Good grief.
“Is there something going on here that I should know?” I asked my great-uncle as I entered his kitchen.
The tall man flipping a greasy hamburger patty knitted his bushy silver eyebrows. “Not anymore there’s not.”
I cringed. “Want to fill me in?”
Scowling through the cut-out window over the grill at the approaching grandmotherly waitress giving him a dirty look, Duke vented a breath. “Unlike some people, I know when to keep my mouth shut.”
“Hey, I’m not the one who started it,” Lucille Kressey protested, coming to a stop in her squeaky orthopedic shoes to tack an order ticket to the aluminum wheel in front of her longtime boss. She looked around the wheel at me. “And Miriam sure didn’t mean any harm.”
Huh?
The only Miriam I knew was a Duke’s regular and one of Lucille’s favorite gossip wranglers. “Why do I need to know that?”
Lucille’s light blue eyes widened with alarm. “Uh … Steve didn’t tell you?”
My heart sunk to the pit of my churning stomach. “What have you done?”
Chapter Seven
“IF I’D SEEN Steve sitting at the counter, I would have nipped all that wedding nonsense in the bud,” Lucille said, sitting across from me at my great-aunt Alice’s butcher block worktable.
“But you didn’t.” Despite the heat radiating from the industrial oven at my back, I shivered. “And now Miriam’s acting like the town bookie so that your pals can bet on when we’re getting married.” As if I were obligated to keep up with the brisk race-to-the-altar pace set by my ex and Marietta.
“I didn’t place a bet, if that makes you feel any better.”
I glared at Lucille. “It doesn’t.”
Alice patted my hand. “Sorry, hon. You know what sport those old biddies like to make out of all the he-ing and she-ing goin’ on in these parts.”
“And I know for a fact that Miriam was embarrassed to have Duke tell her to knock it off,” Lucille added. “She even went over and apologized to Steve.”
I pushed back from the table to make myself a turkey sandwich to go. Although after I marched the two blocks to the police station to offer my own apology and met the stony gaze of the detective climbing out of his unmarked sedan, my appetite made a run for it. Exactly what my feet wanted to do.
“Have you had lunch?” I asked, holding up the white paper sack in my hand like a peace offering.
Joining me on the cracked sidewalk, Steve glanced at the bag as if it might be worthy of target practice. “That depends.”
“On what?”
“On what you brought me.”
“Half a turkey sandwich and an apology.”
Grimacing as if neither held much appeal, he headed toward the shade-covered wooden bench across the street. “Sounds like we’d better sit down, then.”
Taking the seat next to Steve, I pulled out one of the sandwich halves from the paper sack and offered it to him.
He shook his head. “You don’t need to give me your lunch. And since I can guess where it came from, there’s absolutely nothing that you need to apologize for.”
I tossed the sandwich back into the bag on my lap. “Still, I’m sorry,” I said, wishing it were that easy to hide the burn of embarrassment flaring in my cheeks. “I guess some of the ladies saw Chris announce that he was getting married.”
“Yep, pretty safe guess.”
Steve didn’t seem to want to say anything else on the subject of my ex, so I took that as his way of informing me that he had heard enough for one day.
I nodded. “Miriam must’ve decided that betting on Rox’s delivery date wasn’t enough sport for them.”
“She is overdue,” Steve added as if that helped explain away some of the insanity from this morning.
“And is very ready to welcome that baby into the world.”
Steve wrapped his arm around my shoulder. “I’m sure.”
And I was pretty sure he was as relieved to have something else to talk about as I was. “I know Eddie is, too.”
“That would be a safe bet.”
No, no, no. We were not going to tiptoe back toward the subject of wagering on our wedding date.
I held the paper sack in front of his nose. “Are you sure you’re not hungry? It’s a yummy sandwich if I do say so myself.” And if we ate, we wouldn’t have to talk.
“I’m sure it is, but I wouldn’t want to spoil my appetite for later.”
I relaxed into his warmth. “Are you taking me out later?”
“It’s Wednesday.”
The evening we had a standing dinner invitation at my grandmother’s. “Oh, yeah.”
“We’re still on like usual, right?”
“You bet.” Crap! Just when I thought I had averted the impending disaster of Miriam’s stupid betting pool, I managed to push us back to the precipice of that debacle’s deep end.
“Something wrong?” he asked when I sat up straight with my cheeks on fire.
“No, why?”
“You’re blushing.”
Gathering my bags, I got to my feet. “Don’t be ridiculous. I just realized that I need to get back to work. That’s all.”
“Of course. A perfectly natural reaction.”
I didn’t believe him for a second, but if he was willing to play along, so was I. “Absolutely.”
“A safe wager, one might say.”
In no mood to acknowledge the evil gleam in his eyes, I turned on my heel. “I think we’re done here.”
Because there was nothing safe about it. Not to my head and definitely not to my heart.
* * *
Steve’s pickup wasn’t in his driveway, so I assumed I was the first to arrive when I greeted my grandmother around six that evening.
“What’s for dinner?” I asked, looking through the window of her oven at a casserole dish bubbling with cheese. “It smells awesome.”
