Sleuthing Women

by Lois Winston

  Swell. I want Anthony to finish this house so I can sell it, and now he has to stop work. Anthony sat perched on the wide, concrete top of the porch wall, smoking a cigar, which he usually never did around me.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I should have told you not to hang around. You want to take a couple of days off? They’re going to put crime scene tape around the house, and nobody’s supposed to go in or out.”

  He grinned. “Yeah, I’d like that. I’ll take my boys fishing in the river. I need to get away from this place for a bit. That…it spooked me.” Anthony’s much younger wife died of cancer a couple of years earlier, leaving him with three children to raise. Emil, I thought, was about seven by now, and Stefan was twelve. The oldest, Theresa, was seventeen. She sometimes babysat for me, and I worried about her because she was saddled with the care of the family.

  “I’ll go home now and tell them they can play hooky tomorrow,” Anthony said, walking down the stairs.

  I didn’t remind him that the school system’s attitude toward playing hooky, even with parental approval, was strict, but I asked, “What about Theresa?”

  He frowned. “She won’t fish. She’ll have to go to school.”

  Something struck me as wrong about that, but it wasn’t my business.

  ~*~

  When I finally left the Fairmount house, I intended to go back to the office and finish up that contract—until I glanced at my watch. I was already late to pick up the girls, a situation that was too chronic with me and always made me feel like a bad mother. I made a conscious decision not to tell the girls about the skeleton. It would just scare them, and I was still hoping that it would amount to nothing in our lives.

  I went first to the day-care center where four-year-old Em wiles away the time until she is old enough for kindergarten.

  “Hi, Mom,” she said, reaching up for a kiss. “How was your day?”

  It was such a solemn, caring question that I almost cried.

  “It was okay, sweetie. How was yours?”

  “Not so good,” she said matter-of-factly. “I was ready to go home after lunch. But Miss Emily told me you couldn’t come get me that early.”

  “She was right, honey. I was busy, but one day soon, we’ll play hooky all day, okay?” I think I got the idea from Anthony. If he could do it, so could I.

  That quiet, sincere voice again, “I’d like that, Mom.” Em was my solemn child, and I often worried that she needed more laughter in her life.

  Her sister, Maggie, on the other hand, was a blithe spirit, full of joy and laughter one minute and pouting the next. This afternoon she was pouting and not at all forgiving when I picked her up at the local elementary school where there was also an after-school program. “You’re late,” she said accusingly, “and that makes Miss Benson angry.”

  She’s already acting like a teenager, angry and bored with adults, and she’s only seven! I admitted to myself, however, that I only saw flashes of that behavior. Most of the time, Maggie was a love, a child who would run a block to give me a hug. Besides, she was right. The after-school day-care program director frowned at me when I straggled in after four o’clock, and I’d ignored the look. I wondered if she’d asked Maggie, in exasperation, “Where is your mother?”

  Now I felt guilty about both girls. “I’m sorry, Maggie, I had sort of an emergency.”

  “Well,” Maggie said in her determined voice, “Daddy was never late. I just hope I’m not too late for ballet.”

  I wanted to scream and ask her how she remembered that her father was never late when he hadn’t seen the girls in three years. And besides, if he was never late picking her up, he was always late with payments, be they mortgage, car, or child support. Nowadays he wasn’t even making the latter.

  Em moaned. “Do I have to watch Maggie’s ballet lesson?” This earned her a jab in the ribs from her older sister, which set Em to wailing.

  “No, Em. You and I will go to the grocery while Maggie’s in her lesson. And you’re not late, Maggie. Your ballet things are right there in the back of the car where you put them.”

  “I didn’t put them anywhere,” Maggie said, “They’re laid out in my room.”

  My instant thought was, “I told you this morning to put them in the car.” But instead of making a deteriorating situation worse, I said, “Fine. We’ll go home and get them. It will only take a second, and you’ll still be on time.”

