by Mary Marks
Dear Mrs. Oliver,
Dr. Anne Smith faxed me the photograph of your friendship quilt, and I am very eager to examine it. This quilt may be a priceless American treasure. Perhaps you have heard of the Declaration Quilt? Mrs. Abigail Adams mentioned it in some of her correspondence with Mrs. Sarah Franklin Bache, Benjamin Franklin’s daughter. Historians know this quilt existed, but its whereabouts has been lost to history.
I understand Dr. Smith was unable to reach you again after your conversation. I urge you to call Dr. Smith or myself. I will gladly provide you with more information when we meet.
Yours truly,
Dr. Naomi Hunter, Curator
The letter from the Smithsonian indicated Harriet failed to respond to Anne Smith’s second letter, so Harriet must have been murdered sometime between January 28 and before February 13. If she lay dead in her closet, who opened the letter from Dr. Hunter? Who else had hunted for this “priceless American treasure”?
I’d never heard of the Declaration Quilt, but I’d call Dr. Hunter on Monday to find out more. How long had the Oliver family owned the quilt? How did they acquire it? Did Estella know the true value?
The rest of the papers from Harriet’s desk yielded only one interesting item, a checkbook she kept for personal use. The register indicated she wrote weekly checks for five hundred dollars to Paulina Polinskaya, a name I recognized from the blue address book. The woman never returned my call.
The checks began two years ago and continued on a regular basis until January 5, about three weeks before Harriet’s death. Who was Paulina, and why did Harriet pay her with a personal check, rather than having Abernathy take care of it? Wouldn’t Paulina have been concerned about Harriet when the checks stopped coming? If so, why didn’t she call the police? I needed to pay the woman a visit.
I got up to stretch and filled the tea kettle with water. A few minutes later the phone rang.
“Mrs. Rose? This is Emmet Wish returning your call.” Emmet Wish was another name from Harriet’s blue address book.
“Mr. Wish, thanks for calling me back.”
“I was shocked and saddened to hear about her death. I’ll be at her funeral, of course. You’re Mrs. Oliver’s executor?”
The knob on the stove clicked and the flame jumped to life under the kettle. “Yes. Are you a friend of hers?”
“I’m her insurance agent, but I’d also like to think I was her friend. I worked very hard to protect her property. She owned several extremely rare and valuable items, which she insured separately at great expense. Are you aware of the pieces I’m talking about?”
I put a bag of Scottish breakfast tea in a cup while I waited for the water to boil. “Yes, I’ve been making an inventory using the insurance rider and photos from a flash drive. I’m afraid some of the items are missing.”
“Are you sure?”
“Well, I haven’t done a complete search of her house yet, but I’m pretty sure.”
Wish moaned a little. “This is very bad news. I mean, we insured everything. Art, baskets, books, a quilt, antique toys, and a pair of candelabras that had been in the family for generations. You’ll be filing a claim, of course.”
The tea kettle whistled. I turned off the stove and poured the water in my cup. “Yes, after I’m through taking inventory of the things still remaining.”
“Damn disturbing news. Please call me right away if you do find them.”
I stirred some milk in the cup. “Of course.”
Later in the afternoon I sat on the sofa with Crusher, eating apple fritters he brought back from Western Donuts. I pulled my feet up onto the sofa and reached for a paper napkin. “I think we’re looking for a killer with specific tastes. Rare books, possibly a priceless quilt, and good jewelry are missing, but valuable pieces of art are still sitting on shelves and hanging on the walls.”
He brushed away some sugary flakes of glaze from his beard. “What do you mean we are looking for a killer with specific tastes? Let the cops handle this. Remember what happened four months ago? You almost got whacked.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Trust the cops to handle the investigation? Like the coroner handled Harriet’s remains? I don’t think so.”
“Babe, you live in the wrong country.”
“What do you mean?”
“Shin Bet could use someone like you.”
The Israeli Secret Service? Why would he mention them?
We sat in companionable silence for a few more minutes. Then he said, “I want to be with you again tonight.”
