For Whom the Limo Rolls

by Lorena McCourtney

  “What?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I was, uh, speaking to someone else.”

  She gave me a name then, Wilson Evertson, with an address and phone number in Tennessee. “I believe I’ll call him about the yard right now, in fact.”

  “You mentioned the name of another woman you knew who’d been to a channeling session—?”

  “Annabelle Dietz. She used to be active in Cultural Club work, but she’s dropped out since her husband died a few months ago. She doesn’t drive any more, and he always brought her to the meetings.”

  “I see. Well, thank you. It’s been nice talking to you.”

  “Give my regards to Fitz.”

  Yeah, right.

  “I may also want to engage the limousine sometime in the near future. I think it would be appropriate for the local Cultural Club officers to arrive by limo at the regional meeting over in Tacoma.”

  “Just let me know when you need it.” And, with the prospect of a limo job, and feeling a bit more kindly toward her now, I added, “I’ll tell Fitz I talked to you again.”

  I didn’t know what Mary Beth’s landlord could know that would be helpful, but I wanted to talk to him. But, since Danielle was going to call him now, I decided to wait a day before doing so. Let her tell him his renter was dead, if he didn’t already know. So, instead of calling him, I looked up Annabelle Dietz’s number, formulated a hopefully acceptable dialogue, and called her.

  “Hello.”

  “Annabelle Dietz?”

  “Hello? Hello? Oh dear, I don’t have my hearing aid in, do I? Can you hold on a minute?”

  A few unidentifiable noises followed by, “There, that’s better. Now, what were you saying?”

  “I was asking—”

  “Oh dear, now the thing is squawking. Hold on again.” Even I could hear a shrill squawk before she said, “Infernal thing drives me crazy. Don’t ever get old and deaf. Now, dear, you were saying?”

  “I was just asking if you were Annabelle Dietz.”

  “I was this morning. I suppose I still am this afternoon.” She laughed, as if delighted with her own humor. “At least I remember that much, and I guess that’s the best we can hope for at times, isn’t it?”

  “I wanted to ask about your experience with the woman who held the channeling sessions. I believe you went a time or two?”

  “Oh, more than that, actually. So fascinating! And now that poor woman’s been murdered. Isn’t that dreadful?” I’d expected her to question why I wanted to know about her relationship with the woman, but she didn’t. Instead she said, “Why don’t you come over in the morning and we can talk?”

  All I’d intended was a phone conversation, but I suspected she didn’t have much company and I rather admired her deft maneuvering to snag herself a visitor. Okay, I was game. “That would be very nice.”

  She gave me an address in some older condos on the west side of town. I said I’d be there about ten.

  “Good. We’ll have tea and some lovely blueberry muffins. And hopefully Godzilla will be better by then. He’s a little under the weather today.”

  Tea and blueberry muffins with this cheerful lady sounded good. Godzilla? Hmm.

  ***

  Next morning I decided I’d drive the limo to Annabelle’s condo. I could then go on to my lunchtime clients direct from there. I was just brushing some fallen twigs off the hood when India came out carrying a camera. She posed me in several positions around the limo to get a photo for the website she was working on. You could look at the photos right away in the digital camera, but we decided we’d wait until evening to get together and select one.

  The condos looked nice enough when I angled the limo across the spaces in the small section for visitors’ parking, well kept, but not ritzy. I parked and rang the bell at #7. Nothing happened, and I wondered if Annabelle had forgotten her hearing aid again. I was about to see if the door was unlocked when it finally opened.

  Her eyes were red and puffy from crying. Deep wrinkles grooved her face. Her eyebrows must have taken a beating with the crying, because stray hairs angled like bristles in a worn-out toothbrush. A pale pink scalp showed through wispy gray hair. She lifted a veined hand and rubbed her wet eyes with a fist.

  I touched her arm. “What’s wrong?” I asked, since something obviously was.

  She motioned toward a box on the sofa. “It’s Godzilla. He died early this morning.”

