Undertaking Irene

by Pamela Burford

  “Sten knows,” I said, “but he’s not telling. Lawyer-client confidentiality. And I asked Patrick outright, but his lips are sealed. Out of respect for Irene, he claims.”

  “Taking the patient, wait-for-her-to-die approach might not have paid off for O’Rourke,” he said. “Irene was in decent shape for someone her age. Yeah, she took digoxin for a hinky heart rhythm, but according to her medical records, she was doing pretty well.”

  “Jonah told me she was overdue for a pacemaker.”

  “Well then, maybe she just put on a good act,” he said. “She certainly seemed indestructible.”

  “That’s how I always thought of her too.” I offered a sad smile.

  “Look at it from O’Rourke’s perspective,” he said. “The guy’s getting on in years. He’s, what, around sixty? And not in the best shape. Lived a hard life, did a lot of drugs when he was younger.”

  “Maybe he was afraid Irene would outlive him,” I said. “Maybe that’s what sent him over the edge.”

  “And where does Nina fit in to all this?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?” I fluffed the boa fringe on SB’s sweater.

  “She’s banging O’Rourke. He kills Irene. She despised Irene.”

  I stared at him. “You think she could be involved?”

  “Those two women were on the outs even before Irene started that rumor about Nina,” he said.

  “Yeah, but come on. It’s one thing to hate someone. It’s another to hate someone so much you’re willing to commit murder.”

  “What if Irene was on the verge of discovering who Nina was screwing?” he asked. “What if she taunted her with it? Like, ‘As soon as I know who you’re getting it on with, the whole town will know.’ I could see her doing that.”

  Unfortunately, so could I.

  Martin exited the expressway and merged with traffic on a busy four-lane artery. “Think about it, Jane. A vague rumor about an affair is one thing. If that gets back to Mal, Nina could always claim it was a case of dirty politics. He’s such an agreeable guy he’d probably buy it.”

  “But if her mystery lover is identified,” I said, “she stands to lose Mal and maybe even the kids. The thing is, I know you think she’s going to dump Patrick, but I don’t necessarily agree. I think she might be planning to make a new life with him.” And the baby they were expecting.

  “What do you base that on?”

  “It’s just a feeling,” I said.

  I tried to recall Nina’s exact words after she’d tossed her cookies during the tournament. Hadn’t she used the word we? She’d said something like We’re not telling people yet. Her husband hadn’t known she was pregnant, but maybe the real father did. Patrick. I chose not to share Nina’s condition with Martin. She asked me to keep mum, and unless our idle speculation about her involvement in Irene’s death turned out to be true, I saw no reason to go back on my word.

  “Let’s not forget,” he said, “O’Rourke’s married too. Though as motives for murder go, inheriting sixteen mil beats saving a marriage.”

  “You’re an incurable romantic.”

  “That’s one thing I’ve never been accused of.” He zipped around slow-moving traffic, seemingly oblivious to the posted speed limit. “So is it true that Irene hired a PI to get the goods on Nina?”

  I nodded. “Sten already received his bill.”

  “My guess is that she had no intention of calling off the investigation just because she lost the election,” he said. “If I knew Irene, the defeat would make her even more determined to seek revenge—to find out who Nina’s mystery man was so she could wreak maximum havoc.”

  “But if the mystery man turned out to be someone Irene was close to?” I asked. “She must have cared deeply about Patrick to leave him all that money.”

  Martin nodded. “If she even suspected he was the one Nina was sleeping with, she would’ve found some other way to attack her—some way that didn’t involve O’Rourke.”

  “What was that you said earlier,” I asked, “about Nina’s poker tell? She taps her fingernails?”

  “Yep. When she’s bluffing. Why?”

  I’d seen Nina do that nail-tapping thing not too long ago. I struggled to recall the circumstance. “It’s nothing, I guess. I can’t remember.”

  He gave me a searching look. “What was she saying when she did it? Think.”