  And she was, but barely. One of the advantages of living and working in Fairmount is that everything is handy, even the school and the day-care. I raced into the house, grabbed Maggie’s ballet clothes, and was back in the car before the girls could start fussing at each other.

  After we’d walked Maggie into class—never let a child out of the car by herself is one of my rules—I said to Em, “Let’s you and me rush to the grocery for a few things and then surprise Maggie with pizza.” Keisha was always complaining that I fed the girls junk food, but when you’re late and tired, pizza and frozen dinners sure are easy. I know better, and I am always resolving to make home-cooked meals, but I usually only manage one or two of those a week.

  “Okay, Mom, pizza would be good. I like it.”

  I’d been a single working mom for three years. I loved my children, I loved my job, but I was getting tired of juggling. When Tim was there to share, it was a lot better—I couldn’t believe that thought even went through my mind. But Tim loved his daughters—or had then—and carried his share of parenting responsibilities. It was just now that he’d dropped out of their lives like a stone dropping into deep water, and I knew Maggie missed him. She remembered the good times—and so did I.

  For a long time, Tim and I were happy. We had all the things young couples want—and sooner than most couples. I later found out that was because Tim wasn’t paying bills, but at the time I enjoyed the dinner parties we gave, the Christmases when Tim bought way too many presents, the vacations we took.

  Sometimes I look back and think I was blind and dumb.

  ~*~

  The pizza was a success. I got Em settled into pajamas in front of her favorite video, something about Dora, and I sat down at the dining table to help Maggie with her homework. By eight o’clock the girls were in bed, and I was exhausted.

  Once I was in bed, my imagination took over and shock set in. That skeleton once was a person, someone with a life of her own (I was convinced it was a small woman), with joys and sadness, hopes and dreams, but she couldn’t have expected to end up as dry bones hidden away in a box. Who was she? What happened and why? Was she dead when sealed up, or did death come slowly, locked in a dark box—too horrible a thought to contemplate, like Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado,” which would give anyone chills.

  A fantasy began in my mind. She was young, blonde, and beautiful of course, a schoolteacher, a churchgoer, an all around small-town girl come to the city. But she fell in love with a scoundrel who cheated on her; she confronted him, and he strangled her. I was so close to working out a novel in my head that I named the skeleton. Maybe it was those wisps of once-flowered material, but she made me think of Miranda from The Tempest. That, I decided was how I would think of her instead of “the skeleton.”

  Could the police solve a mystery all these years later? I assumed it was many, many years, and yet to let it go unsolved seemed barbaric. And the idea of rats and mice—I didn’t want to think about that again either. It made my flesh crawl. At last I drifted into a troubled sleep, but the ringing phone startled me awake.

  When I mumbled “Hello,” a deep voice said, “Forget about the skeleton. Don’t investigate or you’ll be sorry.” Whoever was on the other end slammed the phone down in my ear. I looked at the clock: three o’clock, and for me, sleep was over for the night. Who would call with that strange, threatening message? Who, besides me, could care about an old skeleton? And how did they know so quickly? Should I call Mike Shandy? No, he’d just tell me to lock my doors and let the police handle it. A hidden place deep inside me was scared, b
ut I was also angry. Nobody was going to threaten me. I’d learned a lot in the three years I’d been single, and protecting myself and the girls was the biggest lesson. I got up to check them, but they were sleeping peacefully. Once back in bed, the endless questions played themselves in my mind. Who was Miranda? How did she get there? And how long ago? Why?

  Sleep came again fitfully at dawn, less than an hour before the alarm went off. Sleepless though the night had been, I turned off the alarm and got right up. In that space of time before the girls were up, I sipped coffee and read the newspaper. Once, Tim and I employed an agent who never read the paper. I was almost firm with the woman about how important keeping current was. After all, the business section had lots about real estate trends and developments, and the general news was important. You couldn’t talk to clients and say, “What hijacking?” when then news the day before spent six hours following the travels of a truck and its woman driver hijacked by a man she did not know. No, I was convinced it was important to know what went on in the world but also to know what went on locally. Besides, I loved reading the local news in the peace and quiet of the early morning. It was one of my favorite times of day.

