Ink, Red, Dead (A Kiki Lowenstein Scrap-N-Craft Mystery)

by Slan, Joanna Campbell

  I don’t know.

  “Gee, I’d have gotten a tattoo, too, if it meant a promotion,” said Clancy when I told her the story. We worked together companionably to trace circles on paper for an upcoming Zentangle® class. “She’s our boss?”

  I lifted my shoulders and let them fall in resignation. “I guess. I’ve learned the hard way that being a minority owner doesn’t mean a thing.”

  “Prediction,” Clancy said. She waved her hands over an imaginary crystal ball. “Big mistake. Big, big mistake. I see a cloudy future, confusion, and many problems ahead for you and me both.”

  Gee, was Clancy ever right.

  Although Rebekkah was normally a sweetie, the title went straight to her head. And her head was up her butt. Which meant the title was…

  Never mind.

  Day after day, we reaped the harvest of that conciliatory move by Horace and Dodie. First when Rebekkah decided to “build community” by having us travel from home to home, and secondly whenever a problem arose. We’d been instructed to take any concerns directly to Rebekkah.

  But Rebekkah’s way of solving problems was to stick her head in the sand, wave her tail feathers in the air, and turn up the volume on her radio. That’s exactly what she did as I tried to tell her about Marla Lever.

  “Rebekkah!” I nearly shouted. “Listen! There’s a problem! You need to—”

  My plea was interrupted by a high-pitched screech as Rebekkah switched the phone line to the fax line. She would claim it was an accident. But I knew better. She’d pulled the same trick last week.

  I gave Clancy the bad news. “You got that checklist? I suppose we could go through the roster and try to call everyone ourselves. We have a few cell numbers. Most people gave us their email addresses. You could try to contact them with your Blackberry.”

  “Will do.” Clancy put on her reading glasses. They were by Versace. I put on my reading glasses. They were by Walmart. We started punching in numbers.

  But we weren’t fast enough.

  The first carload of scrapbookers arrived as we dialed. They parked in front of Marla’s house.

  “Uh oh.” When I said it, I meant it as code for “rats, dag-nab-it” or something stronger.

  Four women bailed out of Lottie Feister’s car.

  “Hi! We’re here!” Lottie waved at me. Her smile was as bright and cheery as her orange-red hair color.

  I raced to the curb with Clancy right behind me. “Um, Lottie? There’s a bit of a problem.”

  Two more cars showed up.

  Doors slammed. Three scrapbookers started toward me, hauling their Cropper-Hoppers and other suitcases on wheels. The women stood on the pavement and stared at the house. Most of their jaws were on the ground, they were so shocked by its unkempt condition.

  “This is Marla’s place?” one woman wondered.

  “We’re having our crop here?” said another.

  I stepped in front of the crowd. “Um, everybody? See, I’m very sorry to say, there’s a…we have a…”

  Clancy grabbed my shoulder and moved me aside. With a crisp clap of her hands, she said, “Listen up! Attention! Marla isn’t feeling well. We have to cancel and reschedule.”

  “Why don’t I just drop off this casserole?” One of the scrappers tried to step around Clancy.

  “No.” I blocked her way. “This might be contagious. You don’t want to go in there. Really you don’t. You can’t.”

  Another scrapper hoisted a Tupperware cupcake carrier. “I baked all last night so I could ice these this morning. I’ll just set them in her kitchen. That’s the least I can do.”

  Chapter 8

  “No!” I panicked. “That’s very nice of you, but Marla’s indisposed. Seriously. You can’t go in. Not now.”

  “Marla’s indi-what? You mean sick? Is that puke I smell? Over in the bushes?” Casserole woman outflanked me. She moved within two inches of my face and sniffed the air like a beagle. “Yeah, definitely upchuck. Who tossed her cookies?”

  Clancy had, but that wasn’t the point.

  “Marla’s not well. Sorry, we’ll have to reschedule.” I hated to admit it, but she was right. As the sun moved toward high noon, the smell of Clancy’s puke puddle grew stronger and stronger. I stuck a finger inside my collar and pulled it away from my neck, trying to get a little air on my skin.

  “If she’s sick, we need to go see how we can help.” Cupcake Lady turned a high-beam smile on me. The effort caused her multiple chins to wiggle.

