Sleuthing Women

by Lois Winston

  “Back off, will you?” I snapped. “I said I was tired.” There was a long, uneasy silence, during which I made a few mental stabs at explaining, but I could never find the right words. Finally Michael said, “Okay, maybe tomorrow then,” and hung up.

  When I eventually climbed into bed, I couldn’t sleep. One after another, in rapid succession, memories flipped through my brain, like a movie stuck on fast forward. And the bed that last night had been so warm and comfy, now seemed uncommonly cold.

  In the morning, when the gray light of dawn began leaking through the cracks in the curtains, I heard Anna pad down the hall to my room, where she slipped silently under the covers and nestled against me. In less than a minute, we were both asleep.

  ~*~

  Anna wanted me to park the car around the corner from the school so that no one would be able to see her arriving in “that heap.” She asked me over breakfast and then again as we approached the parking lot.

  “Listen,” I told her, “there are lots of children in families that don’t even own a car. They’re thankful if they can afford bus fare.” Anna scowled and wiggled lower in her seat. “Some of them,” I added, speaking slowly for emphasis, “don’t even have houses to live in or food to eat.”

  She tugged at her sock and ventured one quick peek out the side window. “But we have a car.”

  Wearily, I parked—right smack in front of the school. When I’d assured her the coast was clear, Anna opened the door and climbed quickly out.

  “Remember,” I said as we walked into the building, “you’re going home with Kimberly today because I’m going out with Daria after work. I’ll pick you up as soon as I can.”

  “Mrs. Marsh has a nice car.”

  I kissed her, handing over her lunch box. “Have a nice day, sweetie. And if anybody asks, you can tell them ours is a special, magical car.”

  Outside I met up with Tina, who had just dropped off Zachary. “Did you manage to find a baby sitter?” she asked me. “I asked around for you but most everyone was full up.”

  “I’ve got a temporary arrangement with Kimberly’s sitter, and once school is out Heather will be available.”

  “Sorry I couldn’t help you out. I would have liked to. Be nice to care for a little girl now and then.”

  Given Anna’s recent snooty drift, I thought a boy’s boisterousness might be preferable. “That’s okay,” I told her, “I appreciate your looking.”

  We walked to the parking lot, where Tina stopped so abruptly I had to do a little shuffle to avoid running into her.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “That car.” She pointed to my colorful clunker.

  “Quite something to look at, isn’t it? But it runs well.”

  She pivoted quickly to face me. “It’s yours?”

  “Only for a couple of days, I hope. It’s from the auto shop. My Datsun needs a new engine. Given what it’s going to cost to have mine fixed, maybe I ought to see about a permanent swap.” I opened the door and climbed in. “I’ve got to run or I’ll be late for work.”

  With Tina standing woodenly by the curb, I drove off, stopping by the bakery to pick up croissants and lattes to share with Daria. After considerable deliberation I’d made up my mind to say nothing about Jim’s philandering. In the first place, it was over. Knowing about it would only hurt her. More than that really. Daria was the sort who would be destroyed by infidelity. Anyway, she and Jim were off to Mexico next week—Jim’s idea—so maybe he’d decided to make amends.

  Then, too, there was that little issue of casting stones when you, yourself, were not without sin, although I suppose it could be argued that since Andy had left me, my situation was a different. Still, I thought I was hardly in a position to judge Jim too harshly. So it was business as usual, but that didn’t stop me from feeling more than a little uncomfortable about coming face to face with Daria.

  She seemed to notice nothing unusual, however. She greeted me with her usual warm but distracted manner. “How’s the car repair business?”

  “Expensive.”

  “Isn’t that the truth?” She finally looked up from the stack of papers she was sorting. “Oh, goody, I’m starved. You’re such a doll to think of this.” Popping off the plastic lid, she took a sip of coffee, licking the white foam with her tongue. “I feel so bad for you, as if you don’t have enough to worry about already, and now this thing with your car.”