“You’re moving too fast for me, Yossi. I need some time to sort things out in my head.”
“Let’s talk, then.”
“We will. I promise. But not tonight. Tonight I just need space.”
After a lingering kiss, I almost asked him to stay. I reluctantly closed the door behind him and settled back on the sofa with my unfinished Jacob’s Ladder quilt and my sewing kit. The slow, steady rhythm of pushing the needle in and out of the fabric always calmed me. A lump formed in my throat when I remembered the birthday card Harriet received from Isabel Casco. Didn’t she deserve to know about Harriet’s murder? I put down my sewing and called her.
Isabel picked up on the second ring. She must have been well into happy hour because ice tinkled in a glass as she slurred her greeting. “’Lo?”
“Hello, Isabel, this is Martha Rose. I have some bad news and I wanted you to hear it from me first.”
“’Smatter?”
I told her about the mortician discovering Harriet’s murder. “Do you have any idea who might have wanted her dead?”
“Nathan.”
“Her husband? He died in ninety-seven.”
Isabel snorted. “I can’t talk right now. I’m watching a marathon of The Mentalist on cable. Come over tomorrow an’ I’ll tell you all about it.”
Click. Dial tone.
Oh Lord. Did she believe Nathan Oliver was still alive or was the booze talking? That was weird. Isabel Casco just accused a dead man of murdering Harriet.
CHAPTER 10
A tickling on my cheeks woke me Sunday morning. I opened my eyes. My cat Bumper’s face sat about three inches away from mine. We stared at each other and I blinked first. “You hungry or what?”
He jumped off the bed, ran to the kitchen, and sat by his food bowl. The clock read seven-fifteen.
I made a cup of tea with milk, sat at the table, and opened Harriet’s blue address book. Isabel Casco lived in an apartment in Santa Monica on Eleventh Street. Paulina Polinskaya, the woman who received five hundred dollars a week from Harriet’s personal account, lived not too far away on Venice Boulevard in Culver City. I needed to talk to both of them. Paulina never returned my call, so I planned a sneak attack. I figured everyone would still be at home on a gloomy Sunday morning in December.
The southbound 405 Freeway was wide open at seven forty-five, and I reached Culver City in thirteen minutes. I drove west toward the ocean on Venice Boulevard, looking for Paulina’s address, while a light drizzle sprinkled my windshield. A mixture of one-story commercial structures and gray office buildings lined both sides of the street.
Paulina’s place, wedged between a strip mall and an auto body shop, turned out to be a small, pre–World War II yellow bungalow, the last domestic holdout on a street transformed into commercial buildings. A black BMW sat in the driveway next to a miniscule front yard that looked like the last blade of grass died when Nixon occupied the White House. A sign, with huge purple letters, stood on the cracked concrete:
PSYCHIC
TAROT READINGS PAST LIVES
SPIRITUALIST
Well, this explained the books about contacting the dead on Harriet’s library floor. Harriet must have paid Paulina to talk to her dead family. What else would account for the weekly checks for five hundred dollars? I began to understand why Paulina the Psychic didn’t return my calls. She milked nearly $25,000 from Harriet over the period of a year.
A spindly hibiscus bush
barely clung to life in a painted Mexican pot on the front porch. White paint peeled off the front door where a sign announced business hours and displayed an emergency number. I knocked, but nobody answered. Someone must be at home because of the car in the driveway. I dialed the emergency number on my cell phone.
A sleepy voice answered. “Nnnhullo?”
“Is this the Psychic?”
“Who’s this?”
“Someone who needs help.”
She yawned. “What time’s it, anyway?”
“Eight. Can I see you? It’s really important.”
“You woke me.”
“I’m sorry, but I really need your help. I’m right outside, but I guess you didn’t hear me knocking.”
A hard East Coast accent emerged. “I charge extra for emergencies.”
“Okay. I’ll pay whatever you want.”
“Gimme five minutes.” She hung up.
