Killed by Clutter

by Leslie Caine

  “You sure I can’t help? I can carry those pots and things to the truck for you.”

  “That’s a nice offer, but we can let the experts take care of everything. Erin and Steve know what they’re doing.”

  Teddy said his reluctant goodbyes and left. Helen promptly asked Sullivan and me, “Do either of you want a box of chocolate candy? I really don’t care much for sweets. If Teddy wanted to impress me, he should’ve brought pretzels.”

  Not only did I love chocolate, but this gave me the chance to get an item out of her house; she was bound to get attached to the empty box someday. “Are you sure you don’t want them yourself?”

  “Oh, well, on second thought, maybe I do. I just hope they’re fresh and won’t break my jaw. Teddy probably bought these for my sister, Lois, months ago, before he learned she was allergic.”

  “She was allergic to chocolate and peppers?”

  “Also peanuts and shellfish.”

  “Jeez,” Sullivan muttered. “Last night I had Chinese takeout. One of the dishes was shrimp with green peppers sautéed in peanut oil.”

  Helen glared at him, but he didn’t notice.

  We boxed up the worthless pots. As we worked, I worried about Teddy’s gift to her; the chocolate could be tainted. But that was absurd; he wouldn’t have given her poisoned candy in front of two witnesses. Helen was right, though. I’d yet to see a new-but-unsealed box of chocolates.

  Chapter 7

  I asked Helen, “Stephanie implied that Teddy once dated your sister. Is that true?”

  “Yes. They got reacquainted when he came to her husband George’s funeral.”

  “Was the relationship serious?”

  Helen nodded. “Teddy proposed to her, but she didn’t want to get married again, or at least, not right away. He’s a sweet man. And I think men are wonderful.” She narrowed her eyes at Sullivan and added, “In general. Husbands, on the other hand, are problematic. They always seem to want their wives to mother them.” With a wink, she added, “Although, that’s the observation of a self-confirmed spinster.” She rolled her eyes and repeated, “‘Spinster.’ Isn’t that just the most sexist word you’ve ever heard?”

  “I suppose it is, a little.”

  “It’s worse than ‘a little,’ in my opinion. A man who never marries is a ‘confirmed bachelor.’ Whereas they make us unmarried women sound like spiders!”

  Sullivan and I had appointments with separate clients in the afternoon, and we agreed to stop work at Helen’s a little after one, with the truck still just two-thirds full with a second load. Our progress was bound to bog down as we continued to inch toward the items that were less obviously disposable. To pave the way for what was certain to be an emotionally challenging day for Helen, I announced that tomorrow we were going to move everything into the center of the floor and sort it into keep, toss, or sell piles.

  Sullivan stretched his shoulder muscles as we made our way to my van and said, “I’m going to need a ride to the rental place to pick up my van.”

  “No problem.” We had the truck leased for two weeks, which seemed like wishful thinking. Right now I could imagine myself having to wrench things away from Helen over the course of the next several months.

  Sullivan moved the truck to an out-of-the-way, overnight space around the corner from Helen’s house. As we drove away in my van, he asked me to connect the dots from the snippets of conversation he’d overheard about break-ins. I filled him in on Helen’s fears and suspicions. Then I sighed. “Even though her theory about her brother-in-law’s death is a bit off the wall, I really don’t agree with Stephanie and Peter about the Alzheimer’s. As far as I can see, Helen’s simply a little eccentric. Although I sure wish she’d listened to my suggestions about changing her locks.”

  “Wouldn’t make any difference. It’s not like anyone really is entering her house.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You don’t seriously think she’s taping hairs across the door openings each and every time she goes out, do you? Judging by the number of visitors she had today, those doors of hers are getting quite a workout. I bet she forgets about the hairs, opens her door for her cats or a guest, then later thinks, ‘Oh, my! Somebody broke in!’ Face it, Gilbert. Your client’s a nutcase.”

  “Now you’re making fun of my client?”

  “No. I’m just saying I think your client’s lonely and a little frightened being in the house by herself. So she’s imagining things.”

