A Stitch to Die For (An Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery Book 5)

by Lois Winston

  Zack placed his hands on my shoulders. “Hold on. First of all, we both know Ira has an incredible need to have people like him. He buys friendship the way most people buy weekly groceries.”

  I couldn’t disagree with that.

  Zack continued, “Besides, you only have Flora’s word that Lawrence’s business was successful, right?”

  “True. Lawrence has never spoken about his business. I didn’t even know what he did before he retired until Mama mentioned the commercial laundry facility.”

  “What if it wasn’t successful? What if he sold the business at a loss? Or had outstanding loans that ate away at all the profit?”

  “Lawrence may have lied to impress Mama.” It certainly wouldn’t be the first time Mama fell under the spell of a prevaricator. Lou Beaumont had her convinced he was worth millions. What he failed to mention was that he’d lost all those millions to Bernie Madoff and his Ponzi scheme.

  “Or perhaps Flora heard what she wanted to hear,” said Zack.

  That certainly described Mama to a T. “Still, they’re off gambling in Atlantic City while I’m reduced to robbing Peter to pay Paul at the end of every month.” No one promised me life would always be fair, but damn, does it have to be this unfair?

  Then I realized what I was doing and had been doing for days now. I hate whiners. With everything that had happened over the last few months, I’d continually fought to keep a positive attitude and not succumb to constant complaining. Karl may have kicked me down the rabbit hole into my current financial quagmire, but I refused to allow him to control me from the grave. I took a deep breath and heaved a huge sigh. “Okay, I’m going to stop whining now.”

  Zack quirked a smile. “Oh, were you whining? I hadn’t noticed.”

  Before leaving the condo, I scrawled a quick note to Lawrence: Steven Jay showed up to collect some papers from you. I suggested he come back tomorrow. A.

  *

  The weather gods smiled down on me Sunday morning. Although the temperature hovered in the chilly mid-forties, the wind had died down, and the sun shone against a cloudless bright blue sky. “A perfect day for leaf raking,” I announced as my sons entered the kitchen for breakfast.

  Both Alex and Nick pulled faces as they poured themselves glasses of orange juice, but they knew better than to object. However, the same couldn’t be said for my motherin-law who had already parked herself in her chair, waiting to be served a plate of pancakes, eggs, and bacon. “I’m not raking leaves!”

  “Don’t worry,” said Nick, taking his seat. “We wouldn’t want you to break your track record by pitching in to help with something.”

  Lucille bristled but directed her anger toward me, not Nick. “That’s what comes from your lax parenting, Anastasia. My son never would have allowed such impudence.”

  I had been about to reprimand Nick and insist he apologize to his grandmother, but I quickly changed my mind. Impudence aside, my son had spoken the truth. Lucille never lifted a finger around the house. Not that her physical condition would have allowed for leaf raking, but there were many other ways she could contribute if she had a mind to do so.

  Communism might be her creed, but in practice she acted more like a Russian empress than a member of the proletariat. She sat on her rump, expecting everyone to wait on her.

  I halted my egg scrambling, spun around from the stove, and opened my mouth, a sarcastic barb about Karl on the tip of my tongue. Zack stopped flipping pancakes and reached for my hand. Ever the voice of reason, he leaned toward me and whispered in my ear. “It’s not worth it.”

  “I know,” I muttered, returning to my egg scrambling. I closed my mouth, shut my eyes, and inhaled a deep calming breath, letting it out slowly as I fluffed the eggs.

  Like Mama, Lucille would never change. Maybe I needed to take up yoga and meditation to learn how to keep both of them from burrowing under my skin.

  As soon as she wolfed down her breakfast, Lucille pushed herself away from the table, grabbed her cane, and hobbled out of the kitchen, leaving her dirty dishes for someone else to rinse and place in the dishwasher.

  “See what I mean,” said Nick, making a face at his grandmother’s departing back. “She doesn’t even clear her own plate. Why do we put up with this, Mom?”

  “She won’t live forever,” said Alex.

