“One never truly gets over the loss of one’s dearest love.” He gave her a smile full of compassion and commiseration. “I know that better than most. But it’s been thirty-two years, dear. You need to look to the future, not dwell on the past.”
This sweet speech would have had more oomph if not for the Big News of the preceding week. An unsolved three-decades-old murder demanded answers.
She squeezed his hand again. “Thank you, Norman. And thank you for answering all our dumb questions.”
“Thank you for the excellent wine,” he said. “It will help me get a good night’s sleep.”
“You be sure to give my best to your family.” To me she explained, “Norman’s granddaughter and her husband and kids have been staying with him for the past week.”
He appeared happily surprised by the news.
“Ah, a full house,” I said. “Great-grandchildren. That’s wonderful. Listen, before you go, Norman, can I ask just one more question?”
“Anything, dear.”
“You said ‘visitors.’ He had ‘visitors’ that day, as in more than one.” Norman appeared confused, prompting me to clarify: “You told us that on the day Ernie died, Porter came by. Did anyone else visit him?”
“Why, yes,” he said. “Dean dropped by in the morning.”
Sophie frowned. “My husband Dean? My ex-husband, I mean. Dean Phillips?”
“Well, naturally. I don’t think I even know another person by that name. There is a film actor, I believe, called Dean—”
“Are you sure it wasn’t someone who just looked like him?” Her voice was tight. “Dean was in Boston the day Ernie died.”
“You might not be recalling things too clearly.” He patted Sophie’s arm. “It can happen to anyone, dear. It was your Dean, all right. Well, he wasn’t your Dean at the time, of course, he was merely a friend.”
Sophie appeared at a loss for words, struggling to process this information. Norman seemed so certain, but could his recollection be trusted?
“Did he ring the front doorbell?” I asked.
He shook his head. “When I opened the bedroom drapes—it was after breakfast, around ten, I’d say—I saw him approaching from the trees back there and waving hello.” He pointed toward the stretch of woods that bordered the back edge of Sophie’s property. “I assumed he was waving to Ernie here on the patio, but from inside my house, most of your backyard isn’t visible. Not that I look, mind you. I’m no snoop.”
“Wait,” Sophie said. “Dean came on foot through the woods? He didn’t drive up to the house?”
“That’s right,” Norman said. “I assumed he was out for a morning stroll and decided to drop in on Ernie.” As if the man who’d coveted Ernie’s wife, not to mention Ernie’s wife’s fortune, would pay an impromptu social call on the man who was living the life he dreamt about. Well, except for the gay part.
“Do you know how long he stayed?” she asked.
“Haven’t a clue. Ernie must have had a devil of a time trying to get any work done with people popping in all day.” More somberly he asked, “You don’t suppose that had anything to do with the poor boy’s suicide?”
“No, I’m sure it didn’t,” she said.
He nodded, reassured, and glanced around for his cane. I handed it to him. He noticed my myriad lacerations and said, “Good grief! What hap—”
“Who knew you shouldn’t dry off a hand grenade in the microwave? Last question, I promise,” I said, as we all rose. SB stretched luxuriantly, shook himself, and did his happy where are we going now, what are we doing now dance. “Do you recall anything else out of the ordinary about the day Ernie died?” I asked Norman. “Anything at all? Aside from the unusual foot traffic back here?”
He shook his head. “Just that and the mess those young hoodlums made. Otherwise it was a perfect June day. I was finishing up a landscape of the Death Valley salt flats that day. Took me forever to get the light just right. My daughter Margaret fell in love with that painting, so I gave it to her. It’s hanging in her—”
“I’m sorry, Norman,” I said. “Some young hoodlums made a mess? I don’t think you got to that part.”
“Didn’t I? Well, it’s hardly worth mentioning. I came over here in the late afternoon. The mailman had delivered a piece of your mail to us by mistake—” he directed this to Sophie “—and I didn’t want to leave it in your mailbox. It looked to be official, a tax refund or some such. Ernie didn’t answer the bell, so I assumed he was still outside.”
“So you came back here,” I said.
