Killed by Clutter

by Leslie Caine

  “Will do.” I resisted a childish temptation to give a mock salute.

  “We’ll see you there! Eight p.m., sharp!”

  Before she and Teddy could head down the stairs, I took the opportunity to show Helen my preliminary sketches of the addition I had in mind for her house. She loved them (as did Teddy), and after a brief game of phone tag with Peter, Stephanie, and Sullivan, I managed to make an appointment at Helen’s house the next morning, which was Saturday, for Sullivan and me to present my idea to them.

  Anxious to discuss my wanting his help tonight in person, I ducked into Sullivan’s office later that evening. His space bore a masculine, modern look—clean lines, all very chic and Zen-like in its red, smoky gray, and whisky tones. He was on the phone and gave me a crooked grin as he hung up. “What’s up, Gilbert?”

  “I needed to see if you can come to Helen’s house in a couple over hours. Are you doing anything tonight at eight p.m.?”

  He cocked an eyebrow. “Of course I am. It’s Friday...date night.”

  His statement hit me like a blast of bitter-cold air. He was seeing somebody. Maybe they’d met in California. That could certainly explain why he’d suddenly cooled our relationship and crept back into town without a word. I forced a smile. “Right. Forgot it was a Friday. No biggie.”

  Sullivan was going to be off on some hot date tonight, while I was on my own, chaperoning senior citizens intent on playing cops and robbers—with real-life “robbers!” I turned and grabbed the doorknob.

  “Why? Is this important?”

  Not unless there’s gunplay. “No, no. Teddy and Helen are just testing a silly theory.”

  “What theory?”

  His phone rang. Maybe that was his “date” calling. “Nothing worth changing your big plans for. Have a nice evening.”

  Feeling like a complete ass, I let myself out the door before he could stop me. If things fell apart at Helen’s house, I could picture myself sitting at the police station afterwards, being grilled by O’Reilly and having to admit, “Yes, Detective. Shrewd observation. I am indeed missing my nose. I cut it off tonight to spite my face. You see, I couldn’t swallow my pride long enough to tell Mr. Stuffed-Shirt Sullivan that I needed him to postpone his tryst with some other woman and make sure that Helen’s burglar could be overpowered.”

  At eight p.m. “sharp,” I was still kicking myself as I walked from where I’d parked, having taken a circuitous route through the neighborhood to avoid being spotted by nosey Rachel. I never should have agreed to any of this.

  Helen and Teddy greeted me at her back door, and Teddy said, “You’re just in time. I spotted Rachel peering out her window at the house, and you can bet she’ll be on her way over here any minute now.”

  “Rachel knows I have a scrapbooking club tonight. Somebody always breaks into my house on Friday nights.” I could see Helen smile even in the limited lighting. “This is so much fun,” she told Teddy. “I feel like a kid again! I don’t know why I didn’t try this weeks ago.”

  “Maybe because common sense prevailed,” I couldn’t help but retort, although I had to admit that I, too, felt a giddy surge of excitement.

  “Now we just wait in the dark,” Teddy instructed.

  We all took seats in the living room. I’d felt my way to the arm chair across from the piano. It was fortunate that this space had been decluttered. Otherwise we might not have found chairs so easily. Let alone a hapless intruder.

  “Teddy! What’s that in your hand?” Helen cried a moment later.

  “It’s my old service revolver.”

  “But you promised that there—”

  “Don’t worry. It’s not loaded.”

  “That’s not good enough for me,” she persisted.

  “Me, either, Teddy. I’m putting a stop to this right this second unless you put that thing far out of reach,” I demanded. “There’s a drawer in this end table beside me.”

  “The gun’s not loaded!”

  Helen said firmly, “You have till the count of three to do as Erin says, or we’re both turning the lights on, and you’re leaving my home.”

  “Fine. Your concerns are stupid, but it is your house, so I’m respecting your wishes.”

  “How can you still have your service revolver?” I asked as I slid the revolver safely into the drawer. “I thought you had to return those things when you left the force.”

  “It’s not the actual weapon. It’s a duplicate I purchased myself.”

  “Shush!” Helen chastised.

