“Maybe the cat marriage business isn’t as good as we thought it was,” Libby commented as she looked for the number of Mrs. Van Trumpet’s house.
“Either that or Mrs. Van Trumpet is very frugal,” Bernie replied as she spied the place she and Libby were looking for. She pulled over and parked. “Maybe we should have called,” she said, referring to the fact that there was no car in the driveway. But then, she reflected, if they had done that, they would have lost the element of surprise.
“Her vehicle could be in the garage,” Libby remarked, although the garage was so small, it would be difficult to fit in anything besides a really tiny compact car.
“Let’s find out, shall we?” Bernie replied as she and Libby exited their van.
When they got up to the doorway, Libby rang the bell. They could hear it chiming inside, but no one answered.
“Try again,” Bernie said to Libby. “Maybe she’s in the bathroom.”
Another minute went by. No one came to the door. Libby rang the bell again.
“Definitely not in,” Libby said after she’d walked down the porch steps and peered into the garage. It was empty.
Bernie was rummaging around in her bag for a pen and a piece of paper so she could leave a note when an elderly woman wearing a plaid cotton housecoat and felt slippers came out of the house next to Mrs. Van Trumpet’s and began slowly walking over to where the sisters were standing.
“Are you looking for Gladys?” she asked. Her voice had a slight tremor to it.
“No,” Libby answered. “We’re looking for a Gertrude Van Trumpet.”
The neighbor frowned and shook her head. “Then I’m afraid you have the wrong house. Gladys Trainer lives here.”
“Are you sure?” Bernie asked.
“I’m positive,” the neighbor said. “I’ve lived next to her for the past ten years.”
Bernie thanked her. She was apologizing for any inconvenience she and her sister might have caused when something occurred to her. “Excuse me,” she asked the neighbor, “but what does Gladys look like?”
The woman peered at her suspiciously and pulled her housecoat closer to her chest. “Why do you want to know?”
Bernie improvised. “You see, she won a raffle from our store, A Little Taste of Heaven, for a peach pie, but I’m having a hard time deciphering the writing on the ticket.” Bernie smiled. “So is my sister. Isn’t that right, Libby?”
Libby startled. She hadn’t expected to participate in the conversation. “Oh yes. Absolutely.”
“I just wanted to make sure I had the right address before I dropped off the pie,” Bernie continued.
“Gladys likes pie,” the neighbor said. She loosened her grip on her housecoat.
A good sign, Libby thought. This time it was her turn to smile. “Everyone likes pie.”
Her suspicions laid to rest, the woman told Libby and Bernie what they wanted to know.
“She’s really short. Black hair. Dark eyes—”
Bernie interrupted. “How short?”
“Short, short.” The woman demonstrated by bringing her hand to her shoulder.
“And her hair is black?” Libby asked.
“That’s what I said,” the neighbor replied.
Libby frowned. Mrs. Van Trumpet’s hair had definitely not been black at the wedding. But maybe she’d dyed it since then. Or she’d been wearing a wig at the wedding.
“Like I just told you,” the neighbor continued, “you have the wrong house, and Gladys wouldn’t be there, anyway. She’s working down at the auto parts store over on Randall Road. Maybe the address you want is Elm Avenue. That’s over on the other side of town. It’s easy to get confused.”
The sisters thanked her and left.
“So, what do you think?” Bernie asked Libby when they were back in the van.
“I think we should check out the auto parts store.”
“I think so, too,” Bernie agreed as she consulted her phone. There was only one auto parts store listed in Great Hill, and it was named Auto Parts.
Five minutes later, they’d found the place. Located in a small strip mall, the store was wedged between a hardware store and a tanning salon.
“Imaginative,” Libby said, pointing to the neon sign in the window that said AUTO PARTS.
“Sometimes, direct is best,” Bernie noted as she maneuvered the van into a parking spot. She had just turned off the motor when Libby pointed to a woman coming out of the auto parts store.