“And it’s a good thing I did. The patio furniture had been overturned. The birdhouse knocked down. One of the cats had been pulled right out of the ground. Ernie’s keyboard and music notebook were on the grass. I set it all to rights.”
Sophie looked grim. To me she said, “I was wondering why he’d left his new keyboard outside. And then when he didn’t come home that night… I didn’t know what to think.”
Until his boat was found floating off Montauk the next morning.
She said, “Why didn’t you ever tell me about this, Norman?”
He gave a dismissive wave. “I didn’t want you upset over nothing, especially the next day after...” He sighed. “No doubt it was a couple of delinquents showing off for each other. I’m just glad they didn’t decide to—” he made spraying motions “—decorate the place with graffiti like you see on television.”
I said, “What does that mean, ‘one of the cats was pulled out of the ground’?”
Sophie pointed to the memorial cat statues. “Those guys.”
“Yeah, but—”
“The white one.” Norman strolled over to it and tapped it with the tip of his cane. “She’s my favorite.”
“What’s to pull out of the ground?” I asked. “Don’t they just sit on top of it?”
“Nope,” Sophie said. “They have built-in pedestals. Only the actual sculpture sits aboveground.”
My nape was doing that prickly, nagging thing. Wakey, wakey, Janey, it was saying. You might want to splash some cold water on your gray matter right about now.
The black cat still crouched, ready to attack. The white cat, the lazy one, still reclined in feline languor, licking that one pearly paw. I squatted by her and ran my fingers around her base, scraping away a little dirt. It was true. The marble extended belowground. I got a solid, two-handed grip on the thing and glanced up at Sophie. “Do you mind?”
“Knock yourself out.”
I very nearly did just that. One good yank and that hunk of marble popped like a twenty-pound cork, leaving me sprawled in the grass and Sexy Beast yelping in alarm. I sat up, dusted myself off, and examined the statue’s base, normally hidden from sight.
The pedestal was squared off, a perfect cube about six inches on all sides, with no shortage of hard, sharp edges.
One look at Sophie’s face and I knew she was thinking the same thing I was. I asked her, “So when’s the last time you pulled this thing out of the ground?”
“Never have,” she said. “Bad luck.”
“Bad luck, huh?” I gave her a wry smile. “You’re the least superstitious person I know, Mayor.”
“Yeah, well,” she said, “I’ll bet you anything it was damn unlucky for Ernie.”
17
National Register of Historic Lawn Ornaments
“So you know what she said then?” I sat with Dom at one of the wood-and-chrome bistro tables next to the big picture windows at Janey's Place, facing Main Street. It was late morning and the lunch crowd had yet to descend. Behind the counter, Cheyenne texted nonstop on her phone with one hand while wiping incessantly at a nonexistent smudge with the other.
I’d gone into the shop for my usual papaya-ginger smoothie and had run into Dom. The Janey's Place headquarters where he worked were across town, but he’d dropped by the store that day as he often did, to check up on the flagship operation and relive the good/bad old days by slipping behind the counter and whipping up
a Mediterranean quinoa salad or a predigested-looking tofu scramble for some lucky, pasty-skinned lettuce chomper.
Dom was struggling with the timeline. “Was this before you called Bonnie or after SB peed on the cat statue?”
“Both.” I sucked up the last of the smoothie, a noisy operation that earned a lopsided smile from my ex. He’d always loved to feed me—it was how Janey's Place had been born. He’d felt certain that once I’d experienced bunny food in all its multifarious scrumptiousness, I’d become a lifelong convert to healthful eating. We all know how that turned out. “SB tried to pee on the cat,” I said. “I didn’t let him. It was starting to drizzle by then, so I shoved the base of the statue right back into the ground.”
“Smart.” Dom forked up a great big wad of something that looked like it had been peeled off the side of the road. Didn’t smell half-bad, though. “Protecting whatever evidence might remain after all these years. Is that when you called Bonnie?”
I nodded. “While Sophie was making sure Norman got home okay. But first, let me tell you what she said.”
“Sophie?”
