Haunted Homicide

by Lucy Ness

  I didn’t.

  “All penny-ante stuff, nothing violent. And nothing lately.”

  “How about the rest of them?”

  “You mean the ladies of the club?” He grinned around his next forkful of pasta. “Patricia Fink once threw a beer at a belligerent guy in a bar. He filed charges.”

  I swallowed a mouthful of spaghetti. “For a beer?”

  “The guy admitted he saw the PPWC pin she was wearing and figured she had bucks. Nothing came of it. And then there’s . . .” He flipped the pages of his notebook. “Gracie Grimm. She had her driver’s license taken away six months ago. Ran into her neighbor’s mailbox. Again.”

  I didn’t bother to mention I knew Gracie drove to the club that morning. Some things were better left unsaid.

  “How about our president, Agnes Yarborough?”

  “Clean as a whistle. As is Valentina Hanover. Geneva Duran once punched her husband in the nose. He told the cops who came to the scene that he deserved it. And Bill Manby . . .”

  I held my breath. If Oz knew about Bill’s sticky-finger problem, that put a whole new spin on everything Bill had told me.

  “He doesn’t work here, anymore,” I told Oz.

  “Yeah, so I found out. He did some time twenty years ago. Grand theft auto.”

  Which was not the same as stealing from the Portage Path Women’s Club, I reminded myself.

  “Sounds like everyone has secrets,” I said.

  “Like the mysterious woman lurking in the basement?”

  I set down my fork. “Oz, what you said about my aunt Rosemary, about how she contacts the dead—”

  His phone rang.

  Oz took one look at the caller’s number, sighed, and answered. “Alterman.”

  He listened for a moment before he pushed his chair away from the table. “I’m not far. I can be there in a couple minutes.”

  “You have to go?” I didn’t have to pretend to be disappointed. I enjoyed talking to Oz. Even when we were talking about murder. And I felt sorry for a guy who didn’t even have a chance to finish his pasta before he had to get back to work.

  “Duty calls.” He slipped into his coat. “Sorry to leave you with dishes to wash.”

  “Sounds like that’s the least of your worries.” I walked him to the door. “Come back for pasta. Anytime you want.”

  Oz gave me a smile. “It was good pasta. And better company.” He pushed open the door and stepped outside. “And oh, Avery, there’s something else you should know. I mean, about that background check I did on you. Sure, it was all part of the job, but truth is, I also did it because I’m interested.”

  I smiled as I watched him leave. After all, I knew he wasn’t talking just about the murder.

  CHAPTER 13

  The third Saturday of the month. It was written in stone. A club tradition. One that went back forty years or more.

  Puzzle Day.

  I got downstairs early, set up six card tables in the Carnation Room so the puzzle builders would have plenty of elbow room, and went to the supply closet to retrieve six different puzzles, ranging from easy to hard, one hundred pieces to one thousand.

  From what I’d heard, dissectologists (honestly, that’s what people who love jigsaw puzzles are called!) can be really picky about their preferences, and the way things were going there at the club, I wanted everything to be perfect for them. When it came to puzzle pictures, I had all the bases covered—cute animals, still life, panoramic scenery, abstract design.

  Ridiculously satisfied by my own efficiency, I poured myself a cup of coffee and waited for the dissectologists to arrive.

  And then I waited some more.

  Three women showed up. Loyal to the cause of dissectology, from what I heard, they hadn’t missed a Puzzle Day in years. Gracie was one of them.

  “Ooh, five hundred pieces!” She crooned over the puzzle box with a picture of a fuzzy kitten playing with six balls (all different colors) of yarn, then slid a look across the room at the two ladies already sorting edge pieces from middle pieces. “This ought to keep those old biddies busy for hours,” she whispered and gave me a wink. “I’ll make sure of it. That way they’ll stick around for lunch.”

  My smile told her I appreciated it, but that smile only lasted as long as it took me to get back to my desk near the front door. From what I’d heard, Puzzle Day used to be one of the highlights of the PPWC social calendar, attracting dozens of members. Now there were just the three of them busy in Carnation, and the four other activities scheduled for the club that day—bridge, watercolors, book discussion, and mah-jongg—had no one registered at all. I couldn’t help but feel down, and at that point, I should have known better than to check my phone messages. What I found were voice mails from five members expressing their outrage at belonging to a club where a murder had been committed and that a murderer might still be on the loose. Every single one of them wanted to know how to get a refund on their membership fees.

  “We’re doomed,” I moaned to myself and I will admit to a black moment of doubt, one that included me actually thinking about getting online to start the search for another job. After all, once the club failed, a club manager wouldn’t be needed, and I’d be out on the street. Did I like Portage Path enough to stick around? Or would I head back to the peace, quiet, and unearthly delights of Lily Dale?

  I wallowed in my misery. At least for a few minutes. Then my common sense took over and when it did, it brought along with it a big dose of outrage and a figurative boot to the butt.

  Or maybe that had something to do with the caffeine in my coffee finally kicking in.

  The Portage Path Women’s Club wasn’t going to fail.

  Not on my watch.

