by Lois Winston
If Jim was acting like all was hunky dory, so would I. If he thought working with Sheila Carney was a great idea, I did too. If he was going to orchestrate Davis Rhodes’s memorial service, that was okay with me. No problemo. It was time for me to focus on my freelance work again. There might even be an editing assignment for me if I took the time to check my email.
Unfortunately, no new job opportunities had magically appeared. Which was probably just as well. I admitted I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to concentrate on work. I’d allowed my professional motivation to go out the window, and it was going to be very tough to get it back again. Depressing, but true.
I sat at the computer and my mind wandered all over the place. I had no plan for how to spend the day. Even worse, I had no plan for my life. I was just drifting along aimlessly.
Mary Alice was probably going to face many times like this after she retired. I wondered how she would cope.
Then, in a flash, I had a brilliant idea. I would do something for Mary Alice to celebrate her retirement. I’d give her a party. A fabulous party. No, not a party. A shower! Where everyone would be encouraged to bring unique gifts to mark this auspicious occasion. At last I had something positive to focus on. And I knew just who to call to help me plan it. She even had the perfect place to hold the shower. I got out the phone book and looked up the number for Maria’s Trattoria.
~*~
“This is a great idea you have for a party, Carol,” said Maria. Luckily, when I called, she had an hour to spare that afternoon. We were sitting in a corner booth near the kitchen, and Maria was making some notes in a big three-ring binder while we talked.
“When I retired from teaching,” she remembered, “my send-off was in the school cafeteria, with soggy sandwiches and warm sodas. I’d insisted that my students be included in the party, and because of liability issues, the event had to be held on school property. It was a wonderful, meaningful party for me because of the kids. But the food was terrible. I want to provide a real feast for Mary Alice’s retirement shower. It’s a great opportunity for me to show that we can cater private parties, too. Most people don’t think of us for that.”
I was thrilled at her enthusiasm. And a little surprised, too. While I was driving over to the restaurant, I’d had second thoughts about planning the party with Maria. I remembered that she’d been an excellent teacher, but she ran her classroom like a general on the battlefield. And she didn’t tolerate suggestions, which she interpreted as interference, from parents. I wasn’t sure I wanted to work with her so closely.
But this was the new Maria Lesco, ready to lend her expertise and creativity to make my shower idea the fabulous party that Mary Alice deserved.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen the restaurant this quiet,” I said, sipping from a glass of chilled Pellegrino water with lemon.
“Three to four o’clock is pretty much down time for us,” said Maria. “Too late for lunch and too early for dinner. But about four-thirty, the take-out business starts to pick up, and then we’re really busy till around ten o’clock every night.” She pointedly looked at her watch, and I got the message. I needed to move this conversation along.
“Mary Alice’s last official day of work at the hospital is the Friday before Labor Day,” I said, “which is about five weeks away. I know that Labor Day weekend may not be the best time to have a party because lots of people are still on vacation, but I’d like to schedule the shower as close as possible to the time when she actually retires.”
After discussing a few possible dates, Maria suddenly said, “I’ve just had a great idea. The restaurant is usually closed on Mondays. How about if we have the shower on Labor Day afternoon? What could be more appropriate than that?”
“I love it!” I exclaimed. “That’s absolutely perfect. I’ll make some calls to a few close friends and give them a head’s up on the date right away. Will you come up with a suggested menu? I’m planning on about thirty people, if some of Mary Alice’s coworkers from the hospital are invited. Do you want a deposit?” I reached in my purse for my checkbook.
“No deposit necessary,” Maria said. “Don’t worry about it. Give me a few days to think about the menu and then I’ll be in touch with you, all right? I’ve never planned a party like this before, and I’m going to have to do a little research. This is going to be such fun for me.” She rose and walked me to the restaurant door.
“By the way, that was a terrible thing about Davis Rhodes?” Maria said. “I couldn’t believe it when I read about his death in the paper.”
