A Tale of Two Biddies (League of Literary Ladies)

by Logan, Kylie

  As it turned out, it was a good thing I did, or I never would have seen Mike Lawrence near the yacht club entrance, selling ice cream out of a cart.

  Parking was another challenge altogether. Fact is, I’d never actually owned a car when I lived in New York, but I’d learned a lot from watching the way many of my neighbors drove. And parked. Within just a couple minutes, I’d managed to go where no SUV had gone before—nor was meant to go—smack dab between a massive motor home and a golf cart.

  I exited the SUV before anyone showed up to point out that I had no business wedged so close to either vehicle and joined the flow of the crowd heading to the lake. I was so busy trying to see over and around the people on all sides of me to where I’d last spotted Mike, I practically ran right into Luella, who was going in the other direction.

  She put a hand on my shoulder to keep me from going down like a stone. “You look intense. What’s up?”

  “Mike Lawrence!” I stood on tiptoe so I could see the entrance to the yacht club. Both Mike and the ice cream cart were gone and I grumbled a curse. “I need to talk to him.”

  In her own way, Luella was as tuned in to island gossip as the Defarge sisters. No doubt, like everyone on the island, she knew the details of Richie’s story. She didn’t have to ask; she also knew exactly why I wanted to talk to Mike. She wasn’t the least bit surprised that I was hot on the trail of a suspect.

  “I just got back to port with the group of fishermen I had out this morning, and I’m on my way home for a while before I take another group out this evening. You know I’d offer to help but—”

  “I do. Don’t worry about it! You go home and get some rest and I’ll catch up with you later and let you know what I find out.”

  Luella smiled her gratitude. “I’ll keep an eye out for Mike,” she promised, and edged out of the worst of the press. “I can’t stand crowds. Give me the lake any day!”

  I knew just how she felt. The closer I got to the yacht club, the more I was simply pushed along by the tide of spectators. When we were finally across the street and just a few feet from the lakeshore, I managed to dodge a stroller, sidestep a woman with a walker, and double shuffle around a couple who insisted on walking side by side with their arms looped around each other when there was hardly room for even one person to get by. I slipped to the side, away from the main gate where regatta tickets were being collected.

  Fists on hips, I looked around and wished I wasn’t so short. The answer to my problem, though, was only a few feet away in the form of a lightpost sunk into a foot-high cement base. I grabbed the post, hoisted myself up onto the base, and took advantage of a completely new perspective on the scene.

  An Impressionist painter would have had a field day with the swirl of colors that played out before me. Lake Erie was a brilliant blue, three shades darker than the dome of sky above it, and there was just enough wind to kick up foamy whitecaps that turned turquoise where they broke against the sides of the boats with their sails, billowing and brilliantly white. Sailors stood at the ready, a couple here and there decked out in jewel tones that added colorful exclamation marks to the scene, a splash of green here, a dab of red there.

  I’d never been much of a sailor myself, but I’d attended a few of these kinds of events over the years, and I knew the boats that looked to be randomly sailing back and forth were actually plying the waters near the starting line, waiting for the signal for the race to begin.

  Onshore, the panorama was just as interesting. The grounds of the yacht club were immaculately groomed, the grass a gorgeous emerald, and the geraniums that lined the walk a crimson as dark as rubies. The folks in the crowd were dressed in every fashion imaginable, from traditional sailors’ whites to brightly colored sundresses to denim and T-shirts, the kaleidoscope of colors intensified by the afternoon sun.

  Lucky for me, the race started and the slowpokes still waiting for a good vantage point got a move on. The crowd thinned, and I spotted Mike and his ice cream cart on the other side of the main entrance. I got over there just a fraction of a second after Alice.

  “Don’t tell me, let me guess, gorgeous. You’re here for a chocolate cone!” Even before Alice answered, Mike flipped open the lid of the ice cream cart and started to scoop.

  “You know me too well,” Alice chirped, then in response to Mike asking about a vanilla cone for Margaret, she added, “I think it’s too hot to take a cone back. It will be mush before I get halfway there.”

