Sleuthing Women

by Lois Winston

  Lark turned in early that night and by ten p.m., Mom was sleeping soundly on the sofa, with Hollywood Boulevard playing on the TNT channel. I was sitting at the kitchen table going over my notes on the case when the phone rang. I grabbed it by the second ring, so it wouldn’t wake up Mom. Pugsley gave a soft yip of surprise, emerging from some doggie dream and jumped into my lap.

  “Back off,” a gravelly voice said.

  “What?” The voice was low and indistinct with some static in the background. It sounded like someone was dragging a plastic comb over the receiver, maybe to disguise the voice?

  “You heard me. Back off. You know what I’m talking about.” This time the threat in the voice was unmistakable and a chill passed through me. “Unless you want to lose your mother, your roommate and oh yeah, your stupid little dog.”

  I froze, every brain cell on red alert. “Who is this?” Pugsley must have sensed the urgency in my voice because he nestled closer, looking up at me in alarm.

  “You don’t need to know that. And I’m not dumb enough to stay on the line long enough for you to trace the call, if that’s what you’re thinking.” I nearly laughed out loud. I am the most low-tech person I know, and the idea of me tracing a call is about as likely as me piloting a space shuttle. “Stop butting into things that don’t concern you, or you’re a dead woman.”

  Click.

  A dead woman? A line of goosebumps sprouted on my forearm and the skin on the back of my neck prickled.

  “Who was that?” Mom murmured from the sofa, her voice thick with sleep.

  “Nothing,” I said, muting the television. “Go back to sleep.”

  “Okay,” she said agreeably, nestling back into the sofa pillows.

  I grabbed my purse and my cell phone and went out onto the balcony. Rafe had given me his cell phone number for emergencies. I thought it was silly at the time, but now I wanted to hear his warm, reassuring voice. I punched in the number and he answered on the first ring.

  “Maggie,” he said. “What’s up?”

  For a second I was taken aback and then recovered. Caller ID, of course.

  I quickly filled him in on the phone call, wondering if I’d been silly to call him.

  “Look at the read-out,” he instructed. “What does it say?”

  “Private number.”

  “Probably a phone card, but we can try to trace it tomorrow.” A pause.

  “Was it a man or a woman?”

  “I’m not sure. It was sort of muffling and there was a scratchy noise in the background.”

  “Is everything locked up tight? You need to check all the doors and windows and double-check that the security system’s turned on.”

  “I don’t have a security system.”

  A muffled curse. “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

  “I thought this was some little backwater town, you know, like Mayberry. I figured the biggest crime you had to deal with was someone stealing newspapers off the front porch. Or maybe a kid snatching one of Aunt Bee’s apple pies off the windowsill.”

  “Do we seem like hicks to you? Is that what you’re saying?”

  Oops. “No, that’s not what I meant at all. Sorry. I just meant Cypress Grove is a quaint little place, totally different from Manhattan. I didn’t think people locked their doors here.” Rafe didn’t say anything so I babbled on. “I guess I’m just a little shaken up, that’s all.”

  “Do you want me to send someone over?” His tone had softened, I was forgiven.

  I knew I had to be careful. I didn’t want to come across like a ditzy heroine in some silly woman-in-jep movie. That wasn’t the image I wanted to project. I wanted to be more of an Angelina Jolie, kick-ass heroine type. But the wobble in my voice probably gave me away.

  “No, I’m fine,” I said, trying to sound confident. “Let’s just chalk it up to a prank call, and leave it at that. It’s not like I’m not in any real danger.”

  “That’s not true. You could be in very real danger,” Rafe said evenly. “But I’m not going to let anything happen to you, you can count on that. Lock everything up, Maggie, do it now. I’ll get up with you first thing in the morning and I’ll let you know if we manage to trace that call. And Maggie–”

  “Yes?”

  “Stop playing Nancy Drew. This isn’t a game.”

  His voice was low and intense, as if he cared what happened to me. Or was he just doing his job? Protect and Serve was the motto emblazoned on every Cypress Grove patrol car.

  Was he as attracted to me as I was to him?

  It was impossible to tell.