  I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I thought back to that day at Janey’s Place when Nina and I were talking, before she got doused with chili. We were discussing Irene’s death. She was offering cloying false sympathy.

  My eyes flew open. “Jaws. She said Irene was watching Jaws when she died.”

  “Was she?”

  “Yes, but no one knew that but me,” I said. “Well, Jonah knew, but I asked him not to spread it around. I didn’t want everyone in town talking about it, you know? He said he wouldn’t, and I believed him. Still do. Nina told me she didn’t remember where she heard it. That’s when she did that nail-tapping thing.”

  “She was lying,” he said. “So the question becomes, how could Nina Wallace know what Irene was doing at the time of her death?”

  “Unless she was there.” My breath caught. “Maybe those were her wet footprints.”

  Martin glanced at me, a question in his pale blue eyes. I told him about the footprints in the laundry room the night Irene died. “I thought maybe Irene went outside for something after the rain started,” I said, “but they could have been left by someone entering through the back door.”

  “Since when does Nina Wallace know how to pick locks?” he asked.

  “Nina Hannigan Wallace,” I said. “You’re forgetting her illustrious family heritage.”

  “Oh, right, she’s Hokum Hannigan’s, what, granddaughter?”

  “Great-granddaughter,” I said. “You know, Hannigan’s criminal activities didn’t stop at bootlegging and rum-running. That guy was one scary dude.”

  I thought of the framed black-and-white photo of Hokum that held a place of honor in the Prohibition museum Nina had constructed in the basement of the Historical Society. He’d stared right into the camera. Everything about the image, from the angle of his fedora to the way he held his cigar to his menacing sneer, said, You don’t want to mess with me.

  “You think Nina got the bad gene?” Martin asked. “Three generations later?”

  “It’s just something to keep in mind. I’m brainstorming here.”

  “I thought Irene was poisoned by something in the smoothies Patrick brought her.”

  “She was,” I said, “but maybe Nina really was in cahoots with him, like you said. Maybe she went there to deliver some kind of coup de grâce.” I entertained a mental image of Nina slipping in through Irene’s back door, wearing a black ski mask and carrying a plate of yummy baked goods. She never visited anyone without bringing yummy baked goods. “You know…” I waved away the thought. “Nah, forget it, it’s nothing.”

  “Nothing’s nothing at this point.” He shot me a commanding look. “What is it?”

  “It’s just that, you know, Nina’s always baking. She brought homemade cookies and stuff to the Poker Posse games all the time. It would have be easy for her to… No, that’s stupid,” I said. “I’ve been eating those cookies. So has everyone else. No one but Irene got a stomachache.”

  “Okay, but that gets me thinking about the assumptions we’re making.” He turned onto the road that would take us into Crystal Harbor.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, we know that O’Rourke brought Irene smoothies,” he said. “We know that the smoothies contained poison. Who’s to say he’s the one who poisoned them?”

  “Well, I suppose Nina could have done it without his knowledge, but—”

  “You’re ignoring the obvious,” he said.

  It took a few moments for the implication to sink in. “Maria?”

  “She had access to all of Irene’s food,” he said. “Hell, she made all of Irene’s food.
Did they get along?”

  “Well, outwardly they did, but privately Irene treated her like crap and she resented it.” I saw what Martin was getting at. “If Maria poisoned her employer’s food, everyone would know it was her. But if she poisoned the smoothies that someone else brought her…”

  “Then the deed gets blamed on the someone else.” He blew past a traffic light as it turned red.

  I frowned, mentally grasping at something that kept skittering away. “Oh,” I said when I caught up with it. “Hmm.”

  “‘Oh hmm’ what?” he asked. “And don’t tell me it’s nothing.”

  “I don’t know how thoroughly you searched Irene’s house. Which is my house now,” I added, “so you can just stop it.”

  “Why? What did you find?”

  “Well, I saw something under the kitchen sink,” I said. “I didn’t think anything of it at the time. Wasp spray.”

  “Which is a kind of insecticide.”

  “Yeah, but… well, everyone has bug spray and stuff like that lying around.”

