Gourdfellas

by Maggie Bruce

  “Big change,” Melissa said, “once Linda went away to school. It was like she came back normal.”

  Nora sighed. “Sheesh, high school is such drama. Sorting people out by how they look . . . how weird is that? But Anita’s clothes and her makeup were things that made it hard for me to warm to her. I mean, I wanted to. I wanted to be a big person and not let appearances put me off. But it felt like she decided I wasn’t cool or something and so she ignored me whenever I tried to . . .”

  “You were too cool.” Susan sniffed and tossed her red curls. “She knew that if she was seen with you, the outsiders would reject her and find a new leader and she’d be left where she started. My mom and dad once dragged me to a barbecue at the Bannerman’s, some kind of business obligation. Linda was an only child, grew up with rich parents in a huge house that required outdoor and indoor help.

  Servants, right? It was a rumor, but I remember hearing that Linda got pregnant in junior year.”

  “Not a rumor.”

  All eyes turned to Nora.

  “I can’t remember how I know this, maybe something Connie told my husband when they worked together at Walden High. They were putting together a program on teen pregnancy and telling stories about local kids, saying how nothing much had changed since our day. Anyway, Anita was the one who went with Linda to get it taken care of. Out in Pennsylvania somewhere, so that Linda’s parents wouldn’t know. I wish I had listened more carefully when Coach told me.”

  I stared at the red, orange, and gray painting above the sofa, thoughts exploding in my head like those colors against the backdrop of this snowy room. That might explain what I’d seen in the house. The real question was how long a period of servitude Anita would demand to repay that long ago favor, and to what lengths Linda would go in order to satisfy her.

  Elizabeth cleared her throat noisily. “So what did Anita say this morning?”

  Heads swiveled in my direction, as though the ball had just been hit over the net and now it was up to me to make the perfect return volley.

  “She said one very interesting thing. She was talking about a conversation with her mother and she said, ‘She told me she found out something that would turn this town upside down.’ But Marjorie never told her what it—oh no!”

  Time stopped then.

  My heart ticked and I was aware of each tiny muscle in my face as a smile formed. My laugh was a release of tension that started in my chest and made its way to my throat, where it bubbled out in a rain of sound. Finally, I inhaled deeply and looked into the confused and expectant eyes of my friends.

  “This has been driving me nuts all day. Those words kept going around in my brain but they weren’t right, they didn’t scan correctly. I was so frustrated I thought I’d spit. What Anita really said was ‘She told me she found something that would turn this town upside down.’ Not found out. Just plain found. As in discover. Come upon. Find. A thing.”

  “While she was working,” Melissa said softly. “She must have made her discovery when she was cleaning.”

  “That’s it! How could we have missed something so obvious?” I jumped out of my chair and marched around the room, stopping only long enough to put my pie plate back on the serving tray. “Marjorie ran a commercial cleaning business. So maybe whoever murdered her wasn’t trying to stop the casino. Maybe they were trying to keep her from revealing some secret she discovered when she was vacuuming and dusting.”

  Blood pounded in my ears, and I watched the stunned faces of the others as this new idea sank in.

  “What?” Melissa pointed her fork at Elizabeth, whose narrowed eyes blinked once. “It’s possible, right?”

  “Of course it’s possible.” Elizabeth’s lawyer voice was a half-tone louder than her normal conversational speech, and her eyes brightened with excitement. “You have any idea how many people Marjorie Mellon might have had the goods on? Anyone who comes into a business after hours has access to whatever’s lying around. She knows secrets that no one else does.”

  “Doesn’t that make you a better suspect than me?” My brain was busy sweeping out old assumptions to make room for new possibilities. Elizabeth had said two or three times that she looked forward to going to work on Thursdays because Marjorie put things right in her office every Wednesday evening at eight.

  “Believe it or not, we’re not the only ones thinking this way. Michele Castro stopped by to see me this morning.

