Death to the Highest Bidder: A Jill Andrews Cozy Mystery #2

by Nicole Ellis

  “And your mother wants to tour Europe in luxury instead.”

  “Ok. So can’t you do both?” I looked back and forth between them.

  My dad leaned against a wall and stared at the ground.

  My mother pressed her lips together and looked at me with eyes bright with tears. “It’s not so much the travel, but that we’ve realized we’re two very different people.”

  “Ok.” I stood, pacing the ground.

  As much as I didn’t want to, I understood. Although Adam and I had met in college, we hadn’t married until we’d both graduated and been out in the workplace for a few years. In that time, we’d both been able to experience the world.

  “Does Becky know?” I asked.

  “We haven’t told her yet,” my mother said. “We’ve been trying to figure out a good time to get down to Oregon to see her.” She smoothed a strand of hair away from my face. Her fingers brushed my cheek, sending a pang of longing for my childhood through me.

  “Please don’t say anything to Becky. We want to be the ones to tell her. We’ll let you know as soon as possible if anything changes in our relationship.” My father stood in front of me, looking helpless.

  I summoned up all the strength I had left. “Can you watch the kids for a few minutes? I’d like to be alone to think about this.”

  “Sure, honey. Take all the time you need.” Mom rocked Ella back and forth.

  When I neared the door and was far enough away from them that I thought I could speak without crying, I said in a strained voice, “Thank you for telling me. I do understand, but it’s going to take me a while to wrap my head around this.”

  Their heads bobbed up and down rapidly.

  “I love you.” I swiveled and escaped to the parking lot, where I sat on a curb, staring blindly at a flowerbed filled with petunias.

  My childhood had been pretty close to idyllic. With my parents both being teachers, we’d spent summers and school breaks camping and playing together. It had always been my sister, me, and them. If my parents divorced, what would holidays with my family look like? Would my parents still celebrate important events together? Would they remarry? Would I like their new partners? I shook my head. I couldn’t go down this rabbit hole. I didn’t even know what the next week would bring, much less the next few years. For all I knew, they could decide in a few months that they were actually meant for each other.

  I dried my eyes and returned to their hotel room. We decided that my father would take Mikey to visit the local children’s museum in Everton. Dad was especially eager to teach Mikey about the extensive collection of model trains there, a passion of his. My mother asked if Ella and I would join her for lunch at Lindstrom’s before she took my daughter on a shopping spree. I figured dealing with them one-on-one would be preferable to seeing them together, so I agreed.

  After helping my father install Mikey’s car seat into his SUV, I waved goodbye to my son, made sure my father was prepared for an afternoon with a three-year-old, and left for the mall. Mikey was so excited to see his grandfather that he barely acknowledged I’d left. Neither my mom nor I spoke about the separation the entire way to the mall. When we got there, I dropped her off in front of Lindstrom’s, where she was going to return a sweater. Then, I drove around the parking lot until I found a spot that wasn’t halfway to the next city, put Ella in her stroller, and speed-walked through the mall, slowing as I approached Lindstrom’s. I was nervous about spending time alone with my mom after the bombshell she and my father had dropped on me only an hour earlier.

  Ella giggled and I looked up. My mother was walking toward us, making faces at her granddaughter. She’d changed into a knee-length dress that accentuated her svelte figure. I hoped I would look half as good as her when I was in my fifties. I pressed my lips together and swallowed nervously before smiling at her.

  “Hey, Mom.” I wrapped an arm around her shoulders, and she leaned in. Her familiar Chanel No. 5 perfume encircled me in its comforting embrace. Childhood memories of my family happy together flooded my mind.

  “Hey, sweetie.” She looked into my face and frowned. “I didn’t get a chance to ask you earlier, but are you ok? You have dark circles under your eyes. Have you been sleeping?”

  I rubbed my right eye as though I could brush away the dark bags under them which had appeared a week ago.

  “Let’s check out the makeup counter at Lindstrom’s after lunch, ok?”