  “Irene left Maria zilch in her will,” he reminded me. “Well, almost zilch, which is worse. After how many years of service?”

  “Twenty-eight,” I said. “But the thing is, Maria thought Irene was leaving her a wad of cash. Enough to retire on. That’s what Irene told her.”

  Martin emitted a low whistle. “Good reason to want her dead. She could have dosed the smoothies with wasp spray and made sure there were leftovers sitting in the fridge.”

  I followed his train of thought. “So that in case anyone got suspicious, the evidence would point away from her and toward Patrick.”

  “Imagine,” he said. “Maria murders her employer for the inheritance, and then finds out the old woman left her enough for a couple of fill-ups at the gas station.”

  I glanced out the window and jerked upright. I’d been so absorbed in our conversation I hadn’t noticed where Martin was taking us. “What are we doing at the cemetery?”

  “A little detour.” He drove along the narrow main road, past rows of headstones. “This won’t take long. Where’s Seventh Street? Okay, there’s Sixth.”

  I knew Martin’s grandparents weren’t here. They’d been cremated. “Are you looking for relatives?”

  “Why would I?” he asked. “They never looked for me. Anyway, Clan McAuliffe is over in the north section. Green Valley, they call it.” His mouth twisted. “You see any valleys around here?”

  Valleys, no, but there were a few stretches of open lawn and more than a few willow trees sheltering stone benches. Whispering Willows Cemetery was a pleasant, well-maintained boneyard, for which I was grateful since my chosen career brought me here on a regular basis.

  Martin turned left onto Seventh and slowed to a crawl, peering at section markers. Finally he stopped and got out of the car. He gestured for me to follow.

  “I’ll stay here,” I said, trying to control Sexy Beast, who was excited by the fact that we’d reached some sort of destination and also by the interesting aromas that had him sniffing to beat the band. Considering where we were, I chose not to think about what his turbocharged nose detected that mine didn’t. “Anyway,” I added, “I’m pretty sure dogs aren’t allowed here.”

  He bent to grin at me through the open window, his blue eyes luminescent in the sunlight. “And you always follow the rules, don’t you, Jane?”

  I sighed, looking around the cemetery. Other than an elderly couple in a distant section, the place was deserted.

  “Come on.” Martin thumped the car hood. “I need an assistant.” He turned and strolled among the headstones, looking for one in particular, clearly confident I’d follow.

  Which made me want to stay put to spite him, but SB was scrabbling at the door and barking, and curiosity gnawed at me. Assistant for what?

  I exited the car with SB, who strained at the leash, wild to investigate this wonderful new playground. I indulged him until he started to lift his leg on a headstone. “No!” I cried. “SB, no! Hold it in!” I shortened the leash and trotted him to the nearest willow tree. Anxiously I peered around while SB watered the tree, expecting at any moment to be busted by a cemetery employee.

  By the time I joined Martin, he was standing before a granite headstone, studying a small index card he held which was covered in scribbled notes. I looked at the stone. Roberta Lynton Montero, who’d died five years earlier at age sixty. The name was familiar, though I couldn’t place her. The stone next to hers belonged to a Roberto Alejandro Montero—her husband, I assumed. Roberto and Roberta. How adorable is that? He’d died seventeen years ago.

  After a minute Martin nodded to himself, slid the card into his pocket, and retrieved his cell phone. “All right, let’s get started.”

  “Why are you talking like that?” I asked.

  “Like what?”

  “You know darn well like what,” I said. “Like an Irishman. From Ireland.”

  “Well now, I’m just getting into character, aren’t I?” He tapped the screen on his cell and handed it to me. Another smart phone. Good grief, was I the last holdout?

  “What am I supposed to do with this?” I asked.

  “Stand here.” Martin positioned me off to the side. “You’re going to be shooting video. Start with an establishing shot. Do a sweep of the whole graveyard, then home in on Roberta’s headstone for a few seconds, make sure it can be read, then move out to frame me and the stone in the shot. Try to keep the dog quiet.” He adjusted his clerical collar and brushed lint off his black priest’s outfit.

