Ricky looked at his fingers and picked at a cuticle. For a moment, the only sound in the van was that of the van’s tires crunching over the gravel lying on the street. Then he started to talk. The words came out in a rush. “See, after I delivered the package, I came back because I was feeling a little . . . off . . . and I wanted to light up, but it . . .”
“Your joint?” Bernie said, guessing.
“Yeah. Must have slipped out of my pocket—I have this hole—when I was delivering the package, so I went back to find it.”
“Then why didn’t I see you?” Bernie asked, glancing at Ricky.
“ ’Cause you and your sister were running around down near where the trees were,” Ricky explained. “And, by the way, I’m sorry. I didn’t know what was in the package. I really didn’t,” Ricky added for emphasis. “If I had, I wouldn’t have done it. That lady . . .”
“Susie Katz?” Bernie asked for the sake of clarity.
“Yeah. Her. She never done nothin’ to me.” Ricky’s eyes narrowed. “And Charlene didn’t pay me, like she said she was going to. She keeps telling me she has to get money out of the bank, but she never does.”
“Funny thing about that,” Bernie commented.
“Next time, I’m asking for the money up front,” Ricky said.
“Maybe there shouldn’t be a next time,” Bernie suggested.
Ricky scowled and began picking at his cuticle again.
Bernie decided to return to the matter at hand. “Is that what you wanted to tell me?” she asked.
Ricky shook his head. “No. I wanted to tell you that Ralph told me he knows who killed Susie.”
“And how does he know that?”
“Because he saw it happening.”
“I see.” Bernie raised an eyebrow. “Funny, but he never mentioned that to me.”
“Maybe he had his reasons,” Ricky replied.
“Such as?” Bernie asked. They’d arrived at the Nice N Easy.
Ricky rubbed his thumb and index finger together in the universal sign for money.
Bernie stopped the van. “He’s blackmailing the person?” She asked, handing Ricky twenty bucks.
He shrugged. “I guess you’ll just have to ask him.” Then he opened the van door and stepped outside.
Chapter 42
Sean was watching a movie on TV when Libby came up the stairs with a pot of tea and some shortbread cookies for herself and her dad. The strawberry tarts were done, the chicken was soaking in its buttermilk bath, the salads were prepped, the pickup orders were ready for pickup, and the dishes were washed, at which point Libby had decided she could use a break.
“Is that Mr. Deeds Goes to Washington?” she asked her dad as she set the tray down on the coffee table in front of the sofa.
Sean looked away from the TV for a minute. “No,” he answered. “It’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, not the other way around. The first has James Stewart, and the second one has Gary Cooper.”
“I can’t tell the actors apart,” Libby admitted as she poured her dad a cup of tea, put two shortbread cookies on the saucer the cup was resting on, and set the cup and saucer on the table next to Sean. Then she served herself tea and cookies as well.
“That’s appalling,” Sean told her. “They were two of the greatest actors of my generation. Or any generation.” He took a sip of tea. “Nice,” he said appreciatively, referring to both the tea and the cup and saucer. They were his wife’s Rosenthal china, and she had always insisted on using them every day, a tradition his daughters had lately started following again, even if it meant washing the bone china by hand.
“It is a pretty pattern,” Libby agreed as she sat down on the sofa next to Cindy. The cat hissed at her, jumped down, and stalked off. “Be that way if you want,” Libby called after her.
She tasted the tea. Her mom was right, she decided. Tea did taste better when one drank it out of a bone-china teacup instead of a mug. But why? Was it perception or reality? While Libby was mulling the question over, she watched Cindy strut into her bedroom, jump onto her bed, give her a defiant stare, and curl up on her pillow.
“Don’t bother,” Sean told Libby as she started to get up to shoo Cindy off her bed. “You can’t win with a cat,” he noted before he went back to watching the movie. “That’s why I like dogs.”