  “Someone else is here,” Lottie pointed to Hadcho’s car. Fortunately, it was unmarked. Unfortunately, anyone who knew anything about cop cars would identify it as such.

  I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Any minute uniformed police would be pulling up to assist in closing down Marla’s animal hoarding operation. As would more Animal Control officers. I needed to get these women back in the car and on the road—and I needed to do it quickly.

  “Um, that’s very kind of you. Very kind. But Marla’s not doing so hot, and Clancy and I’ve already been…sick. It’s definitely catching. You don’t want to get this.” That was true. Marginally true, but true. Encouraged by my quick thinking, I added, “You’ll have to come back another day. Okay? We’ll reschedule everything.”

  “Huh. I drove here from Fenton. I live down on Gravois. Do you know the price of gas? I’m not driving all this way again. I came to scrapbook and I plan to do just that.” Lottie crossed her arms over her chest and glared at me. The other three women mimicked her gesture. Monkey see, monkey do, I guess.

  The second Animal Control van pulled up as I was talking. It was bigger than the first. Three uniformed Animal Control officers stepped out. Their expressions were grim as they hoisted nets on poles and pet carriers. An SUV from the County Health Department pulled in behind them. Followed by a squad car of uniformed officers from Ladue.

  “Hey!” said one of the scrappers. “They’re going in! All of them! Let’s see what’s happening! We can take pictures!”

  “Pictures!” squealed the other women.

  “Whoa! Stop!” Clancy and I threw out our arms in an imitation of school crossing guards. “No!”

  Cupcake Lady shoved me to one side. “Move out of my way, Kiki Lowenstein.”

  “STOP!” I yelled.

  A loud Bronx whistle split the air.

  Hadcho stomped down the concrete steps, his eyes narrow and angry, his lips twisted into a sneer. One hand rested on his belt. His jacket flapped open and his gun holster gleamed in the hot sun. With that thick black hair of his and his chiseled cheekbones, he could have been Geronimo on the warpath.

  “What part of STOP don’t you understand? She told you to stop and you didn’t listen. Did you? Huh? Ladies, either you back off or I’ll toss your butts in jail. Go away. Pronto. Are we clear? You! You with the cupcakes. Hand them over! Now!”

  Cupcake Lady’s double chin quivered, but she did as she was told. He snatched them from her and held them at his side. A whiff of chocolate danced in the air.

  “Scat! Go!” Hadcho brushed the women away. “Kiki? Clancy? Get inside. Now.”

  Chapter 9

  “You win the prize for worst day. Hands down. No contest. You might even have taken the crown for the entire week.” Detweiler said as he rubbed my dog’s ears. Gracie, a harlequin Great Dane, took up the entire left side of the couch, leaving the long-legged detective and me to huddle at the other end.

  We have this ongoing joke: “The winner of the worst day is…(cue the drumroll)….”

  The contest lightens the load by putting distance between us and crummy.

  That said, I could have passed on being today’s grand prize winner. I wanted to forget my visit to Marla Lever’s house. I tried to wipe it from my mind, but I’ll admit: a part of me was fascinated. I mean, how could she have lived like that? With all those cats? And the papers? Why wasn’t her living room filled sky high with junk, too? Why did no one notice the growing hoard of animals? How had she kept her we
ird little secret, secret, for so long? Most intriguing: What would happen next?

  “The neighbors complained off and on about the smell,” Detweiler said. “That’s about it. I guess everyone was happy to have a quiet old lady next door, one who minded her own business. Beats me what they were thinking. Maybe they weren’t thinking. We all get busy going about our lives. Maybe they didn’t notice how she was accumulating all those cats. It wasn’t like she took out a lot of trash.”

  Double ugh. Definitely not. That was part of the problem: The trash stayed IN the house.

  He continued, “Hadcho told me that Marla Lever’s daughter and son-in-law stopped by to see her at the hospital. Her son Allen showed up, too. Not that they could do much visiting since Mrs. Lever’s in a coma. There’s not much to charge her with. Animal cruelty. Breaking the city statutes. That’s the long and short of it. Unfortunately, Missouri does have any anti-hoarding laws.”

  “What did her family say?” I sipped my ice tea and chewed on a mint leaf.