  “‘Establishing shot,’ huh?” I was tempted to remind him his last name wasn’t Scorsese. “I don’t even know how to work this thing.”

  “Nothing to it.” He indicated a little red icon on the phone. “Just touch that. As long as it’s blinking, it’s recording. Let’s go.” He circled his finger as if to say, Roll ’em.

  What the heck. I looped the leash handle over my wrist and told SB to lie down and then stay. He looked like he had other plans, but he obeyed. “Good boy.” I reached into my purse for a slender, pepperoni-style dog treat that I hoped would keep him busy for a while.

  I started the video and did as Martin had instructed, getting a sweeping view of the rows of tombstones before zeroing in on Roberta’s. Martin cleared his throat and I realized I’d lingered a little too long on her stone, still trying to remember how I knew this woman.

  I backed up until I had both Martin and the stone framed in the shot. The little red dot was blinking. So far, so good. Then the padre started to speak.

  “Oh, Roberta, my beautiful, sexy darlin’, how I have missed you.” If anything, the Irish brogue got thicker. “When I close my eyes, I imagine I can still taste your luscious lips, your silken shoulders…”

  He went on to list the other parts of Roberta he could still taste, in XXX-rated detail. My mouth sagged open.

  “You were the only woman who could make me forget my vow of celibacy, my darlin’ Roberta,” he went on, with feeling. “From the very moment we met, all I could think about was the wicked, sinful things I yearned to do to you.”

  He commenced to describe those wicked, sinful things, one by one, as my face heated. And yeah, that wasn’t my only physical response. There, I said it. You happy?

  Part of me wanted to stop the recording, to demand what in the world was going on. Another part of me wanted to hear what other dirty stuff Father Martin intended to tell the corpse moldering under our feet. Guess which part won.

  He continued, “I’ll never forget that time we slipped away from the potluck supper and made savage love in the church coatroom. I know I was rough with you then, my darlin’, but I couldn’t help myself. You always brought out the beast in me.”

  To hear the padre tell it, their rough coatroom sex involved a variety of inventive acts and acrobatic positions.

  My brain chose that moment to slide the pieces together. Roberta Montero. I’d helped arrange her funeral reception five years earlier. The clien
t who’d hired me? Roberta’s good friend Veronica Sheffield, my Death Diva cash cow.

  The very same Veronica Sheffield I’d watched Martin chat up at the poker tournament.

  My gasp of outrage brought an answering yip from SB but had no effect on Martin, who was in the process of wrapping up his filthy little monologue.

  “Memories of that last time,” he said, “in the church school bus, are what keep me going during the long, cold nights—”

  “You bastard!” I stalked up to him with the phone, framing a close-up of his hatefully handsome face. Sexy Beast jumped up, barking excitedly at this new game. “You raided my client!”

  He plucked the phone out of my hand and shut off the video camera. “No need for a second take. I can delete that last bit before Veronica sees it.”

  “You copied my business model.” I shoved his chest. Hard. He didn’t seem to notice. “I’m the Death Diva, Padre. I’ve been doing this for more than twenty years. You can’t just waltz in and… and make off with my idea. My clients.”

  I’d spied him talking to Maia Armstrong, too, at the tournament. The caterer. Maia and I had been referring clients to each other for years. Obviously he intended to horn in on that action as well. I thought Martin had just been taunting me that night at the bar when he’d said he might try his hand at what I did for a living. Doing sick things to dead people was how he’d put it.

  He jerked his head toward Roberta’s tombstone. “Veronica’s pal here had a thing for Irish priests. She wanted to give Roberta a little something to keep up her spirit in the afterworld.”

  That certainly sounded like flaky Veronica. “She should have come to me,” I said.

  “Roberta was into priests, not nuns.” His grin was salacious. “Although if you ever take a job that calls for hot lesbian action, give me a call. I’ll hold the video camera.”