  “Heck, she’ll probably outlive us all,” said Nick.

  Ralph squawked and flapped his wings from atop the refrigerator where he sat observing us. “Let not this wasp outlive, us both to sting. Titus Andronicus, Act Two, Scene Three.”

  “That’s enough.” I waved my fork at Ralph. “From you, too.”

  “Braaawk!”

  “And no heckling from the cheap seats.” Good grief! Was I actually conversing with a parrot?

  I shook my head and turned to my sons. “Lucille is a miserable old woman. We should pity her.”

  “Why can’t she go live with one of those communist ‘sisters’ of hers?” asked Nick. “She cares more about them than she does us, anyway, and I’d get my room back.”

  “Because even they don’t want her,” I said.

  “Huh? Aren’t they her only friends?”

  “It’s a friendship based on a shared political philosophy. They respect her, but personally, I don’t think any of them like her all that much, at least not enough to want to live with her.”

  “But they have a choice,” said Alex. “We don’t, thanks to Dad.”

  At one time Karl had been a good father, or at least he acted like one while he carried on his affair with Lady Luck. He spent time with his kids, reading them stories, teaching them how to ride their bikes. He became a scoutmaster when they joined Cub Scouts and coached their Little League and soccer teams. He helped them with their homework and always attended parent/teacher conferences.

  Sadness settled over me at the realization that their father’s deceit had shoved all those wonderful memories aside. My sons would never again think kindly of Karl. He had not only betrayed me, he’d betrayed Alex and Nick in a far worse way.

  The sputtering sound of Harriet Kleinhample’s antiquated orange Volkswagen minibus jumping the curb in front of the house pulled me out of my maudlin reverie. A moment later the front door slammed. “There she goes, off to foment a revolution,” I said. “Did anyone walk Mephisto this morning?”

  “He’s her dog,” said Nick.

  “See if she took him with her.”

  Nick left the kitchen, returning a moment later with Devil Dog in tow. “Not only doesn’t she help out around the house,” he grumbled, “Now we’re stuck taking care of her dog.”

  This past summer Mephisto and I had reached a détente of sorts while Lucille was confined to a rehab facility after suffering a stroke. She considered the dog’s newfound affection for me a traitorous act and accused me of corrupting her pet. To punish the dog—not to mention me—she began ignoring him. Personally, I think Mephisto reveled in the lack of s’mothering attention. However, more often than not, the boys and I were now stuck walking him several times a day.

  “Go grab some rakes and take your frustrations out on the leaves,” I said. “Zack and I will join you as soon as we’ve cleaned up the kitchen and walked the dog.”

  We live in a neighborhood of older homes, built back during the Eisenhower era when New Jersey farmland was gobbled up by developers who replaced cornfields with countless subdivisions of mid-century modern split-levels and ranchers. Over the years the oak and maple saplings planted in yards more than half a century ago had grown to heights between seventy and a hundred feet tall. Every autumn those trees, along with the smaller flowering dogwoods, weeping cherries, and ornamental pears that dotted the neighborhood, shed a massive amount of leaves.

  Both the front and back yards were ankle deep in brown, gold, burgundy, and rust colored leaves, all of which had to be deposited in a pile at the curb. After nearly three hours of raking leaves onto a tarp, then hauling the tarp to the front of the house and dumping t
he leaves curbside, we’d managed to make decent progress in the backyard. However, we still had several hours of work ahead of us.

  I was about to suggest a coffee/hot chocolate break when Alex shouted, “Mom! Zack! Come quick!”

  Zack and I rushed across the yard to where Alex and Nick had been raking leaves out of the shrubs alongside the fence that separated our yard from our next-door neighbor’s yard. Alex held the handle of his rake in one hand. With his other hand he pointed to the ground where the rake’s metal tines rested. Trapped within the tines, along with decaying leaves and assorted yard muck, was either an extremely lethal hunting knife or an excellent facsimile of one.

  “Tell me that’s a Halloween prop,” I said, staring at the weapon.

