“Any ladders?”
“I didn’t notice any.”
He nodded and closed his notebook.
“Thanks, Catherine. That confirms what other witnesses have said. Oh, one more thing. Did you notice anything about her face when you saw her on Tuesday?”
“Her face?”
“Yeah.”
“No.”
“No bruises or anything?”
“No. She looked fine. A little heavy on the makeup for my taste, but nothing like what you’re suggesting.” Her nostrils flared then. She sniffed, grabbed a long wooden spoon, and took the lid off the stew. “Just in time,” she said, stirring down to the bottom of the kettle. Fred’s mouth watered.
“Thanks again,” he said. “By the way, did you happen to mention any of this to anyone else?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Maybe the quilts on the floor?”
“Oh, that. Sure, I said something to one of those women with the white gloves. They act as if the mere smell of food would hurt their precious quilts, but I told them that the Elletts had theirs lying right on the floor.” She looked at his face, and her own changed from satisfaction to horror. “Fred, she wasn’t—I mean—Oh, no!”
“Thank you for your help, Catherine. I really appreciate it.” And he dragged himself away, keeping it cool. Just in time, he thought. Another minute and I’d be tempted to say anything you want to hear, just to taste that stew.
Silver and Gold
Her will is straightforward, Lieutenant,” Mary Sue Ellett’s young lawyer was telling Fred across a splendid mahogany desk in front of an impressive shelf of leather-bound volumes. His prematurely bald head gleamed above his bulging vest. “She made a couple of small bequests to charity. After that, she left everything evenly divided between her brother and her sister, with the understanding that they would care for their mother if she was still living.”
“Which she wasn’t.” Fred leaned forward in the comfortable leather chair.
“No.”
“Do you have an estimate of Mary Sue’s estate?”
“No. I understand that there’s some question about her mother’s will.”
“Assuming for the moment that she inherited nothing?”
The lawyer made a tent with his fingers and puckered his lips.
“Counting her house and her retirement plan, I’d estimate it in the vicinity of a hundred fifty thousand dollars.”
Fred thought he could make moderate hay out of 150K, or even half that. It might not mean much to Alice and her CPA husband, but he was reasonably sure Leon would love nothing better than to lay his hands on that kind of money.
“Fairly liquid, would you say?”
“Not really. It will all have to go through probate, of course. But there was only a small savings account. The house will take a while to sell. Oliver’s a slow market, and—well, frankly, the place will need some going over.”
Shoveling out, Fred guessed, and grinned.
“The lady was quite a pack rat, wasn’t she?”
The lawyer stiffened.
“I’m sure I didn’t say that.”
“No, you didn’t need to.” Fred smoothed his ruffled feathers. “And you haven’t told me yet whether you drew up her mother’s will.”
“No, Mrs. Ellett never dealt with this firm.”
“You don’t know who did?”
“I can’t help you there.” The lawyer considered the ceiling. “You’re not the first person to ask.”
Fred wanted to strangle him for his professional coyness.
“Mary Sue, of course.”
“No.”
“Is her brother also your client? Or her sister?” Do I have to pull this out of you inch by inch?
“No.”
“Did they ask about her will?”
“Mrs. Ellett’s?”
“Yes.” Fred gripped the arms of the chair and worked at not clenching his teeth. “Mrs. Ellett’s.”
“Only after my client’s death. As per her previous instructions, I contacted them and notified them of the provisions of her will. They naturally asked about her estate, but I couldn’t tell them any more than I could tell you.”
“Only those two?”
“Oh, no.” He moved a pencil an inch to the right, lining it up with the edge of his immaculate blotter. Give me patience, Fred thought.
“Suppose you tell me about all the rest.”
“There was only one other, a Mrs. Graf.” Kitty, the cousin. Of course.
“She was present when you read Mary Sue’s will?”
“No. This was after Mrs. Ellett died.” Fred felt his eyebrows shooting up. For once, the lawyer answered what he didn’t ask. “That’s right, Lieutenant. She was making inquiries about the old lady’s will last week.”
