by Vicki Delany
I’d have to take the risk. When I turned on the tap in the bathroom sink on Tuesday morning, I was greeted by . . . nothing.
Not a drop of water.
I padded down the hallway and knocked on Steve and Wendy’s door.
Wendy opened it and greeted me warmly. She was ready for work in a gray skirt, teal blouse, stockings, patent leather pumps, and sedate gold jewelry. The only thing spoiling the image of the perfectly put-together office worker was the patch of fresh porridge dripping down the sleeve of her silk blouse. The sound of someone being torn limb from limb erupted from a back room, and a man swore.
“Sorry to disturb you,” I said. “Problems?”
“Tina has decided she doesn’t want to go to day care anymore. Steve has decided he wants to run away to sea. She’s in her bedroom having a tantrum, and he’s hiding in the bathroom.” She gave me a strained smile. “Life with a toddler. What’s up?”
“Do you have any water?”
“Last I checked, we did. Hold on.” She ran into the kitchen, and I heard the sound of running water.
“Just me then,” I said. “I’ll go down and tell Mrs. D’Angelo.”
“Good luck. If you’re not back when we get home from work, I’ll send a rescue party.”
I returned to my apartment and pulled on jeans and an old sweater. Mattie and I went down the back stairs, and I let him romp in the enclosed yard while I went around to the front. Last night’s snow was rapidly melting, leaving everything wet and mushy.
I climbed the steps to the veranda. The front door opened before I’d so much as raised my hand to knock. Mrs. D’Angelo stood before me, dressed in a white satin robe with some sort of fluffy pink furlike substance at the ends of the sleeves, the fuzzy, backless slippers called “mules” now rarely seen outside of ’50s-era movies on her feet, and her ever-present iPhone stuffed into the belt around her waist. “Merry Wilkinson. You’d best come in. I was about to call around and see if there were any more developments in your parents’ case.”
“My parents don’t have a case,” I said. “They were unfortunate enough to have someone pass away in their house.”
Mrs. D’Angelo dismissed that trifle with a wave of her hand. The pink furry substance fluttered.
“But that’s not why I’m here,” I said. “My . . .”
Her hand shot out, too fast for me to dodge it. She grabbed my arm in a surprisingly powerful grip and dragged me into her house. Behind me, the door slammed shut. Trapped!
“I’ve put the coffee on,” she said. “I’m normally a much earlier riser than this, but I was up late talking to Ruth Johnson. You know Ruth, don’t you, Merry?”
I’d never heard of her before. I’d never heard of most of Mrs. D’Angelo’s contacts. I wondered if there was a secret network of spies lurking underground in Rudolph. And if so, did the FBI and CIA know about it? They might be able to use the help.
A cup of thin black coffee was poured and placed on the kitchen table. Mrs. D’Angelo gestured to me to sit down. Reluctantly, I did so. “I don’t have time to visit,” I said. “I have to get to work.”
“Nonsense. It’s only eight o’clock. Your store doesn’t open until ten.”
“I . . . uh . . . wanted to get in early today.”
“Toast?”
“What? No, thank you.”
I might as well not have spoken. Into the toaster went two pieces of squishy white bread and out of the fridge came store-bought raspberry jam and a budget-sized tub of margarine.
Mrs. D’Angelo’s kitchen overlooked the backyard. I guessed she didn’t spend a lot of time in here (as she spent most of her time peering out the front window hoping to find her neighbors doing something gossip-alert-worthy). The room was neat and clean but hadn’t been updated in a long time. The floor was covered in brown linoleum, curling at the edges; the fridge was the color known as harvest gold, hugely popular, so I’d been told, around the time I’d been born; and the Formica kitchen table had matching steel-rimmed chairs with cracked cushioning.
The toast popped out of the toaster. Mrs. D’Angelo slapped the slices on a chipped plate and put it on the table in front of me. “Eat up,” she ordered.
“I have no wa—” I began.
