Scareplane

by Elise Sax

  “I’m here to clean the upstairs toilets,” I said in my best old lady voice. I walked quickly by him and down the hallway. I kept a lookout for unfriendlies, but I didn’t have a lot of time. Sooner or later, Fred would remember that there wasn’t an upstairs.

  I found what I was looking for in Remington’s office. The door had two names on it now. Remington’s and Terri Williams. I tried the door handle, but it was locked. But I had lock picks in my purse, and I was particularly talented at using them. It only took a few seconds to break in.

  The Mike Chantage file was right on her desk, where I expected to find it. I opened the file and took photos of every page with my cellphone without taking the time to read. I put the phone back in my purse and closed the file, leaving it the way I found it. I heard footsteps on the floor outside in the hall, and my skin prickled with fear. I had to get out of there in a hurry, but before I left, the framed photos on her desk caught my attention. They were the usual. One of her graduation with her parents. One on vacation on a beach in her bikini and her perfect body.

  And there was one last photo of her in uniform next to Mike Chantage, the man who had been murdered a few hours before.

  CHAPTER 6

  Some matches are weird, dolly. Big, fat weirdos. But we’re progressive, forward-thinking matchmakers. We don’t discriminate on the basis of weirdo. In fact, I’ve matched a whole pile of weirdos. Remember when matching a weirdo, don’t think you need to match him or her with another weirdo. Sometimes, a weirdo will love a non-weirdo and vice versa. But really, there’s no rhyme or reason with weirdos. It’s meshuga.

  Lesson 50, Matchmaking advice from your

  Grandma Zelda

  I wanted to arrest Detective Guilty Gorgeous immediately. I wanted to point at her and yell, “she did it!” more than I wanted the Oreo company to make quadruple-stuffed Oreos, and I wanted that real bad. But I didn’t have any proof that she killed Mike, whereas she hated me and had a gun, and I was reasonably certain she wasn’t shy about using it. Somehow, I was going to have to gather all of my sleuthing skills in order to get her put away.

  First thing was first. I had to get out of the building without her seeing me and poisoning me, too. I tied my grandmother’s scarf tighter around my head and locked the office door behind me. I was anxious to get out fast in order to read the file, but I was careful to avoid as many people as possible. I walked close to the walls and peeked around corners. When I couldn’t avoid a person, I lowered my face and hoped for the best. It worked. Nobody recognized me, and I got out with my stolen file images on my phone in my purse.

  Boy, Spencer had crappy security.

  Back in my car, after I removed my grandmother’s clothes, I studied the images of the file. Detective Pretty Bitch had interviewed everyone, except for Cynthia. She had spent a lot of time grilling Arthur Fox and the waiter, who were the obvious number one suspects for poisoning Mike’s food. But that was the problem, according to lab tests. There was no poison in his food or anyone’s food. Mike Chantage had been poisoned earlier than lunch.

  Poisoned with daffodils.

  The interviews were all more or less the same. How had they known Mike? They had worked with him. Had he been acting differently? No. Had they seen anything out of the ordinary? No. Did they know of anyone who wanted to kill him? He wasn’t a likable guy, but they didn’t know anyone who would poison him. What are your thoughts on daffodils? They didn’t understand the question.

  I tapped my finger against my chin. There were a lot more questions I wanted to ask, but I would have to be careful. Spencer and Detective Moody Boobs wouldn’t take kindly to me butting my nose in, and I didn’t know how to interview the conference participants without Spencer finding out. Hmmm…I would have to think about that.

  There was a knock on my car window, and I jumped, banging my head against the back of my seat. I peered out. “Larry? Is that you?”

  Larry Doughy looked like hell. Half of his head was now bald, and his clothes were filthy. His eyes were wild. Crazy eyes. Obviously, he had only gotten worse since yesterday’s snake incident. I was riddled with guilt, feeling that I should have protected him, somehow. Instead, I had been avoiding him and not taking his curse seriously.

  I opened the car window. “Are you okay?”

  “You gotta get this curse off of me. I don’t know how much more I can take.”

  “The goat lady says she can do you tomorrow.”

