Legs Benedict

by Mary Daheim

  “Friday,” Judith replied as Sweetums jumped onto the floor and gave an indignant swish of his tail. “Tell me about Minerva. Please.”

  “Minerva?” Gertrude frowned. “Oh. Minnie. Nice woman. When’s lunch?”

  “Mother.” Judith’s patience was ebbing fast. “When did you talk to Minerva?”

  “The other day.” She paused to straighten the cards that Sweetums had disarranged. “Monday. Or Tuesday. I forget.”

  “Think hard,” Judith urged. “Please.”

  Gertrude finished laying out the hand. “Okay. Tuesday. Right after Bruce left. The first time, that is. Why isn’t he coming back?”

  “Because you’re not a Nazi,” Judith said, and knew she sounded irritable. “Why did Minerva come to see you?”

  Gertrude drew back in her chair. “Because she’s neighborly. Nice woman. We had a good visit. I figure she’s had a hard life. Left with a boy to raise. He sounded like trouble. But aren’t you all for us poor widows?”

  As usual, Judith was fighting an uphill battle. “Barney, right?”

  “Yep.” Gertrude had started playing her cards. “A real handful. Unlike that other kid, Coronary or whatever.”

  Judith stepped around Sweetums and leaned on the card table. “Whose kid?”

  Gertrude waved a hand. “That other woman. Kind of gruff. But that’s okay. What’s wrong with being gruff?”

  “Was her name Bea?” Judith asked.

  “Could have been,” Gertrude conceded. “Or Cee or Dee or…”

  “Mother!” Judith broke in. “This is important. I’m asking about a guest, a Bea Malone from Chicago. Did she come to see you in the last few days?”

  “Chunky woman. Chunky and gruff. Didn’t stay long.” Gertrude paused, peering at her cards. “Where’s that black eight? I could’ve sworn I uncovered it.”

  “When was this? Please try to remember.” The sharpness was gone from Judith’s voice, now she was pleading.

  “The other day. I figured she might come back,” Gertrude said, playing up the ace, deuce, and trey of diamonds. “People sure are funny.”

  “Was Bea here Monday? Tuesday?” Judith was practically on her knees.

  “She came before Bruce. That must have been Tuesday. That’s right,” Gertrude said, more to herself than to Judith. “That was the big day for company.”

  Only now did Judith recall how her mother had mentioned having visitors that day. The old woman had used the plural. Judith should have known that her mother wasn’t referring to Joe and J. J., following the discovery of Legs Benedict’s body. In Gertrude’s world, Joe wouldn’t count as a guest. Neither would J. J., if he appeared to be a friend of Joe’s.

  At last, Judith remembered what her mother had mentioned earlier in the day. “You told me this morning when I woke you up that I did the same thing one other time this week,” Judith said carefully. “It wasn’t me. But someone obviously did. Do you recall who?”

  Gertrude was winning the hand. Her arthritic fingers fumbled a bit, but she played up every card until only the kings were showing on top of their respective suits. “Got it,” she announced in triumph. “Now can I go two in a row?”

  “Mother…” The patience that Judith had reined in with such difficulty began to fray again.

  Gertrude swept all the cards into a pile. “It wasn’t you, huh? Then it must have been that man.”

  “What man?”

  “The one who got me out of bed. To tell the truth,” Gertrude went on, again shuffling the cards, “I wasn’t asleep. He brought me a present. But he said I couldn’t open it until the Fourth of July.”

  Judith took a deep breath. “Where is this present?”

  “I put it in my bureau,” Gertrude replied, setting out another game of solitaire. “You know, where I put all my special candy. Under my old girdles.”

  Judith bolted into the bedroom. “It’s not wrapped,” Gertrude called to her daughter. “But it’s a nice box.”

  There were half a dozen worn-out girdles in the middle dresser drawer. Though some of them were probably older than Mike, Gertrude refused to throw them out. Molded by the Great Depression, Judith and Renie’s mothers hoarded all sorts of bizarre, useless items, from paper bags to rubber bands to hair nets they hadn’t worn since Eisenhower was president.

  The precious candy boxes were another matter. Gertrude reserved the more expensive chocolates for special occasions. There were five boxes under the girdles, all unopened. One was wrapped in Christmas paper, two were heart-shaped, from St. Valentine’s Day, and another bore a yellow ribbon with a small Easter bunny cut-out.

  Next to the plain sealed two-pound box of Dolly’s Dark Delights was a black leather case. At first, Judith thought it might be her father’s old shaving kit. But the case was too long and too narrow. Judith flipped the clasp open and gazed at the contents.