“And yet we have Cindy,” Libby observed, thinking of Susie’s kitties and wondering how Grace and Ralph were doing with them. She took another sip of tea and a bite of her shortbread cookie. The cookie melted in her mouth, the way it was supposed to. The few crystals of sea salt she’d put in the batter dissolved on her tongue, providing a pleasant contrast with the sweetness of the sugar and the smoothness of the butter.
“Excellent,” Sean said, sighing with pleasure. “This is your best version ever.”
Of course, her dad said that about all her versions, but, Libby thought, it was always nice to be complimented. Then she turned her attention to the movie. For the next ten minutes, the only sounds in the room were the ticking of the clock on the wall and the sound of a dog barking at a squirrel outside. She was watching a scene concerning Mr. Deeds and the bankers when it hit her.
“Dad,” she said, leaning forward and putting the teacup down. “Remember those pages that were on Susie’s desk, the ones with her to-do list on them?”
Sean tore his eyes away from the screen for a minute. “You mean the ones I’ve been obsessing about? What about them?”
“Where are they?”
“Right where I put them.” Sean gestured to the desk. “Over there. On top of the pile. Why are you asking?”
Libby got up. “I’ll tell you in a minute,” she said as she went over to the desk. Then she started looking.
The desk, a large rolltop saved from a 1920s train station, was piled high with junk mail, flyers, and magazines, but the pages Libby was looking for were in plain sight, lying on top of a car manual for the Chevy her dad had owned fifteen years ago.
“You could get rid of this, you know,” Libby said, holding the manual up as she glanced at the pages Sean had taken from Susie’s desk.
“I could,” Sean said, watching to see what his daughter was up to.
Libby put the manual down. “But you won’t,” she answered as she studied a phrase Susie had written in the middle of the first page.
“Correct,” Sean replied as Libby continued staring at the phrase. Unlike everything else on the page, Susie had underlined the phrase several times and had followed the last word with several exclamation marks.
In addition, Susie had borne down on the pen when she’d underlined the words, leaving an indentation in the paper. Libby looked at the words for a moment, running her finger along the underlining, to reassure herself that she was correct. Libby shook her head and walked over to the chair Sean was sitting in. Amazing. It has been there all along, Libby thought as she showed her dad the paper. They just hadn’t seen what was in front of their eyes.
“I think we were wrong about this,” she told him. Sean looked where Libby was pointing.
“Wrong about what?” Sean asked.
Libby told him. “I don’t think the word deeds refers to properties. I think deeds refers to a last name.”
Sean stared at the phrase for a moment. He read it aloud. “Get rid of deeds.”
“You see what I mean?” Libby asked.
“It’s possible,” Sean allowed.
“I think it’s more than possible,” Libby retorted. “The first letter of the word is capitalized. Also, if deeds referred to property, the word the would have preceded it. Anyway, why would Susie be getting rid of property deeds? She was in the process of acquiring property.”
Sean thought about all the papers he had stuffed away in his filing cabinet that he didn’t need anymore. “That’s easy. This was a note to herself to clean out her old files,” he suggested.
“I disagree. This was her note to herself to get this person out of her life.”
>
Sean leaned back in his chair and glanced at the TV screen again. “Who are we talking about?”
“The name’s on the tip of my tongue,” Libby said.
“Tell me when you remember,” Sean said, then turned his attention back to the TV.
Libby ate the last cookie, even though she really didn’t want it. She hated when she couldn’t remember something. It made her feel as if she was losing her grip. She finished her tea, grabbed her cell, and texted Bernie the list of things she needed her to pick up. She was just about to text her about the deeds thing when a sales rep called about a new coffee system. She set up an appointment with him, then texted her sister again.
Does the name Deeds ring a bell? she wrote. It’s making me nuts. Who is he? She’d just pressed SEND when she heard the downstairs door open and Amber calling up to her, telling her their credit card machine was off-line.
“Terrific. Just what I don’t need,” Libby muttered as she went down the stairs.
