A Crazy Little Thing Called Death

by Nancy Martin

  It was Emma, not Michael, and she had her polo player in tow. Also a bottle of wine in one hand.

  She laughed at me. “Don’t start playing poker with Rawlins, Sis. You have guilt written all over your face. Who were you talking to?”

  I put the phone back on its cradle. “Ben Bloom, as a matter of fact. Hello, Ignacio.”

  “Hello!”

  “You were talking to the boy detective, huh?” She pulled Ignacio into the bedroom. “What did he want? A date for the prom?”

  “He wanted some information.”

  Emma plopped onto the bed beside me. “Does Mick know you’re having phone sex with Bloom?”

  “I’m not having—look, it was police business. But just the same, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t go blabbing.”

  “Oho,” said my little sister. “Keeping secrets from your fiancé doesn’t sound like the right way to start a marriage.”

  “I’m not keeping any more secrets than you are. Ignacio, would you like to sit down?”

  He truly was a beautiful specimen of a man. He could have been a model. That perfect tan, those delectable shoulders, that angelic face. The melting brown eyes.

  “Hello,” he said cheerfully, standing at the foot of the bed and admiring Emma beside me. He carried two wineglasses in one hand.

  Emma’s half-empty wine bottle had a cork stuck in it, and she used her teeth to pull it out. She spit the cork on the floor. Ignacio held out the glasses, and she poured generously. “Feeling better?”

  “Not much. What are you doing?”

  “What does it look like?”

  “Like you’re drinking again.”

  “A glass of wine before bed doesn’t constitute drinking. I can handle it.”

  “Em—”

  “Hey, do I look out of control? I’m having a social drink, that’s all. Iggy likes to relax with a glass of wine. I don’t need you playing cop, okay?”

  But she hesitated, her nose poised at the rim of the glass to inhale the bouquet of the wine. She didn’t drink, though. Instead, she gave the glass to me. I didn’t smell alcohol on her breath. I wondered what brought on her sudden urge to have a drink.

  “Okay,” I said, relieved that she’d stopped herself. “Did you buy another pony?”

  “Two. And I’m going to start a beginners’ class in June. I’ve got three students signed up.”

  “Wonderful.” I noted that Emma seemed pleased despite her offhand manner. I said, “Thank you, by the way, for looking after me last night.”

  My little sister grinned and leaned back into the pillow. She patted the bed, and Ignacio sat beside her. He rubbed her thigh. “Hey, you were in no shape to be left alone. Aldo couldn’t wait to unload you. Good thing I was here to take over. You don’t remember any of it, do you?”

  “Zilch,” I admitted.

  “Well, you were ready to party, Sis. None of your usual inhibitions. I didn’t think you had it in you.”

  I looked into the wine in my glass. “It’s a terrifying drug, isn’t it?”

  “The real question is why a guy like Raphael Braga feels he needs to drug a woman to get laid.”

  I didn’t answer. But I felt sure Raphael hadn’t drugged me for sex. He had wanted information.

  Emma said, “Do you think you were Raphael’s original target? I heard he went to the party with Betsy Berkin, the twenty-two-year-old virgin. Maybe he planned to party with her. Thanks to you, she can still wear white on her wedding day.”

  “Em, have you heard anything about Raphael using roofies on women before?”

  “Not Raphael. But I heard some of his teammates talking about it. It’s all over the place. In fact, I know some women who’ve used roofies on men.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “It’s one way of waking up with the man of your dreams, I guess.”

  “Before it happened, I talked to him about Penny Devine. He told me his relationship with Penny was more than business. He as much as admitted they slept together.”

  That news startled Em. “Wow, that must have been some performance on his part.”

  “I should ask Bloom to test the hand I found for drugs. If there are traces of Rohypnol in her remains, maybe we’ll know if Raphael had something to do with Penny’s death.”

  “That won’t prove he’s a murderer.”

  Ignacio moved his massage higher up on Emma’s thighs. He set his wineglass on the nightstand, then put his other hand on my leg.

  Emma and I looked at each other. I said, “Is this one of those situations where the language barrier might be a problem?”

