STAGING WARS

by Grace Topping

  “What do you have planned for today?” I asked Aunt Kit.

  “Anne Williamson and I are going to see an art display in the lobby of the medical center. They are supposed to have some nice pieces done by local artists.” Aunt Kit dug into her pancakes. She enjoyed anything that resembled dessert.

  “You and Anne have been spending a fair amount of time together.” I reached for more maple syrup, thinking I should have added the butter.

  “It’s nice sharing my interest in art with someone close to my age—someone who can understand where I’m coming from.”

  My sense of guilt for not spending more time with Aunt Kit during her visit made me cringe. Could her statement have been aimed at me? “Why don’t you stay longer so we can visit some of the places you haven’t been to for a while.”

  “That would be nice. What about you? Do you have a place to stage today?

  Just then, I heard a knock on the door and went to answer it, finding Nita standing there with an arm full of folders and a laptop. We had planned to work on several things that morning, including updating our webpage. We decided we would have far fewer distractions at my place than at Vocaro’s.

  A surprise to us both, Nita had turned out to be a wiz with the technological things that were supposed to help us with our business. I was thankful that she had taken right to it since the devices that were supposed to save us time took far too much of our time. With my background in IT, I could have handled it but was happy not having to.

  “Hey, Nita. You’re just in time for breakfast.”

  “You fixed breakfast? That’s a new one.” Nita put her things down.

  “It’s a special treat for Aunt Kit.”

  Aunt Kit called from the kitchen. “Nita, I’m glad you’re here. Laura and I have been talking about Monica’s situation.” Situation was definitely a euphemism or polite way of saying she was in jail and accused of murder.

  When we reached the kitchen, Nita hugged Aunt Kit and then leaned over to pet Inky. He had positioned himself under the table ready to snatch a piece of bacon if someone, namely Nita or Aunt Kit, offered it to him.

  After Nita sat down, I handed her a plate of hot pancakes and bacon I took from a warm oven. She accepted it with relish. Everyone seemed to love pancakes.

  Sitting down again, I eyed my now-cold breakfast. “I was about to tell Aunt Kit about my visit to see Monica yesterday and that we haven’t discovered anything that could remotely help her. It’s so frustrating. With us finding her over Damian’s body, it’s hard to prove someone else could have killed him.

  Nita poured syrup liberally over her warm pancakes. “Sister Madeleine will be happy if we can discover anything that could point to someone other than Monica. She truly believes Monica is innocent.”

  “Let’s think about it.” Aunt Kit seemed to be mulling it over as she put English breakfast tea into a warmed teapot, poured boiling water over it from the electric kettle, put the lid on the teapot, and covered it with a tea cozy to keep it warm. She was a stickler for making sure the tea was made properly. “Doesn’t anyone think it’s strange there were two murders in town within a few days of each other—both murdered similarly. Monica looks pretty guilty about the one, but is there anything connecting her to the other?”

  I shrugged. “Monica said she didn’t know Ian. I don’t know much about him myself. Poor guy. He comes to town to settle his aunt’s estate, which we all assumed to be a modest one, and then is murdered. For all we know, his aunt could have been the millionaire next door no one suspects of having any money.”

  “Could that have been the case?” Aunt Kit sounded almost envious. I wondered again about how she was doing. Could she be having financial troubles?

  “You never know,” Nita said. “She could have been left a fortune by her parents and never spent much of it.”

  “Let’s be realistic.” I reached for the last piece of bacon that I wasn’t going to share with Inky. “It would be somewhat improbable that the motive for Ian’s death was related to a huge inheritance. But even if she had been as rich as Andrew Carnegie, who in town could benefit from Ian’s death? Ian didn’t have any other connections here other than his aunt and a few friends he hadn’t seen in twenty years—Warren being one of them. It’s unlikely anyone here would have benefitted from his death.”

  “Maybe someone from New Zealand followed him here and murdered him,” Aunt Kit said.

