A Secondhand Murder

by Lesley A. Diehl

  It was still early so I strode back into the restaurant, indicated to the hostess I wanted a booth and ordered the breakfast buffet. Anger paired with disbelief gave me a hearty appetite. Returning to my booth after loading my plate with eggs, bacon, pancakes, pastries and a slice of toast, I noticed someone had joined me for breakfast. He was seated with his back to me as I approached the booth but I recognized the sun-streaked hair curling over his collar. My favorite PI. I almost dropped my plate.

  “Hi.” I tried for nonchalant but sounded more like a hormone-addled teenager.

  “Saw you come in. I guess you had an early morning chitchat with the local gendarmes.”

  “To be continued this afternoon at the station.”

  “Fingerprints?” He stirred a packet of sugar into his coffee.

  “Nope.” The tingle in my tummy was more than simple hunger for food. I tried to satisfy it by stuffing a large forkful of pancake into my mouth. I nodded and swallowed. “Like anyone would be dumb enough to leave their prints.”

  “Certainly, we know you’re smart.”

  “I had no reason to kill Mrs. Sanders. That would be like killing the golden goose.”

  “You didn’t like her very much, did you?”

  I dropped my fork on the plate. “What do you mean? I hardly knew the woman.”

  “So you say, but my sources indicate that’s not the whole story.” He stared at me. Last night I thought those azure eyes looked inviting. Now they looked more like ice. He smiled.

  “You said you were investigating Mrs. Sanders. Sounds like you’re trying to nose into my affairs. Why?”

  “Don’t get mad. I’m not accusing you of murder, you know.” He took a sip of coffee.

  “I’m not mad.” I was a little miffed, peeved even, but not really mad. Okay, I was mad.

  “Oh yes you are, and when you get angry, you stick your chin out and turn your head ever so slightly to the right. Your cheek twitches, probably from clenching your teeth. Did you know that?”

  I had lost my appetite. I grabbed my purse and slid out of the booth. “I don’t recall inviting you to join me for breakfast. I just remembered I have an important appointment.”

  “That would be ...?” He also stood.

  “That would be none of your business.”

  I stalked out of the restaurant, then remembered as I approached my car that I had forgotten to pay my bill. Damn. Now I’d have to go back in there and face him again. I gritted my teeth, stuck out my chin and slammed through the door. He turned from the counter, credit card in hand.

  “Don’t worry about it. I got it. Your treat next time.”

  “There won’t be a next time.” I spun around and pushed open the door. By the time he reached his car, I was already starting my engine, wondering what the man knew about Mrs. Sanders and me.

  Chapter 4

  I opened the store right at ten. This morning there were no customers waiting for me to unlock the doors. Maybe word had spread that Madeleine and I were suspects. Grab a bargain and lose your life. The mad consignment shop entrepreneurs.

  Madeleine showed up several minutes after I did, looking like her usual, put-together self. That is, if you didn’t look too closely at the worry lines around her mouth and brow.

  “Don’t do that,” I said.

  “Do what?”

  “Wrinkle your forehead like that. The lines will become permanent.”

  She looked, at first, as if she didn’t believe me, but then rushed to one of our mirrors and almost pressed her face against the surface. “I think you may be right. Even when I stretch the skin upward,” she pulled at her forehead, “I can still see a fine line across the middle.” She turned back to me. “You know, I never used to worry. But ever since we decided to go into business together, it’s been one thing after another. I guess I could consider Botox, but it’s so expensive.”

  “So you’re saying it’s my fault you need a face lift?”

  “Not a face lift, silly. A little procedure. With a needle.”

  I don’t consider needles of any kind in my face a “little procedure.” More like an invasion of pain. A kind of cosmetic house of horrors, where the syringe is loaded with poison.

  “You’re overreacting to the recent stress but that’s certain to go away soon,” I said. Or so I hoped. “Besides,” I added, “remember what happened to that doctor and his wife when they got a hold of some nonmedical grade Botox several years ago? With your propensity for accidents, you’d find someone who’d inject you with sheep urine or something.”