  My mind made up, I gave my desk an affirming slap and headed upstairs. Quentin and Geneva were busy in the kitchen. Our three dissectologists were hard at work in Carnation and would be until every last little furry piece of that kitty was exactly where it should be. The presidential inaugural committee wasn’t scheduled to arrive for another two hours.

  I had the place to myself and I intended to make the most of every minute.

  Upstairs, I stood outside Muriel’s office and thought about how I’d seen Tab try to worm his way in there the day after the murder. He hadn’t been so successful, but I was younger and more agile, and within a minute, I was in don’t-go-there territory, on the other side of the tape.

  The president’s office.

  Muriel’s inner sanctum.

  Aside from that aspidistra on the credenza—more wilted than ever—nothing there in the office had changed from the day I’d peeked inside when I ordered Tab to leave the premises. The cops had been through the place, sure, but that didn’t mean they were looking for what I was looking for.

  Then again, I had no idea what I was looking for.

  “I’ll know it when I see it,” I told myself, and I got to work.

  I started with Muriel’s desk, a hulking antique that was probably as old as the house. I had no doubt it had been used and used proudly by every PPWC president over the years. I went through it drawer by drawer and did the same thing with the credenza, and what I found was a big ol’ nothing.

  At least nothing that was interesting.

  And nothing all that personal, either.

  The thought hit and I dropped into Muriel’s desk chair and considered it.

  “Tab said he wanted to gather family treasures,” I reminded myself. “But there are none.”

  No pictures.

  No mementoes.

  No funny magnets stuck to the side of the filing cabinet from places like Muriel’s favorite coffee shop or her dentist.

  The office was all business, no nonsense. All PPWC. No warmth. Nothing personal at all.

  It was as if Muriel the person never existed within these walls, only Muriel the p
resident.

  As disheartening as the thought was, I didn’t let it stop me. I got to work on the filing cabinets, found the first one neat and in perfect alphabetical order, and promptly lost heart again.

  At least until I tried to close the file drawer nearest to the floor and it caught on something inside.

  I rolled out the drawer, jiggled it, tried it again.

  Again, it stuck.

  The next time I opened the drawer, I paid a little more attention, peering inside as best as I was able to see what was causing the problem. There was something at the back of the cabinet, something lying flat on the bottom of the drawer, and it was catching on the files that had been strategically arrayed above it.

  I squashed file folders to the front of the drawer and stuck in my hand. What I snagged was a manila folder.

  Holding on tight, I dragged it out into the light without bending it too much, and flipped it open.

  Bill Manby’s face stared back at me.

  “Picture,” I told myself, then promptly revised that statement when I shuffled through the rest of what was in the folder. “Pictures.”

  All of them of Bill Manby.

  I am certainly no expert, but my guess was they were taken with a phone, blown up and printed at some drugstore, and I wondered if the clerks there found themselves wondering what I was wondering.

  Why all the pictures of Bill?

  Bill standing outside the front entrance of the club, a hoe in one hand, looking at the terra-cotta pots on either side of the front door that overflowed with a spectacular arrangement of red geraniums, yellow marigolds, and some little white flowers I couldn’t name.

  Bill outside the old summerhouse on the far side of the parking lot, now used for storage. He was bent over the riding mower, tinkering with the engine.

  Bill, shirt off and muscles rippling, patching a pothole in the parking lot, steam rising from the asphalt in a bucket at his side.

  Bill on his way out the front door, pausing for a moment to say something to Brittany, who was behind her—now my—desk.

  This photo seemed the most interesting to me, though I couldn’t say why, not right away. It wasn’t because I knew Bill and Brittany had a thing going, though looking at the two of them, I wondered how long they’d been seeing each other and if it was before or after Brittany quit and Bill was fired. I studied the picture for a few more minutes before the reality of it hit. The angle of this particular photo was odd—not taken from the first floor, where Bill and Brittany chatted, but from the top of the stairs, like someone was looking over the bannister and down on the scene.

  Like the photographer didn’t want Bill and Brittany to see her.

  I set that particular picture aside and looked through all the others again. In each one, Bill was busy working and, just like in the photo with Brittany, I’d bet anything he didn’t have a clue someone—and it had to have been Muriel—was taking his picture.

  “Interesting,” I mumbled, but just as quickly, my brain provided a perfectly logical explanation. Muriel suspected Bill was stealing from the club. She was keeping an eye on him. Trying to find proof, maybe. Though how a picture of a bare-chested Bill was supposed to provide that, I couldn’t say.

  I set the pictures aside and wondered what other secrets were hidden in Muriel’s office, though for the life of me, I couldn’t imagine where. Not satisfied with looking for something and finding nothing, I had another rummage through the office, looking again through the desk and the credenza and the filing cabinets, and yes, this time I checked the bottom of each and every drawer.

  Nothing.

  With a sigh of surrender, I finally gave up. On my way out the door—I’d shimmy out just like I’d shimmied in—I took pity on the aspidistra. Except for the fact that Aunt Rosemary is convinced they have a consciousness of sorts and that they can feel emotions, I don’t know much about plants. But I knew for sure this one needed a drink. Badly.

  I grabbed the pot and stopped cold.

