Bernie corrected her. “Verbal. She’s verbal.”
“Whatever.” Then Libby gasped.
“What’s the matter?” Bernie asked, alarmed at Libby’s expression.
Libby pointed. One more step and she would have planted her foot squarely on Old Lady Randall’s stomach. She was splayed out on an oriental rug in the middle of her bedroom, wearing a housedress. One slipper was on and the other one was lying a short distance away. Her eyes were wide open, as was her mouth; she was staring at the ceiling, a circle of blood pooled around her head. Libby put her hand to her mouth.
“Oh no,” Bernie said, stepping inside.
Both sisters looked down at Old Lady Randall. She was smaller than either Libby or Bernie remembered her. She looked fragile, but most of all, with her white hair and wrinkled, age-spotted skin, she looked old. Libby couldn’t believe she’d been terrified of her all this time. She felt ashamed of herself.
“Do you know what her first name was?” Libby asked.
Bernie thought for a moment. “I think I remember Mom calling her Clara.”
“Did she ever get married?”
Bernie thought for another moment. “I’d have to ask Dad, but no, I don’t think so. Why are you asking?”
Libby shrugged. “No reason. No reason at all, really. I think we should start calling her by her name. Clara, Clara Randall. Somehow given the circumstances, Old Lady Randall seems disrespectful.”
Bernie wrinkled her nose. The room smelled of old age, lavender, and death. “I don’t think she’s going to care.”
“Maybe not,” Libby said. “But I do.”
Bernie shrugged. “Sure, why not. If it’ll make you happy it’s fine with me.” She pointed to the towel lying next to Clara Randall’s outstretched hand. “She must have been getting ready to take a bath.”
“Maybe this was an accident,” Libby suggested as she watched the tabby butt her head against Clara Randall’s outstretched hand. “She could have fallen and hit her head. It’s possible.”
Bernie gestured around the room. “Hit her head on what?”
Libby nibbled on her lip again. “The bed post? The dresser?”
“They’re too far away.”
“She could have hit her head on one of them and staggered over here and collapsed,” Libby answered. She went over and examined the four carved cherrywood bedposts and the matching dresser. She pointed to the right-hand post at the end of the bed. “There’s blood on this. So it was an accident.”
“Maybe,” Bernie said. “But I can’t see Clara Randall leaving the front door open.”
Libby contemplated the implications of Bernie’s statement. “So,” she said after a moment, “what we’re saying is that someone came up here and killed her. Someone with a key to the house.”
“I suppose I am.” Bernie automatically readjusted the belt on her dress. It kept sliding off to the side. She could hear rain starting to fall outside. “Especially if Manny was staying here. That’s certainly a link.”
The cat gave up on Clara Randall and began rubbing her head on Bernie’s ankles.
“That’s certainly a big red flag,” Libby agreed. “On the other hand, she could have been expecting a neighbor or a delivery. She could have left the door open for them.”
Bernie looked down at the cat. “What do you think?” she asked her.
The cat looked up at her and meowed.
“I think that’s unlikely too,” Bernie told her. Given what she knew of Old Lady—sorry, Clara Randall’s personality—she seemed like the kind of person who would have kept her door locked at all times.
Libby sighed. “I know.”
Bernie shifted her weight onto her good foot. “Everything up here and downstairs looks in order, so I think we can rule out a burglary gone wrong.”
Libby closed her eyes for a minute and pictured the possible train of events. “Unless whoever was responsible came upstairs and Clara Randall surprised them so they killed her and fled without taking what they were looking for.”
“Possible,” Bernie conceded. She thought of the Hoppers downstairs and the Tiffany lamp and the oriental rugs, all of which were worth a sizable amount of money. Most people, though, wouldn’t take those; they’d take cash, jewelry, and electronics. “Let’s take another look,” she suggested.
Which they did, but there was no evidence of a TV in the bedroom, and as for jewelry, the only thing the sisters found was a jewelry box full of fake pearls and Timex watches.