I stiffened. Easy, Carol. Don’t overreact. It was an innocent remark.
“It certainly was,” I said. “I suppose he must have had a heart attack, poor man.”
“From the way he ate every time he came in here, I’d say he wasn’t worried about his cholesterol,” Maria said. “He loved his red meat and cheese, and never passed up the opportunity for a fattening dessert.”
Whoa. New information. I had to find out more.
“Did he come in here often?” I asked, as casually as I could. I was dying to hear more details. The Miss Lesco I remembered from the kids’ school days was no gossip. But maybe the Maria from Maria’s Trattoria was. I decided to bait the hook a little more and see how she responded.
I let my eyes fill up just a little (I confess I’m pretty good at that), then said, “You may not know that Jim and I had gone to Rhodes for retirement counseling. His sudden death has been a personal blow to both of us.” If you only knew how much of a blow.
Maria looked at her watch again, then said, “You know, I think I have time for a cup of cappuccino. Would you like one, too, on the house?”
I tried not to appear too eager. “I’d love a cup, if you’re sure you have the time.”
“My pleasure.”
We settled down at the corner booth again with two steaming cups of cappuccino, and I waited to hear if she would share more information about Rhodes. I’d read in mystery stories that the police often find silence to be a good method of interrogation, and I decided to try it. I needn’t have worried about getting her to talk. Maria needed no prompting from me.
“I know it’s not professional to gossip about the customers,” she said, leaning toward me and speaking in a low voice. “I’d probably fire one of my staff for talking like this, but Rhodes is dead and who can it hurt now?”
I said nothing. Just looked interested, and took a sip of the cappuccino. Yum. Delicious.
“Rhodes was one of the worst customers we’ve ever had,” Maria continued. “He treated all the servers like personal lackeys, and was a stingy tipper to boot. Nothing was ever cooked to his liking. He sent things back to the kitchen all the time. It got so that none of the servers wanted to wait on him. When he’d come in, we’d draw straws to see who would get him. Loser won, if you know what I mean. And it was disgraceful the way he treated that lovely assistant of his. The last time he brought her in here, they had an awful argument.”
Maria leaned back in her chair. “You know, it feels good to get this out. I don’t ever talk about customers this way, but at least he won’t be coming in here anymore.”
I took a sip of my cappuccino and sent up a silent prayer. “Thank you, God. I know this is You at work. Please don’t let me screw this up now by saying the wrong thing.” I had to keep her talking.
“Do you remember what the argument was about? I can’t imagine Rhodes losing his temper. When Jim and I went to him, he seemed so easy-going. This doesn’t sound like the man we knew.”
“Hah,” retorted Maria. “He had an awful temper. I don’t remember specifically what they argued about that time, but you can bet that if he brought someone here for dinner, they’d end up in an argument about something. We used to joke that he’d provoke an argument with the person he was with so he wouldn’t have to pay for their food.”
A random question popped into my head, and I asked it. “Did he bring in any other women besides Sheila?”
&nb
sp; “Well, his wife, of course,” Maria said.
I tried not to choke on my cappuccino. “His wife? What wife?” I asked.
“Well, maybe I should say his ex-wife,” Maria said. “I talked to her briefly while she was waiting for him to arrive. She seemed very sweet. And she had gorgeous white hair. Some people go white when they’re still young, and it looks fabulous on them, you know?”
I nodded my head encouragingly. Forget the hair. Let’s move along here.
“They were apparently in the process of divorcing,” Maria said. “You could tell they’d been married a long time. She knew just how to handle him. Wasn’t the type to put up with any of his nonsense. That’s probably why they were getting divorced.”
I hoped my eyes weren’t popping out of my head, but I wondered if the police had this information. I decided to probe a little further. I rationalized my nosiness by telling myself I could pass on whatever I found out to Mark Anderson.
“Did you happen to overhear anything they talked about?”
Maria thought for a minute. “They seemed to talk about money quite a bit. I got the feeling that she thought he had hidden some assets so she wouldn’t get them as part of her divorce settlement.”