Ten minutes later the door opened. I expected a wily old con artist. Instead, a plump young woman stood no taller than five feet. She had pulled her long black hair back into a hasty bun and wore a silk tunic with purple flowers. Her eyes, heavy with kohl, resembled the portraits painted on the walls of Egyptian tombs. The skin on her face padded high cheekbones and she smiled with lips painted fuchsia.
“I’m Paulina. Enter.” Her eyes darted toward my purse.
I walked into a room painted a deep terra-cotta with one small lamp shining in the corner.
Paulina gestured for me to sit at a round table covered with a purple satin cloth and walked around the room lighting sandalwood-scented joss sticks and twelve white candles. Then she perched atop a burgundy velvet pillow she’d placed on the seat of the chair facing me. “Your aura’s off.”
“Off?”
She nodded solemnly. “Something bad’s happened recently.”
Well, duh, why else would I need an emergency visit?
Before I could respond, she shifted in her seat and stuck out her hand. “I charge a hundred dollars an hour, hundred fifty for an emergency session. You pay up front. Any questions?”
I leaned forward with my elbows on the table. “Yeah. What did Harriet Oliver get for five hundred dollars a week?”
The reflection from the lamp glittered in her black eyes, but she didn’t flinch. “You’re the woman who called the other night, aren’t you? About Harriet’s death.”
The fragrant smoke from the joss sticks curled through the air. “I’m Martha Rose, the executor of Harriet’s will.”
She crossed her arms. “Whaddaya want with me?”
“I want to talk about Harriet. She was murdered.”
Paulina raised her eyebrows. “Murdered? So that’s . . .”
Just then the tea kettle whistled. Paulina turned toward another room. “Wait here.”
I studied the blue flowers in the red Turkish carpet and the geometry of the inlaid Moroccan table across the room. Three minutes later she returned with two teacups painted with pink flowers. Without asking, she put sugar in both cups and handed one to me. “You like sugar.”
It didn’t take a psychic to figure out you didn’t get my kind of curves without having a few extra treats now and then.
Paulina sipped her tea, leaving a fuchsia-colored lip print on the edge of the cup. “Your aura is pink. You are honest, are determined, and thirst for truth, so I’m gonna help you.”
Should I be grateful my aura isn’t green? “What exactly did you do for Harriet?”
“I was her spiritual adviser. And her death coach.”
Did I just hear her right? “Her what?”
Paulina smiled and lowered her eyelids halfway. “I helped her communicate with the souls of the departed. Especially her little boy.”
“Is this what she gave you five hundred a week for?”
Her eyes flew open. “I’m a skilled and highly sought-after medium. I spent a lotta time helping that poor woman. Making house calls when she became hysterical—sometimes in the middle of the night. Not once did I ever refuse to see her. Harriet insisted on paying me a weekly retainer.”
I swirled my cup. The tea leaves eddied in the bottom. “Weren’t you alarmed when the checks stopped? If you cared so much for her, if you were so helpful, why didn’t you try to find out what happened to her?”
Paulina sighed. “When did you say she died?”
“I didn’t say. Somewhere between January twenty-eighth and February thirteenth.”
She relaxed back. “Harriet stopped coming to see me in the beginning of January.”
“Why?”
“I worked with her to contact her son. She also talked to a twin brother who died when they were kids, and to her deceased parents. Harriet always felt calm and relieved whenever they came through with messages. Her father advised her to pay me a retainer.”
I rolled my eyes. “Of course he did.”
Paulina looked at me wearily. “I’m used to skeptics. But I’m telling the truth. Do you wanna hear the rest or no?”
“Okay, go on.”
“Harriet was definite. She didn’t wanna communicate with anyone else, only those specific four people. I started getting some strong signals from her dead husband. He kept trying to break through and talk to her. I told her I sensed great turmoil, but Harriet insisted. She didn’t want any contact with Nathan.”
I drank the cooled tea. “Did she say why?”
“No, but during our last session I went into my usual trance, and Nathan managed to breach the barrier. When Harriet heard him speak, she screamed and broke the connection. Then she said she didn’t want to see me anymore. I tried to warn her and reassure her, but she didn’t wanna risk any further contact.”