  And it wasn’t a social visit, either. She asked a lot of questions about Marjorie. When she’d been at the office, what our relationship was, whether I left my computer on when she came, whether the file cabinets were locked. Pretty easy to read between those lines. What she was really asking was whether Marjorie had access to information that I might want to hide from the rest of the world.”

  “So, what might she have discovered? Who are her clients?” Susan pushed out of her chair and stacked empty dessert plates on the serving tray, her red hair flying out behind her. “What would be damaging enough that it would be worth killing for?”

  We sat in silence with our own secrets for a few long seconds. There were lots of things I’d done in my life that I wouldn’t want to broadcast to the entire world—shoplifting an Annie Lennox CD when I was thirteen; having a one week secret fling with a college friend’s newly discarded boyfriend; telling my sister Anne that I had the flu on her twenty-fifth birthday and then spending my precious Saturday in my gourd studio. None of these were offenses I couldn’t get over.

  “Good question,” I said. “First of all, it would have to be something that would change your life if other people knew.”

  “Make you lose your spouse or your business or your reputation, you mean?” Nora looked skeptical. “Why wouldn’t you just pick up and start over somewhere else?”

  Elizabeth laughed. “There you go, thinking like a normal person. Someone who can take a life for any reason except self-defense doesn’t think like a normal person. I guess I’m the one with the most experience in dealing with the criminal mind. Uh uh, don’t you go there, Melissa Paul. I see that twinkle in your eye.”

  We all saw it. Melissa looked down into her tea cup, the knowing smile still lifting the corners of her mouth. Finally, as though she could hold it back no longer, she said, “I was just thinking that you’re very good at what you do.

  Which means you have to out-think the other side. Which means that you’ve had some practice trying to come up with bizarre and illegal schemes. Right?”

  “Now my secret’s out.” Elizabeth laughed with the rest of us. “But I don’t have any big ideas, not yet. So, let’s look at what we have so far. Marjorie found something, possibly that belonged to someone she worked for. That someone’s life would have been ruined if Marjorie revealed that something. We need to start with a list of her clients. Normally, that would be difficult to obtain, given that we have no power to impound her files or her computers.”

  Her smile gave me a shiver. She was going to suggest something that would have us skating on the edge of legal. Elizabeth Conklin drew out the moment for the sake of heightening the drama until Nora tapped her fingernail against the rim of the pie plate.

  “But you’re going to tell us why it’s not going to be so hard this time, right?”

  “Who knows as much about people’s business as a cleaning person?” One raised eyebrow nearly touched Elizabeth’s hairline.

  “Marjorie probably didn’t have her nails done, so it isn’t her manicurist.” Who else? “Her hairdresser?”

  Elizabeth shook her head slowly. “Marjorie went to the barber shop, had him cut her curls the same length all over, and then she left. No gossip.”

  “No, it’s not who she would tell about her clients, but who would already know them.” Melissa’s eyes narrowed. “An accountant. That’s the only . . . I’m right, aren’t I? You know Marjorie’s accountant.”

  Elizabeth’s grin was answer enough. “I don’t want to get him in trouble by asking him outright for that list. So
maybe I’ll visit his office, and while I’m there he might just happen to leave her client list out on his desk while he visits the men’s room. If I can figure out how to tell him what I need without actually saying it.”

  Nobody expressed a shred of doubt that Elizabeth would find a way make her intentions known to the accountant.

  “Meanwhile, though, we know enough about Marjorie’s clients to get started.” Assuming her role as unofficial recording secretary, Nora started listing names. “Elizabeth Conklin, Seth Selinsky, Joseph Trent, Holly Herman, Luney Toons.”

  “B. H. Hovanian,” Elizabeth said, avoiding my eyes. “Walden Savings and Loan.”

  “Taconic Inn,” Melissa said, grinning. “Four times a year, you know, when we do big seasonal changes. I think she also does that—did that—for Maria’s Italian Restaurant and for that new, expensive French bistro in Rhinebeck.”

  “Seems like enough to start. I vote that we save Elizabeth Conklin and Melissa Paul for last.” Everyone giggled nervously, and I laughed with them. The next part was what was making me nervous. “I’m not going to be the one to talk to Seth. If one of you finds out something, fine, I’ll live with that. But I don’t want to go sneaking around in the dusty corners of his life.”

