all I could do was gape at him. Finally I croaked, “What?”
Sten shook his head slightly, as if loath to believe what could no longer be chalked up as a figment of Jane Delaney’s robust imagination. “The toxicology screen revealed the presence of dangerous chemicals in Irene’s stomach contents, blood, and urine.”
I swallowed hard. “What kind of chemicals?”
“Insecticides. Two common types that are found in many household bug killers. This was just the initial findings. We will have more information when the final report is completed, but meanwhile Joyce was able to say with certainty that the quantity of insecticides in Irene’s system is more than could be accounted for by accidental exposure.”
“You said stomach contents,” I began. “So…”
“So she ingested it.” Sten yanked off his glasses and tossed them onto his desk in one harsh movement, making me jump. Color suffused his lined cheeks. I’d never seen him angry before, had never known this even-tempered man could get angry. “Needless to say, she did not consume it intentionally.”
“The cup?” I said. “The smoothie?”
“The residue in the cup showed significant amounts of the same two chemicals,” he said. “Someone deliberately poisoned Irene.”
Someone, huh? We both knew who that someone had to be. But Sten was a man of law first and foremost. Innocent until proven guilty and all that.
He returned his glasses to his face and reached for the phone.
“Who are you calling?” I asked.
“The police.”
______
I parked on the cobblestone courtyard in front of my new house, having somehow made it there in one piece in Mr. Franckowiak’s rattletrap station wagon. The car sported a cracked windshield, multihued paint job, countless dents and dings, and bench seats that were more duct tape than fabric. The front end felt and sounded like an off-balance washing machine, and the rear end belched clouds of acrid exhaust. The good news was, by experimenting I found that if you stood on the brake pedal and bounced hard enough, you could bring the thing to a stop. At least the day was sunny and mild. I didn’t have slippery roads to contend with.
I was grateful that Mr. F. had volunteered to keep an eye on Sexy Beast. The only thing that could have made the ride more hair-raising would have been a shaved poodle in a ridiculous boa-fringed sweater whining and scrabbling and dodging shifting boxes that outweighed him by eighty pounds.
You’re a damn millionaire! I railed at myself. You have no business being behind the wheel of a death trap like this.
Not that my old Civic was much better. If the shiny Lexus SUV sitting in my garage belonged to me, I’d have loaded it up instead. But all three of Irene’s lovely chariots now belonged to Patrick O’Rourke, and I found I didn’t relish the prospect of accidentally crumpling the fender of a hellishly expensive vehicle belonging to a murderer.
I had not, in fact, been able to take all my stuff in one trip. Once I’d wedged the kiddie desk into the trunk and crammed boxes and bags around it and in the backseat and passenger side of the front seat, I still had another full load sitting in Mr. F’s backyard. I looped the handles of several shopping bags filled with office supplies over my wrists and grabbed a heavy cardboard carton crammed with business files, then kicked the car door closed and struggled up the steps to the portico. Balancing the box on my knee, I managed to unlock the massive double doors and swing them open. The box fell onto its side, disgorging files and papers, which I shoved back into it willy-nilly.
I managed to make it up the staircase and stopped at the top to catch my breath and rest the carton on the balcony railing.
A male voice rang out from the master suite. “Need help with that?”
I screamed and lost my grip on the box, which tipped over the railing and sailed down to the foyer floor far, far below. I very nearly made the same unscheduled trip as I flailed wildly, trying in vain to snatch it from the brink. File folders and papers flew in all directions, catching air currents and touching down on the glossy, brown and black macassar ebony floor.
“No?” The voice sounded bored. “Suit yourself.”
I wheeled around and stalked into the master bedroom. Martin McAuliffe lounged on Irene’s king-size sleigh bed, surrounded by his own assortment of papers. Lazily he perused the contents of a manila folder.
I parked my fists on my hips. “How did you get in here?”
“Did you know that Sten Jakobsen hums when he has a decent poker hand?” Martin was wearing his priest getup again, dog collar and all. At least he’d kicked off his shoes before climbing onto Irene’s hand-woven silk-and-linen bedspread. “‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’ when he’s looking at a straight or a flush, and ‘Dixie’ for a full house or better.”
