Losers, Weepers

by Jessica Thomas

  I left Fargo in the car until I could make sure just what was awry in the Maddock household, and rang the doorbell. There was no answer, and after three rings, I walked around to the back and tried the kitchen bell. There was no answer there either, but I thought I saw a curtain flutter. In a moment, the door flew open and Karen launched herself into my arms.

  It would not have ordinarily been an unpleasant sensation, but she was crying heavily and snuffling mightily, and I was praying urgently that the moisture on my neck came only from her tears. I patted her back, said, “There, there,” about a hundred times, and finally sort of waltzed her out of the doorway away from the gaze of any nosy neighbors, across the kitchen and into the living room. Pushing her gently onto the couch, I then went back in the kitchen and grabbed a couple of paper towels. The situation seemed far beyond the capabilities of a tissue.

  I asked her where they kept the liquor, and she waved abstractedly toward the kitchen. I made another trip there and found it in the third cabinet I tried. I got out two glasses—do you blame me?—and put together two stiff vodkas with 7UP, some dried up lemon I found in the fridge and ice. A couple of sips reduced Karen’s sobs to mere sniffs and gulps, and in another minute or so, I felt relatively safe in asking what was the matter. I had been a little ahead of myself in expecting a sensible answer.

  “I found eighteen thousand dollars in the freezer, and I think Mark cleaned out our savings account and I can’t find him and his boss can’t either. Or the passbook, or his pal Richard.”

  A new freshet of sobs and tears resulted from this befuddled screed, and I’d had about enough. Enough with missing money and missing kids and missing husbands and missing pals and bastard fathers, not to mention murder. And finally, having been unable to find any bourbon, I was drinking cheap vodka, which I didn’t really like, even when it was expensive. Got that?

  “For God’s sake, Karen, get a grip. I can’t help you if you don’t make sense.” Something in my voice apparently got through to her. She blew her nose and straightened up.

  “We have a freezer in the garage where we keep extra stuff. I do a little catering on the side and keep extra dough and other things in it, plus we use it for food that won’t go in the freezer in the kitchen. I went out a while ago to take out some pastry dough, and the freezer was a total mess.”

  She sipped at her drink and took a deep breath. “I assumed Harry had been looking for some special flavor of ice cream or something and had messed it up. I started taking things out so I could put them back in proper order. About halfway down I found this canvas bag.”

  She pointed to a table in the small adjacent dining area. I recognized what the bag was as soon as I saw it. It was like several others I had seen at Fishermen’s Bank, looking rather like large school lunch bags, and used by people who dealt in sizable amounts of cash for deposit or withdrawal. I was sure it would have Fishermen’s Bank stamped on one side.

  “Did you check what was in it?” Stupid question, but it got her in gear again.

  “Oh, yes. I saw right away it was money, so I brought it out here and dumped it on the table.”

  The voice broke and tears began again, but a schoolmarm’s look from me got her back on track. “The bills—they’re mostly fifties and twenties and a few hundreds—had gotten a little damp and were hard to count. I did it twice. Once I got a little over eighteen thousand, once I got nineteen.”

  She was talking freely now, and my mind wandered for a moment or so. Eighteen or nineteen thousand . . . somewhat under what was missing from the gallery, if Karen had counted correctly, between damp bills and doubtless shaking fingers. The track! Karen would have been afraid her husband had gone to the track. That took care of torture on the rack.

  On the other hand, Harry Maddock was in dire need of money, and he hung around the gallery, at least sometimes. Had he somehow opened the safe, or seen the money on Charlie’s desk? Had mild-mannered Harry killed her? Even though he was counting on a share of the kidnap ransom? Stranger things had happened. Maybe he just happened to walk into the office and couldn’t resist all that lovely money.

  I pulled myself back to Karen’s tale. Something about a maiden aunt, with no other relatives, had died and left Karen plus two distant cousins all the poor dear had on this orb. Karen had gotten a letter from her aunt’s attorney up in Sandwich, where the aunt had lived, telling her to come to his office with ID and pick up her third of the money. At least I think that’s what she said.

