Importance of Being Urnest

by Sandra Balzo

  The rehab wing was to the left when you entered the building and the residential one was to the right. I knew Sophie and Henry’s apartment was on the ground floor of the residential wing and had a door leading to a small patio facing the Poplar Creek woods. I had to assume Jack Andersen’s set-up was the same, meaning he could have taken Pauly’s body out that way and avoided the communal hallway and lobby.

  As I went to lock the car, I hesitated, eyeing the ice cream on the passenger seat. It was already softening up. I probably should have dropped it off at my place but I’d been too busy talking to Sophie as I’d passed. Maybe I would take it in with me. If Vickie was home, I could stash it in her freezer as we talked.

  I was in luck. As I stepped into the lobby, Vickie was coming out of the small store which also served as the post office.

  ‘Maggy,’ she said, seeing me. ‘Why are you carrying two cartons of ice cream?’

  ‘I didn’t want to leave it in the car but I needed to ask you a few things.’ I glanced out of the lobby window and saw Jack Andersen walking through the parking lot toward the entrance. ‘Could I stick these in your freezer so they don’t melt?’

  ‘I guess so.’ She looked none too sure that she wanted to talk to me, much less store my frozen treats. ‘But I don’t know that I can help you.’

  I was pretty sure she could. What I wasn’t sure about was whether she would. I did know, though, that if I had any chance of prying any information out of her, I had to keep her away from Andersen.

  ‘Can we get it in right now?’ I asked, making a show of juggling the cartons. ‘It’s going to drip all over.’

  ‘I guess so,’ she said again, leading me down the hallway. We passed Sophie and Henry’s number nine. There were bullet holes in the walls across from ten, so no question who lived there. Each hole was circled and numbered.

  I noticed Vickie didn’t look at them as we passed, instead searching through her purse. ‘I know the key is in here somewhere.’

  Finding it, she turned the key in the lock and I made it in just as Jack rounded the corner. Hopefully he was just heading to his apartment next door and hadn’t seen us. If he had and had something to hide – something he didn’t want Vickie to share – we wouldn’t have much time.

  ‘Sorry the place is such a mess.’ She pushed some foil and a plastic bag aside to get at the microwave, which was flashing 12:00. ‘The electricity must have gone off last night.’

  ‘I’m not surprised – it really stormed. You weren’t here?’

  She finished resetting the clock. ‘I’ve slept here all of two nights in the last month. Jack and I are talking about my giving it up and moving in with him.’

  ‘This is it?’ I put the two cartons down on the kitchen table. ‘You’re in love?’

  If doubt does have a shadow, I saw it cross her face.

  ‘Now why didn’t I put these dishes away?’ she scolded herself, plucking silverware from the dish drainer next to the sink and opening the drawer to put it away.

  She was nervous, but with Jack in the hallway I didn’t have the time to schmooze her. ‘So do you think you’re in love? Is that why you’re sticking with him against your better instincts?’

  ‘Maggy, it’s sweet of you to be worried about me but you need to just … stop.’ She pulled a large serrated knife out of the drawer and brandished it. ‘For your own good.’

  I backed up. ‘What are you going to do with that?’

  ‘This?’ She looked at the knife like she hadn’t realized she’d been holding it.

  Yes, that. The big-ass frozen food knife in your hand. ‘Please put it back in the drawer before you cut yourself.’ And, more importantly, me.

  ‘Uh-uh.’ She gestured with the knife for me to move away from the table.

  I stayed where I was. ‘Pavlik knows I’m here.’

  ‘So?’ The gesture again, the tip of the knife drawing a circle in the air.

  I say tip, but the one on this knife was a two-pronged stabby doo-hickey. I had a feeling it would hurt. More. ‘I told him your Soul was in the parking lot. He wondered whether Jack has been using it?’

  Vickie seemed surprised and the knife dipped a bit. ‘Occasionally.’

  ‘Any odd … smells?’

  ‘Smells?’ Her nose wrinkled. ‘You and your imagination. It’s amusing when you’re talking about somebody else, but I must say you’re getting downright annoying. Now will you move?’

  This time I did, sliding right toward the patio door. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m not going anywhere,’ she said. ‘Jack will be here any minute.’