  While Mike took Alice’s money and made change, she took the time to look around and noticed me standing in line behind her. “Well, isn’t this a coincidence. I’m lucky enough to get to see you twice in one day!” She took her cone and stepped aside, and because I didn’t want to grill Mike in front of her, I signaled to him that I’d order in just a bit and moved to stand in the shade with Alice. “Are you going to get chocolate, too?” she asked.

  I glanced at the list of flavors written on an erasable board and attached to the front of the cart. “I think I’ve already got my heart set on salted caramel.”

  Alice grinned and took a lick of her cone. “Good choice. Now don’t you go tattling on me to Margaret about this. If she finds out I had ice cream and she didn’t get any, I’ll never hear the end of it.”

  I crossed my heart to prove my good intentions. “Margaret’s back at the shop?”

  Since Alice was mid-lick, she simply nodded. “I know I can’t stay long. I just wanted to see the start of the race. But I’ve got to hurry back. Good heavens, if anyone comes in and asks Margaret a knitting question . . .” Whatever else she was going to say, her cheeks turned pink and Alice clamped her lips shut.

  Call me as nosy as the Defarge sisters, I couldn’t help but wonder what was going on.

  “Margaret must know as much about the shop as you do,” I ventured, trying to draw her out. “You two have owned the shop for how many years?”

  “Oh good heavens!” Thinking, Alice closed her eyes. “Going on forty, I think,” she finally said, opening them again and realizing there was a chocolate drip about to run down her hand. She licked the edge of the cone. “And of course Margaret knows as much as I do about inventory and orders and payments and utility bills and such.”

  Don’t think I didn’t notice that she’d left something out.

  “But not about knitting?”

  The pink in Alice’s cheeks intensified. “You know how it is with sisters,” she said, and I had to admit that I didn’t; I had no siblings. “Well, it’s worse with twins,” she assured me, undeterred by my only-child status. “Always sticking up for each other. Always having each other’s backs. Of course, that’s why I hate to say anything bad about Margaret but . . .” She leaned in close. “Truth be told, she’s not much of a knitter.”

  I would have laughed if not for the grave look on Alice’s face. To her, this was serious stuff.

  “Oh, she tries,” she added, and I guess she thought that took care of the having-each-other’s-backs part, because she went on to say, “but Margaret’s fingers just aren’t as nimble as mine. They never have been. Not even when we were kids and first learned to knit. It was for the war effort, you know, Korea. All the women here on the island got together two nights a week over at the town hall and knitted socks for the soldiers. Such a good memory!” Her smile was soft, but only for a moment. Then her lips puckered. “Oh, I don’t mean the war. Don’t get me wrong. I’m talking about the friendship between the women. We got together, we talked, some of the women brought the letters they got from sons and husbands and brothers, boys we all knew who were all away fighting the war. And we knit socks. My goodness, did we knit socks! We even got a commendation from the national Red Cross because we made so many pairs.” Her slender shoulders went back. “Even though I was a brand-new knitter, I ended up knitting more socks than anyone. That’s how easy knitting came to me. Like that!” She snapped her fingers. “Margaret . . . well, she tried, bless her heart. But it was never easy for her. To this day, she ca
n’t look at anyone knitting socks without getting heart palpitations. Now don’t you go spreading word around about any of this,” she warned me with a look. “Margaret’s a little touchy when it comes to her knitting skills.”

  I gave her a wink. “Your secret is safe with me.”

  That was enough to satisfy Alice. She took another lick of her cone, gave me a jaunty wave good-bye, and headed downtown to the knitting shop.

  “You want that ice cream now?” Mike asked me.

  I assured him I did, paid for my cone, and bided my time. If there was one thing I’d learned investigating Peter’s untimely demise, it was that suspects can’t be rushed. At least not without spooking them. Since I couldn’t afford to let Mike know I was investigating, I decided to play dumb.

