Murder Can Rain on Your Shower

by Selma Eichler

  Leaving the young law clerk—and the roach—to

  hold the fort, I headed home, resolved to studying

  these latest additions to the Bobbie Jean Morton file immediately after supper.

  I’d just kicked off my shoes and set the omelet fix

  ings on the counter (these fixings consisting of virtu

  ally every mold-free item in the refrigerator) when the

  phone rang.

  ‘‘What are you doing?’’ It was my neighbor Barbara.

  ‘‘You mean this minute? I was about to take some

  thing to eat.’’

  She adopted her most imperious tone. ‘‘Forget it.

  I’m treating you to dinner.’’

  ‘‘Why would you do a thing like that?’’

  ‘‘Because I won a raffle.’’ Her attempt to conceal it

  notwithstanding, a hint of excitement managed to

  sneak into her voice when she added, ‘‘First thing I ever won in my life, too. Anyhow, the raffle entitles me to dinner for two at the Reel Thing, this new sea

  food place on Seventy-ninth.’’

  ‘‘Lucky you! And I thank you for thinking of me,

  Barbara. I’d love to go, but I have an awful lot of work to do tonight, and—’’

  ‘‘The work won’t run away. It’ll be there when you

  get home. I promise.’’

  ‘‘Gee, I don’t know. I—’’

  ‘‘I’ll make you another promise, too: I won’t even

  mention calories.’’

  Now, Barbara has this habit of counting calories.

  Only not hers—mine. And let me tell you, it’s pretty

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  tough to enjoy your meal when somebody—particu

  larly somebody who’s no thicker than a matchstick—

  is sitting there, scrutinizing every morsel that winds up behind your lips. ‘‘We-ll . . .’’ I was weakening, but I still hadn’t been completely won over.

  Barbara, however, sensing victory, closed in for the

  kill. ‘‘I understand they have wonderful scampi.’’

  Sold.

  The food turned out to be very good—better than

  very good, really. Barbara had the grilled tuna, which,

  while not exactly my cup of tea, she pronounced ‘‘ex

  quisite.’’ I ordered the scampi, and it was, as Barbara had indicated in her pitch to me, ‘‘wonderful.’’ It

  wasn’t until dessert (fresh fruit salad for her, cre`me bruˆleé for me) that my devious host confessed the

  truth: Actually, she’d never heard a thing about the scampi here.

  At any rate, we talked pretty much nonstop through

  out the meal.

  Barbara, who’s a grade school teacher, told me how

  much she was looking forward to the start of the new

  semester—solid proof of that old adage about absence

  making the heart grow fonder. I mean, almost every

  time I see her during the school year, she’s carping about her little charges or their parents or the admin

  istration. And sometimes she takes aim at all three

  at once.

  After this she reported on her matchmaking Aunt

  Theresa’s latest offering. This one was the stockbroker

  nephew of Aunt Theresa’s new neighbor. It seems that

  Aunt Theresa had met the nephew by chance, just as

  he was leaving Mrs. Murray’s apartment—she’s the

  new neighbor. And Staten Island’s version of Dolly

  Levi had, naturally, managed to wheedle a few crucial

  statistics out of the fellow’s relative. According to Mrs. Murray (who, it goes without saying, was com

  pletely unbiased), Barbara’s prospective soulmate

  was intelligent, kind, generous, personable, and the

  earner of large bucks. Aunt Theresa’s contribution

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  was that he was also extremely handsome. ‘‘As hand

  some as Tyrone Power, even,’’ she’d declared to Bar

  bara. (This comparison to the long-dead movie star

  in lieu of someone slightly more contemporary we

  attributed to Aunt Theresa’s being close to ninety.)

  She did have to admit, however, that there was a slight impediment to the coupling—actually, two.

  The man was almost certainly past sixty. Plus, it had

  somehow slipped her mind to establish whether he

  was married or single. ‘‘Well, after all, I am going on ninety,’’ she’d reminded Barbara in defense of

  the oversight.

  ‘‘Just minor details,’’ I put in at this point, laughing.

  ‘‘So your advice would be to wait a while before I start shopping for my trousseau?’’ Barbara inquired,

  straight-faced.

  ‘‘ I would.’’ Suddenly I could feel my cheeks burn

  ing, as my own clumsy attempt at playing cupid for

  my friend here came to mind. And, the thing is, I

  should have realized that it was a lousy idea to begin with. I mean, Barbara’s not what I’d consider a snob—

  honestly. But in some areas—like men, for instance—

  she does have champagne tastes. What I’m getting at

  is that she’d no doubt prefer a stockbroker (or a doc

  tor or a lawyer) to a policeman. Even if he was For

  sythe’s chief policeman.

  ‘‘So how’s the Bobbie Jean thing going?’’ she

  asked then.

  ‘‘Don’t ask.’’

  ‘‘I assume this is the work that’s awaiting you

  tonight.’’

  ‘‘Yup.’’

  ‘‘No luck yet, huh?’’

  ‘‘I’m afraid not.’’

  ‘‘You haven’t forgotten what I told you, have you?’’

  ‘‘Uh, what was it again?’’

