by Mary Marks
“Is Birdie coming?” I asked.
Lucy put her large bag in the backseat and buckled her seat belt. “She wanted to, but she’s got a garden club meeting.”
“It’s probably just as well. If all three of us descend on Delia Pitcher, she might not talk freely.”
On the way south through the Sepulveda Pass, I told Lucy about Henry Oliver’s call. “He acted like such a bully.”
“Do you think he’s right about being entitled to inherit Harriet’s estate?”
“I don’t have a clue. I’m going to have to ask Abernathy, even though I’m royally ticked off at him right now. Someone in his office embezzled nearly two hundred thousand dollars from Harriet over a period of twenty months.”
“Have you gone to the police?”
“Not yet. I still need Abernathy to help me figure out Henry Oliver’s claim. Maybe after Harriet’s estate is settled.”
Lucy shifted in her seat to look at me. “Good grief. Every time you turn around, you run into another complication.”
“Isn’t that the naked truth!”
Harriet had allotted a $10,000 per month stipend for my efforts as executor. Did she anticipate just how much trouble settling her estate would turn out to be?
Lucy shifted in her seat. “So, what do you know about the housekeeper?”
“Shortly before she was killed, Harriet let Delia and Paulina go. I don’t even know if Delia still has a key to Harriet’s house.”
We transitioned to the 10 Freeway heading east, got off at Robertson Boulevard, and headed north to Hargis Street. Delia Pitcher lived in an area a lot like the one where I grew up. Small, 1920s Spanish-style bungalows with red tile roofs lined the street. In front of her house, two boxwood bushes trimmed into neat squares flanked the front steps, and a small dog barked at the window. I rang the bell. A little peephole guarded by an iron grate slid open in the front door, and a pair of curious brown eyes stared at me.
“Hello, I’m Martha Rose, and this is my friend Lucy.”
The dead bolt slid back and the door swung open. A woman in her forties with a large gold cross around her neck beckoned us inside. Rows of braids on her head were threaded with bright glass beads. “I’m Delia. Come on in.”
The smell of cinnamon filled the air of Delia’s small and comfortable living room. Three West African wooden animal masks hung in a group along one wall. Someone very short had taped a picture crookedly to the opposite wall. Scribbled smoke poured out of a red chimney on a brown house. Behind Delia’s legs stood a small terrier mix yipping loudly. She picked him up, and he wiggled in her arms and licked the air.
I smiled. “Thank you so much for agreeing to see me, Mrs. Pitcher. I promise not to take up too much of your time.”
She gestured toward the red leather sofa and smiled. “Go ahead, sit down.”
Lucy and I sat on the sofa, sinking into the marshmallow texture of the seats.
“I won’t be a minute.” She put the terrier on the floor and disappeared through a small dining area.
The dog immediately came sniffing at my feet and legs, no doubt picking up trace scents of Arthur and Bumper.
Two minutes later Delia carried a tray with three mugs of steaming coffee and a plate of snicker doodles. She set the tray on top of a carved wooden stool and pulled over a Parsons chair from the dining area to sit on. The dog settled at her feet, eying the plate of cookies. “Now, how can I help you?”
“Well, first of all”—Lucy chewed—“you can give me the recipe for these cookies.”
Delia smiled briefly and clutched her coffee mug with both hands. “Please tell me about Miss Harriet.”
I took a deep breath. “She died around the end of January, beginning of February this year and lay in the house for ten months before the police discovered her body. Several items are missing, so the police think it was a robbery gone wrong.”
Delia reached up and grabbed the cross hanging from her neck. “Lord! The detective told me the same thing. Someone must have broke in. Miss Harriet would never open the door to no stranger. What did he take?”
So Farkas got here before me. I should have known. “Some valuable old books, an antique quilt, an old watch, and her good diamond jewelry. Do you remember where she kept those things?” Maybe Delia knew about the secret room.
Delia frowned and thought for a while. “She always wore a gold locket. Once she showed me pictures of two little boys inside. One was her dead brother, David, the other was her baby boy, Jonah. She kept a few other pieces of jewelry in a drawer in her closet. She also kept a show box with several watches inside. Is that what you mean?”
