by Lucy Ness
I did, and it described Muriel perfectly.
“What happened before she rolled down the steps?” I asked Clemmie.
“How should I know? One second, I’m down here all by myself, and the next, that door there . . .” She looked toward the stairs. “It opens up and that woman comes crashing down.”
“Was she alive when she did?”
“What do I look like?” Clemmie asked. “A sawbones? I can tell you she wasn’t moving. And I can tell you she hurt her head somehow.”
“She didn’t exactly hurt her head. Muriel was murdered.”
I don’t suppose it’s possible for a ghost to get pale. After all, there was no blood flowing through Clemmie’s body, so there’s no way it could drain from her face. Still, I swear she turned a little more ashen. A little more transparent.
“The women of the club have asked me to look into the murder,” I told her, then added, “I’m the new manager here,” because unless she’d been floating around, unseen, while I was working or when I’d had my job interview, she wouldn’t know that. “I thought if you saw who threw Muriel’s body down the steps—”
“No.” She shook her head and backed away from me. “I didn’t see a thing.”
“But you must have! You just said—”
“I said I pass the time around here.” All of a sudden, I could see the wall behind Clemmie through her body. “I didn’t say I know anything about what happened.”
“What happened was murder. And you can help. You can really help.”
“No.” Clemmie’s eyes filled with tears. She shook her head, faster and faster, and with each shake, she faded a little more. “I . . . I can’t help you. I don’t know.”
“But Clemmie . . .” I rushed forward but I wasn’t quick enough.
Clemmie was gone.
CHAPTER 10
I’d seen it done so many times, it should have been a piece of cake.
Eyes closed.
Deep breaths.
Mind blank, floating, open to messages from the Other Side.
And . . .
Nothing.
Nothing when I tried the routine before I went to bed the night Clemmie showed me the speakeasy, and nothing again the next morning when I gave it another go before I headed downstairs to work.
So how come the whole meditation thing always worked for Aunt Rosemary when she wanted to contact Spirit?
And when I wanted to give it a go, why was it the only thing I got was a kink in my neck from sitting still too long?
Grumbling, I slid off the brown-and-orange couch that had once belonged to Aunt Rosemary and had been delivered to PPWC the day before I arrived, and finished getting ready for the day ahead. Little by little, I’d cleaned up the mess left by the intruder, who Clemmie insisted wasn’t her. But if it wasn’t her, why wouldn’t she tell me who it was? After all, being able to float around—and be invisible, to boot—should have been the world’s best excuse to keep tabs on everyone and everything in the place. Which was exactly why I wanted Clemmie’s help solving the mystery of Muriel’s murder.
The bad news was I couldn’t get in touch.
The good news? Well, that was a little more practical and a whole lot less supernatural.
Thanks to elbow grease and some serious organizing, my rooms finally looked presentable. I’d always pictured the suite as a refuge and a place where I could kick back after a long day.
But then, that fantasy never involved murder.
Or the supernatural.
Or burglary, for that matter.
On the way to the bedroom for my brown flats, an electrical current of unease zipped up my spine when I glanced at the list I’d prepared to give to Oz the next time I saw him.
Datebook.
Journal.
Spiral-bound notebook where I kept a list of important addresses.
Three things—three very personal things—I hadn’t been able to find when I cleaned up the mess. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why anyone would want them, and heck, I should have been able to.
After all, like it or not, it looked like I shared Aunt Rosemary’s Gift. I was supposed to know what was happening in people’s heads. And in the Great Beyond.
“Some Gift,” I muttered. Shoes on, I locked the door behind me and started downstairs. “Never asked for it. Can’t return it. And let’s face it, Avery . . .” The thought soured my stomach. “You don’t have a clue how to use it.”
That morning, Agnes was scheduled to lead a discussion with the Current Events interest group and after the packed house we’d had the day before, I expected the club would be hopping. When I got downstairs, though, the parking lot was empty.
“No worries,” I told myself. “It will be just like yesterday. Our members, they’ll come.”
Only they didn’t.
I unlocked the door and waited.
Nobody.
I went to the kitchen to make sure Quentin and Geneva were A-OK with everything they had to do that day.
Nobody.
Agnes’s discussion was set to start at nine, so I poured myself a cup of coffee, answered the phone (and promptly hung up again with a terse, “No comment,”) when someone from the media called to demand more information on the murder, and I was just checking the day’s schedule when Agnes arrived.
In a trim dark suit and pearl earrings, she looked professional, in charge, and up to the task of leading the group. She had a copy of the day’s newspaper tucked under her arm, and I couldn’t help myself. My gaze wandered to the glaring headline—President’s Peril—above a picture of Muriel. “Current Events? Do you think they’re going to want to talk about—”
“I certainly hope not!” Agnes shivered. “I’ve never thought of our members as voyeuristic. Not until yesterday, anyway.” She shook her head in a way that told me she’d been disappointed then and the thought still rankled. “I won’t allow it in my discussion group. I’ve already prepared the agenda, and we’re sticking to it. We’re talking about trade with China and the outlook on inflation. Period.” I couldn’t speak for the other members of the Current Events group, but the way Agnes emphasized that period, I was sure I, for one, would never argue with her. “All we need . . .” She glanced back toward the empty parking lot and the starch went out of her shoulders. “Nobody?”
