by Lois Winston
Sam Spader was a heart attack waiting to happen. When doctors told him the stress of working homicide in Newark would kill him sooner than a bullet, he’d transferred to Union County to finish out his years before retirement. However, judging from what I’d observed of him, he had more to fear from liquor, cigarettes, and donuts than bullets. His nose sported the burst capillaries of a man who drank too much, nicotine stained his fingers and teeth, and he wore an enormous spare tire around his middle. If he didn’t clean up his act, he’d never make it to retirement, no matter in which jurisdiction he worked.
“You find the vic?” he asked.
“I did.”
“I’m going to need a statement from you. Wait here.” He then lumbered toward the entrance to the house.
The flashing lights eventually drew the attention of various neighbors. One by one they exited their decorated homes and converged on me. With the wind picking up and the mercury plummeting, they created a much-appreciated windbreak around me.
“What’s going on?” asked Angie Perotta, the mother of the hopscotch aficionado.
Even though I was totally freaked at the thought of a murderer in the neighborhood, I knew the police wouldn’t appreciate me divulging the details of Betty’s death. “Mrs. Bentworth died,” I said.
“Good riddance.”
Others nodded or murmured in agreement. Perhaps they’d feel more sympathetic—not to mention scared as hell—once they learned the cause of Betty’s death. For now, they’d have to wait to read the salacious details in tomorrow’s newspaper unless Spader saw fit to tell them. Once they knew, we’d all take part in a town-wide freak-out.
Until then, since no one had any love for the deceased, and most had left their homes without first grabbing jackets, the crowd quickly dispersed. I was left alone to shiver in the cold as I waited to give my statement.
A minute later Lawrence’s gold Honda Accord pulled up in front of my house. Mama jumped out of the car and raced across the street before Lawrence cut the engine. “Anastasia, thank God you’re safe! I was so worried.”
“I’m fine, Mama. Why are you here?”
“What do you mean, why am I here? You’ve got a killer loose on your street. I was worried.”
“How in the world did you find out?” Even the press hadn’t arrived yet, but somehow my mother had gotten wind of Betty Bentworth’s murder.
“Lawrence heard the call go out on his police scanner.”
By this time Lawrence had joined us. Dressed for the arctic, he wore a bulky pea coat, a muffler wrapped around the lower part of his face, and a fur-lined leather bombardier hat covering his head. With the brim pulled down over his forehead, only his eyes showed. At least one of us was protected against frostbite. “You listen to a police scanner?” I asked.
“It’s a hobby of mine,” he said, his voice muffled by the muffler.
Stamp collecting is a hobby. Cooking is a hobby. Beekeeping is a hobby. Monitoring police radio bandwidths struck me as more voyeurism than a hobby. I still knew little more than zilch about my new stepfather but could think of only one reason he might listen in on police dispatches. “Were you in law enforcement before you retired?” I asked.
Mama latched onto her husband’s arm, craned her neck toward him, and beamed. “Lawrence owned a very successful commercial laundry service.”
Very successful? The only difference between Lawrence and Mama’s other husbands—besides the fact that he was still breathing—was that he had his very own sugar daddy in the guise of Ira “Moneybags” Pollack. What had happened to the fruits of Lawrence’s successful enterprise? Maybe Ira knew.
Anyway, I saw no connection between soapsuds and the police. Perhaps Lawrence had wanted to be a cop when he was a kid and now derived some vicarious thrill out of eavesdropping on police communications.
At that moment Detective Spader emerged from Betty’s house and headed down the flagstone walkway toward me. “Mama, I need to give the detective my statement. Why don’t you and Lawrence wait in the house for me.”
“But—”
I cast pleading eyes toward Lawrence. My fingers and toes had turned numb from the cold, and my teeth were beginning to chatter. I’d get through my statement in far less time without Mama standing next to me, interrupting every other sentence to offer her two cents worth of nonsense.
“Come, Flora.” He grasped her upper arm and practically dragged her back across the street.
