Pellner walked around the car and kneeled down by the tires. “This is bad.” He snapped some photos and then took our separate statements. “You have a tow truck coming?” he asked Hennessy.
“Yes. They should be here soon.”
“I’ll wait with her until it shows up,” I said.
Both Pellner and Hennessy looked surprised.
“Great. I’ll let you know if we find anything out,” Pellner said. He took off with a little spin of his tires.
“I can give you a ride home after the tow truck comes.”
A gust of wind kicked up. Hennessy brushed back her hair. “Why? Why would you be nice to me after I accused you of doing this?”
I didn’t want to tell her it was because I felt sorry for her after Stella told me about her lousy upbringing. “I’m here, and you’ll need a ride.” Another gust of wind blasted us. “No one’s going to want to come out on a night like this, anyway.”
Hennessy climbed in my Suburban after the tow truck pulled out. She strapped in and twisted her body toward me. She looked older than she had when I saw her at DiNapoli’s this morning. Her lipstick had worn off, and I noticed lines radiating out from her eyes. She told me where her house was.
“I did owe Margaret,” she said as I pulled out.
I was so surprised, I couldn’t think of anything to say.
“She paid for my acting classes and helped with my living expenses in New York.”
“But that was a long time ago,” I said.
“Not to Margaret. Once she helped you, she felt like you were hers for the duration.”
I concentrated on the dark road, not because there was a lot of traffic, but because it was narrow and winding. Trees crowded either side, along with low stone walls.
“Margaret loved being known as a patron of the arts. I’m not the only one she helped.”
I pulled up in front of her house. No lights were on.
“She arranged for Pellner’s daughter to sing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ at a Celtics game last year.”
“I saw her. On TV. It was a nationally televised game,” I said. Which meant Pellner and his wife had owed Margaret.
“It got Chelsea attention from the big music schools. She’ll have her pick.” Hennessy’s voice sounded bitter. “And since Margaret’s dead, Chelsea and her family won’t have to pay up.”
Was Hennessy insinuating that Pellner had killed Margaret so he wouldn’t owe her? Was that possible? He was the first cop to show up at the scene after I called 911, which had to mean he’d been in the area. And as nice as Pellner had been to me lately, I’d seen another side of him when I went snooping at his house once. He’d protect his family at all costs.
“I’ll wait until you’re in the house and have the lights on.” Now it was my turn to change the subject.
Hennessy climbed out of the car but turned back. “You might want to ask your landlady about Margaret. She was up to her ears in it with Margaret. Way worse off than I was.”
I stared after her, waiting until she got in the house. Stella had ties to Margaret?
* * *
Stella’s lights were off and her car was gone when I got home. From the bottom of the stairs I smelled cigarette smoke and heard a burst of laughter. It wasn’t that Stella had ever said we couldn’t smoke in the building; it was just the first time anyone had since I’d moved in. I walked up and looked toward Mike’s apartment just as his brother came out. A group of men who all looked like they came out of the movie Goodfellas sat around a poker table. Smoke hung over it like smog hung over Los Angeles. A man ducked back when he spotted me, and he looked an awful lot like Seth. Mike waved. For a guy who was supposedly out here to lay low, it seemed like he was having a lot of friends around. I waved back and unlocked the door to my apartment.
Before I went in, I craned my neck to see if that was Seth or just someone who looked like him. But Mike’s brother quickly shut the door, so there was no chance to tell. I closed my door but left the lights off. I went to my window and scanned the street, looking for Seth’s car, but I didn’t see it. What did it matter if he was there? It wasn’t really any of my business.
I checked the garage sale site. Someone had sent me a message, asking if I needed another admin to help run the site. It was tempting. As the group grew, so did the amount of bickering and the volume of posts that had to be managed. And even though the rules were clearly stated in a static display right above where people posted what they had for sale, they continued to post too many pictures, which slowed the site, or they bumped their item up more often than once a week.
However, I’d heard horror stories about people adding admins they didn’t know and the admins taking over the site, sometimes even blocking the person who had set it up. So I sent the person a thank-you and said I didn’t need anyone right now. If I decided I did, it would be someone I knew well and could trust. Juanita had left a post, asking if I could deliver the Pez dispensers to her tomorrow morning at ten. Yeesh. I kept telling people not to arrange times publicly. I left her a reply that I’d send her a private message. Then I sent her a message, saying ten would be fine.
We’d been trying to meet for several days now, but she’d been working long hours running her cleaning business. I’d be glad to have them out of the house, but I wasn’t going over there just to deliver the Pez. Juanita was a cleaning lady, and Margaret must have had one. I couldn’t imagine Margaret down on her knees, scrubbing a floor. With any luck, Juanita either would be her cleaning lady or would know who was. How many cleaning people could there be in Ellington?
* * *
I drove to Juanita’s house to give her the Pez dispensers. It was another sunny day, with no chance of snow. If this weather kept up, people from Florida would start retiring here. Although thirty-five was considered balmy only in the winter up here. I parked, grabbed the box of Pez, and rang her doorbell. She lived on one side of a duplex. She didn’t answer, so I set the Pez down and knocked hard. The door swung open. Juanita was lying facedown in the entry. Blood pooled next to her.
