“Mr. Riss,” I said, “Silas and I have been discussing fishing nets today. I see there are a great many here. Can you tell which net belongs to which fisherman by looking at it?”
“Sometimes.” He set down his shuttle, unable to pass up the opportunity to be the expert and teach me something.
We inspected some two dozen nets hanging to dry.
“This belongs to the Tylers. See how the left side of each mesh is slightly longer than the right? Can always tell their nets. This next one is Smith’s. Don’t know where he gets his cord but it isn’t like any other here.”
“Looks like most everyone went out this morning,” said Silas.
“Peaches will be ready to pick in a day or two, so everyone was out on the river this morning. Last chance until the harvest is in.”
“I saw some fish being dried and plenty of smoke from the smoke houses,” I said. “It must have been a good catch.”
“Fair enough. Myself, I got no peach orchard, so I can go on fishing. You’re looking for Beck’s nets? Ain’t here.”
“They weren’t in his boat this morning either.”
The murderer took them, I thought, but didn’t want to say out loud.
* * * *
I awoke the next morning with something tugging at the edges of my mind. I couldn’t quite figure out what it was, but I knew it had something to do with Phineas Beck’s murder. The image of the five women in the Beck common room, all doing handwork seemed important, but for the life of me I couldn’t say why.
I tried to remember who the women were. Mrs. Beck, of course, but she had been sitting with her hands in her lap. Mrs. Riss, Mrs. Hooper, Mrs. Tate, and two other women.
As I pondered Silas knocked on our door. “Want to ride with me to New Castle? I’m going up to check the deeds for the orchards around here.”
“I would enjoy that, but there is something else I need to do today. I am going back to visit Mrs. Beck. Find me when you get back.”
Silas tipped his hat to me and went to fetch his bay mare from the stable. Perhaps it was the unusual situation of the murder, but I found I did in fact want to ride with him to New Castle. It was a pleasant day, and the distraction of being at the hub of the county was appealing. Oh, well, I had my own work to do.
Gathering up a loaf of the bread my mother had baked the day before, some fresh butter, and a small crock of strawberries in brandy, I made my way back to the Becks.
Maude Beck sat as she had when I was last there, by the front window as if watching for her husband to come up from the river. Mrs. Hooper and Mrs. Tate were with her.
I handed my simple gift to Mrs. Tate and went to the mantle.
“Did you make this lovely doily, Mrs. Beck?”
Before she could answer, Mrs. Hooper spoke up. “No, I did. I was trying to teach Lucy how to tie a net and together we made enough to furnish the whole neighborhood with decoration.”
“The twist that keeps it from lying flat gives it a lacier look. It is quite becoming.”
“Ralph is always at me to tie his nets properly. I didn’t grow up tying fishnets, like everyone else around here. There isn’t all that much fishing in Townsend.”
“No, I don’t imagine. It’s a bit land locked.”
“Being left handed has been a hindrance in teaching needle work to Lucy,” Mrs. Hooper went on as though she hadn’t heard me, “but she is picking it up, in spite of my handicap.”
The child herself looked up from her seat by the fire and said, “I will never be able to tie a net properly. I’d prefer to work in the peach orchard.…” Her mother scowled at her and she added, “If we had one.”
“I was never very good at knots,” I admitted to the child. “Good thing my father didn’t depend on me for his nets.”
* * * *
It was dusk when Silas rode up to our door and asked my mother if I were in.
“What did you find out?” I asked without greeting.
Mother set out the tea things and left the room, but I had a feeling she was lurking behind the door to hear what we knew.
“Beck has worked the orchard for seven years but he doesn’t own it. At least not yet. He has been leasing it with the prospect of buying it for the lease money at the end of ten years. His son takes over the lease from him. It is owned by a Middletown man named Anderson.”
I looked at him over the rim of my cup to encourage him to go on.
“I couldn’t find any will or probate inventory for Anderson. But it should be easy enough to find out by asking around.”
