“You going to write your dissertation about the French Revolution?”
He made a tsking sound. “Don’t think so. But who knows?”
“The same idea interested my ninth graders. The part where a good idea—the liberty, equality thing—goes over some cliff and becomes a new kind of oppression, as bad as the one they’re throwing over ever was.”
“Well,” he said, “it’s not a bad thing to become aware of. It didn’t stop with the French Revolution.”
Sasha bounced in at that point, red-faced and out of breath. “So hungry I practically ran here,” she said as she sat down. “Let’s order first, then tell me what you two Sherlocks have unearthed.”
The pizzeria had perhaps not been the wisest choice of venue, as the noise was overpowering. People came to eat and shout, and with each beer downed, the group of young men near us grew louder and more raucous. Sasha, Mackenzie, and I huddled at our table near the window, talking in stage whispers, and after the sausage pizza arrived, we leaned over it so as to hear, thereby endangering our clothing.
“What’s happening with the investigation? The one the cops are doing about Toy’s murder?” Sasha asked. “I can’t find anything out even though I check the Jersey papers every day.”
Mackenzie shook his head. “Nothing, really.”
“You’ve got a friend there, too?” I asked.
His shrug said, “But of course. Why ask?” “They’ve looked for anybody she knew, but she didn’t know that many people well enough to have stirred up deliberate passions of that sort. Mostly knew clients, and all of them were apparently satisfied. Definitely not interested in killing her. She still had her wallet and money, so it doesn’t sound like a junkie. She seemed legitimate, her business on the up and up. She did staging in Chicago, too, but apparently, an aunt in Philly promised her an interest in her real-estate business if she helped care for the woman. Hasn’t happened yet, though. The old auntie is holding onto all her assets.”
“One thing my friend told me,” Mackenzie said, “was that they found evidence that the house had probably been broken into several times. A basement door had been messed with so that it didn’t completely lock. But they can’t tell if anybody was taking things.”
“If you saw the house, you’d know why,” I said. “But I’ll bet they were, and that they were back again the day Toy interrupted them.”
“Stealing the car wasn’t their object, either,” Mackenzie said. “Just convenient. They found her BMW abandoned on Delaware Avenue.”
“Abandoned? In good shape?”
He nodded.
“When? How long before they found it?”
“That same day. Or night, really. Somebody was trying to steal it and the alarm went off, and for the first time in recent history, somebody noticed that a car alarm was signaling and called nine-one-one.”
“The thief—the killer—locked it up and set the alarm before he abandoned it?”
“Guess so.”
“Prints?”
“Nothing they can identify. Not even the would-be car thief’s.”
“It’s winter. The driver wore gloves,” I said. “Probably the guy trying to break in did, too.”
Sasha gave a what’s-to-be-done-about-it? lift of her shoulders. “What about Phoebe?” she said. “What’s happening with that?”
“I’m about out of ideas,” I confessed. “Marc was in Virginia that night, the blind-date guy was in California. Merilee? Who knows, but nothing to connect her with Phoebe that night, and it would be really hard for me to convince myself that the guy I talked with today had anything to do with her death.”
“Who was he again?” she asked me.
“Jesse Farmer. He has a store called Extraordinaire! two blocks from here. Antiques and appraisals, and she apparently came to him for the latter.” I eyed Sasha’s crust. I happen to love crust, and would be so happy with an entire carb-loaded meal of pure crust alone that I’m astounded when people walk away from plates littered with it.
“Appraisal?” Sasha said with some wonder. “Of what?” Then she noticed my glance. “Take it,” she said. “Please.”
“Her treasures.” We both smiled. I would have laughed, but it’s hard and unaesthetic to eat and laugh at the same time.
“Did he actually say something was worthwhile?” Sasha asked.
“He wouldn’t say anything. He never got to tell her whether it was or wasn’t, but he saw her for a business dinner the night before she died, and he was emphatic about her not seeming depressed. She wanted to go on Antiques Roadshow.”
Sasha shook her head. “I loved her, but I can just imagine them looking at her refrigerator magnet collection, or the pottery puppies.”
“There was that silver,” I said. “That was good stuff, I think.”
“But not exactly a treasure. The Berg family silver—or silver-plate for all I know—isn’t going to wow them on Antiques Roadshow. His royal highness Oscar Berg is not that well known.”
“I feel I am being left out of a joke here, ladies,” Mackenzie said. “That’s impolite.”
“I’ve told you about Phoebe’s treasures,” I insisted.
He shook his head. “You told me about the clutter in her house, her collections, but you’re obviously laughing at something more.”
“I never mentioned her, um, pretentiousness?”
“Meaning?”
“Oh, say, claims of royal ancestry?”
He raised one eyebrow. “I think I would have remembered that. Any special royal? Any special country’s royalty? Where’d her family come from in Europe?”
Sasha sighed. “Her family, what she knew of it, has been here since Colonial times.”
“Here, in a fledgling democracy, where royalty is generally not an easy commodity to find,” he said. “Unless she meant it metaphorically. Theatrical royalty?”
Sasha shook her head.
“Okay, so she was delusional.”