“Yes. Did you ever see any fancy jewelry, like a diamond ring or bracelet?”
“Miss Harriet wasn’t fond of bling like some of the ladies I worked for. Plus, where would she wear it? She never left the house. If she owned anything like that, I never saw none of it.” Delia frowned and sat up straighter. “Anybody say different?”
I raised a reassuring hand. “No, no. Not at all. What about the other things I mentioned? The books. The quilt. Did you ever see them?”
Delia relaxed a little and studied the ceiling.
“A year ago, maybe, I helped Miss Harriet take a picture of a raggedy old quilt. I remember there was a circle of stars in the middle.”
My pulse sped up. Delia actually saw the Declaration Quilt. “Do you know where she kept it?”
“Uh-uh. The quilt appeared one day and disappeared the next. I just figured she tucked it away in a drawer somewhere.”
“How long did you work for Harriet?”
“About three years. Five days a week unless one of my kids got sick. Miss Harriet, she lost her own baby, so she was very understanding.”
“The death of her boy must have affected her deeply.”
“Oh, yes. Poor Miss Harriet always looked so sad, and she got worse over the years. She didn’t trust no one. And like I said, she hardly ever left the house. She spent a lot of time in her baby’s room by herself. Sometimes I heard her talking and singing to him. Like he was still alive. You know?”
I pictured Harriet sitting in that blue room folding and unfolding Jonah’s little socks and smoothing the blanket on his bed. Tears filled my eyes. “Did you ever go in that room?”
“Not often. Miss Harriet didn’t want nothing disturbed. I had to be real careful when I dusted in there. She told me she fired her last housekeeper because she messed up her baby’s things. She said, ‘Delia, you’re the only other person I trust in here besides myself.’”
“Did she ever have visitors?” I bit into a cookie and a small piece fell on the floor. The dog had been waiting for just such an opportunity and quickly scarfed it up.
“Not very many. Her lawyer, Mr. Abernathy. He’d bring papers for her to sign. And sometimes he just came to check on her. He’d try to take her out to dinner, but Miss Harriet, she always made an excuse.”
Harriet didn’t want to spend time with Abernathy. Did she suspect him of embezzling her money? “What about other visitors?”
“Miss Friedman from the Children’s Hospital came a few times with Mr. Abernathy. She always stuck her hand out for money.”
There it was again. Abernathy the lawyer and Bunny Friedman the fund-raiser. Just how connected were they? Did Abernathy cultivate a friendship with Harriet just to get her money?
Delia counted on her fingers. “A neighbor lady visited occasionally, but she died. The insurance man stopped by a few times. Mr. Oliver’s brother also called on Miss Harriet when he visited LA. And then there was Miss Isabel.”
I pricked up my ears. “Tell me about her.”
Delia’s voice dripped with disgust. “When I first worked for Miss Harriet, that woman hung around all the time. I mean, all the time. One day, about two years ago, I heard them arguing and Miss Harriet told her, ‘Just leave me alone, Isabel. Just go away.’ Afterward, Miss Harriet told me to say she was sleeping whenever Miss Isabel called.”
Two
years ago. That was around the time Harriet named me executor of her will instead of Isabel. What caused their falling out?
I grabbed another cookie. The dog sat looking at me, waiting for the next crumb to fall. “What about other visitors?”
Delia’s demeanor darkened. “Miss Harriet started seeing that Paulina woman right around the time she sent Miss Isabel away. Miss Paulina came by at least twice a week and they’d sit in the library. She gave me the willies. She always brought those picture cards and sacks of some kind of tea leaves. I’d have to brew a pot so she could read Miss Harriet’s fortune.”
“When I called you before, you mentioned something about ghosts.”
“Yeah. Sometimes the two of them’d hold hands on top of the table and Miss Paulina would close her eyes.” Delia lowered her voice. “She talked to ghosts.”
Lucy perked up. Talking to ghosts was right up her ESP alley. She leaned toward Delia. “How do you know she talked to ghosts?”