“Chicken parmesan.” Gram looked up from the radish she was slicing into a salad. “After an evening of watching that jerk make it with all that cheese, I came away with a powerful hankering for it.”
The only hankering I came away with was to throw all that gooey cheese in my lying ex’s face.
“I used low-fat mozzarella like I usually do, though.” Gram’s lips curled conspiratorially. “Let all that fat go to his love handles instead of ours.”
I stole a cherry tomato from the salad bowl in front of her. “You’re my kind of girl. Anything I can do?”
Typically, the answer to that question was to make myself comfortable, so it got my attention when she hesitated.
“I hate to ask, and this isn’t anything that needs to be done tonight …” Gram used her paring knife to point at the white banker box on her kitchen table. “But Florence obviously didn’t look inside all those boxes she had us pick up last Saturday, because that one there was mislabeled.”
I lifted the lid and peeked inside at what appeared to be the contents of some desk drawers that someone had emptied into the box. “So it’s not garden club stuff you need to hold onto?”
“No, mercifully. But in case there’s anything important in there, it should go back to Naomi’s family fairly soon, so if you wouldn’t mind. Her daughter’s still living in Naomi’s house south of the park, so it’s practically on your way home.”
“No problem,” I said, securing the lid. In fact, this provided me with a good excuse to have a little chat with a family member without anyone around here raising so much as an eyebrow.
“I’ll take it to my car now so I don’t forget about it later.” And to get it out of view of the inquisitive cop who would be arriving any minute.
No sooner than those words came out of my mouth the front doorbell rang.
“That’ll be Stevie.” Gram looked expectantly at me.
Dang. The owner of the eyebrow I was most worried about raising.
Still, it wasn’
t like I had anything to hide. Gram hadn’t asked me to do anything unethical. Quite the contrary. I just didn’t want her to volunteer any details about our conversation to the great-looking guy on her doorstep, or mention my ex. Steve and I simply needed to have a nice, normal meal together, and given how we were about to chow down on my ex-husband’s favorite chicken recipe, fat chance of that happening.
“Hope I haven’t kept you girls waiting,” Steve said.
“Nope. Your timing is impeccable.” More than you know. “Dinner’s almost ready.”
Steve dropped a quick kiss on my lips as he came in holding a white envelope. “Good, I’m starved.”
I pointed at his hand. “What do you have there?”
“Your granny’s mail. It came to me by mistake.”
“What is it?” Gram asked from behind the stove.
“Looks like junk mail.” Steve crossed the room to the kitchen table and set the envelope next to the box. “What’s with the box?”
Gram gave it a dismissive wave. “Probably more junk, but someone else can make that determination.”
Steve turned to me for a translation. “Huh?”
I wanted the first someone to make that determination to be me and scooped up the banker box before he asked any more questions about it. “It’s just stuff that she’s getting rid of.”
“Yeah? Looks heavy, so allow me,” he said, taking it out of my clutches.
Crap.
Steve headed for the back door that I was holding open for him. “Want this in the trunk or backseat?”
“Backseat.” What I didn’t want was more questions about it and followed him to my car to avoid eliciting commentary from the kitchen.
“Garden club junk, huh?”
“What?”
Waiting for me to open the car door for him, Steve dropped his gaze to the orange lettering on the box lid.
“Yeah. It’s odds and ends that Gram has no use for.” Sort of true.
“What’re you going to do with it?”
Since it came from the site of a possible murder, “I’ll see if there’s anything in there that I can use.”
After he loaded the box into my backseat, Steve gave me an easy grin. “Play your cards right and I’ll come over later to help you.”
No, no, no. This was not something I wanted his help with. “Or we could find something else to do.”
He closed the distance between us. “Even better.”
I melted into his arms, relaxing for the first time today. Much better.
Chapter Eight
AFTER STEVE KISSED me good night at the door, I waited until I saw him pull out of my driveway before I started digging through the contents of the box that had been screaming for my attention the last four hours.
With the black fur ball at my feet as the least judgmental witness to my snooping that I could ask for, I still felt as if I were invading Naomi’s privacy by rifling through her belongings. But she wasn’t here to protest, and someone needed to make some effort to investigate the “murder” that her neighbor had reported, right?
Steve would be quick to answer that the someone in question shouldn’t be me, but he wasn’t here either. So I snapped on a pair of the latex gloves I carried for the occasional death scene investigation and pulled the lid off the box.
Ten minutes later, I had sorted the contents into three piles, covering most of my dining room table top.
The sizable collection of ballpoint pens embossed with the name and address of local merchants indicated only one thing to me: Naomi liked her freebies. I remembered my grandmother once telling me that Naomi’s late husband had been a vice president at Chimacam Bank, so I wasn’t surprised to see the bank’s logo on the better pens. Same deal with the ones with the ergonomic grips from Durand and Terry Realty. Obviously, companies serious about wooing clients with money were willing to spend a little more to entice them to sign on the dotted line.
Mixed in with the pens were some pencils, an assortment of rubber bands and paper clips, a box of staples, a ruler, some felt markers, an eraser, and a book of postage stamps. It was the typical array of stuff I’d expect to find in a desk, so it looked all the more that someone had emptied a drawer or two into the banker box.
