Some Enchanted Murder

by Linda S. Reilly

  Hmmm. “He’s doing all that for ten dollars?”

  Lillian frowned. “Well, yes, I think that’s what he said. I hope I didn’t misunderstand him.”

  I hoped so too. Maybe I’d find an excuse to show up at Lillian’s the day Darby was building Elliot’s carpeted kingdom.

  After extracting another promise from Lillian to call me if she needed anything, Aunt Tressa and I headed outside into the cold. I’d lost track of time, but the digital clock in my car flashed 6:16.

  “Let’s stop at the Food Mart,” Aunt Tressa said, referring to Hazleton’s only market. “If I’m going to have to fight a murder rap, I’m going to need some sustenance.” She snapped her seat belt into place with a loud click.

  Starting in the bakery aisle, no doubt. But I couldn’t resist a tiny smile. Aunt Tressa was back.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I knew I must have appeared to be staring, yet couldn’t tear my eyes from her. With a shy smile at the teller, she pulled from her small purse a bank book, along with a five-dollar bill, and set them both on the counter. As the teller made the transaction, I felt myself wishing I could be him, that I could touch the bank book, which moments before she’d held in her slender hand. I knew what I was feeling was madcap. But in that single moment, I wanted nothing more than to marry this woman …

  The Hazleton Food Mart was hopping.

  A plow had swept through the parking lot earlier, leaving the pavement coated with a treacherous layer of slippery, freezing slush. Nonetheless, dozens of cars, trucks and SUVs had slithered over the icy mess, somehow managing to slide into parking spaces. I was forced to park my Honda at the end of a long row. I prayed another driver wouldn’t wheel around the corner too fast and skid into me.

  “I’ll make supper for you tonight,” I told Aunt Tressa as we picked our way cautiously across the slick parking lot. “What would you like?”

  She heaved a sigh. “Oh, I don’t know. After all my talk about needing sustenance, I’m not sure I’ll even be hungry. Maybe I’ll get a pizza. And I’ll pick up a bit of dessert while we’re in here.”

  The deli at the Mart has a deep dish sausage and pepperoni pizza that makes my taste buds dance the tarantella. Since it also contains my monthly allotment of fat calories, I indulge only on rare occasions. Besides, I knew Aunt Tressa could eat the whole thing herself.

  “Then I’ll get some haddock for myself and a pizza for you,” I said. The automatic doors slid open, and a blast of heated air escorted us inside.

  I grabbed a hand basket and Aunt Tressa did the same. The market was already mobbed, the lingering after-effect of the blizzard of ’seventy-eight, when almost every store had been forced to close for nearly a week.

  We wove our way through the produce section, where I snagged a bunch of bananas and a sweet onion, and Aunt Tressa—who sneered at veggies—snagged nothing at all. She trailed behind me as we approached the fresh seafood counter, her upturned nose already wrinkling at the aroma. She narrowed her eyes at the display case, where fish selections were grouped by species on mounds of crushed ice.

  “As far as I’m concerned,” she quipped, “this whole display should be labeled the cat food department. I mean, look at that thing!” She pointed at an orange-skinned, polka-dotted creature that was labeled Snapper. “Who’d want to eat that?”

  It was an old refrain, but after everything she’d been through today, I was relieved to hear her spouting it for the umpteenth time. “Lots of people. It’s supposed to be delicious.” As for me, a piece of fresh haddock coated with olive oil and spiced crumbs and baked to perfection was one of my favorite meals.

  “After you get your fish, why don’t you meet me in the bakery aisle,” she said. “I’ll pick up some snacks for us. We can get the pizza on the way out.”

  Ten minutes later, I found Aunt Tressa squinting at the ingredients label on a loaf of bread wrapped in blinding turquoise cellophane. “Look at this, App. It has organic barley malt syrup, organic whole spelt flour, organic cracked wheat … and that’s only for starters.”

  “It’s healthy,” I pointed out. “Oh gosh, this is one of Celeste’s homemade breads. See? Celeste-y-al Whole Grain Breads,” I read from the attractive, scallop-edged label. “A healthy, heavenly treat!”