  “I’ll manage somehow. At the moment, and much to Anna’s chagrin, I’ve got your hand-me-down.”

  She looked confused.

  “The multi-toned clunker Jim had a couple of weeks ago when his car was in the shop.”

  “How did you know about that?”

  “I rode in it, remember? When we went to the Guild Wine Festival.”

  “Oh, that’s right, you did.” Her mouth relaxed into a smile. “Seems like everyone in Walnut Hills has driven that car at one time or another.”

  I finished my croissant and tossed the bag into the garbage, then started for the back room where I was unpacking a shipment of hand-blown glass.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Daria said in that slow, deliberate way of hers. “Maybe you should get serious about your painting. We could carry your things here as a start. That piece Sondra bought is really very good.”

  Daria did not hand out compliments readily, so I was pleased she liked the painting but wasn’t so sure about the offer. “I don’t know, I’ve never thought about painting professionally.”

  “Well, think about it. You’ve got talent, Kate, and that’s rarer than you’d think.” Standing, she ran her fingers through her thick curls and laughed. “In the meantime, you’ll have to handle things here while I run into the city for a couple of hours.”

  As soon as Daria left, I placed a call to Michael who, it turned out, was “unavailable.” Since the receptionist had asked for my name before checking, I thought perhaps he was angry with me, as he had every reason to be. But I left my name anyway and then set about addressing a stack of fliers while I readied myself to answer questions from customers.

  But there weren’t many, customers or questions. A middle-aged man with a cherubic face and carefully manicured nails bought a ceramic vase for two hundred dollars, but his only questions were “How much?” and “This is something you put flowers in, right?”

  When he left, two women entered—one about my age, the other a generation older. The older woman, who wore a turquoise polyester pantsuit, tittered and scoffed while her younger companion looked uncomfortable.

  “Look at these prices,” she said. “Who in the world ever buys this stuff? Back home a place like this would be laughed out of town.”

  The younger woman smiled blandly. “That’s why you live in Kansas, Mother, and I live in California.”

  The person who asked the most questions was a young man sporting an American flag tattoo on one arm and a ponytail. He wanted to place a collection box and a small poster that read Drug-Free Kids by the door.

  “I’ll have to ask the owner,” I told him. “She’s not here at the moment.”

  “Can’t you agree to something like this yourself? It’s for a good cause.”

  “She might not like the idea.”

  “How can you not like the idea of keeping kids off drugs?”

  “It’s not that. She might think asking for change is . . . well, tacky.”

  “Tacky? She sells stuff costing hundreds and thousands of dollars, and she thinks asking customers for a quarter to fight drugs is tacky?”

  “I didn’t say that was what she thought, I merely said it was what she might think.” And in fact would think, I was pretty sure. Daria had already said no to posting a sign about missing children. This was a gallery, she told me, not a convenience store.

  The young man would have stayed around to badger me, which he seemed to enjoy doing, if Tina hadn’t shown up and stood uncertainly by the entrance.

  “Come in,” I called to her as the young man
shuffled past on his way out the door. “Can I help you find something or would you prefer to browse?”

  She shook her head. “Actually, I came to talk to you.”

  “Is something wrong?” I thought instantly of dozens of things that could be. Some pretty horrible—stealing, drugs, child abuse; some not so horrible but still fairly disturbing. Maybe Anna was being mean to Zachary. Or mean to everyone. The terror of preschool. And nobody wanted to confront me with it.

  “Are we alone?” she asked, looking around like a conspirator in a grade-B movie.

  I nodded.

  “That car you’re driving . . .”

  I nodded again.

  “It’s the car I saw that night.”

  “What night?”

  “The night Mrs. Livingston was killed. Remember I told you about it that day in the park when Zachary scraped his knee. How I couldn’t sleep that night because it was so hot, and how I went to the window for air?”

  I did recall, vaguely.

