Black and White and Dead All Over: A Midlife Crisis Mystery (Midlife Crisis Mysteries)

by Marlo Hollinger

  I got into my car and headed for Eden Academy. As soon as I was through I planned to drive past Kate’s house and see if her husband’s car was in the driveway and if I had the nerve, I was going to knock on the door and introduce myself.

  I swallowed a bit nervously, not at all sure what I was doing but at the same time knowing that I had to do something. Kate was dead, Fritz was in a coma and somehow or other the two events were connected. I was sure of it.

  “Welcome to the White Elephant!” Kate Weston’s husband opened the door widely and gave me a smile that was positively dazzling. He wasn’t at all what I had expected. If I’d thought about the kind of man who would marry someone like Kate—which I hadn’t—I would have imagined someone just as nerdy and geeky as Kate had been. Someone short and skinny with thick glasses and hair that needed cutting. The man I was looking at was none of those things. Tall with dark hair and stunning blue eyes, he looked a bit like Paul Newman in his prime—not that Paul Newman had ever been out of his prime. How on earth had Kate ever managed to bag this guy? “Do I know you?”

  “Hello,” I said as I realized that I didn’t know Kate’s husband’s name. Some reporter I was! “I work at the Kemper Times and I was in the neighborhood and wanted––”

  “To stop by and tell me how sorry you were about Kate’s passing,” he finished for me. “How kind of you. What’s your name?”

  “DeeDee Pearson.”

  Throwing back his head, Mr. Weston laughed. “The newbie!” he said. “Kate talked about you quite often right before she died. What did she call you? Her ‘latest lamb to the slaughter.’ Would you like to come in?”

  “Just for a minute,” I said. “I don’t want to disturb you.”

  “You aren’t disturbing me at all. I’d welcome the company, actually.” He gestured for me to come in the house. Mr. Weston was dressed in a peacock blue silk bathrobe that had lots of gold embroidery all over it and silk pajama bottoms along with a pair of Ugg slippers. I knew they were Uggs because I’d gotten the same slippers for Steve last Christmas.

  Oh, boy, Steve. My husband wasn’t going to be pleased at all when he heard what I was doing but I was sure that the end would justify the means. Taking a deep breath, I stepped into the front hallway of the White Elephant.

  I could see what Natalie meant about needing sunglasses. The glare off the white walls made me squint and although it didn’t seem possible, the inside of the Weston house seemed brighter than the sunshine outdoors. “Wow,” I said as my eyes teared up.

  “I know,” Kate’s husband said sympathetically. “It’s blinding, isn’t it? What can I say? Kate loved white. Never wanted any color in the house. It was a thing of hers. One of her many ‘things.’”

  “Quirks, you mean?”

  “Or affectations. Six of one, half a dozen of another. Let’s go in the kitchen. I’ve started doing a little something there about this hideous color scheme—if you can call it that. Lack of a color scheme might be more accurate.”

  His robe flapping at his sides like a huge, oversized bird, Mr. Weston led me down the wide hallway to the back of the house. It was silly but as we walked I put my hand in my sweater pocket and found my phone. If he tried anything funny I’d be able to dial 911 faster than the speed of light.

  “I’m Lou Grant, by the way,” he said over one shoulder.

  I couldn’t have heard him correctly. “What?” I asked as I struggled to keep up with him. Even though he was wearing slippers, Kate’s husband walked like he was racing to catch a bus.

  “Lou Grant,” he repeated. “Do you remember the old Lou Grant show or the Mary Tyler Moore Show?” We had reached the kitchen, a sparkling room filled with, naturally, white cupboards, walls and a floor that looked like a sheet of ice. Lou Grant—really?—hadn’t been kidding when he said that he was doing something about the unrelenting tidal wave of white on white. Fortunately, there was relief from the snowy landscape on the other side of the room where a huge table was covered with a rainbow striped tablecloth. On top of the table was a box from Macy’s. The box was open and I could see that it was filled with Fiestaware in every color offered.

  “Of course, I remember Lou Grant,” I said with a laugh. “That show is why I always wanted to work for a newspaper.”