“Of course Sophie. She told me that Dean, way back when they got married and he was living there? Dean insisted she get rid of the cat statues.”
“Why?” Dom asked.
“The real why or his excuse?”
“Let’s try both.”
“Well, he told Sophie it was because he’s allergic to cats and they creep him out and all that nonsense,” I said.
“How do you know it was nonsense?”
“Well, the creeped-him-out part makes sense. If I’d bashed in someone’s skull with a hunk of marble, I’d be creeped out every time I looked at it too. Plus he was probably worried that he’d left evidence on it.”
“I take it Sophie didn’t let him toss out the statues,” he said.
“She told him she wasn’t allowed to, that they’re an inviolable part of the history of her house. You know, it’s on the National Register of Historic Places. Of course, that’s total BS. I mean, yeah, the house is a historic landmark, but Sophie can do whatever she wants with those cats. They might be old, but they’re just lawn ornaments.” I shrugged. “But she likes them, so they stayed.”
“Aren’t you getting a little ahead of yourself with this Dean business?” He gave that condescending smile I’d forgotten he was so good at. “From trying to ditch some old lawn ornaments to murder? Leave the investigation to the experts, Janey.”
“Because they’ve done such a great job so far,” I sneered.
“Hey, it’s only been what?” he asked around a mouthful of vegetarian roadkill. “A week and a half? And the crime is more than three decades old. Give Bonnie a chance.”
Something about the way he said that last part pressed a little alarm button inside me.
Don’t judge me! It’s complicated, like Sophie said. And anyway, I’m allowed to be conflicted about my ex. After seventeen years. And five months.
He said, “Speaking of which, did you call—”
“Yes! Yes, I called Bonnie! I told you I called her. Jeez.”
“You could use a calming drink,” he said.
I perked up. “Hey, it’s five o’clock somewhere. Is Murray’s Pub open yet, you think?”
Dom’s indulgent chuckle said he knew I was kidding. Yeah, that’s me, Jane the Kidder. He turned toward the service counter. “Cheyenne?” He waited. “Cheyenne!”
She glanced up from her phone, her dull-eyed annoyance revealing not the slightest comprehension of Dom’s importance to her continued employment, or what her probation officer might have to say about the loss of said employment. She waited.
“Please pour Janey a cup of lavender tea,” he told her.
I reared back in disgust. “Lavender? Why don’t I just get my bridal bouquet out of mothballs and gnaw on that?”
My ex stared at me for a long moment while my face roasted to a nice, even shade of Holy Crap Did I Really Say That. In a murky little corner of my brainpan, I bitch-slapped the heck out of myself.
At last he said, “You still have your bridal bouquet? After all these years?”
The part he kindly left unsaid, which only amped up my mental self-flagellation, was: After all these years, our divorce, my two subsequent marriages and three kids, and your pitifully lonely and childless state?
“I, you know, had it freeze-dried.” I gave an elaborate shrug
He opened his yap to say, And you still have it. If he hadn’t had the sense to snap it shut without speaking, I’d have had to grab another damn chair and hurl myself though another damn window.
After first beating him to death with the chair.
Not that I needed a calming damn beverage or anything.
“The bouquet’s somewhere in the house.” A careless toss of my hand. “Or not. You know what? Yeah, I think I tossed it out when I moved into that little basement apartment after the divorce.”
It certainly wasn’t parked in my attic in a fancy glass display dome, double-boxed with bubble wrap and Styrofoam peanuts, and plastered on all sides with big red stickers reading FRAGILE! THIS END UP! KEEP DRY!
Cheyenne plunked a steaming mug in front of me. No joke, it smelled like lavender. Seriously, these people had issues.
“That’ll be three ninety-five,” she said.
Dom, the soul of patience, smiled at the girl. “It’s on the house, Cheyenne.” Her head tipped slightly to one side, and I swear her ears twitched at the mention of her name. He could have been talking to Sexy Beast.
“No charge,” he explained. “For my friend.”
At last, some animation. “So we can, like, give our friends stuff for free? Nobody told me.”