  “What if I’m dead tomorrow? Or worse?”

  From the looks of him, worse was definitely possible. “I’ll protect you,” I said and instantly regretted my words.

  “Do you have Mace? I think I need Mace.”

  “I have a travel-sized hairspray in my purse, and I know Krav Maga,” I lied. His eyes stopped dancing, and he seemed to calm down a bit with the news of my weaponry.

  “We should probably take your car,” he said. “I’ve been using Uber, but the last guy caught fire.”

  I looked at my beautiful new car. It was older than spit but in pristine condition, and I had just gotten it. I didn’t want it to be attacked by snakes or worse. But my guilt was overriding all of my other impulses, like survival. Larry Doughy was my client, my match, and he had already given me a deposit. Professional pride and moral decency were preventing me from fleeing for my life.

  “Hop in,” I told him.

  Larry sat in the seat next to me and belted himself in. “Have you serviced this car recently? Have you checked the air in the tires?”

  I had never done anything to the car except put gas in it. “Of course,” I said. “Here we go.”

  “Where are we going? Someplace with no pointy corners?”

  I didn’t know how to answer that. “I have a few errands to run.” I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I was looking for a murderer.

  I drove back to Cynthia’s house after trying to get her by phone. She had disappeared, and I didn’t know why, but I had a sneaking suspicion that she might have been involved in Mike’s murder, even if I wanted Detective Gnarly Nipples to be the guilty one. If Cynthia really was the killer, Spencer would have my hide for bringing a murderer in to his station to kill one of his conference participants.

  There was also the detail of Cynthia being my client. My matchmaking business had just begun to get off the ground, and I didn’t want to derail it with a failed match, due to her being a killer.

  Next to me in the car, Larry yawned. The poor guy probably hadn’t slept since he had gotten cursed. After parking in Cynthia’s driveway, I hopped out and checked all around her house for any sign of her. Nope. Nothing. I peeked in the windows, but there was no movement. I wrote a quick note and put it on her door. Then, I went back to the car. Inside, Larry was fast asleep. I closed the car door, quietly and sat for a moment, trying to decide what to do next.

  A black van screeched to a halt a couple houses away, and two old ladies climbed out, one of them pushing a walker. They were dressed head to toe in black with black marks under their eyes, as if they were professional football quarterbacks. They looked around as if they were seeing if the coast was clear and then pulled out two large garden shears from the van. One old lady held the walker lady’s shears while they walked, but they didn’t have to go far. They hacked the hell out of the yellow daffodils with a terrifying ferocity.

  Whack! Whack! Whack!

  They went up the driveway, one on the right side and one on the left side, whacking the daffodils to their deaths until their little flower corpses littered the ground. Once they were finished with the driveway, they hit the daffodil beds in front of the house. When they were done, the one with the walker lifted her garden shears in the air and cackled a triumphant laugh. They looked around again, I assumed to see if the cops were coming, and when the coast was clear, they shuffled back to the van and took off with a screech of their tires.

  Daffodil terrorists.

  Ruth’s words came back to me. “The whole town is a suspect.”

 
; I needed to talk to Morris, the head of the Daffodil Committee. He could give me insider information on psychotic Daffodil Committee members, although it did occur to me that Morris might have been the biggest psychotic Daffodil Committee member of them all. I called my grandmother. “Morris is at Bar None,” she said, answering the phone. “There was a flower dust up, there. The bar had ordered white daffodil centerpieces for the Daffodil Competition, and the yellow daffodil contingent got angry. Pee before you get there, dolly.”

  She hung up. Larry was snoring next to me, his head slumped against the window. I backed out of the driveway and made my way to Bar None.

  The bar was hopping with customers, with nearly every parking spot taken. I recognized the daffodil terrorists’ black van, and there were a couple of white ones next to it. “Where are we?” Larry asked, waking.

  “Bar None. I have to talk to someone here.”

  “They deep-fry food here.” He shuddered. “Being deep-fried’s gotta hurt.”

  “It’s a risk, I know, but they make the best chili cheese fries I’ve ever had.”

