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

by Marlo Hollinger

  “What’s your interest in all of this? What do you care if Fritz was poisoned or not?”

  “I’m a journalist,” I reminded him. “Of course I’m interested!”

  Bernard squinted at me for several long and uncomfortable moments. I had the feeling that he wanted to grill me some more but I also had the feeling that he didn’t think he’d learn much. “Why don’t I walk you to your car?” he finally said.

  “That isn’t necessary in the least,” I told him as I got to my feet. “I’d prefer to walk by myself. If it’s all right for me to leave, that is.”

  Putting a butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-his-mouth expression on his face, Bernard looked at me innocently. “You were never being held here against your will, DeeDee. I simply wanted to talk to you in private.”

  Right. And I’m constantly being mistaken for Angelina Jolie. “If you’ll excuse me,” I said stiffly. “My husband is going to be wondering where I am.”

  Bernard followed me to his office door, too closely for my taste, and put a large, sweaty hand on my arm as I reached for the door knob. “It’s been pleasant talking to you, DeeDee, but I have a brief word of advice: don’t bother wasting your time trying to figure out who killed Kate Weston or if Fritz was poisoned. People like you should stick to things you know—baking and cleaning and taking care of that husband of yours.”

  Although he might have had a point, I didn’t appreciate his comment or the patronizing tone he used to deliver it. “Thanks for the advice,” I said curtly, biting my tongue to make sure I didn’t add anything else. After all, this creep was Jane’s boss and I’d done enough to jeopardize her job. But one thing I knew for sure: as soon as I got home I was going to start a campaign encouraging Jane to start finding a job someplace—any place—else. Bernard Morton was not the kind of person I wanted my daughter, or anyone else’s child, to work for. The guy was a jerk through and through.

  Safely in the hallway, I half walked, half ran to the elevator that would bring me back into the world and away from the oh-so-slimy Bernard Morton. Thankfully, the elevator doors were open and I slid inside and pushed the L for Lobby button quickly. The doors shut and for the first time since arriving at Kutrate Kemicals a half an hour or so earlier, I felt the tension in my shoulder muscles relax slightly although they still felt as tight as steel cords. That man was unbelievable! He was either the most paranoid person on the planet or he had something to hide. Something shady that involved not only Fritz Scheider but the murder of Kate Weston and more than likely Kutrate Kemicals.

  It has to be ‘Fat Off.’ That’s the connection, only how?

  Thinking hard, I hit the lobby running and within about thirty seconds was behind the wheel and headed straight for home, completely forgetting about going back to Lou Grant’s to spy on his mystery guest. All I wanted was to get home as quickly as I possibly could.

  “DeeDee, this is too dangerous,” Steve said. We were sitting at the kitchen table an hour later over a meal that I’d thrown together from boxes, mixes and whatever I could find in the freezer. Although I’m sure the end result was unbelievably high in sodium and chemicals, it tasted pretty good but that might have been because of my chat with Bernard. Near death experiences often ignite a person’s appetite. “I forbid you to do any more investigating into either your boss’s murder or what happened to Fritz.”

  I helped myself to some more macaroni and cheese. “Since when have you ever forbidden me to do anything? We don’t have that kind of marriage, Steve.”

  “Maybe we should,” he said darkly. “I don’t like this, DeeDee. I don’t like it one little bit.”

  “Well, neither do I but we can’t just let it go. Jane works for that man, remember? It’s our moral duty to find out if he was involved with Kate’s death. I’m pretty sure he had something to do with Fritz’s.”

  “But how can you do anything?” Steve persisted. “Leave it to the police. That’s what they’re paid to do. You’re not a detective or anything resembling any kind of sleuth, honey. You’re a wife and a mom and a journalist. Stick with the things you know.”

  Although I was happy that he’d remembered to include journalist in the list, I wasn’t about to let anything go. “Steve, Jane works at Kutrate Kemicals. She works for Bernard Morton. Something stinks in that whole set up and I’d bet my last dollar that it’s directly related to ‘Fat Off’ and that man. I think Kate found out about ‘Fat Off’ and was planning to do an expose on it. Bernard must have found out and killed her. Maybe Fritz knew about it and that was what he was going to tell me at the Coffee Hut the other night.”

