I decided to experiment with paper bag albums. True, the bags aren’t archivally safe, but they make a fun base for collecting memorabilia after a trip or special event. As a cheap project, they were unbeatable. I whipped up one or two in no time. While I stood back to critically assess my results, Nettie and Rena walked in. Luckily by then, the clean-up crew had removed all traces of the ugly message from our wall.
“I know, I know,” Nettie said to me. “You’ve never seen me this late in the day. I’m usually such an early bird. But Rena wanted to stop by, and I needed more patterned paper.”
“Actually, I’m glad to see both of you. I was thinking of sending you both a note. I am so sorry about Yvonne. My sympathy goes to you both, as well as her family. I know you three were close. I recall she rode with you to the crop. That must have been hard—going home without her.”
Despite Detweiler’s warning about meddling, or perhaps because of it, I was determined to move this investigation along. The fact he’d fingered both of my friends as suspects added to the urgency.
“That’s right,” said Rena. “I drove. Yvonne was so excited about the contest she chattered the whole way there. I was nearly deaf from all her jabbering. And Yvonne made Nettie sit in the back with our supplies because she’s started smoking again. That’s so gross. Stinks up everything.”
Nettie shrugged off the aspersion and added, “She called us the day she got the news. Couldn’t wait to brag about winning. Have you seen her pages on the website?”
No, I admitted I hadn’t.
Nettie snorted.
I filed that away.
Both women stared at me expectantly. They’d lobbed the conversational badminton over the net and expected me to return it. But I was not on my game. “I’m sure I’ll be surprised. To be frank, I hadn’t realized Yvonne’s skills were so … advanced.”
Nettie’s face twisted. “They weren’t.”
Rena cut in. “Her death is devastating to her family. Really. Why poor Perry, her husband, is going to need a lot of TLC to get through this.”
Nettie snorted. “Pollen count is up. Sorry.” She covered her nose and mouth with a grubby handkerchief and blew hard. A whiff of stale tobacco floated my way. I couldn’t help but think that smoking and allergies were a bad combination.
Nettie was tall and large-boned with a disappointed and tired face. “So are we, but life goes on, right? Rena and I thought we’d make a memorial album for the family. Or we could do a group project. We figured you’d want to contribute.”
“Of course. What did you have in mind?”
“We’d considered making pages for the kids to fill in as the years go on. Leaving blanks for birthdays and holidays and such. What do you think?” Rena asked.
“They’re already making a tribute album covering Yvonne’s life over at Memories First,” Nettie said. A certain sourness colored her voice. “Excuse me, I need a ciggie. Do you have any more cola?”
I volunteered to get another couple of drinks from the back. “Don’t mind her.” Rena noted me watching the front door. She fiddled with a combination of ribbons and tags. “You do know about Nettie, right?”
“Um, know what?”
Rena leaned close to speak to me just under her breath. “She’s suffering a psychological problem related to getting Lyme disease from a tick bite. It causes really big mood swings. She’s had seizures and now brain lesions. Medication can keep it in check, but still … she has her ups and downs.” Rena shook her head and continued. “I guess Nettie hates how the drugs make her feel. Her husband left her. Once her kids were old enough, they all moved out of the area. She’s lost contact with them.”
“Wow.” That hit me like a blow to the solar plexus. I’d almost lost Anya in a custody battle, and the memory felt raw as an open sore. My heart went out to Nettie. Suddenly, I put her sharp comments and her angry manner in another light: the woman was hurting.
“All she has is her scrapbooking,” whispered Rena as we heard Nettie’s footsteps. “It’s her whole life.”
Nettie was heading back toward us. Rena changed the subject and began to speak loudly. “Ellen is putting pages up on the store website as quickly as they come in. But they aren’t doing it because they care about Yvonne. Ellen Harmon is a publicity hound, through and through. And under most circumstances, she wouldn’t even let kids into her store. Now she wants to make the Gaynor kids the centerpiece of her event!”
“The carpet mishap right?”
Nettie nodded as she took her seat.