“Maybe there’s a safe here somewhere,” Bernie said.
But if there had been, it wasn’t there now. At least, it wasn’t anyplace in the bedroom that Bernie or Libby could see.
Libby thought about the small safe her mom had kept to store her marriage certificate in. It was still in her dad’s bedroom. It was so light she or Bernie could pick it up and carry it down the stairs. “The attacker could have taken it.”
“I don’t know,” Bernie said. “Clara Randall strikes me as more of a safety deposit box person.”
Libby nibbled on her cuticle, realized what she was doing, and stopped. “It looks as if Clara Randall died after Manny. I don’t think she’s been dead that long.” She rubbed her temples. She could feel a headache coming on. One murder was bad, two was worse. “But I guess we’ll have to wait for the autopsies to find out for sure.”
Bernie bent down and scratched the ginger tabby underneath her chin. She began to purr. The sound filled the room.
“Do you want to call the cops or should I?” Libby asked.
“You can after we finish looking around.”
“I think we should call them now.”
“And not finish what we started?”
Libby shook her head. “I don’t know, Bernie . . . given last time.”
“This is different. We’re not going to run into the police this time.”
“I think Dad would disown us if he had to bail us out again.”
“He didn’t bail us out. We didn’t get ourselves arrested.”
“Don’t be so literal. I was talking figuratively.”
“He’s not going to have to. No one is coming through the door.”
“And you’re sure of that?”
“Reasonably.”
Libby glanced down at Clara Randall. She fought an impulse to close her eyes and cross her arms over her chest.
“Listen,” Bernie said, “we need to know if Manny lived here or if he didn’t, and the sooner we find out, the better. If he did live here maybe there’s something in his room that will shed light on what’s going on.” Bernie picked the cat up. The tabby leaned her head on Bernie’s shoulder. “Besides, we owe it to Ellen to follow through on this. Mom would have wanted us to.”
Libby frowned. She swatted at a fly that was hovering around her face. “Raising the ugly specter of guilt, are we?”
Bernie grinned. “Absolutely.”
“Well, just because you feel guilty doesn’t mean that I have to.”
“Sisters share. Remember?”
“Ha-ha-ha. Funny lady,” Libby retorted.
“That’s what Mom always said. Anyway, Mom liked Ellen. You know she did. We also owe it to Ellen’s kids,” Bernie continued. “They paid us. We agreed to take the case. We’re morally obligated to follow through.”
“That’s true,” Libby reluctantly agreed. She couldn’t argue with that. A vision of Ethan, tears trickling down his cheeks, floated through her mind, and she caved. “Okay,” she said, “but let’s get in and out of here fast.”
Bernie curtsied. “Your wish is my command.”
“Yeah, right,” Libby muttered.
“We will,” Bernie promised as she and Libby stepped out into the hallway.
Chapter 17
The cat meowed and Bernie resumed scratching behind her ears.
“She certainly seems starved for attention,” Libby noted as she looked around.
The upstairs hallway was spacious and well lit. An oriental style runne
r ran down the center of the floor while a matched pair of antique Chinese Fu Dogs sat on mother-of-pearl inlaid tables across from one another and staring at each other. If the dogs had been meant to protect Clara Randall, they had failed miserably. The walls were dotted with photos and the sisters stopped to take a look at them. They were all family photos, most of them of Clara Randall when she was younger.
“She was attractive,” Bernie noted over the cat’s purring.
“Very,” Libby answered, looking at a picture of Clara Randall. She and a girlfriend were hugging. Both of them were wearing white skirts and striped, long sleeve, boat-neck T-shirts and had their faces turned to the camera. They were both sticking out their tongues.
“I bet she was twelve or thirteen when this was taken,” Bernie said.
“I wonder what happened to her,” Libby mused. “She looks so happy there.”
“Whatever it was, I hope it doesn’t happen to us,” Bernie said as she walked down the hall scanning the other photos.