“It’s early.” I used my perky voice.
Agnes wasn’t fooled. Her lips folded in on themselves. “We had six people signed up for the discussion, and I saw every single one of them here for lunch yesterday. They’ll be back.” She gave me a sidelong look. “Right?”
I sure hoped so. I’d spent a whole lot of time the evening before designing and ordering invitations for Agnes’s inauguration. They were set to arrive later that afternoon, and I planned to get them right in the mail. Would our members attend? Would they ever walk into the club again?
I wished I could be sure. In spite of what Agnes believed, I feared our members really were just plain, old-fashioned gawkers. And now that they’d seen what they wanted to see—the scene of the grisly crime—just thinking about the murder was enough to keep them away from the club.
Permanently.
“Maybe it all comes down to what the board said. You know, the night I found Muriel.” A picture of her battered body popped into my head and I got rid of it as fast as I could. “We need to find answers, and since you gave me the job of doing that . . .” I glanced her way, hoping she’d catch on to what I was getting at, that I wouldn’t have to come right out and ask. When she didn’t, I gritted my teeth.
“Where were you when Muriel was killed?” I asked her.
As if I’d slapped her, Agnes sucked in a sharp breath. “You can’t think I could have possibly—”
“No. But the board told me I have to ask.”
“Yes. Of course. You�
�re right.” She steadied her shoulders and lifted her chin. “I was home. All evening. By myself.” She slid me a look. “Not much of an alibi, is it?”
“No, but your word is good enough for me.”
The uncomfortable questions over, she shook herself. “For now, I think our bigger problem may be today’s events.” She glanced at the phone on my desk. “I’m not telling you how to do your job, Avery, but—”
Maybe I was legitimately psychic after all; I knew exactly what Agnes was thinking. I rounded the desk immediately and grabbed my phone, then checked the list of members signed up for Current Events and started dialing at the same time I told Agnes, “Maybe our members just need a little reminder.”
Marcy Collins, the first woman I called, did not. In fact, her response to my call—about how the Current Events discussion group was going to be meeting soon and we looked forward to seeing her—was a clipped, “There’s no way I’m stepping into a building where there’s been a murder.”
“But—”
Yeah, I was going to remind her that she’d been there the day before for lunch and lived to tell the tale when she hung up on me.
Diana Green, Peggy Organsky, and Lily Pratak were a little more subtle, but they made it just as clear.
The Portage Path Women’s Club was off their list of places to go.
At least until the police apprehended the deranged killer.
Four calls in, I hung up the phone and gave Agnes a sour smile. “They saw what they wanted to see yesterday,” I told her. “They can tell their friends they were here. They can talk about how they knew Muriel. I bet some of them even peeked down the steps in the hopes of getting a look at the bloodstains. And now—”
“I get it.” Agnes heaved a sigh. “Maybe I’d feel the same way, too.” She hung her head and fingered the gold PPWC pin on her lapel, the picture of despondency.
At least for a minute.
Then Agnes pulled back her shoulders and lifted her chin. “But I don’t have the luxury of acting the way they’re acting, do I? I’m the president of the Portage Path Women’s Club, and I’m going to find a way to turn this around. Starting right here and now.”
As if Fate were listening, the front door popped open and the other two women who were scheduled for the Current Events discussion stepped inside.
“See?” Agnes gave me a smile. “We’ll make this work, Avery. I promise, we’ll make this work.” And still smiling, she greeted the ladies and led them back to the Rose Room. Three cheers for Agnes. Sure, there were only two attendees, but she treated them like they were the two most important people in the building.
Which, come to think of it, I guess they were.
I had the next few minutes to myself to check voice mails and respond to emails. Three of them were from members asking how they could get what was left of their yearly membership fee refunded because they were dropping out of the club. The rest were from reporters looking for comments about the murder, background on Muriel, or just wondering why the cops were being so closed-mouth and did that mean we knew something we weren’t talking about? Fine by me. Those emails were easy to delete, delete, delete.
In fact, I’d just finished getting rid of the annoying messages when the door banged open and Patricia flew into the club.
“Late, late, late,” she grumbled. “Can you believe it? I’ve got a clock on my phone, an alarm clock on my bedside table, and a cat that every other day of the year would have had me up at six so I could feed her. Except today, when I’m scheduled to help with Current Events.” She slid me a look. “Anybody show up for it?”
“A couple.”
“That’s all?” Patricia’s eyebrows rose. She scratched a finger under her nose, and I noticed her knuckles were raw and bruised.
Concerned, I jumped up from my desk chair and went to stand in front of her. “Are you all right?” I asked.
It took her a second to realize I’d seen the injury, and when she did, she closed her eyes as if praying for patience.
“Please don’t say anything to anyone else,” Patricia groaned. “It’s so embarrassing and I wouldn’t want anyone to worry about me.”