  “People like Bernard Morton don’t go around killing people. They hire other people to do the killing for them. Besides, why would he kill her when he could just buy her off?”

  “Maybe Kate wasn’t interested in being bought off. Maybe she was shooting for the Pulitzer. She was plenty rich on her own, remember. Her house is extremely tacky but it takes some mighty big bucks to be that tacky. Besides, everyone has been saying that all she cared about was her job at the paper. It makes sense that she was planning some kind of expose that would make her famous.”

  “And that’s another thing,” Steve said. “I don’t like you going to strange men’s houses by yourself. Kate’s husband could have been some kind of weirdo who might have attacked you when you started asking nosy questions.”

  “He’s weird but he isn’t a weirdo. I can tell the difference.”

  “I’m sure you can but you didn’t know that until you were inside his house. If he’d been a weirdo instead of weird, it would have been too late for you to do anything about it.”

  “And what about that thing Fritz said, about Kate being his business partner? Maybe she owned a piece of ‘Fat Off.’”

  “Then why would she write an expose?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe Fritz decided to freeze her out and that’s when she decided to write something up.”

  “That’s a whole lot of maybes.”

  “I have another one for you.”

  “What?”

  “Maybe you could help me out,” I suggested.

  Steve snorted. “How could I possibly help you out?”

  “I’m not sure yet but I know we could think of something. You were a huge help when we were trying to figure out who killed Frank Ubermann.”

  “I’d never describe what I did as a ‘huge’ help but if there’s something I can do, just say the word. You’re sticking your nose into places where it doesn’t belong and if I can’t stop you, I’d like to be around to make sure you don’t get into any trouble.”

  I smiled. “Thanks, honey. You’re one in a million.”

  “So are you and that’s why I’d like to keep you alive until we retire. I’m too old to find another wife.”

  “You smooth talker,” I laughed. “Now let’s figure out our next move.”

  “That’s up to you,” Steve responded. “Just tell me where to be and what to say and I’m good. Now if you don’t mind, that new cable channel is rerunning The Dick Cavett Show and I want to watch it.”

  “Have fun,” I told him. “I’ll clean up in here. I’ll join you in a few minutes.”

  Steve’s offer got my mind running and as I cleaned the kitchen I tried to figure out what was going on. It was clear that Bernard Morton was up to something but what that something was I couldn’t quite see. After loading the dishwasher, wiping down the counters and getting the coffee ready for the morning, I sat down at the kitchen table with a legal pad and a sharp pencil. On the pad I wrote:

  Who killed Kate Weston? Why? Was Fritz poisoned?

  Chewing the eraser end of the pencil, I decided that Kate might have been killed by anyone. Her fellow employees hated her and her husband didn’t seem all that fond of her either but my money was on somebody Bernard Morton hired to permanently shut her up. That had to be the connection between Kate and Fritz. Fritz knew that Bernard had hired someone to kill Kate and he was going to spill his guts to me, the only p
erson he knew who worked for a newspaper. Bernard stopped that from happening by somehow poisoning him. Maybe he paid off someone in the kitchen at the Coffee Hut, gave him or her a thousand bucks to slip some kind of poison into Fritz’s slice of pecan pie. Bernard had to have access to all kinds of chemicals since he was the head of his own chemical company.

  Of course, I reminded myself, I didn’t know for sure that Fritz had been poisoned. He might have had a heart attack or a stroke but the timing of his attack did seem mighty coincidental to me.

  Who is the most likely person to know about the business connection between Kate and Fritz?

  Again, pencil chewing time. I stared at the sheet of paper and tried to pinpoint someone who had a connection to both Fritz and Kate. Jane? No, she didn’t know Kate. Me? I barely knew Fritz and my relationship with Kate was almost brand new. I thought some more but couldn’t come up with anyone. Fritz knew the most and at the moment he couldn’t tell me a thing. Frustrated, I crumpled the paper up and threw it in the recycling basket. The problem was that I didn’t know what I was doing, a problem that had often plagued me throughout my entire life. I didn’t know enough about the newspaper or Kutrate Kemicals or Kate or Fritz or Bernard Morton to figure out what the heck had happened.