  “So,” she continued, “my cousin Ruthie and I decided to drive down together to each pick up our portion. Then Ruthie suggested asking the third cousin to ride down with us. No use taking two cars when we all lived in Provincetown. I agreed and asked Ruthie who it was. Ruthie said she knew her slightly and her name was Charlotte Cohane. I had heard of her, but had no idea she was kin. So that’s what we did. We called and invited her to ride with us. She was delighted and I was glad we did. She was so nice.”

  Karen babbled on. “I looked forward to knowing her better, and then of course she—died. And I think that may be why Mark stole the money.”

  I was staring at her, speechless. She was Charlie’s cousin. And she had just found nearly twenty thousand dollars in her freezer. And her homophobe husband was missing. I had that Alice in Wonderland feeling again.

  I was falling . . . falling . . .

  My hands were shaking in time with Karen’s when I lifted the glass to my lips. I took a sip, cleared my throat and tried to speak normally.

  “Let me get this straight. Your aunt died and left her three nieces about twenty thousand apiece—you, Ruthie and Charlie Cohane? Right?”

  That would explain Charlie’s spending spree. I wondered if it would explain her telling Ellen that she needed a more respectable car than her old VW because she, too, was going into business?

  “Yes,” Karen replied. “Aunt Jane never married. She was a nurse and lived with another nurse for a number of years. I figured them as lovers, but maybe they were just friends. Doesn’t matter. They were very close. Aunt Jane’s partner died several years back, and Jane was never really well after that. Ruthie used to take the twins to see her once in a while. And sometimes I took Harry. Aunt Jane loved him from the time he was a baby. Said he looked just like her father.” Her voice got wobbly again and she sipped her drink.

  “I wish we had seen more of her, especially after her friend died,” Karen continued. “But you know, Sandwich is a long drive for just a casual visit. Ruthie and Charlie both said they saw her sometimes, too, but we all felt bad it wasn’t more. Especially lately.”

  “Yes, I’m sure,” I said abruptly. I wanted to get past the sentiment and into how Charlie fit into this sudden gaggle of relatives.

  “Did you say you think Charlie was the reason your husband may have taken the money you got from Aunt Jane? How could that be?” I asked.

  “Let’s see . . . on the way home we three girls stopped for lunch, to celebrate our good fortune and to drink a toast to Aunt Jane. We got to talking about what each of us would do with the money. We giggled about silly things we would never do, like go to Paris in April, buy a red sports car, get a new wardrobe and an ‘escort’ to squire us around New York. Just having fun, you know?”

  “Indeed,” I answered patiently. “Then what?”

  “Then . . . I guess it was Ruthie who said she and I should start the catering business we had always wanted. She’s a fabulous cook, and I do real well with canapés and desserts. Then we sighed and got back to reality and said we guessed we’d spend it on the kids’ college expenses. Ruthie and Carl are a bit better off than Mark and I, but they also have twin kids who will be in college at the same time, so they are really in a bind.”

  “Did Charlie say what she might do with her twenty thousand?”

  Karen’s face lit up, and she was very nearly beautiful, red nose and all. “This is what was so great!” she exclaimed. “Charlie said to me, ‘If you spend twenty thousand on Harry for colleg
e, in one year—possibly two—you’ll be broke again, and he still will have two or three years to go. If you and Ruthie go into your catering business, you can both help Harry every year, and then you can both help the twins when they get to college age, and still be making money.’” I was beginning to feel like a member of the family, listening to the plans for all the kinder.

  I was also ready to scream at Karen’s seeming inability to give me a straight answer. “Karen, that’s wonderful advice to you and Ruthie. God knows this town needs a first-class caterer. The ones we have all think a spiral cut ham, potato salad and cole slaw plus ice cream with strawberry sauce is perfect for all occasions. If you can better that, you should have our yuppie set beating your door down. But what did Charlie plan to do? She certainly couldn’t cater a party of starving explorers. The only thing I ever had that she cooked was a TV dinner, and that was still cold in the middle.”