  I stepped inside and warily peered into the box. An oversized, black and white cat lay curled inside. It looked as if she’d had to scrunch a little to make him fit.

  I put my arms around her. “I’m so sorry.” I seemed to be saying that a lot lately.

  “He was old, almost seventeen. I guess it was time for him to go. But. . .” She started crying again, and I patted her back.

  “I’m sure you gave him a wonderful home all those years.”

  “I put him in the box, but now I don’t know what to do with him. There’s no place to bury him here.”

  I peered over her shoulder out the window. That was true. There were no yards here, just pavement to the street and tall board fences on both sides. The only dirt was in a narrow window box, and there was probably some regulation against burying dead cats there. Godzilla wouldn’t fit anyway.

  “Is there a back yard?”

  “It’s all concrete and rocks. Easier to take care of than grass, they said.” She sniffed, and I grabbed a tissue from a box on the end table and handed it to her.

  What, I wondered, did one do with a dead cat in a place like this?

  “I’ve heard about pet cemeteries, but I looked in the phone book and I can’t find one here. And I-I can’t just dump him in the trash.”

  “Of course not.” I made a hasty decision. I still had almost two hours before my midday appointment. “How about if we drive out in the country and find some nice place under a tree to bury him?”

  “I don’t have a car.”

  “We’ll take mine.”

  “I don’t have a shovel.” She brightened slightly. “But I do have a little trowel l use in my window box.”

  “That should work fine.”

  The cardboard box had a lid, which we fastened securely with Scotch tape. She pulled some silk flowers from a bouquet on the coffee table and put them in a paper sack. Then she couldn’t find the trowel, and the only other implement she could come up with was a big spoon from a kitchen drawer. I eyed it doubtfully, but I guessed we’d have to make do.

  “Maybe I should change clothes?” Annabelle said. “I don’t want to be disrespectful.”

  She was wearing purple polyester pants and a pink sweatshirt with a puffy appliqué of a blue cat. “You look lovely,” I assured her.

  The box was heavy when I lifted it to carry outside. How much did this animal weigh anyway? He certainly hadn’t died from lack of food.

  Once outside, Annabelle stopped short. “You’re driving a limousine?”

  “Yes, I have a limousine service.” I’d have handed her a card, but my arms were full of dead cat.

  “This is marvelous! Godzilla riding to his final resting place in a limousine!” This seemed to cheer her considerably. “Oh, and I know just where we can take him. That gravel road out west of town goes through a lovely forested area.”

  This was also the area where I’d acquired the bullet holes in my limo, but I didn’t mention that. Besides, it was unlikely we’d encounter killers on the way to a cat funeral.

  We put Godzilla on the rear seat. I thought Annabelle would want to ride back there with him, but she climbed into the passenger’s seat up front beside me. I hoped this meant I’d have a chance to ask her about the channeling sessions, but she wanted to talk about Godzilla. So I learned about how she’d acquired him from a cat rescue organization, how he liked to sleep in the bathroom sink, how he had a special meow for when he wanted a dish of milk.

  As I listened, I thought how our plans in this life go awry. I’d intended to spend this morning as
king clever questions to help solve a murder mystery. Instead here I was, driving out in the country to bury an overweight dead cat with a spoon.

  Having a good laugh at our plans down here, Lord?

  Chapter Seventeen

  We found a lovely place near a bubbling stream. Fallen maple leaves carpeted the ground with gold. Elegant ferns grew nearby. Green moss covered an angular rock that, with imagination, might be a headstone. I retrieved Godzilla from his spot in solitary splendor in the rear seat of the limo.

  Near the rock, I scraped leaves away with my foot and started digging. The ground was fairly soft, but digging with a spoon still took considerable effort. I reminded myself I really should keep a shovel in the trunk for vehicle problems. And perhaps the occasional cat funeral.

  Finally, with a raw spot wearing on my digging finger, the hole was deep enough to set the box inside. Annabelle dropped the first handful of dirt on top it. I added a second, and Annabelle said, “Goodbye, Godzilla. I’ll miss you.”

