The group was clustered in the kitchen, Chinese takeout containers strewn across the counter. At least they had had the good sense to bring dinner. Drinks were well under way, and I heard Fred’s booming voice bouncing around my small Cape Cod. Everyone fell silent when I walked in.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Nothing,” Crawford said quickly. “Everything’s fine. Trixie’s doing great.”
“Where is she?” I asked.
“She’s upstairs next to our bed.” He pointed toward the stairs. “Go see for yourself.”
I took my shoes off and held them in my hands as I went up the stairs. Trixie was in her favorite spot on the throw rug next to Crawford’s side of the bed, stretched out and sleeping peacefully. When she sensed my presence, her eyes flew open and she got up, lumbering over to me for some love. I got on the floor in my work clothes and kissed and hugged her, ruffling her ears. Her nose was wet and shiny, just as it should have been, and her eyes looked clear. I let out a sigh of relief, my breath still redolent from my lunch with Abe, the panini having been followed by an espresso chaser.
After she was satisfied that I had given her enough love, Trixie drifted off and went back to her spot next to the bed, where she fell heavily to the ground, her back legs tucked underneath her, her front paws under her chin. The dressing from her intravenous puncture was still wrapped around her leg, but she didn’t seem troubled by it, so I left it on. I pulled off my skirt and sweater and threw on a pair of baggy pajama pants and a St. Thomas T-shirt; Fred and Max weren’t what I would consider “company,” so I made the decision to go with comfort over style. After I washed up, I went downstairs to partake of the Chinese feast that awaited me.
Not being the types to stand on ceremony, they had eaten before I had gotten home. I resisted the urge to tweak Crawford about it, but when the guy needs to eat, the guy needs to eat, and the alternative was a testy and weak man who wasn’t a lot of fun to be around. I heaped a pile of lo mein and General Tso’s chicken onto my plate and put it into the microwave for thirty seconds, hoping that that would land me somewhere between lukewarm and nuclear, heatwise. Crawford had already made me a martini—three olives, a little dirty—which was waiting for me on a place mat on the kitchen table. I carried my plate over and sat down, digging into the lo mein first.
I didn’t wait until I had finished chewing my first bite before pointing my fork at Fred and saying, “If I find out who poisoned my dog, I will kill them.”
He put his hands up in surrender. “I believe you.”
Crawford pulled open the refrigerator and handed Fred a beer, grabbing one for himself as well. “I have to call the detective tomorrow, but nobody seems to be able to figure out how someone got in here.” He opened his beer and tossed the cap into the sink. “Including me.”
Fred gave him a hard stare. “You’re better than that.”
“Don’t think I don’t know that,” Crawford said. “It’s driving me crazy, but I can’t find where they got in.”
Fred downed his beer and banged the bottle onto the countertop, so hard that it was a miracle that it didn’t shatter. “Let’s look.”
“I’m telling you, Fred,” Crawford protested, “we were all over this place.”
“Yeah, but I wasn’t all over this place, and that’s what you need.”
Max nodded vigorously. “That’s exactly what you need.”
“That and an alarm system,” Fred said before he started canvassing the downstairs. “I don’t know what’s wrong with you people.”
“You people?” I asked.
“Yeah, you people. Suburbanites. The kind that think nothing bad will ever happen to them.”
As he exited the kitchen, I called after him. “Hey! I once saw a body with no hands and feet! Check that! Two bodies with no hands and feet. Don’t lecture me on what we suburbanites think about safety.” Too bad he was gone. Although even if he had stuck around to hear my tirade, he wouldn’t have cared. That’s how Fred rolls.
Max looked at me. “Think they’ll find anything?”
I shrugged.
“It’ll make them feel better one way or the other,” she said.
I hadn’t really looked at her when I walked in, just having given her a cursory glance. “Are you wearing a Lambda Pi Eta sweatshirt?” LPH was the Department of Communications honor society at St. Thomas and elsewhere, and Max had been a member in good standing back when Bill Clinton was in his first term, before he’d even met Monica Lewinsky. That item of clothing was soon to have its twentieth birthday, but what was more amazing was that it was still in such good shape; certainly it had seen its fair share of barroom floors, Max having been a bit of klutz back in the day.
“Still fits,” she said proudly, puffing out her chest.
“Why wouldn’t it?” I asked. “You’ve been a hundred pounds since the day I met you.” I forked in another heap of lo mein. “And it’s an extra large.” I put my fork down. “What’s going on with you? Is it your birthday? The big four-oh?”
The sound she made was a cross between a Bronx cheer and something much more dismissive. “No,” she said, but it didn’t sound convincing.
“Then why are you dressing like a teenager again?” I asked. “I miss the Jimmy Choos and the Prada coats and the Diane von Furstenberg wrap dresses. I miss you,” I said, pointing at her.
“I’m still here,” she said.
“Then why are you dressing like you did when we were in college? The Ramones T-shirt? The ripped leggings?”
“Hey,” she said, jumping off her perch on the counter. “Do I criticize you for dressing like Leave It to Beaver’s mother? Huh? Do I?”