  Aunt Tressa hoisted the loaf in the air. “Healthy, heavenly and hopelessly heavy,” she remarked, setting it back on the display rack. “No offense to Celeste, but give me a plain loaf of fluffy white bread any day.”

  She tossed a package of frosted brownies and a box of almond cookies into her basket. After picking up the pizza from the deli section, we headed toward the checkout. Then I remembered something. “Wait here,” I told my aunt. “I have to run back to the seafood section. I forgot the cracker coating for my fish.”

  “I’ll go, Apple. I saw a basket of lemons near the fish display. I’m thinking of baking a lemon pound cake some night this week.”

  Yumster.

  She scooted off while I waited my turn in the “Twelve items or fewer” line. A tap on my shoulder make me swing around.

  “Hello, Ms. Mariani,” Chief Fenton said gruffly. In one huge hand he juggled a frozen meatloaf entrée, a green pepper and a can of baked beans. “Fancy meeting you here.”

  Fancy indeed.

  “I’m surprised to see you,” I said. “I thought you’d still be at the crime scene.”

  “The techs from the State lab are processing it now. Everything’s in competent hands. Where’s your aunt?”

  Ah, the real reason he got in line behind me.

  “She’s in the, um”—I crossed my fingers in front of me—

  “cat food department.”

  In case he decided to go looking for her.

  “Well maybe you can remind her,” he said crisply, “that her Caddy should have been inspected eight days ago.”

  “She has an appointment on Monday. And aren’t you forgetting the grace period?” And why didn’t you tell her that yourself when you interrogated her? I felt like snapping.

  “I’m not forgetting anything.” He glanced around to see who might be within earshot, then lowered his voice and leaned close to my ear. “You also might want to tell her to stick close to home, if you get my drift.”

  Now that perked my dander up. “As in, don’t leave town?” I said sharply. The woman standing in line in front of me turned and shot me a glare. I gave her a bland smile, keeping at least a yard behind her as she unloaded the contents of her basket onto the checkout counter.

  Fenton flushed slightly. “I’m only telling you what I told her back at the Dwardene place. I don’t think she was listening the whole time I questioned her. She kept staring off into space.”

  “Chief Fenton, a man she cared about was viciously murdered. Don’t you think she was probably in shock?”

  “Or she was scrambling to construct an alibi.”

  I threw up a hand. “She doesn’t need an alibi! She didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “We’ll see,” he said ominously. “In the meantime, you be sure to relay my message to her.”

  With that, he turned and stalked off to a different checkout line, one that was much longer than the one he’d been in.

  I paid for my groceries, then waited for Aunt Tressa near the customer service desk. By the time she got through the checkout, she looked thoroughly drained.

  As we exited the store, I skimmed my gaze all around. I half expected to see the mysterious Darby pop into my line of vision.

  But he didn’t, and for that I was grateful.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  On the pretext of wanting a word with the teller, I strode up and stood slightly to her left, my heart fluttering like a butterfly in my chest. I gave her a polite nod, apologized for the interruption, then proceeded to babble out some imagined task I wished to have the teller assist me with when he was free. Oh, if only she knew that the single task I longed to carry out was to have her for my beloved wife …

  Cinnie, my orange marma
lade cat, was on me like static cling the second I unlocked the door and stepped inside my apartment.

  “I know, I know, you’re starving.” Balancing her on one shoulder and carrying the groceries in the other arm, I trekked into the kitchen. I deposited her gently on the floor, then poured her favorite kibble into her bowl and freshened her water. A wave of mental fatigue—a kind of after-shock—was beginning to slither through my bones.

  My aunt had gone into her side of the house to feed Pazzo and Ringo, the two kitties she adopted from the shelter during the adoption fair this past August. Five years ago, Aunt Tressa and I bought the side-by-side duplex we lived in. That was two years after Marty Krichner, my aunt’s adoring husband, died from a sudden aneurysm.

