A Taste of Death

by Suzanne Rossi

  “Too long, I guess. The new owner wanted someone up front who could deal with shoplifters.” He eyed the tote bag. It contained her wallet amongst other things.

  “Oh, my, was that a problem?”

  “Yeah.”

  His brief answer left her with little else to say. “Hopefully, that will be a thing of the past. I understand Mr. Harrison taking over?” Anne probed.

  “Yeah, he’s taking over.”

  Anne took another tack by gazing at the items nearby. “I’ll say this, Fran did have some nice merchandise.”

  “Some of its good stuff, some I can’t think why anyone would want to lay out the bucks for.”

  “Um, yes, I suppose it’s all a matter of taste.”

  George Harrison walked down the aisle. “Carlos, I have to take my sister-in-law to the airport. Keep your eyes on things here for an hour or so. Hello, Mrs. Jamieson. Back again?”

  “Yes. Fran had such nice things I just had to return for a second look.”

  “I’m the one responsible for the nice things. If you look closely, you’ll see a lot of it is not antique, but merely second hand. That’s why we never mentioned antiques in the store name. You get what you pay for.”

  “Uh, yes, I guess you’re right,” she replied, once again taken aback by the critical words.

  “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must be going.”

  “Tell your sister-in-law it was a pleasure meeting her and I hope she has a safe trip home.”

  He nodded and pulled Carlos aside to speak softly to him. Anne turned away and pretended to inspect a set of old china.

  So Pam Waters is leaving. A thought crossed her mind causing her to pause. Pam had no love for her sister. Suppose she didn’t arrive just for the funeral. Suppose she came a day or so earlier to visit? Maybe she and Fran argued—argued enough to spawn murder. And Pam would certainly know about Fran’s allergies. Could she have been the ghost?

  George Harrison left and the new clerk returned. “You sure I can’t help you find something, lady?”

  “Maybe later. For now, I’ll just walk around.”

  Two more women came in the door. The man approached them, and then led one of the ladies to some items across the room.

  Anne wandered down the aisles taking a second look at the merchandise. George had been right. Some was good, high quality while others were not so nice. Fortunately, the new man stayed out of her sight. His appearance and demeanor didn’t suggest he had any experience in the world of retail or antiques. In fact, he was downright rude.

  So why would Fran’s husband suddenly let the other lady go and hire this man? Looks like he picked him up off the street corner. And while shoplifting was always a concern for store owners, the really valuable things were too large to just carry out or were kept under lock and key by the front desk.

  Nor did she like the tone George had used regarding the merchandise. He was the one responsible for the nice items? George Harrison was a snob and full of crap. That, however, is not a crime.

  She peeked around a corner to see the salesclerk still busy with a customer. Satisfied, she headed toward the office with no idea what motivated her actions.

  Anne paused in front of the closed door and looked toward the ceiling, but saw no cameras. Not expecting the door to be unlocked, she turned the knob anyway. To her surprise it opened. Casting a quick look over her shoulder to make sure no one saw her, she slipped inside.

  The desk was tidy. A small stack of manila folders sat off to one side. A sticky note was attached to the top one—Carlos, shred and toss. Anne quickly flipped through them. Inventory of merchandise and delivery receipts. The bottom one held several sheets of paper with columns of names and items. The heading on the tab merely said, Special Orders. She moved on to the file cabinets hoping to find something financial. A fast glance showed nothing of that sort.

  Probably at the house.

  She was about to leave when a door in the back corner of the room caught her eye. She opened it and walked into the warehouse area. Furniture and shipping crates were strewn about the space.

  Unable to resist, Anne inspected a large secretary with intricate scrollwork. Admiring the workmanship, she wondered at the price. Probably more than I can afford, but I’d love to have this. A quick search revealed more of the same. Nice items that would fetch a good price.

  She glanced at her watch. She’d been here for over half an hour. Since the new clerk stayed near the front of the shop, it was obvious he knew she was still in the store.

  Time to get out of here.