My second pile contributed to the weight of the box but as Leland Armistead had suggested, there was nothing the least bit elucidating about two reams of paper and a few gently used ruled tablets.
That left six file folders, each thick with paper and each with a handwritten label: Phone, Utilities, Bank, Insurance, Medical, and House.
Leafing through the Phone and Utilities folders, it became immediately apparent that Naomi was a stickler for organization, with every account statement filed by date. This also held true for the Bank, Insurance, and Medical folders. But they had something else in common: Not one of them contained a statement for the last three years. Maybe that was why it all got dumped into a mislabeled box and left behind. There were no family keepsakes, no cards or letters to evoke loving memories. It was just a lot of paper that I guessed no one particularly cared about.
I wasn’t so sure that should be the case, though, when I opened the House folder and found a comparative market analysis done almost two years ago by Durand and Terry. A signed sales agreement followed along with several pages of handwritten notes. Clearly, Naomi had once intended to sell her home. Yes, this still came under the heading of old news and might accomplish little more than to explain how she came by some of the nicer pens. But if Naomi’s family had plans to sell her house as part of settling her estate, they might find this information helpful.
“All the more reason for me to go over there tomorrow,” I said to Fozzie, who was stirring at the base of my chair while I helped myself to a couple of pens. “What do you think, blue or black?”
Fozzie responded by resting his head on my thigh as if I should spend this moment petting him instead of helping myself to someone else’s office supplies.
I tossed the pens back into the box and then ran my hand over his ear. “It’s not like anyone’s going to notice a couple of freebie pens going missing.”
That ear twitched as if it couldn’t believe the rationalization it had just heard.
“Don’t give me that. You know it’s true.”
Fozzie shot me a sidelong glance.
If I hadn’t been looking down at a dog, I would have sworn that he rolled his eyes.
“Stop with the judgment. That’s reserved for humans.” Especially latently maternal types who would be returning home on Saturday. “Do you know what’s for dogs? Cookies!”
Fozzie raced to the kitchen, his toenails tapping in a happy dance in front of the pantry where I kept his bag of biscuits.
“Welcome off that moral high horse, because you, my dear doggy, can be bought.”
* * *
Two hours later, I was lying in bed with a snoring dog watching my ex-husband’s fiancée gush on an entertainment show about her five-carat diamond ring when my phone rang.
No one I knew would call me after midnight, with the exception of my mother, who tended to do her best griping about her latest reviews at this hour. Also an overdue pregnant lady with breaking news.
At the welcome sight of Rox’s name, I muted the TV and tossed back the cover, propelling Fozzie to the floor. “Is it time?”
“No,” Rox said with a sigh of irritation that rivaled my dog’s. “Sorry if I woke you for a false alarm.”
I dropped back onto my stack of pillows. “You didn’t. I was just watching TV.”
“Me, too. In between trips to the bathroom now that this kid is playing footsie with my bladder. How’re you doing?”
I was in no mood to provide an honest answer to that question. “Me? I’m fine and dandy.”
“Sure you are. Not to pile onto everything that’s been going on the last couple of days, but Raina Lassen is talking about her engagement on channel thirteen.”
&
nbsp; “Good grief,” I said, changing the channel. “What show hasn’t she appeared on this week?”
“It’s not just the ring she’s showing off, she’s making the rounds with other news.”
“The baby.”
Rox sharply inhaled. “I thought that was just a celebrity gossip magazine rumor.”
I pointed at my flat screen as if Rox could see me. “Look at her. There’s a reason she’s wearing that linen tunic. It’s hiding a bump.” As opposed to the tunics I wore to hide my butt.
“Hunh. Maybe. Since they’re focusing in on that rock on her finger it’s hard to tell.”
“Keep watching for a wide shot. That hand is going to rest on her belly any minute now. And not just because of the weight of that gaudy rock.”
“Don’t be bitter. It’s a beautiful ring and you know it.”
Didn’t mean that I had to like it. “Whatever.”
Rox didn’t respond for several seconds except to yawn.
“There,” I said, pointing again when Raina’s hand swept over a nonexistent wrinkle at her waistline while the host drooled over the calendar she was promoting. “That’s a definite baby bump.”
“Oh, I see what you mean. Yep, she’s preggers, all right. All glowy and everything, which I find totally depressing, considering how all I did in my first trimester was puke.”
She was depressed? As the first Mrs. Christopher Scolari, it was all I could do to not cry at the sight of this super-human.
“It’s unfair is what it is,” Rox added.
I couldn’t argue with her on that point. My sense of justice had felt under assault since the moment I caught Chris cheating on me with his sous-chef. “No kidding.”
“How come when I wear linen I get so wrinkled it looks like I slept in it, and she looks as smooth as silk?”
“Some people live charmed lives.” And on that point Raina and Chris were perfect for one another, no matter how much it pained me to admit it. “Wrinkles aren’t allowed.”
“She’s what, twenty-two? Twenty-three?”
“Something like that.”
Crazy, Stupid, Dead Page 4