by Ali Brandon
“Don’t worry. I should be fine,” she protested, doing her best to keep her tone light. “Remember, I’m not a dancer.”
“What about those six months of ballet when you were ten years old?” he countered, and then rang off before she could reply.
James gave her a quizzical look as she stuck her phone back under the register again. “Was Detective Reese enlightening on any fronts besides horticulture?”
Recalling that he’d heard only one side of the conversation, Darla summed it up as, “He says Livvy’s death might have been accidental, but more likely it was murder. And poor Penelope is with all the other cordwood stacked up at the medical examiner’s office until they can figure out how she died. Oh, and since I took ballet when I was ten, I could end up dead, too.”
“Like, that is really bad,” Robert said, cradling Roma and gently scratching her behind her ears. “This is the worst Fourth of July ever, and not just because we missed the fireworks.”
“I concur,” James said.
Darla nodded. “Me, too. Why don’t we salvage what we can of the weekend? I’m going to close early, so at least we can save a little on the electric bill. You two enjoy the rest of the day off on me, and we’ll try again on Tuesday.”
Since, of course, they were closed on Mondays.
Robert didn’t have to be told twice. “Thanks, Ms. P.!” he called over his shoulder as he and a happily barking Roma raced for the front door.
James’s departure, while more sedate, was no less enthusiastic.
“Martha is back early from her visit with her family in Georgia. I would appreciate the opportunity to spend some additional quality time with her.” Then, as Darla gave him a knowing smile, he added, “In certain circles, Darla, quality time is equated with lively conversation and enthusiastic interaction with one’s peers.”
“I’m all for enthusiastic interaction,” Darla said, her smile broadening. “Tell Martha I said hi.”
With James out the door, Darla locked up after him and did a quick closedown of the register. Then, reaching for her cell phone and purse, she turned to Hamlet. “Looks like it’s just you and me, Hammy. You wanna go upstairs and watch movies the rest of the day until I go meet Jake?”
The cat needed no further encouragement and rushed to the side door with her, the one that led out into the narrow foyer of her building. This was her short commute. She could either head out the front door to her private stoop, or else take the stairway two flights up to her apartment. After setting the store alarm, she headed for the stairs.
Hamlet was far ahead of her. By the time she reached her front door, he was already seated before it, green eyes fixed in concentration on its wood paneling as he seemingly willed it to open. Which it did once she turned the key.
She turned on her television and, swiftly scanning past the news outlets, tuned in to her favorite retro movie channel. “All right, Hammy,” she said as he nudged her in the shin with his big head, “I’ll get you some early supper.”
It wasn’t until she finished in the kitchen attending to His Catness—fresh bowl of kibble, fresh water in cut-glass water dish, with just a sprinkling of crushed ice floating on top—and headed back to the living room that she realized what old-time movie was playing.
“Bad choice,” she muttered as she saw a frightened Audrey Hepburn on the screen, cane in hand and stumbling through a darkened apartment. She grabbed the remote and checked the channel listing. Next up after Wait Until Dark was The Maltese Falcon. It was obviously a thriller-themed lineup, when she’d been hoping for a mood-lightening comedy.
She sighed and instead flipped over to Hamlet’s favorite nature channel.
“Ah, much better,” she wryly noted as a giant anaconda flashed on the screen, silently swimming its way toward a hapless baby hippo. The sound of crunching kibble in the kitchen ceased, and Hamlet came rushing in, leaping onto the back of her horsehair sofa and settling in to watch some heavy-duty hunting. She sat in companionable silence with him until the anaconda show ended, and a crocodile special began, then rose.
“You hold down the couch,” she told the cat, “and I’ll be back in a minute. I’ve got a call to make.”