“Look,” she said. “Is that who I think it is?”
Bernie studied the woman. She was as short as Gertrude Van Trumpet, but that was where the similarities ended. Her hair was cut pixie style, and it was black, just like the neighbor had said. Her clothes were different, too. Gladys was wearing flats, tight-fitting jeans, and a T-shirt. She even moved differently.
“I believe it is,” Bernie said. She clicked her tongue against her front teeth. Seeing Gertrude Van Trumpet in her present incarnation made Bernie think that she’d seen her somewhere else in a different context. A very different context. She just couldn’t remember where. It would come to her, though. Of that, she was sure. It always did. “Let’s find out, shall we?”
The sisters got out of their van and hurried across the parking lot. Gertrude or Gladys was just reaching for the door handle of her vehicle when Bernie and Libby intercepted her.
Now that they were closer, Bernie and Libby could see the resemblance to Gertrude Van Trumpet. It was true the hair was different, as were the eye color and the clothes, but this woman’s height and build were the same, as were the shape of her head and the tilt of her nose.
“Hi, Gertrude,” Bernie said. “Nice to see you again.”
“You’ve made a mistake,” Gertrude stated, daring them to think otherwise. “My name is Gladys Trainer.”
“Not when you were officiating at Boris and Natasha’s wedding, it wasn’t,” Libby observed.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Gertrude said, but Bernie could hear the notes of resignation in her voice.
Bernie laughed. “Seriously? There’s no point in playing it this way.”
Gertrude bit her lip. The sisters watched her decide what to do. Finally, she shrugged and gave it up. “So what if I am?” she demanded. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“That’s what we’re here to talk to you about,” Libby told her.
Gertrude looked up at her. “Why should I talk to you? I don’t want to, and you can’t make me.”
Bernie smiled sweetly. “This is true. But I ask you to consider this. If you don’t talk to us, I’m going to take pictures of you and post them on the Internet.”
“So what?” Gertrude asked, but Bernie could see from the slight twitch starting in Gertrude’s right eye that the threat had upset her. “Do whatever you want. Why would I care?”
“Maybe you won’t,” Bernie said. “Maybe I’m wrong. I just figured you have a lucrative side business going and you wouldn’t want to see it go down the toilet. These days branding counts, and for you, I suspect, it means everything. Gertrude Van Trumpet. Gladys Trainer.” Bernie moved her hands up and down as if she were weighing something. “Big difference here.”
“On the other hand,” Libby added, “if you want to chat, our lips, as they say, are sealed about your real identity.”
Gertrude didn’t say anything.
Bernie pointed to her watch. “Hey, Gertrude—or should I say Gladys?—time’s a-wasting. What’s it going to be? Decide.”
“I . . . ,” Gertrude began. Then she stopped talking and contemplated the situation she was in. When it came down to it, she realized she really didn’t have much choice. “Okay,” she said. “There’s a diner ten blocks over. You can follow me there.”
“Good decision,” Libby told her.
“Does the place have a name?” Bernie asked, in the unlikely event they got separated.
Gertrude shook her head. “Nope. There’s just a neon sign that says DINER
in the window.”
“Figures,” Bernie muttered as she made for the van. “I’ve seen her somewhere before,” Bernie said to her sister as she hopped in.
“Yeah. At the cat wedding.”
“No. Somewhere else,” Bernie said as she put her key in the ignition, turned the van on, and followed Gertrude’s vehicle out of the parking lot.
Chapter 29
In keeping with the rest of the town, the diner was a place you could go by a hundred times and not notice. Located at the intersection of Concord and Stanton, it looked like a hundred other places of its type. The booths along the window were faded, the tables and chairs that made up the rest of the furnishings looked as if they’d been around for as long as the town had, the tiles on the blue-and-white linoleum floor were cracked with age, and the travel posters on the walls were covered with a thin layer of grease.