“That would be June Cleaver,” I said.
“Right. Her.” She leaned in and picked a piece of chicken off my plate. “The pearls, the pumps, the sweater sets. Do I criticize you?”
“As a matter of fact, you do. All the time. Sometimes I feel really bad about myself because when I think I’m looking good, you dispel that notion with one word.”
She let out a little puff of air. “You make it sound like I’m not nice to you.”
“Sometimes, you’re not.”
“You don’t respect what I do,” she said.
“Yes, I do.”
“You’re always making fun of the shows on my channel,” she said.
“Hooters: PIs? Come on, Max. That’s funny,” I said. Why she couldn’t see that eluded me. We had had this discussion a hundred times; I would never not see the humor behind the show.
“I’ll have you know that that show is making people a ton of money.”
As if that were proof of its legitimacy. “It’s funny, Max. Women running around in tank tops and short shorts solving crimes?” I asked. She wasn’t having any of it.
She gave me a hard look. “Do you really want to do this?”
I was tired. My dog had been poisoned. My husband looked like he had shell shock. No, I did not want to do this.
“Stop making fun of what I do,” she said.
“Okay, and you just think about what you say to me. That’s all I ask.”
As she often does when confronted with the truth, Max changed the subject. “How’s Trixie?”
I decided to ride her wave of denial. “She’s fine.” I put my napkin on top of my lo mein and chicken. “I would tell you to go up and see her, but as we both know, she hates you.”
Max snorted. “Dog has no taste.” We heard Fred and Crawford banging around above us. She looked up at the kitchen ceiling. “God, I hope they find something. Fred will be in a funk for days if they can’t solve this locked room mystery.”
“Good point.” I stood and rinsed my dish off in the sink. “Speaking of your birthday, what are we doing?”
“Nothing,” she said quickly. “I just want to forget that it’s happening. The party at my parents’ was enough for me.”
I knew it. She was having a major issue with turning forty. “But we need to celebrate together,�
� I said, not content with leaving well enough alone. Above me, I heard Fred grunt and then let out a triumphant cry. “I guess they found something.”
I hadn’t really focused on the fact that someone had broken in, concerned as I was about Trixie’s health first and foremost, but hearing the effort that they were putting into solving the mystery of how someone had gotten into our hermetically sealed house made me realize that I should be paying closer attention. I went to the bottom of the stairs and called up. “Success?”
More Fred grunting followed by Crawford swearing convinced me that I should wait until they revealed their discovery on their own. Max jumped back up on the counter, and I returned to the table. They came down five minutes later, sweating but happy.
“We found it,” Crawford said.
“Who found it?” Fred asked.
“Fred found it,” Crawford said, giving credit where credit was due. “In the lingo of Nancy Drew, it was a second-story job. A cat burglar.”
He was making light of it, but I could tell that he was confounded.
“Fred looked out the window and saw a crushed bush beneath the guest room window. It was against the house. We all missed it.” Crawford washed his hands at the sink. “There was just the slightest dent in the screen, too.” He ripped off a paper towel and dried his hands. “I can’t believe we missed that. Of course, they repaired it pretty well.”
Fred frowned. “You’re losing your edge, brother. It must have been the worry about the dog.” He downed his beer. “Although I could see how you missed the broken hedge. You two aren’t known for your landscaping skills. Half the hedges in your yard are broken.”
We both ignored him. “Really?” I asked. “That was pretty brazen, climbing up the side of our house and breaking in.”
Fred shrugged. “It was dark. You’ve got those high shrubs at the back of the house. I’m not surprised—whoever it was—that they figured out a way to get in.” Fred’s jacket, a giant piece of fabric with intricate stitching, was draped over the counter, and he pulled it on. “So you’ll be back tomorrow?” he asked Crawford.
Crawford looked at me for approval. “I think she’ll be fine, Crawford. Yes, go back to work.” The sooner we got our lives back to normal, the better.
“I’ll call the village PD tomorrow and see if anything has turned up.” Crawford looked at Fred and shook his head. “You never cease to amaze me.”
Fred made a face that was the closest thing to a smile I had ever seen him attempt.
Max leapt off the counter and grabbed Fred’s hand. “Let’s go. I have to plan for a production meeting tomorrow.” She leaned over me and kissed the top of my head. “See you later. I’m glad the dog’s okay,” she said in that hurried way that made me think that after all these years, she still had a hard time showing me any kind of affection in any kind of overt way. We were probably still a little at odds because of our conversation earlier and the fact that she was being a complete weirdo about her birthday.
After they left, Crawford joined me at the table. “You have enough to eat?” he asked.
“Plenty,” I said. “I’m going to hit the sack.”
“I have to ask you something,” he said.
I waited.
“Christine called today. She’s still insisting that Chick’s death wasn’t a suicide.”
I sighed. “Sure looked like a suicide to me,” I said, desperately trying to wipe from my mind the image of Christine’s brother slumped over a vomit-stained suicide letter.
Crawford ran his hands over his face. He had had it with Christine’s talk of nonsuicide, too. “Do you think you could ask Mac McVeigh if he would talk to her? Assure her that it was suicide?”