  Nita and I both laughed at that one. Aunt Kit, like Will Parker, enjoyed bizarre mysteries that were way out there. Next she would be on the lookout for a Chinese man to show up as a surprise suspect as they often did in movies from the 1930s—a device used so often that Ronald Knox in his Ten Commandments of Detective Fiction admonished writers not to use it.

  “Don’t you think it was suspicious that Ian was murdered in Warren’s funeral home?” Aunt Kit added. She loved conspiracy theories.

  “I don’t suspect Warren of killing someone he hasn’t seen in twenty years.” But I’d been wrong in my judgment of people before. In Warren’s case, I hoped not. “Warren would have been more likely to bore him to death telling him every detail about his upcoming stage production than to have stabbed him.”

  Aunt Kit reached over and took another pancake, which surprised me since she usually ate so little. “Who else might have known Ian was in town—or would have remembered him for that matter?”

  “Remember what my cousin Neil said about one of the calls on Ian’s phone records being to an old girlfriend? Maybe the girlfriend is worth looking into.”

  Aunt Kit pondered that for a minute. Being a real fan of mysteries, she loved trying to solve the puzzles they presented. Perhaps I had inherited my sense of inquisitiveness after all. “I still think the police should continue looking at what could’ve connected Damian and Ian. Something they may have had in common?” Aunt Kit shared her piece of bacon with Inky.

  “They both stayed at the B&B,” I said. “But at different times.”

  Aunt Kit’s frown told me I wasn’t taking this seriously enough.

  “Okay, let’s consider this,” I said. “Damian was about ten years older than Ian. Before coming to Louiston, Damian lived in California, Ian in New Zealand. To the best of my knowledge, neither had been in Louiston at the same time until recently. Damian was an artist and was teaching at the college. I don’t know what Ian did for a living, but we probably could find out.”

  Aunt Kit sat up abruptly. “Maybe that’s the connection.”

  “What?” Nita was wide-eyed and anticipating a revelation.

  “Art,” Aunt Kit said.

  “I never heard Ian was an artist,” I said. That was something else I needed to check into.

  “No, but his aunt was.” Aunt Kit waved her fork at us as if for emphasis. “Maybe it’s far-fetched and a pretty weak link, but so far that’s the only link between the two men.”

  That was a real stretch, but I didn’t want to tell Aunt Kit that. She looked as satisfied as if she’d just uncovered the solution to a major case and delivered it to Perry Mason in the courtroom herself.

  Aunt Kit poured us cups of the brewed tea, which I was more than ready for. “All I’m saying is think about that connection,” she said.

  “I will, I will. But if we are going to look into Ian Becker’s death, it might be important to talk to the old girlfriend he called.”

  “And don’t forget his aunt’s attorney,” Aunt Kit added. “He could be hiding the money she left.”

  “No, that won’t be the case.” Nita put down her cup abruptly. “Her attorney was my cousin Ted. He wouldn’t steal from anyone. You don’t know Ted. He is so straitlaced the family is still surprised he didn’t go into the priesthood.”

  Aunt Kit was adamant. “I still think you need to look at the art link.”

  Maybe Nita and I should turn our search for information over to Au
nt Kit.

  Nita nodded. “We should look for who might inherit Doris Becker’s money since Ian is no longer around. Maybe someone else was named in the will.”

  “You have to see the will,” Aunt Kit said.

  “I wish I knew how we could do that.” I refilled everyone’s teacups and sat back down.

  “Let me think about it.” Nita scrunched up her face in thought. “I may have a way we can find out.”

  Oh no, another one of Nita’s ideas. Her ideas once nearly put us in jail.

  I couldn’t believe this. Now we were delving into two murders. It was difficult enough trying to make sense of one, but two separate murders with no obvious connection were enough to make me reach into the cupboard for the bottle of Harvey’s—and it was only breakfast time. How did I get myself pulled into these things?