There were five people in the diner when Gladys Trainer, as Bernie and Libby had come to think of Gertrude, and the sisters walked in. Everyone nodded at Gladys, and she nodded back as she walked to the rear and grabbed a booth. Libby and Bernie slid into the seat across from her. A moment later, the waitress, an overweight middle-aged woman with bleached blond hair that looked like straw, gold hoop earrings that were pulling down her earlobes, and a large tattoo on her arm that read JOHN, I WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU, came by to take their order.
“The usual?” she asked Gladys, tapping her pencil on her ordering pad. Gladys nodded, and the waitress turned to Libby and Bernie. “And you?”
“Just coffee,” Libby said.
The waitress pointed to the sign posted in front of the cash register. FIVE-DOLLAR MINIMUM UNTIL SIX O’CLOCK.
“What happens after six?” Libby asked.
“We close,” the waitress told her.
“Makes sense,” Bernie commented. She wanted to ask the waitress if she still loved John, but she ordered two coffees and two cheese Danish for herself and her sister instead. She didn’t expect much in the food and coffee department, and she wasn’t disappointed. The coffee was weak, and the Danish were stale. Bernie took a bite of hers and pushed it to the center of the table. Not worth the calories, she thought.
“Just out of curiosity,” Libby said after the waitress had plunked their orders down on the table and gone back to her magazine, “do you do a good business marrying cats?”
“Good enough,” Gladys replied. She poured some sugar into her coffee and stirred it in with a teaspoon. “Cat people are nuts.”
“We’ve noticed,” Libby said. She took a sip of her coffee and pushed her mug away. It tasted like dishwater. “And yet you’re working at an auto parts store and living in Great Hill,” she observed. “You can’t be doing that well.”
Gladys shrugged. “Well enough.”
“Are you hiding out here?” Bernie joked.
Gladys smiled for the first time. “Exactly. No one ever visits this place. There’s no reason to—”
Libby interrupted. “How long have you been doing it for?” she asked.
“Marrying cats?” Gladys thought for a minute. “Going on ten years now.”
“How do people find you?” Bernie asked.
Gladys put the teaspoon down and ran her index finger around the rim of her cup. “I’m strictly word of mouth,” Gladys replied. “Adds to the cachet.”
“See?” Bernie said to Libby. “Told you. These days, when you can find anything on the Internet, people think not finding it makes it special.”
Gladys took a bite of her sandwich, chewed, and swallowed. “I didn’t have anything to do with Susie’s death,” she announced after she’d taken her second bite. “I assume that’s what you want to talk to me about.”
“So you say,” Libby said.
“Yes, I do,” Gladys replied.
“Where were you after Susie went into her house?” Bernie asked her. “Because I didn’t see you outside, looking for the cats.”
“That’s because I wasn’t. I went home,” Gladys said.
“Why?” Libby asked.
Gladys gave her an incredulous look. “What do you mean, why? My job was done. There was no reason to stick around and look for the bloody Russian blues.”
“And you can prove that?” Libby asked.
“Actually, I can,” Gladys said. “Not that it’s any of your business.”
“Unfortunately, it is.” And Libby explained why.
Gladys sniggered. “I’m sorry I missed it. Allison getting punched.” She shook her head. “It must have been quite the scene.”
“You don’t sound exactly heartbroken about Susie’s death,” Bernie observed.
Gladys finished the first half of her sandwich and went on to the second. “Of course I am,” she said in a completely unconvincing tone. “I’m very upset.”
Bernie snorted. “I can see you’re devastated beyond belief.”
Gladys looked up. “What? You don’t believe me?” she demanded.
“No, I don’t,” Bernie answered. “No one liked her. In fact, everyone she invited to that wedding except for us”—Bernie pointed at her sister and then at herself—“hated her. That’s why she invited them in the first place. Why should you be different than them?”
“Simple. Because like you, I performed a service.” And with that, Gladys finished the rest of her sandwich, wiped her hands on a napkin, then balled it up and threw it on the table, after which she finished her coffee. “If we’re through here . . . ,” she said.
