by Mary Daheim
“Sure. All the time.” Dooley gave Judith a sheepish grin. “Did you say Joe? Lieutenant Joe Flynn, right?”
Judith turned her back on Dooley, ostensibly organizing the refrigerator. “Right.” She pulled out what was left of the crab balls, sniffed, and emptied them in the garbage under the sink.
“What’s the matter, Mrs. McMonigle? Don’t you like him? I thought he was kind of a cool dude. I mean, for his age and all.”
Judith didn’t answer right away. Asking her if she liked Joe Flynn was like asking a drought-ravaged region if it wanted rain. But Dooley was too young to understand. Deliberately, she turned around and eyed Dooley on the level. “Yes. I like Joe Flynn. He’s a good cop. So is the guy who works with him, Woody Price. I don’t suppose you could tell from the CB who was sent up to SOTS?”
“Naw.” Dooley took a big drink from his pop can. “They just give unit numbers and stuff. I haven’t memorized all those yet. Hey, what did you do to your hair? You spill paint on it or something?”
Judith shot Dooley a baleful look, then gave a start as she heard a noise above her head. The Rankers’s relatives, maybe, or Gertrude. So far, she had seen little of her guests, who seemed to be mainly in the twenty-to-thirty age category, and married to each other. Their children, presumably the same crew that had butchered Pooh Bear, were staying in the Rankers’s basement, which struck Judith as a good idea, as long as there was no reform school available.
But it was the butchering of Sandy Frizzell that stunned Judith. She finished restocking the liquor cupboard and sat down across from Dooley. “I still can’t believe it. I must have talked to Sandy just a few minutes before she…” Judith swallowed hard, remembering the golden hair and the nervous mannerisms and the heavy makeup. Now Sandy was no more than a memory. “Delicate” was the word Kate Duffy had used in reference to her. Perhaps that was an accurate assessment, but John Frizzell’s description of his wife as “high-strung” seemed nearer the mark. In any event, Sandy certainly hadn’t died from natural causes.
Judith’s thoughts were interrupted by the sound of Gertrude thumping down the back stairs. Dooley gulped his pop and announced that he’d better get home. Knowing that Gertrude and the paperboy had a rocky history, Judith wasn’t surprised when Dooley opted to leave via the front entrance.
“I think I’ll call that Flynn dude,” Dooley said on his way out. “Maybe he’ll let me look for evidence. Explorers get to do that sometimes, at least in the woods.”
Our Lady, Star of the Sea wasn’t exactly in the woods, but Judith didn’t say anything to squelch Dooley’s enthusiasm. He was young, she wasn’t, and youth should have its day. Judith would retire to the sidelines and let the Dooleys of the world take over. She was girding herself to relay the grisly news about Sandy Frizzell to her mother when the phone rang. It was Renie, aghast.
“Yeah, yeah, I blanked out again on your other phone number. Anyway, I can’t get you on that line if you’re downstairs all the time, can I?” she demanded, but didn’t wait for an answer. “What’s this I hear about Sandy Frizzell? I discovered my yeast was outdated for the buns and had to run up to Falstaff’s to get more. Eve Kramer was there, and she was practically traumatized.”
“Aren’t we all?” said Judith, signaling for her mother to listen, but not to ask questions. Yet. “It’s true, I guess.” She turned so that Gertrude could also hear clearly. “Dooley heard it on his CB. Sandy was stabbed to death in the parish nursery, probably right after I left.”
“Good God!” Renie lapsed into silence while Gertrude’s eyes glazed over with shock. “Damn,” Renie breathed at last. “And she and John just came into all that money! I can’t believe it!”
“It’s terrible,” agreed Judith, motioning for her mother to sit down. A banging at the back door startled both women. “Hey, coz, I really don’t know much about it, and there’s somebody on the porch. Arlene, maybe. I’ll call you back if I hear anything, okay?”
“Sure. I’ll do the same.” Renie clicked off.
Judith stopped just long enough on her way to the back door to help her mother into the chair. Gertrude was pale and unwontedly grim. The knock sounded again, this time with greater urgency.
“I’m coming!” Judith called. “Get a grip on it, Arlene,” she added in a lower voice.
But it wasn’t Arlene Rankers who stood on the back porch.
To Judith’s astonishment, it was homicide detective Lieutenant Joe Flynn.