  That was very possible, but his cockiness was annoying. “Or maybe her sister was murdered just like she says, and she’s justifiably taking precautions.”

  “Come on, Gilbert! You really think there’s a serial killer of harmless little-old ladies running around? Whose weapon of choice is a bell pepper?”

  “You know what, Sullivan? This is why Helen acts a little frosty toward you. She’s smart enough to see right through your charming act and figure out how cynical you are.”

  “She’s not ‘frosty’ toward me. She just doesn’t jabber away at people the way you do.”

  “I don’t ‘jabber’! Nobody has ever once accused me of jabbering!”

  “Fine. I just meant that women tend to talk to other women a lot more freely than they do to men.”

  “Probably because men tend to use insulting terms such as ‘jabbering’ to describe women when we converse!”

  “Hey! It was Helen who said we were ‘gabbing’ instead of working this morning!”

  He had a point there. Sort of. I gritted my teeth and said nothing, but took a corner a little more sharply than I should have.

  Sullivan retorted, “Furthermore, it’s not an act! I am charming!”

  “Not right now you’re not.” We’d reached the parking lot of the rental place, and I pulled up to the curb. “See you tomorrow,” I mumbled as he got out. And then I drove off instead of waiting to make sure he had his keys, thinking for the countless time that, without fail, Sullivan brought out the very worst in my personality.

  To my disappointment, nobody was home when I arrived there at the end of my long day. Audrey was working late. The phone rang at about eight thirty. It was a double ring, which meant that the call was for me. I answered.

  “Erin?” The voice was elderly and trembling with fright.

  “Yes. Helen, is something wrong?”

  “I just got home from my scrapbooking session. I get together twice a week with friends to do our albums. Another hair has been snapped on the back door, so I’m in the garage again. It’s the only safe place here!”

  “I wish you’d reconsider putting new locks on the doors, Helen. I’m really certain we can make your house safe so that—”

  “Wait! I haven’t gotten the chance to tell you my problem yet. You’re interrupting me!”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, truly contrite. The woman was scared out of her wits and here I was, bullying her. “Tell me what’s wrong, Helen.”

  “The moment I saw the snapped hair, I got Ella to come join me in the garage, but Vator wouldn’t come when I called. Then I heard this...this crash, and an instant later, the power went out in my house.”

  “Are the lights out in your neighbors’ houses, too?”

  “I don’t know. The garage doesn’t have any windows. I’m calling from the cell phone my nephew and niece bought me to keep in my car for emergencies.”

  “So it’s possible that somebody is in your house right now?”

  “No, no! I haven’t heard another sound after the crash. Vator must have knocked a lamp over, which tripped the circuit breaker.”

  “Why don’t you call Stephanie or Peter, and—”

  “But they could be the ones breaking into my house when I’m gone!”

  “I thought you said nobody was there.”

  “I can’t be certain!”

  “Okay. Just in case then, Helen, I’ll call the police right now and send them out there.”

  “No! Those people always treat me like an old fool! It’s hu
miliating!” She took a ragged breath.

  Was she crying?

  “Please...help me.”

  I felt a pang. Helen was frightened and alone and deserved better. “I’ll come out myself.” Not wanting to sound condescending, I resisted the urge to tell her everything would be fine. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  “Thank you!”

  Although it took me a bit longer than ten minutes, I arrived at Helen’s house, with a flashlight in hand. The power was on everywhere in the neighborhood, but her house was utterly dark. Without thinking, I pushed the button for the doorbell. When no one answered, I realized that, of course, the doorbell wasn’t functional during a power outage. I trotted over to the garage door and knocked on a panel.

  “Erin?”

  “Yes, Helen, it’s me.”

  “I can’t lift the door by myself with the power out. I’ll let you in through the front door. It’ll take a minute.”

  I waited, worrying that she’d trip over something and injure herself. After what felt like several minutes, she swung open the front door. “Thank goodness, you’re here,” she gushed and hugged me. She smelled of cinnamon. I could feel her trembling.