  “Sure, Mom.” I knew the only thing that would truly help was for the auction to be over, for Louis’s murderer to be found, and for my parents to kiss and make up. That, and about one hundred hours straight of sleep.

  “You know, you need to take better care of yourself.” She looked me up and down. “Have you been eating right and exercising?”

  “Mom.” I fought to keep my tone in check. “When am I supposed to exercise? I have two little kids and a busy life. Right now, exercise isn’t top of my priorities.”

  “Well it should be. You need to take care of yourself now, so you’ll feel your best later in life. Your father and I go to the gym several times a week.” She eyed me. “Have you been eating vegetables and whole grains?”

  I felt like a child being reprimanded by their parent for not eating their broccoli at dinner. My blood pressure rose.

  “I do the best I can.” Did french fries count as a vegetable? I figured that was a stretch. As a long-time physical education and health teacher, Mom had made a career out of exercising and eating healthy. Somehow, I hadn’t inherited her zest for it. She was right though, I did need to take better care of myself. Maybe then I wouldn’t be so tired all the time.

  She wrestled Ella’s stroller out of my grip and walked purposefully toward the department store, not stopping until we reached the elevator. I followed dutifully behind them, wishing I was back in my office working on the auction preparations rather than hanging out in a department store during work hours.

  “You like Lindy’s Café, right? You always did when you were a kid.” Worry clouded her eyes.

  “I do like it.” I smiled at her. “Thanks for thinking of it, Mom.” Could it be that she was just as nervous around me as I was with her?

  I did love Lindy’s Café. While the store itself was pretentious and employed haughty salespeople, the café was decorated in a style that I called atrium-chic. It was filled with plants and sunlight, and they piped bird noises through speakers. I felt as though I’d been transported into a jungle paradise. The food itself was varied, and I’d never disliked anything I ever ordered there. It had been awhile since I’d gone there though. With two kids, a household, and a job, I had very little time to hang out with friends on a leisurely day at the mall. I missed that. My botched girls’ night out with Desi had been the closest I’d come in a long time to having fun with a friend without the kids around. Being a mom was great, but sometimes I missed my independence.

  After we’d ordered, my mom played peek-a-boo with Ella, who was propped up in a high chair between us. Ella soon tired of the game and occupied herself with picking Cheerios off the table instead. After she’d scattered all the cereal, she focused on a stuffed parrot hanging in nearby tree.

  “So how have things been going?” my mother asked. The waitress set our drinks on the table and scurried away.

  “Stressful. You know we have Mikey’s school auction tomorrow night, but in addition to that, Desi and I found an auction donor’s body last week when we went to his office to pick up a donation. Everything since then has been a mess.” I sipped my Diet Coke.

  “Oh, honey, I’m sorry. That’s horrible. Did you know the man?”

  “No, but one of my friends did, and now she’s one of the police’s main suspects.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “He was murdered? Your friend killed him?”

  “No,” I said, in a sharper tone than I’d intended. “I mean, yes he was murdered, but I don’t think she did it. But she was dating him, and he turned out to be married, which she didn’t know
.”

  “Did his wife know about her?”

  “Yes, it appears that she did.” I wasn’t going to tell her how Desi and I had discovered that little nugget of information. I didn’t want that to get back to Tomàs. He had already seen through our decision to bring Sandy food, and he didn’t need to know we’d broken into her house as well.

  “So maybe she killed him.” She looked pleased at her deduction.

  I smiled. “Maybe, but she seemed devastated by his death. By all accounts, she was devoted to him.” The peanut butter she’d bought still struck me as odd. It was almost a jab at her dead husband to buy it immediately after he was put in the ground.

  “Well, women can do funny things when their trust is broken.” She frowned. “A friend of mine—”

  Suddenly, I had the feeling of ice running through my veins. “Mom,” I whispered.

  She looked up. “What is it?”

  “Did Dad … cheat on you?”

  A smile crept across her face. “No, of course not. Your father would never do that. How could you ever think that?”

  I breathed a sigh of relief. “Then why did things not work out between you two?”