  ‘Vickie, please—’

  ‘I can’t believe you think he killed his brother. Not that life wouldn’t be simpler without Pauly around.’ She shook her head.

  Yeah, murderous future in-laws are a bitch. ‘You heard what Pavlik said at the funeral. He believes Pauly is dead. And Pavlik is no fool.’

  ‘No, unfortunately he’s not.’ Vickie was thinking.

  It was better than stabbing me. ‘He knows that you picked Jack up at the bus station in Milwaukee.’

  That startled her. ‘How does he know that?’

  ‘He’s the sheriff.’ I said it simply, the implication being that Pavlik was all-seeing and all-knowing. Like, for example, he saw that Vickie had a knife and knew to send in the troops.

  Though, at the moment, the sheriff had no troops. I decided to ignore the knife and play it the way I would with my friend Vickie, who I believed was being duped. ‘What was Jack doing at the bus station anyway?’

  ‘Well, that’s where they dropped him off, of course, after they questioned him.’

  ‘Who?’ I’d noticed a panic button – the kind Sophie had been grousing about – on the other side of the refrigerator/freezer. I’d have to reverse course to reach it.

  ‘Your sheriff’s detectives, of course. Jack texted me after all the ruckus that they had a few questions and he was going to the station with them.’

  I ignored the reference to the double shooting as a ruckus. ‘The bus station?’

  ‘No, of course not. The sheriff’s station.’

  ‘But Pavlik’s detectives are with the Brookhills County Sheriff’s Department west of here. Why would they drop him fifteen miles east at the Milwaukee bus station?’

  ‘Why … I don’t know.’ Vickie’s eyes were uncertain and even her Botox couldn’t keep her brow from furrowing this time.

  I shook my head. ‘That’s not what happened, Vickie. Jack stole Gloria Goddard’s car and drove it to the station to make it look like Pauly had abandoned it there.’

  ‘Stop, Maggy. I don’t want to hurt you.’

  I froze as, with one swift movement, she lifted the knife …

  And plunged it into the knife block on the counter to my left.

  I put my hand up over my heart, which was thumping wildly. ‘You … umm, you just wanted to put the knife away.’

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t belong in the silverware drawer. What did you think I was doing?’

  She didn’t want to know. But maybe I should tell her anyway. ‘I thought you were going to stab me.’

  Her eyes went wide and filled with tears. ‘I would never hurt you. I never meant to hurt anybody.’

  Odd way of putting it. ‘What do you mean, Vickie? Who got hurt?’

  ‘It was only meant to be temporary, you understand? I—’ She was nervously moving between the kitchen table and the refrigerator and back again. ‘Oh, dear. Your ice cream is melting all over the table. Let me just put them—’

  ‘Leave them,’ I said. ‘And tell me what was meant to be temporar—’ A knock at the door interrupted me.

  ‘Vickie?’ Jack’s voice called. ‘Are you home?’

  ‘We need to leave,’ I whispered to Vickie. ‘Now.’

  ‘But what about the ice cream?’ she asked, lowering her voice to match mine. ‘Do you still want me to put it in the freezer?’


  ‘Vickie.’ I put out my hand as she picked up the Madagascar vanilla. ‘We’re going out the patio door. You won’t have to explain. He’ll never know we were in here.’

  ‘Fine,’ she said, not looking toward the door where Jack stood on the other side. ‘But first let me—’

  She swung open the freezer door and dropped the vanilla.

  Pauly Andersen’s head was staring back at us, wrapped in aluminum foil.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  My first thought was that Pauly must not have fit into the zip-lock.

  My second was get the hell out of there.

  Vickie was still staring open mouthed at Pauly and he at her. She moved first, backing away as Jack knocked on the door again. ‘Vickie, sweetheart? Can I come in, baby?’

  I grabbed her arm. ‘Does he have a key?’

  She nodded but I could have answered the question myself. The key was already turning in the lock.

  ‘Come on.’ I pulled her toward the patio door.

  She resisted. ‘We have to call for help.’

  You think? ‘No time. We can’t get caught in here with him.’