  Zack bent down to inspect the knife, taking care not to touch it. A dark, dry substance coated the exposed parts of the blade and much of the handle. “It’s real.”

  “Is that blood?” asked Nick.

  “Could be.” He turned to me. “Did Detective Spader mention whether or not he’d recovered the weapon from Carmen’s murder?”

  “He didn’t say. Do you think this is the knife the killer used?”

  “It’s certainly possible.”

  “What’s it doing in our yard?” asked Nick.

  “Good question.” Zack stood up, removed the handle from Alex’s grip, and gently lowered the rake to the ground. “You need to call Detective Spader,” he said to me.

  I motioned for the boys to step away from the rake, as if the mere presence of the knife posed a threat to us. In some ways it did, at least a threat to my carefully choreographed day of chores.

  Zack confirmed this by saying, “No more raking for now. We need to leave everything as we found it until the police arrive.”

  Crap!

  Fifteen minutes later Zack and I led Detective Spader to the spot in the backyard where the knife sat tangled in the rake. He crouched down to take a closer look. “Did anyone touch the knife?”

  “No,” I said. “As soon as Alex realized he’d trapped it in the rake, he called us over. Do you think it’s the knife that killed Carmen?”

  Spader grunted as he hefted himself upright, nearly toppling over onto his rump in the process. The man really did need to lose a significant amount of weight if he planned to reach retirement. Part of me wanted to warn him of the terminal effects of obesity, but I didn’t think he’d take too kindly to my concerns over his health. I opted for discretion, keeping my tongue planted firmly in my mouth. Spader was a grown man. He had to know he was killing himself.

  “We’ll have to test the blood,” he said after pausing for a moment to catch his breath, “but I wouldn’t be surprised. What I’d like to know, though, is who have you pissed off lately, Mrs. Pollack?”

  Zack stepped closer and wrapped his arm around my shoulders. “Exactly what are you inferring, Detective?”

  Too shocked to speak, I stared wide-eyed at the detective.

  “I’m beginning to see a pattern emerging here,” he said, and I’m wondering if you might not be the central figure that connects all the dots.”

  TWELVE

  Spader’s words hit me like an ice bucket challenge during a blizzard. “Are…are you accusing me of having something to do with…with Carmen’s murder? How could you—”

  He held up his hand to stop my sputtering. “I’m not accusing you of anything, Mrs. Pollack.”

  “Then, why—?”

  “I think you might know more than you realize. Hear me out.”

  I rattled off a quick mental count from one to ten, hoping to stay the massive amounts of fright hormones currently coursing through my body, before nodding. “Go on.”

  “Something about Mrs. Bentworth’s door being left open doesn’t sit right with me.”

  “This is more than just about Carmen’s murder?”

  Zack squeezed my shoulder. “Let him speak.”

  “I’m looking at the larger picture here,” continued Spader. “You’ve got a hit man who went to great lengths to sneak into a house without being noticed. Then he exits the house through the front door, leaving it wide open. That in itself is odd.”

  “Or he opened the front door and left the same way he entered the house,” said Zack.

  “Precisely. But either way, this scenario only makes sense if—”

  “If he wanted the body found,” I said.

  “By you,” added Spader.

  I gasped. “Why me? Anyone could have discovered Betty’s body.”

  Spader raised an eyebrow. “Anyone? From speaking with your neighbors, I got the impression you’re the only person on the block who would have cared enough to investigate that open door.”

  I pondered that for a moment and realized Spader was probably right. Everyone hated Betty. No one would care that her front door was left wide open on a chilly October evening—no one but me.

  “In addition,” continued Spader, “Carmen Cordova is murdered the following day, and what could very well be the murder weapon, winds up in your backyard.”

  “The killer needed to ditch the knife,” I said. He tossed it into some bushes.”

  “No, he tossed it into your bushes, Mrs. Pollack. In your backyard. Not your front yard.”

  “Which means he either deliberately entered the yard to plant the knife—” said Zack.

  “Or entered the yard next door and tossed the knife over the fence,” I said. “However the knife wound up here, he went out of his way to ditch it in my yard. But why?”