Joe’s casual air masked his tenacious professionalism, just as the well-cut tweed sports coat camouflaged the spreading midriff Dooley had mentioned. His receding red hair was flecked with gray, yet his round face retained its freshness, despite over two decades observing the seamiest slices of life. At his side stood Woodrow Price, a uniformed officer on the verge of thirty and his next promotion. A stolid black man with a walrus moustache, Woody Price had displayed a hidden reservoir of talents during his previous adventure at Hillside Manor.
But it wasn’t Woody Price’s serious dark gaze which held Judith mesmerized at the back door. Rather, Joe Flynn’s green eyes, with those magnetic flecks of gold, turned her faintly incoherent.
“You’re early,” she blurted. “It’s still two weeks to go. But who’s counting?” Judith giggled and mentally cursed herself for sounding like a half-baked teenager instead of a poised middle-aged widow.
Joe’s mouth twitched slightly, showing the merest hint of his roguish smile. “This is business, not pleasure. I’ve yet to bring Woody along on a date.” He put a highly buffed loafer over the threshold. “May we?”
Judith actually jumped. “Oh! I didn’t mean…Sure, come in, I just heard about what happened up at church…”
Gertrude’s rasping voice crackled from the kitchen: “Is that Joe Flynn?” She didn’t wait for confirmation. “Where’s he been for six months? One lousy cribbage board and a box of chocolates won’t buy this old girl! There was a caramel in with the creams, and it wrecked my partial plate! Get that bastard out of my house!”
As always, it was useless for Judith to argue over the legal rights of ownership to Hillside Manor. “Mother,” she pleaded over her shoulder, “you know why Joe hasn’t called on us since Thanksgiving. That was the bargain. Now he’s here about Sandy Frizzell’s murder.”
“Baloney!” snarled Gertrude, wrestling with her walker as she tried to get up from the dinette table. “Joe’s here because you got your hair dyed like a two-bit hussy! Out!” Her thin arm flailed under cover of a baggy blue cardigan. “Beat it, and take your chauffeur with you!”
“Mother!” Judith was aghast. “Don’t be so ornery!” Agitated, she rushed to Gertrude’s side. “Settle down. Do you want to be arrested for impeding justice, you crazy old coot?”
While she was still seething, Gertrude’s voiced dropped a notch. “Justice, my foot! If there were such a thing, Joe Flynn would have spent the last twenty-odd years in prison for breach of promise! But you, you gutless wonder,” she raged on, wagging a bony finger in her daughter’s face, “you just rolled over and married Dan McMonigle! Is that justice, I ask you?”
Judith had to admit that Gertrude had history on her side: Almost a quarter of a century earlier, Judith and Joe had planned to marry. Joe had followed through with the marriage, but took a different bride. The shock of learning that Joe had eloped with a blowsy thrice-divorced piano-bar entertainer ten years his senior had sent Judith rebounding into the arms of Dan McMonigle. It had never been clear whether Gertrude put more blame on Joe for dumping Judith or for consigning her to a life sentence as Dan’s wife. Gertrude had never liked Joe much, but she had absolutely loathed Dan. Neither the death of the one nor the return of the other had changed her opinions.
It had been over a year since Joe Flynn had cruised back into Judith’s life. His calling card had been his policeman’s badge; his arrival had been in response to foul play at Hillside Manor. Judith had been astonished. Joe had been bemused. It was during the investigation of the fortune-te
ller’s death that Joe had revealed that his marriage was over and he was seeking a church annulment, as well as a civil divorce. When he had insisted that his feelings for her hadn’t faded any more than hers for him, Judith had reacted with skepticism. Such romantic notions were ridiculous for a woman of her age. Judith thought old dreams were too fragile to bring out into the bright light of middle age. But Joe was back in her life and Judith was happy for the first time in years, Gertrude notwithstanding.
Despite the blush that covered her cheeks, she fought to regain her usual aplomb. “I’m going outside and talk to the policemen,” she told her mother in a firm tone. “You sit back down and smoke or something. If you want to get violent, take it out on Sweetums.” Gently but firmly, she pushed Gertrude into the chair, then turned to face the two bemused detectives. “Come on,” Judith said, leading the way outside. “As luck would have it, I got the lawn furniture out just this week.”
On the other side of the driveway, a small patio bordered by the Ericsons’ laurel hedge and the picket fence that marked the Dooley family’s property line nestled in the shade of a pink dogwood tree. Judith’s cherished birdbath with its statue of St. Francis rose from a bright border of ranunculus and creeping phlox. She offered the redwood chaise lounge and matching chairs to her visitors while she sat down on a small stone bench next to the portable barbecue.