  “I’ll do it,” Nora offered. “He’s always been nice to me, helped me take a second mortgage after Coach died. I’ll see what I can find out.”

  “I’ll talk to Rick Luney,” Elizabeth said. “We bump into each other at the diner at least once a week, and he likes to gossip much more than he likes to work. I think I can get him to open up.”

  “Holly Herman,” Susan declared, as though she were bidding on a fine antique at an auction. “I must spend half my salary at the bookstore, so we’re on pretty friendly terms.”

  The list was narrowing; only Melissa and I hadn’t made our choice. “I can’t very well be impartial about B. H. Hovanian since he’s my lawyer. So that leaves Joseph Trent. I go there for Neil’s meds, and he’s even given me some herbal sleeping remedy, so I can check him out.”

  “Which leaves me to find out what’s beneath the very virile surface of our Armenian lawyer friend. I don’t mind doing that, not one bit.” Melissa smiled.

  Unexpectedly, I felt a pang of jealousy. He was an attractive man, but we were on a strictly business basis. Weren’t we . . . ?

  Melissa made designs in the chocolate mousse with her fork and said, “Sounds good, our plan. But I still don’t know what to say. I can’t go up to someone and say, ‘Would you please tell me if you have a secret that Marjorie threatened to expose?’ and then wait for the truth to come spilling out.”

  Elizabeth pressed her elegant fingers together. “We’ve been limited because we don’t have access to what the sheriff ’s department knows, haven’t seen the note that was found in Wonderland, haven’t had a chance to examine that address book, weren’t present when Marjorie’s house and office were searched. So we have to do what we can by creative thinking, observation, and a little canny interrogation.”

  I laughed. Despite being the one in need of saving, the situation suddenly struck me as amusing. Maybe it was the surreality of it all—my quiet country existence turned into the most challenging contest of my life. And here was a friend talking about “canny interrogation.” Before I could say anything, Susan stopped in front of the fireplace and clasped her hands in front of her.

  “You know what? I feel dis-canny. Without a single can. I don’t know how to get my neighbors to tell me stuff without making them think I’ve lost my mind.” She shook her head and smiled ruefully. “Not that it matters. But I really can’t figure out what I’d ask.”

  “Just keep opening doors,” I said, thinking about how mediators are trained to ask questions that get people talking. “Be interested in what they’re interested in. Don’t put words in anyone’s mouth, and don’t judge what they say. I guarantee that you’ll hear more than you expect.”

  Elizabeth’s mild surprise shifted to a nod of approval. “Lili’s right. It’s different when I’m in a courtroom or taking a deposition. When I’m fishing for information, I just try to set things up so that the person can ramble. People love talking about themselves. That’s how I found out about Marjorie’s will.”

  She also knew how to get our attention. Everyone froze, mid movement.

  “Aha, I knew you’d perk up. I just want to make sure we don’t think ourselves into a corner, that we keep all the possibilities alive. Long story short, Marjorie’s attorney’s clerk was sitting next to me at The Creamery this morning. I engaged her in a little chit chat about her son, who’s graduating from Walden High this June. One thing led to another and suddenly we were talking about Anita Mellon, about how she’d never finished school, and how hard things are for her.” Elizabeth licked a curl of whipped cream from her fork and smiled.

  “Stop playing, Elizabeth, and tell us!” Melissa’s smile was real but so was the annoyance in her voice.

  “Okay. Anita inherits the house. Plus investments—are you ready?—worth nearly a million dollars.” Now, Elizabeth sat back and took a long gulp of now cool tea. “If that’s not a good reason to make sure Mommy Dearest bites the dust I don’t know what is. The fact that Anita was in Tennessee at the time isn’t really important.”

  “She could have hired someone,” Nora said, sitting on the edge of her chair. “Someone local she could pay off. Or even someone not local.”

  Melissa frowned and said, “Or even someone she didn’t have to pay off.”