They were all family photos of one kind or another. Some were in black and white, others were faded Polaroids. Most had been taken by amateurs, although a few on the wall had been taken by professionals. All of the pictures had been expensively framed and hung with great care.
There were pictures of Clara Randall with her dad and mom, at her high school and college graduations, and away on holidays at the beach and lake. The thing that struck Bernie the most as she looked at them was Clara’s progression from happy to unhappy, which the photos showed. Clara Randall had started off a pretty girl with a brilliant smile and turned into a sour-faced, plain-looking woman. How had that happened?
Bernie was three-quarters of the way down the hall when she stopped in front of one of the photos. “Libby, come here.”
Libby walked over. “What’s up?”
Bernie pointed to a goofy-looking kid mugging for the camera. He was sitting at a picnic table in what looked like Highland Park. “Isn’t that Manny?” she asked Libby.
Libby squinted. She bent over to take a closer look. “It sure is,” she said after a minute had gone by. Boy has he changed, she thought again, and not for the better.
Bernie studied the other people in the photo. There was Clara Randall sitting at the edge of the picnic table with her hands folded on the table, and between her and Manny were a stiff-looking, sour-faced, well-dressed, middle-aged couple. She pointed to them. “I’m betting they’re his parents. Manny looks just like them.”
“Dad would know,” Libby observed. “Too bad we can’t ask him.”
Bernie ignored the comment. “They don’t look like much fun, do they?”
“I think you can safely surmise that anyone who names their kid Raymond Manford probably isn’t,” Libby replied. She studied the couple’s faces. “I bet they expected great things from their son.”
“Maybe if they had expected less, they would have gotten more,” Bernie observed.
“That certainly wasn’t the principle Mom operated under.”
“No, it wasn’t, was it?” Bernie said softly. Her sister, being the older one, had definitely borne the brunt of her mom’s expectations.
She was thinking about that while Libby gently nibbled on the inside of her cheek and studied the pictures on the wall. “He looks familiar,” she said, pointing to a slightly older kid standing in back of Manny.
He looked familiar to Bernie too. She just couldn’t put a name to his face. “We should get going,” she said after glancing at her watch. “The less time we’re in here, the better. How about you take the rooms on the right side and I’ll take the ones on the left?”
“Works for me,” Libby told her. She shook her head. She was still thinking about the kid in the picture with Manny. “I know I know that guy from somewhere.”
“It’ll come to you,” Bernie reassured her as she started toward the second bedroom on the left-hand side. The cat jumped down and followed her.
Including Clara Randall’s, there were five bedrooms in all on the second floor and one bedroom in the attic. It turned out that of the remaining bedrooms on the second floor, one was being used as a sewing room, while the next three rooms had no furniture in them at all. They were chock-full of racks of clothes and shoes and various accessories.
“Holy cow,” Libby said, emerging from her first room and joining Bernie. “And I thought you shopped a lot.” She gestured to the room she’d just been in. “There must be ten racks of coats and pants and suits in there.”
Bernie surveyed boxes of shoes stacked up against the wall and arranged by color and type. The middle of the room was filled with three racks of skirts and dresses, while shelving filled with sweaters and blouses and handbags lined the other walls.
“It looks as if Clara Randall never gave anything away,” Bernie said in a massive understatement.
Then she walked over and opened the closet door. It was packed with old clothes neatly hung on pink quilted hangers. The scent of lavender mixed with the smell of mothballs assaulted Bernie’s nose. The cat must not have liked it, because she scampered to the other side of the room. She sniffed at the baseboards while Bernie quickly thumbed through the clothes. The dresses were from places like Saks and Lord & Taylor and Bergdorf’s.
“Definitely oldies but goodies,” Bernie observed, shutting the closet door behind her. “There’s a lot of money here,” she said, referring to the clothes, as she and Libby walked back out into the hallway.
Libby shook her head. “I can’t imagine staying in a house like this by myself,” she said, interrupting Bernie’s train of thought. “It’s too big. It would give me the heebie jeebies.”