  On page three of the city news section, in the “Local Briefs” column, there was a piece about a skeleton being found in a house under renovation in the Fairmount addition. It gave the address of the house and said that the remains had been sent to the county coroner’s office for possible identification, adding that authorities were not yet sure of the gender or age of the victim nor when the death occurred. I didn’t learn anything from reading it, but I wished that O’Connell and Spencer Realtors were mentioned—anything for publicity. On second thought it occurred to me that maybe the omission was good—future buyers might be turned off by a house that held a skeleton for who-knew-how-many years. As it was, curiosity seekers would drive down Fairmount today, just to see the house where a skeleton was found. And they’d see the O’Connell and Spencer sign out front. The article could bring forth someone who knew something. It might work to my advantage and to that of the police. In the bright light of a Texas morning, a skeleton seemed more of a curiosity than a threat, worth only a mention in the local brief news. I decided not to tell Mike Shandy about that strange call in the early morning hours.

  TWO

  I should have woken the girls up ten minutes ago. I’d gotten so absorbed in thinking about what that tiny news brief did or didn’t mean that I lost track of time. I flew up the stairs, trying hard to be gentle even though I wanted to scream that we were all late and they better jump to it. They stumbled around, looking for toothbrushes and the clothes that we laid out the night before—I didn’t exactly approve of the color combinations. Em chose an orange shirt and blue plaid pants, but I didn’t object. I raced downstairs to pour cereal and milk into bowls and pack peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in lunchboxes. Maggie would say, “Peanut butter again?” Mental note: put lunch meat on the grocery list. While they ate their cereal, I went upstairs to throw on slacks and a turtleneck, topped by a blazer—my standard outfit. Maggie was at school in good time, but Em was a bit late. “That’s okay, Mom,” she said. “It’s only pre-school and they aren’t as strict.” I hugged her. Then, frazzled before the day began, I headed to the office.

  Keisha thrust a sheaf of pink slips at me as I walked in the office door. “You win the lottery or something?” Keisha was a young, large African-American woman—not fat but big-boned, large all over—and she dressed to take advantage of her size, sporting long glittering fingernails, a huge beehive hairdo, lots of makeup, and wearing sweeping loose clothes, even caftans. I blessed the day I called the school district’s vocational program to find an administrative assistant. Keisha was much more—and she didn’t even mind making coffee. She was also friend, confidante, and occasional babysitter.

  “I think what happened,” I said, “is that I lost the lottery—and a lot of other contests. All these this morning?”

  Keisha nodded. “And if this phone don’t stop ringing, I’m tearing it out of the wall.”

  “Be my guest,” I said as I wandered toward my desk. Mostly Tim and I found it easiest to do business ourselves, without agents, and I didn’t hire anyone after he left, so the room always seemed large and bare. But so far I was doing fine by myself, though I often felt pushed by too much to do. If I ran into the perfect agent, I’d reconsider. I riffled through the callback slips. Joanie called. No choice there—I’d call Joanie first. She was must be worried about me after seeing that piece in the paper.

  Joanie Bennett was maybe my best friend. We’d met when Tim and I first came to town, at an open house. Joanie was looking at houses she couldn’t afford. But she was talkative, and I was always chatty on the job because that’s part of real estate, so we hit it off. She seemed to bubble over with enthusiasm for life in general, and I liked that. We’d meet for lunch and gradually I found out that she was in advertising, working with high-dollar clients for one of the most prestigious agencies in town. She was also single and longing to be a wife and mother—but she never seemed to meet the right guy. Tim and I would include her and the current man-of-the-moment in our dinner parties, and I agreed with her—whoever he was, he wasn’t the right guy. Joanie, I decided, wasn’t a good picker. After Tim left, Joanie was great support for me, and I came to rely on her visits. We’d drink wine late into the night, and many times she fell asleep on the couch. The next morning, we both felt awful.

  Now, I assumed she was calling about the skeleton. “Joanie, it’s Kelly.”

