by E. C. Bell
“What kind of questions?” I asked.
The Queen didn’t answer. Just narrowed her eyes in an uniquely infuriating way. “What were you doing at Naomi’s? You upset her, with all your questions about her son, Edward.”
I glanced around. Eddie’s mom, Naomi, wasn’t in the room.
“It’s Eddie, you old cow!” Eddie yelled.
I glanced over at him, and he shut his mouth, but I could tell by the look on his face that he wasn’t going to keep control for long. I hoped he would, because I had to find out why they were here.
“You mean Eddie?” I asked, and saw Eddie relax, a little bit.
“Yes,” Bea said. “I suppose. Though I never understood his need to use a contraction of his name. Seemed so—boyish. Don’t you think so, girls?”
The rest of the women nodded, agreeing wholeheartedly with Queen Bea, and obviously not seeing the irony of her calling Eddie’s name boyish, and then calling them girls.
“I’m sorry I upset Eddie’s mother, but it was important that I speak to her about her son,” I said. “We’re trying to solve his murder—”
“Aren’t the police doing that?” one of the other women asked. Bea gave her a “you stole my line” look that could probably wither corn on the stalk, and the woman shut her mouth with a small snap. I tried to hide the nasty little smile that came over me, even though it was really nice to see that Bea could be rattled.
“Yes, of course they’re doing what they can,” I said. “But we’ve been hired to exonerate a person of interest—and if we can solve the murder at the same time, then that will help the police. Won’t it?”
“Yes, yes, those poor dears, run off their feet the way they are, any help is good, I’m sure,” Bea said. She looked like she thought she was back in control, just where she liked it. “And who are you trying to exonerate, dear?”
I smiled at her, wishing my lips didn’t feel quite so angry tight. The old woman was getting under my skin, darn it, anyhow. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you that.”
Bea smiled. It wasn’t pleasant to see. Felt a bit like watching a shark smile. “I’m afraid I don’t understand,” she said, and settled back in her chair, clutching her oversized purse in her hands like she was settling in for a really long talk, one that would probably last until she got the information she wanted.
“I’m afraid it’s a matter of client confidentiality,” I said. I smiled even harder, letting the old woman know I wasn’t going to let her push me around.
Eddie whispered, “You go, girl!” and pumped his arm in the air a couple of times. I ignored him, concentrating on the smiling old woman sitting before me.
“But you’re not a doctor, dear,” she said. “Or a lawyer.” She looked around the office again, and clucked. “Doesn’t even look like you’re much of a private investigator. You do have a licence, don’t you?”
“I am not the private investigator,” I said, and stopped with the smiling. She was really starting to bug me. The rest of the old biddies leaned back in their chairs, but Bea leaned forward, ready to do battle.
“So who is?”
“James Lavall.”
“And why wasn’t he conducting the investigation?”
“That is none of your business.” I opened a small pad of paper, and picked up my pen. “I’ll need your names, please.”
“Why?” Finally, Bea looked taken aback. I liked to see that look on her face. I really did.
“You’ll have to be checked out,” I said. “You’ve decided to become involved in an ongoing investigation, for some reason. I believe it goes past just being Eddie’s mother’s friend.” I glared at the woman sitting to Bea’s right. “Name and address, please.”
The woman opened her mouth as if she was about to give me everything I’d asked for. This brought Bea back to attention.
“Shut your mouth, Edna. You don’t need to tell this young woman anything.” She stared at me, obviously hoping to break my will down with a look.
Not a chance.
“If you have nothing to hide, why wouldn’t you tell me your names?” I asked, pen still poised over the paper. “Not telling me makes you look guilty, you know.”
“Oh Bea, maybe we should tell her,” a woman sitting near the door said. “We have nothing to hide—”
“Fine,” Bea snapped. “If you need our names and addresses so you can check us all out, we’ll give them to you. We have nothing at all to hide, do we, girls?”
“No,” the woman to the right of Bea said, and I swore I heard a hint of “I told you so” in her voice.
Looks like a bit of a mutiny there, Queen Bea.
In five minutes, I had all their contact information written down. I closed the pad of paper and put down the pen.
“Thank you for your cooperation,” I said. “And now, if there isn’t anything else, perhaps you should be on your way. I have a very full day, and—”
“Oh no,” Bea said, shaking her head vigorously. “We came here for some answers, missy. We are not leaving until we get them. We gave you everything you wanted. Turnabout is fair play.”
There was some additional grumbling from the other women, and it looked like I was going to be stuck with an old lady sit-in if I wasn’t careful.
Darn it. I’d thought it would work.
I plastered the smile back on my face. “What information are you looking for?”
“Are you absolutely certain Eddie was murdered?” Bea asked the question quickly, as if afraid that if she wasn’t fast, I’d reconsider, and they’d be left sitting there drinking cold coffee and getting nothing more.
“Yes, ma’am,” I replied. That much information they could have gleaned from the morning news.
“Do you have any idea at all who could have done it?”
“I am not at liberty—”
“Yes, yes, fine,” Bea snapped. Her lips thinned as she thought, hard. “Would you like some help?”