  She slipped back into the office and hesitated. Another rapid look at the top folder on the stack on the desk showed a computer printout of the inventory. Without stopping to think, she grabbed the folders and shoved them into her tote bag.

  Opening the office door a crack, Anne peeked down the aisle. No one was around, although she heard voices from the front of the store. With more confidence that she felt, she opened the door and walked out closing it behind her. The folders in her tote seemed to weigh a hundred pounds. She hustled through the maze and made for the exit noting there was a camera covering the front of the shop.

  The clerk was now at the counter ringing up a sale. Another shopper was near the door.

  “Hey, you. Lemme see what’s in that shopping bag,” Carlos said in a loud voice.

  “What?” the woman replied in an outraged tone.

  Anne’s heart almost stopped. She used the woman as a shield and hurried onto the sidewalk before ducking into another store in case the clerk came looking for her, too. Ten minutes later, she exited and headed straight for her car. The farmer’s market could wait another week.

  ****

  Once home, Anne hurried upstairs to her office. Why on earth had she taken those folders? It was so stupid! Gil would be livid. And what could I possibly glean from anything in them? Giving in to impulses is never a good idea. Her actions could have put her in a lot of trouble if the clerk had searched her bag. The only excuse she could give was an intense dislike of Fran’s husband and his new clerk.

  She plopped into the chair at her desk, removed the folders from her tote bag, and sat back to read them again. The inventory involved expensive items that had arrived in the past month. She recognized the description of the secretary she’d admired in the storeroom. Delivery receipts were all from the same company, Rodriguez Moving, with a Miami address. The names of the customers in the last folder marked ‘special orders’ had been compiled in the past month also. A sheet of paper at the bottom of the pile held the most interesting information. It was a list of money being paid and received over the past three months. That was all. Just a list. No names or merchandise description.

  Anne sighed. This had been a useless endeavor. She had no idea what it was she just read. The only question in her mind was why a note instructing the new clerk to shred them? The information was fairly recent. She shook her head and rose having no clue as to what to do with the folders. Returning them to the store was not an option. And they couldn’t have been important or the note wouldn’t have said to destroy them.

  In the end, she tossed them into her paper recyclable bin. The trash guys were due on Monday anyway.

  With the kids spending the weekend with their father, Gil was coming over at seven o’clock for dinner.

  She spent the rest of the afternoon writing and menu planning. It was close to five when she decided a trip to the grocery was in order. With a list in hand, the task didn’t take any more than forty minutes.

  Anne walked in and dumped the grocery bags on the kitchen counter, then headed for foyer, her mind busy with making sure the bedroom and bath were presentable. The first thing she noticed was Bruno hiding under the end table in the living room.

  “Bruno, what’s wrong, sweetie?” The little shih-tzu shivered and stared at her with mournful eyes. She reached down and pulled him out, then cuddled him in her arms. “Goodness, you are in a state. What frightened you?”

 
She made her way back to the kitchen and set him on the floor. It took her a moment to realize the sliding glass door was ajar. The hair rose on the back of her neck. She hadn’t used that door since yesterday. And it sure as hell wasn’t open this morning.

  She scooped the dog back up, grabbed her cell, and exited the house through the open door. A few seconds later, she was in her driveway and on the phone to Gil.

  “I’m not sure, but I think I had an intruder in the house,” she told him giving him the details.

  “Where are you now?”

  “In the driveway. I have no idea if someone is inside or not and I sure as hell wasn’t going to look. Thank God, the kids are in Orlando this weekend.”

  She hated that her voice shook. She didn’t resent being scared, but sure resented some stranger having this kind of control over her.

  “You did the right thing. Now go to a neighbor’s and wait for me, I’m on my way.”

  He hung up and Anne hurried across the street to stand in her neighbor’s driveway. The Sampsons were out of town, but it put some distance between herself and whoever was inside—if anybody.

  Gil’s car screeched around the corner ten minutes later. A patrol car pulled up behind him.

  “Stay put,” he ordered when she walked to the curb.