  “Me too. I was born with the horrible name of Rudolph Fenton Weston but I legally changed it to Lou Grant in 1979 when I was eighteen. After my hero of the newsroom.”

  “Why didn’t you change it to just Lou?” I asked.

  “What fun would there be in that?” Lou Grant questioned. “Besides, no one remembers Lou Grant anymore, of course, just dinosaurs like us, DeeDee. Coffee? Or a glass of wine?”

  “Coffee would be fine but I really didn’t mean to take up a whole lot of your time. I just wanted to stop by and tell you how sorry I am for your loss.”

  Lou Grant looked at me quizzically before comprehension dawned in his sky blue eyes. “Oh, right, my loss! You mean Kate?”

  “Well, yes,” I said feeling slightly idiotic. Lou Grant most definitely wasn’t acting like the grieving widower. If anything, he seemed quite chipper.

  “How do I put this diplomatically? I guess there’s really no way to do that although I should know that by now—I was married to the woman for thirty years. I’m going to be blunt with you, DeeDee. Kate and I got married because I had health insurance and she didn’t. We were never romantically involved. We started out friends and that’s what we remained, more or less, throughout our marriage.”

  I sat down on a white kitchen chair with a thump. I’m not completely naïve but I still always register a large degree of surprise when I hear about people having a marriage of convenience. Steve is my best friend in the entire world but he’s also my husband and I can’t imagine being in any other kind of marriage. What’s the point? Why would anyone want a marriage of convenience? “Didn’t Kate get health insurance when she started working at the newspaper?”

  “Of course she did, although it was never a very good policy. As you will undoubtedly learn, DeeDee, the Kemper Times does everything on the cheap. My insurance policy was always better.”

  “I heard you once worked at the Kemper Times.”

  “Yes, I did, about a million years ago. I’m actually the one who got Kate her job. I lobbied for her and since no one else applied, she got it. She owed me for that as well as for so many other things it created something of an imbalance in our relationship. There were times when I felt quite strongly that she resented me.”

  “Then why did you stay together?”

  Lou Grant shrugged. “It was easier than splitting up. Maybe that tells you how lazy the two of us were but it’s the truth. Besides, Kate came from a very wealthy family and once she came into her inheritance there was no way that I would leave her. Once and for all, I balanced our relationship by doing exactly what I wanted to do.”

  “What was that?”

  “I became a househusband and let her decide just about everything while I got to do just about everything my little old heart desired.” He cocked his head as he studied me. “You strike me as a nice, normal woman so I’m sure this is all very bizarre to you.”

  “Just a little,” I admitted. “So Kate was the one with the white fetish?” I asked as I looked around the kitchen again.

  “She certainly was. Now that she’s gone I’m going to either sell the White Elephant or spend a whole ton of her money making it something I like. Who knows? I might even go hog wild and paint the living room red. Kate would be rolling in her grave if I hadn’t had her cremated.”

  Wow, this guy was possibly thrilled to pieces that his wife was gone. Kate probably had a nice, fat life insurance policy on top of all of the family money that Lou Grant was now going to inherit. It wasn’t surprising that he was so giddy. “I wonder who would have wanted to hurt her,” I ventured, “although I suppose she might have interrupted a robbery in the newspaper building.”

  Lou Grant laughed loudly. “You are a babe i
n the woods, aren’t you? Why would there ever be a robbery at the newspaper? There’s no decent equipment in that building, not even a semi-decent coffee maker. I’m sure there’s less than a hundred bucks in petty cash. There’s nothing to steal in that dump. And who would want to hurt her? How much time do you have, DeeDee, because I could give you a list about half a mile long of people who would like to have killed my wife. She wasn’t exactly a well-loved figure in Kemper. Everyone disliked her.”

  “Did you?” I asked feeling like the rudest person on the planet.

  Lou Grant considered my question. “Sometimes,” he admitted, “although I understood her. Not many people did. Let me put it this way; I appreciated her. Kate let me live my life exactly how I wanted to, no questions asked, and I did the same for her.”

  “Huh,” I said, confused. Was Lou Grant talking about both of them having relationships outside of their marriage? He had to be. Well, that made sense since it didn’t sound to me like they had any kind of marriage at all. “So what did Kate get out of being married to you?”