  She reached down and removed Ignacio’s hand from me. She patted him to show all was forgiven, and he smiled. No harm, no foul.

  “I love the language barrier,” she said. “This way we don’t have to know a thing about each other. Just take off our clothes and have wild monkey sex. But you and the Love Machine, Sis? Is there a language barrier there, too?”

  I folded down the top of the sheet and smoothed it flat in my lap. “Of course not. I was just talking to Ben on the phone for a minute, that’s all—”

  “Forget the kid cop,” Emma said. “I’m not blind, you know. Or deaf. You and Mick—there’s something going on. Is it the whole baby thing? Your miscarriage? You’re not trying to sweep it under the rug, are you?”

  “No, we talk about it.”

  “Because you could get some counseling, you know.”

  I laughed. “Can you imagine Michael in counseling?”

  “Yeah.” Emma was serious. “I can imagine him doing just about anything to make you happy. Look, Sis, I don’t want to tell you how to run your life—”

  “Good.”

  “—but since you have no qualms about giving me advice all the time, let me just give you my two cents on the Love Machine subject: Don’t blow it, okay?”

  “I’m not. I’m marrying him!”

  “Don’t do that, either,” Emma said.

  “What?”

  She lay back and stared at the cracks in my bedroom ceiling. “I know it’s stupid! But how can we not believe in the curse? Hell, Mick’s already been in a car accident, plus the fall down the stairs, and then the whole house almost burns down around his ears—”

  “Those were accidents.”

  “Yeah, and any one of them could have been fatal.”

  “What are you saying? I should break it off with him?”

  “Hell, no. Just break off the engagement. Before he gets killed. Then you can live happily ever after, but safely outside the bonds of matrimony.”

  “Emma, I never expected this from you.”

  “I know.” Her grin was embarrassed. “Me, neither. But it’s hard to ignore the evidence when your house is in flames, right?”

  I looked up at the ceiling, too. “I can’t break off the engagement. It would hurt him, Em. He wants to be married. He’s really a very traditional person.”

  My sister rolled over on one hip and pulled a smashed pack of cigarettes out of her hip pocket. She shook one out of the pack, but made no move to light up. “It’s the Catholic thing.”

  “He wants a wedding.”

  “So does Libby,” Emma said on a laugh. “I heard her on the phone earlier. She’s found somebody who will rent her a chocolate fountain. With an attendant who wears a G-string.”

  “Why would anyone want a woman in a G-string at a wedding?”

  “It’s not a woman, Sis.”

  I groaned. Libby and her wedding plans were putting my stomach in knots. I had a lot on my mind, and a night of crazy, drugged-up behavior hadn’t made any of it go away. So I said, “Stick with Ignacio, Em. He’s very sweet. Sweet and uncomplicated.”

  Looking up from his massaging, Ignacio smiled very sweetly indeed.

  “Thing is,” she said, “sweet and uncomplicated doesn’t exactly float my boat.”

  Before I could ask her to share more, her cell phone rang. She dug into her pockets again to find it.

  “Yea
h?” she said to her caller. Then, “Sorry, I’m all booked up tonight. Try again tomorrow.”

  She terminated the call and found me watching her. She grinned. “You going to give me the third degree?”

  I knew she was sleeping with a man who satisfied her need for sex without intimacy. And that she was buying ponies so she could teach little girls how to ride. So I figured there couldn’t be anything else going on that was too awful.

  So I said, “Rock on, baby.”

  We heard Michael’s car arrive, and in a couple of minutes, he came up the stairs and found the three of us in bed together.

  Ignacio sat up abruptly, cheerful and willing. “Hello!”

  “Not a chance,” Michael said.

  Emma laughed as he bent to kiss me. “I figured you for the more adventurous type, Mick.”

  “He doesn’t worry me,” Michael said. “You’re the scary one.” He had brought up a slice of cold pizza from the fridge. Seeing Ignacio’s hopeful expression, Michael gave the pizza to him. Then Michael pulled an unopened can of beer from the pocket of his leather jacket. He stripped off the jacket and dropped it on a chair. “How are you feeling?” he said to me.

