Caught Read-Handed

by Terrie Farley Moran

  Bridgy came through from the kitchen with a hot breakfast plate in her hand. I could tell by the look on her face she’d heard her dramatic aunt. I raised my eyebrows and telegraphed my thoughts. Delicious? Really? I mean, who talks like that? The answer to my question was standing in front of me.

  “Sassy, honey chile, don’t y’all keep this handsome man a-waitin’.” She sounded exactly like a character in the classic Gone with the Wind.

  Before I could say whatever joke came to mind at Ophie’s expense, Bridgy rushed in to do the rescue with a little Scarlett O’Hara of her own. “My darlin’ aunt Ophie, thank you for always being here in my hour of need. Now let’s get an apron to cover that pretty dress. Blue is such a becoming color for you. Can’t be having it ruined.” She dragged her aunt toward the kitchen but not before Ophie pitched what I thought was a rather steamy gaze directly at Mark Clamenta. He must have picked up on her intent because he colored a lovely shade of pink right to the roots of his thinning silver hair. He stood stock-still and watched her disappear into the kitchen.

  Finally, he remembered why he was here. Turning to me, he clapped his hands. “Are we ready?”

  Mark volunteered to drive, which pleased me to no end. I was content to sit in the passenger seat as beachgoers crossed over to the Gulf side of the island with all their paraphernalia, books and e-readers for the grown-ups, sand pails for the kids and broad-brimmed hats for everyone. As we turned up San Carlos Boulevard and drove across the bridge, I watched the ospreys and blue herons circle lazily, silhouetted against a cloudless sky. Occasionally, one would dive-bomb into the bay and come up with a prize. We crossed San Carlos Island and drove onto the mainland.

  Mark told me he’d scouted out the unitarian church earlier in the morning. “A small street ends right opposite the church. I’ll park there and we can watch for a while. If we decide to get out and mingle, we can cross over in a jiffy.”

  He parked curbside under a stately royal palm. We were directly opposite the front entrance to the church, which was a fairly new and exceptionally aesthetic stucco and glass building. There was a large parking lot on one side and a tastefully landscaped lawn on the other. Two men in navy blue suits and somber ties were standing on either side of the main entrance. With their aviator sunglasses they could easily be mistaken for Secret Service agents. The few mourners who had arrived early were mingling in the parking lot. They chatted softly, perhaps not wanting to be first to go inside.

  The sun was moving higher in the sky and there was less of a breeze than we’d had the past few days. I was glad I’d worn a beige cotton blouse and tan linen skirt. It was worth getting up extra early to iron so I could be comfortable. Sitting in the car for any length of time could get sticky.

  Mark was silent and watchful, his eyes darting from face to face, his spine stiffening with every new car that entered the parking lot. He leaned forward, as if to verify what he was seeing and said, “Okay, now watch her.” He pointed. “The lady in yellow.”

  Sure enough a woman in a pale yellow sundress wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat was walking purposefully past the mourners and toward the front door. She grabbed onto the handrail but only got to the second step before one of the blue suits held up a hand indicating she should stop. When she ignored him and proceeded to the third step, both suits moved to the center of the wide doorway and stood shoulder to shoulder, preventing her from going any farther. The lady in yellow became agitated and was screeching loud enough that we could hear her tone if not her words.

  Mark clapped his hands and chortled. “This is getting good. Want to go over?”

  “Why not? Who is she?”

  “One of the kooky neighbors.”

  By the time we crossed the tiny street, everyone in the parking lot was drawn to the staircase. The woman was flapping her arms and ducking back and forth like a boxer trying to find an opening. Her shrill “I have a right to pay my respects,” didn’t sound one bit respectful.

  The suits crossed their arms. There was no way she had a chance of getting past them. From behind me I heard a familiar voice. “Excuse me. Thank you. Excuse me.” Cady Stanton maneuvered his way through the crowd and stood at the bottom of the stairs. In his quiet, controlled voice he approached the woman. “Mrs. Ramer, I’m Cady Stanton from the Fort Myers Beach News. Do you have time for a short interview?”

  The woman went dead quiet, so Cady pressed on. “I won’t take much of your time. I promise.”

