Dead Man Stalking (Barbara Marr Murder Mystery Series Book 5)

by Karen Cantwell

  “Have you read this?” I asked her.

  She shook her head. “No plans to either. I’m having enough troubles finishing my own novel. My editor isn’t very happy with me because I’ve fallen behind deadline.”

  “Do you mind if I try reading it? I’m going to be all alone for a week. I could use something fun to read.”

  “I’m not sure you’ll find it fun, but be my guest.”

  “So,” I said, “where’s this viewing?”

  Chapter Four

  Later that day, back inside the oven that was my house, I fashioned a vest of gallon-sized zipper baggies filled with ice. I’d already called the heating and air conditioning company that the Perkins had recommended. In fact, I’d called three times, leaving increasingly more desperate messages each time. Air conditioning repair had better not be like dating where the more desperate you appeared, the less likely you were to get called back.

  After calling a fourth time and hanging up when the message machine kicked in, I looked at the clock and realized it was time for the news. I was just in time for the end of Guy’s report.

  “Residents of Rustic Woods are deeply saddened at the loss, but also worried, as the killer remains at large. This is Guy Mertz reporting from Rustic Woods, Virginia.”

  I felt heartbroken all over again. There had been a time when I saw Mr. Chang as often as three times a week. I’m not a very good cook, so ordering in had been the only way to get decent food. But that habit had changed when Howard retired from the FBI and became self-employed. Our unsteady, unpredictable income dictated cheaper alternatives. Now we ate a lot of spaghetti and bargain-brand sauce from a jar.

  Clicking off the TV, I sat back into the cushions of our couch, and tried to enjoy the peace and quiet. Eh, I thought, peace and quiet isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, I guess. I wondered what Howard was up to. Maybe he had a few minutes for a video chat, but I didn’t want to interrupt him if he was in the middle of work. I texted him: Can u talk? My eyelids drooped while I waited for a reply. The heat drew me to sleep like a cat in the window. My eyes closed.

  My phone rang, waking me nearly two hours later. Peggy wanted me to come join her for wine on her back porch. Roz was coming too. I was still groggy from my hot, late afternoon nap, but wasn’t about to turn down a cold glass of wine and some relaxing conversation with my friends. Before leaving, I checked my text messages for a reply from Howard.

  He’d responded. Can’t talk. Work. Maybe later. How was your day?

  Smiling, I answered: Hot but not the kind of hot I like if you know what I mean.

  His reply was a smiley emoticon so I knew he was busy. Usually a text like that would get me more than just a simple smiley emoticon.

  At Peggy’s, I wandered through her oddly quiet house to the sliding glass door that led to her back porch. Roz was already there sipping her white wine. Peggy was reclined in her Adirondack chair, an easy smile on her face.

  Peggy has three boys. Three very active boys. Her house was never this quiet. “Where is everyone?” I asked.

  She pointed to a small table with two bottles of wine and an empty wine glass. “Choose your poison. Red or white. I think the white is a Pinot Grigio. Or maybe Chardonnay. Simon took the boys to a baseball game. Isn’t it magnifico?”

  Peggy was a freckle-faced, red-headed, stout lady of obvious Irish lineage who had converted to Judaism before she married, and then to Italian-ism afterward when she and her husband Simon spent a month-long honeymoon in Italy. Ever since, she has talked Italian, walked Italian, cooked Italian and often forgotten that her maiden name was O’Malley, not Minnelli.

  I poured myself a glass of Pinot. “I’m glad you’re enjoying it. It’s strange having an empty house. I don’t think I’ve had the house to myself since Callie was born. I thought I’d enjoy it more, but truthfully, it’s feeling a little lonely.” I pulled a chair under the circulating ceiling fan, sat, kicked off my sandals, and wiggled my toes. “On the upside, there are hardly any dirty dishes in the sink and no one is begging me to take them to the mall.” I raised my glass in a toast. “Here’s to freedom. What will we do with ourselves?”

  Roz raised her glass. “I think we’re doing it.”