  “Like I’ve been kicked in the head,” I answered. “But better than this morning. Look at the get-well card Lucy sent me.”

  “Cute.” He smiled a little, cracked the beer and sipped off the foam. “But your eyes aren’t so crossed anymore. I want to wring the bastard’s neck, you know.”

  “I want to let you,” I said lightly. “I haven’t felt so hungover in years.”

  Emma said, “Let’s plot some really good revenge.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Michael replied.

  With Emma watching, I decided to come clean. “I talked to Ben Bloom tonight. I saw him last night, too, before I turned into a raving lunatic.”

  Michael took a long, relaxed swallow of his beer before responding. “I heard.”

  “Aldo reported to you?”

  “Yep.” He made no apologies for checking my whereabouts. “What’d you learn from Gloom? He making any headway on the dismembered-movie-star case so he can get his promotion?”

  “He doesn’t want a promotion. He wants to get onto the city’s homicide squad.”

  “When he grows up,” Michael added, then caught my look. “Okay, okay. I assume he wanted your help.”

  “Yes.”

  “And he threatened to have me deported or executed so you’d cooperate?”

  “Don’t even joke like that, Michael.”

  “Sorry.” He came back over and ran one finger underneath my jaw. “What did you learn from Bloom?”

  “He has a suspect. A gardener from the Devine estate who disappeared back in the autumn. Kelly Huckabee.”

  Emma glanced up. “Huckabee? That son of a bitch is gone? What’s going on? Serial disappearances?”

  “They say he was fired and left the estate, but the police can’t find him. I think I could find out more about Kell if I asked Vivian Devine. Gently, of course.”

  “The dead woman’s sister, right?” Michael said.

  “The cat lady,” Emma said.

  “The one with the big fence in her backyard,” Michael reminded us.

  “I asked Ben about that fence. He says there’s nothing behind it. He figured they might have raised some farm animals there at one time.”

  If Michael noted my use of Ben Bloom’s name, he gave no sign. He drank a little more beer.

  I said, “So I’ve been thinking about what Libby mentioned. About Vivian’s house where she had all those cats years ago here in Bucks County. I wonder if she still lives there.”

  “Me, too,” said Emma. “Libby’s such an idiot, she couldn’t remember where the house was. But I got to thinking about a map in Granddad Blackbird’s collection—”

  To Michael, I explained, “Emma was our grandfather’s favorite. She spent hours with him. He collected clocks and mechanical toys.”

  “And maps,” Emma said. “Are they still here?”

  “Yes, of course. In the library.”

  Emma stood up. “Let’s have a look.”

  I put a bathrobe over my pajamas, and the four of us trooped down to the library. From one of the lower bookcases, I hauled a large bound book of maps. It was so heavy that Michael stepped in to carry it to the long library table, where his telescope was laid out in pieces. He set down the book on the opposite side of the table.

  Emma unfastened the ties expertly and opened the book with care. She smoothed the covers flat. Inside, a selection of maps lay in sleeves, each one carefully folded. She let her fingers walk through the index tabs until she located the one she wanted.

  It took a full minute to unfold the dry paper of the map without damaging it.

  Emma said, “These really ought to be stored flat now. They’re getting too old to keep folded like this.”

  “I don’t have room.”

  “They ought to go to the museum, then.”

  Emma hadn’t been a particularly good student, and she had lasted only a semester or two before dropping out of college, so her continued interest in cartography surprised me. Her passion had clearly been learned at our grandfather’s knee.

  “Here,” she said, smoothing the heavy paper. “See?”

  We all leaned close and tried to read the fine drawing.

  She said, “Here’s the Delaware River, and here’s New Hope.”

  She went on to point out landmarks we knew. Michael found the site of his own house across the river on the New Jersey side.

  “And here’s Blackbird Farm.”

  Our family’s estate was so old it warranted a grand label on the map.

  Emma’s finger ran lightly down the river from the farm, cut westward through the hilly contours of the county and came to rest on a spot I didn’t recognize.