With an indulgent smile, she left Hamlet to his viewing and reached for the old-style turquoise princess phone hanging in the kitchen (she’d never bothered to get rid of Great-Aunt Dee’s ages-old landline). She dialed Jake and, reminding the PI of how she’d been left hanging, made plans to meet at Thai Me Up for dinner for the rest of the Penelope story,
An hour later, she and Jake were sitting at their favorite window table in Steve’s restaurant.
“At least someone’s got customers,” Darla observed as she glanced around the place, which was filled almost to capacity. “I guess sometimes bad publicity equals good publicity.”
“That, or everyone’s July Fourth BBQ’d out and in the mood for good old-fashioned Asian cuisine,” Jake said with a shrug. “But you’re probably right about the publicity. I swear, every news channel on the tube was leading off with the story about the quote, unquote ballerina murders. The way they’re playing this up, you’d think the gutters were flowing with blood, or something.”
Darla suppressed a shudder and, vowing not to order anything with red sauce, picked up her menu to see what was on special that night. She wasn’t even really in the mood right now for Thai food, not after that uncomfortable lunch with Reese yesterday, but it was the closest open restaurant, and after Reese’s warnings, she felt better being out in a familiar place where she knew the staff.
Steve passed by their table, giving them a sober nod but not stopping since he was carrying a tray overflowing with various Thai delicacies. He was already aware of the Penelope situation, for Darla had made an executive decision and called him once she’d hung up with Reese the previous night. As far as Darla was concerned, Reese’s moratorium on her talking to her friends was now a moot point, given the suspicious death on their hands. Steve hadn’t said much when she’d broken the news, but the few words he’d spoken had been thick with grief.
She’d called Hank, too. He had been equally shocked, but to Darla’s surprise he had swiftly moved on to another subject . . . his concern for Penelope’s students.
I hope someone breaks it to them all nice like, he’d told her. You know how kids are, especially the younger ones. They look up to their teachers. How do you explain something like this to a ten-year-old?
Darla hadn’t been able to answer that last question. And, as far as she knew, Penelope had no local relatives, and no second-in-command at her studio. The nearest thing to that would be her accompanist and a few of her senior students who Darla knew helped with the beginner classes. Presumably, most, if not all, of the students’ parents would have heard of Penelope’s death from some news source or another. But given that it was a holiday weekend, some of the students might still be in the dark.
She’d decided after hanging up with Hank that she would discuss the matter with Doug as soon as she could track him down. Perhaps he could help settle things with notifying students and shuttering the studio; he was the closest thing at the moment to a next of kin.
But, for the moment, she wanted to hear just what Jake knew about Penelope’s love life.
Darla waited until Kayla—still in crisp black and white but far more subdued this time around—took their orders before leaning toward Jake and demanding, “Okay, spill. Why did Penelope want to hire a PI? You said she told you that she thought some man was cheating on her. Did she name names?”
Jake shook her head. “It was all pretty vague. She seemed kind of embarrassed to be bringing it up at all. According to her, she didn’t have much to go on except a hotel receipt and a gut feeling. But I’m a big fan of guts. They usually know what they’re talking about. But that’s all I was able to get out of her. She said she’d call for a consultation after the weekend.”
“What about Reese?” Darla wanted to know. “Did you call him and tell him about your conversation with her?”
“Yeah, I called him this morning, right after I finished with my client, and he read me the riot act,” Jake remembered with a shake of her curly head. “Not that I blame him, but excuse me for having a lot of other stuff on my mind. This just temporarily slipped through the cracks.”
She broke off as Kayla brought them their usual coconut milk soup. Darla gave her bowl a considering stir and then reluctantly asked the obvious. “Do you think it’s possible that the guy she was worried about was the person who killed her?”
“Yeah, the thought crossed my mind maybe twenty or thirty times since it happened. But I didn’t get that kind of vibe off of her. She was . . . I guess you’d say . . . disappointed. And maybe sad. But she wasn’t afraid. So my gut says the two things aren’t related.”
“I hope not. Because my gut has a theory that her mystery man is none other than Doug Bates.”