What?
“What kind of help?” I asked. Had these old women actually figured something out about Eddie’s murder? “Do you know something—”
“Oh no, nothing like that,” Bea replied, shaking her head. “However, we have some—expertise in solving crimes of this sort, don’t we, girls?”
Assenting noises from the other old women, and I stared. What were they talking about? What kind of expertise could they have?
“We’ve studied under the masters,” Bea said. “For years.”
“The masters?” I asked.
“Doyle, Patterson, Christie, Roberts. You know. The best the literary world has to offer.”
“The literary—” I blinked. “You’re talking about mystery writers. Right?”
“Of course,” Bea replied. “We’ve studied them extensively and understand exactly how to run an investigation. Don’t we, girls?”
More rumblings of assent from the rest. Oh, my. I had to nip this in the bud.
“I don’t think—” I started, but Bea cut me off. Again. It was getting tiresome; it really was.
“As a matter of fact, we only came here as a courtesy,” she said. “To find out who you were and why you were bothering Naomi. However, I like your face and believe you are trustworthy.”
“Well, thank you,” I said.
“We’ve already started our investigation. When it’s complete, we’ll bring you our findings, gratis.”
“Gratis?” I tried to keep smiling, but it was starting to hurt. What I wanted to do was laugh, but I guessed that would probably be a bad thing to do. I imagined Bea could get vicious if someone laughed at her.
“That means for free, girl,” Bea snapped. “We’ll go out and solve this mystery. Not for you, of course. We’re doing it for Naomi. But we will share our findings with you. So you can find out if your secret client is guilty or not.”
Bea grabbed her huge handbag and hitched the straps over her shoulder, then hauled herself upright. The rest of the women took it as the signal that they were finally leaving, a
nd all stood.
“Oh,” I said, and belatedly stood, too. I had to put a stop to this before they left. “Thanks, but I don’t think—”
“We are doing this for Naomi, girl,” Bea repeated, her eyes glittering dangerously. “For you, we’ll call this a test. If we do a good job, we will expect you to consider us for your other endeavours. And we will expect to be paid.”
“Oh.” I glanced around the room, hoping against hope that the rest of the women—or maybe one of them—thought this was a bad idea. But no, all heads were bobbing enthusiastically. Eddie wasn’t even any help, because he was laughing his butt off in the corner of the room. I took a deep breath and blew it out slowly, to get myself back under control. “Oh. Well. Thank you. I will definitely keep that in mind.”
“See that you do,” Bea replied. She dug in her voluminous bag and pulled out a business card, which she dropped on the desk in front of me. “You can reach me there.”
“Thanks.”
“And you?” Bea asked.
“Me what?”
“Give me your card, girl,” Bea snapped.
Seriously? Handing out that stupid business card had brought me nothing but trouble so far, but Bea’s hand stayed outstretched. I had this horrible feeling that she could stand there, like a statue, forever, if I didn’t give her what she wanted.
I opened a drawer, and stared into the huge mess of stuff I’d dumped in there after the break-in. I shifted some stuff, and one popped into view. I pulled the card from the mess and handed it to Bea.
“The number’s on the front,” I said. “Call if you have any information.”
“Oh no, this is not the way this is done, girl,” Bea replied. She turned to the rest of the women and snorted indignant laughter. “As if we’d do this over the telephone.” The rest obediently tittered, and Bea turned back to me, staring with her shark-cold eyes.
“No. The only reason we’d call would be to set up a meeting. To discuss our findings and so forth.”
She dropped the card in her purse and led the way out of the office, the rest of the women bobbing along in her wake like a handful of dinghies following an ocean liner.
I didn’t move until I heard the downstairs door slap shut. Then I dropped Bea’s business card in the garbage.
“Where did your mother find those women, Eddie?” I asked.
“No idea,” Eddie replied. “No idea at all.”
But he was lying to me. I could tell.
I sighed, and sat down at my desk. Time to check out these women and find out what their secrets were. If Eddie wouldn’t tell me, I’d find out myself.
Eddie:
No Confession for Me
ACTUALLY, I KNEW exactly where my mother had found the women from her book club, but Marie didn’t need to know that Bea Winterburn had been running the local “Tough Love” group, and my mother had joined when I first got in trouble with the law.
After a few months, Bea and Mom had figured out that they both liked to read mysteries, and Bea invited her to join the book club she’d organized. All the women were old and cranky, like Bea, but even though Mom was at least twenty years younger, she fit right in.
And between the stupid mysteries, Bea kept telling Mom to get me out of her life. For her own good.
No. Marie didn’t need to know any of that.
“No idea,” I said. “No idea at all.”
Marie glanced at me, and I could tell she knew I was lying. More lying. I felt exhausted. I also felt like I needed to get high and let it all drift away.
“I gotta go.”
“Eddie?” she asked. “Are you all right?”
“I’m dead. I’m as far from all right as I can get.” I didn’t turn around or anything. I just wanted to get out. “I gotta go.”