  She turned her head and then her full body. She took off her hat and held it high to shield her eyes from the sun while she took in Cady’s full measure. “Why, I believe I can spare you a few minutes.” She tossed a cantankerous “You two haven’t defeated me” look over her shoulder and walked back down the steps. Cady extended his arm and escorted her to a shady spot on the edge of the parking lot. The men in blue relaxed. They moved back into position on either side of the door, their mission fulfilled. A number of mourners decided it was better to enter the church now before the path was blocked again by someone else. Men slipped their hands into jacket pockets and women opened purses. They retrieved buff envelopes and drew out stiff cream-colored cards. When shown to the suits, the cards were a magical entrance key.

  “The husband is a builder, right?”

  It took a second for me to realize Mark was asking the question of me. “Oh, yes. According to Ophie, he is a regular Daddy Warbucks. Money to burn. His car backs that up.”

  “His car?”

  “He drives one of those James Bond Aston Martins. Very showy.”

  “Yeah, well he must have a thriving business to support the car because every general construction contractor, electrician, plumber and landscape architect from up and down the west coast of Florida is milling around this parking lot or already inside the church. Guess they want to stay on the husband’s good side.”

  I started to agree, and then it dawned on me. “The construction guys may be here sucking up to Barry Lipscome for business reasons, but if they are getting into the church, they were sent invitations. Look around; everyone here has an invitation. Perhaps Lipscome is using his wife’s funeral service as a business event instead of the other way around.”

  Mark gave me a look of appreciation. “I’ll have to be careful around you. You’re a sharp cookie.”

  Two things happened at the same time. To my left, Sally Caldera stepped out of her car, while to my right, there was a loud commotion in the shady spot where Cady and the woman in yellow had been talking quietly just moments before. I gave Sally a quick wave but moved away from her and toward Cady. Whatever was going on, I didn’t want to miss it.

  A bulbous man with a grizzled beard, whose surfer shorts hung past his knees to reveal hairy, spindly calves, was shaking his finger rapidly in the face of the lady in yellow.

  “Ah, terrific. I’ve been waiting for him,” Mark said. He looked delighted that the man was here, regardless of the chaos he was causing.

  Perplexed I asked, “Who are these people?”

  Immediately contrite, Mark answered, “Sorry, I thought you knew. They are the Lipscomes’ neighbors. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit. Cordelia Ramer, rabid environmentalist, and her next-door neighbor Otto Ertz, former wrestler, and not above episodes of ’roid rage. Quite a pair.”

  A semicircle of gawkers was gathering around them as Cady tried unsuccessfully to calm Otto Ertz down. Mark Clamenta simply walked up and put his hand on the back of the wrestler’s neck and gave it a pat. “Otto, how’s it going? Woman giving you grief?” Mark laughed and swiveled his head as though he was looking for some agreement that the situation was amusing. Cady and I both caught on and let out a few “hee-hees.”

  Ertz calmed down immediately. He shook hands with Mark, said he was pleased to meet me and generally acted as though his tantrum in the previous couple of minutes hadn’t happened. While Mark was making small talk and Cady was trying to sw
ing the conversation back to whatever aspect of the funeral his news story would cover, I spotted Elaine Tibor walking across the parking lot. She was dressed to the nines in an expensive-looking grey sheath dress and high heels that Ophie would envy. What were surely fourteen-karat-gold pendants graced her neck and ears. It was a heck of a look for a graduate student who waits tables for a living. I watched as she displayed her invitation to one of the men in blue. Then she sashayed through the double doors and into the church.

  “That’s interesting,” I said to no one in particular. “Why would anyone invite the tutor and not the neighbors?”

  “That’s the most galling part of it all. Who was physically closer than we were? Us just down the road?” Cordelia Ramer spread her hands in appeal to the small group around her. “I mean, if a tragedy occurs, neighbors are the first on the scene . . .”

  Her face crashed to stricken and she couldn’t pull back either the words or the look. A tragedy had occurred. No one was around to help. And who knows whether or not a neighbor might have caused it.