  I clicked the phone shut and stayed out on the balcony for a few minutes. The air was soft and balmy, a full golden moon hung in the black sky. The lyrics to Moon over Miami came rushing into my head and I smiled at the incongruity of it all.

  Here I was, the perfect target, standing on the balcony overlooking a darkened garden. And I was enjoying the night air, thinking about the lyrics to a syrupy song. What if someone was lurking out there, spying on me, waiting to hurt me? I quickly went inside, double checked the lock on the glass door and closed the drapes.

  ~*~

  I debated whether or not to tell Lark and Mom about the late-night call, and finally decided against it. The next day was bright and sunny, a typical Florida morning, and the threatening voice on the phone had faded from my thoughts. It could easily have a prank call.

  Couldn’t it? Rafe once told me that small southern towns have their share of crime and random violence. I tried to push aside the nagging thought that the caller was serious. Drop dead serious.

  But I told myself the best thing to do was to ignore it. Mom had gone out shopping with Lark. It was nearly nine o’clock and I was standing on the balcony, sipping a cup of Bananas Foster-flavored coffee. I was idly looking over at the Seabreeze next door when something caught my eye.

  A big ugly dumpster. It looked like a gunmetal gray monster sitting there.

  It was invisible at eye level, shielded by a lattice work privacy fence. Had anyone checked the dumpster for a Styrofoam container? It seemed like a no-brainer, but evidence has gone missing before in criminal cases. Nick told me that only one percent of collected evidence is actually used at trial, and things get lost all the time. I wondered how I could ask Rafe if anyone had checked the dumpster without sounding like I was telling him how to do his job.

  I decided to do his job for him.

  I shoved my feet into flipflops and crossed the backyard into the garden behind the Seabreeze. There’s a little place between the hedges that it’s easy to slip through. I did a quick check of the lawn. No unsightly debris, no signs of a takeout dinner. Holding my breath, I lifted the lid on the ugly dumpster. Empty.

  For a moment, I was stymied, and then I saw Francesca, one of the maids, coming toward me, lugging a wastebasket. She gave me a puzzled smile, probably wondering why I was fascinated by the dumpster. She was in her mid-thirties, attractive and slightly plump, her black and white uniform stretched tight over her hips.

  “Senora,” she said, lifting the lid and skillfully tossing a bag inside.

  “Francesca, right? I live next door.” I flashed my most reassuring smile and pointed to my condo.

  “Qué?”

  “Me llamo Maggie,” I said, using up my limited knowledge of Spanish.

  “Oh, Maggie, si,” she said politely. She nodded and headed back to the Seabreeze, but I blocked her way.

  “I’m trying to get some information on Sanjay.”

  “Sanjay?”

  “Guru Sanjay Ginjii,” I repeated. “I need to find out what happened to him. He stayed here at the Seabreeze and then he died.”

  “Died?”

  “Died. Dead. Muerto.”

  A sudden recognition flickered in her eyes and I realized she knew something about Sanjay. About the room. About that night. Something.

  She shook her head. “No se nada. Nada.” She didn’t know anything. Or so she said. I had the feeling her English
was much better than she was letting on.

  “Maybe you’re frightened, Francesca,” I said, leaning close. “Don’t be. I just need to know if anything unusual happened the night Sanjay died.” I had no idea how to translate that so I just looked at her intently. “Anything would help, any little bit of information. Even una poca. Una poca informacion.” I touched my thumb to my index finger to show that even a tiny bit would help.

  Francesca looked at me, her dark eyes wide. For a moment, I thought she was going to tell me something and then she shook her head. “Por favor, Senora.” She angled her body so she could brush by me and return to the Seabreeze. “No se nada.”

  I decided it was time for the direct approach. “Francesca, Lark needs our help. She’s in a lot of trouble with the police.”

  “Lark?” Her dark eyes looked troubled.

  “You know Lark, my roommate, right? We live right next door.” I pointed again to our condo. “You’ve seen Lark many times.”

  She nodded her head vigorously. “Lark, si! Very nice lady. Blonde.” She smiled and touched her own dark hair. “Very simpatica.”