The fitful rain had all but stopped, though the sky was still overcast. Yet the late afternoon April air was soft, and the dogwood gave them shelter. Like most natives, Judith, Joe, and Woody preferred drizzle to sizzle.
Judith looked over toward the back porch, momentarily fearful that Gertrude might charge out of the house and try to chase Joe and Woody off with Grandpa Grover’s shotgun. “I’d apologize for Mother,” Judith began, still faintly embarrassed, “but she’s unrepentant. Joe understands,” she said to Woody, “but I’m sorry she was rude to you.”
Woody Price’s grin was as dazzling as it was infrequent. “But I did used to be a chauffeur. That’s how I got through college. The only bad part was prom night. I was just old enough to sneer and young enough to be envious.”
Judith gave Woody a grateful smile. “Oh, yes, I remember when Mike…” She caught herself and shook her head, then squared her shoulders. “Okay,” she went on in a more businesslike manner, “how can I help?”
Joe and Woody also shifted gears. Woody produced a notebook, and Joe crossed his legs with the knifelike press in the tan flannel slacks. “You knew Sandy Frizzell, I gather?” Joe asked in the easy voice that had been known to lull suspects into unintended revelations.
Judith let out a little sigh. “Sort of. She and John hadn’t been on the Hill for very long, you know. Since January, I think. I’ve seen them at church, talked to her at coffee and doughnuts after Mass, run into her at Falstaff’s. But I really didn’t know her.” She gave a little shrug. “And John even less. They may have mixed with the SOTS or the rest of Heraldsgate Hill, but you know me, I don’t have time to socialize much. Ask somebody like Eve Kramer or Kate Duffy.”
“We did,” said Joe dryly. “Kate was hysterical, and Eve’s got a tongue like a laser. The Frizzells were pretty private people. Still, there’s always gossip.” The green eyes glinted. “Got any?”
Judith reflected. “No. Except that Sandy was supposedly delicate, and John was very protective of her.”
“Does that translate as jealous?” inquired Joe.
“Jealous?” Judith frowned slightly. “It could, I guess. But that’s idle speculation.”
Joe gestured at Woody to ready his pen and notebook. “When did you last see Sandy?” Joe asked.
Judith thought back to the early part of the afternoon. “Just before I left the church hall. It must have been one-thirty or so. I think it was going on two when I got to Falstaff’s.” Idly, she glanced at her watch: It was now almost five p.m. The afternoon had flitted away as it so often did in a haze of errands, leaving Judith with a blurred sense of time.
“Where did you see her last?” Joe kept his voice free of emotion, but those keen green eyes never left Judith’s face.
“In the nursery.” Judith glanced down at the barbecue, subconsciously noting that one of the wheels was loose. She had the feeling that Joe knew all this, that he’d talked to John Frizzell, to Father Hoyle, in fact to anyone who had remained behind at the church hall. “I was with her for five minutes, maybe a bit more. I offered to help clean up, but she said she preferred doing it herself. Chores ‘restored her equilibrium’, she said.”
A slight frown creased Joe’s high, wide forehead. “Which was upset by what?”
Judith spread her hands. “The kids. She had all the little ones. They were terrors.” Her quick glance took in the Rankers’s house, its solid outline looming over the apple trees and the lilac. “Sandy wasn’t used to toddlers. Her own kids are older.”
“Really.” Joe passed a hand over his upper lip. “Was that the reason she was—what?—upset? Nervous? Anxious? Or was she afraid?”
Judith’s dark eyes narrowed in the effort of concentration. “I wouldn’t say she was afraid. John called her ‘high-strung.’ It was just the way she was. Neurotic, maybe. As I said, I didn’t really know her.”
Joe grimaced. “I wish you did. I could use a reliable witness. The fact is,” he went on with a glance at Woody, “nobody knew the Frizzells that well. They didn’t mix much.”
“Typical New Yorkers,” remarked Judith. “Suspicious. Stand-offish. And of course Emily was very ill. They probably spent a lot of time with her.”
“Maybe.” Joe paused, swinging one loafer-clad foot. A sparrow hopped onto the hedge, studied the birdbath, scrutinized the inhabitants of the patio, and took wing into the dogwood. “Did you see anyone else near the nursery when you left?”