“I pretended to dust the living room so I could listen in on them. I didn’t want nobody to take advantage of poor Miss Harriet. Miss Paulina’s voice changed from high to low, depending on which ghost was speaking. I tell you, the woman scared me!” She shivered and reached up to grasp the cross around her neck again.
I drank the last of my coffee. “I guess you heard about Nathan Oliver’s grave in the backyard. Rudy, the gardener, told me Harriet sometimes asked you to weed the flower bed where the body turned out to be. Weeding seems like an odd thing to ask a housekeeper to do.”
Delia stood, went to the kitchen, and brought back the coffeepot to refill our cups. “I didn’t mind. I felt sorry for her. She told me she buried her baby’s pet dog there and didn’t want the gardeners to mess up the grave. A few times she asked me to use a hand shovel and pull up some of the uglier weeds. She said, ‘Don’t go too deep. I don’t want to disturb the dog.’ Then she’d stand right there and watch me ’til I was done.”
Well, I could no longer deny Harriet knew about Nathan’s grave. How could I ask the next question? “Harriet seemed to really trust you. Do you mind telling me why she let you go?”
“No, I don’t mind. One day she sat with Miss Paulina in the library. I heard a awful scream and came running. Miss Harriet had turned white as a sheet. She shouted, ‘Tell him to go back to hell! Tell him to leave me alone!’”
The day Paulina said she channeled Nathan’s ghost.
“I helped Miss Harriet into the kitchen and sat her at the table while I put up some water for a cup of tea. Then I marched into the library and told that purple Paulina—did you know she always wore purple?—I told her to get out and leave Miss Harriet alone or I’d call the police.”
Delia stopped for a moment and stared at the floor. An ice-cream truck rolled slowly down the street playing “Turkey in the Hay” over and over again.
“Miss Harriet shook so hard she could hardly hold her cup and drink her tea. She said, ‘Nathan wants me dead. He wants to punish me. He wants everyone to know.’ Then she got a funny look on her face, and asked me, ‘How much did you hear in the library, Delia?’ I told her I heard enough to know she shouldn’t see Miss Paulina no more. Two days later she called me into the library and sat me down at the table. She hands me a check for three months’ wages and a real nice letter of recommendation. I asked her if I did something wrong. She told me, ‘It’s got nothing to do with you, Delia. I just need to be alone.’ I turned in my key and left. That’s the last time I saw her.”
Harriet must have been scared she’d revealed too much when she told Delia that Nathan wanted to punish her and wanted everyone to know. She probably thought she had no other choice. She had to let the housekeeper go to keep her from finding out the truth about Nathan’s death and burial.
The terrier moved to sit at Lucy’s feet and she reached down to pet the dog. “What’s your opinion of Harriet now that her husband’s body has been found?” she asked.
The little glass beads in Delia’s braids clicked against each other as she wove her head from side to side. “I’ve worked for crazy, and I’ve worked for mean. But Miss Harriet was just sad. The poor woman couldn’t kill no one. Lord only knows how her husband ended up in the backyard.”
I placed my empty mug on the tray and stood to leave. “One more thing, Delia. You mentioned Henry, Nathan Oliver’s brother, came for a visit. Did you ever hear any conversation?”
“They weren’t friendly. On his visits I’d serve them coffee and go about my business. He never stayed very long.”
So Delia went to work for Harriet four years ago. After two years, Harriet sent Isabel away and Paulina came into the picture. A year after that, Harriet got rid of both Paulina and Delia. Shortly afterward, Harriet died. I found Delia to be quite credible. I believed her when she said she gave her house key back to Harriet the day she was dismissed. Delia didn’t kill Harriet nor did she steal anything from her. I handed her a piece of paper with my name and phone number. “Thank you for your time and the delicious cookies. If you can think of anything else, will you call me?”
“The fat detective said the same thing when he handed me his card. Which one of you am I supposed to call?”
“Call us both. Detective Farkas is trying to solve Harriet’s murder. He thinks he’s already solved Nathan’s murder. As far as the detective’s concerned, Harriet killed her husband, which means it’s up to me to prove she didn’t.”