  “Her daughter was livid. Went ballistic. I guess they’ve cleared out Mrs. Lever’s house twice before. Mrs. Lever told them she was getting help. Supposedly was on medication. Tofranil? I guess it was prescribed for her years ago, she quit taking it, started up again after her kids begged her. They thought she was getting better. Then this.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “This.”

  “Ali Lever Timmons lost it right there in the hospital. Threw a real tantrum. Mrs. Timmons’ brother, Allen Lever, didn’t say much. He’s a state employee up near Belleville, Illinois. Mr. and Mrs. Timmons live in Illinois, too, just across the river in O’Fallon. I gather the kids and their mother had been estranged, but started talking to Mrs. Lever after she swore she was getting help,” Detweiler said. “They asked if I knew a good cleaning service. I recommended Mert. I think she’s over there right now to see what she needs. She’ll definitely have to rent a Dumpster, and bring in a flock of helpers.”

  That meant she’d call me. Mert Chambers was my former cleaning lady and my forever best friend. These days I assisted her with her pet-sitting service and whenever she had a big cleaning job. The extra money fed Gracie, bought a few trinkets for Anya, and generally came in handy.

  “What happens next? For Marla? I mean after she gets out of the hospital? That is, if she comes out of the coma and can take care of herself?”

  That house is off limits until they get it cleared and cleaned out. Mrs. Lever can’t go back until it passes inspection. They were still rounding up cats late this afternoon,” he said.

  “How many?”

  “Eighty-three so far. Five euthanized right away. The vet at the animal shelter will determine whether another dozen can be saved. All were undernourished. Most were sick with mites, mange, feline distemper, worms, and so on. As you know, at least three of them had been dead a long time.”

  “Wow. That’s a lot of homeless cats.”

  “Cats? Did I hear there are cats that need homes?” My daughter Anya carried her gray tiger-striped kitten, Seymour, nestled against her shoulder like a mom might a baby. “Seymour would love a playmate.”

  “Uh, no.”

  “Mo—om!”

  “Honey, a pet is an expense. We can’t afford another animal right now.”

  “Maybe his parents could take them in.” She looked pointedly at Detweiler.

  “I’ll ask Mom and Dad, but—”

  He didn’t have the chance to finish. His phone, my phone, and the doorbell all started ringing at once.

  Chapter 10

  “A corpse? In the deep chest freezer? You mean an animal body, right?” I poured more coffee for Detweiler and Hadcho, then for myself. Even though it was hot outside, coffee was definitely our “think drink.” We had switched from ice tea to the hard stuff. I dropped ice chunks in mine, swirled in pink Sweet-n-Low, and added enough milk to create a concoction more coffee-flavored milkshake than strictly java.

  “No such luck. We’ve got ourselves a dead woman. When we opened the freezer, the body was there, folded up under packages of ground meat frozen in baggies,” Hadcho spoke casually, as if he dealt with this every day. But even as he spoke, his hands trembled. Hadcho was part American Indian and with the stress of the day weighing down on him, his handsome features were drawn and sharp, especially around his high cheekbones.

  I cradled my cup in my hands, and stared out the kitchen window at the pen that held Monroe (pronounced MonROE), my landlord Leighton Haversham’s donkey. Whenever Leighton left town for a book signing, I took care of Monroe and Petunia, Leighton’s pug. When Hadcho arrived, I sent Anya to check on Monroe’s water and food. Petunia and Gracie tagged along with my kid. They formed an oddly shaped trio, with Anya’s lanky colt-like frame loping toward the pen, Gracie’s solid Great Dane body prancing on spindly legs, and Petunia waddling behind, her sausage-shaped body punctuated by that silly curl of a tail.

  The chore might keep Anya busy for a half an hour.

  My method of diversion wasn’t subtle; I’ll admit. But Anya didn’t need all the gory details of what I now mentally labeled “The Marla Lever Case.”

  Details that turned the ruddy-skinned Hadcho whiter than my porcelain coffee cups.

  “That new patrolman, what’s his name? Lambert. He screwed up. I told him to look everywhere.” Hadcho paused a second, gathered his thoughts, sipped his coffee. “He says he opened the chest, but he didn’t rummage around. Didn’t look carefully. Saw packages of frozen food and slammed the lid.”

