The Cluttered Corpse

by Mary Jane Maffini

  Sally couldn’t have picked a better time to have her baby. Half her friends were already stuck in Woodbridge General; the other half were already visiting. Even Margaret had ducked out of her office to visit Lilith. Very convenient.

  No surprise, there was a partylike atmosphere in her private room in the Mother and Baby Center. Pink flowers filled the room, including a giant bouquet from Jack. He was very disappointed that the hospital had a no-balloons policy.

  “Don’t worry, Jack,” Sally said. “We’ll make up for that when I get home. No latex allergies there.”

  Lilith was out of danger, relocated on the fifth floor near me, and surprisingly well enough to be wheeled in to see Sally and the new baby. She smiled vaguely and briefly before she was whisked away back to her room. Word was she had a good chance of a full recovery. Rose, of course, remained by her side, although she had promised to sleep at home that night. I felt a lump in my throat at how close my friends had come to seeing Bonnie Baxter on the wrong end of a gun.

  “Hey, Charlotte,” Sally said. “Bernice called just as we were leaving for the hospital. She mentioned that she’d like that mudroom project after all. What a ditz.”

  There was so much going on in my head that, for once, I couldn’t think about work.

  I jumped when I spotted Pepper at the door. Without a glance in my direction, she swooped in on Sally. Her skin glowed, her eyes shone, she looked quite magnificent, although in the magnificence sweepstakes, no one can ever top our gal Sal. I watched and waited as Pepper pecked Sally’s cheek. I thought I spotted a special bond, the mothers’ club.

  I felt a wave of guilt and shame as I watched Pepper. I had sent Waylon Favreau to invade her home, well, her husband’s garage, but close enough. How could that ever be forgiven?

  Sally said, “Meet Shenandoah.”

  “Shenandoah,” Pepper said, leaning over the pink bundle and reaching down to stroke the tiny cheek.

  “Did you wash your hands?” Jack said.

  Pepper said, “She’s so beautiful, and that’s a lovely name.”

  Sally shot her an impish grin. “Should be. Jack thought of it.”

  My injuries were catching up with me; the adrenaline from Shenandoah’s arrival wasn’t enough to keep me up much longer. I left them all cooing in the room and stumbled into the hallway. The granite-faced detective stood there, sipping his Stewart’s coffee, waiting for Pepper. My mouth fell open as I spotted Margaret advancing toward him with a can-do look in her eye. When Pepper emerged from Sally’s room, I said, “I urgently need to talk to you. I’ve been leaving messages.”

  “And I’ve had a few things on my mind. Anyway, every time I tried to contact you, you were tied up with the doctors or getting X-rays or whatever.”

  “I guess that’s true. First, congratulations. You will make a terrific mother.”

  “Thank you.”

  I swallowed. “Second, I want to say how sorry I am that I put you and Nick in danger. I hope you can forgive me. I felt I had no—”

  She raised her hand. “Forget it. Worked all right. No one in his family or the police force ever took Nick seriously. Now he’s a hero, all over the news. People are asking him for his autograph. Best thing that ever happened to him.”

  “But won’t he be investigated? There was a death.”

  “I’m not worried. Nick was defending himself and me. With what this Favreau pulled off? Murders, assaults, hit-and-run, plus there’s a lot of outstanding stuff against him. It will be ruled a clean shoot. When it’s over, he’ll probably get a commendation.”

  “Oh, that’s good.”

  “Yeah. It’s hard for him to get respect. This will change things.”

  “I hadn’t thought about it that way.”

  Her eyes shone. “Everyone’s always so disappointed in him: his father, his uncles, his brothers. Now he showed them. I knew he could do it.

  “Right.” He was a vapid, underperforming, womanizing child in a man’s body. But hey, whatever turned her on. Maybe the combination of hero status and fatherhood would make a difference. But any suspicions I’d had about her relationship with the granite-faced detective vanished. There was no one for Pepper but Nick. If only that could work both ways.

  She said, “And your friend Emmy Lou’s out now. We got that one wrong.”

  “I think you can both be heroes. All the family. I believe you’ll find the missing piece of the puzzle about Bonnie and Bill, or whoever they really were—”

  “Fugitives.”

  “This will sound crazy, but if you go to Gary Gigantes shop and check out the toys I left there, you’ll find a little bride and groom mouse. Somewhere inside them, there’s a safety deposit key to something that the Baxters were willing to kill to protect and Waylon Favreau was willing to kill to get. I don’t know where the safety deposit box is or what’s in it, but I wanted to tell you. At least you might get credit for something.”