  “We were just talking about the excitement at Rustic Woods Shopping Center.” Peggy said. “I watched Guy Mertz’s report. Poor Mr. Chang!”

  “Did you know him?” I asked Roz.

  She shook her head. “Never met him. So, you’re friends with Guy Mertz—what do you know about the murder that we don’t?”

  “Nothing.” I wasn’t about to tell Roz that I’d agreed to exchange a favor for information on Mr. Chang’s murder. She’d kill me. “He was found by their chef—face down on the kitchen floor, with a knife in his back.”

  Peggy cringed.

  “Do they think the chef did it?” asked Roz.

  “Guy said the chef was being questioned by police. That’s all I know. But I can’t imagine that he’d be stupid enough to shoot him, then call police and report a murder.”

  “Maybe he’s that smart,” Roz suggested. “Do the opposite of what everyone expects.”

  “Maybe it was Roaring Ralphie.” Peggy nodded slowly as if we knew what she was talking about, but then her nodding ceased and she furrowed her brows. “Or was it Ralphing Ralphie? Hiccuping Ralphie?” Finally, she shook her head.

  I was sure she was about to regale us with another Peggy Tale from the Strange Side, but all she said was, “Well, anyway, maybe it was Ralphie.”

  Roz and I exchanged glances. It seemed that Peggy was done with that thought. But I couldn’t let it go. “Okay, Peggy. Who’s Ralphie?”

  “You know Ralphie.”

  I was pretty sure I didn’t know Ralphie.

  “You met him at our anniversary party a couple of years ago. He was Simon’s roommate in college. They’re related somehow, too. Cousins or uncles or brothers or something.”

  Ah yes. Now I remembered Ralphie. His real name was John and his college nickname was Ralphie because he vomited frequently after drinking too much at frat parties. “They’re fraternity brothers, Peggy, not relatives,” I clarified.

  Her face lit up. “That’s right! See, I told you that you knew him. This is really a smooth Pinot.” She reached for the bottle. “I’ll have to remember this winery so I can get it again.”

  “Peggy,” Roz sighed, “what does Simon’s college fraternity brother have to do with Mr. Chang’s murder?”

  “Ralphie’s having an affair with Mrs. Chang.”

  “There is no Mrs. Chang,” I said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive. Mr. Chang is gay.”

  “Hm. Maybe it wasn’t Mrs. Chang that Ralphie was seeing.” Wrinkles creased her forehead as she puzzled over this news. “I wonder why he’d want to kill Mr. Chang then?”

  Peggy was being crazy even for Peggy. Maybe she’d sipped a little too much of that Pinot.

  Roz changed the subject. “So what are you going to do with all this free time you’ll have while everyone is out of town?”

  “Free time?” I parroted wistfully. “Sadly, there is none. The self-employed never sleep, it seems.” I winced. “Except when the self-employed’s house is as hot as a witch’s heart and the self-employed falls unexpectedly into a two-hour nap. I am thinking of getting a haircut though.” I crunched my curly mane with my fingers. “Maybe try a new color with some highlights?”

  “Take my appointment tomorrow with JuJu at La Voila Day Spa. He works wonders.”

  “Yikes,” I said. “You told me how much he charges for color and a cut. I can’t afford that. He’d have to work wonders on my wallet too—magical genie wonders.”

  Roz gave me her wary mother eye. “Is this because of Mariah Hahn?”

  I gulped the rest of my w
ine then reached for a refill. “No.”

  “Yes,” said Peggy. “Of course it is. And so what? I don’t think there’s any problem with a woman wanting to change up her looks if it makes her feel better about herself. I say you go for it, girl.” She stood, fist pumped, and disappeared.

  My phone vibrated in my shorts pocket. I checked the display. Howard had sent two texts. I smiled when I read them, and responded.

  Peggy returned just as I was getting ready to read a text from Guy Mertz. She plopped a two-inch-thick binder in my lap so I set the phone aside for later.

  “There,” she said. “Years of my own beauty research.”