“Wow. That could get really nasty.”
“It did once or twice during their meal,” said Maria. “He only brought her in that one time, about three weeks ago.”
Maria paused for a minute. “There was one odd thing, though. She didn’t call him Davis. She called him Dick. We all had a good laugh in the kitchen about what a perfect name that was for him.”
Hmmm.
SEVENTEEN
Q: What’s the first big shock of retirement?
A: When you realize there are no days off.
As soon as I got home, I emailed Nancy and Claire about my retirement shower brainstorm. I hoped that Claire would think the shower was a fabulous idea and want to help, and I knew Nancy would be annoyed with me for not including her in the preliminary planning. But she’d get over her snit. She always did.
Once I sent the two emails, I sat down with my trusty pad and jotted down Maria’s comments about Davis Rhodes while they were still fresh in my mind. I still couldn’t get over what she had told me.
At the top of my notes, I wrote: Find Rhodes’s wife. I underlined it several times. Then, I realized I had no idea what her name was. Perhaps Maria remembered. But I had to come up with a plausible excuse for my curiosity, so I called and told her I wanted the name so Jim and I could send a sympathy note to the family.
But Maria was no help at all. “It was several weeks ago,” she said in the voice she must have used to strike terror into her students. “You can’t expect me to remember back that far with all the customers we’ve had since then.”
Okay. Dead end, pardon the pun.
I remembered that the other curious thing Maria had mentioned was Rhodes’s first name. The wife had called him Dick. Was “Davis” not his real name? I had never heard “Dick” used as a nickname for “Davis.” And how the heck could I find that out?
Sheila Carney might know the answer. She might also know the wife’s name, but I doubted she’d share either one with me. She might share that information with Jim, though. Unless he already knew and hadn’t bothered to tell me.
I made another note to myself: Suggest Jim get name of Rhodes’s wife from Sheila to invite to memorial service. Ask Jim if the name “Davis Rhodes” could be a pseudonym.
Maria’s description of Rhodes’s abrasive personality was worth checking out, too. The man she described bore no resemblance to the charismatic retirement counselor Jim and I had met.
If Rhodes had such a short fuse, I thought, it was probably for the best that Jim and he never had a confrontation. Who knows what would have happened? Then I chided myself for my incredible stupidity. Jim’d found the guy dead, for God’s sake. How much worse could a confrontation between the two of them have been than that?
I thought briefly about calling Mark Anderson at police headquarters and giving him the new information I’d gotten from Maria. But I dreaded any conversation with him, and especially his partner, that could lead to their asking me more questions about our involvement with Rhodes. Besides, maybe I could find out some things on my own.
All of a sudden, I had another brilliant idea. Who knew what was going on in town better than real estate agents? They were incredibly connected, and Rhodes must have used an agent to either lease or buy the building where the Re-tirement Survival Center was located.
And my own very best friend Nancy was a real estate agent. Quickly, I dialed her cell phone number. She answered on the second ring.
“Nancy, it’s Carol. Where are you right now? Can we get together? I really need your help.”
“I got your email about the shower for Mary Alice,” Nancy said, sounding slightly peeved at me. “I can’t believe you started making plans without including Claire and me. I’ve decided to forgive you, because you’ll need our help to pull it off. But the party’s not until Labor Day. That’s weeks away. What’s the emergency about it this afternoon?”
“It’s not about Mary Alice’s party,” I said excitedly. “I found out some information about Davis Rhodes today from Maria Lesco. I need your help tracking down some more information. Can you come over right away?”
Nancy, predictably, rose to the bait. “I just finished showing a house to a new client, and I have to take her back to my office. Can you meet me there? I can close the conference room door so we’ll have privacy.”
“I’ll see you there in fifteen minutes.”
“Perfect.” She clicked off.