  “Other than the insurance at the beginning of our relationship, I gave her respectability and freedom. Kate needed a husband to hide behind but she didn’t want a real husband. I didn’t ask her where she went or who she was with or what she was up to.” He smirked. “I especially didn’t ask who her current boy toy was.”

  I felt my eyes boggle inside my head. Of all the people I’d ever met, Kate Weston was about the last one I ever would have expected to have a ‘boy toy.’ “Oh?” It occurred to me to wonder—briefly—why Lou Grant Weston was being so forthcoming with me, a complete stranger. Then I spied the almost empty bottle of vodka on the gleaming white counter and I had my answer. I could smell a faint whiff of alcohol emanating from him but he wasn’t slurring his speech and he walked like he was perfectly sober. Perhaps alcohol had the effect on him of loosening his tongue.

  “You look shocked. I know, it is surprising since Kate was so, well, unattractive. However, even the most unattractive people are able to attract attractive people if they have plenty of money. Which my dear, late wife most definitely did.”

  “Um, who was she seeing?” Whoever her latest boy toy was might provide a very big clue as to who killed Kate Weston.

  Lou Grant picked up a Fiestaware coffee cup and took a large swallow, a smile tugging on the corners of his Paul Newmanesque mouth. “Her latest? He worked at Kutrate Kemicals. I do believe his name was something like Tex or Rex. Tex, I think.”

  It wouldn’t be hard to track down someone named Tex working at Kutrate Kemicals. I had what I’d come for and now I wanted nothing more than to scoot down the white carpeted hallway and out the white front door and into the safety of my own car. I didn’t feel unsafe with Lou Grant, but I didn’t feel exactly comfortable with him either. I had one last question for him. “If you loved newspapers so much that you changed your name to Lou Grant after a character on a TV show about newspapers, why did you stop working at the Kemper Times?”

  “I wasn’t a reporter at the Times,” Lou Grant explained. “I was the newspaper’s accountant. I got a much better paying gig at Kutrate Kemicals, actually, with far better insurance coverage.”

  “Why weren’t you a reporter?”

  “Because, my dear, I can’t write worth a damn and I hate interviewing people. That’s a lot harder than I bargained for. I contemplated changing my name back to Rudolph but I like Lou Grant. It has appeal. Lou Grant Weston. It has panache, just like me.”

  It did although it was something of a mouthful. “Well,” I said, “I should be going. Thank you for talking to me and again, I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “Very kind of you,” Lou Grant said as his cell phone started to chirp. “How about that coffee?”

  “No, thanks. I’ve taken up enough of your time. I’ll see myself out.”

  Walking out of the kitchen, I lingered for a moment to see who was calling Lou Grant.

  “Hey,” Lou Grant said, “I’ve been waiting on you…yeah…I’ll be there. Give me an hour to clean myself up and then you’d better come over here because I’m half in the bag and the last thing I need is to get popped by the police. See you soon, Caroline.”

  Caroline?

  I scooted down the long hallway and out the front door like I was being propelled by a giant catapult. Of course there was more than one person named Caroline living in Kemper but it was highly possible that the Caroline Lou Grant was talking to was none other than Caroline Osborn, ace reporter at the Kemper Times.

  I got into my car and considered my next move. I wanted to go out to Kutrate Kemicals and see if I could track down Tex or Rex although if I did manage to find him I wasn’t at all sure how I’d broach the subject of Kate with him. I also wanted to stay in my car and stake out the White Elephant to see who drove up and parked in the driveway in an hour. Well, there was no reason I couldn’t do both. I knew what kind of car Caroline drove. I’d go out to Kutrate and then swing past Lou Grant’s house on the way back home. Steve and I were going out to dinner so it wasn’t like I had to rush home and throw something on the stove. I glanced at my watch. Almost four. Steve had a meeting until seven. I had plenty of time to drop by the paper and type up my story and then head out to Kutrate Kemicals. Putting my car into gear, I pointed it in the direction of the Kemper Times.