  Nestled against a soft cloth background was a Colt .45. Judith slammed the lid shut, tucked the case under her arm, and, without giving Gertrude an explanation, ran from the toolshed.

  Joe had given up on the guests in the front parlor, and J. J. had gone back to Herself’s house where Agents Rosenblatt and Terrill had arrived to conduct their own interrogation.

  When Judith showed Joe the gun, he swore out loud. “You mean this freaking thing was in your mother’s freaking drawer this whole freaking time?”

  Judith nodded. “And I think I know who gave it to her.”

  “Who, dammit?” Joe was glaring at Judith, his face almost touching hers.

  Judith backed away. “We have to do some checking first. I’ll take the closet in Room Three.” She offered Joe a coaxing smile. “While I’m doing that, could you go out to the garage and get a shovel?”

  Joe opened his mouth to lash out at Judith, then clamped it shut. “A shovel,” he said at last. “What do I do with it? Slam you in the backside?”

  Judith’s smile wavered. “Of course not. You use the shovel to dig. And here’s where you do it and what I expect you’re going to find.”

  Despite his skepticism, Joe agreed to cooperate. “So far, this isn’t making much sense,” he said, over his shoulder.

  Judith had reached for her handbag, which was sitting on the kitchen counter. “You may be surprised. When you come back in, I think we’ll both know who shot Legs Benedict.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  MIKE, KRISTIN, AND the baby arrived at Hillside Manor five minutes after the lame-duck guests had finally departed. Judith’s reaction upon seeing the dark green Isuzu Trooper pull into the drive brought a lump to her throat. No more Ford Explorers from Chicago, Cadillac Sevilles from Detroit, Chrysler Concords from New York; no aliases, no concealed weapons, no deceptions. Just a mother and a father in the front and a newborn in the back, securely strapped into a high-tech car seat. Judith welcomed the trio with tears of joy.

  The new parents’ first stop was at the toolshed, where Gertrude was introduced to her great-grandson, Dan McMonigle II.

  “Wasn’t one enough?” Gertrude had rasped. But her wrinkled face had shone with pleasure when Kristin placed the baby in the old woman’s arms. Lifting one of his tiny hands in hers, the new great-grandmother gave a shake of her head. “Look at those little bitty fingers. So small and perfect.” She held up her own gnarled hand. “See what time does. My, my.” But Gertrude still managed a smile.

  Renie dropped by half an hour later. “Bill couldn’t come,” she said. “He’s doing the housework today and he hasn’t finished the list.”

  “List?” Judith gave her cousin a puzzled glance.

  “Right,” Renie said. “When it’s his turn for housework, he makes a list for the kids. You know—Tom: Vacuum first and second floors; dust. Anne: Clean bathrooms. Tony: Clean kitchen, including refrigerator.”

  “That’s it?” Judith responded, still puzzled.

  “Of course,” Renie said nonchalantly. “It takes time. First, he has to divvy up the work in fair amounts. Then he has to make sure everything is done righ
t. If it isn’t, he has to call the kids back, give them hell, and make them do it right. When it’s his turn and there’s a long list, Bill gets exhausted by the end of the day.”

  After Renie had taken her turn at holding little Dan, the baby had become fussy from all the excitement. Kristin and Mike took him up to the third floor to change him and put him down for a nap.

  “Maybe Bill can stop by this evening,” Judith said as she and Renie sat down in the blessedly empty living room. “Joe had to leave before they brought the baby home, so our husbands could do a male bonding thing after dinner.”

  “Good idea,” Renie noted, sipping from a can of Pepsi. “Now tell me about the arrest.”

  “It was very quiet,” Judith replied. “Anticlimactic, really. Joe wasn’t surprised. But then he’s had so much experience with murderers. He told me that when a perp feels vindicated by killing someone, the frequent reaction to arrest is indignation.”

  Renie gave a little shake of her head. “Still, in this particular case, I would have expected something more volatile. And frankly, coz, it’s not going to be easy to prove which of them did it, is it?”

  Judith smiled wryly. “Not when they both say they fired the shot. But,” she went on, bemused, “I suppose when you’ve been married as long as Mal and Bea Malone have, you truly feel as one. Maybe we’ll never know which of them fired that Colt .45 and put an end to the life of Legs Benedict.”

  Once more, Judith showed Renie the photographs she’d had developed. “You see, there in the background at that rest stop is Legs Benedict. This was taken Monday. The date is right there. As Bea was perfectly willing to explain, they’d stopped to give their dog, Corelli, a run before heading over the pass and into town. She admitted that the dog could be annoying.”