  She turned back to examine her face in the mirror.

  “C’mere.” I took her head in my hands and scrutinized her brow, cheeks and chin. “It’s a hair.”

  “What?”

  “It’s not a line. There’s a fine hair embedded in the makeup on your brow. There. I removed it. Take a look.”

  She did. “You’re right. The line is gone.”

  Well, of course, I had lied. There was no hair, but I was the one who told her that the lines would become permanent if she continued to worry, so I did my best to undo what I had done. I’m a good friend.

  It’s funny, but the Botox scandal had started me thinking about the odd things that had happened since I moved down from Connecticut. In the Northeast, the news always revolved around politics, banks, and the stock market. There was some of that here, but Floridians had their own spin on scandal. The Botox mix-up was one of many newsworthy items for the aging and overly tanned denizens of this place.

  Another big story focused on the death of a string of polo ponies due to contaminated vitamin supplements. Last month several more horses died from food laced with poison. Something to do with a Chinese company that had also been selling lethal baby food. Last I heard, the investigation was ongoing. They were trying to determine whether the bad horse feed was intentionally tampered with or if it had been a manufacturing accident.

  The story had dropped from front-page news and I hadn’t had time to read the paper all the way through since Madeleine and I opened shop, so I didn’t know what was happening with the ponies. Why should I care? This train of thought triggered a memory from Connecticut. Then there was the comment Valerie Sanders made just last week …

  I could have used the library for information, but I decided on another source. I could kill two birds with one stone. Oops, not a good choice of words. But I did owe him a phone call.

  “Could you take over the floor? I’ll go through the items dropped off yesterday,” I said over my shoulder to Madeline.

  “Sure. We’re not very busy today, anyway. I wonder why?”

  “Today’s Thursday. Everyone goes to the coast on Thursdays. You know that.”

  “I do?”

  I smiled and headed for the office. Another tiny lie for my partner, but I didn’t want her to be concerned about the murder jeopardizing our business. I worked my way behind the racks of clothes waiting to be tagged, slid to the floor, and flipped open my phone. I had to be careful about how I approached him with my questions and be prepared for only half-truths—the story of our marriage.

  I punched in the number and waited. “Hi, Jerry.”

  “Evie, baby. I tried to call you last night, but you didn’t answer. Hot date?”

  I remembered PI Montgomery’s lips on mine and wanted to say yes, but the more recent memory of his breakfast interrogation overshadowed the romance and kept me from answering the question.

  “This is not a social call. I need some information.”

  “I’m disappointed. When are you coming home? I’m trying to honor your request for space, but you need to stay in touch.”

  I couldn’t help myself. “How’s Bobbi or Billie or Bonnie?” The girl at the party. The drunken date.

  “Who? Oh, you mean Monica.”

  I didn’t think that was her name, but Jerry was so fast on his feet, and off them, that he could have already rented another bimbo. I’d been gone for over three months.

  “Ye
ah. That one.”

  “Well, funny you should ask. That’s why I called last night. I’ve got a little problem here.”

  “Later. Right now I have a question I need you to answer. Several years ago you visited someone in Stonington who was interested in using you for a financial consultant. Wasn’t the name Sanders?”

  There was a moment of silence. “Yeah. Leon. Poor fellow. And I do mean poor.”

  “Poor?”

  “In more ways than one. Had a real lummox of a wife, Vera or Vivian or—”

  “Valerie?” I suggested.

  “Could be. Anyway, her family had money. He was only the manager, and she never let him forget his role. But I heard recently that his money vanished. Bad market or bad investments. I couldn’t say. He thought my advice was too far out there, but … Go figure. He took the conservative road and lost it all anyway.”

  “Right. What I want to know is, was he interested in polo ponies?”

  Again Jerry hesitated, as if trying hard to remember what he knew or figuring out how to edit the informationa more likely possibility. “Leon? God, no. His son-in-law, well, that’s another matter. Guy’s from South America. I heard he’s into the ponies. What’s this got to do with us?”