“I have my suspicions. Let me tell you what I found out. Mrs. Hooper is the one who tied the net. Her daughter Lucy made the mend. Perhaps you can connect the peach orchard to the Hoopers. Mrs. Hooper is from Middletown, big peach center.”
He paused for a long time, stroking his chin, and then at last said, “I think I will call on the Hoopers this evening.”
I knew we would argue if I told him I was going with him, but I was going all the same. So I watched his front door until he stepped into the street. Then I ran to join him. ”You can’t come. This is town business.”
I didn’t answer, but I stayed by his side. At last he shrugged. “You will get yourself in trouble one day, young lady.”
“This is the next best thing to being a pirate,” I said.
Mr. and Mrs. Hooper were still seated over the evening meal when Lucy admitted us.
“Good evening,” said Silas. “I have some questions to ask you about Phineas Beck’s death.”
Mrs. Hooper’s eyes went wide. Mr. Hooper tried and failed to look calm.
“You and Tate found him. Is that right?” Silas spoke gently but Mr. Hooper tensed up at his words.
“Yeah,” Hooper said¸ but added no more.
“He was dead when you found him?”
Hooper nodded.
“Where are your nets, Mr. Hooper?” Silas asked.
“In the shed where I keep all my equipment.”
“Would you mind showing us?”
We went out the back door and up to a small building behind the house, next to the necessary. Hooper pulled out a mass of string much like the one I had seen on Silas’ table. This one was tied in the more acceptable manner. A net waiting for mending showed the same left handed twist I had identified on the net in the boat and on the mantle above Beck’s fireplace.
“Your net was found in Beck’s boat. Can you explain that?” asked Silas.
“It’s easy to mix up fishnets. They are all alike. Mebby he took mine that morning and I took his.”
“That’s a logical explanation,” said Silas. I wanted to yell at him that it wasn’t at all a logical explanation, but I held my tongue.
“Is your wife’s father still living?” Silas went on.
“No, he died two years ago. What’s that got to do with it?” I could tell by the way Mr. Hooper looked at Silas that he knew very well what it had to do with it.
“What was his name?”
Grudgingly Mr. Hooper said, “Jeremiah Anderson.”
“You inherited the peach orchard that he leased to the Becks,” I blurted out.
It was clear from the way his shoulders slumped that we had figured it out.
“Yeah, a piece of paper worth a few shillings a year. Beck was making a good income off my land. Beck wasn’t about to give it back. There’s years to go on the lease.”
He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and finally he looked directly at me. “How did you know it was my net in his boat?”
“You may not be able tell one fishnet from another, but I can,” I said.
Silas added the legal part. “You are under arrest for the murder of Phineas Beck.”
* * * *
Once Mr. Hooper was safely locked away to be transported to New Castle first thing in the morning, Silas saw me to my door.
He took my hand and laid his lips gently on the back, then with a grin he said to me, “If you have decided not to run off and be a pirate, you wou
ld make a fine wife for head of the town constabulary.”
DRESS FOR SUCCESS, by Diane Vallere
It was the most outrageous shade of yellow I’d ever seen backstage. Yellow fur coat, yellow fishnet stockings. Yellow five-inch pumps that put his blonde hairstyle easily six inches over the heads of anybody else around. That’s right, I said him. Big Bird was a man in drag.
Fashion week brings out all kinds, which worked to my benefit. I was here, undercover and under a tent at Bryant Park, on business. A certain designer had hired me to determine if there was anything to his assistant’s suspicions that his collection had been knocked off—days before he debuted it down the runway.
The two people in front of me were too distracted by Big Bird to notice the woman at the check-in desk waving them forward. She leaned to the left and signaled for me to pass them.
“Name?” she asked.
“Katarina Jones,” I answered, which, of course, is not my real name. My real name is silly and not particularly fashionable and tends to stick out in crowds where people are named Anna and Grace. Not only did I not want to stick out, I didn’t want to be remembered for my silly and not particularly fashionable name, which also happens to be Polish. Two strikes.
“Here’s your tag, Ms. Jones. Enjoy the show,” she said mechanically.