  “There was a car parked across the street by the Dumpster. The same car you’re driving now.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I know it was the same car because I thought maybe it belonged to one of the workmen. It looks like the kind they drive, you know, beat up and all, and I was trying to figure out what it would be doing there in the dark of night. Then I saw someone come walking down the street, way off on the shoulder, step behind the Dumpster before getting in the car and driving off.”

  “What time was this, do you remember?”

  “Oh, yes. I looked at the clock just before I got out of bed. It was one o’clock exactly.”

  “Did you see what this person looked like?”

  “No, it was too dark, and the person stayed in the shadows. All I saw was a dark shape.”

  The day and hour of Pepper’s murder. Her jewelry found in the Dumpster. The car in all likelihood was driven by the killer.

  An acid taste rose in my throat. “Why didn’t you tell the police?”

  “I sort of forgot about it until I saw the car this morning.” She stared at her shoes for a moment before continuing, her voice almost a whisper. “And I didn’t want to create trouble. I’m only here on a tourist visa. I was supposed to leave months ago. If the police find out, I’m afraid they’ll send me home. My family needs the money I send them.” Her mouth quivered, and she looked as though she might at any moment break into tears. “But I should have said something before now, I know. I did rather like Mrs. Livingston.”

  I reached for her hand and gave it a squeeze. “It’s okay, Tina. Sometimes it’s not easy to know what’s right.”

  She nodded.

  “But you’re sure it was the same car?”

  “Absolutely.”

  I did some quick calculations, but I knew the answer before I finished. I knew who had the car that night—the same person who’d had it four days later when he gave me a ride to the Wine Festival. The same person who was hurt and angered by Pepper’s refusal to divorce Robert. The man who’d been humiliated by the woman he loved.

  You don’t know for sure, I told myself. There could be a logical explanation. But I knew I would have to tell the police, and I also knew that I would have to tell Daria—at least enough so that the police wouldn’t spring it on her from out of the blue. I owed her that much, friend to friend.

  TWENTY-ONE

  While I was sorting through my options, the phone rang.

  “I have a message here that you called,” Michael said. His voice was flat, and very businesslike.

  “I wanted to apologize for last night.”

  “No need. You’re entitled to your own life.”

  “But you’re part of my life. An important part,” I added, in what I hoped was an appropriately contrite tone. “It had been a horrible day and . . . oh, Michael, I don’t know why I was so short with you, but I’m sorry. I feel awful about it.”

  I half expected a thank-you-for-calling kind of reply, pleasant but cool. Instead Michael laughed. A warm, rich, wonderful sound that made my skin tingle. “I was afraid you were calling to tell me to get lost once and for all.”

  “You’re not angry then?”

  “Just at myself. If I come on too strong, it’s only because I’m crazy about you and I want you to feel the same way about me.”

  I do, I wanted to tell him. So much so that it scares me. Instead, I responded with one of those all-purpose, mechanical laughs and asked, “How about dinner tonight? I’m going out for a drink with Daria right after work, but I should be home by seven. No frozen pizza, I promise.”

  Michael sighed. “I’ve got a retirement dinner tonight—for a guy I used to work with in the city—but maybe I could drop by later. Unless you’d prefer I didn’t.”

  “No, I’d like that.”

  He hesitated. “And I’m free all day tomorrow.”

  “Good,” I said softly, “so am I.”

  I picked up the paperweight from Daria’s desk and turned it over in my hands. It was made of smooth, rounded glass, and inside were droplets of colored oil that drifted and curled and meandered in free-form patterns.

  “There’s something else,” I said slowly.

  “Mmm.”

  “I think I know who killed Pepper.”

  “You what?”

  I told him everything I’d learned, starting with Tina’s remarks that afternoon and working backwards to my visit to the Royal Arms Motel.

  “Pepper broke off with him a couple of days before she was killed. Apparently he was quite upset. It wasn’t just some meaningless fling. He’d wanted to marry her.”