Bernie smiled. That had been one of her mother’s expressions. “Me too, but Clara must have liked it this way. She could certainly afford to move,” Bernie said as she slowly made her way back out into the hallway. The cat followed. “I guess she needed room for all of her stuff.”
She reached down and massaged her ankle. It was throbbing by now. The more she was on it, the more painful it became. She ignored the ache and limped toward the door to the attic. It was midway down the hall and qualitatively different from the other doors upstairs. This one was new. The other doors were solid oak; this was hollow core, and even though it had been stained, it didn’t match the others.
“I bet Clara Randall got this at Home Depot,” Bernie said as she grasped the doorknob and pulled.
The door opened easily and the cat scampered up the stairs before Bernie could stop her.
“Great,” Bernie said, looking at the dark stairwell. She put out her hand and felt around until she found a light switch and turned it on. She sighed as she studied the stairs. They looked steep and the treads of the two middle ones were sagging.
“I’ll go if you want,” Libby offered. “You can stay here.”
“No. I can do it,” Bernie said, gritting her teeth. After all, she’d been the one who had insisted on this. She grabbed hold of the banister and pulled herself up one step at a time. Libby came up after her to make sure her sister didn’t fall.
The cat was sitting on a bed when Bernie got up there. It was one of those futons that converted into a bed. The bed was unmade, a bath towel was thrown on a chair, there was a backpack on the dresser and magazines on the floor, as well as empty candy wrappers, movie ticket stubs, and clothes.
“Someone is living up here,” Bernie said as Libby picked up a pair of jeans and held them up. “The question is: is it Manny?”
“These look like they could fit him,” Libby said.
“They are really big,” Bernie allowed.
Libby peeked inside the waistband. “The waist size is forty-two. I’d say that’s pretty big.”
“Me too.” Bernie watched Libby going through the jean’s pockets. She found some loose change, a crumpled up Snickers wrapper, and a receipt from the local CVS for a bottle of aspirin, but that was it.
“There’s nothing of interest here,” Libby noted disappointedly.
&nb
sp; Bernie grunted “We’re not done yet,” she observed. Then she walked over to an old, battered desk set off in a corner. She ran her finger over a stack of old newspapers, then picked up a chess book lying next to them and opened the cover. There was Manny’s name written in the corner in blue ink. “This is his room,” she said, holding up the book for Libby to see.
Libby smiled. “Well, at least we’re right about that.” And she bent down and looked under the futon.
Meanwhile, Bernie went through Manny’s dresser drawers. Aside from some underwear, socks, T-shirts, and a couple of hoodies, there wasn’t much in there. Whereas Clara Randall had way too much, Manny Roget had practically nothing.
“You know what I don’t see?” Bernie told Libby when she’d finished going through the drawers. “I don’t see a laptop, or a tablet, or anything of that nature.”
“Maybe whoever killed him took it,” Libby posited.
“Maybe,” Bernie said as she walked over to the mesh basket that was full of clothes and began rummaging through them. A few minutes later, she held up a laptop. “Or not. It was buried under some T-shirts,” she explained.
“Odd place for it,” Libby observed.
Bernie grunted a response. Then she sat down on the futon, opened it up, and tried to log in, but she couldn’t. It was password protected. Bernie cursed under her breath and began trying different combinations of Manny Roget’s name, but nothing worked, and after five minutes of trying, she gave up and put the laptop back where she’d found it.
In the meantime Libby had opened up Manny’s backpack. It was empty except for a couple of energy drinks, three packs of gum, and a folder containing order forms and a book of receipts, both of which had the word Arf printed on them. “Look at what I found,” Libby cried, holding up the folder for Bernie to see.
“I think we have a theme going here.” Bernie held up a large black T-shirt with the logo ARF written on it, which she’d found on the bed buried under a pile of smelly sweatpants. Begging for More was written underneath it. “You know what this means, don’t you?”
“Offhand, I’d say it means that Manny was selling Ellen and Lisa’s products,” Libby said.
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