  “That’s what we need to figure out,” said Spader. “And let’s not forget the swatting incident Thursday night. Someone specifically targeted this house. Three separate crimes occurred on this block within the last week, and they all lead back to you in some way.”

  I shook my head. “None of this makes any sense.”

  “It makes sense to someone,” said Zack, “assuming the detective’s theory is correct.”

  “You got a better one?” asked Spader.

  “I wish I did.”

  “Then we’ll be going with mine for now. I’m calling in the Crime Scene Unit. We’re going to have to cordon off your property, Mrs. Pollack. You’ll have to remain indoors while they comb through the yard.”

  “For how long?”

  “As long as it takes.”

  “As in a couple of hours or an entire day?”

  “As long as it takes.”

  Abandoning my recent vow to stop whining, I let my emotions trample my common sense. “You can’t do that. We’ve got to get the leaves raked. The collection for our street is tomorrow.”

  Spader scoped out the leaves still covering a major portion of the yard and shrugged. “You can always pray for a hurricane to postpone the pickup.”

  If that was Spader’s attempt at humor, I hoped he wasn’t planning a second act on the comedy circuit once he retired. “How about if we make a deal? The knife was found in the backyard. We’ll rake the front yard while you do your forensic combing through every blade of grass in the backyard.”

  He raised an eyebrow and scowled at me. “Really, Mrs. Pollack? I expected better from you.”

  And he would have received it if not for the town leaf deadline. I offered him a weak smile and sighed in defeat. “You can’t blame a girl for trying, can you?”

  *

  After lunch Zack helped me fix the toilet, a task I’d looked forward to with about as much enthusiasm as I would a case of shingles. Before Karl died he’d taken care of home repairs. For anything he couldn’t fix, he’d call in a repairman. I no longer had Karl, and I couldn’t afford a plumber. Luckily, Zack knew how to replace a toilet flushing mechanism because the directions on the box might as well have been written in Japanese for all the sense they made to me.

  Detective Spader had allowed the boys to leave the house to watch the Giants/Eagles game at a friend’s home before he cordoned off my property and posted an officer at the front of the house to keep away my curious neighbors. Meanwhile, a ph
alanx of police continued to comb through my yard. “I swear, they really are examining every single blade of grass,” I said, watching from the kitchen window. “What else do they expect to find?”

  “They won’t know until they find it,” said Zack.

  “Meanwhile, I’ll be raking leaves at midnight.”

  “If that’s what it takes, that’s what we’ll do.”

  “There is one upside,” I said.

  “What’s that?”

  “If we’re outside raking leaves after dark, no juvenile delinquents will dare TP or egg any properties on the block.” For as long as I could remember the night before Halloween was known as Mischief Night, a time when teenage hellions ducked out of their homes to commit pranks and minor acts of vandalism throughout the area.

  Zack tipped my chin upward and planted a peck on the tip of my nose. “I’m glad to see you’ve regained your positive attitude.”

  “Is that sarcasm?”

  “From me? That’s your realm of expertise. I’m just the hired gun.”

  “Flattery will get you everywhere.”

  “Good to know.”

  I turned away from the window. Watching the police progress was tantamount to watching grass grow. “I’ll make some popcorn. Maybe there’s something worth watching on television.”

  I pulled the popcorn maker from the cabinet above the stove and plugged it in to warm up. Zack headed for the den. Once the popcorn was popped, I joined him.

  “What are you watching?”

  “A PBS documentary on the mob.”

  “Really?” I frowned at the screen as I curled up on the couch and placed the popcorn bowl between us. “We live in New Jersey. We hear about Mafia crime on a daily basis.”

  I’d also had more than my share of personal run-ins with the Mafia this past winter, thanks to Karl. His loan shark had tried to shake me down for fifty thousand dollars. When that failed—because thanks to Karl, I didn’t have a spare fifty dollars, let alone fifty thousand—he tried to kill me. Luckily, he failed at that, too.