  “Nothing at all. Thanks for the information. I’ll be in touch.”

  I flipped my phone shut and wondered where the investigation into the ponies’ deaths stood now. Intentional poisoning? There had to be insurance money involved. The owners would want to collect on that as soon as possible. What had Valerie told me when she and I talked at the shop? “This downturn won’t be for long, my dear. I’ll be back shopping on the coast soon, so take advantage of my temporary poverty. I may find that my investment scheme got some horse manure on my boots, but never mind about that. So what?” She had tapped my shoulder with a brilliantly lacquered nail. “So what?”

  I had listened with half an ear because I assumed Valerie, like the other women in her social class, exaggerated both their poverty and their schemes for getting rich again. I tuned most of the whining out, as I had with this conversation, but I had noticed Cory Burnside listening in with more interest than you might expect. Afterwards, she pulled Valerie to one side and the two of them engaged in an intense discussion that did not seem to be about charity events, Manolo Blahniks, or the theater. Now I wished I’d listened to Valerie more closely and done some eavesdropping of my own.

  Dead polo ponies and Valerie’s so-called “horse manure” investment scheme. At the time I thought she was using the phrase metaphorically. Maybe she meant real horses. How was any of this related to Valerie’s death? Should I share my information with Frida?

  I lied yet again to Madeleine and told her I was getting a pedicure at three. She seemed a bit put out by my leaving the shop, but I calmed her down by calling attention to the absence of customers.

  She acquiesced. “I think we need more merchandise,” she said. “This stuff is so picked over, our racks are almost bare. Everyone’s seen what we have.”

  I didn’t want to share my concerns, but I was beginning to worry that being murder suspects wouldn’t be good for business.

  “So why don’t you call some of our clients in Stuart and West Palm? We’ll take a run over there tonight and pick up any items they want to offer.” We’d begun to offer this service to protect women who didn’t want to take the chance of being seen too often in the unfashionable part of Florida, namely, anywhere off-coast. I could almost hear them mouth the words “cowboy country” as if they’d eaten a sour pickle. Since we didn’t advertise on our van, no one in the classy coastal neighborhoods we visited questioned our presence.

  “Call Cory Burnside,” I said.

  “She’s south of West Palm. That’s a long way to drive tonight. We won’t be back until after ten.”

  “You got a hot date or something?”

  “No. Obviously, you don’t either. I thought you were pretty taken with that PI guy.”

  “I slept on it and realized he wasn’t such a good dancer after all.”

  Captain Tony was called away on other business, so Frida and her partner, Trevor Timble, interviewed me. The only furniture in the room was a wooden table with a teetering leg, three metal chairs and a window air conditioner that made the room only marginally cooler than it was outside. About what you’d expect from a small-town police department.

  Frida was one of only three detectives on the force. Timble was due to retire soon and the third detective, Fred Walling, was out on medical leave. According to the local paper, he had suffered extensive injuries when his cruiser hit a bridge abutment. Timble looked as if he was already gone. He had less meat on his body than a gnawed dog’s bone. He sat with his chin on his sunken-in chest, gaze fixed on his notebook. He said nothing when Frida introduced us. I remembered him at the shop on the day of the murder, making a mess of the skirt rack as he looked around the crime-scene. I lowered my head and sneaked a peek at this face. His eyes were closed. This was the lead detective on the case? It was a good thing Frida had over twenty years in as a uniformed officer.

  Frida sat down in one of the chairs and looked at Timble. He held his pose of alleged notebook inspection. Captain Tony probably assigned Timble to show Frida the ropes. That wouldn’t happen today or anytime between now and his retirement.

  “Detective Timble has a few questions for you.” Frida turned toward Timble and waited.

  “Trevor,” she urged him on.

  He cleared his throat and his head jerked up. “All yours.” He uncrossed his legs, recrossed them and shifted in his chair. His head slowly bent to its former position. I looked over at Frida and felt sorry that she was saddled with Timble for a partner. I shouldn’t have wasted my sympathy.