  Aunt Tressa is more like a mother than an aunt to me, since she reared me from the time I was seven. I was six, just entering the first grade, when my mother left my father and me. She disappeared as effectively as if she’d joined the Witness Protection Program. Not long after that, my father, Vincent Mariani, decided single fatherhood wasn’t for him. A year after my mother vanished, he left me in Tressa’s care and flew out to Vegas. He’s still there, working as a blackjack dealer in a casino on the strip.

  I was sliding Aunt Tressa’s pizza onto a cookie sheet and popping it into the oven when I heard her kicking off her Beatle boots in my front entryway. Along with the brownies and cookies she’d picked up at the Food Mart, she brought along her fuzzy orange slippers—the ones I call her duck feet.

  I’d also poured two hefty-sized glasses of chardonnay. I handed one to Aunt Tressa after she dumped the cookies and brownies she’d bought onto my kitchen table. After a long swig of wine, she dropped into a chair. Her eyelids were puffy, and her nose was red. She’d apparently had another crying jag while she was alone in her apartment.

  I squeezed her shoulder lightly. “Aunt Tressa, I’m so sorry about Lou.” She looked up at me, her eyes watering. I leaned over and gave her a fierce hug.

  I wanted to say more, to expand upon Lou’s many attributes. But frankly, I hadn’t known the man all that well, at least not in a personal sense. He’d been an estate appraiser for years. My boss, an attorney who specialized in estate planning, had had a fairly long affiliation with him.

  In the six or so weeks that my aunt had been dating Lou, they seemed to have developed a special fondness for one another. Lou had even professed to love the Beatles music that Aunt Tressa was forever pumping out of her CD player. My aunt was probably the most fanatic Beatles lover in modern history.

  “Thanks, Apple.” With a loud snuffle, she tore open one of the bakery boxes and ripped a brownie in half. “I need an hors d’oeuvre,” she explained, as if scarfing down a brownie right before dinner was an aberration for her.

  While the pizza heated, I unwrapped the butcher paper that contained my haddock. I grabbed a lemon from the fridge, cut out a wedge with a sharp knife, then squeezed some of the juice over the fish. A light coating of olive oil went on next. Then I dredged the fish through the spicy cracker crumb mixture that Aunt Tressa had picked up for me in the “cat food” section.

  I glanced at the knife resting next to the lime. A memory came at me like a comet.

  Quick caveat, though. Lou and Blake had a bit of a spat earlier, so he might not be in the best of moods …

  “Aunt Tress, did Lou ever mention anything about not getting along with Blake?”

  She swallowed a huge glob of brownie. “With Blake? No, I don’t think so. Although he did mention once that Blake could squeeze a dime until FDR surrendered. But I never heard him say they actually fought about anything.”

  I extracted a baking dish from my cabinet. “Celeste mentioned that Lou and he had a tiff earlier, remember?”

  “Yeah,” she said slowly, “you’re right. But a tiff does not a murder make.”

  No, but right now I was looking for motive. “Can you recall who was hanging around Lou’s office when you went in to see him?”

  She thought about it for a moment. “No one other than Lillian. She was coming out just as I was heading in. She looked odd, too, as if—”

  “As if she’d seen a ghost, right?”

  “Kind of. She had a spacey look in her eyes.”

  More like frightened, I thought. I slid the haddock into the oven next to the pizza. “Was anyone else hanging around?”

  “A man I didn’t recognize came out of the bathroom as I was leaving Lou’s office. Short, balding, sort of nondescript.”

  Which pretty much described at least a dozen of the people I’d seen milling around at the estate sale.

  I grabbed some veggies from the fridge and began putting together a salad. “I wonder if Celeste and Blake will still have their open house tomorrow,” I said, carving a tomato into five slices. “And before I forget, there’s some mail for you next to the toaster. The mailman put it in the wrong box. Again.”

  She got up and snatched the two envelopes addressed to her off the counter. “Look at this one. Tressa Kirchner. They want me to send them a donation but they can’t even get my name right.” She flipped the envelopes back onto the counter.

  I squelched a smile. Either way, I knew she would send them a check. The solicitation was from one of my aunt’s favorite children’s charities.