“No,” Judith replied. “Most of the people had gone by then. I didn’t see anybody until I got back into the church hall. Oh,” she recalled as an afterthought, “except for Wilbur Paine, going into the men’s room.”
Joe leaned over Woody’s notebook. “Wilbur Paine? What’s the connection?”
Woody Price flipped through the looseleaf pages. “Attorney for Emily Tresvant, also for John and Sandy Frizzell. Hoover, Klontz, and Paine, old established firm in the Evergreen Tower Building. But not on retainer or otherwise connected with Tresvant Timber.”
Joe nodded. “Emily Tresvant sold out to a Japanese firm about five years ago. They kept the name and the headquarters, but the power is in Tokyo.” His gaze traveled skyward, where the sun was breaking through the clouds. “Wilbur played Easter Bunny, right?”
“Right. The kids loved him.” Judith followed Joe’s gaze. In the wake of Sandy’s death, it didn’t seem so important for the sun to shine. “Joe—who else was up at church? Don’t tell me you’re narrowing this investigation down to just us SOTS?”
Joe was on his feet, scraping an errant pebble off the sole of his right loafer. “You’re not exactly coming up with a list of suspicious characters lurking in the rectory bushes. It would help a lot if you could remember more about Sandy than that small children made her nervous. Face it, Jude-girl, you were probably the last person to see her alive.” The green eyes glittered. “Except for the killer, of course.”
Wincing at the long-ago, much-despised nickname, Judith gnashed her teeth but kept her temper. “Come on, it was just a coincidence that I was there at all! I told you, I hardly knew the poor woman! I already did everything but solve that fortune-teller case for you two bozos. If you want to hire me, pay me. This one occurred off-premises. It’s your murder, not mine.”
Joe gave Judith his annoying, ingenuous expression before he turned to Woody. “Sounds like you’ve lost your sense of adventure. This one may not have happened in your dining room, but it is your parish, after all. Don’t you feel a sense of proprietorship?”
Judith’s gaze was even. “No. If somebody jumps out of a plane and lands on my roof, do I have to take over for the FAA?” She sounded
emphatic but realized that she was already weakening.
Joe may have guessed as much. In any event, he stopped arguing. “Okay, Woody, let’s strut our stuff. Who’ve we got on hand at the time of the murder?”
Woody Price again consulted his notebook. “Father Francis Xavier Hoyle, Father Timothy Mills, Eddie La Plante, Mr. and Mrs. Kurt Kramer—that’s Eve—Mr. and Mrs. Mark Duffy—she’s Kate—the aforementioned Wilbur Paine and his wife, Norma.” He gave Judith an apologetic look from under his heavy eyebrows. “And Mrs. McMonigle, of course. But that’s just for procedure’s sake.”
Judith groaned. “Swell. Why don’t you throw procedure out the stained-glass window for once? And aren’t you forgetting someone?” she inquired archly.
Joe turned wry. “I didn’t think you cared.” His green eyes were speculative as they rested on Judith’s face. “Do you mean John Frizzell?” Joe saw Judith give a slight nod, but he shook his head. “No, we’re not neglecting him. He was there, possibly before anyone saw him. A husband is always the primary suspect in the death of his wife. And vice versa.” He gave Judith a needling glance. “Was Renie joking when she said Cousin Sue issued a notarized statement that she was with you all the time the week before Dan died?”
“Don’t be crass!” But Judith flushed all the same. “Dan weighed four hundred pounds and had about seventeen pernicious diseases. He’d been bedridden for over two years. The whole family was amazed that he lived as long as he did.”
Joe couldn’t suppress a grin. “Who won the mortality pool, Uncle Al?”
An impish light danced in Judith’s black eyes. “I did,” she said, and then sobered again. “How was Sandy killed? I mean, what was she stabbed with?”
“A pair of scissors,” Joe replied, adjusting his cream-and-gold-striped tie. “Unusually sharp to be left in a nursery. The killer may have brought them along, which would make it premeditated homicide. Did you notice any scissors?”
Judith tried to remember. “No.” She suppressed a shudder as something tugged at her memory, then danced away. Judith saw the vision of a weary Sandy, a bedraggled Pooh Bear, and scattered colored blocks. It had seemed so innocent, the predictable finale to a children’s holiday fete. “Why do I feel I should have, though?” Judith asked in a bleak voice.