  Linda Bannerman’s pleasant face wafted in front of me like a smoke ring that curled through the air and then disappeared.

  “But then why would they try to make it look as though I was the one responsible?” My thoughts wouldn’t line up, wouldn’t stop long enough to be sorted out and evaluated. “So, does this mean we drop the casino idea? What about the people whose property is directly adjacent to the site? People whose lives would be most directly affected, aside from Ira Jackson, who owns the land.”

  “Only two people abut that parcel directly. Nathaniel Bartle owns the big field that forms the north and the west borders, so I guess his pro-casino ethics trump his privacy concerns. Jonathan Kirschbaum and Trisha Stern own the plot on the east side of the site. The road is the south border.” Melissa’s voice dropped off at the end of her sentence, and she seemed to drift away into thought.

  “What about Jonathan and Trisha? She’s said more times than I can count on both hands and feet how much she loves her house. Sometimes I think she married him for that piece of land.” I wished I didn’t like Trisha as much as I did, wished I’d have a more objective view of her passion for her home and where that might lead her. “You think your principal might have taught her how to shoot a rifle? She didn’t grow up in the country like the rest of you. Watching your fathers and the neighbors and all.”

  “Trisha’s too smart to think she might actually get away with murder,” Susan said. “And too nice to do it. I don’t see it. But given the mysteries of human nature and how much we don’t know about the people in our lives we can’t rule her out.”

  Now it was Elizabeth’s turn to jump out of her chair and pace the floor in her stockinged feet. Her long dark hair, freed from its pins and clips, swung like a sheet of silk as she made a sharp turn and came to a stop in the middle of the room. “We’re stuck here. We’re going around in the same circles. We need a rectangle or a hexagon or some other shape. I hate to say this, but we really do need to think outside the box.”

  My pulse quickened. She was right, and I had the feeling that we were about to sail into new waters. “Okay, we’ve gone down a couple of paths. There’s the casino, our poor mistreated Anita, and now the entire roster of Marjorie’s clients. Is there something we’re not seeing, another category?”

  “The part we keep shoving off to the side,” Nora said softly, “is that someone is trying very hard to make it look as though you killed Marjorie. We need to look at who had something against Marjo
rie, sure. But we shouldn’t forget that someone wants to pin this on you.”

  Elizabeth stopped so suddenly she almost knocked over the chunky red vase on the coffee table. “Who would gain from both things—Marjorie’s death and Lili being blamed? Anita doesn’t have anything to do with Lili. I know Tom Ford wrote a letter to the town council opposing the casino but why would he want to frame Lili? He’s not getting the cottage back. It might have been an unorthodox method of payment, but the cottage is hers and it’s legal. The real estate attorneys made sure the deed was in Lili’s name and she’s been paying taxes. What about Seth? Maybe he opposes the casino because he thinks it will dry up his business and also because he has another use for the land. Framing Lili would be an extreme way to tell her that he doesn’t think the relationship is going anywhere.”

  “What?” I felt gut-punched. “Are you saying . . . did he tell you he doesn’t want to see me any more?”

  All eyes turned toward the fireplace. Elizabeth frowned, took her time, finally said, “I don’t know anything about how Seth feels about you. We’re exploring possibilities. Talking hypotheticals. Trying things on to see if they fit all the circumstances.”

  Of course that’s what we were doing. So, why had it felt as though she’d said the very thing I didn’t want to hear? I wanted to be the one to call it off, to say it wasn’t working. When the time came. If the time came . . .

  “Sorry. Touchy subject. Let’s go on,” I said evenly, hoping my smile convinced everyone that all was fine with me.

  “That reminds me,” Nora said, her generous mouth spreading in a smile. “You get your computer back, Lili?”

  “Not yet. They said they’d let me know when the tests are finished. Listen, instead of going around in circles, let’s go in one direction at a time. Maybe we’ll keep coming back to the same place, but that’s all we can do. Let’s concentrate on Marjorie’s clients. Start with the ones we know and then when Elizabeth gets the complete list we can expand.”