This was legend in our scrapbooking community. In a store newsletter Ellen published a close-up photo of saltine crackers ground into her rug. Underneath she put the headline: Vandalism! The article was a rant about how unsupervised children—indeed, all children—were no longer welcome in her store.
The article appeared right before Christmas. Dodie and I had read it in stunned silence. Here’s the $64,000 question: Who did she think her customers were?
Duh. Women with kids?
Ding-ding-ding! You win the prize!
Rena nodded. “The carpet incident. After that, kids were verboten .”
Nettie said nothing. The part down the center of her dark hair served to emphasize her broad and freckled forehead. I thought about what Rena said. I’d often thought Nettie was distracted or shy. Now I knew better. Probably she was just heavily medicated.
Rena interrupted my reverie with, “Trust Ellen to capitalize on a tragedy. Her store’s so full of customers, you can’t walk around. I hate that she’s benefited from Yvonne’s death.”
“I agree totally,” said Nettie. “She should be shot.”
I curbed my tongue. This was getting interesting. I wanted desperately to keep the women talking. “Look, why don’t we make a list of special occasions you’d like layouts for? I’ll photocopy them for you. We can coordinate papers—patterns and solids—and suggest folks use them so the album has a good flow. You can tell me more about Yvonne. I didn’t know her very well.” I cleared a workspace for the women and went to the back to grab a couple of colas.
The women were eager to chat. At one time, they had all been neighbors. When Yvonne’s husband, Perry, was promoted to IT department manager at RXAid, Inc., a drug manufacturing company, the Gaynors traded up to a bigger house in a nicer neighborhood. The family enrolled their children in private schools and upgraded every portion of their lives. Soon Yvonne was bragging about their vacations to Los Cabos and Cancun. She joined Weight Watchers and lost forty pounds. Bit by bit, she also shed her old friends.
“But she still liked to hang around with us when she scrapbooked,” said Rena. “Her hoity-toity pals didn’t do crafty stuff.”
Nettie shrugged. “She could show off to us, but she was bottom of the totem pole in their eyes. She wasn’t as well-accepted as she’d hoped to be. And she started gaining back the weight.”
“What was her marriage like?” I was striving for that oh-so-casual tone of voice.
The two women exchanged glances full of meaning. Rena cleared her throat and compared two identical pieces of cardstock for what seemed like forever. Nettie hummed and fingered a stack of patterned papers. Finally, she said, “Perry wasn’t happy with her …”
“Weight,” finished Rena. She put her cola can in our recycling container.
Ah, there it was. The scourge of my generation of American women. Too much food, too much fast food, and too many empty calories. We were victims of our success as a nation of food producers. We’d succeeded in stocking our pantries, overloading our refrigerators and dispensing food at every stopping point along our daily path. I mean, where could you go and NOT find food?
Add surfeit to surplus and multiply it by the lack of physical effort in our electrically enhanced lifestyle, and you got … fat. And lots of it. Enough to fill Oprah’s little red wagon a zillion times over.
“There was talk about him having an affair,” Nettie added. “Someone said it’s with his secretary. Such a cliché
,” and she waved a hand in the air. “But still … you know, he thinks she’s different, and she will be until he marries her. Different evaporates somewhere between pursuit and capture, if you want my opinion. Of course, we shouldn’t be sharing any of this. The other woman was only a rumor.”
Rena shifted her body and turned away. Obviously, Nettie’s disclosures made her uncomfortable. She picked up a package of Mrs. Grossman’s Stickers and examined them carefully. “Nettie, all that’s just a rumor. Perry’s really a wonderful guy. Very caring. And romantic. You’re being unfair. Why are you so crabby?”
Nettie sniffed. “I haven’t been getting any sleep. They’re changing my meds.”
If the conversation lingered on the subject of marital infidelity too long, I’d surely seem to be prying. Which I was. Besides which, I’d had my own little marital experience with a lying, two-faced sack of cattle dung, and I wasn’t eager to reminisce.
Best to move on.
But before I could change the topic, Nettie continued, “I can say for a fact Perry lost a lot of money at the riverboats. I know, because my brother-in-law was with him when he dropped a bundle. Perry told him it wasn’t the first time. The cops should consider that a motive. I heard Perry had Yvonne insured for, well, an obscene amount.” She held up two patterned papers and a stripe for my approval. “Gee, you don’t suppose he … uh … needed the money and planned her … demise?”