  “Have you heard any more noises?”

  “No, but I can hear Vator someplace in the house. I left poor Ella in the garage.” She flicked on the tiny light in her keychain, and I turned on my flashlight. I sent the beam darting around the living room. The place looked eerie, crammed so full that anyone could be hiding behind a stack of boxes or a mound of old clothing.

  “Everything seems pretty much the same as when I left the house a couple of hours ago,” she said.

  I deliberately left the front door wide open, taking advantage of the limited ambient light. I could indeed hear plaintive, muffled meows. “Sounds like Vator might be in the kitchen. Maybe she’s gotten herself closed up in the pantry.”

  Helen stepped back and allowed me to lead the way. I walked up to the kitchen entranceway and stood still, listening. After a moment, I heard another meow. “She’s downstairs in the basement,” I said.

  “That’s impossible. I never go down there. That door’s always shut.” She held her ground, directly in front of the basement door. Vator cried again, and the sound definitely came from the other side of the door.

  “Oh, dear! Now I’m going to have to start taping a hair over this door, too!” She called, “I should have known! Somebody’s been going up and down those stairs, Erin. They keep making a path for themselves, no matter how much stuff I put on the steps to block them. We’re coming, Vator!”

  I opened the door.

  Helen grabbed my arm. “Be careful, Erin! I can’t imagine how my kitty got down there.”

  “Maybe Sullivan accidentally left the door cracked open this morning, and Vator’s been trapped down there ever since.”

  “Maybe so. I can’t remember when I saw her last. Vator? Come on, Vator. Come on upstairs.”

  Vator answered with another meow, but did not come running up the stairs through the darkness. I weighed calling the police, but other than the meows, the basement was silent. I urged Helen to stay put and started down the stairs myself.

  As Helen had said, there was a clear path through junk piled on either side of the stairs. I grabbed hold of the railing and kept a firm grip on my flashlight as I made my way down a couple of steps. I started to get anxious. What if I tripped and fell? What would Helen do if I got knocked unconscious?

  This basement was spooky and smelled musty. I would give my search for Vator thirty seconds or so, tops, then I’d call the police. Surprisingly, the boxes at either side of the open stairway were neatly stacked.

  Wait! Was that running water I was hearing?

  I shifted my light to the stairs below me once again. The beam reflected off the concrete surface. “Your basement floor is wet,” I exclaimed in surprise.

  “You mean it’s flooded?” she cried. “It’s never flooded in the forty-plus years I’ve lived here.” I heard a rustle as she started to follow me.

  “It did rain for a few—”

  I broke off and gasped as the beam from my flashlight fell on something lying motionless on Helen’s basement floor.

  “Go back upstairs, Helen!” I descended the stairs, staring at the horrible sight. Jack Schwartz was sprawled on his stomach in the inch-deep water, his face tilted to one side.

  Chapter 8

  Refusing to believe my eyes, I called, “Jack?”

  Helen gasped and sobbed, “Oh, no!” She hadn’t gone upstairs like I’d asked. I turned and saw her wobble. I dropped my flashlight and rushed up to support her, then helped her sit down on the stair. “He’s dead, isn’t he?” she cried. She sank her face into her hands.

  He was lying face down in water, but maybe there was a chance he was still alive. “I’ll check for a pulse. Stay right here.”

  Remembering a safety lecture from college about the danger of touching standing water in basements, I hesitated. The fuse had been tripped, though; there was no risk to me of electrocution. I stepped out of my shoes, made my way down the stairs, and stepped into the bone-chilling shallow water within the murky darkness.

  I gasped and jumped at a hissing noise, panicking at the irrational fear that there was an electrical charge after all. It was just the cat. Vator was stranded on the peak of a mountain of boxes against the back wall, just beyond Jack’s motionless body. In darkness relieved only by the ambient light from the window wells, her eyes glowed yellow.

  Sloshing through the water, I crouched beside Jack. He wasn’t breathing. I rolled him over onto his back. Just then, Vator leapt on top of him and sprang to the stairs, darting past Helen, who whimpered and repeated, “Is he dead?”