  I finished covering the box and tamped the dirt securely with a broken chunk of branch. Annabelle stuck the flowers in the bare spot and arranged them nicely. I found some especially lovely leaves and made a pattern out of them around the flowers.

  Annabelle clasped her hands together as we stood over the spot. “He was a good kitty. He always hogged the pillow in the bed, but he was so much company.”

  I wanted to tell her there were lots of other good kitties desperate for a home, but I knew this wasn’t the time. She was crying again when I helped her into the front seat of the limo.

  “Thank you,” she managed to say through her tears. “Thank you for making Godzilla’s last ride something special.”

  “I’m glad I could do it.”

  I’d been thinking that on the way home maybe I could get back to the real reason I’d come, asking questions about the channeling sessions, but I thought now about how bad I’d feel if this were Phreddie. The questions could wait. Annabelle needed this time to grieve, to let her beloved kitty go, to talk about him all the way home if she wanted to.

  To encourage her, I said, “How did Godzilla get his name?”

  “He was the smallest and scrawniest of all the kittens there, and I figured he needed a name to help his self-image.” She smiled self-consciously at the idea of helping a cat with a self-image, but I was delighted with her reasoning.

  “It worked, didn’t it? I have a cat too. His name’s Phreddie. With a Ph, not an F. He comes with me in the limo sometimes. That’s his catbed down there on the floor by your feet.”

  “I thought you must be a cat person.” She peered down at the white satin. “It looks like part of a wedding gown.”

  “It is.”

  She nodded as if the odd name and unusual catbed were perfectly reasonable and required no further explanation. “Godzilla mostly slept in my bed, except when he was in the sink. Though sometimes he liked to curl up on top the refrigerator.”

  “Cats have wonderful personalities all their own, don’t they?”

  “Nicer than a lot of people.”

  “Would you like to stop somewhere for coffee?”

  A little smile lit her wrinkled face. “Yes, that would be nice. Kind of like what they did after a funeral back home. There was always a big potluck, and everyone sat around and visited.”

  There was a little country store a few miles down the road. I went inside and returned with two Styrofoam cups of coffee, napkins, a handful of creamer and sugar packets, and a couple of packaged cupcakes.

  I spread everything on the console between the seats. I tried a sip of the coffee and immediately added five creamers and three sugars. The stuff tasted as if it were made of old tires that had been brewing since last week. Annabelle, to my surprise, did a taste test, nodded approvingly, and left hers black.

  “This is nice,” she said.

  “It isn’t exactly potluck—”

  “It’s the thought that counts.”

  I didn’t know how appropriate it was, but on impulse I said, “Shall we make a toast to Godzilla?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  So we lifted and touched our coffee cups, and Annabelle said, “To one of the best friends I ever had, the extraordinary Godzilla.”

  “To Godzilla,” I said.

  We each drank a few sips. I used part of a cupcake to help get mine down. Although it didn’t help much. The cupcake probably wasn’t as old as Godzilla, but in cupcake years it was pretty well up there.

  Annabelle dusted crumbs from her fingers. “About those channeling sessions you wanted to know about,” she said briskly.

  “That’s okay. It can wait.”

  “It must have been important or you wouldn’t have called me.”

  I didn’t intend to push it, but I said, “A neighbor of mine is accused of murdering the channeling woman. I don’t think he did it. I thought maybe I could find out something to help him.”

  “I don’t know that I can help, but I’ll tell you what I know. Like I said, it was a most fascinating experience.”

  “How did you get started going?”

  “Mary Beth invited me.”

  “You mean she just called up and invited you?” I asked, surprised.

  “That’s exactly what she did.”

  “Didn’t you think that was kind of odd?”

  Annabelle tilted her head thoughtfully. “Well, now that you mention it, it does seem a little unusual. And I suppose I was rather naïve, wasn’t I, just taking up with someone who called me out of the blue? I’d certainly never buy anything from some stranger on the phone. But at the time, when Mary Beth invited me to these gatherings at her place, it just seemed . . . nice. I’ve had a hard time being alone since Ed died. Mary Beth always came over and picked me up, since I don’t drive any more. Dora too.”