  Chapter Sixteen

  After finishing my story and leaving the paper for the day, it occurred to me that my best source of information about what was going on at Kutrate Kemicals was probably Jane but I seriously doubted that Jane would cooperate. After all, it was her job on the line. My second best source of information probably would have been Fritz Scheider but he was in a coma. Maybe this Tex or Rex would come through.

  After parking in the visitors’ lot, I walked to the main entrance. This was my fourth visit to Kutrate Kemicals in less than ten days and it was starting to feel familiar to me, almost like I worked there. An idea occurred to me as I entered the lobby area and smiled at the receptionist. “Hello,” I said in a very mom-type voice, “do you remember me?”

  The redheaded receptionist shook her head. “Not really.”

  I hesitated as I tried to choose between jogging her memory as Bob Meredith’s assistant or Jane’s mom. I decided to go with the role that made me much happier—Jane’s mom. I’m Jane Pearson’s mom.”

  “Oh, right, now I remember,” the receptionist said. “You two don’t look anything alike. Jane’s so pretty. And thin.”

  I smiled. “Jane asked me to come in and pick up something from one of her co-workers. His name is Rex or Tex.” I giggled in what I hoped was an absentminded middle-aged kind of way. “I can’t remember which,” I confided.

  The receptionist looked sympathetic. “Don’t worry about it, Mrs. Pearson. That happens a lot to people when they get older. My grandmother forgets things all the time.”

  No doubt about it; I didn’t like young people.

  “Jane must have meant Rex Folsom. He’s the caretaker for her floor.”

  “The caretaker?”

  “That’s what Kutrate Kemicals calls custodians,” the receptionist explained. “It sounds more PC than janitor.”

  Not seeing what difference the title made as long as the person was treated with the same respect as everyone else, I asked, “Do you know where I could find Rex?”

  “Probably up on Jane’s floor. He comes in at three o’clock so I imagine he’s already started working.”

  “Is it okay if I just go up there?”

  “Sure. You’re practically family, Mrs. Pearson. Here at Kutrate Kemical, we treat our family well.”

  “Thanks…” I looked down at the receptionist’s faux wood nameplate. “…Elizabeth.”

  “My pleasure. Just take that elevator to the seventh floor and you’ll find Rex. You can’t miss him.”

  I smiled my thanks at her again and walked toward the elevator. Elizabeth seemed happy working at Kutrate and Jane was usually happy with her job. Fr
itz, however, wasn’t the least bit happy but that appeared to have more to do with his boss than the job he had. I’d have to see if Rex felt like he was part of the Kutrate Kemical family too.

  Stepping off the elevator on the seventh floor, I glanced quickly in both directions but didn’t see a single soul. Everyone must have quit for the day. I was trying to decide what to do next—flying by the seat of my pants often results in, well, flying by the seat of my pants—when a burly young man came around the corner pushing a cart full of cleaning supplies. He was on the short side but well-built with broad shoulders, a flat waist and muscular thighs that I could see through his very tight blue jeans. He had curly blond hair and was maybe twenty-five years old. If this was Rex I could see why Lou Grant had called him Kate’s boy toy. He was practically an infant.

  “Hey,” he said when he spotted me. “Can I help you? Everyone’s gone for the day.”

  I thought fast. I was tempted to lie and tell Rex that I was doing a human interest story on custodians but Elizabeth might tell him that I was Jane’s mother and then I’d be in trouble with Jane. The next time I had a murder case to solve I was going to make sure that none of the members of my family had even the remotest of connections to it. “I hope so,” I said brightly. “My daughter is Jane Pearson. I left something in her office and I’d like to get it. Could you open it for me? Elizabeth sent me up.” I added that so Rex wouldn’t think I was some crazy woman who’d wandered in off the street.

  “Sure,” Rex said agreeably. “I can see the resemblance between you and your daughter. Both beauties. When is Jane getting back from Vegas?”

  This was one young person I liked. “She’s back. She was in today but I imagine she’s at the hospital now checking on Fritz.” I mentally patted myself on the back for bringing Fritz into the conversation so neatly. My goal was to get as much out of Rex as fast as I possibly could without looking like I was pumping him and then get the heck out of Kutrate Kemicals.