“Unfortunately,” she said, “none of my friends know anything about your mother’s visitors, so it’s difficult to come to conclusions. What are the police saying?”
“Nothing they’re sharing with me. I came down because—”
“The family of the deceased is in construction, I’ve heard. That often means organized crime, doesn’t it?”
Kyle Lambert, Jackie’s boyfriend, had said the same thing. I wondered if he was tied into Mrs. D’Angelo’s network. “They’re a small family company. I don’t think the mob had anything to do with anything.”
“It’s a working theory.” She stirred a huge spoonful of sugar into her own coffee and then dumped in another.
“Do you have water this morning?” I asked.
“Unfortunate timing for Noel, of course.”
“Because I don’t . . . What do you mean by that?”
“Wayne Fitzroy’s making noises about taking on the role of Santa, and Sue-Anne seems to be going along with him. Some think he wants to use the Santa position as a stepping-stone to a seat on the town council, and eventually mayor, but I disagree. All he’s doing is making trouble, mark my words. I’ve known men like that before. The late Mr. D’Angelo comes to mind.”
Despite myself, I said, “Really?”
“Always out to make trouble. Wayne tells everyone he retired, but that’s not the case. He was kicked out of his company for embezzlement and told if he left quietly charges would not be laid.”
“Really?”
“To pay his substantial legal fees, he had to sell the apartment in Manhattan and the vacation home in Sag Harbor and flee to what he dismissively calls ‘the boonies.’” She sniffed in disapproval.
“How do you know all that?” I asked, truly impressed.
“His wife.” My landlady gave me a sly grin. “She’s lonely here. Her fancy society friends dropped her like a hot stone when he got into financial trouble, and she blames her husband for her reduced circumstances. She’s trying to fit into Rudolph in her own way.”
“Ah,” I said. “I get it. Strange that Sue-Anne would be friends with him if he’s after the top job. Which is currently her job.”
“Friends? What on earth makes you think he and Sue-Anne are friends?”
“Isn’t that what you said? Someone else told my dad they were ‘chummy.’”
She snorted. “Really, Merry, you shouldn’t listen to idle gossip. So easy for things to be misinterpreted. Sue-Anne and Wayne Fitzroy are not chummy in the least. If they seem to be close, it’s only because Wayne’s blackmailing her.”
“Blackmail?”
“If she supports him as Santa Claus this year, then in next year’s elections for town council, he’ll hold off running for mayor for one more term.”
“What on earth has he got to blackmail her with?” I asked. Sue-Anne Morrow wasn’t the brightest bulb on our town’s Christmas tree, but no one ever suggested she wasn’t honest or didn’t have the best interests of Rudolph at heart.
Mrs. D’Angelo looked very smug indeed. “It wouldn’t be proper for me to make insinuations about anyone else’s marriage. But seeing as to how your father’s position as Santa Claus is threatened, I’ll make an exception in this case. Sue-Anne’s husband, Jim, is known to be carrying on with a woman on the Muddle Harbor town council.”
“I get it,” I said. Jim Morrow was scarcely ever seen in Rudolph. He wasn’t a typical politician’s spouse: standing by his wife’s side at events, holding hands and exchanging not-so-secret smiles, nodding enthusiastically at her speeches. Mr. Morrow was a good-looking man for his age, semiretired from a
successful career in the city. He was full of charm, or so he thought, and no doubt some women thought also. To me, his charm was severely undermined by the creep factor. The first time I’d met him, out walking Mattie one snowy evening, he’d asked me out.
No, thank you.
I wasn’t surprised to hear that the mayor’s husband was cheating on her. It couldn’t have come to much of a surprise to Sue-Anne, either. But maybe it did. And maybe her pride made her vulnerable to blackmail.
I thought of Karla, trying so hard to make her friends believe she was in a loving marriage; meanwhile, she and her husband were fighting to the bitter end in court, and everyone in their town knew every salacious detail.
“If you and your friends know about this,” I asked my landlady, “what makes it blackmail-worthy?”
“We,” she said proudly, “will not be talking to the press.”