  Anne obeyed. Bruno, no longer shivering wiggled in her arms. She put him down on the grass where he immediately lifted his leg on a tree.

  The officers from the other car joined Gil as they split up with guns drawn. One policeman went around the back of the house. Gil and the other man entered the front door. Five minutes later, the men returned.

  “No one’s inside, but your office is a mess. Papers tossed everywhere. The intruder also gave your dresser a good going over, too,” Gil informed her. “They got in through the sliding glass door. Probably lifted the door until the lock released. I hate sliding glass doors. Just too easy to break in.”

  The other officer called for backup on his radio. For the next hour or so, police swarmed throughout the house dusting for fingerprints. By the time Anne was allowed back inside, dinner was a vague memory. Luckily, nothing was taken from her dresser. Her jewelry box was intact. It would take her a while to decide if anything was missing from her files in the office.

  “This doesn’t make any sense,” Gil said. “Someone breaks in, but doesn’t take anything.”

  “Kids maybe just wanting to create a mess and scare the crap out of me?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Wish old Gary here could talk?”

  “Gary?” he asked gazing around the paper-strewn floor.

  She nodded toward the stone figure on the shelf over the file cabinet. “Gary the Gargoyle. He was a gag gift from the kids ages ago. Sometimes I talk to him.”

  He gave her a strange look, but refrained from saying the obvious. “What kind of stuff did you have up here?”

  “Notes on my books, publishing things like contracts and such, chapter business—certainly nothing worth stealing—unless…”

  “Unless what?”

  “I had a bunch of Fran’s stuff. I picked it up the other day from her place.” No way would she confess to her lapse of common sense regarding the folders from the store. “Most of it was chapter related. She had several hard copies of e-mails from the past year, along with dealings from vendors and the hotel. Nothing earth-shattering. I gave it to Rose yesterday. I did, however, accidentally pick up a folder or two of her personal things having to do with her antique business.”

  Gil picked up several sheets of paper and put them on her desk. “Are they still here?”

  “No, I chucked them into the car. I was going to return them, but forgot.” She paused. “I guess I should put the groceries away. I’m not sure I can cook chicken parmesan right now.”

  “We can go out or order in.”

  “Order in. I don’t feel right about leaving the house tonight. Plus poor Bruno was scared to death. I’m not far behind him.”

  “I’ll stay the night, but I doubt whoever did this will come back.”

  Chinese was the order in consensus. They were well into it when Anne thought to ask, “So, how did your interview with George Harrison go yesterday?”

  “Pretty much as expected,” he replied before eating another forkful of chicken in garlic sauce. “He told me he would be taking over the store and when I asked about how he and his wife got along, he swore everything was fine. Claimed he had no idea who’d want to harm her. Thinks it was a mix up in the hotel kitchen and that they got rid of the evidence before we could analyze it.”

  “Do you buy it?”

  He shrugged. “No reason not to at this stage, but to me it seems odd that a CPA would suddenly want to run an antique shop.”

  Anne answered without revealing she’d been to the shop that morning. “I heard he bought some items for the store and did the books.”

  “Not all the financial information has come in yet, but I did get some information on Jeffrey Wainwright. Cause of death was definitely a massive overdose of cocaine. He had enough in his system to down an elephant. And the remaining amount in the baggie we found came back from the toxicologist as being ninety percent pure.”

  “I’m not too up to date on the drug world. Is that good or bad?”

  “For Jeffrey Wainwright, bad. The cocaine that comes into this country from Central and South America has that purity.”

  “Ninety percent? Why not a hundred?”

  “The raw product has to be processed. It loses some of its intensity. Once it’s sold here, the dealers cut it to make it go further. They use anything from baking soda, to powdered milk, to even talcum powder. That brings the purity level down to anywhere from fifty to thirty percent. That’s generally what’s sold on the streets. And then there’s crack, another form of cocaine. It’s nasty and highly addictive. Wainwright showed no signs of being a crack user, however, and we found no such paraphernalia in the apartment.”