“Not quite,” Libby told her.
“I told you what you want to know,” Gladys protested.
Bernie rested her elbows on the table and leaned forward. “Just a few more questions.”
“Fine,” Gladys said, even though it clearly wasn’t, a fact she demonstrated by drumming her fingers on the table.
“You got paid before the ceremony?” Bernie asked.
“After,” Gladys answered quickly, too quickly, in Bernie’s estimation.
“So, you’re out your fee?” Bernie asked.
Gladys shrugged again, spread her fingers apart, and studied her nails. They were pearlescent. Bernie liked the way the light shone on them. “It happens.”
Libby studied Gladys for a moment. The twitch was back. “I’d want to collect my money,” Libby said.
“Me too,” Bernie said. “In fact, I’d probably follow Susie back to her house and ask for my money.”
“Well, I’m not you. I went home,” Gladys told her.
“Did you?” Libby challenged. “Maybe you did, or maybe you didn’t.”
“Ask Grace. She’ll tell you. My car wasn’t in the driveway.”
“So what?” Libby said. “You could have gotten in your car, driven off, changed your mind, turned around, come back, and parked around the other side of Susie’s house and gone in,” Libby pointed out.
“Definitely,” Bernie said. “I could see you asking for your money and Susie telling you she wouldn’t pay you. She would do something like that. Maybe even blaming you for the mice—”
“I had nothing to do with the mice . . . ,” Gladys said, interrupting.
Bernie held up a hand. “I didn’t say you did. I said that’s what Susie would have said. And then you got angry—and why wouldn’t you?—and one thing led to another, and you picked up the letter opener and stabbed her.” Bernie turned to her sister. “What do you think, Libby?”
“Sounds like a possibility,” Libby said as Bernie looked at her phone.
Gladys turned to Libby. “You don’t know anything,” she told her. “You’re just making this up on the fly.”
“Then enlighten me,” Libby urged as she picked a little of the cheese out of the center of her Danish and ate it. Then she ate a little more. She couldn’t help it. She was hungry, and cheese Danish were one of her favorite things. Even when they were old and stale.
“If you must know, I was doing the wedding for free,” Gladys huffed. “So, so much for that theory,” she added a triumphant note in her voice.
“And why would you do that?” Libby asked.
Gladys smiled. “Because I’m a nice person.”
Libby snorted. “Surely, you can come up with something better than that.”
“I think I know why,” Bernie answered, and she pushed her cell phone across the table. “I thought you looked familiar,” Bernie said to Gladys as she pointed to the screen on her phone. “She was blackmailing you, wasn’t she? That’s why you weren’t charging her. You were there, like everyone else, because Susie was doing a power trip on you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Gladys blustered, pushing the phone back to Bernie. “Where do you get this stuff from? Just because it’s on the Internet doesn’t mean it’s true.”
“In this case it does,” Bernie said.
“Let me,” Libby said, and she leaned across the table and grabbed Bernie’s phone. She whistled as she read. “Nice,” she said when she was done. “Bedford Hills Correctional Facility. Not bad. Manslaughter. No wonder you use a different name.”
“I don’t run cons anymore,” Gladys said quietly. “I didn’t mean to do it then. Things just got out of hand.”
“Like with Susie,” Libby said.
“No,” Gladys said in a loud voice. “Not with Susie.”
Everyone in the diner turned around and stared.
“Sorry,” Gladys said, pasting a smile on her face. “I just got carried away.”
The rest of the customers nodded, smiled back, and returned to what they had been doing before.
Gladys continued. “We were running a scam, and Nola decided to run off with the profits, and I tracked her down. . . .” Gladys shrugged. “She fell down the stairs and broke her neck.”
“You pushed her down the stairs,” Bernie said.
Gladys gazed into her cup. “I didn’t mean to. I just wanted my money.”
A Catered Cat Wedding Page 17