Rebecca met Joan at the front door in cutoffs and bare feet.
“Your sleazeball boyfriend called.”
“Rebecca!”
“I’m sorry, Mom.” Rebecca shut the door and followed her into the living room. “I wasn’t going to stick my nose in again. But I couldn’t shut him up at first. And then I couldn’t help leading him on. I’d been wondering just how much he’d admit to beyond kiting checks.”
I suppose there are worse ways to find out what Leon’s up to, Joan thought. Nudging her shoes off with her toes, she tossed her bag on the floor and flopped onto the old sofa, waiting.
Nothing.
Her eyes, which had closed as if she’d given them permission, opened again.
“So?”
“So you can’t resist wanting to know, can you? Any more than I could.”
“Okay, okay.” Joan tossed a sofa pillow at her. It fell short. “What did you find out?” Rebecca grinned back from the safety of the overstuffed chair across the room.
“Enough to know I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him. He wants to take you out to dinner again and explain it all to you in person.”
“I’ll just bet he does. Rebecca, I don’t think I could bear another minute with any member of that family.”
“Maybe you should.” Rebecca was suddenly serious. “I’ll bet you’d learn a lot more from him than the cops will.”
“They’re going to have to do it without me. Honestly, Rebecca, I’m all in. Did Leon tell you anything at all, or just raise your hackles?”
“Oh, he told me, all right.” Rebecca padded across the floor and perched on the arm at the far end of the sofa, facing her. “He’s running a mortgage interest reduction service—at least, that’s what he calls it.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s a scam. You know, the kind of thing where someone offers to sell you money-saving tax tips for only nineteen ninety-nine, and when you pay, all you get is the 1040 instruction booklet?”
“People do that?”
“You’d be amazed. Leon’s only a little subtler, but he’ll make a lot more than nineteen ninety-nine a sucker.”
“How do you know?” Joan sat up straight.
“It’s one of the top-ten scams we hear about at the bank. Guys like Leon find out you’re buying a house. They approach you, usually over the phone, with a great way to save you thousands of dollars on your mortgage payments. They’ll make your payments for you twice a month instead of once a month, see, and all you have to do is pay them a monthly service fee—and one big payment up front.”
“So it doesn’t save me a thing?”
“Actually, it does. You save interest on the loan by paying half your payment early every month, and it mounts up fast. Even with the outrageous fees these guys charge, you do save thousands over the long haul, just the way they say.”
“Then it’s not a scam.”
“It’s not illegal, as long as Leon actually makes the payments. Just unethical. I mean, you could do it yourself without paying him a red cent, and save thousands more. Depending on the lender, you could probably pay twice monthly, the way he says he’ll do. Or just add the fee you
’d be paying Leon to your check every time you make a monthly payment. Or pay an extra monthly payment once a year or so.”
“So it really is like buying something the IRS would send me free.”
“Exactly. He never would have described it to me so beautifully if he’d known I worked in a bank. I think he was playing me both ways—as your daughter and as a possible home buyer. Once he found out I wasn’t paying on a mortgage myself, he was more interested in telling you about it.”
Joan laughed out loud and fell back against the cushions.
“I take it you didn’t mention that Grandma and Grandpa Zimmerman left me this house free and clear.”
“Did they?” Rebecca looked surprised. “Is that why you moved here?”
“It was a powerful inducement. What did you tell Leon?”
“Oh, I said I didn’t know when you’d be home, and he said he’d try again around five.”
“Thanks, Becca.” She felt her eyelids drooping. “I should be asleep long before then. You wouldn’t want to wake me.” He sure fooled me, she thought. And then she didn’t think at all.
The smell of curry filled her nose when she woke. In the darkening kitchen she found generous leftovers still warm enough to eat, and dug in. The curried rice tasted wonderful—she hadn’t realized how hungry she was. Slowing down at last, she flicked on the table lamp and read a note: “Told Leon you were out like a light. Enjoy supper. R.”
