by Elaine Macko
“If you’re going to have to move back in with me, you better get used to no smokes and no alcohol, or you’ll find yourself out on the street.”
Ruth gave a snort and looked at me. “Do you hear how she talks to her mamma? I bet you don’t talk that way to your mother. And my son? He was trying to get rid of me even before he died. You do all you can for them growing up and this is what you get in return. What kind of kids have I raised? Huh?”
Ruth looked at me like she was expecting an answer. “I don’t know, Mrs. Sanjari. Was there nothing left to either one of you?” I didn’t envy Mr. Annunzio having these two women living above his shop.
Delilah huffed. “My brother told me I was executor of the trust, but guess what? He lied. The sad part is I believed him. After knowing him my entire life, I actually believed him. Well, he got the last laugh, didn’t he?” Delilah looked as if she was trying to control her temper. “Princess Maddi gets everything. Jenna made sure that her family made out if anything ever happened. Victor wanted Jenna back and he told me Jenna said she’d only come back and try again if he would agree to set up the trust. As soon as she died, he told me he had changed it, but looks like he never got around to it like he said. I’m going to be stuck with her again,” Delilah nodded in her mother’s direction. “You tell me how that’s fair. And how the hell am I supposed to pay my rent? Huh?”
“A job, perhaps? I hear that’s what a lot of people do to earn money.”
“You got a smart mouth,” Ruth said to me.
I was tempted to tell her that I wasn’t the one with no place to live, but instead said, “my understanding is that everything is in trust for Moshi as it should be.”
Delilah gave me a disgusted look. “I know how these things work. Maddi holds the reins until that kid is grown. That’s a long time from now, and she probably gets something for being the executor. And I get stuck with my mother.”
Ruth shot Delilah a look of pure disdain. “I need something to drink.” She headed down the hallway, presumably to the kitchen. Delilah and I followed her.
Ruth rummaged around and, finding nothing, took a glass from the cupboard and got some water from the kitchen sink.
“I understand you had an argument with your brother the night he was killed?” I asked Delilah.
“Did I? Huh. Considering that’s how we usually communicated with each other, you’re probably right. We didn’t have much use for one another, Vic and me.”
Except for him giving her money every month, I thought.
“And after the argument what did you do?”
“Why I went back to my lovely apartment, turned on some music, cooked a gourmet meal in my beautiful kitchen, and then went for a swim in my pool. What the hell do you think I did?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know, but you threatened to kill your brother and then shortly thereafter he was murdered.”
“If I was going to kill him, I would have made sure he changed that damned trust first.”
She had a point, but she also mentioned earlier that she thought he had. As I walked back to my car I had to wonder if Maddi had also known Victor planned on changing the trust and did something before he could.
Chapter 40
After I left the Sanjari women arguing over whether or not to spend their pooled resources on some cheap whiskey, or stop and get some burgers for dinner at a drive-thru, I tossed around the idea of stopping by the design studio of Kate Cavanaugh. I wanted to ask her why she was seducing my brother-in-law, but it was a Saturday evening and the chance of catching her was probably nil. She and Michael might even be together, and I certainly didn’t want to walk in on that. Maybe I should call my sister and find out if Michael was home. Shirley had said that she would call Kate to set up an appointment and see if she could get a feeling for what was actually going on between Michael and the designer. I reluctantly decided to wait and see what Shirley was able to find out before I barged in on the woman.
It was getting late, and after an afternoon at the beach with the kids, I was tired. The beach always relaxes me. They should bottle beach and dispense that to people rather than all the anxiety drugs you see advertised on TV. I ended up going straight home where I made a sandwich for dinner. John had gone over to his parents’ house to help his dad repair a broken screen in their breezeway, and knowing his mother, I’m sure she would feed him. I took my BLT into the den and plopped myself into my recliner. I turned the television on low, and then dug into my sandwich. It was delicious and hit the spot and I was already contemplating making another.