  “Where’d you learn that?”

  “Andy told me. Seems he talked to Jim the Saturday before Pepper was killed.”

  “Andy, your husband?”

  I bit my lip. “He called yesterday.”

  “I see.”

  My marriage was not a subject I wanted to discuss right then; murder was far less complicated. “Jim is such a gentle guy,” I said, frowning. “I still can’t believe it.”

  “This isn’t easy for you, I know. But you’ve got to remember that killers come in all sizes and shapes. They buy groceries, drive cars, go to the movies. They have lives, even family and friends, just like the rest of us. Now tell me how I can contact this witness who saw the car by the Dumpster.”

  “I can t.”

  “What do you mean, you can’t?”

  “She’s . . . sort of in this country illegally. She doesn’t want the police to find her.”

  “Kate,” he said, his voice rising with exasperation, “we’re a small, suburban police force, not the INS. You think I’m going to take her down to the dock and throw her on a boat? I promise you, the subject won’t even come up.”

  “Still, I’ll have to ask her first.”

  “Well do it,” he snapped, “and get back to me ASAP.” Then his voice softened. “And remember, we don’t know anything for sure. It may turn out it wasn’t Jim after all.”

  ~*~

  At Daria’s suggestion we went to her place after work instead of out on the town. “It’s such a beautiful evening,” she said, “it doesn’t make sense to spend it huddled in some crowded, smelly room. And I have a bottle of Kendall-Jackson chardonnay all iced and ready to go.”

  It was a beautiful night, warm without being oppressively hot, and the air was flagrant with the sweet scent of jasmine. But the real reason I agreed so readily was that I thought we would have a better chance to talk privately if we weren’t yelling to be heard over the din of Friday night happy hour. And much as I dreaded it, I knew there were some pretty weighty things that needed to be said.

  “Daria, I have to talk to you,” I began as soon as we were through the front door. It was probably best, I thought, to jump in with both feet and get it over with before we got all cozy. “It’s about Pepper’s murder.”

  “Not that again!”

  “It’s important. I wouldn’t be telling you this, except that you’re
my friend and I think you need to know.” The words came in a rush, the way Anna’s did whenever she was forced to confess her role in some transgression.

  “Let me change my shoes first,” Daria said. “My feet are killing me. Go get the wine. It’s on the bottom shelf of the fridge, there’s some brie in there too. We can sit out on the patio.”

  I found the wine and opened it, then got out two glasses. I was looking for the crackers when Daria joined me. She poured two glasses of wine, then took a sip of hers. “Now what about Pepper?”

  “It’s about Jim too,” I said slowly.

  She smoothed one eyebrow with the tip of her finger, but her expression remained unchanged.

  “I think he may have been involved.”

  “Really? What makes you think that?”

  I turned back to get the brie, hoping to buy time; choosing the right words wasn’t going to be easy. How did you go about telling your best friend that her husband was unfaithful—and a murderer?

  And that’s when I saw the picture on the refrigerator door. It was in one of those clear plastic holders with a magnetic back. A photograph I’d seen dozens of times. Daria with her two boys, standing under the big oak in their front yard. Three fresh, smiling faces. Only this time I saw something I’d missed before, something that caused my blood to run cold.

  “It’s on the left,” Daria said, “next to the milk I think. You can’t miss it.”

  Slowly, I turned around to face her. “Oh, God, Daria, I was wrong. It wasn’t Jim—it was you.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You killed Pepper.”

  I waited for her to deny it, to laugh at me or get angry. But she stood motionless, without uttering a word.

  “The earring the police found—it wasn’t one of Pepper’s, it was yours. I thought it looked familiar, and it didn’t seem like the sort of thing Pepper usually wore, but until I saw this picture I’d forgotten you had them. And the scarf. It wasn’t a tie that got caught in the bedpost, it was a yellow and black silk scarf, the one you used to wear all the time.”