“I installed new locks. Unpickable locks.” I got in his face. “And a state-of-the-art alarm system.”
He flipped a page. “And Nina Wallace taps her fingernails when she’s bluffing.”
Obviously he’d gotten ahold of Irene’s notes about her friends’ poker habits. I looked at the other folders strewn on the bed. Medical records. Bank statements. Income tax returns. “You have no shame.”
“Sophie Halperin and Jonah Diamond possess outstanding poker faces, according to Irene,” he said, “as did Colette O’Rourke.”
“Wait, Jonah has a good poker face?” I asked. “As in a blank expression that gives nothing away?”
He thumped the folder. “Downright inscrutable, according to Irene. Why?”
Jonah had looked anything but inscrutable during the tournament. What was it Sophie had told me at the time? That he’d played like a rookie and burned through his chips, as if he couldn’t get out of there fast enough. Of course, any number of things could have thrown him off his game. A bout of food poisoning. A fight with Rachel. A patient taking a turn for the worse.
I shook my head. “It’s nothing.”
“He was Irene’s doctor, right?” Martin said. “I’ve never met the guy. Now, this is interesting. Your ex has a tell when he’s holding four of a kind or better, but he knows about it and can usually control it. You get three guesses.”
I didn’t need them. “He bites his bottom lip.” The revealing gesture I’d always thought of as sweet and sexy had been repurposed by Irene as a poker tell, letting her know when to fold ’em. Dom hadn’t been so self-aware eighteen years earlier when he’d planned my surprise twenty-first birthday party. I’d had enough warning to put on makeup and a nice outfit, thanks to his unconscious lip-nibbling.
“Why aren’t you cute kids still together?” he asked. “You must still care for the guy, to let him feel you up in public like that.”
“Get out.” I pointed to the door. “Get. Out.”
“So where’s your affectionate ex now? I’d have thought he’d want to help you move.”
I didn’t bother saying, He would have if I’d asked him. Instead I retrieved the shopping bags from the floor of the balcony and carried them down the hall into the office, where I dumped them on the rug. “I mean it, Padre,” I called as I returned to the master suite. “I want you out or I’m calling the po—” I skidded to a halt when I saw what he was doing. “Stop that! Put your clothes back on.”
“Not to worry.” Martin had stripped off his clerical collar and black shirt, revealing a snug white undershirt. Now he sat on the edge of the bed to put on his shoes. “This is as far as I go without a steak dinner.” He eyed me up and down, his gaze appreciative despite my glamorous moving-day attire of baggy jeans and faded SUNY Stony Brook sweatshirt. “Though I’ve been known to make exceptions.”
My visceral response to his words annoyed me, so I offered a glower in response and escaped to Mr. F’s station wagon. Martin caught up with me there as I attempted to wrestle a carton of books out of the trunk. My beleaguered back demanded to know why I’d chosen such a huge box for the books and such a teensy one for the kitchen sponges.
“The only thing missing from this vehicle,” he said, “is Granny Clampett and her rocker.”
A Beverly Hillbillies analogy. How droll.
He nudged me aside, shoved the box back into the trunk, and held out his hand. “Keys, Elly May.”
“No.” Logical Jane asked Paranoid Jane if she was worried about the padre making off with Mr. F’s coffin on wheels and her antique kiddie desk—a particularly ludicrous scenario as it would require him to abandon the expensive motorcycle he’d no doubt left in the parking area by the garage.
He didn’t wait for the internal debate to resolve itself but slid his fingers into my front jeans pocket and plucked out the car keys.
“Hey!” I smacked his bare forearm. This was why he’d stripped down to his undershirt—not to jump my bones but to help me unload the car.
“Open the garage.” Martin got behind the wheel, got the engine started on the third try, and moved the station wagon while I went inside and did as he asked. He was right, it made more sense to bring stuff in through the garage.
Mr. F’s monstrosity looked even more ludicrous next to Martin’s big, gleaming Harley as he backed up to the open garage door and got out. He eyed the three vehicles parked inside. “When’s O’Rourke coming for his cars?”
Undertaking Irene Page 14