Chapter 17
I clapped my hand over my mouth and stumbled back. I grabbed my cell phone and called 911 as I ran to Juanita. She didn’t look good. I tried not to touch anything, assuming this was a crime scene. I put my fingers to her neck and felt a weak pulse. “She’s alive,” I told the dispatcher. “Hurry.”
I threw my coat over her to try to keep her warm. I didn’t want to move her and make things worse, because I couldn’t tell where the blood was coming from. “Come on, Juanita. It’s going to be all right. Help is on the way.” What the heck is taking them so long? “I can hear sirens. They’ll be here any minute. Hang on.” I didn’t know if talking helped her, but it seemed to help me keep calm, so I kept it up until the ambulance arrived.
The EMTs went right to work, asking me a few questions, then talking over Juanita as they worked. They gently turned her to put her on a gurney. What looked like a silver serving fork stuck out of her stomach. Black dots appeared in my eyes, and I scrambled back outside. I leaned my head down to my knees until my vision cleared. Two squad cars arrived. A woman officer stayed with me, while Pellner ran into the house. They loaded Juanita into the ambulance and took off, lights flashing and sirens blaring. I hoped they weren’t too late.
“We need to take your statement,” Pellner said when he came back out.
I shook from the cold. I could see that my coat had been tossed aside in the hallway. Blood rimmed one side. Pellner slipped out of his jacket and handed it to me. I put it on, enjoying the warmth infused in the fabric from Pellner’s body. Maybe I should invent a coat warmer. “You’ll get cold,” I said to Pellner.
“I’m fine. I have my vest on.”
“Do you work every shift?” I asked. It seemed like I’d been giving him an awful lot of statements lately.
“Apparently, only the ones where you’re in trouble. Which seems to be all of them lately. With five kids, I need all the overtime I can
rack up. What happened?”
“I came to deliver the Pez dispensers.” I pointed to the box, which was sitting to the side of the door. “I knocked on her door. It opened, and there she was.” I gestured toward her house.
“You sure you didn’t open the door?” the woman officer asked.
“Check it for prints. You wouldn’t find mine.”
“You might have been wearing gloves,” the woman said.
We all looked at my bare hands. My gloves hung out of my coat pockets, visible to all in the hallway.
“Did you see anyone or hear anything?” Pellner asked.
I thought through the whole scene in my mind. “Nothing. No one.”
“No cars took off?” the woman asked. “Or anyone walking away in a hurry?”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t see anything.”
* * *
I picked up my mail with jittery hands, owing partly to the cold, since I’d given Pellner his jacket back before we parted ways. I found a package and smiled a little bit as I carried it and the Pez back up to my apartment. It looked like it was the fourth in a series of packages from my “anonymous” admirer that had shown up over the past several months. I knew they were from CJ, but then I hesitated. At least I thought they were up until this moment. No way my stalker knew me well enough to send this stuff. No one else knew me that well.
The first gift had been a DVD of The African Queen, my favorite classic movie, with Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn. The second had been a box of chocolates from See’s Candies, famous on the West Coast but not so much on the East. After that a red Coach purse. And now this little box. One of these days I’d bring it up to CJ, but for now I just wanted to enjoy the moment. It meant that for all his gruff behavior, some part of him still had feelings for me. And with the joy each gift brought me, it meant I had more feelings for him than I’d been able to admit to.
I was still so conflicted about both CJ and Seth. If it weren’t for Margaret’s death, I wouldn’t have seen either of them until I’d been more ready. But now I was all over the place with both of them, literally when it came to Seth. I wished there was a search function for life like there was on my garage sale site. In search of a happy relationship, in search of a man who understood me, in search of the person who murdered Margaret More. It would make my life so much easier.
I sat on the couch and opened the box. It was a small cameo on a delicate gold chain. The background was a coral color, and the head was white. I flipped the cameo over, and engraved on the back was My love. My heart beat a little faster. But part of it was from conflict. I liked that CJ was trying to win me over, but like Seth, he was violating the no contact rule. Conflicted or not, I put the necklace on and went to the bathroom to admire it in the mirror. Stunning. And a lovely thing to receive after such a rotten day.
* * *
Around eight I heard voices in the hall, followed by a knock on my door. I was growing more and more fond of having Mike’s crew out in the hall. I opened the door, and CJ stood there.
“So you have your own personal security now?” CJ sounded grumpy. “They asked who I was and what I wanted with you.”
I leaned out and waved to one of Mike’s brothers. “They’re not out there for me. But it has been nice, especially after getting attacked in here.”
“I don’t like having those thugs around.”
It made me think about Seth and whether he had been playing poker over there.
“Can I come in?” he asked.
“Sure.” CJ looked serious. “What’s up?”
“It’s Juanita. She didn’t make it.”
I walked over to the couch and collapsed on it. “What happened?”
“The fork caused internal bleeding. It was just too late.”
“Oh, no.” I toyed with the cameo, trying not to think about all that blood. “I guess I’m not shocked. There was a lot of blood. Do you think it has anything to do with what happened here?”