  We tensed. There were footsteps on the porch. Entering via the front door? Granted, the only house with a view of the front door was Rachel’s, but this still seemed awfully brazen.

  A key scraped in the lock. My heart started pounding. The prowler unlocked the door and stepped inside.

  With a triumphant, “Ta dah!” Teddy flipped on the lights.

  We gasped in surprise as our burglar stood there, dressed in black from head to toe, cowering in shock at this unexpected exposure.

  It wasn’t Rachel Schwartz. It was Helen’s nephew. Peter.

  Chapter 17

  “What’s going on?” Peter said, donning a look of pure innocence. He scanned all three of our faces, finally settling on Helen’s steely gaze. “I was just stopping by to check on the house.”

  Teddy let out a derisive chuckle. “Come off it. You don’t actually expect us to believe that, do you?”

  Peter spread his arms and pleaded to his aunt, “I’ve been swinging by your house after I get off work, ever since your neighbor’s death. I saw that all the lights were out. I wanted to make sure you weren’t having any more trouble with prowlers.”

  “So you dressed up like one?” Freddy snorted with disbelief.

  “I wore black for the funeral earlier today.”

  Using the trick I used frequently when picturing rooms, I closed my eyes, trying to picture him at the funeral; I’d only spotted him briefly, but I could recall that he had indeed been wearing a black shirt of some kind.

  “A black turtleneck? Baloney!”

  Peter ignored Teddy and continued, “I wanted to make sure there were no lethal booby traps in your house...like the electrified water in your basement. I’m simply trying to protect you, Aunt Helen.”

  Teddy stepped between them. “Don’t be looking to your aunt to bail you out of your jam, Mr. Miller. Why are you breaking into her house? Grand theft? Attempted murder? Either way, it’s a federal offense.”

  Peter shot him a look of pure disdain. “My mom was living here just twelve weeks ago! And I’m not ‘breaking into her house.’ I have a key! Since when is using one’s own house key to check in on an elderly relative a crime?”

  “I’m not as ‘elderly’ as all that, Peter,” Helen said. “And I’m still sharp enough to recognize when somebody’s trying to con me.”

  Pacing in front of Peter as though he fancied himself as some sort of cogitating Sherlockian, Teddy said, “Don’t lie to us, son.”

  Peter’s face was nearly purple with anger. “Don’t you dare call me that! I am not your son, thank God! And I’ve got a lot more right to be here than you do, so stop acting like you’re the man in charge of this household!”

  “I’m just trying to get at the truth, and we all—”

  “That’s enough, Teddy.” Helen rose from the piano bench. “Thank you for your help, but I’ll take it from here.”

  Teddy’s jaw dropped. His bravura instantly drained from him. “What do you mean?”

  “You can go home now. Erin’s here. She can serve as mediator.”

  Teddy shifted his injured gaze to me for a moment. “But...I’m the one who’s trained in interrogation techniques, Helen.” He shook a fist at Peter. “This chump is obviously trying to play the nephew card to get away with stealing from you. Lois admitted to me that she let him practically bankrupt her. He—”

  “Hey! Leave my mother out of this, or else!” Peter shouted.

  Teddy jabbed a finger at him. �
�You’re the one we caught breaking and entering, Petey boy! So you have no right to make threats!”

  “Again, Teddy, I have a key! And you’re the one who’s trying to weasel his way into my family fortune!” The men squared off and were practically spitting in each other’s faces.

  “Time to go home, Teddy.” Helen grabbed his arm and tried to tug him toward the door.

  Glaring at Peter all the while, Teddy wrested his arm away from her grasp. “Fine, Helen. I’ll do as asked. I am a gentleman. Unlike someone else I could mention.”

  Peter balled his fists, but held his tongue.

  “Remember, I’m just a phone call away if you need me,” he said gently to Helen. He went to the table beside me and retrieved his gun, which he jammed into his waistband. He focused a hateful glare at Peter and dragged his finger across his throat, then left through the kitchen, letting himself out through the back door.

  Helen sighed. She shook her head, settled into the beige velour recliner that she’d recently unburied (in favor of reburying the kitchen), and gestured for Peter to take her now-vacated position on the piano bench. “Sit down, Peter. Tell me what’s really going on here.”