  For a parched aspidistra in a plastic pot, it was awfully heavy.

  I weighed my options, which were pretty much these—yank the plant out of the pot right then and there to find out why it felt so heavy and risk making a mess that Oz would certainly notice and undoubtedly question. Or go into the basement, where I could have a little privacy and a workroom where I could take my time and clean up any mess more easily.

  I set the plant out in the hallway, climbed out of the office after it, and headed for the basement.

  There was no sign of Clemmie, and at that point, I hardly cared. I was burning with curiosity, dying to find out what was squirreled away at the bottom of the pot, and I went right to a room off the main basement corridor, plopped the plant and its pot on a table, and got to work.

  A second later, there was dirt all over the table, a bare-rooted plant sitting at my elbow, and I was staring slack-jawed at the almost-empty pot.

  “What’s eating you? You act like you ain’t never seen a plant before.”

  I didn’t gasp when Clemmie showed up out of whatever nowhere it was she went when she wasn’t hanging around the club. Well, at least not too much. When my heartbeat finally slowed and I was able to get the words out, I pointed to the bottom of the pot.

  “Not the plant. What’s in there.”

  She leaned closer and bent down for a better look. “A book?”

  “Not just any book.” I retrieved the object and shook the soil from the plastic bag it was in. “My datebook. The one that was filched from my room.”

  Her bottom lip protruded. “The one you thought I took.”

  “Sorry.” I meant it, but I didn’t dwell. Once the datebook was on the table, I got my journal and my address book out of the pot, too, and fists on hips, I stepped back to study the scene.

  “Why would Muriel steal my stuff and hide it in a plant pot?” I asked, and I didn’t expect Clemmie to answer, but she did.

  “Nobody would ever look there, would they?” As if the very act of thinking was painful, she wrinkled her nose. “Except you did. Maybe you ain’t such a dumb Dora after all. You really know your onions!”

  This I wasn’t so sure about. But I did know fishy when I smelled it.

  “Why would Muriel take my things? And then hide them?”

  “Well, ’cause she didn’t want you to find ’em, of course.”

  “But why take them in the first place?”

  “It’s fluky, all right. Unless . . .” Clemmie chewed on her lower lip, and I had only so much patience.

  “Unless what?” I asked.

  “Come here.” Her satin shoes silent against the stone floor, she turned and walked out of the workroom and down the hallway to the furnace room. “In there,” she said.

  I went where she pointed and found myself face to face with a hulking monstrosity of a furnace that chose that particular moment to kick in. It groaned and whirred.

  I felt my brain doing the same thing. “What’s this all about?” I asked Clemmie.

  By way of telling me to be patient, she held up a hand.

  After a few more minutes of contortions, the furnace throttled back, the quiet settled, and I could hear myself think again. I was just about to ask what I was supposed to be thinking about when I heard a voice.

  Disembodied.

  Hollow.

  Like it came from beyond the grave.

  “Not that one, Doris. That’s got a fuzzy edge and a yarn edge. We’re looking for all fuzzy.”

  Gracie.

  I slid Clemmie a questioning look.

  “It’s the heating ducts. Get it?” I think she was going to give me an elbow in the ribs, but she thought better of it and I was just as glad. I didn’t exactly like the thought of making contact with the disembodied. “I can be down here, and sometimes, I can hear what them dames upstairs are talking about.�
��

  “Anywhere upstairs?”

  When Clemmie shrugged, the beads on her dress shimmered in the dim overhead light. “Can’t say where they are when I hear them talking. I only know I pick up on something every now and then.”

  “And you picked up on something? About my datebook? And my journal?”

  “Don’t know. Not for sure. I only know that one day I heard that ol’ Mrs. Grundy.”

  “Muriel.”

  “Yeah, Muriel. I heard her cooing to herself. You know, like she was really happy about something. And I heard what she said, too. About how she hoped she could use something she found. Against you.”

  I sucked in a breath that was more about outrage than it was about surprise. “She wanted me to quit. And she thought she could look through my personal things and find . . .” I wasn’t sure what Muriel thought she’d find, I only knew the thought of her trying sent my blood pressure through the roof.

  It had a chance to settle when two new voices floated down to us and I stopped to listen.

  “What have you heard?” I recognized Agnes’s voice. “About the old records? Has that restorationist said anything to you about what he’s found and how much has been damaged?”

  “Not a word. Not to me,” Patricia answered her. “He says he’s preparing a report and by next week at this time . . .” Her voice faded and I could only imagine that wherever Patricia and Agnes had walked to as they continued their conversation, it was farther from the heating registers and so, impossible to hear down here in the basement.

  “You must pick up on all sorts of interesting stuff down here,” I said. “I don’t suppose you heard anything at the time of the . . .” I remembered how Clemmie had reacted the last time I mentioned murder, how she’d faded right away. “That Tuesday night. Before I found Muriel. Did you hear anything that night?”

  “Not a word, sister, and believe me, I’d tell you if I did. Nothing at all. Except . . .” She pursed her lips, thinking. “Come to think of it, I did hear something. Not anybody talking. But a sound. Before the door opened and that Muriel got the ole heave-ho down the steps. I heard something like a whirring.”