  Karen managed to delay things further by making herself another drink. I declined. I was confused enough as it was.

  Finally, she returned and continued. “Charlie was going to run the business end of things. She said she would handle the advertising and sales promotion. She said the Tellmans swore she could sell ice cubes to Eskimos. And she said she could keep the books and inventory items we always had to have on hand, and that way you got the best prices from vendors. She would figure profit margins, too. Honestly, Alex, she actually knew more about it than we did. It was perfect. All Ruthie and I had to do was cook. And that we can do.”

  It was sad to see her face fall as she realized these dreams would never be. I patted her hand. “Maybe you could find some other third person,” I suggested weakly.

  She just looked at me.

  Well, at least now I knew what Charlie had been so excited about. She’d found an outlet for her many business aptitudes. And a family, to boot. I wished I’d known. I would like to have told her we’d book their first party. What a waste. What an effing stupid waste of her talents and enthusiasm. The only good thing I could think of was at least Charlie’s mother and Ellen would be relieved she hadn’t suffered some sort of mental breakdown.

  I realized Karen was looking at me quizzically and shook my head.

  “Sorry, I was daydreaming.”

  She smiled sympathetically. “Yes, I’ve done a lot of that lately. Anyway, to finish this soap opera, we all parted that day on cloud nine. I couldn’t wait to tell Harry and Mark. I made a special dinner and bought a bottle of champagne. Over dinner, I told them my good news. I was all excited. I kept laughing, saying who could guess that we could all go head over heels. That I just fell in love with Charlie in minutes. And she even knew a well-equipped little place we could rent, at least for a start.”

  She lifted her glass of vodka as in a toast. “Harry was so happy, he actually almost cried for a moment. Mark was furious.”

  “Did you say furious?” I thought I heard wrong.

  “Yes. I had mentioned what Charlie had said about running the business and the promotional end of things, and he yelled that he wouldn’t have me turning Aunt Jane’s money over to some queer and catering queer parties just because they had more money to burn than the rest of us.” She looked down for a moment, embarrassed.

  “Then, right in front of Harry, he screamed that the way I had acted in bed the past few years he shouldn’t be surprised if I had become queer myself and had some dyke on the side. Alex, I thought I would faint.”

  “I don’t doubt it.” I stubbed out my cigarette in the ashtray, wishing it were Mark’s nose.

  “I was hurt and angry,” she went on. “If Mark thought our sex life was lousy, he was right, but he forgot how many times he came to bed so drunk sex just didn’t work. Anyway, he stormed out and didn’t come home that night. I imagine he stayed with a young man he’d gotten friendly with at work. I don’t think Mark has a girlfriend. Frankly, I don’t know who would have him.”

  Possibly the young man from work, I answered silently. Aloud, I said, “And you think he took the money out of the bank so you couldn’t invest it along with Ruth and Charlie?”

  “Yes. I had deposited the check from Aunt Jane immediately in our savings account. There’s a thousand or so missing from the check I put in the bank, and I can’t find the bankbook. The account’s in both names, worse luck. When I found the money in the freezer, I called Mark at work.”

  She sighed and shook her head. “Nothing was going right. On the phone, I got his boss, who was really seeing red. This is a busy time of year for them, and both Mark and the young fellow—Richard somebody—had called in sick this morning. The boss says he’s going to fire them both. I don’t know if he means it. I hope not. But we agree on one thing—we’d both be willing to place our own bets that Mark and Richard are at the racetrack.” She slammed her glass on the coffee table so hard, I was very glad it was plastic.

  I put the coda on this sonata by asking, “The bankbook is missing, you said?”

  “Yes. I’ve looked everywhere.”

  “Let me call the bank. We may be able to make certain of your balance without the book.”

  I called Cindy’s direct number, and wonder of wonders, she picked up. “Cindy Hart, may I help you?”