  Chapter 31

  Make sure every area of the house is spotless. Cleaning things like the top of the hot water heater shows buyers that the house has been well-maintained.

  While Nita and I worked that morning, I was able to get our minds off murders, wills, and huge inheritances. Hours flew by, and we made good progress.

  Nita snapped her laptop closed and stretched. “We now have an updated web page and a new Facebook page. But we have to keep posting to make them worthwhile.”

  “Nita, you are a jewel—in more ways than one. I hope Guido appreciates how wonderful you are.”

  She smiled. “Thankfully he does. And if he forgets, I don’t hesitate to remind him.”

  “Next we have to work on updating our inventory system. At the rate we’re accumulating things, if we don’t work on it, the system will be woefully out of date.”

  “Yeah, but first we have to think of a way to find out who else might have been named in Doris Becker’s will.” She picked up her things and walked to the door.

  “That may be a challenge,” I said.

  “No, it won’t.” Nita gave me an amused and calculated look. “I’ve worked out a plan. Meet me at my house tonight at nine and wear something old. Oh, and bring your vacuum cleaner.”

  Just before nine that evening, I pulled up in front of Nita’s house. She stood by the curb, wearing a baggy pair of jeans and a brown plaid shirt that hung almost to her knees, probably borrowed from Guido. In one hand she held a bucket with a mop inside it—the long mop handle resting on her shoulder.

  What in the world did she have in mind? Her crazy ideas had gotten us into trouble in the past, and I feared this was going to be another one of those occasions.

  “Did you bring the vacuum cleaner?” she asked.

  “It’s in the back. Nita, what is this all about?” I opened the back of my car and she deposited the bucket and mop.

  “We’re going to get into Ted’s office and search for that will.”

  “What? Nita are you crazy?” Nita’s cousin Ted Wojdakowski was handling Doris Becker’s estate.

  Nita got in the front seat. “I didn’t want to say anything earlier and give you time to think about it. Ted isn’t going to tell us anything, so that’s the only way we can find the information we need. We aren’t going to take anything. We are merely going to look and then leave. And we won’t disclose what we’ve learned unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

  I stood on the curb, not knowing whether to run away and leave her sitting in my car or go along with another one of her hair-brained ideas.

  Nita waved at me. “Come on, get in the car.”

  “And end up sharing a cell with Monica when we’re arrested for breaking and entering?” Of all the people in the second grade I could’ve made friends with, I picked the certifiably insane one. It was all Sister Madeleine’s fault—both for encouraging my friendship with Nita and for putting a guilt trip on me to help Monica.

  Nita held up a set of keys. “Who said anything about breaking and entering? We’ll go in looking like cleaning personnel, search, and get out of there. Easy.”

  “Where’d you get those?” I asked, eyeing the keys.

  Nita put them back in her pocket. “Let’s just say it’s good to have sympathetic relatives.”

  I got in my dented Corolla that had once belonged to my mother and started the motor. I still missed the Volvo I’d sold to help finance my staging business. What a stupid thought to come to mind—missing a luxury car when I wasn’t going to need one in prison.

  “You know where Ted’s office is?” Nita asked. “It’s in the professional building just down the street from the police station.”

  “That’ll make it convenient for the police to nab us in the middle of our search. Did you think to inquire if there are any alarms we need to turn off once we’re inside?” What was I talking about? Could I possibly be agreeing to this caper?

  “Alarm? Are you kidding? This is Louiston, not Manhattan. Pull into the parking lot in the back, and we’ll go in through the rear entrance.”

  As cleaner number one, I unloaded my vacuum cleaner, all the time wondering what the sentence was for unlawful entry.

  “Just act like a cleaning crew member who is going in for a scheduled cleaning,” Nita said.

  “And just how am I supposed to act, never having been the member of a cleaning crew?”

  “I don’t know. Try to look like you should be here and like you’ve had a hard day.”

  “The hard day part won’t be difficult.” The vacuum cleaner weighed a ton and I decided it would be easier if I wheeled it across the lot instead of carrying it.