“Doug? Well, tell your gut that’s an interesting theory,” Jake said in approval. “Is it just a guess, or do you have anything concrete?”
A certain butt swat came to mind, along with Doug’s referring to her as Penny during the block party. Little things, Darla conceded, but possibly part of a bigger pattern.
Aloud, she said, “Mostly guess, but now that I think about it, Doug’s reaction when he found her body seemed more . . . well, extreme than simply shock at stumbling over a dead person. It looked like there was some real emotional investment.”
“Well, I’m sure Doug confessed that relationship to Reese, since it would look pretty bad after the fact if the police found out he’d kept that tidbit from them,” Jake assured her. “So let’s let Reese do his job, and we can enjoy our dinner.”
They finished their soup in companionable if a bit uncomfortable silence. Kayla’s brother, Jason, swung by to clear their empty bowls. As he leaned past her, Darla noticed what looked like a vaping pen tucked into the breast pocket of his busboy’s jacket.
She gave him a considering frown as he left, recalling that George had mentioned it was an Asian youth who’d first approached Livvy about so-called drugs. It was quite the stretch to assume Steve’s son was the same teenage boy. On the other hand, according to their father, Jason and Kayla had words with George, which definitely put the two kids at the scene of the sting, so to speak. Impulsively, she gestured him over again.
“Excuse me—Jason, right? I’m Darla, a friend of your dad’s.”
“Yes, how may I help you?” he asked, his tone far more formal than any of the teens she knew.
She gave him a bright smile. “I couldn’t help noticing you have one of those vapor pens in your pocket,” she began. Then, jumping straight into outright fiction, she went on, “I’m trying to give up smoking, and I heard those vape pens were the way to go. Do they really work?”
“I don’t know. I don’t smoke.”
“Oh.” Momentarily thrown, Darla tried again, going for a conspiratorial tone. “I understand you can put stuff other than nicotine in them, if you know what I mean.”
Shrugging, he dropped the formality and replied, “Yeah, I guess. Uh, I really need to get back to work now.”
“Sure, thanks for your time.”
As the busboy hurried off, no doubt questioning the sanity of anyone over thirty, Jake gave her a look. “You’re trying to quit smoking? That’s funny, because I had no idea you’d taken up the habit. You want to ’splain, Lucy?”
“Someone’s been watching the retro channel again,” Darla replied to Jake’s use of the old I Love Lucy catchphrase. Then, after first making sure no one else was listening, she went on to “’splain” about her and James’s talk with George.
“You do know there’s a pretty good-sized teenage population around here,” the PI pointed out when she’d finished. “The chances that Steve’s kid is the same one who set the Kings on their path to pseudo drug dealing are pretty slim.”
“But what about proximity?” Darla argued. Lowering her voice, she went on, “He works just a couple of blocks from Perky’s, and I know he and his sister have been there at least once before. If he’s like all the other kids who like to hang out around coffee shops because they’re too young for bars, it makes sense. He could have been there and seen all of Livvy’s herbal offerings. What can I say, it’s a gut feeling.”
Jake rolled her eyes. “Fine, but I’m not going to play unless you can come up with a little more of a case than just your gut. At least Penelope had a receipt. So how about we put this in the ‘to be reviewed again later’ pile, okay?”
Kayla brought their meals just then, putting a temporary halt to the conversation. While Jake had gone the full pad Thai route, Darla had decided to try one of Steve’s salad specialties. As soon as she took her first bite of the chopped salad—replete with edamame, baby kale, bell peppers, and other veggies, and topped with cashews and a sesame garlic dressing—she knew she’d made the right choice. Even Jake, normally a confirmed carnivore, gave a longing little look at Darla’s salad bowl before she started chewing on a mouthful of chicken-topped spicy noodles.
Darla had made good progress on her meal when her cell phone rang. She glanced at the caller ID and then gave Jake a look of surprise.
“It’s Mary Ann,” she said and pushed the “Talk” button.