I munched on sandwich and pieces of cool cantaloupe while I stared at the television. A rerun of a British comedy I had seen a hundred times was playing. When I finished my dinner—holding off on the other sandwich for the moment—I lowered the volume and picked up my iPad. I brought up the app I use for keeping notes and created a new page and called it Suspects. In all my investigations I always seem to get to this point when I need to sort things out by writing them down, but this time it was more difficult trying to keep things straight because I was working on solving two murders. Or at least one murder and proving another death was indeed at the hands of another.
I typed in my first suspect: Maddi. I really liked her and hated to put her on the list for a number of reasons, one being that if she had killed Victor, what would happen to Moshi? But Maddi loved her sister and felt certain Victor had killed her, a conviction I also held. And Maddi wanted justice. She had told me that the police questioned her and her husband Hal. They were both home at the time Victor had been killed. Hal was helping the girls with their math homework and Maddi was working on crafts. Sounded good to me, but that didn’t mean that Hal wasn’t covering for his wife or perhaps hadn’t even realized that she had left. Ditto for Maddi covering for Hal.
The second person on my list was Gary Hachmeister. He had known Victor since they were kids and had coveted Victor’s wife. Gary couldn’t be blind to Victor’s lascivious ways with women, and perhaps he resented the way Victor had treated his wife, knew Victor killed Jenna, and finally exacted revenge. And perhaps this desire to get rid of his friend was helped along by the fact that Victor was forcing Gary to use illegal workers, which was costing him a lot in lost productivity. But would Gary kill someone on one of his own work sites? Maybe the opportunity just presented itself or maybe he did it for just that reason, to cast doubt as to his guilt. I didn’t know, but I wanted it to be him because men who so openly gawk at women’s chests should be put in prison in the same cell as a sex-deprived serial killer. I’m just saying.
I went to the kitchen and refilled my little bowl with more fruit. I really wanted that sandwich, but guilt got the better of me. I consoled myself by grabbing a large handful of M&M’s from a jar I keep on the counter. I poured a glass of iced tea and brought it all back into the den.
Doc Martin, one of my favorite British imports, was just starting, and I turned up the sound and watched for a bit while more suspects ran through my head.
Next was Delilah Sanjari. If I was looking at the prospect of spending all of eternity in a small, cramped apartment with Ruth Sanjari, I think I would resort to murdering the person who had created that hell, too. Plus, Delilah had actually been heard to say that she would rather kill her brother than live with her mother. I found it hard to believe she wasn’t already in jail. And despite the look she projected of living like a frugal hippie, she definitely resented her brother for not leaving her anything. Of course, now that her brother was dead, she actually had a much bigger problem, and that problem was what was she going to do about paying Mr. Annunzio each month? I didn’t think what he paid her to clean the bicycle shop could possibly cover the rent. It seemed to me that Victor was worth more to Delilah alive, but maybe she didn’t realize that at the time because she felt certain he had changed the trust. Perhaps her anger at her mother’s impending move back to the apartment may have just overtaken her before she could think of the consequences. Pure fury at what her lif
e was to become overcame her and she picked up the nail gun and filled her brother full of pointy spikes.
And what about that nail gun? Was it Victor’s? Delilah’s? Or was it simply left there by one of the workers? And why did Victor go to the construction site in the first place? I let all these thoughts stew in my head while I watched Doc Martin once again berate one of his patients for wasting his time.
And of course I couldn’t leave the grieving mother off my suspect list, though she seemed to grieve more for the loss of a bottle of Scotch than her own son. It seemed to me that Ruth’s life would also be better with Vic alive. Even though her son had plans to move her out of his home, Ruth must have realized at some point, between liquor-induced benders, that things would be far worse without her son’s monetary handouts.
I took several sips of my tea and then finished off the rest of the fruit while I watched the rest of Doc Martin. The show was set in Cornwall, and I mentally added it to my bucket list dreamily thinking about what life would be like living in a small Cornish fishing village, and eating something called a Cornish pasty.