  Her smile faded, and she reached out for my hand. “Honey, as I told you before, we just want to take a break from each other. You have to understand, we’re different people than we were when we got married. It wasn’t as apparent when we were both working, but now that we’re retired, we’re stumbling over each other in the house.”

  “Is Dad moving out? Are you?” I couldn’t imagine my childhood home without both of them in it.

  “Your father has moved to the bedroom in the basement while we sort all of this out.” She smiled. “He’s got quite a little bachelor kitchen there, with a mini-fridge, microwave, and toaster oven.”

  I stared at her. It sounded awful, although my dad had never been much of a cook, so it was probably good enough for his toast and TV dinners. I didn’t know what to say.

  “Ok.” I removed my silverware from the paper napkin and placed it on my lap.

  “Anyway, I didn’t have a chance to finish telling you about my friend. Usually, she’s quite mild-mannered; the stereotypical meek librarian, but when she discovered her husband was cheating on her, she went a little crazy. She threw all of his clothes out their bedroom window and set fire to them on the lawn. Then she slashed all of his tires. Finally, she emptied the bank accounts and went on a month-long cruise. He didn’t know what hit him.”

  “Wow. She was really mad.” Mom’s friend must have been in a lot of pain, not that I blamed her.

  “Yeah, no kidding. When people are hurt, they lash out in ways that you wouldn’t expect.”

  That made sense. —In Louis’s case, every one of the suspects had reason to be hurt; some by relationship infidelity and some by financial infidelity. Any one of the people Desi and I had considered suspects could have murdered him. It all made my head hurt, and the dissolution of my parents’ marriage didn’t help.

  The waitress put our plates of food in front of us. I’d ordered a mozzarella and tomato panini with a side salad, which my mother gave a look of approval. She dug into her fava bean salad and that was the end of our conversation about their marriage. Perhaps it was for the best. Although their marriage affected me, how they wanted to spend their future really was up to them.

  Twenty minutes later, we’d both devoured our food. After paying the bill, Mom looked up at me. “Did you still want to come with me to the makeup counter? I think some of the Clinical Face’s under eye cream would make a big difference. With all your work on the auction, you want to make sure you look your best tomorrow.”

  “Sure.” She had a point. I didn’t want to look like death warmed over at the auction.

  We got off the elevator on the first floor, and I pushed Ella toward the giant cosmetics section in the middle of the store. The collision of scents from hundreds of different perfumes assaulted me as we grew closer to the center mass.

  Mom pointed to a counter off to the side. “There’s the Clinical Face counter.”

  When we reached Clinical Face, a woman with dark hair and a white lab coat was brushing blush onto a woman’s face. With her back to us, the salesperson held up a mirror for the woman in the chair to see. Apparently the customer was pleased with her reflection because she smiled and nodded at the salesperson, who selected a box from a shelf and deposited it in a small paper bag. After paying, the woman left the store with a spring in her step. Without turning around, the salesperson busied herself with organizing the remaining products on the shelf.

  My mother cleared her throat to alert her to our presence. The woman in the white lab coat spun around, her hair swinging around her like a glossy black cape.

  When she’d completed her revolution, my eyes widened. It was the woman that the PI had photographed with Louis. And, I realized, the same woman that I’d seen with Sandy at the funeral. A perky white name tag on her smock read Macy.

  “Hi,” she said in a cheery tone. “How can I help you today? Would you like to try our new firming lotion?” She didn’t give any indication that she’d recognized me, not that I expected she would.

  “Not today, thanks. My daughter is interested in trying your eye cream.” Mom pointed at my face. “She’s been under a lot of stress lately.”

  The salesperson motioned for me to sit in the chair, but my feet refused to budge. My mother nudged me toward the chair, pressing on my shoulders until I sat. She gave me an odd look, probably wondering why I was so distant. I couldn’t help it, though—my mind raced with uncertainty. Should I say something to the salesperson? Let her know that I’d seen the photos of her with Louis? That I knew she was sleeping with her friend’s husband?