“Oh, Darla, I don’t know what to do,” the old woman exclaimed almost before Darla could manage a “hello.” “With all these rumors about serial killers in our neighborhood, Brother is beside himself. He managed to get upstairs onto the roof, and now he’s sitting by the ledge with a pair of binoculars keeping an eye out for suspicious people.”
The Plinski neighborhood watch, Darla thought with a smile, hoping the old man didn’t have an antique rifle up there, too.
“Mary Ann, I’m sure Mr. Plinski isn’t hurting anyone being up there, as long as it’s not too hot out there on the tar for him.”
“There’s a bit of a breeze up there with the sun going down,” Mary Ann replied, “so it shouldn’t be too warm. But, Darla, what if he actually does spot the serial killer?”
“Tell him to call Jake”—she grinned a little as her friend, having heard enough of the one-sided conversation to get the gist, began waving, no!—“and I’m sure she’ll be happy enough to check things out. And if he really does see the killer, she’ll take charge of calling the police.”
“Well, I suppose that would work.” The old woman gave a tsk, and Darla could practically see her shaking her head. “I vow, I don’t know what this world is coming to. Serial killers on every block. All right, Darla, I’ll take your advice and leave Brother to keep watch.”
Darla was smiling as she hung up. “Sorry to throw you under the bus, Jake, but you really don’t want Mr. Plinski calling 9-1-1 every time he sees some guy in a hoodie wander past.”
“I don’t want him calling me, either,” she grumbled, but her expression was amused as she, too, doubtless pictured the frail old man as stern sentinel.
Making a game of casting the octogenarian in various Clint Eastwood movies, the two of them snickered their way through the remainder of their supper. Jason had silently cleared away that course, and Kayla had brought them more mango ice cream, when Jake’s cell phone buzzed that she had an incoming text.
“Whoops, me, too,” Darla said when her phone abruptly let loose with the typewriter key sound that indicated a message. “I wonder if it’s Mr. Plinski?”
Though she doubted the old man even knew how to operate your basic cell phone, let alone find the messaging icon and type out a text.
“No,” Jake said, “it’s Reese.”
“Me, too,” Darla replied with a frown as she opened the message.
The older woman, however, was already reading aloud, “Cause of death 4 Ms Winston = oleandrin poisoning.”
“Oh no,” Darla breathed, her stomach clenching into a knot. Two women dying within two days of the same rare cause could not be coincidence.
“Wait, I’ve got a second text,” Jake exclaimed, just as Darla’s phone snapped out the typewriter cadence a second time, as well.
Darla opened the second text and read it; then, gripped by disbelief, read it again. Finally, she lifted her gaze to meet Jake’s.
“I guess Mr. Plinski doesn’t need to search for serial killers anymore,” was the PI’s grim comment as she sent a quick text back to Reese.
Darla could only shake her head as she read the message once more: Preliminary ruling on Winston & King deaths is murder-suicide.
SIXTEEN
“You sure you want to do this?” Jake asked as she and Darla left the brownstone the next morning, headed on foot toward Doug’s doughnut shop. “The man pretty well hung up on you when you called to see if he was going to be there.”
“Doug said he was in the middle of receiving a delivery. There’s a difference.”
“He was putting you off. That’s what you say to someone when you don’t want them to think you’re hanging up on them.”
Darla sighed. “Fine, he doesn’t want to see me . . . but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to see him. The worst he can do is toss me out of his shop. If he doesn’t want to discuss his personal life with us, fine, but I’m darn sure going to do what I can to get him to open up.”
After the first shock of Reese’s text from the previous evening had passed, Jake had dialed up the detective for more answers. Though sympathetic, Reese hadn’t been much help, citing departmental policy in discussing details at that stage of the investigation.
Until we release a public statement, you’ll just have to take my word for it that for the moment, we’ve got enough circumstantial evidence to be pretty sure that’s how it went down.