  “I don’t think I’ve seen you working for the ice cream company before. Oh!” I put a hand to my mouth. Too dramatic? Since Mike went as still as a statue, his hand inside the ice cream freezer and his face suddenly the color of the crimson geraniums that grew nearby, I don’t think he even noticed.

  I did my best to sound repentant. “This was one of Richie’s jobs, wasn’t it?”

  Mike slapped the cooler cover closed. “Yeah, well, Richie’s a little busy being dead today so the guy who owns the concession called me to fill in.”

  I took the ice cream cone out of Mike’s hand. “So what’s your theory about the way Richie died? You must have one. Everyone else I’ve talked to about it today does.”

  As if he couldn’t believe I cared enough to even ask, Mike snorted. “Drank himself to death. Or maybe it was terminal stupidity that killed him.”

  He didn’t know.

  Or he pretended he didn’t.

  The chill that ran through me had nothing to do with the ice cream.

  I watched Mike carefully, hoping to gauge his reaction. “You haven’t heard the news.”

  “I know the idiot is dead, and I say good riddance. Believe me, the world is a better place without Richie Monroe in it.”

  This didn’t seem like an especially good time to start slurping down a salted caramel ice cream cone, but since it was already dripping down my fingers, I gave the cone a quick lick.

  “Richie was murdered,” I told Mike.

  If Mike was surprised by this piece of news, he didn’t show it. He wiped a damp rag over the top of the ice cream cart. “Everybody who ever met the guy hated his guts. It was bound to happen sooner or later.”

  “You don’t sound especially sorry.”

  Understatement, and I guess Mike knew it because he barked out a laugh. “Sorry? Should I be? I mean, really? I know you’re pretty new around here, but even you must have heard the story. That jackass ruined my life.”

  Somehow, eating ice cream and talking about murder didn’t seem to go together, but the sun was hot, and my salted caramel was quickly disintegrating.

  I licked around the cone, paying special attention to the rim. “Did you like Richie?” I asked Mike.

  Surprised by the question, he flinched. “Like him? You mean before he ruined my life or after?” It was a small ice cream cart and no way it needed it again, but he swiped the towel along the chrome top one more time.

  “I tried,” Mike said, and I knew it wasn’t easy for him to admit it; a muscle jumped at the base of his jaw. “You know what I mean? Like everyone else on the island, I felt sorry for the guy. He was so quiet, and anytime I saw him, he was usually alone. Yeah, I tried to like him. And I tried to help him out. I hired him to do lots of odd jobs for me. And I thought, you know . . . I thought maybe if I stopped in at a work site to see how he was doing, and we talked a little bit . . . I thought I could get to know him a little better, maybe sit down and have a beer with him sometime. And just when I figured I’d ask if he wanted to come by the house for a burger and a brew, that’s when he’d do something so stupid that all I could think was that I wanted to wring his neck.”

  “Or poison him.”

  Mike snickered. “Poison? Really? Who the hell would waste perfectly good poison on a jerk like Richie?”

  Ice cream dripped on my fingers, and I grabbed a napkin from the cart, wiped my hand, then took another quick lick to prevent another drip. “You tried to help him out. You gave him work.”

  “You got that right. And how did he repay me? By screwing up my life. Did I like Richie? You know, now that I think about it, I can tell you one hundred percent without a doubt, I hated the guy’s guts.”

  I made a face. “That’s probably not something you should say too loud.”

  Mike snorted. “What, you think the cops will think I’m the one who offed the guy?”

  “Did you?”

  He propped his fists on his hips. “Are you accusing me of something?”

  “Me?” I managed a laugh. “Honest, the only thing I could possibly accuse you of is selling the best ice cream I’ve tasted in a long time. Really, Mike . . .” I couldn’t afford to make an enemy of the guy, not when he hadn’t told me everything I wanted to know. I made sure I kept a smile on my face when I moved closer to the ice cream cart. “I understand how you feel about Richie. If the guy had blown up my house—”

  “Yeah. See. That’s just it!” Like he’d just thought of something, Mike pointed a finger in my direction. “Now you’re talkin’! If anybody has a reason to kill that idiot, it was Peebles, the Used Car King. That place he had over at the other end of the island was worth more than a million. More than a million! And it was just his weekend summer home. Can you imagine?”