I put my hands out, palms up, then looked at the gesture that I had unconsciously made. A gesture of offering, but with empty palms. I put my hands on my lap. “She was illegitimate—does anybody even use that word anymore? She had a single mother who seems to also have lacked a resident and known father, and they were dirt poor, so these stories were spun around their origins. Something to help the girl hold her head up at school.”
Sasha picked up the thread. “Nobody believed the stories except Phoebe. She took them to heart. Maybe because she had to. It was a survival mechanism and it got her through bad times. It was silly, but somehow endearing. Back when she was with my dad, she spent huge amounts of time on genealogical research—to no avail, as far as I know. And I think I’d know if she knew. Everybody would have known. Honestly, when we looked at her computer, I thought we’d find all kinds of genealogical sites, but apparently not.”
“She was researching live men, not dead ones,” I said.
“You know, you went through that list of probably-didn’t do-it’s and you left off Dennis! Are you forgetting Dennis?” Sasha asked. “Because you shouldn’t. He’s a given. If something underhanded’s going on, Dennis is nearby. Trust me.”
“Ah, yes,” Mackenzie said. “Dennis. I thought you’d never ask.”
Why had we needed to ask at all? The man was a little too into his Great Detective act, withholding information for maximum dramatic effect. I wanted to remind him that it wouldn’t have broken any international code of silence if he’d told us whatever he knew about Dennis a half hour ago. But maybe this innocent game was his antidote to the other miseries he was coping with. If this provided a minor pressure valve, so be it.
Instead of saying anything, I looked at the pizza pan, which now held only one piece. I saw both Sasha and Mackenzie eye it and look away, politely.
“You guys split it,” I said. “If I can have more of the crusts.”
They gave me a decidedly David Copperfield look, and Sasha even tossed one of the crusts my way. “What about Dennis?”
I asked after happily munching through Sasha’s leftovers. “Do we have to beg?”
“It appears my theory was correct,” he said modestly. “Dennis was tryin’ to raise money by hustling out a mortgage on the house you both had inherited. The idea, of course, was to take out as much cash as they’d give him, and you wouldn’t know about it, and ultimately, your half of the so-called profit, divided after the bank reclaimed its chunk, would be minuscule.”
I sat in stunned silence. Sasha also took a while to regain the power of speech. “How could he do that? She left it to both of us. Isn’t that illegal?”
“Well, of course, yes, if anybody catches you. But Dennis went in with his friend—”
“That lawyer!” Sasha said. “That smarmy lawyer buddy of his, I bet.”
Mackenzie nodded. “Plus, a tiny blonde with big hair—her name, surprisingly, was Sasha Berg.”
“Toy Rasmussen was pretending to be me? She was in on the scam with him?”
“They had the death certificate, and the papers on the house—which, by the way, has no mortgage on it. Apparently, Mr. Ennis had insurance that paid it off when he died. But you didn’t know that, did you?”
Sasha shook her head. “I asked Dennis about equity in the house, and he said there wasn’t much.”
“Not so. Dennis was relying on bluster and smooth talk, and with his two friends and a lot of fast-talk and some documents, he was doing fine.”
“He got it, then?” Every trace of the outdoor glow that had bustled in with Sasha was gone from her face, and her voice was only a whisper. I had to lip-read. “He took out all the money?” She closed her eyes and shook her head. “I don’t care about the money, but I do care about his stealing it. And Toy!”
Mackenzie smiled. “It was a flawed plan. In fact, Toy’s death derailed it. Once the house was a crime scene, appraisers couldn’t get in, the mortgage company got more cautious about a house that might have a major stigma on it, somehow somebody found out that the victim and Sasha Berg were not one and the same, and the entire process ground to a halt. Otherwise, I’m not sure what would have happened.”
“I am…I’m…I never trusted him, not even in junior high, but still. This is criminal, isn’t it?”
Mackenzie nodded. “I think he’ll face charges.”
“Good!” Sasha said, her natural voice regained. “And good for you for finding out. You really are a great detective.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “How could you have found out?”
He pulled back, an exaggerated expression of indignation on his face. “You’re surprised?”
“Come on. How? It was a scam, and it was this week. How did you know where to look, what to ask? Who did you ask?”
“I told you. If he stayed in town—especially if he stayed and pretended to have gone—I was sure he was after money. Didn’t you tell me his whole life had been shady schemes and grandiose failures? People don’t change. He had money coming in the form of that house, so I tried to think of how he’d want to get still more. An’ then I made a few calls to a few banks. Just checking whether a Mr. Dennis Allenby had been in to see the loan officer.”
“And they told you?”
“I may have stretched the truth a little. I said I was trying to track him down. That I was handling some of the late Phoebe Ennis’s estate, and we’d discovered a problem he needed to attend to, that he’d said he was heading to the bank to arrange a mortgage, and I was hoping I could catch him there. It took three banks before I found him.”
“Why would they tell you that? Isn’t it private?”
“I didn’t ask for a single bit of information except whether he’d been there. Once I knew that he had been to one of them, once I knew there’d been an attempted crime, it wasn’t that hard to call in a favor to get some of the law on my side—”
“Somebody on the force?” Sasha asked. “Somebody you used to work with?”