  “You and Dan had a black Lab when you lived out on Thurlow Street,” Renie pointed out. “Oliver. He was awful. The first—and only time, thanks to Bill’s No Oliver Allowed decree—you brought him to our house, he ran across the living room, got behind Bill’s favorite chair, and did something exceedingly nasty on our new carpet.”

  “I know,” Judith sighed. “He ate our drapes, the screen door, and our landlord’s prosthesis.” The memories of the shoddy neighborhood in the city’s south end made Judith cringe. “Anyway, Bea admitted that Corelli could be a nuisance, which I translate as vicious. All their dogs—Corelli, McCormack, Albanese, Tagliavini—were Labs.”

  “And thus,” Renie put in, “caused problems for other people. By the way, the opera singers they named the dogs after were Franco Corelli, John McCormack, Licia Albanese, and Ferrucio Tagliavini. If you’d remembered those other names, I might have gotten on the right track much sooner.”

  “Make me feel bad,” Judith said sarcastically. “Don’t you think I had already begun to wonder if my brain wasn’t disintegrating?”

  Renie grinned at Judith. “It wasn’t. Its wheels just slowed down a bit because you got sick. Go on, tell me more.”

  “At the rest stop,” Judith said, taking up her tale as told to her by the Malones, “Mal went to use the restroom while Bea tended to the dog. Corelli started bothering Legs. Or Mr. and Mrs. Smith, I should say. Bea had let him run, and the dog was barking and jumping all over Legs and Darlene. Finally Legs told Bea that if she couldn’t control her pet, he would. Bea didn’t scare easily, despite the fact that back in Chicago, two of their other dogs had been poisoned by neighbors—I think that would have been Albanese and McCormack—and a third had simply disappeared.”

  “Maybe they should have gotten a Chihuahua,” Renie mused.

  “What happened next,” Judith continued, “was that Corelli bit Legs—in the leg, I might add—and tore his very expensive trousers. I noticed the tear when he and Darlene arrived, but of course I never paid any special attention. I did check the closet, which still contained Legs’s clothes. The tear definitely could have been made by a dog.” Judith paused as Renie digested the information. “Anyway, according to Bea, Corelli’s attack so infuriated Legs that he whipped out his gun and shot the dog. That, in turn, explains why Legs’s gun—the Glock—had been fired recently.”

  Renie winced. “What a mean thing to do. Unless,” she added wryly, “Legs was wearing Armani.”

  “He was,” Judith responded. “Mal, who had his gun with him, came out of the restroom just as Legs and Darlene got into their car and roared off. Bea had left her weapon in the Explorer, so all they could do was follow Legs into the city. He and Darlene may have known they were being followed, but they probably just laughed it off. Anyway, the Malones lost the Chrysler after it turned off Heraldsgate Avenue. However, they assumed he was headed for some sort of lodging since his car had out-of-state plates. It turns out that they came into the cul-de-sac only to turn around, but then O. P. ran into their Explorer, and the Malones saw Legs’s Chrysler. That’s when they asked me if there was somewhere to stay nearby.”

  Renie set her Pepsi down on the glass-topped coffee table. “Are you saying they planned from the start to shoot Legs?”

  Judith gave a sad little nod of her head. “The Malones were childless, maybe even friendless, given their harsh manner. Their pets meant everything to them. As we mentioned earlier, a dog can become a child, a son, the focus of thwarted affection. They’d already lost three animals. Then Corelli was gunned down before their very eyes. Something snapped, I guess. They were out for revenge. By chance, the Malones and the Smiths—Legs and Darlene—didn’t cross paths here at the B&B Monday evening. In the middle of the night, Bea and Mal got up and went outside. Do you remember that J. J. said there was fresh dirt on their shoes?”

  “I’m not sure I ever heard that,” Renie said.

  “The Malones had wrapped Corelli in that dirty brown blanket I’d seen in the Explorer. They borrowed a shovel from the garage—I noticed last night that my garden tools had been disturbed—and buried the poor dog in the flower bed between the kitchen and dining room windows.”

  Renie gave Judith an inquiring look. “You didn’t see any sign of digging out there?”

  Judith’s expression was sheepish. “I did, but it was getting dark and it was raining, and I assumed that the Dooleys’ dog had been rooting around out there. He does that, you know.”

  “Farky was the worst,” Renie put in, referring to the Rankerses’ pesky dog of many years past, who had also met a suspicious end.

  “Yes,” Judith agreed. “Anyway, I asked Joe to dig out there—I couldn’t bear to do it myself—and sure enough, he found Corelli. Then I showed him the torn trousers and that last photo from the Malones’ roll. Joe saw Legs in the background. That was when he began to think that maybe I wasn’t crazy.”