  The idea of chili cheese fries won Larry over. He also seemed calmer around me, like I was his talisman, even though we had been snaked together. Inside, the bar was dark, lit only by candles on the tables. Despite the darkness, Larry’s entrance made a stir, and half of the patrons shifted in their seats, as if to make as much space between them and the cursed man.

  “This looks pretty safe,” he said, giving me his first smile since I had met him. My stomach growled. I was looking forward to the fries.

  I looked around for Morris, but I heard him before I saw him. “White? White? Really?” he said to the manager. “The Daffodil Committee has patronized Bar None for sixteen years. Where’s the loyalty? Where?”

  “The Daffodil Committee ordered the centerpieces. Not me, Morris.”

  Morris choked and sputtered. “They… wha… huh… they… no!”

  It was a cruel blow to Morris. He had traitors in his beloved Daffodil Committee. Those who wanted white daffodils instead of yellow. He turned around, searching the bar, probably for those who betrayed him.

  “Morris,” I said, approaching him. “It’s me, Gladie. I was wondering if I could speak to you for a moment.”

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Spencer interrupted us, and he was giving me his “Lucy, you have some splaynin to do” look. He stepped between me and Morris, his large body blocking my line of sight.

  “I…uh…huh?” I answered.

  “I told you not to get involved.”

  I was disoriented. I couldn’t figure out how he knew that I was getting involved. Did he have a third eye like my grandmother?

  “I’m not getting involved,” I lied. “I’m here with my match. You remember Larry.”

  Spencer flinched when he noticed Larry. Poor Larry. Even Spencer thought he was cursed. “And I was talking to Morris about…” I shut my mouth tight. Shoot. I had gone one step too far. If I mentioned anything about daffodils, Spencer would know exactly what I was doing. “Football,” I said, finally.

  Spencer leaned forward. “Football? Gladys Burger is talking about football?”

  “Don’t call me Gladys, and yes I’m talking about football. Nice talking to you, Morris,” I said, even though I hadn’t really spoken to him. “Come on, Larry, let’s get some chili cheese fries.”

  “Spencer, you need to get CSI down here to take samples of all of the flowers in the back room of this place,” Joyce Strauss ordered, stomping toward him before I could get to a table with Larry. She was at the bar, along with Sidney, Frank, and Leah. All of the conference participants were there. So, Spencer hadn’t followed me. He didn’t have a third eye. But they were ahead of me in the investigation. Way ahead. The only difference between us was that they didn’t seem to know that Morris was the head of the Daffodil Committee.

  “We’re a town of two thousand people,” Spencer told Joyce, annoyed. “We don’t have CSI. But we’ll get samples, Joyce.”

  Even in the dark bar, I could see him roll his eyes. Joyce was a pain in the ass, which was good for me because it took his attention off of my nosiness.

  “Those flowers are going back,” Morris said. “We don’t want white daffodils here.”

  “What do you know about the daffodils?” Spencer asked him and shot me an I-know-what-you’re-doing-here look.

  My goose was cooked. I had to cover my tracks, quickly. “Go Bears! Go Dodgers!” I cried. I didn’t know anything about football, but in my experience, lying followed by running away was always an effective tactic. I pushed Larry toward a table.

  “This is a nice place,” he told me, sitting.

  “Yeah. Yeah. Whatever.” From our table, I tried to hear what Morris and Spencer were talking about. It was like I was racing against Spencer to find the killer first. He had a whole team on his side, and I was on my own. But I was a dog with a bone, and Spencer had a detective who was a suspect. At least, I thought she was a suspect.

  While Larry and I waited for our chili cheese fries, I fantasized that Detective Jerkface Belly Shirt was the murderer and I was the one to put her in the slammer. Oh, that would be satisfying.

  Our fries and sodas arrived, and we dug in. “This is good,” Larry said. “And nothing’s happened for a while now. Maybe the curse is gone.”

  I didn’t believe in curses, but I knew better than to tempt fate by saying that it might be gone.

  Frank Fellows, the bully-type top cop, sat down next to me without being invited. “Gladie, right?” he asked me.