  Our respective meals came out of the oven at about the same time. After we finished eating, I lifted a curtain and peeked outside the window. The snow had finally stopped. I had to admit it made a lovely winter scene, as if an unseen hand had spread a layer of marshmallow frosting over the town. I was also pleased to see that the plows had done a thorough job of clearing the roads.

  And while there was no doubt that the worst thing that had happened today was Lou Marshall getting murdered, I couldn’t stop thinking about Lillian—alone in that cold trailer with her cat. She was frightened of something, I was sure of it.

  That night, the last thing I saw as I drifted into a fitful sleep was Lillian’s fearful expression.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  In those few moments at the teller’s cage, I gained much. First, I saw that her left hand was bare; it bore not a single token of another man’s affections. I was also able to see the name on her bank book, as well as her address. She lived in an old section of Hazleton, on a quiet street of predominantly two-family homes. Her name was Dora …

  On Sunday morning, I was popping bread into the toaster when I heard my aunt’s front door open and close. I trotted into my living room and flicked open the mini-blinds on my front window. Outside, snow glistened on the bare branches of the maple trees that lined our quiet street. I spotted Aunt Tressa trudging down our unshoveled front walk in search of the Sunday paper. She found it, halfway between the sidewalk and our front porch.

  And then she flew upward, butt over Beatle boots, landing hard in the snow. I whipped open my door. “Are you all right?” She waved a hand at me, a signal that she’d survived the fall.

  Then I saw her face contort as she read the headline through the plastic bag that shrouded the paper. She hoisted herself up out of the snow and clomped back up the walk.

  “Look at this!” She closed my front door with a crash and shoved the paper under my nose. I glanced at the headline as I brushed chunks of clinging snow off the back of her coat. “Come inside and have some coffee.”

  In the kitchen, I unsheathed the paper and set it on the table. Aunt Tressa dropped into a chair, and I read the paper over her shoulder.

  APPRAISER MURDERED AT ESTATE SALE

  Local Realtor claims she was last to see victim alive

  Oh, Lord.

  The article went on to describe the murder in gruesome, ghoul-like detail.

  The eager reporter whose byline appeared under the headline had attended the estate sale with the idea of writing a local feature article.

  He got a bigger story than he ever dreamed of.

  Apparently, as the police were questioning everyone, a witness to my aunt’s “last one to see him alive” declaration r
evealed this delectable bit of hearsay to the reporter.

  “What kind of reporting is that?” Aunt Tressa bellowed. “Totally irresponsible, I say!”

  Possibly, but unfortunately, the reporter was simply quoting a witness.

  “I wouldn’t give it another thought, Aunt Tressa. Everyone in Hazleton knows you would never commit murder.” I poured her a cup of coffee and set the sugar and milk on the table.

  “Everyone except Paul Fenton.”

  Oops. Forgot about him. “Maybe. But he can’t go around accusing you of murder based on circumstances alone. Yes, you and Lou had been dating. Yes, you’d seen him only ten minutes before he—”

  She looked at me, open-mouthed.

  “Never mind. How about a cinnamon roll? I can defrost one in thirty seconds.”

  “Defrost three.” She chucked two spoonfuls of sugar into her mug.

  I still can’t figure out how Aunt Tressa ended up with the turbo-charged metabolism gene, while I inherited the one with the dead batteries. Her size eight frame consumes enough sugar in a year to keep a chocolate bunny factory up and running. She also lucked out with lush brunette hair that made her wavy, Beatles-style coiffure fluff to perfection around her heart-shaped face—as opposed to my chestnut brown hair, which couldn’t hold a curl with a snow shovel.

  Which reminded me of the task that awaited me—the first shoveling out of the season.

  While the rolls defrosted in the microwave, I smeared raspberry jam on my toast.

  “I thought about this all night,” Aunt Tressa said. She reached down to pat Cinnie, who’d strolled under the table and was rubbing against her legs. “I wracked my brain trying to remember who else was milling around on the second floor after I left Lou.”

  “And?”

  She shook her head. “Josh was in his room with that”—she shuddered—“creepy monster of his. Celeste came out of one of the bedrooms as I was heading down the stairs. I think I mentioned the bald guy I didn’t recognize. And there was Lillian, of course.”