  “I hope so, honey, we have a bit of a situation here. Karen Maddock’s husband has disappeared, possibly having cleaned out their savings account. Karen can’t find the bankbook, but she did find eighteen thousand or so in cash in the freezer, where Mark may have hidden it. She wants to know if it’s part or all that remains of the savings account. Is there any way you can help us?”

  I could almost hear her shrug. “If they want to be helpful downstairs I can. Hold on a minute.”

  I heard a click and then was treated to “Tales from the Vienna Woods,” which I rather like. Karen was watching me like a mongoose eyes a cobra, so I didn’t dare whistle along with the orchestra.

  “Alex, are you still there?”

  “Yes, darling. I am here.”

  “Okay. The husband may be gone, but the family fortune seems intact. There is a balance of $23,405.05. No recent withdrawals. When Mrs. Maddock made the latest deposit—of $19,994.65—she left the bankbook along with the check. The teller assumed she wanted the bank to hold the book. They have it safely in a drawer somewhere. She can pick it up anytime. So can the husband.”

  “Thanks a million, honey. Mrs. Maddock will be greatly relieved. By the way, she thinks Mark may be at the track, though I don’t doubt she would prefer he was on the rack. Oh, and please advise the teller to check first with Ptown Police if anyone tries to make a withdrawal or get the book. Tell Choate the police will officially freeze the checking and savings accounts shortly. See you tonight.”

  “Yep. Gotta run, other phone.” She clicked off.

  I leaned back in my chair and grinned. “Your fortune totals something over $23,400. There have been no recent withdrawals. When you deposited Aunt Jane’s check, you left the bankbook with the teller. You were a little excited, maybe? They have it safely stowed.”

  “Oh, thank God!” Karen had one or two tears left, but not many. “Oh, I feel ten years younger. I wonder where all this other money came from? Could he possibly have won that much at the track, or maybe on the numbers? I can’t believe it. Mark has never been lucky at that sort of thing. And he certainly hasn’t been acting elated the last week or so.”

  I stood up and stretched. I was beginning to feel numb in spots. “What do mean?”

  “Was he depressed?”

  “Not exactly,” she demurred. “More edgy and short-tempered. He wasn’t sleeping well. I’d wake up and he’d be over by the window looking out. If I asked what was wrong he’d just snap at me to go back to sleep. And Harry got accepted at Northern Connecticut College. At the dinner table I said we’d better ask them about a scholarship. Mark blew up and said just have faith in him for once. We wouldn’t need any scholarship.” She shook her head. Sad? Bewildered? I didn’t know.

  Then she asked, “And
why did you freeze our bank accounts? Do you have a legal right to do that?” She was ready to display a little righteous anger now.

  “I don’t. I’m a mere deputy, and temporary at that. That’s why I need to call Sonny right now.” I picked up the phone again.

  “Who is Sonny?”

  “My brother, Lieutenant Edward J. Peres of the Provincetown Police. You see, your bank account still has all your money in it.” I gestured toward the dining table. “But over there sits a lot of money that did not come out of your account. Where did it come from? I don’t know, but it is worrisomely near the amount that was stolen from the Tellman Art Gallery the day Charlie was killed.”

  Karen dropped her glass. But at least it didn’t break.

  Chapter 22

  At police headquarters, Nacho worked her usual magic, chased Sonny down at some carefully undisclosed location and patched him through to me—sounding thoroughly irritated.

  “I’m busy as hell, Alex. You’re beginning to remind me of Harmon.”

  “And you remind me of Captain Anders. What are you so involved with? A blonde or the Wall Street Journal?”

  “Neither. If you must know, I’m interviewing Dana Portman.” He went on to tell me how surprised he was at her maturity . . . what insight she had into Reed’s warped personality . . . what a keen perception of the problems the police department faced, having never been officially involved in what might not be a kidnapping in the true legal sense anyway . . .

  “Goodness, Sonny, I told you she was a charmer, but I didn’t recognize she had such deep intellectual powers. When are you announcing your engagement?” I could tell that Dana was in no danger of being subject to police brutality, especially since I could hear restaurant sounds in the background.