Usually, it was a matter of connecting and disconnecting the lines. Hopefully, that was what it was now. That was the problem with running a place like this, she thought. There was always something to take care of. If it wasn’t the equipment breaking, it was the staff not showing up, and if it wasn’t the staff not showing up, then it was the suppliers messing up the order. Oh well. As she crawled under the counter to get to the wires, she forgot about Deeds. An hour later she remembered, but by then it was almost too late.
Chapter 43
Bernie had dropped Ricky off and was pulling onto Loomis Avenue from the Nice N Easy parking lot when she got Libby’s first text. She didn’t read it right away, because she was making a left turn into oncoming traffic, but she did a couple of minutes later, when she stopped at the next red light.
Ah, she thought as she slipped the phone back in her tote. More stuff to get. Her life was one long errand. How they could go through so many napkins, straws, and sugar packets at the shop was beyond her. Plus, they were almost out of fives and tens, and she’d just gone to the bank yesterday.
Well, the errands would have to wait. She wanted to talk to Ralph first, to look him in the eye and see what his reaction was when she asked him if he knew who had killed his aunt. Then she’d talk to Libby. There was no point in getting her sister excited if this turned out to be a big fat nothing. Which it probably was, given the source of the information. With that settled, Bernie reached over and turned on the radio, tuned it to her favorite station, and then, because Libby wasn’t in the van, she turned up the volume, thereby missing Libby’s incoming text.
Because of a fender bender on Roth Street, it took Bernie almost half an hour to get to the old Connor estate. It wasn’t a big-deal accident—someone had driven into a ditch—but people slowed down to look, which backed everything up, which meant that the drive took ten minutes longer than it should have.
“Oh my,” Bernie exclaimed as she turned into the estate. Things had not improved. The pink cat was now lying facedown in the dirt, the grass was even longer than it had been the last time Bernie and Libby were there, and the weeds were taking over the flower beds.
On the drive up to the house, Bernie spotted four paper coffee cup lids and several fast-food wrappers along the side of the road, something that Susie wouldn’t have tolerated if she were alive. Obviously, Travis wasn’t doing his job without Susie to keep him in line, Bernie reflected, as she parked the van, got out, and walked up to the house. She could hear the cats meowing as she rang the bell.
A minute later, Grace opened the door. A Russian blue peeked its head out, and Grace quickly scooped the cat up before she could run outside. “Yes?” she said, stepping onto the porch and closing the door behind her. She appeared to have lost weight since Bernie had last seen her. Her cheekbones were sharper, her eyes had a sunken-in look, and her hair looked dull and lifeless.
“Are you okay?” Bernie asked her.
Grace averted her eyes. “I’m tired, that’s all. I haven’t been sleeping well.”
Bernie thought there was more going on, but she didn’t say that. Instead, she said, “I need to speak to your brother.”
“About what?” Grace asked, a note of alarm in her voice.
“Nothing important,” Bernie lied. “I’m just tying up a few loose ends.”
“He’s at the lodge,” Grace answered, looking relieved.
“Lodge?” Bernie wasn’t sure where that was.
“Where Travis lives.”
“I don’t know where Travis lives.”
Grace pointed. “Just go to the end of the house, take a left, and keep going,” Grace explained as the cat scrambled up on her shoulder and began kneading the back of her head. Grace winced.
“We didn’t see it when we were here,” Bernie said as Grace lifted the cat off her shoulders and hugged her to her chest.
“You can’t see it from where the tent was, because it’s hidden by apple trees.”
Bernie nodded her thanks. Then she asked Grace if she was all right again.
“Fine,” Grace answered, petting the cat she was holding. “Why shouldn’t I be?”
“I don’t know. You look really, really stressed.”
“I am stressed,” Grace admitted. “Ralph made me promise not to tell.”
Bernie waited. Sometimes it was better not to say anything.
Grace leaned in toward Bernie and lowered her voice. “You have to swear not to say anything.”
Bernie held up her hand. “I swear.”