The smell of sandalwood smoke almost overpowered me. I fanned my hand in front of my face. “Warn her about what?”
Paulina placed her palms on the purple tablecloth. “When a soul suffers as much turmoil as Nathan Oliver, there’s a lotta unresolved issues. Anger. Frustration. Regret. Until his soul can settle those issues, he’s doomed to wander in a in-between world. A soul in such a state can wreck havoc on the living, cause torment and even violence.”
“You really believe all that?”
She nodded vigorously. “Oh, yeah. I’ve helped many of the departed pass over. I promised Harriet if Nathan could communicate whatever he needed to tell her, he’d let go and never bother her again. But I warned her, if she refused to speak to him, well . . .” Paulina turned her palms up and shrugged.
My jaw dropped. “Are you saying Nathan Oliver could have killed Harriet?” When Paulina didn’t respond, I shook my head. “Someone with human hands killed Harriet. No ghost could strangle her to death.”
Paulina reached her hand across the table. “Gimme your cup.”
I handed my empty teacup and saucer to her. She looked at the pattern the brown leaves made on the sides and bottom. “The one you thought you loved before will ask to come back into your life.”
Beavers? Is she talking about Detective Arlo Beavers?
“The one you’re with now loves you deeply.”
Crusher? How does she know about my love life?
Paulina smirked. “Believe me yet? Lemme read your cards.”
Shock and curiosity got the best of me.
Paulina shuffled the tarot deck and turned over a beautifully illustrated card picturing a queen sitting on a throne, holding a sword. “Just as your aura revealed, the queen of swords. You are honest and forthright and seek the truth.”
The second card she turned over pictured a man holding five swords with two more stuck in the ground. Paulina frowned. “The seven of swords. Beware of a deceiver and a thief. Someone’s been covering his tracks.”
I hated to admit it, but Paulina was right. A clever thief did enter Harriet’s house, and I wasn’t even close to knowing his identity.
Darkness covered her face when she turned over the last card showing a tower being struck by lightning and people jumping or falling off the top. “This is ver
y bad. The tower indicates chaos, an explosive crisis of some kind. Please believe me, Martha, you’re in great danger. You must be very, very careful.”
Right. She probably said that to everybody. But she did kind of nail the Crusher thing. Could she be right about this too?
Paulina looked up. “If you wanna come back, we could schedule an appointment.”
CHAPTER 11
I left Paulina’s by nine. I figured Isabel should be up by now, so I called her on my cell phone as soon as I got into my car. She answered on the third ring. Her voice raked through her throat. “Hello?”
“This is Martha Rose calling. Remember we talked last night?”
Isabel cleared her throat. “Vaguely.”
“I’d really like to come over. I happen to be in the area right now. Are you free?”
“What time is it, for God’s sake? I just woke up.”
“Around nine. Let me take you out to breakfast. We can go to Harvey’s Deli. It’s not too far from where you live, and I can pick you up in ten minutes.”
Isabel coughed. “Does anyone ever say no to you?”
“Sure,” I laughed. “But I’m hoping you won’t be one of them.”
“Okay. Give me fifteen. Takes me awhile to put my face on.”
I drove slowly on the surface streets from Culver City to Santa Monica. Traffic became denser, especially around the big box stores, where people were no doubt doing their Christmas shopping.
Isabel lived in a condo near Wilshire on Eleventh. Her second-floor unit faced the front of the building with a view of the street lined with magnolia trees. For a fifty-something woman whose voice had been wrecked by cigarettes and booze, Isabel Casco looked stunning. Her brown hair had been cut a youthful and hip half inch from her scalp. Silver hoops hung from her ears, emphasizing her long, slender neck. A distinctive diamond cocktail ring sparkled on her right hand as she shook mine.
“Nice to meet you, Martha. Any friend of Harriet’s is a friend of mine. Come on in. I’ll make us a batch of mimosas.” Her house smelled like stale cigarette smoke and Chanel N°5.