  I could, but it hardly mattered.

  “Dan Peebles is staying at my place,” I told Mike. “He checked in this morning. He wasn’t even on the island last night when Richie was killed.”

  “Maybe he says he wasn’t on the island last night. Does anybody know that’s true? Hey.” Mike stuck out his chin. “I watch the cops shows on TV, just like everyone else. I know what I’m talking about. Peebles is a royal pain. Believe me, I know. He’s the one who took me to court over what happened to his house. He’s the one who sued me for all I was worth, and then some. Because of him, the feds found out I was paying Richie under the table.”

  And not paying Social Security taxes.

  I didn’t mention it. There was no use pouring salt on Mike’s obviously open wounds.

  Instead, I tried to close in on the information I wanted from another direction. “So what do you think?” I asked Mike. “If Peebles won his case, why would he still be mad at Richie?”

  “Mad doesn’t even begin to describe it. Man . . .” As if he still couldn’t believe it, Mike shook his head. “The day we all had to appear in court and Richie took the stand to talk about what happened, Peebles lost it. He jumped out of his chair and he would have strangled Richie right then and there if the bailiffs hadn’t held him back. The judge, he forgave Peebles, said he understood his emotional distress. That’s what he called it, emotional distress. But I’ll tell you what, I’ve never seen that kind of hatred in anybody’s eyes before or since.”

  “Not even when you think about Richie?”

  Mike grunted.

  I guess that was the only answer I needed.

  A couple kids came up and got ice cream bars and I waited until after they’d walked away before I said anything else. By that time, I was down to chomping the cone and I took a bite, swallowed, and said, “You were at the bar last night. Did you see anybody talking to Richie?”

  Mike’s smile was tight. “I was a little busy.”

  “But you knew he was there.”

  “Sure. Son-of-a-bitch had the nerve to come up to the bar and order a couple drinks from me. Just to rub it in, you know? Just so I wouldn’t forget I wouldn’t be working odd jobs if it wasn’t for his stupidity.”

  “So Richie wasn’t sorry for what he did and how he cost you your livelihood?”

  “You mean was he sorry for blowing up that house?” I don’t think Mike had ever considered this before. His head cocked to one side and he was quiet for a momen
t or two. “He said he was sorry. In court that day. He said it was an honest mistake and it could have happened to anybody.”

  “Could it?”

  “Anybody dumber than a rock.”

  “Which Richie was.”

  “All you had to do was talk to the guy. You knew in an instant he had a couple screws loose.”

  “But you sent him to the Used Car King’s house to turn off the gas anyway.”

  “Yeah, I did.” Both his hands flat against the ice cream cart, Mike leaned forward. “Biggest mistake I ever made in my life.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. Not if you count the fact that you left the bar early last night.”

  Mike didn’t expect the change of subject. He pushed away from the cart, grabbed the handle, and rolled it down the sidewalk, looking for a new location to set up.

  I followed along.

  “That doesn’t mean anything,” he said without looking my way. “My kid was sick.”

  “It means you were inside the bar with Richie while we were all outside watching the fireworks.”

  “So?”

  “So by the time I got inside after the fireworks show, Richie was already dead. That means you were probably inside the bar with Richie when he died.”

  He stopped and spun to face me. “You’re crazy.”

  I gave him a one-shoulder shrug. “I’ve heard that before.”

  “Well, I’d better not hear anything about any of this again. Because I’ll tell you what, I learned plenty from what happened to me last year. All about the legal system, and how sometimes people who don’t deserve it get royally screwed. I hear one word out of you, lady . . .” He jabbed a finger in my direction. “I hear anybody say anything about how you’re talking like I could have done something to Richie, and I’ll sue the pants off you. I’ve learned my lesson. I’ll fight as dirty as I can to make sure I win.”