“No, it’s just…” It’s just that I get to treat my friends because I own the place? I could see the instant he decided it was time to pass the buck. “Ask your dad to explain it.” Cheyenne’s father, Patrick O’Rourke, was the manager of the store. Not that Patrick needed a paycheck after a hefty recent inheritance, but he knew his own weaknesses well enough to welcome structure and responsibility into his life.
Cheyenne shrugged. “Whatever.”
After she’d clopped away on her rhinestone-studded platform sandals, Dom reached into his wallet and slapped a healthy tip on the table. My lopsided grin accused him of being an old softie. His lopsided grin was accompanied by a helpless shrug.
If a clergyperson had been sitting at the next table, I would have married Dom again right then and there.
A priest, a rabbi, and a minister walk into Janey's Place. Insert your own punchline.
“So you called Bonnie…” Dom prompted, rolling his hand to steer me back on track.
“So she came out to Sophie’s, and I could tell she thought I was wasting her time—until she laid eyes on the squared-off base of that cat statue,” I said with a grin of satisfaction. “Then she went all crime-scene on us and got people out there and they set up this tent and lights and everything.”
“Wow,” Dom said. “Looks like you might have found the murder weapon.”
“They’re hoping to get evidence off the statue or the dirt it sat in. I mean, that thing has never been moved in all these years.”
“DNA evidence?” he asked.
I nodded. “If they find hairs or, I don’t know, dried blood or something, they can compare it to Ernie’s skeletal remains—a tooth or whatever—and look for a match.”
He nodded toward the lavender tea. “Drink up before it gets cold. Oh, don’t give me that look. I bet you’ll like it. Here.” He plucked two raw-sugar packets from the table dispenser, tore them open, and stirred the beige crystals into the hot liquid.
“You’ve got some nerve calling this stuff tea.” I slid the mug across the table to him. “I say it’s potpourri soup, and I say it’s all yours.”
He sighed and lifted the mug. “Well, I’m glad you were able to help Bonnie with the investigation.”
There it was again. That little alarm bell. Maybe bec
ause he directed his words to the mug rather than to my face.
“Oh yeah,” I said, “she expressed her appreciation very eloquently. Her precise words were, ‘Don’t tell me how to do my job, Jane.’ I’m telling you, I got all misty-eyed.”
Dom lowered the mug. “I know I’m not getting the whole story here.”
“I told her what Norman said, about Dean being there the day Ernie died. She blew it off, said Norman’s senile and besides, Dean was in Boston that day, which Sophie had verified by calling him at his hotel. And did I think Dean was in cahoots with Porter, because Porter’s definitely the one who moved the body and made the murder look like suicide.”
Dom spread his hands. “Well, is she wrong about any of that?”
“First of all,” I said, “I hate that word, ‘senile.’ Norman’s short-term memory is shot, it’s true, but his recollection of stuff that happened way back when is spot-on. And hey, you know what? If Norman hadn’t remembered about replacing the cat statue in the ground thirty-two years ago, Bonnie would never have found the murder weapon.”
“If it is the murder weapon,” he said. “Bonnie was right about the rest of it, though.”
“Boston’s, what, a four-hour drive from here. You’re telling me Dean couldn’t have slipped away from that seminar long enough to come down here and off Ernie? It’s possible, right?”
“I thought he flew to Boston,” Dom said. “He didn’t have a car at his disposal.”
The look I gave him was a plea not to go stupid on me. We both knew that if Dean had wanted to get hold of a car in Boston, he could have.
“Well, it was Porter who engineered the fake suicide, right?” Dom asked. “Not Dean.”
“Yes,” I said, “because he thought he was covering up for his wife. He thought Lacey murdered Ernie. He had no idea Dean had been there earlier.”
“Maybe Lacey did murder Ernie,” he said, “and maybe—”
“Yeah, I know, maybe Dean never left Boston that day.” The simplest explanation was usually the correct one. Norman’s eyewitness account was beginning to look like the delusions of a confused mind.
Uprooting Ernie (Jane Delaney Mysteries Book 2) Page 20