  So find out. You’re a journalist now. Start asking the hard questions. Do some digging. Research. Sitting at the kitchen table feeling sorry for yourself isn’t going to solve anything!

  All true. I got up and headed for the family room. Time to pull out my laptop and see what I could discover.

  “This is great,” Steve told me when I sat down next to him. “Dick Cavett is talking about Watergate. I’d forgotten most of this stuff.”

  Looking at the television set, I watched a young Dick Cavett talk about the Watergate scandal. As he talked, I remembered how Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward had broken that scandal. They had been newspaper reporters assigned to cover the break in at a hotel named the Watergate. The result of their coverage had been the resignation of the President of the United States and an entire country changed forever. But they had a Deep Throat to help them. My Deep Throat was in a coma. I was on my own.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “I know what you can do,” I told Steve excitedly, shaking his shoulder to wake him up. It was almost three in the morning and Steve had to get up at seven but I couldn’t wait until then. If I waited, I might forget my idea and once I forgot it I knew that I’d never be able to retrieve it. There’s something about hitting fifty that makes remembering things, even important things, an often impossible task.

  “What is it?” Steve bolted up and reached for his glasses. “What’s the matter? Is it one of the kids?”

  “Everything’s fine,” I quickly assured him. “But I had an idea of how you can help me figure out who killed Kate and Fritz!”

  “DeeDee,” Steve moaned, put his glasses back on his nightstand and fell back on his pillow. “Can’t this wait?” He pulled the pillow over his face.

  “It could but I’m afraid I’ll forget. Just listen, Steve. This will just take a minute. What if we did the same thing we did when we were trying to figure out who killed Frank Ubermann? Remember how you pretended you wanted to buy a piece of pottery from Jack Mulholland so you could question him?”

  Steve’s voice was muffled. “Yes. I also remember that I ended up paying eighty bucks for four of the ugliest mugs on the planet. Didn’t we wind up giving them to Goodwill?”

  “That’s beside the point,” I said impatiently. “The point is that you could do the same thing at Kutrate Kemicals.”

  Steve pulled the pillow off his face and lifted his head to glare at me. “How could I do that?”

  “You could pretend you were a salesman and tell them that you heard about a new weight loss product and you want to get in on the ground floor.”

  “And how would that help you find out who killed Kate or Fritz?”

  “Well,” I elaborated, “if you talked to Bernard Morton and he got all upset and nervous, we’d know that he was involved.”

  “I hardly think a salesman would talk to the president of the company,” Steve said. “Especially a fake salesman. Besides, I don’t know anything about sales or diet products or chemicals or anything remotely related to Kutrate Kemicals.”

  He sounded a little irritated and I knew that I should drop it but I was too wound up to stop. “Then you could pretend you want to work there,” I suggested. This was my Plan B and while I knew the odds were extremely low that Steve would go for it, I was willing to give it a shot.

  “Doing what? I’m not qualified to do anything at Kutrate Kemicals other than clean at night after everyone has gone home.”

  “That’s it!” I said, bouncing up and down. “I knew you’d think of something! That would be perfect, Steve!”

  “DeeDee,” Steve said, “I have a full-time job that takes up all of my energy. How would I ever be able to do another job at night?”

  “You wouldn’t have to do it forever,” I pointed out. “Plus you have a vacation coming up. You could do it then.”

  “I didn’t plan on spending my vacation working as a custodian at Kutrate Kemicals. Why don’t you suggest your idea to Tyler? He’s not doing anything. Although I doubt Kutrate will hire him,” Steve added grumpily. “Your son doesn’t have the most stellar work history.”

  “That’s a great idea! I’ll talk to Tyler in the morning. Now go back to sleep,” I told him, lying down myself. “You’re keeping me up.”