The beads clicked together again as Delia nodded. “I’ll guess I’ll call you first.”
CHAPTER 23
After we left Delia’s, Lucy and I picked up burgers and fries at In-N-Out Burger in Westwood. By the time we got to Harriet’s house, the sun had disappeared behind dark gray clouds and the air smelled damp. Thunder rolled in the distance. Carl sat at his usual place in the library, working on his computer. A lamp with a green glass shade cast a warm light in the corner of the room. He smiled when I handed him a white bag with the red and yellow In-N-Out logo.
“Awesome. Thanks a lot.”
I unwrapped my “protein-style” hamburger (lettuce leaves instead of a bun). “Anything interesting happen?”
Carl dipped a French fry in ketchup and shoved it in his mouth. “The gardeners came this morning and cleaned up the yard. The hole is gone and the backyard looks normal again. They want to know what kind of flowers to plant.”
Selling a house where two murders had occurred might prove to be difficult. A flower bed would stand out from the rest of the yard as the obvious site of Nathan’s grave. Better to extend the lawn over the area to make it disappear. “I’ll call Rudy later.”
When we finished eating, Lucy fished out a Stanley retractable tape measure from her green tote bag. “Time to measure the house.” She dug inside again and pulled out a notepad and pencil, which she handed to me. “You can write.”
Carl gathered the trash on the table. “What are you up to?”
I told him about the file from Safe-T-Construction indicating they built a safe room in 2005. “We’re going to measure the outside proportions of the house and compare them to the dimensions of the inside. We hope to find a hidden pocket of space where the room could be.”
Carl stood. “Cool. I’ll come with you.”
We circled the outside of the house. I recorded the numbers as Lucy and Carl stretched the fifty-foot yellow aluminum tape. When we got to the back of the house, where we’d discovered Nathan’s grave, I was relieved to see a neat patch of bare soil ten feet by four feet where the flower bed used to be.
Harriet’s Tudor-style home had a rectangular footprint with a bump out for the one-story garage, so calculating the outside dimensions took only ten minutes. Back inside, Lucy extracted two flashlights from her tote bag and handed them to Carl and me. Then she pulled out something that looked like a pair of binoculars attached to head gear and strapped it to her face.
“What in the world?” I stared as she telescoped the lenses about six inches in front of her eyes.
; She swung her head toward me. “Night-vision goggles. Ray wears them when he and the boys go to Wyoming to hunt.” Lucy and her husband, Ray, grew up in Moorcroft, Wyoming. Ray returned every year with his five sons during deer season.
“What makes you think you’ll need those?”
“To explore dark spaces.”
“But it’s still daylight.”
She adjusted the focus on those protruding eyes. “Well, I know. But things look different with these on. Maybe I’ll spot something not visible with the naked eye. And anyway, when we find the hidden door, who knows how dark it’ll be on the other side?”
Who could argue with Lucy’s logic?
Lucy waved her arm like the leader of a SWAT team. “Okay, let’s roll.” She strode toward the stairway in her matching green clothes and night-vision goggles, looking like a very tall praying mantis with bright orange hair.
Upstairs we measured every room, closet, bathroom, and hallway. I made a crude map of the second floor and added up the numbers. “I’m sorry, Lucy, but I just don’t see any discrepancies between the inside and outside measurements. According to this, there’s no hidden pocket of space.
Carl took the drawing and looked at it. “Yeah, I agree. While we were measuring, I kind of kept the numbers in my head. They didn’t add up for me either.”
Lucy removed the goggles and her shoulders slumped. “Dang it! I thought for sure we’d find something up here. What about the attic?”
“I already looked. Nothing up there except for the heater.”
“Are you sure? Could there be a false wall up there?”
“Well, I did have a migraine when I looked before, so I didn’t really spend much time. I just poked my head up there, took a quick survey, and left. We could always take a closer look.”
We returned to Harriet’s closet. Thunder boomed louder as the storm approached. “Up there.” I pointed to the rope hanging from the ceiling.