  I flipped through magazine clippings and website article printouts and newspaper clippings. It was a veritable tome of do-it-yourself beauty tips and regimens. “Have you done any of these yourself?” I asked her, a little overwhelmed by the volume of information.

  She shook her head. “Not yet. It’s hard finding the time. There’s a ton of articles in there on color and highlighting.”

  “I think you look fine just the way you are,” Roz argued. “You’re beautiful. I’d kill to have your curly hair.”

  I flipped through more of the pages and scanned some of the more interesting pieces on hair and skin care. “Can I borrow this?” I asked Peggy.

  “Sure,” she said.

  Roz shook her head. “I think you’re acting crazy.”

  “Oh, come on,” I said, “they’re just do-it-at-home beauty treatments, for crying out loud. Not botox. What harm can it do?”

  Right. Famous last words.

  Chapter Five

  By the time Roz and I left Peggy’s, we had drained her wine bottles and finished off a box of chocolate mint cookies.

  A few pounds heavier, and a wee-bit tipsy, Roz and I decided to walk home, leaving our cars at Peggy’s to retrieve the next day. It was only a three-block walk and we enjoyed listening to the cicadas buzz and one hoot owl hoot. In our state of inebriation, we even giggled about the word “hoot.”

  Roz was feeling quite sentimental. “You know, Barb,” she said, putting an arm around me, “I’m so glad we moved back here. I missed you. You’re my friend.”

  Her affectionate mood was catching. “I know.” I gave her a squeeze. “You’re my friend, too. You and Peggy are the best friends a girl could have.”

  “That’s right. And that’s why you have to promise me you won’t go snooping around into Mr. Chang’s murder. You’re gonna get kilt one of these days and I don’t wantchoo kilt. You know?”

  “Kilt?”

  “Kilt.” She pointed a stern finger in my face. “You know. Like dead kilt.”

  “Okay. I won’t.”

  “Promish me.”

  “I promish.”

  In the street in front of my house, she gave me another tight hug. “I love you, Barbara Marr.”

  “I love you too, Rozalind Walker.”

  We hugged four more times, and Roz said the word kilt five more before we finally parted ways—me to my house, and her to hers next door.

  Friends. They’re the best.

  Inside, I flicked on the hallway light. Our poodle, Puddles, attacked my feet. We’d had issues in the past, but we’d gotten past them and were now nearly as in love as tipsy Roz and I. He jumped on my legs, yapping, until I picked him up and allowed the appropriate number of doggy kisses.

  “Okay, okay,” I said. “I know you miss Daddy. So do I.”

  Puddles whined and gave me another kiss. I set him down, but instead of heading off to his doggy bed as usual, he whined again. His ears were back, and he focused his stare toward the kitchen at the back of the house.

  Why was my dog looking toward the kitchen when I was supposedly the only one home? My heart lurched. My palms began to sweat. “Hello? Anyone there?” Thankfully, no one answered me.

  Phew.

  But Puddles continued to whine and stare. For added safety, I called out again. “Hello?”

  Still no answer. But breaking the silence was the telltale sound of a tuna can banging against the kitchen cupboard. Of course. The person who had Puddles in a panic wasn’t a person at all. It was Mildred Pierce, the cat. We had two cats before Puddles joined the clan—Indiana Jones and Mildred Pierce. Mildred had been sent to me drugged and left for dead by a crazy woman named Viviana Buttaro. I’m not sure Mildred ever quite recovered from the trauma. I overcompensate for her past by spoiling her with tuna. She overcompensates by terrorizing Puddles, who also thinks he would like tuna every once in a while.

  Relieved that an intruder had not broken into my home to do me bodily harm, or worse, to steal my prized Meryl Streep DVD collection, I released the breath I’d been holding, and headed for the kitchen to throw the tuna can into recycling.

  I also needed several glasses of water and a pain reliever to avert a morning hangover.

  Puddles followed me reluctantly, ears still back. When I shooed Mildred Pierce away from the can, he still hung back, afraid to enter the kitchen.