I clipped the fake ID onto my carefully chosen vintage Versace dress and eased through the crowd. I have enough contacts to get into most fashion-related events in New York, but attending this one required the help of a stylist-slash-mentor, and one of the few people in the industry who knows my true identity. The terms: complete anonymity and all of the sordid backstage gossip, plus my word that, once inside, I’d blend. Clearly, Big Bird had never made that kind of agreement with anyone. I didn’t even know where you bought a pair of yellow fishnets these days.
I took my seat. After double-checking that my cell phone was off I checked the time on my watch (really, it’s a voice recorder, and I dictated a couple of observations while I waited), and touched up my lipstick (really, a lipstick. I haven’t figured out what else to do with it). The air was warm, and a good portion of the crowd was fanning themselves with their invitations. I relaxed the cashmere wrap around my shoulders and sat back in the plastic chair. Big Bird was in the second row across from me, but closer to the end of the stage. I almost pitied the people behind him, trying as they were to get a better viewpoint around his wig. He must know someone, to get a seat like that. Someone with more relaxed standards than my friend.
The lights went down twenty minutes late and the show started shortly after that. I knew what I was looking for: Britt Ekhart, the hot new Swedish model who’d been popping up on runways from New York to Milan. My client had booked her six months ago. But what I also knew was that she was one of three models booked to work both his show and his suspected copycat, and that, on a covert mission where I posed as a student reporter from an out-of-state college, I found blonde hairs on both of their sample collections. The other two models were beyond suspicion: Diandra had shaved her head a year ago and had been rockin’ the cue ball ever since, and Shandra was African American. Britt was the only person I had connected to the two designers in question, and it was my theory that she had somehow been the courier of my client’s original concepts, straight to Thomas Quinn’s design studio. As far as I could tell, she was the only thread that tied the two collections together.
* * * *
The show was a hit. Based on the applause, the audience liked what they saw. What I saw was a little different. I saw my client’s collection being strutted down a runway in Bryant Park one day earlier than it was supposed to show. And when Britt Ekhart closed the show in a short, white coat of ostrich feathers that set off a strapless sequined rose-gold gown, I cringed. It was my client’s piece de resistance, and it came alive against Britt’s pale, Scandinavian skin. It was the most exquisite ensemble Quinn showed on the runway, and it wasn’t even his. I adjusted my cocktail ring and snapped a few pictures with the pinhole camera hidden inside.
It was official. My client was toast. Or, he would be tomorrow, when every magazine with fashion coverage heralded the genius of Thomas Quinn while he showed a mirror image a day later. I had the proof I was hired to get.
When the models took a final spin around the runway, cameras exploded with pops of light. Despite the steady stream of lanky models, Britt stopped, stared directly at the crowd of paparazzi, and posed. She almost caused a runway traffic jam. Quinn, who ventured halfway down the runway after the models had returned to home base, didn’t seem to mind her attention-seeking behavior. She linked her arm through his and kissed him on the cheek. The crowd erupted.
I scanned the audience. Six, maybe seven people weren’t applauding. Big Bird was one of them. He flipped his blond locks behind his shoulder and stood, throwing his yellow fur coat over his yellow beaded shoulder (hitting one retail buyer in the process). When he turned to leave, recognition hit.
Big Bird was my client’s assistant. Which meant, Britt wasn’t the one selling off my client’s collection.
His assistant was.
I snapped a couple more pictures with my oversized cocktail ring, now in the direction of the opportunistic trannie who had sold out his own boss for thirty pieces of silver. Adrenaline swept me like the spray of a self-tanner. It was my job to determine if my client’s suspicions of thievery were legitimate, and now, thanks to a pinhole camera hidden in a chunk of blue agate, I could provide evidence that the answer was yes.
All in all, very Rockford Files. With better clothes.
My efforts to leave quickly were thwarted by slow movers and buzzing critics. I looked for another exit and spotted Big Bird ducking behind the chairs closest to the left side of the stage. A faint Exit sign glowed in the kind of orange-red neon that looked like an accessory to the fashion show. I followed.