“Really, Lawrence,” she protested, “someone should stay with Anastasia.”
“She’s a big girl. She can take care of herself.”
Spader lit a cigarette and took several deep drags as he watched Lawrence and Mama head toward my house. I sidestepped his smoke, although part of me wanted to cup my hands around the glowing cigarette tip to steal some of its warmth.
When Mama and Lawrence were out of earshot, Spader shoved the cigarette to the side of his mouth and whipped out a small spiral notebook and pencil stub. “Harley and Fogarty tell me the vic had lots of enemies. I take it you weren’t one of them?”
“I wouldn’t say we were enemies. I’ve had a few minor skirmishes with her from time to time—as have all the neighbors on the block—but nothing the last several years. Like everyone else, I tried to keep my distance.”
“But you found her. Did you have a key?”
I quickly explained what had happened. “No one liked her, but I don’t know that she had enemies, at least not the kind that go around shooting people in the head.”
“Why was she so disliked?”
I shrugged. “Betty Bentworth was a disagreeable, nasty old woman who did nothing but complain, criticize, and threatened lawsuits.”
“Over what?”
“You name it—a dog peeing on her lawn, someone parking in front of her house—”
“Anyone can park on the street,” he said.
“Not according to Betty. She insisted the street in front of her house belonged to her. Anyone who parked in that spot received a threatening note stuck under the car’s windshield wiper. Same with the sidewalk.” I told him about the hopscotch incident.
“Was there anyone who liked her?”
“No one I know. Any attempts at friendship were met with suspicion and quickly rebuffed. She was nasty to everyone and had been that way for as long as I’ve lived here.”
I pondered for a moment, then added, “Maybe something happened to her years ago, or maybe she was born with a mean streak. Who knows? You have to feel sorry for people like that.”
“Someone didn’t.” Spader took another drag, hacking once before he continued. “You have any idea who might have wanted her dead?”
I laughed in spite of the situation. “Probably everyone on the police force. She kept 911 on speed dial.”
Spader stepped closer. Looming over me, he set his mouth in a tight line and narrowed his eyes. “Are you suggesting—?”
I took a step backward. “No, of course not.” The man must have been on a smoke break when God handed out the Sense of Humor genes.
“Hmm. What about the neighbors? Anyone who might have had a beef big enough to turn to murder?”
“Unlikely. This is a block of mostly teachers, lawyers, and accountants.”
“You sure of that?”
I thought about the twelve houses on our one-block-long street and the people who lived in them. No one stood out as the hit man type, but I’d had enough run-ins with hit men lately to know they came in all sizes and shapes. Still, I didn’t see any of my neighbors as possible assassins. “Pretty sure.”
“How well do you know your neighbors, Mrs. Pollack?”
“I suppose about as well as most people know their neighbors. We wave hello to each other, chitchat while raking leaves, often attend the same school functions. That sort of thing.”
“In other words, you really don’t know any of them very well at all, do you?”
In the dim light of the street lamp I studied Spader’s face. He looked
dead serious. Earlier in the day Cloris had planted doubts about Ira in my head. Now Spader was suggesting I might have a homicidal maniac or hired gun living on my street. “Is there something I should know about one of my neighbors, Detective?”
“Not that I’m aware of.”
“Then why scare the crap out of me?” Not to mention turn me as suspicious as Betty Bentworth. Had her paranoia been justified? Did she know something about one of our neighbors that I didn’t? Something that had gotten her killed?
Spader ignored my question. He took one last drag from his cigarette, tossed the butt onto the sidewalk, and ground it to death with the toe of his shoe. “If Mrs. Bentworth were still alive and had seen you do that, she’d threaten to sue you for sullying her sidewalk.”
“Sounds like she was a real piece of work.”
“If you want confirmation, ask anyone on the police force.”
“So, Nancy Drew, what’s your theory?”
The detective had developed a grudging respect for me when I discovered a clue he and his team had missed while investigating the death of Lyndella Wegner this past summer. The Nancy Drew snark aside, I think he genuinely wanted to know my thoughts on Betty’s murder.