  “So someone used to snorting thirty percent and suddenly gets ninety is likely to overdose?”

  Gil nodded. “Especially if he’s not a regular user and not expecting it. He thinks he’s got the thirty and blasts a large line of ninety up his nose. It feels so good, he does it again and again. His heart starts racing to the point of arrhythmia. His body temp rises sharply along with his blood pressure, and he can pass out.”

  “And with no one calling 9-1-1, he dies,” she finished.

  “That’s about it. Once the victim has passed out, he’d still be breathing very fast. It’s not a stretch to imagine someone holding that little baggie under his nose so he’d inhale more.”

  “Is that what happened?”

  “Don’t know for sure. All we do know is that bag was almost empty.”

  “What about the car?”

  “Haven’t found it yet. Probably in some canal.”

  Anne agreed. But a suspicion that the dead waiter was somehow connected to Fran’s death still nagged in her mind. It was just too much of a coincidence. Yet she couldn’t reconcile the why.

  Let’s assume the mystery waiter at the meeting bribed Wainwright to not show. Would Wainwright even connect the death of a woman at a writer’s meeting with the man who’d paid him to not show up at work that day?

  No mention of Fran had made the television news and as far as she knew nothing had been in the paper about it other than the obituary. And the waiter likely didn’t know Fran’s name or the real name of the man who’d bribed him. Plus, Wainwright had died on Saturday night or close to it. Why kill him?

  Because the killer is one careful son of a bitch. The deaths have to be connected. A lot of supposition going on here, but I can’t see any other explanation.

  Anne sighed. She was tired of thinking about Fran, the waiter, and the whole mess.

  “You’re awfully quiet,” Gil said as they finished the meal.

  “Can’t keep things out of my mind. How do you do it?”

  “I learned how to turn my m
ind off a long time ago. How about we watch a movie, and then go to bed?”

  “How about we forget about the movie and go to bed?”

  Gil laughed as he grabbed her hand and led her upstairs.

  ****

  Gil’s phone rang as they were finishing brunch the next morning.

  “Collins here…Oh, really? Any ID…Okay keep them busy and I’ll be there shortly.” He hung up and turned to Anne. “Seems they found Wainwright’s car around three this morning.”

  “Where?” she asked.

  “A couple of patrol officers caught it running a red light and ran the plate. The two kids in the car were arrested and have been in jail since then. I’ve gotta go, hon. Will you be all right?”

  “I’ll be fine. Lisa and Ken are due home this evening. Did the kids say where they got the car?”

  He shook his head. “I’ll find out when I get to the station and talk to them. If it makes you feel better, I’ll have a cruiser drive by every once in a while.”

  “Thanks, I appreciate it.” She waved goodbye as he left, then shut the door behind him.

  Even Gil’s presence last night hadn’t eased her nerves. Every little outside noise or creak in the house snapped her out of whatever sleep she had attained. She hadn’t fallen in to a deep slumber until just before dawn.

  Determined not to let the events of yesterday control her, Anne did household chores, and then wrote on her work in progress. Gil had helped clean up the mess from the night before, but in her mind’s eye, she still saw the paper-strewn floor in vivid images.

  Two hours later, she deleted all she’d written. It was garbage, total garbage. The break-in and her experience at the shop kept intruding on her concentration.

  She finally gave up. The kids would be home in a few hours. Might as well make the chicken parm I didn’t last night.

  As she assembled the ingredients, Anne couldn’t keep her mind off those folders now resting in the blue recyclable bin in her garage. Something about them seemed off.

  She retrieved the folders and sat at the kitchen table to read them again beginning with the one marked “Inventory.”

  Once again, nothing seemed out of place. The items listed ranged from large pieces of furniture to old trunks. Then something near the bottom drew her attention—6 Grecian urns with lids. One Grecian urn she could understand, but six? Granted she knew little about antiques, but it seemed to her that the scarcer the item, the more valuable. She could find six or more inexpensive urns at the local craft store.