  ‘But—’

  Enough. I yanked her toward the door as the hall door swung open. Jack Andersen may have been all sweetheart and baby for the benefit of people in the hallway, but as he moved into the room and took in the still-open freezer door, he slipped a gun from his waistband.

  Parole violation, of course. But nothing compared to stashing a foil-wrapped bro-head in the freezer. ‘Don’t move.’

  I’d learned many things from Pavlik. One of them was never obey a bad guy. The second was never let them get you alone. Third was that it’s tougher to hit a moving target than a stationary one.

  So I moved. One hand still on Vickie, I flipped the lock on the slider and tugged.

  I’d assumed Vickie would keep it locked, so I was unlocking it.

  I was wrong. Or maybe Jack, being a killer, had left it open in case he needed a little fresh air as he was sawing apart his brother with the frozen food knife.

  ‘Jack,’ Vickie said, like the man didn’t have a gun in his hand. ‘I was just showing Maggy the patio.’

  I flipped the lock the other way.

  ‘Nice try, but you forgot to close the freezer.’ He gestured at Pauly with his gun.

  With one movement, I slung open the door and used that momentum to sling Vickie out like a game of crack the whip.

  She went flying across the patio and onto the grass. I was halfway out the door when a hand gripped my arm.

  ‘Maggy!’ I heard Vickie scream.

  ‘Run!’ I told her as he dragged me back in.

  ‘Couldn’t mind your own business, could you?’

  Cliché. And though it probably wasn’t the right time, I said, ‘Cliché, much?’

  ‘What?’

  He shoved me against the kitchen counter and I flinched as the edge bit into my hip. ‘Couldn’t I mind my own business? C’mon, Jack. You’re a con man, Jack. Can’t you do better? Even your glass house and rocks was more original than that.’

  ‘And yet you ignored it.’

  ‘I did.’ I was inching away from him in the direction of the refrigerator.

  ‘Stop moving.’ He was following me, gun pointed at my chest. The pistol was a semi-automatic like the one Pavlik carried and I saw no silencer. Which meant Jack would rather not shoot me right here. I kept going.

  When my foot touched the ice-cream carton on the floor, I kicked it toward him and made my move for the panic button, slapping it hard.

  Nothing happened.

  Andersen’s hand grabbed my shoulder.

  Truly panicked now, thanks to the non-functioning panic button, I gave Andersen a hard shove, hoping the ice cream on the floor had melted sufficiently.

  It had.

  Jack Andersen took one backward step and then skidded. He was hitting the floor as I high-tailed it through the door into the hall and pulled the fire alarm.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  ‘Those panic buttons don’t work,’ I told Sophie, who’d come out of her apartment when the fire alarm went off. We were sitting on a picnic bench, watching the county’s big crime-scene van pull up.

  There was a freezer full of evidence for them to collect.

  ‘Those things buzz in the office,’ Sophie said. ‘What did you think? They go off like the fire alarm just did? You’d give people heart attacks.’

  ‘Even more heart attacks,’ Vickie said, joining us.

  I was hoping I hadn’t done that. Though I thought maybe I could be excused. ‘Detective Hallonquist finished with you?’

  ‘For now,’ she said. ‘He doesn’t seem to think I had anything to do with Pauly and the …’

  ‘Dismembering,’ Sophie supplied. ‘How in the world did that man kill, butcher and package his brother in your apartment without you knowing?’

  ‘He said he had to use the bathroom,’ Vickie said. ‘And don’t you look at me like that, Sophie Daystrom. You said yourself how hard it is to get by with the one bathroom in these units. And you know how men are.’

  ‘I’ll give you that,’ Sophie said. ‘Can’t jackhammer Henry off that toilet sometimes.’

  Interesting, but I was thinking about Jack Andersen being led off in handcuffs, one pants leg creamed with Madagascar vanilla …

  ‘What are you smiling about?’ This voice was Pavlik’s.

  I stood up and hugged him as Vickie and Sophie thoughtfully moved to the next table. ‘How did you get here? You’re not supposed to drive.’

  ‘Hallonquist picked me up. Are you all right?’

  ‘I’m fine. But Jack Andersen is one bad dude. I never should have come here alone.’