“Fair enough.”
“I’m not saying Sue-Anne has ambitions at the state level, nothing she’s declared at any rate, but a wandering husband won’t help her if she does, now, will it, Merry?”
“No, it certainly won’t.”
Mrs. D’Angelo’s phone rang. “You don’t mind if I get this, do you, Merry? It might be important.” She pushed buttons. “Mary Beth, what have you learned? No! I can’t say I’m surprised.”
I got up from the table, leaving my coffee and toast untouched. I didn’t know if Dad was aware of any of this, but in case he wasn’t, I needed to tell him right away.
Mrs. D’Angelo walked with me to the front door, talking all the while. Someone, I didn’t catch a name, had caught her teenage son rummaging through her purse late one night.
I opened the door and stepped onto the veranda. Only then did I remember why I’d come, and I turned around. “I don’t have any wa—”
The door shut in my face.
Chapter 13
Mrs. D’Angelo finally answered the door in answer to my repeated hammering, and I blurted out that I had no water in my apartment. “One, moment, Jenny,” she said into the phone.
Jenny? I thought she was talking to Mary Beth.
“I’ll call my nephew Keith to come over soon as I’m off the phone,” she said to me.
“Is Keith a licensed plumber?” I shouted at the closing door.
I decided not to wait for Keith to come. If Mrs. D’Angelo needed to be off the phone to give him a call, that might be quite a while. Particularly if there were nefarious activities going on in Rudolph.
I needed to talk to Dad.
I left Mattie in the yard—covered from head to toe (and that was a vast distance) in mud—telling him I’d be right down, and ran upstairs for a change of clothes, my purse, and the leash.
Mattie and I walked the short distance to my parents’ house. The sun had come out in a clear blue sky, and the last of yesterday’s snow was nothing but muddy puddles. In the park, municipal workers were stringing even more lights and hanging decorations on the town’s Christmas tree.
A lit tree stood on the bandstand twelve months of the year to remind everyone we were a year-round Christmas destination. The tree was replaced once a month, but the December one was always the biggest and the brightest and the most heavily decorated. The Sunday after Thanksgiving, the mayor would preside over the official lighting of the holiday tree. The Santa Claus parade was the following Saturday, and then it would be all Christmas, all the time, until the shops closed at three P.M. on Christmas Eve.
The Santa Claus parade was less than two weeks away. If Sue-Anne was thinking of replacing my dad, she didn’t have a lot of time.
I arrived at my parents’ house and rang the doorbell. I waited for someone to answer while Mattie scratched at the door. My mom didn’t normally get up until noon—still living on a performer’s schedule, she said. But Dad was always up with the birds. I rang the bell again and put my ear closer to the door to check that it was still working. Mattie whined. I thought I could hear the distant peal.
I knocked. I knocked again, harder this time. I had my own key, but I didn’t normally use it when I wasn’t expected.
Slowly, the door opened. My dad peered out. “Oh, it’s you, Merry.”
“Of course it’s me. Who were you expecting?” I unhooked the leash from Mattie’s collar, and he dashed into the house, almost knocking my father to one side.
“I’m not expecting anyone. I didn’t hear the bell over the noise in the kitchen. We’re having breakfast.”
“Who’s ‘we’?”
“All our houseguests. Your mother’s still upstairs.”
“Are you feeling okay? You don’t look too well.” His face was drawn and pale under the traces of his holiday tan.
“I’m fine, honeybunch. I didn’t sleep all that well last night. Being confined to the couch in my den as I was.”
“That bad, eh?”
“Aline’s not pleased that I invited Karla’s husband to stay with us. What else was I to do when the man asked outright?”
I refrained from telling him he could have said no.
The sound of women’s laughter came from the kitchen.
“Everything going okay?” I asked.
“They’re in good moods this morning. I doubt that will last. What brings you here?”
I lifted the overnight bag into which I’d put my work clothes. “I have no water in my apartment, so I need a shower, and Mattie could use a hosing down.”