I kept my head down and my wrap clenched around me. Leaving through an obscure exit might not draw attention to me, but being close to the designer, the models, and the general backstage hullaballoo was dangerous.
White parachute silk, mounted above the door, fluttered in the afternoon breeze. I ducked through the opening and found myself behind the tent. A hundred yards ahead was a deserted parking lot. A makeshift sign marked the entrance: No Trespassing. Two cars, a blue Explorer and a beige Volkswagen, marked opposite ends. Someone had written “wash me” on the window of the SUV.
A small, mobile flight of metal steps had been pushed up against the tent by the flimsy metal door, propped open with a concrete block. Cigarette smoke wafted through the air. I heard two male voices and recognized one as Thomas Quinn. I kicked off my blue and black leopard-printed, patent leather pumps and climbed onto a metal folding chair to get closer to the conversation. The occasional word floated to me: “Sorry. . . perfect timing. . . We sent a message. . . He’s through.”
I wanted to hear more but a dumpster separated the distance between us. Vintage Versace notwithstanding, I unzipped the borrowed dress and shoved it into one of the one-gallon Ziploc bags that I kept in my handbag in case of emergency. The dress went under the garbage receptacle, to be retrieved later. In my black foundations—strapless bra and Spanx Power Panties, I hoisted myself to the top of the dumpster and crawled across the top, getting closer to the voices.
“What’s done is done. We just proved our point. There’s no way he can touch us now,” said Quinn. I crawled closer and aimed a voice recorder at the voices. “Tell the press I need a breath of fresh air. I’ll be back in five.”
This is when my job gets less than glamorous.
I have found, in my experience of jumping into dumpsters (which, sad to say, numbers more than once), that it is best not to spend a lot of time looking first. With upper body strength that was a by-product of my obsession with fitting into a sample size dress, I lowered myself into the interior, crouched in a corner, and stifled a scream.
As far as dumpsters went, this was almost a dream come true:
yesterday’s floral arrangements blanketed the bottom, along with confetti and empty champagne bottles. The problem wasn’t the bouquet of day-old lilacs permeating the air, it was that I wasn’t alone.
Big Bird’s body lay awkwardly on a bed of pummeled petals and Perrier Jouet bottles. A growing stain of blood slowly discolored his yellow dress and coat. There was no question that he was dead.
* * * *
My mind raced. Who would have motive to kill Big Bird outside of a fashion show? The one person who knew he had stolen my client’s designs. Quinn. The same Quinn who now stood inches from the dumpster. His cigarette smoke mingled with the discarded floral arrangements. I gagged from the stench of lilacs, blood, and nicotine and fought the urge to throw up.
“Quinn?” called a lilted female voice. “Are you coming back in soon?”
“Of course, Britt, my star,” he said. Outside of my heartbeat thumping in my ears, I heard other noises: footsteps on the stairs, the concrete block sliding against the metal, the flimsy door slapping shut.
I unpinned the carefully styled coif that I’d arrived with and shook out my hair, then colored my lips with a dark burgundy shade, the opposite of the barely-there nude I’d touched up earlier. I jumped from the dumpster and felt around the ground for the Ziploc baggie with my dress. It wasn’t there. I flipped my head upside down, regretting the loose hair, and looked underneath. The baggie had slid down the slope of mud under the dumpster and was out of reach. No time to retrieve it. So with the kind of confidence that must be adopted when wearing a black strapless bra and spandex support undergarments around fashion insiders, I pulled on my heels and ducked back into the tent, strutting behind the last of the attendees out the regular exits.
* * * *
“There’s a body in a dumpster outside of tent number five at Bryant Park,” I said. I was huddled in a phone booth by Union Station, wearing a New York Jets sweatshirt I’d stolen from a street vendor two blocks from Bryant Park who had overcharged a sweet couple from Iowa on a pair of NYPD T-shirts last week. Once a month I updated my chart of working payphones, but this had long been my favorite thanks to the high foot traffic. I could always count on blending in.
Fish Nets: The Second Guppy Anthology Page 3