I checked the clock. It was almost 4:00 now. Who knew what time Jim would be home? I hadn’t heard from him all day. Unless, of course, he’d left a message on my cell phone, which I still hadn’t tried to find.
I decided to take a chance and call him at the office. Better to let him know in advance that dinner might be a little late, not that I’d tell him why.
“Oh, hello, Mrs. Andrews,” said Jim’s assistant, Deb Brownell. Deb was a sweet young thing, slightly overweight, who read too many romance novels at her desk. We had a good phone relationship, as long as she remembered to give Jim my messages. In between chapters. “Mr. Andrews tried to reach you a little earlier to let you know he’s going to be late tonight. Mack asked him to be the agency point man for the Davis Rhodes memorial service, and he’s just left for a meeting with Sheila Carney at the Re-tirement Survival Center.” She sighed. “What a terrible thing about Dr. Rhodes.”
I could tell Deb was dying to get into an in-depth discussion about what had happened, and though she often was a good source of agency gossip that Jim never bothered to share with me, I didn’t have time for chit chat now. I prayed that she didn’t know that her dear boss was the one who found the body. It’d be all over the office in five minutes. But Deb had inadvertently given me an important piece of news: the Re-tirement Survival Center was now considered an official agency client, and Jim was the official agency staff person for the account.
“Yes, it was terrible about Davis Rhodes, Deb,” I agreed. “I don’t want to cut you short, but I’m late for an important appointment now. Thanks for your help. Talk to you soon.”
Then I was off to Nancy’s office to continue my snooping. I mean, sleuthing.
~*~
I needn’t have rushed. Nancy was still with her client in the office conference room when I got to Dream Homes Realty (“Where We Make Your Dreams A Reality”), so I had to cool my heels in the frigid reception area for about forty-five minutes. After aimlessly flipping through current agency listing sheets, I started to pace back and forth in front of the conference room’s glass door and make faces at Nancy through the glass. She was sitting facing the door, and tried not to laugh while her client droned on and on about what houses she’d seen, which ones she liked, which ones she didn’t like, and why. Blah blah blah. Honestly, I don’t know how Nancy puts up with some of the
people she has to deal with.
Finally, the woman stood up and adjusted her shocking pink Lilly Pulitzer sweater, which she had artfully draped around her shoulders. “I’ll expect to hear from you in the next two days with more houses for me to see, Nancy,” she said as she left the office.
Nancy smiled and waved her out the door, then came back and collapsed into a chair beside me. “Boy, she’s a difficult client. I thought she’d never leave. I think she’s one of those people who has no intention of ever buying a new house, but just likes to go around and look at what’s on the market, especially the expensive ones. What a pain.”
She took a good look at my face. “You look like you’re about to explode with news. Let’s go into the conference room. Just about everybody is gone for the day, but I’ll close the door just in case.” When we were comfortably seated, Nancy demanded, “All right, what gives?”
I tried to be as concise as possible with what I’d found out from Maria, but as usual, Nancy kept interrupting me with questions.
“But what about Mary Alice’s shower?” she asked. “Are we definitely going to do it at Maria’s Trattoria on Labor Day?” Trust Nancy to zero in on what was, beyond any question, a secondary issue.
“Nancy, focus,” I said impatiently. “Forget about the shower for just a minute. What do you think about this new Davis Rhodes information? Never mind the fact that he was so rude to the restaurant staff. Apparently his real first name wasn’t Davis at all. If this mystery woman was his wife, why would she call him Dick instead of Dave or Davis? Maybe his last name isn’t even Rhodes.”
“Carol, you focus,” replied Nancy crossly. “Why do we care what his name was? Or even if he was married? The guy is dead.”
“But Nancy,” I said, “Jim found Rhodes’s body. The police have termed the death ‘suspicious.’ They’ve already questioned Jim, and they even came to the house to question me. Don’t you think the more we can find out about Rhodes and his past, the better we can protect Jim? My God, what if they suspect Rhodes was murdered and Jim is accused? Won’t you do a little digging to help me?”