  Otto pushed her hands downward. “What difference does it make now? I don’t care who got invited. I’m only here to make sure that Miss Rich Witch is dead and will soon be buried. The woman gave us nothing but grief.” He assumed a high-pitched chalk-on-blackboard kind of voice. “Your trash can is too close to the edge of the road. Don’t mow your lawn so early in the morning. Leave your outside light on at night.” His voice returned to normal. “Orders. All the time, orders. I’m glad she’s dead.”

  Cordelia gasped. “Otto, please.”

  “Come on, Cordy. Life will be happier on the block and you know it. As for the pool . . .”

  “Oh, that. The pool issue is over and we won.” She nodded confidently.

  Cady, ever the newsman, went after the scoop. “Really? Congratulations. When did the court decide?”

  Cordelia gave him a look as if she was a teacher, and a martinet at that, and he had failed his fourth-grade spelling test for the third time. “Sonny, we don’t need judges or courts to win this one. Barry Lipscome is a high-flying business man who is rarely home. Why would he go through the fuss and bother of a lawsuit to build a pool he doesn’t have time to use? The pool issue is dead.”

  “Dead as Mrs. Lipscome,” Otto chimed in.

  No one else said a word. But I’m sure I wasn’t the only one thinking that these two were flush with motive and opportunity.

  Chapter Twenty-six ||||||||||

  On the ride back to the island, I was feeling discouraged that we hadn’t come up with a longer list of suspects. But I supposed finding two was better than finding none at all. I wondered what Mark thought. “Between those two neighbors, there are certainly plenty of motives for murder, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know. They’re both crackpots, that’s for certain, but killers . . . I don’t see it. Loud and pushy, sure. You can see Otto took steroids for years. Never sure exactly how he’ll respond to things. Then again, I’m not a deputy. I expect the deputies are taking a look.”

  When we got to the café, I invited Mark in for an on-the-house lunch but he said he had to stop by the church for a group session and then hoped to spend some more time with George and Alan. “You haven’t forgotten to try to get the sister out of the mix, have you?” When I shook my head he said, “Good. That one’s a fragile bird. Not at all like Bridgy’s aunt. Now there’s a gal who can fend for herself.”

  I got out of the car thinking he didn’t know the half of it.

  The café was quiet with only two occupied tables, but a quick look at the clock told me the early lunch rush was about to start. Bridgy was taking a pile of tableware and cutlery from the soaking sink and loading it into the dishwasher when I walked through the kitchen to our tiny office to change into my usual work uniform of shorts and a tee shirt. When I came out she’d disappeared. I poked my head through the dining room door and saw she was pouring coffee for the folks at Robert Louis Stevenson, so I decided I’d finish loading the dishwasher. I was nearly done when Bridgy pushed through the kitchen door and immediately grabbed her stomach and doubled over. Miguel looked at me in alarm and we both ran to help her. Then we realized she was laughing hysterically but trying to do so as quietly as she could. She looked up, her face wet with tears. “N . . . n . . . napkin. P . . . please.” And went right back to stifling her laughter.

  Miguel handed her a napkin and I half led, half dragged her to the back of the kitchen. “Bridgy, what? And why are you hiding in here?”

  She stood still for a moment wiping her face, trying to gain control. She wheezed out, “Ophie,” and pointed to the door. “You have to see it to believe it.” And her irrepressible giggles started all over again.

  Miguel had had enough. “I’ll go and report back. Then perhaps I can have some sanity in my kitchen, sì?”

  Bridgy reached out to pull him back. “No. I mean yes you can have sanity in the kitchen but let Sassy deal with Ophie. She’s dressed oddly is all.”

  Miguel picked up his black-handled pastry blender and went back to cutting the butter into his piecrust dough. I looked at Bridgy, who gave me the universal double-handed shooing motion to rush me out of the room.

  Bridgy should have prepared me. Then I realized nothing could have prepared me. Ophie was standing in the middle of the room dressed in white capri pants with wide silver buckles at the cuffs. On top she wore an oversized white tee shirt, imprinted with a huge green snake. The snake’s head covered Ophie’s considerable bosom, and the snake’s body curled around the tee shirt front to back, back to front, over and over. Ophie spun like a top several times so that I could follow the snake’s “natural beauty” from head to tail until I was totally dizzy.