Wondering about far off places was nothing more than a delaying tactic. If I was going to do my due diligence, I had to add my brother-in-law to my list of suspects and I really didn’t want to. So far Michael hadn’t produced an alibi for the night Victor was killed and he was definitely acting suspicious. Sam said Michael was pretty tired of Victor’s touching his wife and blaming Kendall for Moshi not getting a certain part, but would that induce a man to kill? Michael was a very even-tempered guy, but the man wasn’t helping any by keeping his whereabouts quiet.
I took another sip of the iced tea thinking I was done with my suspects list, but was I? Hadn’t I just met a young woman who was having a clandestine affair with the victim? What did I know about her? Absolutely nothing. She told me that Victor wanted her to move in with him, but when was that going to happen? How long had he been stringing her along, and was he really interested in having a young woman who was almost a kid herself move into his home with his daughter, or was it just a ploy to seduce Elizabeth and keep her on the hook? And what about Brian Jankowski? He loved Jenna and wanted to start a life with her. That dream had been snuffed out by Victor. At least Brian thought it had.
I finished off the tea. Tomorrow I hoped to speak more with Elizabeth, and maybe Shirley would have made contact with Kate Cavanaugh and would have some news for me on the Michael front. And I also wanted to speak with Mary McCarthy, the woman who told the police about the argument between my sister and Victor. Sure, nothing came of it and Sam was free, but maybe this Mary McCarthy was trying to cast suspicion away from herself by implicating my sister. Tomorrow was a Sunday, but with the help of Shirley, I could get the addresses I needed and catch them at home.
I had just pressed the Send button on my email to Shirley, thinking about how lucky I was to have this new friend in my life—and not because of all the help she gave me but because she was fun and intelligent and gutsy—when John walked in.
“Hey? All done? Can I get you something to eat or did your mother feed you?” I asked. My husband looked beat.
“Thanks. My mom made spaghetti bolognaise for dinner. I had two bowls.”
“One of your favorites, so why do you look so glum?” I asked.
“Because this humidity is killing me, and I just came home to get cleaned up and changed. I have to go into work.” At my questioning look John said, “Someone just tried to kill Gary Hachmeister.”
Chapter 41
Now, one might think that that little bombshell would immediately remove Gary from my list of suspects, but one would be wrong.
As I sipped my tea the following morning, I had a thought: I wouldn’t put it past Gary Hachmeister to pretend to try and kill himself to throw off suspicion, or at least hire someone to pretend to try to kill him.
John had gotten home late last night, but before he left this morning he told me that Gary had been working late. When Gary had left his office, he locked up and walked down the dark hall. The hallway is usually lit, but the lights must have been turned off. Someone came up behind him and whacked him with something like a piece of pipe or baseball bat, then ran away when another weekend worker came out of one of the other offices. I remembered the view from Gary’s office window. It would be very easy for someone to lurk in the woods behind the building, watching Gary. Maybe they observed him for a while and when they thought he was alone, the watcher crept into the building and waited for Gary to leave. I got chills just thinking about someone watching me from a dark place, totally invisible to anyone else. Our house also butted up against some woods, and it was one of the reasons I always closed the shutters on my windows at night.
I pulled into my parents’ driveway. With John headed back to work, I decided that my mother’s chocolate chip pancakes sounded like a good way to start the day. Of course, I had called first to tell her to get things ready. I’m not totally devoid of manners.
“Perfect timing. Riley just ate the test pancake, and by the way he gobbled it up, I think we’re good to go. I just have to add the chocolate to my batter,” my mother said.
Riley will eat anything including the first pancake that for some reason always sticks to the pan and has to be tossed out.
“Hey, boy. Was it good?” I gave Riley a kiss on his little head. He’s usually a lot fluffier, but with the summer heat, my mother took him in for a good clipping. “Where’s Dad?” I asked.
“Golf. He wanted to get a game in before it got too hot.”