“So he could.” Dad’s eyes followed the trail of giant dog prints crossing the formerly clean floors of the hall, heading for the kitchen. “I’d better get that mopped up before your mother comes down, or I won’t even get a bed in the study.”
“I have some news for you that I picked up when I was asking Mrs. D’Angelo about my water situation. Let me see to Mattie and then we can talk.”
I followed the trail of paw prints down the hall. By the time I entered the kitchen, Barbara was crouched on the floor with a kitchen towel in hand, wiping off Mattie’s feet.
“Good morning,” I said. “Thanks for doing that, Barbara.”
“It’s my pleasure.” She ruffled the fur around his neck. “Such a gorgeous boy.” Mattie’s entire body wiggled with pleasure.
The women sat around the kitchen table, sipping coffee and eating toast and eggs or cereal. Ruth had her nose buried in a book. She didn’t look at me, but lifted one hand in greeting. Constance’s and Genevieve’s heads were down as they typed on their phones.
“I hope you’ve come to tell us we can go home,” Constance said without bothering to look at me.
“No such luck. You won’t hear that news from me in any event. Detective Simmonds will tell you herself.”
“If she bothers,” Genevieve said. “I’m expecting a callback for a second audition for a major TV production. When it comes, and if she still says I can’t leave, I’m going anyway. She can arrest me after I’ve got the part.”
“I don’t know why you bother,” Constance said. “You’ve had hundreds of callbacks over the years. Nothing comes of them. Remind me, what was the last role you landed?”
Genevieve punched keys on her phone.
“Detective Simmonds is wasting everyone’s time,” Ruth said. “I still say the food that killed Karla was a mistaken delivery. Someone ordered takeout, the delivery person went to the wrong address, and no one’s willing to confess.”
Barbara wiped the last of the mud off Mattie, gave him a hearty pat, and got to her feet. “Ruth and her mystery novels,” she said to me. “She’s absolutely determined to play detective in her head. As if anyone ever orders one curried egg salad to be delivered.”
“It might have been part of a larger order that got overlooked,” Ruth said. “I saw a sign at the place where I went for lunch on Saturday saying they deliver full meals. Merry, have you seen those curried eggs served anywhere?”
<
br /> “No,” I said. “But even I haven’t eaten at every restaurant in town.”
“Stupidest idea I’ve ever heard,” Genevieve said without looking up from the screen in front of her.
Ruth put down her book. She stared at each of the women, one after the other. In the silence, Genevieve and Constance tore their eyes away from their phones.
“The alternative,” Ruth said, once she had everyone’s attention, “is that one of us deliberately added peanuts to the food, knowing Karla would eat it.”
“One of us? Remind me what Karla said to you, Ruth,” Genevieve said. “Something about working for others, unlike her.”
Ruth didn’t rise to the bait. “I know I didn’t kill her. That leaves the three of you—four, counting Aline.”
“Hey,” I said.
“I haven’t forgotten you and your bakery friend, Merry,” Ruth said. “Although, I’ll admit neither of you had a motive, not as far as we know. Must I remind you all that one of us has been close to a murder before?”
Genevieve laughed.
“You’d better not be repeating that,” Constance said. “Not to the police or anyone else.”
“Or what, Constance? What would you do then?” Ruth glared at her.
“Let’s not be making threats,” Barbara said. “Not to each other. That doesn’t help anyone.”
Ruth tapped the tattered paperback in front of her. Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers. “What would Lord Peter Wimsey do, is what I say.”
Barbara groaned and Constance rolled her eyes. “What on earth that means, I do not care enough to ask.”
“Lord Peter Wimsey,” Ruth said, “was . . .”
“I said,” Constance snapped, “I do not care.”
“Can I give Mattie the last piece of my bacon?” Barbara asked me.
“Sure. He’ll like that.” I left the bickering women and went in search of my dad. I found him putting the mop back in the broom closet. “When does Karla’s husband arrive?”
“Midafternoon.”
“That’s going to add to the festivities.”