  A few minutes later, I heard the deep, even sound of Steve’s breathing and knew that he’d fallen back to sleep. I also knew that I wasn’t going to be so lucky. My mind was racing but in a good way. Tyler working at Kutrate would be perfect. Now I had to find out if there were any openings and what Tyler needed to do to apply. Who knew? Maybe he’d like working there and might be able to get benefits like health insurance and PTO. It had to beat his current job of doing exactly nothing.

  I finally fell asleep around four after setting my mental alarm clock for seven. I wanted to talk to Tyler as early as I possibly could. Leave it to Steve to give me a great suggestion. Whoever said that marriage was a two-part invention sure knew what they were talking about.

  “I’ll do it,” Tyler said immediately. “I’ve always wanted to work the night shift. I don’t know why I didn’t think of applying there myself.”

  “It’s not a glamour job,” I cautioned. “Being a custodian is hard work and it doesn’t pay very well.” I had already looked up openings at Kutrate Kemicals and there were several custodial positions available immediately. They didn’t pay well at all but on the other hand, whatever they paid was more than what Tyler was currently making which was whatever I gave him.

  “I know that but it’s honorable work,” Tyler said. “Where would the world be if people didn’t clean it up at night? I think it might be a very cool job. Plus I could sleep all day without Dad having a hissy fit.”

  “If you don’t like it, you can quit. This is just to find out some information for me about Kutrate Kemicals.”

  “I can do both,” Tyler said with a wave of his hand. “I don’t want anyone to know that Jane is my sister or that I’m spying so I’ll keep a very low profile. After all, if I like it I don’t want the bosses to know I’m a snitch.”

  “You aren’t a snitch. You’re an investigator.”

  “That sounds good,” Tyler agreed. “How do I apply?”

  After showing Tyler the website, I left for work. I had an interview lined up for later that morning but before I left I wanted to do a little sleuthing on my own. First on my list: another chat with some of my co-workers. Everyone seemed too casual about Kate’s death to me. While I didn’t expect anyone to be all that broken up—the woman hadn’t exactly incited sympathy in anyone—I did think that there should be some kind of emotions cropping up around the newspaper. My gosh, we were a bunch of reporters, but no one seemed interested in figuring out who killed Kate. Or why. Shouldn’
t there be at least some professional curiosity about her death?

  At work I went into the break room to start a fresh pot of coffee, a job that seemed to be permanently mine. I was okay with that although I did always take a fast look around to make sure Caroline wasn’t within striking distance when I was brewing coffee. Even though I knew it was her problem and not mine, I still didn’t want to deal with it.

  The coffee was almost ready when Bob Meredith came into the room. “Ah, the fair DeeDee!” he exclaimed. “Our Coffee Queen! Our Earth Mother of the Humble Coffee Bean!”

  “Hi, Bob,” I said. “You’re just in time.”

  “I planned it that way. Did you know that it takes exactly nineteen minutes from your arrival to a fresh pot of coffee? I’ve been watching you. And timing you.”

  “How observant,” I said.

  “I am an award-winning journalist,” Bob reminded me. “It’s my duty to be aware of the details.”

  “I see.” Here was an opening if ever I’d heard one. “So what do you think about Kate’s death? What kind of details have you observed about that?”

  Bob almost spilled the mug of coffee he was holding all over the front of his blue jeans. “What?” he asked in a hearty voice—a little too hearty voice—after setting the mug down and shooting me an ingenuous glance. “I for one don’t know who offed that crazy woman. Nor do I care.”

  “You just said that it’s your duty to be aware of details,” I said. “Don’t you think someone getting murdered in this very building would require a little investigation from the rest of us?”

  “It’s a touchy scenario, DeeDee. Kate was our boss; she was killed on site and nobody wants to do the digging and then discover that it was one of us. Especially since none of us really care who killed Kate. We’re just glad she’s gone.”

  “That’s terrible,” I said.

  “But true. You didn’t know her well, DeeDee, but I think you’d been around Kate Weston long enough to have realized that the woman didn’t exactly inspire admiration in her employees. Or underlings, as she preferred to call us.”