Leon. His name evoked a sadness that surprised her. It’s not the first time I’ve been bamboozled, she thought. So why does it bother me so much? But she knew why. In spite of recognizing what Rebecca called his sleaze, she had been attracted to the big man. I didn’t expect him to be honest, she told herself. But I didn’t think he’d pull anything on me. Bamboozled is one thing. Betrayed is another.
She ran cold water over her plate and fork and tried to throw cold water on her emotions. Not only can I not trust Leon, I can’t trust my own judgment.
Sure you can, a little voice inside told her. You never did trust Leon. You just didn’t think he lied all the time.
Maybe he doesn’t, she answered herself. But I thought I could tell when he would, and now I know I can’t.
So how do I know he didn’t kill Mary Sue? Could someone who doesn’t quite break the law, but who doesn’t mind cheating a woman he’s attracted to, go from that to cold-blooded murder? Or was he attracted to me? Was that just as cold-blooded?
She shivered and turned off the water, leaving her plate to soak with the pot and the other dishes already in the sink.
Still, she thought, why would Leon pick the quilt show? He could get to Mary Sue anytime. Unless he was in a big hurry—what was it he said he needed money for? I wish I’d listened better. I wonder whom Mary Sue left hers to. And how much she had to leave.
It felt like the middle of the night, but the curry had still been warm. Joan wasn’t surprised when her digital clock radio displayed only eight o’clock. Lying on the bed, she dug in her handbag for Fred’s card and dialed his home number.
“Yeah,” he answered, sounding the way she had felt three hours earlier.
“Fred, it’s Joan. Have you eaten?” Listen to me, she thought.
“If you could call it that.”
“I can recommend what’s left of Rebecca’s curry. And I’ve learned something disturbing about Leon Ellett.”
“Five minutes be too soon?”
She laughed.
“Not if you don’t care what anything looks like.”
“Hell, no.”
Resisting the temptation to smooth the bedspread or check the state of the living room, she reheated the curry and brewed a pot of coffee. Then she set a kettle on the stove, too, in case he’d prefer tea with curry.
She answered the doorbell in stocking feet.
Kitty Corner
She fed him first. Sitting across the kitchen table, watching him savor the curry she, too, had found delicious, she was grateful again to Rebecca. Now, she thought, do I tell her she cooked supper for “my cop”? Probably not. But she told Fred.
“Thing is, if you’d asked me a week ago what Rebecca could cook, I wouldn’t have known what to say after hot dogs. She left home so young, and not even faintly interested in anything so domestic.”
He just nodded and held out his plate for seconds. Finally, she refilled their coffee, and they carried the mugs into the living room.
“So,” he said from the big chair. “You had something to tell me about Leon Ellett?”
Joan, curled in the corner of the sofa, laid Leon’s scam out to him as Rebecca had explained it to her, not exaggerating its wickedness, but wanting him to understand what it meant to her.
“Fred, he took me out. Rebecca would say he was coming on to me, but he was actually kind of sweet and shy and awkward. He courted me. So help me, it felt completely genuine. The old ladies saw through him, though. I should have believed them. He not only took me out—he took me in.”
“At least you didn’t lose anything,” Fred said. “And he hasn’t broken any laws.”
She leaned forward urgently.
“No, but this changes what I told you about the Ellett family. At the funeral home Leon was Mr. Generosity, standing up against his mean sisters when it came to letting poor Kitty stay on in Edna’s house. I don’t know whether he put that act on for her benefit or mine, or maybe just out of habit, but I wouldn’t give two cents for Kitty’s chances now.”
“You’re probably right. Still, odds are that no one’s going to own that house free and clear for quite some time. Looking good in the meantime is no skin off his nose.”
“Right. But I can’t help wondering …” She hesitated.
“What?”