I didn’t want to talk about this anymore. I knew the book club hadn’t killed me. I knew I’d picked them to blame because it felt like they’d made my life miserable for almost as long as I could remember. I just wanted a little payback. At least, I had. Now I didn’t know. It seemed stupid, and childish, and pointless. I was dead. I needed to let this stuff go. “I’ll be back.”
“When?”
“Later!” I snapped, then closed my eyes. I remembered saying the same thing to my mom, when she’d asked me that question. “Later,” I said, trying to make my voice sound more reasonable. “After I—”
“Get high?”
That stopped me. “Maybe.”
“It’d be better if you didn’t do that, Eddie,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because, if you want to move on, you need to feel the feelings and really understand. You can’t do that high. You’re hiding behind the drugs. You get that, don’t you?”
“Yeah, sure. I’ll think about it.” Then I left, before she could say anything more, and hit the sidewalk almost running.
No matter what she said, I needed to clear my head. And the only way I knew to do that was to get high.
I desperately needed to get high. More than that, I needed to get away from her. She made me think about shit I really did not want to think about.
So I ran to the park, found the first junkie I could, and stepped in.
Marie:
Should You Drink Something Blue?
Sure. Why Not?
I HAD JUST finished checking up on Naomi Hansen’s book club members when James came back, looking like he had been beaten with a large mental stick. I decided not to mention a thing about the book club dropping in on us, because he didn’t look like he could take any more foolishness. A book club helping us figure our case out—for a fee—was about as foolish a thing as I could think of.
“I take it things did not go well with the sergeant,” I said instead, and pointed at the coffee machine. “Want some?”
He shook his head and threw himself into a chair. “Do we have anything stronger?”
“I think so.”
I went into the other office, to the bottom right drawer of James’s dead uncle’s desk. There were a few fingers of some really decent scotch left, so I brought it out with two glasses. I poured him a little more than half and emptied the rest of the bottle into a glass for me. He took the glass and managed a smile.
“So, what happened?” I asked. He held up his hand, then tossed the drink back in one shot.
“Want mine?”
“If you don’t mind.” He took my proffered glass, and finished it almost as quickly as he had the first one. Then he leaned back and covered his eyes with one of his hands. “This has turned into a really bad day,” he muttered.
“What happened?”
“The cop who ran the sting you got caught in has decided that you tipped off the big guys, just by showing up. And apparently I didn’t help things at all by going there today.”
“They knew you went down to the park today?”
“Yes. Apparently, there’s surveillance everywhere down there.” His face closed. “I tried to tell them you weren’t involved. That you’d gone down on my order.”
“Stewart?”
“That’s the one. He wants our hides, he really does.”
“So what happens next?”
“We have another meeting scheduled with the good sergeant tomorrow morning. 9:00 a.m. Sharp.”
“What for?” Suddenly I wished I hadn’t given James my drink. I could have used it myself.
“She says we have to give all the information we’ve gathered to Stewart.”
“But James, this is our case! She can’t expect us to just hand over everything we’ve found out—”
“What have we found out, Marie? Really, what have we found out? We know that our client has visions. Or pretends she does. We know she lives right by the park where a lot of drug addicts—including the murder victim—hang out. The police already know all of this. What else do we know for sure?”
“I—I don’t know,” I muttered. He was right. We didn’t have much more. Not on the surface. Heck, not even when I took into a
ccount the little Eddie had told me about the turf war.
“I really could use another drink.”
He stalked over to the closet. It was still filled with his dead uncle’s stuff, and he began pulling apart the boxes, one by one. I left him to it, secretly hoping that he’d find something, so we could both have a drink.
He was absolutely right. We had no case. Nothing at all. And if Stewart was telling the truth, I’d wrecked his big sting operation just by wandering into the park on that particular night. Maybe we were idiots.
“Yahoo!” he cried, and backed out of the closet with a bottle of something blue in his hand.
“What is that?” I asked.
“No clue,” he said.
He poured a liberal dollop for me, and then another for himself. Then he knocked it back, shuddered, and poured himself another. He looked over at me as he put down the bottle and picked up his glass once more.
“Go ahead,” he said.
“Are you sure it’s something we should be drinking?” I had never seen a bottle of alcohol that colour blue before. “Maybe your uncle filled it with—”
“No, it’s actually pretty good. A little sweet, but you’ll get used to it,” he said. “Try it.”
I touched the drink to my lips and tasted. He was right. It was sweet, but seemed drinkable, so I took a big sip and swallowed. It warmed me all the way down. I sipped some more as James poured himself another big glass.
“To the two biggest idiots in the world!” he said, holding his glass up. I laughed and touched the edge of my glass to his, then we both drank to ourselves.
“Maybe we just need to learn how to do this right,” I said. “I mean, there are courses we could take, aren’t there?”
“I suppose,” he muttered, burying his face in his glass again. “It’s just so embarrassing, having my ineptitude thrown in my face like that.” He held up the nearly empty bottle. “More?”
“No, I’m good.”
As he poured the rest into his glass, I sipped a little more from mine and savoured the warmth as it slid down my throat.
“So she wants to see us tomorrow.”
“Yep.”