  ‘‘Shame on you, Desiree Shapiro! Quite obviously

  you don’t place much stock in my opinion. Which, if you’ll recall, is that it was that annoying little camera freak who poisoned the woman.’’

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  Once again I managed to avoid bursting into laugh

  ter at this ludicrous suggestion.

  ‘‘Listen, I’m very intuitive,’’ Barbara said, intense

  now. ‘‘And I get this creepy feeling at the back of my

  neck just thinking about that girl.’’

  Her neck? Really! This time I wasn’t quite able to keep the beginnings of a grin from putting in a brief appearance on my face.

  ‘‘Go ahead, laugh if you want to,’’ she muttered

  irritably. ‘‘If you had any sense, though, you wouldn’t dismiss the possibility out of hand like that.’’

  I made what I considered a very reasonable obser

  vation. ‘‘But Ginger had never laid eyes on Bobbie

  Jean until the shower.’’

  ‘‘You know this for an absolute fact? Besides, even

  if you’re right, how can you be sure she didn’t commit

  the murder to avenge somebody?—her mother, for

  example. Or someone else she was close to whom the

  dead woman might have wronged.’’

  It seemed prudent to tell Barbara I’d look into it. So that’s what I told her.

  I’m not sure she believed me, but she left it at

  that. ‘‘By the way,’’ she brought up right after this,

  ‘‘I received a call from the Forsythe police last week

  end. This detective—or whatever he was—asked if

  I’d ever met the victim before, if I’d noticed anything

  of a suspicious nature that Sunday—the usual.’’

  And now I permitted myself a full-wattage smile.

  ‘�
� ‘The usual? ’ You make it sound as if you’re grilled by the police on a regular basis.’’

  ‘‘Yeah. I head up the list of America’s Most Wanted.’’ But she smiled back at me.

  About an hour later we were standing in the hall

  of our mutual building, only a few feet away from

  our respective apartments. I thanked Barbara for

  the lovely dinner and the thoroughly enjoyable

  evening.

  ‘‘Anytime,’’ she said. ‘‘Any time I win another raf

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  189

  fle, that is. And look, be sure you question that pesky

  little girl with the camera.’’

  We said good night and I was already at my door

  when I heard: ‘‘And remember whose neck it was that

  helped you solve this case.’’

  Chapter 30

  I didn’t have a prayer of doing any work that night. Mostly I think this was due to that bottle of pinot grigio—my contribution to the meal. The waiter had

  poured with such a generous hand that I’d exceeded

  my one-glass limit—although only by a fraction, really.

  Still, it was enough to induce me to head for my com

  fortable bed instead of that ubiquitous manila folder.

  I didn’t go near my notes the next day, either, since

  I was completely occupied with getting ready for my

  company that evening. I was, however, fully commit

  ted to devoting all of Sunday to studying Wes’s infor

  mation—a commitment that, as things turned out,

  would soon evaporate.

  Anyhow, by ten thirty on Saturday morning I was

  at the greengrocer’s. From there I headed over to the

  cheese store for some Brie and a chunk of Port-Salut.

  Then came the bakery and following this, our local

  Haägen-Dazs. My final stop was the supermarket,

  where I picked up the rest of the ingredients for my dinner with Ellen and Mike.

  Since I hadn’t allowed myself any time for advance

  preparation, the menu had to be simple—and, believe

  me, it was. In fact, the entreé was such a cinch to make that years ago a friend of mine had labeled it

  ‘‘Moron’s Chicken.’’ At any rate, after I finished shop

  ping, which was the most time-consuming element I

  had to contend with, I mixed up this tangy sweet-and

  sour sauce and poured it over the chicken parts. Then

  as soon as the chicken was sitting in the refrigerator awaiting its stint in the oven, I fixed the salad and

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  cooked up some wild rice with mushrooms and onions.

  The hors d’oeuvres were no problem at all. In addition

  to the cheeses, there were, fortunately, some wild

  mushroom croustades in the freezer. (You might say

  I have a thing for mushrooms.) Dessert was equally

  effortless: store-bought cookies and Haägen-Dazs.

  The kitchen chores tended to, I permitted myself a

  lunch break. After which I straightened the apartment

  a little and set up the folding table in the living room.

  And now I could relax for a while—in a nice, fra

  grant bubble bath.

  I’d gotten as far as sticking one big toe in the tub when the phone rang. I made a grab for the towel—

  and it ended up in the bathwater. Swearing in a totally

  unladylike manner, I hurried into the kitchen au na

  turel and snatched up the receiver.

  I was greeted with ‘‘Hi, Jo baby.’’

  ‘‘You again,’’ I seethed.

  ‘‘Rotten bitch!’’ the caller retorted.

  I won’t even repeat what I had to say to him—but only after he was no longer on the line.

  Ellen and Mike arrived about five minutes early.

  Mike was looking fit and attractive in slim olive chi

  nos. And Ellen might have sashayed down the runway

  in her beautifully tailored rust pants outfit.