I was exasperated, probably more so because I was exhausted. I mulled over his request, coming to the conclusion, finally, that if we were going to get any peace at all when it came to the death of Chick Stepkowski, using my relationship with the medical examiner was a small price to pay.
Sixteen
Mac McVeigh just happened to be the sort of medical examiner who wasn’t averse to talking to someone like Christine. He even went so far as to invite us to his office in White Plains to chat. I had been embarrassed even making the call, but I saw that Crawford was in a bit of a pickle and that this wasn’t going to go away until Christine had some kind of closure—and at this point, I wanted Christine to have closure just so she would go away. The phone calls, the drop-ins, the e-mails … they had to stop. I was as sorry as anyone that her brother had left, come back, and then left for good, but I had my own problems, and they were related to figuring out who broke into my house and poisoned my dog.
If it wasn’t suicide, I was leaning more toward accidental death. Maybe Chick had chronic pain. Why else would he have had all that Vicodin in his apartment? Maybe it was left over from a recent surgery that Christine didn’t know about. Let’s face it: There was a lot she didn’t know about her incredibly eccentric, and up until recently absentee, brother. All I knew was that the guy had offed himself, and coming to terms with it was very difficult for her.
When Christine arrived in my office the day of our meeting with Mac, however, I immediately regretted all of the bad feelings I had had and the impatience I had felt. The usually perky, pixie-faced woman had been replaced by someone drawn and pale, someone defeated. She had lost weight, and on her little frame, every lost pound showed, not like on us big gals who can hide a five-pound loss or gain with the greatest of ease. I held back a gasp, but she could tell that I was surprised by her appearance.
“I know,” she said. “I look like hell.”
“Sit down,” I said, closing the office door behind her. “What’s going on?” I asked.
She started crying. “I am just so sad. All the time. I can’t do anything except cry and cry and cry,” she said, tears rolling down her pale cheeks.
I sat down beside her and put an arm around her. I don’t think I could have felt worse about having lost patience with her; she was in so much pain that it was radiating from her in waves. “Maybe after we talk to Mac you’ll feel better.”
“He’s just going to tell me what everyone else thinks and that’s that Chick killed himself.” She rustled around in her big purse and came up with an old wrinkled tissue with a lollipop stuck to it. She held it up for me to see. It was green and had a piece missing. “I am way too old to be raising four little kids,” she said, going from crying to laughing in mere seconds.
I handed her the tissue box that was on my desk. After she had wiped her eyes and blown her nose, I asked her the question we had all been thinking. “What makes you believe that Chick was incapable of killing himself?” I asked as gently as I could. There were other questions I would have loved the answers to, like where he had been all those years and why he had so much money stashed away in a tenement, but I left those for another time. Or even, who would have killed him?
Her eyes, a vivid blue normally, were the color of sapphires after her crying jag, sapphires rimmed by red. “He was happy to be back. He wanted to be in our lives. Never once did he say anything about being sad, or depressed.” She blew her nose again. “It was more like he had put whatever had happened behind him and wanted to start fresh.”
In a sleazy tenement apartment in Mount Vernon? It was a little hard to swallow.
“Where did he get the money?” I asked.
She got defensive. “Chick did very well for himself for a very long time.”
It didn’t jibe with the hovel he was living in, and I told her so.
“It was temporary. He was going to move.”
The housing market in the past several years had been glutted with places that had been foreclosed on; in my own village alone, I could think of ten places that he could have seen that would have been a thousand times better than the apartment he had chosen.
Maybe it was temporary. It was probably also a hiding place. That seemed obvious to everyone but Christine.
I’m not above talking m
yself into and out of things, but all of the signs were pointing toward a brother who was probably involved in something nefarious. Who knew what that was? Who cared, besides his heartbroken sister?
I looked at the clock over the door. “We have to go. I don’t want to be late.”
The drive took a little under a half hour, and we were knocking on the ME’s office door a few minutes after scoring a gem of a parking spot right in front. Mac was sitting behind his desk doing the New York Times crossword puzzle, his glasses pushed up on top of his balding head.
“Ladies,” he said, standing. “Before we commence, I’ll need some help.”
I was used to Mac and his crazy non sequiturs, but Christine was a novice. She looked confused.
“Where is Pago Pago?” he asked, tapping his pencil on top of his puzzle.
“Samoa,” I said. How do I know this? Because Fred is half Samoan and has told me everything there is to know about Samoa.
Mac filled in the answer. “Thank you, my friend.” He sat back down and took his glasses off the top of his head. “So, Ms.…”
“Please. Call me Christine.”
“Christine. I hear you don’t agree with my ruling on your brother’s cause of death?” he asked, his tone kind. He offered her a half smile to tell her that he didn’t mind being questioned or doubted. He was friends with me, after all.
Christine sank down in her chair, deflated. “I don’t know why we’re here.”
Mac got up from behind his desk and came around to where we were sitting, perching on the edge. “Can I get you some water? Coffee?”
We both declined.
He looked at Christine. “I can’t imagine the pain you’re feeling over the death of your brother.”
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