  I shrugged it off and reached a hand into the cupboard for a glass. “Puddles, you’re being silly.” Who else are you going to talk to when you’re alone? “Mildred is gone.” I shoved the glass into the water dispenser in the refrigerator door. “You need to stop letting her bully you.”

  I was just remembering that the water dispenser didn’t work when Puddles responded. “She needs to stop pushing my buttons.”

  I turned around to get water from the faucet. “Well, Mr. Man, your buttons are easily pushed,” I said, shaking my head. Silly Puddles. Such a wimp.

  Wait.

  What?

  “We’ll talk about this tomorrow,” said Puddles. “I have more important things to handle tonight.”

  Puddles had things more important to handle than dealing with bully cats?

  Remember, I’d had a lot of wine. Wine slows a brain down. A bit. Just about the time I was grasping the concept that the voice I heard was not Puddles’ voice, I was also noticing that the curtains to our rear sliding glass door were pulled back and the door itself was slightly ajar.

  Wine also slows the body down.

  My body should have been halfway across my lawn on its way to Roz’s house by the time that sliding glass door slid open further. Because surely, I didn’t want to be kilt.

  But no, there my body stood, as if glued to the floor, stupidly holding an empty glass.

  It could have been a thief with a gun or a serial killer, or... a thief with a machete.

  Luckily, it was none of those.

  Luckily, it was Guy Mertz.

  Unluckily for Guy Mertz, wine also reduces a person’s inhibitions, so once my body finally did move, I had my hands around his skinny little neck.

  Apparently I had given Guy permission to enter my unlocked house. I don’t know which scared me more. The fact that I had left my house unlocked or the fact that I didn’t know I’d given Guy permission to enter.

  “I texted you,” he said, still trying to calm my murderous fury. He’d managed to convince me to sit and drink a glass of water.

  I took a break between gulps. “When?”

  “A while ago. I was beginning to think you’d never get home. Look, here it is.” He shoved his phone in my face.

  I tried to focus on the words. Wine makes vision blurry, but I managed, finally. At ur huse u r not here dor unlucked can i go in?

  “You’re a terrible texter.”

  “Well, you responded,” he sniffed. “Look below it.”

  I did. Great, have a good time. The text message came from my phone.

  “I wasn’t responding to you. I never saw your text. I was texting with Howard. He told me he was having deep dish pizza and beer with Colt in Chicago.” I pulled my phone out of my pocket and show
ed him my display.

  He shook his head. “You didn’t respond to his text, you responded to mine.”

  “Crap.” I took another swallow. “How did I do that?”

  “Not an easy mistake to make, I’ll give you that. You were distracted perchance?”

  Yeah, I was distracted by too much wine.

  He took his fedora off and fanned his face. “For cripes sake, why don’t you have your air conditioning on?”

  “I would if it worked,” I grumped. “Okay, now that we’ve established that a person shouldn’t drink and text, tell me why you’re here.”

  “Did you see any of my texts?” He sighed and scrolled his phone’s screen. Carefully, like you might do for a small child, he held it in front of my face again. Can I cam bu ur huse? Hav intttrestg bews.

  “Are you sure you haven’t been drinking?” I asked.

  “I have fat fingers. But see, here is your answer.”

  Cool! Can’t wait to see.

  I shook my head. “No, no, no. Howard told me he got Chicago skyline t-shirts for the girls and me.”

  My phone jingled in my hand, indicating an incoming text. I looked at the display. It was from Howard. Why aren’t you answering my texts?Are you okay?!

  Aw. He was worried about me. Quickly, I tapped out an apology message to Howard and said I’d call him tomorrow. Before hitting send though, I double-checked that it was, in fact, going to Howard.

  When I was done, I rubbed my eyes. “Guy, I’m really tired. Can you give me the shortest version possible of your interesting bews?”

  He shook his head and sat across the table from me. “You might want to get yourself a cup of coffee, Mrs. Marr, because what I’m about to share with you is not only hot off the press, it has to do with that client of yours, Ms. Vikki Cleveland.”