“I don’t know. It’s why I came over.”
“Is there any chance her death was a horrible accident? Like running with scissors, only in this case it was a fork?”
“We won’t know for sure until there’s an autopsy. Maybe not then.”
“Did Juanita and Margaret know each other? Two murders so close together in a small town seems unusual.”
CJ rubbed a hand across the stubble on his chin. “How long are those guys going to be next door?”
Ah, the nonanswer. I’d have to try to find out on my own. “I’m not sure. They told Stella for a few days.” It had already been a few days, and that made me wonder if this arrangement was going to be something more permanent.
“Let me know if they leave.” CJ stood. I walked him to the door and held it open for him. He looked down at me. “Nice cameo.” He lifted it with a finger. “I know how much you like them.”
“Thanks. It’s very special to me.”
He ran his finger across my cheek and down my jawline. We gazed at each other, and it seemed like we were trying to say a thousand things without saying a word.
“Hey, everything okay?” It was Mike’s brother.
“I think so,” CJ said as he left.
* * *
After a night of crazed dreams where a stalker chased Juanita as she tried to clean Margaret’s house, I decided some research was in order. I started with Jaunita’s cleaning business, because of the complaints. She’d run a special almost every week on the garage sale site. I checked, but she didn’t have a Web site. So I went through my notifications in my business e-mail and found the last time she’d placed an ad. It was a week and a half ago. Several people had posted that they were interested in hiring her. I copied their names down and decided nine wasn’t too early to make calls. If I nosed around, maybe I could find a connection between Juanita and Margaret or see if Juanita had been up to some kind of funny business. No one answered at the first three numbers I called. Apparently, some people actually had lives and went out to do things on Saturday mornings.
The fourth person answered.
“Hi. I wanted to ask you about Juanita’s cleaning.”
“How’d you get my number?” the woman asked.
Damn. “Juanita listed you as a reference. I hope that’s okay.”
“I guess. She did a great job. House looks better than it has in years, and she’s a real sweet lady, too.”
“Well, thanks. I’ll give her a call.” That was interesting. It seemed like some people loved her and some people complained about her. It was almost as if she had had two different sides to her.
“I’ve been trying to reach her all day. Some idiot broke in and made a mess.”
If I were a dog, the ruff on the back of my neck would be standing straight up. “I’m sorry to hear that. Was anything taken?”
“Computers, TVs, a set of china, my dad’s old camera. That’s what hurt the most. I’ve got another call I need to take. If you talk to Juanita, tell her to give me a call.”
I leaned back on the couch and wondered what to do next. I called the first three people again and left messages for them, hoping they’d call back before the news of Juanita’s death hit the streets. One of them called back right away. They, too, were happy with Juanita, but I couldn’t very well ask them if they’d been robbed or not. After we hung up, I searched the police incident reports online to see if there was anything listed that pertained to their house. I didn’t find anything, but I hadn’t asked when Juanita had cleaned, and I didn’t feel comfortable calling back and asking now.
Maybe there wasn’t a connection between the robbery and cleaning, anyway. Juanita hadn’t cleaned my house; she’d just stopped by. She could be one of those people whom trouble followed. But sadly, even I didn’t buy that theory. Something else was going on, and I had to figure it out. I glanced at the time. Margaret’s funeral was in an hour, but I couldn’t attend. I had an appointment with a woman in Bedford who wanted me to look at what she had to sell and help her price
things. We’d decide while I was there if she wanted to sell her things on the garage sale site or do a garage sale in the spring. And as much as I wanted to go to the funeral, I wasn’t in a position to turn away business. My suggestion that we reschedule had been met with silence. I’d have to have the DiNapolis fill me in.
Chapter 18
By the time I went over to DiNapoli’s, it was nearly 8:30 p.m. and almost time for them to close. I’d been with my client for hours. Thank heavens I’d told her she had to pay me by the hour for pricing. The woman thought everything had value and was worth more than what I thought was possible to get. She wanted to sell old aluminum foil tins that had obviously been used, paper bags, and pencils that were down to the stub. I’d explained putting those things out would detract from all the good items she had, and she had some great things. But she’d heard a story about someone putting an old dirty sock up for sale on a site and someone else buying it. We’d agreed to disagree, and I’d priced everything she wanted me to.
Many people thought Angelo should stay open later than he did, but Angelo had opinions about restaurants and hours. He thought people should eat by nine, and if they didn’t, they’d just have to lose out and eat somewhere else. His family was important to him, so when his kids were young, he made sure he was home in time to tell them good night. Even though his kids were grown and gone now, he continued to close the restaurant at the same time. I’d heard him say more than once that if you ate too late, the food didn’t sit in your stomach right, and why people would eat a pizza at ten at night was beyond him. Personally, I thought pizza was good anytime.
Only a couple of tables still had people at them when I walked in. I knew that soon some not so subtle methods of getting people to leave would be employed. First, the lights would be dimmed, and then the cleaning staff would come out, and if that didn’t get people out, Angelo would ask Rosalie in a loud yet innocent voice if everyone had gone, so they could leave. People put up with it because the food was good and the prices were reasonable.
All Murders Final! Page 10