We all shuddered at the thought. Riverboat gambling in Missouri had traveled down a slippery embankment and landed in hot water. At first, the state allowed gambling vessels to cruise down the Mississippi, in part as tribute to the historical steam-boats of yore. After awhile, boat owners argued that the cruises were dangerous and inconvenient. A compromise was reached to permanently dock the boats. More time passed, and investors diverted a small trickle of water from the Missouri River into a shallow pool, called it a tributary, and opened a casino there. With a wink and a nod, these have been nicknamed “boats in moats.” At this rate, legislators might settle for having boats sprinkled with river water to bless them.
Rena glared at Nettie. “So Perry likes to play Texas Hold ’Em. A lot of people do. It’s fun to visit the boats. He can afford to lose the money because he makes a healthy income. Perry’s really a very nice man. Kind. Thoughtful. A good father. He has the most sensual mouth.” She colored. “Yvonne always said that.”
“Who knew she had allergies?” I asked.
“Nobody,” said Nettie.
“Everybody,” said Rena quickly.
Nettie shrugged. “Yvonne was a drama queen. You did things her way or she made your life miserable. She was a taker, not a giver. And she took a lot.”
Rena pushed a list of special occasions toward me. “How does that look?”
“Terrific. I’ll offer participants a discount on supplies.”
Nettie sneezed. “That darn mold.” She blew her nose and dabbed her eyes before focusing on me. “So … are you investigating Yvonne’s death?”
“No, why would I?”
“One of the other scrappers said you solved your husband’s murder.” Nettie gave me the once-over as if to determine whether I was up to the task.
“No, it wasn’t like that,” I explained. “I … uh … I didn’t solve anything. I just got in the way of a very nasty person. That’s how the whole mess unraveled.”
I might talk big to Detweiler, but the last thing I wanted was for anyone to know I considered myself an amateur sleuth. (Even if, in my heart of hearts, I did. Didn’t I read every one of the Nancy Drew books over the course of a junior high summer? You betcha. And since last summer, I was an even more avid reader of mysteries. I had a newfound empathy for the characters and the puzzles they solved.)
Time to move on. “How many copies should I make? Nettie, should we use your name as the person collecting and collating the pages?”
In pearls, pumps, and a St. John’s suit, Sheila stood in her front yard, bashing mole tunnels with a shovel. Dirt flew past me and rained on her. Raising the tool again and again, she walloped mounds until they flattened. I stepped back quickly, realizing the only control Sheila had was in her upswing. Gravity took over on the down stroke.
This was going to play heck with her golf game.
“We didn’t find anything appropriate for you to wear to the Opera Theatre dinner. Friday, after science camp, Anya and I will hit more stores.” The word “hit” was emphasized with a bash of the shovel. “Don’t forget her allergist appointment tomorrow at eleven. You’ll need to pick her up early from camp.” She paused to wrestle the heel of her leather pump out of a sink hole. “Drat these stupid hafarferot.” She smacked a loose clod of dirt and scattered chunks across a two-foot area. A clump of soil the size of a quarter landed on her nose. She rubbed it, creating a dark smudge across her stunning cheekbones.
“Ferrets, huh? At least you don’t have moles. Good news, right?”
“You ninny. Hafarferot is Hebrew for moles, plural. The word has a common root with the verb ‘to dig.’ And that’s exactly what these rascals have done. Just look at my yard!”
From my vantage point, she’d made more of a mess than the critters had. Poor Mr. Sanchez. He would return from Mexico to find himself groundskeeper of a mudflat. Sheila had managed to mash, mutilate, or mangle every stinking blade of grass in her front lawn. I hoped she didn’t get hold of a copy of Caddyshack, or Mr. Sanchez would be in charge of a nuclear waste site.
“Hafarferot,” I tested it on my tongue.
She heaved a mighty sigh. “No. That’s a ‘het’ at the beginning. It’s a more guttural sound. You might be a shiksa, but you don’t have to sound like one.”