  He followed his aunt’s directive and perched on the bench, looking as precarious and out-of-place as a rooster on a telephone wire. “I...like looking at my parents’ old things in privacy. I know it’s corny and nostalgic, but it helps me focus whenever I’m upset. So, to comfort myself, I come here sometimes when I know you’re not going to be around.”

  Helen rolled her eyes. “Cut the crap, Peter. I’m a retired junior-high teacher. I can spot malarkey a mile away.”

  He stared at his lap for a long moment. He had a bald spot near the center of his dark-brown hair. He was turning into a real nebbish—a pudgy middle-aged man who would steal from his own relatives rather than work hard. He mumbled, “None of this was my idea. It was Rachel’s.”

  Helen asked evenly, “That’s how she got my porcelain dancers? You stole them from me and gave them to her?”

  He nodded, his eyes still averted.

  “But why?”

  He shrugged—the proverbial little boy with his hand caught in the cookie jar. “Rachel really wanted them. She convinced me you wouldn’t even miss them.”

  “What was in it for you?” Helen asked.

  I had a hunch that the porcelain was payment for Rachel’s running surveillance on Helen’s house while he stole Helen’s collectibles, but this being a family matter, I held my tongue, opting to make myself as unobtrusive as possible.

  Again he took a long time before answering. Then he sighed, the muscles in his jaw working. “The deal was: I gave Rachel part of...what I took in exchange for notifying me when the coast was clear to enter and...remove items.”

  “I see. So you’ve been stealing from me for how long now?”

  He finally looked up. “Hey, it’s not theft, Aunt Helen. Everything I took already belongs to me. I inherited them from my mother.”

  Another lie. The porcelain figurines he’d given to Rachel belonged to Helen. Had he gone to all this trouble just to avoid having to share their parent’s estate with his sister? Surely Stephanie would eventually notice if Lois’s most-valuable possessions had been removed from this house. Maybe Peter had counted on claiming that Helen had lost their mother’s things, once Helen had passed away and could no longer defend herself.

  Helen cleared her throat. She asked, “How long has this been going on?”

  In a near whisper, he answered, “Ever since Mother’s death.”

  Helen paled. After a moment, she asked quietly, “What exactly have you taken?”

  He ran both palms over his hair. “In my defense, you haven’t even noticed anything was gone. Meantime, that’s how I’ve kept my private practice afloat. I’ve been making a tidy profit on e-Bay. You name it, some nut out there someplace will collect it.”

  “I have noticed, Peter, dear. And not everything you’ve taken belonged to your mother. As, I’m sure, you’re very well aware.”

  “Sorry, Aunt Helen,” he said meekly.

  That was it? He was just going to shrug this off—concede his role as the ne’er-do-well nephew? Assume his despicable behavior would have no consequences? And was Helen too kind-hearted to press him further? “What exactly have you taken?” I asked him, repeating Helen’s unanswered question and breaking my resolve to keep quiet.

  He fired a stay-out-of-this glare my direction.

  “Peter?” Helen prompted.

  “I dunno. Not all that much, really.” He shrugged. “I have it all written down, though. The list is back at my office.”

  The doorbell chimed. After a deep sigh of resignation, Helen called out, “Come in, Rachel.”

  Rachel leaned in the door, and with a sheepish smile, said, “Good evening, Helen.” She held out a plate of what looked like a small cake, jauntily covered in magenta-tinted plastic wrap with a glittery silver bow atop. “I brought you a slice of crumb cake. As a peace offering.”

  “Crumb cake?” Helen scoffed. “You really had to dig deep for an excuse to come over this time, didn’t you?”

  “Pardon?”

  Helen frowned and didn’t reply. I explained on her behalf, “Peter’s just told us about how he gave you Helen’s porcelain figurines in exchange for your playing lookout person when Helen left her home. Such as she did tonight, when she pretended to leave for a meeting.”

  “What?! Why, I never!” she huffed.

  “Drop the: I’m-so-offended routine!” Peter snapped at her. “This was all your idea in the first place!”