“But what happened?”
As if that would get rid of the telltale marks and what certainly must have been a whole lot of pain, she shook her hand. “Patricia Fink meets back patio,” she told me. “Stupid mistake. Tripped over my own two feet.”
“If you need bandages—”
“No, no. I’ll be fine. Took care of all the minor first aid last night when it happened. The scrapes aren’t deep. And the way I figure it, I can keep my hand out of sight if there are people around. If I bandage it up, chances are it will just attract more attention. That’s all I need, everyone thinking that I’m losing my marbles and shouldn’t live alone.” She examined her hand. “It only hurts when I make a fist. That shouldn’t be a problem. Now that Muriel’s not around, I hardly ever feel like punching out anybody’s lights.”
She was going for funny and I got it, really I did. But it did bring up an interesting point.
“That first day I was here, Muriel told you she’d never let you change the club. ‘Over my dead body.’ Those were her words.”
“Well, that tells you a little something about our relationship.” Patricia touched one hand gently to her raw knuckles. “In fact, it says a lot about Muriel’s relationship with a whole lot of people.”
“Which is why when I asked who hated her, you said—”
“Everybody.”
“But when Oz . . .” I realized she might not know who I was talking about. “When the detective asked the same thing, Patricia, you kept your mouth shut.”
She harrumphed. “We can’t go airing our dirty laundry. There are plenty of secrets in a club like this. That doesn’t mean any of us has the right to go screaming them from the rooftops. That’s not how it works.”
“Even if there’s a chance it might help the police find out who killed Muriel?”
She seemed honestly confused. “It can’t be anyone here, can it?”
“We don’t know that.”
“But of course we do. This is the Portage Path Women’s Club, and sure, there are some petty differences. Show me any place you put a dozen women together and don’t get somebody rubbing somebody else the wrong way. But a murderer? Here? It’s not possible.” Patricia glanced at the clock on the wall above my desk. “Got to go,” she told me. “I’m in the mood for a lively current events discussion, and since there’s hardly anyone else here, Agnes won’t have a chance to call on someone else and shut me up.”
I stopped her with a question. “Is that why you and Muriel were always at odds? Current events? She wanted things here at the club to stay the way they’d always been, and you—”
“Live in the real world?” There was no amusement in Patricia’s laugh. “She was impossible.”
“And you weren’t willing to compromise.”
“Why should I have been? Muriel acted like she owned this club. She didn’t think it could be as important to anyone else as it was to her. But my great-aunts were early members. And I’ve belonged for more than thirty years. I have as much right, as much prestige, as much of a heritage here as Muriel ever did. But that doesn’t mean I’m closed-minded and set in my ways.”
“But it does mean you and Muriel didn’t get along. Patricia, where were you when Muriel was killed?”
Her mouth opened and closed, but no words came out of it. At least until Patricia let out a whoop that echoed against the crystal chandelier over our heads. “Are you asking me . . .” She swallowed another guffaw. “Well, of course you are. It’s what we told you to do, isn’t it? Three cheers for you, Avery. You are exactly the kind of manager this club needs. You’re not going to shirk your duties. Even if it means ruffling some feathers. That’s what I love to see. Initiative.”
I like an attagirl as much as the next person, but I wasn’t going to let it distract me. “So where were you?” I asked her.
“Before I went home and had to fix the sink? Right . . .” She pointed out to the door and toward the church on the other side of PPWC’s nearly empty parking lot. “Right there. There was a Kids Coats event that evening. We collect coats and hats and gloves for needy kids and distribute them at a school in the neighborhood right before Christmas.”
“And the meeting took all night?”
“Of course not. Started at six thirty. Like always. Ended at eight forty-five. Like always.”
“And you were there the entire time?”
“It may surprise you, Avery . . .” She winked. “Once I start talking about a project that’s near and dear to my heart, it’s pretty hard to stop me. Chances are a few of the committee members wished I had left early. I’ll see you later.” She gave me a wave and zoomed toward the Rose Room. “Gotta get to it!”
I was so busy watching Patricia hustle down the hallway, I didn’t realize the door had opened again. The next thing I knew, Gracie was standing next to me, looking where I was looking.
“Think she’s the perp?” Gracie asked.
I laughed because it seemed a better way to answer the question than to admit I honestly didn’t know. “It could be anyone.”
“Not what I asked.”
I gave in with a small smile. “Patricia and Muriel didn’t get along.”
That day, Gracie’s outfit consisted of a thundercloud-gray skirt topped with a fog-colored sweater. The colors were just right for her grim expression. “I hate to speak ill of the dead, but let’s face it, no one got along with Muriel. She was a bully. Always had been.”
I glanced down at Gracie. “You knew her? I mean, before you joined the club?”
“Everyone in Portage Path knew Muriel from day one. She made sure of that. I’m a little older, of course, but I remember hearing stories about her growing up. Muriel this and Muriel that. The world began and ended with Muriel. It was as simple as that.” Gracie’s eyes clouded with memory.