Grace hesitated for another moment. Then she said, “We have fleas.” Bernie stopped herself from laughing. This wasn’t what she was expecting. “I don’t know how we got them,” Grace confided, “but we do, and they’re driving me crazy.” She touched noses with the Russian blue she was holding. “Right, Natasha?” Natasha mewed, and Grace smiled. “She’s such a dear,” Grace said. “I’d be lost without the cats.” Then she opened the door to Susie’s house, went inside, and shut the door after her.
“Good luck,” Bernie called out, and then she started walking.
On the way, she checked her phone and saw her sister’s second text. Here now. Should be easy to find out, Bernie texted back. Then she slipped her phone back in her tote and kept walking. She’d expected some sort of path, but there wasn’t one. Evidently, everyone approached the lodge from the other side of the house.
As she walked, trying—and failing—to keep her heels from sinking into the dirt, Bernie thought about Libby’s latest text, about whether her sister was right or not and, if she was correct, about what that meant. It could mean a lot, or it could mean nothing, Bernie concluded as she got to the end of Susie’s house, where, as instructed by Grace, she made a left and kept walking.
A couple of minutes later, she had passed Susie’s house and the garage attached to it. In the distance, she could see the trees Grace had mentioned, and she picked up her pace. When she got closer, she noticed the apples ripening on the tree branches. She wondered what kind they were as she watched the clouds scudding across the sky. Maybe they were an old varietal. As she rubbed her arms, she made a note to herself to ask Grace if she and Libby could come back and pick some when they ripened.
It had suddenly turned colder, as the sun had disappeared behind a cloud. It’s going to rain soon, Bernie decided as she threaded her way through the trees and came face-to-face with the lodge. It was a plain Jane type of building, without any landscaping to soften its lines.
When the estate had been a farm, the lodge had been the place where the farmhands had bunked. Then, when the farm had been sold off, the farmhouse razed, and the Connor house built, the bunkhouse had undergone a transformation, as well.
Now the long, low-slung building was insulated and covered in slate-blue vinyl siding. The windows were small, and the door was narrower than most doors were these days. The roof was red metal, the kind you found on commercial buildings, and an aluminum flue sprouted out of the lodge’s left side, while a satellite dish perched
on the roof’s right side.
Bernie walked up to the door and knocked, because there was no bell. When no one answered after a minute, she called out, announcing herself. Again, there was no response. She called out for a third time. Nothing. She walked a couple of feet and looked around for signs of activity.
She didn’t see anything except two squirrels chittering at one another from opposite branches of one of the apple trees. She sighed. Three possibilities. Either Grace was wrong; or she’d been lying to her; or she’d called Ralph and told him Bernie wanted to speak to him, and he’d decided to get out of town, which would explain why she hadn’t asked Bernie why she wanted to speak to her brother.
Bernie stood there for a minute, tapping her fingers on her thighs, while she decided what to do next. She could leave. Or she could try the door. She tried the door. It was open. She stepped inside. After all, she reasoned, if Travis didn’t want anyone in there, he would have locked the door. Right? And then there was Libby’s text about Travis. Time to check that out, as well.
“Travis, Ralph. Anyone home?”
Silence reigned. The only sounds Bernie heard were faint scrabbling noises coming from upstairs. Probably mice or squirrels in the walls, Bernie decided. It made sense in an old building like this, she figured as she looked around the place. A large living room flowed into a dining area and from there into a kitchen. A fireplace sat on the far wall, opposite three stairs that, Bernie assumed, led to the bath and bedrooms.
The place was sparsely furnished. In the living room, there was a stained, beige wall-to-wall carpet on the floor, a leather sofa and a matching recliner, and a desk that looked like the kind you’d find at IKEA. A large TV hung on the wall opposite the sofa. It was the dominant object in the room. In the dining room, the table consisted of a large slab of wood resting on two sawhorses. It was piled high with papers and surrounded by four oak chairs.
The scrabbling continued. Must be an infestation, Bernie thought as she went over and looked through the papers on the dining-room table. She picked up a flyer from an auto parts store. The address label read TRAVIS DEEDS OR CURRENT OCCUPANT. Bernie reread the label just to make sure. So, Libby’s hunch was correct, after all.
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