“I don’t think she ever knew what hit her. She certainly didn’t let her assailant into the house.”
“How do you know that?”
“I discovered the body, remember? And you’ve seen it. She was watching TV. Betty was hard of hearing and had the television volume turned up high. I’m guessing she didn’t hear him break in through a window or the back door.”
“There was no evidence of forced entry. She must have let him in.”
I glanced longingly over at my own front door, anxious for the warmth behind it, and shoved my numb bare fingers under my armpits. “And left her front door wide open? Not Betty. Maybe the killer left the front door open when he ran out.” But that seemed odd to me. Why would he risk someone seeing him leave? Sneaking out the back door made more sense.
“If she didn’t let him in, and she kept her doors locked—”
“Paranoid people definitely keep their doors locked, and Betty wasn’t someone who would open her door to a stranger.”
“She may have forgotten to lock the door.”
“Doubtful. She wasn’t the forgetful type. The woman held onto grudges for decades.”
“Did she show any signs of dementia?”
“None. If the killer didn’t force his way in, he must have picked a lock and sneaked up on her.”
“But why?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she inadvertently witnessed something.”
“And someone wanted to make sure she didn’t talk? Not a bad theory, Mrs. Pollack. But where was she, and what did she see?”
“That’s your job to figure out, isn’t it, Detective?”
Spader flipped his notebook closed and shoved it in his breast pocket. Then he reached into his pants pocket, pulled out a card, and handed it to me. “If you think of anything else, call me.”
As I accepted the card, he added, “One other thing. Do you have any security cameras on your property?”
“One at each door.” After several breakins last winter, Zack had insisted on installing an alarm system and cameras under the guise of protecting the expensive photographic equipment he kept in his apartment above my detached garage. He claimed the added cost to include the house was negligible. Although I didn’t believe him, I hardly put up an argument. As much as I never again wanted to rely on a man, finding my family trussed up with duct-taped and tossed into the bathtub was incentive enough to accept all the help I could get to ward off attacks from any future bad guys.
“Mind if I look at the tape in a little while?” asked Spader.
“Not at all. Stop by when you’re ready.”
By this time I had lost the battle to keep my eyes from tearing, my nose from running, and my teeth from chattering. As Spader headed back into Betty’s house, I raced across the street. Through my closed front door, I heard Lucille and Mama squaring off in the living room.
FOUR
“You’re nothing but a vapid, worthless excuse for a human being!”
“You should talk, you traitorous pinko pig!”
So intent on hurling venomous insults at each other, neither Mama nor Lucille noticed me when I stepped into the foyer. Ralph, my Shakespeare-quoting African Grey parrot, sat atop the bookcase, his head swiveling back and forth as he followed the verbal fisticuffs. “Braaawwk!” he squawked. “Mortal revenge upon these traitorous Goths. And see their blood, or die with this reproach. Titus Andronicus. Act Four, Scene One.”
“Déjà vu all over again,” I muttered under my breath, choosing a more modern-day quote from New Jersey’s favorite son Yogi Berra. I walked past Mama and Lucille and headed into the kitchen where I grabbed the leftover Chinese food from the refrigerator, emptied the containers into casserole dishes, and popped them into the oven.
My sons waylaid me as I passed the den on my way to my bedroom. “Mom,” said Alex. “Lawrence said someone shot Batty Bentworth.”
“Right here on our street,” added Nick.
I stepped into the den. Lawrence sat on the couch watching the news, apparently totally oblivious to his wife and my motherin-law setting off World War III in my living room. Or maybe he was deliberately tuning out the battle.
“As scary as it is to know someone on our street was murdered,” I reassured my sons, “I don’t think we need to worry. It appears Mrs. Bentworth was deliberately targeted.”
“I guess she pissed off the wrong person this time,” said Nick. He turned to his brother. “Maybe Mom’s right.”
“About what?” I asked.
“You’re always saying if you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything. That woman was despicable.”