  I took some satisfaction in watching Pepper’s eyes widen. “Safety deposit box? Beautiful. I bet I know what’s in it. We’ve been working on this all night. Your Bonnie and Bill Baxter were actually Brenda and Bob Billings. There are posters of them down at the station, FBI most wanted. They were implicated in a bank heist, along with a partner. The partner went down, died in jail. Money was never found. Feds have been looking for Brenda and Bob ever since. No way they’d get out of the country. I guess they were lying low, building a life and some businesses to launder their money.”

  I refrained from saying I wasn’t sure how much money you could launder through a cupcake and computer-repair business. “Becoming part of a community.”

  “Right. After a while they’d blend in, get older, change their appearance some more. Heat would die down.”

  “How did the delivery guy fit in?”

  “Favreau was the partner’s cell mate. Maybe the partner filled him in. He was paroled recently and vanished after committing a flurry of contract killings.”

  “He’d tracked down Bonnie and Bill. I think he was stalking them, getting a part-time job as an El Greco delivery guy. He was looking for his chance to search the house and find that money. Bonnie had a gun and she had no problems killing. He must have known that from the partner. Maybe have had some kind of plan to get the loot from them.”

  “Yeah, we’ll never know. Three more lowlifes off the streets. Thanks for the tip about the key. We’ll get our ducks in a row and check the banks.”

  I nodded. “If you’re lucky, you’ll be in time to add to the press conference this afternoon.”

  “Or else the next one.”

  Maybe it was relief. Maybe I was happy because Pepper and I had reached a truce of sorts. Maybe my meds were wearing off. For whatever reason, my head whirled. My knees started to buckle.

  Pepper said, “Are you all right?”

  Jack popped out of Sally’s room, grabbed my elbow, and said, “Charlotte has to go back to her room now. Too much excitement. Anyway, the nurse has kicked us out.”

  “We’ll talk,” Pepper said as Jack bustled me down the hall. “Take care.”

  I barely managed to nod.

  As Jack propelled me back out of the elevator on my floor, the second elevator door opened. Dwayne and Emmy Lou Rheinbeck emerged, followed by a whippet-thin young man with sideburns. Emmy Lou looked drawn and exhausted. She was easily ten pounds thinner than a few days earlier when she’d been stuffed into the police car. Her red hair had lost its shine, her skin sagged somewhat, but despite that she radiated joy. Dwayne was holding a massive bouquet of spring flowers: daffodils, bearded iris, forsythia, tulips, even lily of the valley. Over the top, just like Dwayne himself.

  Dwayne said, “Emmy should be home resting, but she wanted to express her appreciation in person for a moment.”

  Emmy Lou beamed at me. “I know you found who really killed poor Tony. I was so afraid Kevin had done it by accident. I could never let them arrest him. Myrna told me that she spoke to you and that she understands how much I
need to be near Kevin. And Dwayne told me how you fought for me. I am sorry for all the trouble you’ve had. Thank you for helping me connect with my son in a real way.”

  I said, “Perhaps you’ll talk to Tony’s mother too. She’ll be glad to have a living connection to her son and her brother.”

  “Already done,” Emmy Lou said.

  Dwayne thrust the bouquet into my arms. “And we’ve reconnected with my daughter too. Although that would have happened anyway. It’s a bit easier now that we’re both in the same situation. Should never have had secrets from each other.”

  At that moment, I recognized the young man standing behind him, the server from the restaurant. “They’ve moved Lilith,” I said. “She’s down the hall in 512 now.”

  He vanished down the corridor, leaving Jack and me to say good-bye to the Rheinbecks’. “I hope you’ll like what we’ve decided to do with the stuffed animal collection,” I said.

  I caught a glimpse of the old Emmy Lou when she responded, “Even though Dwayne has already paid, I’ve decided I never want to see them again. I’m giving them all away. But thank you for all you’ve done.”

  Dwayne mouthed “sorry.”

  As the elevator door closed behind them, I snuffled. “All these happy endings. It’s a bit too much for me.”

  “And more to come,” Jack said. “When you’re ready.”

  Mary Jane Maffini is a lapsed librarian, a former mystery bookseller, and a previous president of Crime Writers of Canada. In addition to creating the Charlotte Adams series, she is the author of the Camilla MacPhee Mysteries, the Fiona Silk series, and nearly two dozen mystery short stories. She has won two Arthur Ellis awards for short fiction, and The Dead Don’t Get Out Much, her latest Camilla MacPhee Mystery, was nominated for a Barry Award in 2006. She lives in Ottawa, Ontario, with her long-suffering husband and two miniature dachshunds.