  “You’d already found the Malones’ other gun under your mother’s girdles,” Renie noted.

  “The Colt .45,” Judith said, still amazed by the discovery. “Mal told Joe that each of them always carried a gun when they traveled. Ironically, they considered rest stops and restrooms the most dangerous places on the road. Since they couldn’t go to the restroom together, they each carried a weapon. As it turned out, they’d left the one locked in the car and brought the Colt .45 into the house. At this point, according to Bea, they hadn’t yet figured out how to get to Legs. But he played right into their hands. J. J. found out from Darlene just a few minutes ago that Legs had made her write a note to Barney, asking him to meet her outside because she was planning to double-cross Legs and needed his help. Apparently, Barney didn’t fall for it, and tore up the note in a fit of rage. But Legs didn’t know that, and showed up in the backyard anyway. The Malones spotted him as they were putting the shovel back in the garage, and they shot him. End of story.”

  Renie sat back on the couch, shaking her head. “Amazing. All this conjecture about the mob and hit men and everybody chasing everybody else.”

  Judith nodded. “The crime turns out to be purely personal. Legs could have been a grocery store manager or an orthodontist as far as the Malones were concerned. The murder came st
raight from the heart, not from the mob.”

  “So what were the Malones doing out by their car that morning?” Renie asked.

  “They knew there’d be a search for the weapon, which they’d already given to Mother and told her it was a present. They figured that the police wouldn’t tear up an old lady’s apartment. Oh, J. J. and Rich made a cursory examination that morning, but the Malones were right,” Judith went on. “However, they had carry permits for Illinois, which meant the police might wonder if they didn’t have a gun. They kept the other weapon strapped under the SUV’s carriage. They retrieved it and put it in their room so that it could be found, and yet wouldn’t be the gun that killed Legs.”

  Kristin, whose usually robust manner seemed lackluster, entered the living room with little Dan propped against her shoulder. “He woke up,” the new mother announced. “I thought you might like to feed him. Grandma,” she added, with a hint of her usual brilliant smile.

  Judith reached out for the baby. “I’d love to. You look as if you could use a nap.”

  Kristin yawned and stretched. “That’s what I’m going to do. Mike just left for work. He’ll be back around seven. I’ll get the formula out of the fridge.”

  “No, you won’t,” said Renie, rising from the sofa. “I’ll get it. You go to bed. Grandma and Auntie have some experience with this sort of thing.”

  With only a minor show of reluctance, Kristin trudged off towards the back stairs. Renie returned to the living room a couple of minutes later, carrying a four-ounce bottle filled with formula. If she was envious of her cousin’s new status as a grandmother, she kept it to herself.

  “Now tell me what Darlene told J. J.,” Renie said after Judith had managed to get little Dan to suck. “You were right about Legs having knocked her out that night, I gather.”

  “Yes,” Judith replied, smiling down at the baby’s tiny red face. “Darlene and Legs weren’t lovers. She was supposed to be his backup in the hit on Barney ‘Fewer Fingers’ Schwartz.” Little Dan hiccoughed; Judith put him against her shoulder and rubbed his back. “Darlene was also the decoy to lure Barney. But Legs didn’t trust her, so he put something in her water glass to make her sleep extra soundly. He didn’t want her waking up and interfering when he met Barney outside.” Little Dan turned his head away from the bottle and began to cry. Judith patted him some more. “Legs was right, according to Darlene. She had orders to whack Legs after he whacked Barney.” Little Dan swung his small fists and spit up on Judith’s shoulder. “What she didn’t know was that Baby Face Doria had orders to whack her,” Judith went on as she used a spare diaper to mop herself up. “He impersonated an FBI agent so he could find Darlene. Obviously, he’d seen the car parked by Dooleys’ and assumed she was still around.” Little Dan began to calm down. Judith resumed feeding him. “What wasn’t clear to him was who had really shot Legs. Doria finally decided that even if Darlene hadn’t pulled the trigger, Legs was dead, and he’d better carry out his assignment. Thus, they exchanged fire this morning, and Doria was killed.” Little Dan pulled his head away from the bottle and emitted some rather alarming bodily noises. “As for Darlene, she had to find out who killed Legs in order to inform the Fusilli gang. That’s why she hid at Herself’s house. And, I might add, used her unwitting hostess to keep her apprised of what was happening here.” Little Dan had become quite furious, screaming and waving his arms. “I think he needs changing,” Judith declared, wrinkling her nose. “I put some diapers and a package of wipes out on the kitchen counter.”