  “Ugh.” I glanced at my own freezer, about the size of a shoebox. No bodies there! No red meat, either. A.) I couldn’t afford it. B.) My daughter had become a chick-a-terian. That was our word for “a person who only eats chicken and no other meat.”

  Since Anya tends to be too thin, I hoped and prayed she would never meet a chicken, close up and personal, so she wouldn’t harbor compunctions about having one for dinner. As in, on her plate, not over a house guest.

  Detweiler leaned against my kitchen counter, crossed his long legs at the ankles, and stirred his drink slowly. “With all that mess it would be easy to overlook something. Get real, Stan. I saw the pictures when the crime investigation team got back to the station. Mrs. Lever packed stuff in every nook and cranny. Junk was stacked to the ceiling, too. So Lambert missed something in the freezer. Big deal. You hadn’t released the scene.”

  “No, I hadn’t. But I had escorted the cleaning lady—what’s her name—through so she could get an idea what she’d be dealing with.”

  “Mert.” I checked my cell phone. “Mert called me. I guess I better call her back.”

  “Yeah, that cleaning lady, Mert Chambers. She and I did a walk through. She asked me if I’d emptied out the freezer. I told her we hadn’t, not yet. She made me look. Said she didn’t want any nasty surprises when she unplugged it. I opened it and shuffled a few packages around. Moved a couple bags of frozen ground hamburger to one side and found myself staring down at the top of a head.”

  “Who was it? I mean, who’s the dead person?” I knew I shouldn’t ask. I shouldn’t have been included in this conversation, and as soon as Hadcho came to his senses, he’d realize that.

  “We don’t know who it was. That’s up to the crime scene people. I didn’t fish around for an ID because I didn’t want to mess up the crime scene for the techs. You couldn’t tell who it was by looking. That for sure. The face had been beaten to a pulp.”

  “Blech.” I gagged a little. “Totally gross.”

  “Geez, I forgot. You’re a civilian.”

  Hadcho poured himself another cup. He took his coffee black. I can’t understand that. Coffee smells a lot better than it tastes, usually.

  “Proud of it, too.” I excused myself. “I’m going to call Mert back. She phoned the same time you banged on the door.”

  “Tell her thanks a lot for messing up my crime scene.” Hadcho gave my kitchen chair a little kick.

  I’d had enough of his whining. “Listen up, pal. Mert
saved you a lot of grief. She’s a professional. She’s good at her job. So your flunkie didn’t do his. Woop-de-do. Mert did hers. Quit complaining about her. You ought to be telling her thanks.”

  Detweiler walked over to my kitchen window and checked on Anya. He turned and smiled at me, reading my mind. “She’s fine. She’s giving Monroe a tummy rub.”

  “What’d you mean tell your pal thanks?” Hadcho wrinkled his brow.

  “What if we had unplugged the freezer and didn’t get back to it? What if stuff started to defrost? Would have been a lot harder to process, wouldn’t it? Better for the killer though.” I wasn’t sure about that, but I’d had enough experience with appliances on the blink that I could imagine the mess.

  “You mean better for Mrs. Lever. Her house. Her freezer. Probably her victim,” Hadcho said.

  “That’s a leap. She hoards cats and she’s a little off, but a killer?” I rinsed out my mug.

  “Kiki is right,” Detweiler said. “We don’t know that Mrs. Lever is a killer. Whether she is or isn’t, we’re lucky Kiki stumbled on her, lying there in her bedroom. She and her kids have an on-again off-again type of relationship. Who knows how long it would have taken for someone to report Mrs. Lever missing? Then we’d be stuck with a corpse in the bedroom and a human Popsicle in the freezer. When the power company turned off her electricity—which would have happened eventually—our corpse would have turned to goop.”

  “I bet goop is hard to identify. Compared to a human Popsicle, that is,” I said.

  “All right already! Kiki and her friend did us a favor. Satisfied? I’ll play nicely. Although I feel like we’re spinning our wheels until we get an ID on the body,” Hadcho said. “Once we do, we can ask around and see who saw our victim last. Maybe the guys in the lab can help us figure out when he or she died.”

  Detweiler addressed Hadcho. “You’ve checked with the hospital? What’s up with Mrs. Lever?”

  “The docs figure it for a stroke, aggravated by heat prostration and dehydration. No telling why her A/C unit quit.”