“I don’t know what Leon’s mysterious land deals are all about, or whether they’re real at all. But I do know he was really upset last week at not being able to get at his mother’s money. And now, with Mary Sue out of the way, only Alice is likely to be standing between him and whatever Edna left all of them—unless maybe she left something to Kitty. What if Leon decided he needed more than his share?” You’d make a lousy poker player, she thought, watching Fred’s eyebrows.
“You’re serious.” Now he was staring at her. She nodded.
“I know I’m mad at him, Fred. But I’m more than mad. I’m afraid he’s dangerous.” There. She’d said it. She felt her body relax.
“I’ll keep him in mind,” Fred said. “Leon was looking for Mrs. Ellett’s will last week. But you’ll be interested to know he wasn’t the only one. Kitty Graf was asking lawyers about it.”
“Kitty?” It hardly seemed likely. Kitty had been worried about survival, though, now that the family didn’t need her to care for Edna. “Who told you that?”
“Mary Sue’s lawyer. We’re checking the other law firms, and the insurance agents, for that matter. You don’t happen to know whether Edna was insured, do you? Or Mary Sue?”
“It never came up. But Edna must have had at least some insurance. For all their squabbling, no one was complaining about the expense of her funeral.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“They didn’t agree about a will, though. Seems to me at one point Leon said she didn’t leave one at all, and Alice said she did. She said Kitty thought so. I don’t know whether Kitty did, or that’s just what Alice wanted me to hear. They made sure she was out of the room before they talked about it—at least it seemed that way. Someone else this week was certain she did leave one, though. I think someone at the center.”
“What did Edna die of?” he asked suddenly.
“Flu, Alice said at Snarr’s. Made worse by her diabetes. Kitty would know more—she was there.”
“She the only one there?”
“Of the family? I think so. Why?”
“No witnesses?” He started to pace, swinging the empty mug between finger and thumb.
“How would I know? They must have had the doctor. Fred, what are you talking about?” She watched h
im, fascinated.
“It wouldn’t be the first time someone was helped along a little.”
“Ohhh.” Why does the thought of Leon killing his mother bother me even more than thinking that he might have done in Mary Sue? “Leon?”
“Kitty, if she was the only one there.” He walked faster. “She could have smothered her with a plastic bag—the carbon dioxide buildup would affect a diabetic fast. It crossed my mind when I saw Mary Sue under that plastic—until we rolled her over.”
“Mary Sue was diabetic?” Joan was trying to catch up.
“Her body type was right for it—but that’s not how she died. And this much later, I doubt that we’d ever be able to establish whether that’s what did in her mother, even if we exhumed the body.”
“Fred, that’s outrageous!” It burst from her, and she jumped up. “Kitty wouldn’t have killed Edna.”
“Why not?”
“You should have seen them together. Besides, if you want cold, hard motives, killing Edna would have put her out of a job.”
“And possibly gained her a house—without the trouble of working to keep it. Though, if you’re right about Leon, Mary Sue wasn’t the only one who stood in her way. I don’t know how she would have planned to get rid of Alice.”
“But to kill for it?” Joan was toe to toe with him now, and too mad to enjoy it. “Fred, you’re way off. You didn’t see her after Edna died. She was devastated.”
“All right, you’ve convinced me,” Fred said, dropping it abruptly and staring her down. “Try this, then. She didn’t plan to kill anyone—she went at those quilts with scissors, in revenge against the whole family. And Mary Sue caught her at it.”
“That’s the first sensible thing you’ve said.” She sank back onto the sofa. “But Leon still fits a lot better than Kitty. Only it wouldn’t have been for revenge. They were all hunting for Edna’s will. They probably figured she lost it, but maybe she hid it, instead. She was more than forgetful—she was losing charge of her own life. She had to have known it. She may have wanted to be sure that her children wouldn’t destroy her will. Leon would have, for sure, unless it left him more than his fair share. And what better place to hide a piece of paper than inside a quilt? Did I tell you about the note she tucked into the orchestra quilt?”
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