  Now Pavlik laughed. ‘You’re saying that so I can’t say it first?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘Well, I wasn’t going to. You had no reason to think you’d be in danger talking to Vickie here at the manor. And who knew he’d stashed his brother’s body in the fridge?’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, my nose wrinkling. ‘Not just the freezer?’

  ‘’Fraid not,’ Pavlik said. ‘Pauly was a big boy. He’s even in the crisper.’

  ‘Meat-keeper?’

  ‘A little.’ Pavlik held up his thumb and index finger, about two inches apart.

  I laughed. ‘Pauly dead and Jack, I assume, going away for a very long time. I’m good with that.’ I chin-gestured to where Vickie and Sophie had been joined by Henry. ‘What about Vickie? Will she face accessory charges?’

  ‘It’ll depend on where the investigation takes us. And what Jack tells us.’

  ‘Do you think he’ll try to pin it on her?’ I hadn’t thought of that.

  ‘Andersen is slick,’ Pavlik said. ‘But don’t worry; he’s not going to get a deal on this.’

  ‘I still don’t understand what he thought I had to hide,’ I said. ‘I suppose I should have asked him that.’

  ‘While he was holding a gun on you?’ Pavlik said. ‘That kind of thing only happens in movies. Or books.’

  Right. Along with being framed by a pillowcase. ‘Did you ever find out from the coroner if Nancy was wearing lipstick?’

  Pavlik’s head jerked quizzically. ‘What made you think of that?’

  ‘I don’t know – loose ends? Remaining murderers on the loose?’

  I wasn’t sure Pavlik was buying it but he answered anyway. ‘Nancy Casperson was wearing lipstick, though no other makeup.’

  ‘Was the lipstick smeared?’

  ‘Wildly. But she was smothered, so that’s not surprising. Aren’t you going to ask me if we found the pillowcase?’

  I made my eyes widen. ‘Did you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You keep saying “we.” Did something happen on the inquiry?’

  Pavlik’s face darkened a tinge. ‘Just old habit. I’m still on leave.’

  ‘With Jack in jail and Vickie out from under his thumb, I’m sure she’ll drop whatever complaint she filed.’

  ‘We�
��ll see,’ Pavlik said, rolling his shoulder back and forth. ‘Are you ready to leave?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said, standing up. ‘Let’s stop and get ice cream on the way home.’

  TWENTY-NINE

  I opened the next day. Despite it being Monday, I knew the core of the Goddard Gang planned to show up, likely thinking they’d get the lowdown on what happened yesterday from the horse’s mouth. Me being the horse.

  Meanwhile, I’d been doing some thinking of my own and had decided the gang’s attendance would save me the trouble of rounding up the suspects.

  And, yes, I know that only happens in books.

  Christy was the first to arrive. ‘Are you coming to Nancy’s service?’

  ‘Wouldn’t miss it,’ I said truthfully. ‘What time is it scheduled?’

  ‘One-thirty. Mort let me help with the cremation yesterday. The sweeping and packaging.’

  ‘Congratulations,’ I said. ‘How did it go?’

  She looked around the empty store before answering in a low voice. ‘Challenging. At the last moment we were told implant removal was needed.’

  ‘What?’

  She leaned over the counter and whispered. ‘Silicone. Thank God it was caught in time.’

  I’d bent over to hear her and now straightened up in surprise. ‘Nancy had breast implants?’

  ‘Yes,’ Christy said. ‘Nobody told us or we would have removed them earlier.’

  ‘Then you must have removed Celeste’s, too.’

  ‘Celeste? No, she didn’t have breast implants.’

  Nor a communicable disease that would have required disposing of the body before the forty-eight-hour waiting period. Interesting.

  Christy left for work before the rest of the gang showed up. First, Mort and Hannah, then Vickie – blissfully single – and Henry and Sophie. I was about to convene my planned meeting of the murder club when Father Jim arrived.

  Vickie jumped up. ‘I want to confess.’

  I thought a priest would take confession in stride, but Jim backed up a pace. ‘Excuse me?’

  I had an inkling of what was coming, since Vickie had started to confess to me before all hell broke out with Jack.