  “Kelly? I’m so glad you called right back. Thanks.”

  “It’s okay, Joanie, I’m okay. Just sort of dazed. Finding that skeleton was bad enough, but seeing it in the newspaper and getting twenty phone calls by nine o’clock is a bit too much.”

  “Skeleton? What skeleton?” Joanie’s tone was one of complete surprise.

  Someone else who doesn’t read the newspaper. “Isn’t that why you called?”

  “No. I called because I have a huge problem, and I have to talk to you about it right away. Not lunch. Not a restaurant. It has to be private.” Joanie passed over the skeleton and went right back to her own problem, whatever it was that demanded privacy. Joanie’s requests for advice—which she usually ignored—weren’t that unusual. Neither was the oblivion to what was going on in someone else’s life. It was just Joanie.

  “Busy day, Joanie. I’ve got a stack of calls to make, got to check on a house I’m negotiating for....” I also wanted to start checking city directories to find out who lived in the house on Fairmount.

  Joanie wailed. “I have to talk to you today. It can’t wait. Kelly, this is big, really big.”

  “Okay,” I relented. “Come by the house tonight, after the girls are in bed. About eight?”

  A dramatic sigh on the other end of the line. “You can’t do anything before that?’

  “Nope,” I said, my voice firm. Give Joanie an inch and she’d take a mile.

  “Okay. Oh, and you can tell me about the skeleton. That’s a disgusting thought.”

  “Thanks. See you tonight.” I hung up, with more of a slam than I meant.

  Next I returned a call from Christian, my friend at the title company. Christian was a good guy, willing to work with clients, and I gave him all the closings I could. We’d lunched a few times, during which he talked about his wife and baby and how wonderful they were. I sort of envied him that domestic bliss. But he was also a caring person, and I could hear concern in his voice now.

  “Kelly,” he said, “what’s going on? What’s this about a skeleton in that house on Fairmount?”

  “It’s true, Christian, and I need your help.” He could do a title search that would turn up owners, deeds, wills, trusts, mortgages, judgments for the last thirty years. I had a sinking feeling that I would need to know about owners beyond thirty years ago—that was, after all, only the ‘70s. But what he could do was a start and maybe the title company’s old card file would tel
l me more.

  “Sure. What do you need? But, wait, are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m okay. Just a little shaken. And a whole lot curious.”

  “I bet.”

  “Can you have your office do a title search? We may have to go back beyond the usual thirty years—the house is ninety years old, and there’s not a good way of dating skeletons. But it’s important to know who owned the house.”

  I heard him take a deep breath. “You give me your title business for the next thirty years?”

  “Cross my heart,” I said.

  “Okay, Kelly, I’ll see what we can find. But it will take some time. Can you be patient?”

  ‘No, but I’ll try. It will take time to do tests on the skeleton too. Meantime I’ve got to fight to keep publicity down. And I’m also going to check city directories, so we can compare title holders to residents.”

  He laughed. “In Fairmount in the last twenty years that could prove a puzzle. Take care and let me know how you’re doing.”

  Fairmount is an inner-city neighborhood of homes, most built in the 1920s, most bungalows but also some spacious two-story homes and some architectural gems, such as original Craftsman houses. Starting in the ‘60s or maybe earlier, Fairmount began to go downhill; houses became ill-tended rental property. By the ‘90s that began to turn around—the neighborhood was close to the hospital district and to downtown, and young professionals found it convenient and charming. They began to buy the older, deteriorating houses and restore them. Then a neighborhood association stepped in, and the business streets—mainly Magnolia Avenue and Rosedale Street—began to perk up with new restaurants and boutiques. Some of the old-standbys remained of course, like the Paris Coffee Shop, which has been a breakfast meeting place for people from all walks of life and all businesses for years. At noon, people stand in line for the pies. Tim saw the opening for growth in Fairmount early on. O’Connell and Spencer specialized in buying older homes and renovating them for sale. But these days I don’t turn away an outright sale either.