My father was an almost-retired insurance specialist. He still handled all personal insurance matters for Sam and me, and everything related to our business as well. He had recently taken up golf and was really enjoying it.
“I called your sister. She’s bringing the kids over for pancakes.”
“Is Michael coming, too?” I asked. I wasn’t sure how to act in front of my brother-in-law. I mean the guy was a suspect for a murder and he was meeting an attractive woman on the side. I didn’t think I could be civil to him.
My mother pursed her lips and shook her head. “Sam said he left very early this morning.”
I slapped my hand down on the table causing the sleeping dog at my feet to jump. “Sorry, Riley. Mom, this has got to stop. What business could a dentist have very early on a Sunday morning? Sam has to put her foot down and ask him once and for all what the hell he’s up to.”
“I agree. Your father knows something’s going on, but I’m not about to tell him that Michael might be, well, stepping out on Sam. Your father loves Michael and John, and he would be heartbroken if either one of them ever hurt you girls. And I haven’t told him about your nonsense to divorce John. I hope you’ve given that notion up?” My mother looked at me with stern eyes.
“Oh, okay. You’ve twisted my arm. I’ll keep him.”
“Good.” My mother smiled and flipped a pancake. “Tell me what’s going on with your investigation.”
I gulped. My mother hates it when I got involved in John’s murder cases. Sometimes she even goes to church and lights candles for me, though I’m never sure if it’s to help me find a killer or to get me to give up all this Nancy Drew nonsense, as she calls it.
“Don’t look so guilty. I’m your mother. I know you like a book, and considering that the police had both Sam and Michael in their sights, I know there’s no use in telling you not to get involved. I took your grandmother to church yesterday and we lit a dozen candles. It’s out of my hands now.” She placed a plate with three perfectly golden chocolate chip pancakes in front of me and then added more hot water to my tea mug.
“I have a few suspects. One of them, Gary Hachmeister, was attacked last night. I have no idea if it’s related to Victor Sanjari’s murder or not.” I put a gob of whipped butter on top of the pancake mound and watched it melt down the sides. Then I poured some maple syrup over the top. “He’s up to some shady deals with his construction business, and that may be the reason Victor was
killed and he was attacked.”
“Your sister says that everyone thinks Victor killed his wife.”
I savored a big bite of pancake before answering. “I agree. I think he killed her because he was an obsessive control freak and he found out she was putting plans in place to leave him. But there were no witnesses and with Victor dead, I can’t very well ask him. But Maddi, that’s Jenna’s sister, she’s certain he killed Jenna, which gives her a good motive for nailing Victor. But then why would she try to kill Gary Hachmeister?” I shook my head and shoved another big piece of syrup-laden pancake into my mouth. “Of course, that’s if the two things are related, and I have no idea if they are. Maybe it’s just a coincidence.”
“There are no such things as coincidences where murder is involved. It says so on all the detective shows,” my mother said with firm authority. “And this industry, construction, seems to be rife with corruption if you believe what you watch on TV.”
I sat back and took a sip of my tea. “Which means that both Victor’s murder and Gary’s attack may have been committed by someone I haven’t even talked to yet.”
Just then the back door opened and Sam and the kids came into the kitchen. Riley jumped up and ran over to Henry. Henry got down on the floor and let the dog smother him in kisses. While they all ate their pancakes, I used my iPad to check emails from Shirley. She had managed to get me addresses for Mary McCarthy, Gary Hachmeister’s home, and Kate Cavanaugh. She also included something else in her email that caught my eye. I put the tablet back in my bag and looked at my sister. The kids ran out the back door with the dog on their heels, and my mother came and sat down with a cup of coffee.
“You don’t look so good,” I said to Sam.
“I haven’t been getting much sleep. I’m trying not to let my imagination get the better of me, you know, like going and staking out Michael’s office,” she said with a wry laugh, “but I’m not sure how much more I can take of not knowing what the hell that man is up to. Am I naïve to think my husband would never cheat on me?” Sam looked down at her hands.