  I couldn’t see any blood on his face or wet clothes, yet one look at his frozen, glassy-eyed features had told me all that I didn’t want to know. I checked in vain for a pulse, and said, “Yes. We need to call nine-one-one.”

  I felt disoriented and thoroughly spooked. How could this have happened? Jack was a former electrician and would have known not to step into water in a basement. Could he have had a heart attack? What was he doing in Helen’s cellar in the first place?

  Helen was sobbing softly on the stairs above me. She seemed to be going into shock, and I wasn’t going to be much use to her, fumbling around in the dark. I spotted my flashlight, which had landed on a thick, wet mat at the very base of the stairs. I fidgeted with the switch and felt relieved when its dull yellow light flickered back on.

  My gaze promptly fell on an object wedged in the small gap between two stacks of boxes. My feet now numb with the cold, I waded closer and pointed my flashlight beam directly into the gap. An electric extension cord was immersed in the water.

  “He was electrocuted,” I muttered to myself in disbelief.

  “Oh, dear Lord,” Helen sobbed. “This was meant for me! It’s a trap! Poor Jack died because of me!” She stumbled back up the stairs. I followed, retrieving my shoes, and finally realized that my cell phone was in the pocket of my khakis. “I’m calling nine-one-one,” I told her as I grabbed my phone and dialed.

  “This is all my fault!” She made her way to a chair at the kitchen table.

  In the strained glow of my flashlight, her face was distorted with shadows. There was a gas lantern here someplace; I’d seen it in one of the boxes in the kitchen.

  “A man’s been killed,” I said into the phone when the dispatcher answered. “My name is Erin Gilbert. I’m at...Helen? What’s your address?”

  “Twenty-six-seventy Violet Lane,” she managed.

  I repeated the address and said, “His name’s Jack Schwartz. The neighbor from across the street. He died from an electric shock in the flooded basement. The power is out in the house.”

  Someone was knocking on the door, not loudly, but persistently. That couldn’t be the police already; there’d been no sirens.

  Helen was tugging on my arm, and I lost my grip and dropped my phone. “Erin?
Can you take me back to my garage? Please?”

  I fumbled with my phone but discovered I’d been disconnected. “Helen? You’re trembling. Let’s get you a blanket.”

  The front door creaked open. “Helen? It’s Rachel.”

  My God. Her husband lay dead in the basement! “Stay there,” I called to her. “I’m coming.” Helen moaned softly and caught her breath, struggling to collect herself.

  “Erin? Erin Gilbert?” Rachel called. “I thought I saw your van in the driveway. What on earth is going on in here?”

  “I came over to help Helen. Just a minute, Rachel. I’ll be right there.” I rested my hand on top of Helen’s on the table and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

  “I’m going back to the garage,” she said, rising. “I knew I should have stayed in there—”

  “Jack?” Rachel called. “Where are you?”

  At this, Helen froze, then crumpled back into her seat. “Poor Jack,” she whispered, covering her face with her hands.

  I made my way to the entrance of the living room. Rachel was standing near the front door, the beam of her flashlight darting about wildly. She shined the light directly in my face. “Where’s Jack? Where’s my husband? I need to talk to him.”

  I averted my eyes, feeling helpless. Should I tell her to sit down in this messy, pitch black room while I broke the hideous news to her? “Rachel—”

  “I know he’s here. We saw a prowler running from here, and—”

  “When? Just now?”

  “No. Fifteen or twenty minutes ago. We knew Helen wasn’t home from her scrapbook club yet. Jack came over to investigate.”

  “By himself? Didn’t you call the police?” Maybe Helen was right! Somebody really did seem to be trying to kill her and had gotten the wrong victim!

  “No, I couldn’t. Jack had bolted outside, absolutely insisting on charging over here to investigate, even though I tried to stop him. I was afraid the police would mistake him for the prowler and shoot him! When he didn’t come right back, I kept trying to call here, but nobody answered.”