  The rear parking lot was empty. “It looks like everyone’s gone. That’s good. With any luck, no one will be coming back this late at night.” Nita retrieved her bucket and mop and followed behind me.

  I looked up at the two-story building. “Some lights are still on.”

  “Those are the lights in the corridors.”

  When we reached the door, Nita inserted the largest of the keys into the lock. I kept hoping it wouldn’t work, but she turned it with little effort. I looked up to check for surveillance cameras that could be pointed at us. I then realized that wasn’t a smart thing to do. If there were cameras, they now had a clear view of my face.

  Nita held the door open while I dragged my vacuum inside, wishing mine was a lighter one. The only vacuum I had was my mother’s old Kirby, which was all metal and heavy. When the door closed behind us, all I could think of was the clang a jail cell makes as it closes behind a prisoner.

  When we arrived at Ted’s office, Nita again easily unlocked the door. I held my breath waiting as the seconds clicked away for an alarm to go off. When one didn’t, I released my breath, suddenly feeling faint. Nita had gotten us into some strange escapades, but this one had to be the worst.

  Nita switched lights on in the outer office.

  It was the first time I’d been in Ted’s office, and I wasn’t impressed. It was as basic as Sam Spade’s office looked in the movie version of the Dashiell Hammett’s Maltese Falcon. I put down my vacuum and eyed with distaste the thick border of dust around the edge of the carpet. “Whatever cleaning company Ted is using, they aren’t doing a good job. Look at how dusty the furniture is. Perhaps we should give it a cleaning, and if anyone finds us here, we could say we were doing it as a surprise for your cousin.”

  “This isn’t the time to be evaluating the place.” Nita grabbed a rag from the bucket she had left by the door and tossed it at me. “Here, you start dusting, and if anyone comes in unexpectedly, they’ll catch you in the act of cleaning, and we can then bluff our way out. I’ll search. Fortunately, Ted doesn’t have a huge practice, so it shouldn’t take long.”

  Not ready to leave the searching to Nita, I went over to the secretary’s desk looking for a folder marked “Becker.” As I searched, I brushed away the crumbs that had accumulated on the desktop. Whoever the secretary was, she ate at her desk. And from the looks of it, she did that a lot. As I
worked, I forced myself to resist the urge to straighten things a bit. My desk was covered with papers, but it never looked as bad as this.

  Just then, I heard the sound of the nearby elevator doors open. My heart started to beat wildly. “Nita, I think someone’s coming.”

  She stopped what she was doing, gently pushed closed the file drawer she had been going through, and grabbed another cloth. For all her bravado, she looked as nervous as I felt. To think we were going through all this for Monica, who had been hateful to us all our lives. Sister Madeleine would tell us that we were building up treasure in our treasure chest in heaven for helping others. Of course, I don’t know what she would say about our illegal search of Ted’s office.

  A few long minutes later when the elevator sounded again, I let out a sigh of relief. “It could have been a night watchman making rounds.”

  Nita switched off the lights in Ted’s office. “I don’t know what to say. I couldn’t find a folder of any kind for Doris Becker. Did you find anything?”

  I shook my head. “Maybe he has a vault somewhere else in the building where he stores documents. If that’s the case, we’ll never be able to get to them.” I drew the line at safe cracking.

  The window in the outer office looked out over the rear parking lot. We heard what sounded like a small panel truck pulling into the lot. My mouth went dry.

  Nita turned off the overhead light and peered between the Venetian blind panels. “A panel truck just parked. Oh my gosh. It’s another cleaning service. Let’s get out of here.”

  I switched off the one remaining light, and we grabbed our equipment, heading for the door. Nita locked it behind us, and we rushed to the stairs to avoid passing anyone coming up in the elevator.

  After lugging the heavy Kirby down to the ground floor, my arms ached, and I resolved to get a cleaning service so I’d never have to handle a vacuum again. Well, maybe someday when I could afford it.