  “See this?” she said. “From the description Libby gave me, I think this is Vivian’s property.”

  I said. “It’s isolated, isn’t it?”

  “More than you think. It’s really hilly. See these lines? That’s the topography. This looks like a cliff. See how fast it drops to this creek? The place wouldn’t be much use as a farm.”

  Michael said, “You could find out who owns the place by looking at the tax rolls. That’s public information at the courthouse.”

  I said, “I wonder if that information might be online, too.”

  While they continued to study the map, I went for my laptop. I took it back to the library, plugged it into the phone line and went on the Internet. In five minutes, I’d found exactly the information I needed.

  “Vivian Devine still owns the house.”

  Michael grinned. “These newfangled inventions sure make crime a lot easier.”

  “Crime? You’re thinking maybe we ought to pay a visit?”

  “If you feel up to a little excursion.” His smile broadened. “Get your coat.”

  “Now?” Emma asked, startled.

  Michael smiled. “We’ll do a drive-by. Nothing fancy.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  I put a raincoat over my bathrobe and pajamas and exchanged my slippers for a pair of gardening boots.

  Then the four of us piled into one of Michael’s muscle cars—a streamlined convertible with a gleaming white top—and he drove for about twenty minutes with Emma navigating from the backseat. Ignacio, clueless about our mission, seemed to be enjoying our late-night jaunt. Perhaps he thought we’d gone out for ice cream.

  In the dark, Michael drove slowly by the old farm.

  “There’s a split-rail fence.” Emma pointed. “That’s probably the beginning of the property line.”

  Beyond the fence we could see a tangle of underbrush—darkness prevented us from seeing through it—and in the distance rose a rocky hillside, covered with scrub trees made visible by thin moonlight.

  The house was a low ranch-style place, probably built in the early fifties, made of yellow brick that looked dingy. A carport was jumbled wit
h old trash cans and a flatbed trailer. An electrical wire sagged from a pole on the road to the corner of the house roof.

  No lights shone from inside the house. I could barely make out tufts of grass growing up through the asphalt driveway. A stand of weeds nearly concealed the mailbox.

  “House looks empty,” Michael murmured.

  He cruised up the road a little farther, turned around and went back even more slowly, this time with the headlights turned off. He didn’t pull into the driveway, but crept past the house and stopped the car along the fence.

  Quietly, he said, “There’s a flashlight in the glove compartment.”

  I found the light and rolled down my window. The night air was cool, but dry. Flicking on the flashlight, I pointed it through the fence and into the overgrowth. The looming bulk of a barn was little more than a shadow.

  “What are we looking for?” Emma asked, low-voiced.

  The flashlight picked up a long, gleaming structure beyond the barn. I squinted, trying to discern what it was. I said, “A place where Kell Huckabee could be hiding.”

  “I think it looks deserted,” Emma said. “Some of the windows on the house are broken. Nobody’s been here for ages.”

  Michael pulled the car along a little farther and slipped it into a sandy spot on the shoulder of the road. He cut the engine.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  He put out a hand for the flashlight. I could see the gleam of excitement in his eyes. “Taking a closer look.”

  “Not alone, you’re not. If Kell is here, he could be dangerous. He may have murdered Penny.”

  “He’s not here. Nobody’s here. The place is deserted. Stay put, Nora.”

  I popped my door and stepped outside. “You’re too accident-prone to go alone.”

  He got out of the car, too. “How are you going to explain that getup if you get arrested for trespassing?”

  “That I’m sleepwalking. What about you?”

  “Hell, we’ll all go,” Emma snapped, climbing out of the backseat. She hauled Ignacio out, too. “If we get arrested, at least we’ll have a foursome to play bridge in jail.”

  Emma was in favor of jumping the split-rail fence, but in deference to my bulky outfit, the group followed the rails until we came to a break where a post had been knocked down—probably by a winter snowplow. We stepped gingerly in the clumpy grass. Michael flashed the light to and fro, and he found a recently fallen tree that had cut a swath through the thick brambles as it fell. We climbed over it.