He nodded. “All we wanted was to know what he was trying. No big thing. Except, of course, to Dennis.”
“And Toy. She was trying to rob me! I can’t get over it—the two of them. And look where it got her!”
We were quiet for a moment. “Hey,” I said. “Let’s be really shallow and materialistic about this. There’s no mortgage. That means a nice chunk of change for you someday.”
“No thanks to him,” she grumbled.
“Not much is thanks to him,” I said. “But there’s a further downside as far as I’m concerned. Toy’s death hurt him. It didn’t help anything.”
“And to you, that means he had nothing to do with it,” Mackenzie said as he collected Sasha’s share of the dinner bill. We all stood and went over to the cashier.
“Doesn’t it?” I asked.
He shrugged. “There are unintended consequences, and it’s been my experience that criminals are seldom sharp enough to think them through. If they did any long-term planning, they wouldn’t be criminals. She was conspiring with him. Truth was, he may have changed his mind, figured she’d signed the papers and he didn’t need her anymore. Or afraid she’d somehow let slip what was going on.”
“So Merilee and Dennis are still on the list,” I said. “What do we do, flip a coin?”
“It would be nice to find a scrap of evidence first,” Mackenzie murmured as he signed the credit card slip and opened the door to what had turned into an icy and blustery December night.
“My God but it’s cold,” Sasha said. “What happened to global warming?”
“Did you walk here?” I asked her, and when she said she had, I offered to drive her home. “I’m parked around the corner. Mackenzie’s dropping me off, taking the car to go back to the office for a few hours, but he could drop you off first. Or second.”
She stamped her feet and shook her head. “I’m on a health and fitness kick, and I’m sticking to it.”
“I won’t ask how pizza fits into that plan,” I said, “but I will ask how long you’ve been on it.”
She looked at her watch. “Since three minutes ago. I took a silent vow after eating that last piece of the pie. I need to burn off a few of those calories. No problem.” She pulled the fake-zebra-skin collar of her black coat up.
“Start tomorrow,” I said. “Maybe the windchill factor won’t be as bad. Or try running in place. Inside your condo.”
She smiled. “Do you feel horrible about corrupting me? I had such fine intentions. But I’ll only agree if you’ll come hang with me while Mackenzie works. What do you say? Have a cup of decaf. I have some stuff I want to talk with you about, anyway.”
Stuff. Enough of crime, then. I knew what “stuff” was for Sasha. She’d met somebody. Again. And she didn’t want to talk about him in front of Mackenzie, knowing he’d disapprove.
They’d long since ended their initial dislike of each other, but Sasha was aware of Mackenzie’s incomprehension and mild irritation about her talent at finding the worst possible men as romantic partners. It stymied me, too, because she was otherwise close to sane. But each one was “different,” and I braced myself for the particulars of her newest find.
I had no real urgency about going back to the empty loft. Macavity could wait. He had food and water, and it was Mackenzie for whom he yearned in any case.
Of course there were papers to mark, but there always were. “Deal,” I said.
She nodded and we walked toward the car, where I got into the tiny back rather than force her six-foot-tall body into the necessary contortions. “If you’re going to drag third parties into your car, and then be polite and accommodating, you should get yourself a four door and get rid of the Bug,” she said.
“I’ll tell you what. Once you’re an heiress with all that house money, you can buy us a bigger car.”
“I can see how it’s going to be,” she said. “People coming out of the woodwork to make claims. You know it isn’t really going to be all that much, don’t you? It’s not exactly a palace.”
And then, without anyone needing to say
we needed a break from crime, we stopped talking about Phoebe, Toy, Dennis, and the house. Instead, we described our various days, weekend plans, how the people who’d been staying with Mackenzie’s aunt and uncle were moving out of Louisiana altogether, and a dissertation idea rolling around in Mackenzie’s head. “I’m intrigued by how high morals spin out of control into fanaticism and lawlessness,” he said. “Maybe it all comes from reading that book about Napoleon.”
We had to circle around because of one-way streets and to stop and start because of traffic, so the relatively short distance to Sasha’s condo required a convoluted route and an inordinate amount of time.
“Could have walked it more quickly,” I said.
“And burned off at least half a slice’s worth of body fat,” Sasha said. “Not that I’m sorry you thwarted me.”
After Mackenzie had been quiet for several blocks, I leaned forward and tapped his shoulder. “Are you ready to tell us what it is?” I asked.
“Pardon?”
“What’s on your mind? I saw that look you got at dinner, as if you mentally sidestepped into your own private space, and now, again. What’s it about?”
He chuckled softly, and to my relief skipped the “Maybe we’ve been married too long because you’re reading my mind” riff. “Okay,” he said. “Where did you say Phoebe lived, Sasha?”
She squinted at him. “I know you too well to think you’ve forgotten, but here goes again: in New Jersey. Bordentown. She was born and bred in Jersey, though she did move around a little with all those marriages. Why?”
He took a deep breath. “Because there was, in fact, a king in Jersey. The king of Spain lived there.”
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