“And now she’s dead,” said Alex.
“That’s a pretty drastic example.” Inwardly, though, I patted myself on the back, glad my sons listened to me and appreciated my parenting skills.
“Maybe someone should tell Grandmother Lucille there’s a serial killer on the loose, and he’s stalking disagreeable old crones,” suggested Nick.
“You think it would help?” asked Alex.
Nick shrugged. “Couldn’t hurt.”
I glanced down the hall. “One of these days those two might just harangue each other to death.”
“If they don’t come to physical blows first,” said Lawrence, pulling himself away from a newscast about an earthquake in Argentina. Maybe he wasn’t so oblivious after all.
“Would you try talking some sense into Mama?” I asked. “She won’t listen to me.”
“I think she derives a certain amount of pleasure in baiting Lucille,” he said, stating what the rest of us in the family had known for years.
“Perverse pleasure. But it only makes my life more difficult. She no longer has to live with Lucille; I do.”
“I’ll talk to her,” he said, “but I doubt she’ll stop until Lucille is dead and buried.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.” Then, even though I already knew the answer, I asked, “Are you and Mama planning to stay for dinner?”
“Since we’re already here, we’ll help you polish off all those leftovers from last night.”
Leftovers I had hoped would stretch for more than one dinner this week. Even without a murder on the street, Mama and Lawrence had probably planned to show up in time for dinner tonight. No matter how often I tried to impress my near-destitute situation on Mama, she seemed incapable of comprehending the financial realities of my post-Karl life.
As for Lawrence, the man had turned out to be a consummate moocher, no better than his gold-digger daughter. What’s that saying about the apple not falling far from the tree? I could see why Cynthia had set her sights on Ira, even with the baggage of three kids, but if Lawrence thought Mama had money stashed away from her previous husbands, he was in for a huge shock.
At least I didn
’t have to deal with Ira and his bratty brood this evening, just Mama, Lawrence, Lucille, and a murdered neighbor—another typical evening at Casa Pollack.
I excused myself and headed to my bedroom to rendezvous with a couple of Motrin. After gulping down the pills, I stripped off my office attire and slipped into a pair of jeans and a threadbare blue and orange Mets National League championship sweatshirt that I’d owned since the dawn of the new millennium. Glancing in the mirror at the fading logo, I wondered which would occur first—a debt-free Anastasia or a Mets World Series win. The odds for either looked equally dismal.
Even with my bedroom door closed, I continued to hear shouts of “Stupid Bolshevik!” and “Ignorant Fascist!” hurled back and forth from the living room, interspersed with an occasional squawk from Ralph. Since dinner would take at least twenty minutes to heat up, I collapsed onto my bed, drew a quilt over my body, and buried my head under a pillow to tune out the shoutfest.
If only such measures would dispel the vision of Betty Bentworth’s dead body, now forever etched into my brain. As I pondered what she might have done or seen that resulted in a gaping hole where her eye used to be, I realized that after nearly two decades of living across the street from the woman, I knew next to nothing about her. Did she once have a husband? Children? A career? Did she have any living relatives? I’d never noticed anyone coming to visit her.
She rarely left her house except to attend church, run errands, do yard work, or shovel her walk in winter. Even at her advanced age, she refused to hire help of any kind. In a neighborly gesture, I once sent the boys over to dig out her property after a blizzard had dumped over a foot of snow on us. Instead of thanking them, she called the police to report trespassers on her property. So much for neighborly gestures.
*
The doorbell rang before my first forkful of food rendezvoused with my taste buds. “I’ll get it,” said Alex, jumping up from the table.
A moment later he returned with Detective Spader in tow. Nodding to me, the detective said, “Sorry to intrude on your dinner.”
I’d expected the interruption. Spader had a murder to solve. For all I cared, he could set up a command center in my living room if it meant a speedier apprehension of the killer. I just wished the timing had allowed me to finish dinner first. I stood and directed Spader to follow me into the kitchen and down to the basement.