  Then I looked at her feet. She of the “well-mannered ladies always dress their feet properly” persuasion was wearing sneakers, and not just any sneakers like rubber-soled backless slide-ins with pretty little bows on the front, or even the sensible deck shoes that she refused to wear the one time we all went out on Cady’s boat. Ophie was wearing hardcore sneakers. Thick firm soles and a toe box wide enough for an actual foot. These on the feet of a woman who wore sandals with mini heels to the beach. Amazing. Before I had a chance to recover from the outfit and the sneakers, Ophie had one last thing to show me. Her picket signs. Each one was colorfully printed and neatly attached to wooden sticks about four feet long. One read:

  FRIENDS DON’T LET FRIENDS KILL SNAKES

  The next:

  DO YOU WANT YOUR GRANDCHILDREN TO LIVE IN A SNAKE-FREE SOCIETY?

  And finally:

  ST. PATRICK DIDN’T KILL THE SNAKES

  HE DROVE THEM OUT OF IRELAND

  That one had a picture of a bearded man wearing a bishop’s miter behind the wheel of a convertible, the backseat overflowing with snakes.

  Now I knew why Bridgy didn’t want Miguel to cross Ophie’s path today. The longer we could delay that, the better off we’d all be. I’ve seen what happens when there is a cranky Miguel in the kitchen, and it isn’t pretty.

  “Ophie, why don’t you sit down and let me pour you some sweet tea.” She settled in at Emily Dickinson and I tucked her signs, upside down, in the back corner behind the counter. She started to object but I said, “We can’t have anyone trip over the sticks. Take a long time to sort that lawsuit out.”

  The word “lawsuit” put the brakes on Ophie in a hurry.

  Ophie took a sip of the glass of tea I’d set in front of her. Then she looked me straight in the eye. “I don’t know what’s wrong with folks ’round here. Snake hasn’t done anything and y’all are ready to kill him for just showing up. The members of the Guy Bradley Environmental Action League are not going to stand for it. We’re having a protest today in Bowditch Point Park. I’m waiting on Augusta and Blondie. We’re meeting here so we can leave our medicines with you, that way you can have Ryan or that handsome lieutenant smugg
le them in to us if we wind up in the hoosegow.”

  Oh, good Lord. I took a deep breath. “What league? And how did you get involved?”

  “Honey chile, Guy Bradley is a martyr for the cause. He was a deputy sheriff and game warden in the Everglades during the Plume Wars.”

  Never smart enough to keep my mouth shut, I said I’d never heard of the Plume Wars.

  “You know how we admire the ladies’ hats in those pictures from about a hundred years ago. The hats with gorgeous feathers flying high. Where do y’all think the feathers came from? Right here in south Florida. Our herons and egrets and other plumed birds. It was Guy Bradley’s job to stop the plunder and he got shot for his troubles back in 1905.”

  Like pulling teeth. “Okay, I get who Guy Bradley was but how did you get involved and what has it got to do with the anaconda?”

  “Well, over at the community center, Cordy was handing out fliers, looking for volunteers . . .”

  Clang. Clang. Clang. Lights and sirens went off in my brain. “Cordy? Cordelia Ramer?”

  Ophie nodded. “Sure. You know her? She’s president of the Action League. She’s the one got this demonstration all set up. And this is just the beginning. Cordy says that all living beings have a right to live out their natural life, even the snakes among us.”

  Well that was food for thought. Unless Cordelia Ramer believed that Tanya Trouble was lower than a snake, she might fall off my suspect list. I decided to switch topics. “Ophelia, I can see that you are very busy but I need a favor. You remember Regina Mersky? You were so kind to her yesterday. She needs more of your down-home kindness.”

  “Whatever that poor darlin’ needs, just tell me.”

  I tried to phrase it as delicately as I could. No telling what Ophie would repeat, or who she’d repeat it to, including Regina. “She is tired, stressed, and who wouldn’t be, given the situation. I was thinking that a little time away from her brothers might clear her head.”