  They had obviously put the recent tragedy aside, at

  least for the moment. I mean, it didn’t take any eagle eye to see how happy they were. Ellen’s cheeks were flushed, her eyes were shining, and her smile could

  have blinded you. Mike had to bend practically in

  half—which he did in order to kiss me—before I was

  able to make out that his cheeks, eyes, and smile were

  likewise. (Ellen’s intended is about eight feet tall. Or so it seems from down here.)

  Now, it’s a real imposition on my Lilliputian kitchen

  to expect it to accommodate more than one person at

  a time. So when Mike went in there to open the wine

  they’d brought, I stayed in the living room with Ellen.

  My niece didn’t waste a second before plopping down

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  on the sofa, directly in front of the mushroom crous

  tades. ‘‘It would have been kind of gauche to reach,’’

  she explained with one of her infectious giggles as she

  helped herself to an hors d’oeuvre.

  ‘‘Mbe we shd wt ntil ltr before lkn thr ta pctrs,’’

  she told me with puffed-out cheeks. After which she

  held up an index finger and swallowed. She flashed

  me a guilty little grin. ‘‘Sorry. But I just love these. Anyhow, I was suggesting—’’

  ‘‘I know what you were trying to say: that maybe

  we should wait until later before looking through the pictures.’’ (There are instances when I think I must be a truly amazing woman.) ‘‘I was about to suggest that myself.’’

  Dinner was relaxed and pleasant.

  If Mike had any idea of his mother’s current diffi

  culties with the police, you couldn’t tell from his

  mood. And since the man had employed me—in a

  manner of speaking, that is—to probe the murder of

  his aunt, I was quite certain that if he were in posses

  sion of such a troubling piece of information, he’d

  have deemed it relevant to pass this on to me. What did surprise me a little, though, was his not bringing up the investigation at all. But then I decided he prob

  ably figured that if there’d been any new develop

  ments, I’d have gotten in touch with him. Mike’s

  lighthearted demeanor also gave me the feeling that

  he was unaware of the state of his parents’ marriage. Which would make sense. I mean, I couldn’t see either

  Allison or Wes being anxious to confide something

  like that to their loving son.

  At any rate, once we’d finished dessert and cleared

  the table—I’d turned down both my guests’ offers to

  help with the dishes—we vacated the dining room and

  moved on to the living room. Which was not much of

  a move, being that in my apartment these are one and

  the same.

  The instant she sat down on the sofa, Ellen reached

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  into her handbag and whipped out three of those fa

  miliar yellow Kodak envelopes.

  ‘‘My, Ginger did shoot a bunch of pictures, didn’t

  she?’’ I remarked, taking a seat next to her.

  ‘‘Yes, didn’t she?’’ Mike agreed, smiling. He was

  sprawled in one of the club chairs opposite us, those long legs of his extending so far they were only about

  an inch short of my toes.

  ‘‘There’s one of you that I’m just crazy about,’’

  Ellen told me, riffling through the snapshots.
‘‘Wait’ll you see it.’’

  ‘‘Don’t bother, Ellen. I’ll come across it eventually.’’

  She passed me the contents of the envelopes and

  then, as I began going through them, leaned over me,

  studying every single picture as if she’d never set eyes

  on it before.

  Anyway, about those photos . . . I should probably

  mention that Ginger didn’t give Annie Liebowitz any

  reason to start peeking over her shoulder. Of course, to be fair, Ginger’s equipment—one of those little

  point-and-shoot things—wasn’t exactly state-of-the-art.

  In any case, many of the photographs were blurred,

  some to the extent that initially I didn’t even recognize the subjects. Still, there were a few beautiful shots of Allison, whose near-perfect features, I imagine, don’t present a photographer with much of a challenge. And there were I-don’t-know-how-many pictures of Bobbie

  Jean, most of them so clear as to belie the fact that it was Ginger behind the camera. In these, the victim alternately smiled, mugged, scowled, and in one

  pose—complete with hands on hips—conveyed total

  exasperation. I found myself pretty much zipping

  through all the prints of Bobbie Jean. It was hard for me to see her so full of life on film without being affected by the realization that this life was soon to be stolen from her.

  I did go fairly slowly with the rest of the batch, however, making an effort to say something compli

  mentary whenever this didn’t stretch credibility too

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  far. At one point Ellen grabbed my arm to induce me

  to linger over one of the prints even longer. It was a really nondescript likeness of me talking to a couple of women whose backs enabled me to identify them

  as Barbara Gleason and Harriet Gould. ‘‘Was I

  right?’’ my niece exclaimed. ‘‘Didn’t I tell you there were some terrific pictures of you?’’

  Well, I had no idea what she was seeing that I

  wasn’t. The best you could say for that picture was that it wasn’t completely out of focus. But, lucky for me, I was able to avoid coming up with a response by

  a loud, jolting sound. And I’m talking loud. I mean, I damn near bolted out of my seat.

  A glance at Mike—who was now fast asleep—

  marked him as the source of this eruption. ‘‘Mike

  snores sometimes,’’ Ellen advised me, stating the

  very obvious.

  Anyway, the next print was of the Fremont ladies,

  who were evidently whispering to each other, much as

  when I’d first seen them at the shower. Now, though, their heads actually appeared to be touching. They