  “I’m Larry. Larry Doughy,” Larry said, smiling.

  “Nice to meet you, man,” Frank said but focused only on me. “Did you hear about the daffodils?”

  I dropped the fry that was halfway to my mouth. “Yes,” I said.

  “Weird way to kill a man, right?”

  I didn’t know where he was going with this conversation. Normally, police wanted me to stay far away from cases, and they never talked to me about them. “Weird,” I agreed.

  “Sounds like a woman killed him. Women use poisons.” He stared at me, like he was trying to mind meld with me, or at least send me a hidden signal about women, poisons, and who the murderer was.

  “They do?”

  “Look at that woman,” he said, gesturing toward Joyce, who was still giving Spencer a hard time. “Don’t you think it’s suspicious that she’s sticking her nose in when it’s not her case?”

  I didn’t think it was suspicious at all. I did it every chance I got. I nodded. “Suspicious, yes. Very suspicious. Why do you think it’s suspicious?”

  “Joyce hated Mike. Everyone knows that.”

  “What are we talking about?” Larry asked.

  “Football,” I said. “Why did she hate him?” I asked Frank, urging him to continue.

  “I don’t know. Mike had something on her. Mike was a bastard, and enjoyed making people’s lives miserable. I would have killed him myself, but I would have knifed him in his throat, not kill him with flowers. I don’t go that way, if you know what I mean.”

  “This is football?” Larry asked.

  “Did he make your life miserable, too?” I asked Frank.

  His face hardened and he stood. “Don’t mind yourself about me. Joyce is the one you should focus on.”

  “I’m a matchmaker,” I said.

  “That’s not what I hear,” he said and walked back to Spencer.

  “I don’t know what’s going on,” Larry said.

  “Errands,” I explained and forked some fries and brought them to my mouth. But I didn’t know what was going on, either. What did Joyce have against Mike? Was she honing in on the investigation in order to move the suspicions off of her? Why would she kill him with daffodils? Or maybe Frank killed Mike and was trying to pin it on Joyce. If not, why on earth would he have told me anything? We barely knew each other.

  I checked out Joyce as she tried to order Spencer around. She was skinny and annoying, but sh
e was all business. I didn’t see her doing anything to prevent herself from moving up in law enforcement. She was gonzo ambitious.

  But Spencer had had enough of her and was talking to Morris. Joyce walked away, obviously frustrated. I watched as she went toward the bathrooms. “I gotta go to the bathroom, Larry,” I said.

  “I’ll come with you. The Coke is going right through me.”

  I cornered Joyce in the little alcove where the bathroom doors were. I plastered a wide smile on my face. “Joyce, I just wanted to tell you how inspired I am from your leadership.”

  She smiled back at me. “Just doing my job, filling in when there’s gaps in the command structure.”

  I nodded in appreciation. “I hear you have your fill of suspects because Mike was, well, you know.” I hoped she knew because I had no idea.

  “I’m not at liberty to discuss suspects with you. Why? What have you heard?”

  It wasn’t easy trying to get information from someone who was trying to get information from me at the same time. “Just that Mike was, you know, not liked because, you know.” Sheesh. I was getting nowhere fast.

  “Mike was a highly respected law official. I don’t see any reason for killing him except if it were someone he had tried to put away. Since he put away his share of bad guys, there’s no shortage of suspects, but who? We don’t know, yet. Yet,” she added for dramatic effect, sticking her finger in the air.

  “I really gotta go,” Larry said and squeezed his way through us to the men’s room. I had forgotten that he was there. Joyce took that moment to push past me to go to the ladies’ room, which opened up and Leah Wilder came out.

  Leah was the nicest of all of the top cops, and she promoted new, gentler methods of law enforcement. As soon as Joyce went into the bathroom, Leah cornered me. “Don’t believe a word she says,” she whispered.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Everyone hated Mike. Everyone. There wasn’t a soul who came in contact with him who didn’t want him dead. Do you know what that bastard did to my nephew?” I shook my head, no. “He beat him half to death during a drug bust. The man was sadistic in addition to archaic. And you probably guessed about the thing between Mike and Frank’s wife.”