  “Dora?”

  “My friend. She’s a widow too.”

  I felt a spark of excitement. Had Mary Beth targeted the bereaved and perhaps picked names out of the obituaries? Tom was also a widower. But that didn’t fit with Tom, I realized regretfully. His wife had died several years ago; his money had come from the eccentric uncle. And neither did it fit with the banker or his daughter, so far as I knew.

  “Where did she get your name?”

  “I used to be active in several clubs. At the time I supposed it was from someone in one of the clubs, but I don’t really know. Where did you get my name?”

  No slouch, Annabelle Dietz. “From a neighbor of Mary Beth’s who went to a couple of sessions and also knows you.”

  “Oh, yes. That would be Danielle Lawrence. A good person, in her way. But doesn’t that yard of hers make you want to run amok with a chain saw? With a karate yell every time you took out one of those ridiculous bushes that looks as if it’s been trimmed with manicure scissors?”

  The chain-saw, karate-yell method of landscape modification sounded tempting, but all I said was, “It’s not my style of landscaping.” Although my style, which consisted of several daisy flower beds, and a lot of dirt piles thrown up by underground creatures, wouldn’t win any awards.

  She suddenly looked at me sharply. “You’re suspicious of Mary Beth, aren’t you? That she was up to something that got her killed.”

  “It seems possible.”

  “Like what?” I heard a hint of challenge in her voice. She’d obviously liked Mary Beth. Which was the way con artists targeting the elderly worked, wasn’t it?

  “The general rule is, follow the money,” I said.

  “But all she got out of Dora and me was what we gave as love gifts. She never seemed like a greedy person.”

  “Weren’t you surprised when you found out these ‘gatherings’ at Mary Beth’s involved this other-dimensional entity?”

  “I guess I was, a little, at first. Except the way Mary Beth did it, it didn’t seem all that peculiar. She said she had this friend she wanted us to meet. And then there was Trafalgar, her friend, talking to us.” But Annabelle’s forehead wrinkled,
as if her easy acceptance of the entity was now a little puzzling even to her.

  “Did you have any private sessions?”

  “Several times. Although I guess they weren’t really private, were they, since Dora and I did them together?”

  “Did you think Trafalgar was real?”

  “As opposed to—?”

  “Some big act Mary Beth was putting on.”

  “If it was an act, she was very good at it.” Annabelle sounded a little huffy, and I groaned inwardly. Was she going to be as stubborn about Trafalgar as Tom was?

  “Trafalgar was fun, you know? He joked with us, and told us we should get out more. Make new friends. Try a health club. Eat better, don’t just open a can of soup. Take a walk. Not just sit around watching TV and grumbling about our aches and pain. He said we should expand our horizons.”

  “That sounds like good advice,” I had to admit.

  “He suggested a Caribbean cruise, maybe even a round-the-world cruise. We told him that was a little rich for our budgets. Ed left me fairly well fixed for Vigland living, but with low interest rates on CDs, and inflation, it isn’t in the world-travel class.”

  I sat up straighter. “Did Trafalgar have a solution for that?”

  Annabelle’s tear-stained eyes widened as she looked up at me. “Yes, as a matter of fact, he did. He said he could very soon tell us where to put some money so we’d quickly have enough to travel anywhere we wanted. He had this way, you know, to look at the future—”

  “Like a hallway, where he could open doors and look in on any time frame he wanted to see. So he could see what would happen to an investment and know what was a good one.”

  She nodded.

  “But you never actually invested anything?”

  “No, but we were going to. Dora and I both were.”

  I sipped my creamer-and-sugar drink and reflected on this. As with Tom, Mary Beth – via Trafalgar – hadn’t offered specifics about the investment, nor had she gotten any money yet. Was her plan to get everyone to put up their money within some short space of time? And then skip town quick, before anyone realized it was a scam?

  “You don’t think it was a legitimate investment?” Annabelle asked.