“Excuse me,” I said, as my face colored. “I am a lot of things, but I am NOT an abomination.”
Turning icy blue eyes on me, she gave me an expression of new respect. I guess she didn’t think I knew what shiksa really meant. Well, I did. She didn’t apologize, but I knew she wouldn’t use that word again.
“Let me get my kid and I’m out of here.” God forbid I should expose my sleezy Church of England roots. Time to collect my mixed-breed offspring and go home.
And to prove what a classy chick I was, I’d planned a dinner with international flair. The piéce de résistance was an Oriental salad made with Ramen noodles that I’d picked up at the dollar store. I headed toward the front door to fetch my daughter.
“By the way,” Sheila called to my back. “She’s in a nasty mood. Up and down like that roller coaster at Six Flags in Eureka.”
I was lightly browning the Ramen noodles in margarine when I heard the cheerful question of the Sesame Street theme song, “Can you tell me how to get …”
“No! Not Sesame Street!” I raced into the living room. I heard, “Elmo likes—” and a brown, black and white fur ball flew past me, like a rocket launched toward our twenty-five-inch TV screen. Guy hit the glass hard, his body arching as he pummeled the image of the red puppet. He had not gone silently into that gentle air. No, he’d raged, raged against the fuzzy singing muppet. His yelping and snarling filled the air. He bounced like a basketball on a back-board and then fell to the floor, scrambling to his feet and beginning anew with a somersault. This time Guy boinked like a coiled spring, meeting me at eye level and intercepting my reach for the dial.
“Grab him!” I screamed.
Anya sat paralyzed on the sofa, her blue eyes open as wide as they would go.
“Anya! Help me!” This time I grabbed at the pooch and succeeded only in flailing empty air. I decided to focus on the stationary television. My finger stabbed the power button. The picture imploded, swirling red and orange as Elmo disintegrated. Not that Guy cared. He raced in tight circles, his tail in his mouth.
Anya lunged for him. He uncoiled, ran up her arm, down over her back and did a half-gainer, coming to land on the sofa. Bouncing up again, he knocked over the lamp and careened toward the floor.
He would have made it, too, but the electric cord wrappe
d his paws like a bola, bringing him to a skidding stop. The motion tangled his feet, flipped him over, and while on his back, he did a canine moonwalk. A pink tongue lolled past gooey pink gums. He was panting hard. I pulled him close and shushed him, nestling his heaving form to my chest before running tentative fingers over his frame. He was out of breath, certainly, but as far as I could tell, he was all right.
“Thank God,” I said, and I meant it as a prayer. I couldn’t have faced Mert or Ethel with the news that he was hurt.
“Mom,” whimpered Anya as she slunk over to my side. She touched Guy gently. He responded by hopping onto her lap and shoving his tongue into her mouth. “Uuu-uck. I’m really, really sorry. I just wanted to see what would happen. I never expected this. It was an accident.”
“Anya, it was not an accident. It was an on-purpose. What would we have done if he’d been hurt? Anya, he could have killed himself!”
“I know! Honest, Mom, I didn’t think he’d go nuts! Please don’t tell Mert! She’ll kill me!”
Oh boy, I thought. Given my friend’s recent visit with the police, that was a real bad turn of phrase.
NINE
THE NEXT DAY AS we flipped the OPEN sign, Dodie got a call from a CAMP representative. The other store owners wanted to meet at three. Dodie asked if I could watch the store from two until seven.
Of course, I could. I would do anything to help, anything at all.
After my “go ahead,” Dodie retreated to her office, shutting the door firmly. Two inches of solid wood are a sure-fire conversation stopper. I desperately needed to know what was bothering her besides Horace’s unemployment, the death of a customer, and the hateful graffiti.
Duh! Put that way, the list made substantive emotional baggage. But I’d seen her go through worse and keep ticking. The Dodie I knew was an Amazon, a Bodecia, a stalwart, stoical “kick it to the curb and spit on it” figure of a woman. Years ago she’d survived the accidental death of her beloved son, Nathan. Surely by comparison, this stuff was small potatoes. More was going on than the obvious. Maybe Horace could clue me in, but dare I call him?
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