  “Ah, stress lines and lack of sleep, I know how to cheat that.” The dark-haired woman snapped her fingers. “We’ll use the eye cream and the skin perfecter.”

  I let her work her magic, my thoughts stuck on her statement that she knew how to cheat. My mother looked on, cheering me with words of encouragement. “You look so much better, honey. Doesn’t Mommy look good, Ella?”

  Ella let out a shriek, which turned into a crying and screaming jag. Mom tried to rock the stroller back and forth to soothe her, but the baby wasn’t having any of it and continued to wail.

  I pushed the salesperson’s hand aside to address her. “She’s getting tired. It’s probably time for a nap.” I looked up at the woman holding a brush an inch away from my eye. “I’m almost done, right?”

  Macy picked up the mirror she’d used earlier and showed me my reflection. One eye glowed, rejuvenated by the voodoo magic in their cream; the other was still sallow and dejected. “A couple more minutes, ok?”

  I swallowed. “Sure. Mom, can you take Ella outside? She might do better with some fresh air.”

  She nodded and redirected Ella’s stroller toward the side entrance. “Meet us out there when you’re done, ok?”

  “She’s got quite a set of lungs on her,” Macy observed before returning to my face.

  I looked into her eyes, not sure if this was my chance or not. Then, I remembered my half-finished face. If I wanted to make it out of the store without strange looks from the other customers, I should probably wait for her to complete the transformation.

  When she finished, she handed me the mirror. While admiring her handiwork, which admittedly took five years off my real age, I tried to gently pry information out of her.

  “You know, you look really familiar.” I pretended to be trying to place her. “Didn’t I see you at Louis Mahoney’s funeral?”

  She turned away from me, but I could see her face flush in the mirrored back counter of the Clinical Face booth. Bottles clinked gently against each other as she rearranged items on the shelves, avoiding my question.

  “It was so awful about him dying,” I said. She still hadn’t moved. “Did you know him well?”

  Finally, she faced me. “My husband and I have been friends with Louis and
Sandy for years. Yes, it was a horrible thing to happen.”

  Nothing Macy said seemed suspicious in the least, other than the fact that I’d seen proof she was cheating with her friend’s husband. That probably wouldn’t have gone over well with either her husband or Sandy.

  “My condolences to you and your husband.”

  “How did you know Louis?” she asked politely.

  “Oh. My sister-in-law and I were the ones who found him after his death.”

  “Oh my. I didn’t know.” She rubbed her fingers along the plump edge of a blush brush. “How awful for you.”

  “It was.” I went in for the kill. “Even worse for my friend Brenda, who was dating him. I mean, I don’t want to speak ill of the dead, but she had no idea he was married. I feel so bad for her.”

  She grimaced. “Louis wasn’t exactly a faithful husband.”

  “No, he wasn’t, was he?” I stared directly into her eyes.

  She squirmed and narrowed her eyes at me. “You know about me and Louis, don’t you?”

  I nodded.

  “How do you know?” she whispered. “We were so careful.”

  “Someone I know had pictures.”

  “Pictures?” She blanched so white that her carefully applied blush and contouring powder gave her the appearance of a circus clown. Macy leaned against the counter and stared at the floor before gazing back up at me. “Do you think Sandy knows?”

  “Do you think she knows about you two?”

  She picked up a tube of eyeliner and twisted it between her fingers. “I don’t think so, but I don’t know for sure.” She stared at me with heavily mascaraed eyes. “You aren’t going to tell her, are you?”

  I tilted my head back but didn’t say anything else. The tinny announcer’s voice came over the loudspeaker, advising Risa to answer line ninety-nine. When it finished, Macy spoke again, her eyes full of pain.

  “I never meant to hurt her, but there was something so irresistible about him.”

  I’d never met Louis while he was alive, but from what little I knew of him, I had a hard time reconciling his looks and personality with the description of him being irresistible. Then again, he’d managed to snare Brenda and she was usually a hard sell. There must have been a quality to him that was indiscernible after death.