  I liked Frida. She, Madeleine, a woman from a nearby apartment complex named Frances Ogilvey, and I met once a month for dinner. Four gals, without men, chatting and enjoying a night out. Nothing much, but over the months, we’d shared our stories. Frida was a single mom with two kids to raise, I had my philandering husband and Madeleine, well, she probably had the best track record with men. They were drawn to her like bears to honeycomb. Frances was thrice divorced and desperate to try matrimony again. We drank a little, laughed a lot, and went home reasonably sober. We had to behave, Frida being a cop and all.

  Last month Frida told us that she’d passed the detective’s exam and was first on the list for promotion. Apparently, with Timble’s impending retirement—God, was that a snore?—Captain Tony had decided that her time had come. I was happy for her and certain she’d do her job—not play favorites, of course, but take under consideration important factors such as friendships.

  She sighed and laid her notebook on the table. I looked at the open page and read her writing upside down. I was in trouble.

  She bent forward and leveled her gaze at me, tapping her pen on the edge of the table. Tap, tap.

  “I’m disappointed in you, Eve.” Tap, tap. She paused as if to give me the opportunity to confess how disappointed I was in myself. I tried to appear both innocent and naive. That’s not a look I wear well. I can do confused, nonchalant, sarcastic, and—if you let me use my mouth—ignorant and cool. The gentler expressions are not in my repertoire.

  “You had the opportunity this morning to come clean. You didn’t.” Tap, tap and another pause.

  Enough of our playing cop and suspect. I slammed the palm of my hand down on the desk. “Fine, then. You win.”

  The sound woke Timble. “You got a confession?” He stuck his pencil in his mouth, wet the tip, and prepared to write.

  “Valerie Sanders and I didn’t like each other much.”

  Frida nodded. “Go on.”

  “We had a bit of a disagreement.”

  “This was when?” She grabbed her notebook off the desk and jotted something in it.

  “Last week.”

  “It was a disagreement, you said?”

  “Right.”

  Timble continued to look awake, bu
t I could tell he wasn’t excited about the direction I was taking the conversation. His eyelids again drooped over his eyes. I didn’t feel guilty for putting him back to sleep.

  “Want to tell us about it?” Frida locked eyes with me.

  “Not really. It was private business.”

  “A woman is dead, murdered. I don’t think you need to be concerned about keeping your business arrangement a secret anymore.”

  I’d never seen this side of Frida before. She was like a snapping turtle—she wasn’t going to let go, not with my finger in her jaws.

  “Okay. Fine. It was more than a disagreement. I punched her in the chops.”

  Chapter 5

  I read what Frida wrote in her notebook, the one she so cleverly placed on the desk in front of me, so I would know I had to ’fess up. Frida’s pupils didn’t even dilate with surprise when I announced that I had I hit the woman. No wonder she got the promotion to detective. She was one smart lady. She got the truth out of me. And someone else. Now I had to do some swift maneuvering of my own.

  “The reason you assaulted her?” Frida’s pencil was poised over her notebook, ready to get the goods on me. Timble came to life, scribbling nonstop in his little black book.

  “You assume the assault was unwarranted? She came at me first. I only hit her to protect myself.”

  “Still. The reason for the two of you getting physical?”

  I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until I let out a sharp sigh. “Can’t you guess? Valerie Sanders was cheap. She may have been rich, but she was tight with her money. Maybe that’s how she got so rich. She wanted me to take a smaller percentage for the consignment of her castoffs. I told her no. She went crazy. Came at me as if I had accused her of buying her clothes at Sears.” Privately, I was pretty certain she did buy some of her stuff at Sears, but then sewed on designer labels. That’s how damn cheap she was.

  “And then?”

  “Once I gave her a good bop on the puss, she seemed to come to her senses. Grabbed her purse and left. The next time I saw her was the day of our grand opening, the day she—”