  Rachel gaped at him. “Peter Miller! How dare you tell such an outrageous, hateful lie! To think that, all this time, I’ve been on your side! You were the one who told me over and over again that—” She paused and her eyes flew wide. “My God. You’ve been lying to me all along, haven’t you, Peter? You’ve been making yourself out to be this big softy, cruelly orphaned, bullied by his domineering sister and his willful aunt, when—”

  Peter leapt to his feet. “I never said anything of the kind! Aunt Helen, she’s twisting everything around!”

  “Rachel, please go home. Now.” Helen’s voice was quiet, yet firm.

  Hanging her head, her cheeks now almost as crimson as her lipstick, Rachel nodded. She set the festively wrapped cake on the small pedestal table near the door. “I am so, so sorry, Helen. Like I explained at Jack’s funeral, my medication caused me to lose my head at the TV station. But I have no excuse now. I let myself get duped into helping your nephew take his things from your home without your consent. That’s...unforgivable.” She lifted her chin. “I’d told myself it was a win-win situation. Jack and I used to worry all the time that one of your enormous junk piles would topple, and you’d be crushed. But...that wasn’t really why I did what I did. Truth be told, I was too tempted by Peter’s offer of your porcelain to say no.”

  Peter stomped his foot. “It’s the other way around, Aunt Helen! I’m the one who was too weak to resist her offer!”

  Helen rubbed her forehead and murmured, “Oh, Peter.” “Please don’t be angry with me.” Peter strode up to his aunt and grabbed her hands, which looked so tiny and fragile in his. “The only person I was really cheating was Stephanie. And I’ll swear on my mother’s grave that I wasn’t here the night Jack Schwartz was killed. This had nothing to do with that. I’d never have risked hurting you, Aunt Helen. Never.”

  Helen extracted her hands. “I’m going to need to see an itemized list of everything you took from this house. For one thing, those dancer figurines were mine, not Lois’s. They were given to me by a gentleman friend who had personal connections to the Spanish factory that made them. He gave me a figurine on our first date, and on our monthly anniversaries.”

  Rachel seemed to be on the verge of tears. “I’ll bring them right back, Helen. The two that Peter took from you, I mean. I’ve had the other eight for years.”

  “Ever since you first saw mine,” Helen snarled
. “I know.”

  Rachel winced, and her eyes misted. “I deserved that. I’ve done a terrible thing. But I’m also terribly sorry.” She took a ragged breath. “At least Jack didn’t live to see this day...and learn just how selfish and greedy his wife could be.”

  Looking both stunned and touched, Helen said, “Heaven knows we’re all capable of making poor choices, Rachel.”

  She gave Helen a grateful smile. Then she curled her lip with disgust as she peered at Peter and walked away. In a choked voice, she cried, “Enjoy your cake, Helen,” as she left.

  “Thank you,” Helen called after her.

  Peter wobbled but stood his ground, looking mortified by Rachel’s accusations. When Helen avoided his gaze, he turned sheepishly to me and said in a quiet voice, “It was my stuff. Mostly.”

  I had no reply.

  “Aunt Helen, I—” He stopped and tried again. “I’m just so...I really didn’t—” His shoulders sagged with defeat, and he stared at the greenish-gold rug below his feet. Finally Peter gave his aunt a hug around the shoulders and a kiss on the cheek, then let himself out, quietly closing the door behind them.

  Peter’s actions made no sense to me. If he merely needed his inheritance sooner rather than later, he could have asked his aunt to let him have what was rightfully his. And the porcelain that he’d freely given to Rachel was surely as valuable as anything he might otherwise have been forced to divvy up with his sister. “Helen? If some of the items Peter took were actually yours, you may want to consider pressing charges.”

  She shook her head. “No, Erin.”

  “I know it would be painful for you to report such a thing to the police, but your candies were poisoned, so somebody is playing for keeps.”

  “Peter had nothing to do with that. And he’s my only nephew. I’m not turning him in to the police over this.”

  “Fine.” I disagreed with the decision, but it was hers to make. Tomorrow morning, Sullivan and I were scheduled to come here and present our new design to Stephanie, Helen...and Peter. That was bound to be more than a little awkward. “Should we postpone tomorrow’s meeting with—”