  “Yes, that’s right, she’s very simpatica.” I paused, wondering how much to say. “Francesca, listen to me carefully. The police think that Lark killed Sanjay.” I let that sink in for a moment before going on. “We both know that’s not possible. Lark is not a killer.” I shook my head from side to side and Francesca became more animated.

  “No!” she said firmly. “Not possible. Lark is not killer.”

  “Right. Lark would never hurt anyone.” I blew out a sigh. “But we need to find out what really happened that night in Guru Sanjay’s room. You could help me. You could ask a few questions, maybe talk to the other maids? Do you understand?”

  “Si.” Her voice was somber.

  “Maybe they saw something or heard something. You could ask them, right? Could you do that for me?” Francesca nodded and I grabbed a pen out of my pocket. I scribbled my condo number and my phone number on a napkin that had fluttered out of the dumpster. “Por favor.”

  “Si. I will help you.” Francesca said softly. She nodded and hurried down the path away from me.

  ~*~

  “Maggie?” Rafe’s sexy voice raced over the line a few minutes later. I had just fed Pugsley and was finishing off the rest of the coffee while catching a few minutes of the Today Show. “Just checking in about the phone call.”

  “Yes?” My heart was thudding with excitement. I told myself it was due to the case, but the truth is, I always felt a little buzz talking to Rafe.

  “We didn’t get anything on the call.” A beat. “But I have some interesting news about the break-in at your apartment. We managed to get a match on a fingerprint one of our techs lifted from the scene.”

  “You did? But how is that possible? Whoever attacked me that night was wearing gloves. I’m sure of it.”

  “I know, but we got a print off the handrail leading up to the outside door to the building. And it matches a partial we got from the bedroom doorknob inside your condo. They always slip up somewhere.”

  “Clever.” I was impressed. “I didn’t know you dusted there.”

  “Our techs are good. Funny how perps can get careless about leaving prints around, especially outside the building,” Rafe said. “They don’t want to wear gloves in public, it would look suspicious. So they wait until they get inside to pull them on. A big mistake.”

  “So this guy wasn’t as smart as he thought.”

  “Except it wasn’t a guy. It was a woman.”

  “It was a woman?” My mind was reeling and I grabbed the TV remote and turned it to mute.

  “That’s right. And here’s some more good news. I was going to get prints from you and your mother and your roommate to rule them out, and then I just took a chance and ran the crime scene prints through the system. Bingo. There was a match. Her prints are already on file because she took out a license to carry a concealed weapon. So now we can place her at your building, and that’s all we need to bring her in for questioning.”

  I could hardly process what he was saying. Rafe kept saying her. The person who broke into my apartment and slammed me against the wall was a woman?

  “This woman,” I began. “Is it...is it someone I know?”

  “You do know her. At least you’ve met her. The prints belong to Miriam Dobosh.”

  “Miriam Dobosh? I can’t believe it,” I blurted out. And then I remembered sitting at the Delano with her and noticing those powerful hands resting on the table. She was a strong woman under that frumpy suit. A powerful woman. “Why would she do it?”

  “Why do you think?”

  “She must have killed Sanjay,” I said doubtfully. “Or somehow she’s involved in his death. But I was sure she didn’t have anything to do with it. At least–”

  “At least what?”

  “Nothing.” I didn’t want to tell him about the Delano and her offer to help solve the crime. Then I’d have to admit to having done some Nancy Drew type sleuthing. Exactly the kind of thing he’d ordered me not to do. “I just can’t believe it. What would her motive be?”

  “That’s what we need to find out.”

  “She might be protecting someone else, the real killer, I guess.”

  “Any idea who that might be?”

  “No.” I felt like I was grasping at straws. “You’re sure you can place her in my apartment? Not just outside?”

  “We have a couple of footprints we lifted from the kitchen floor. If we put those with the fingerprints on the outside hand rail, we’ve got a strong case. She certainly has some explaining to do.”

  “That she does.”

  I clicked the phone shut and sat for a few moment thinking. Miriam Dobosh had been inside my apartment looking for something, but what? I needed to move her up a few notches on my suspect list. This changed everything.

  I had just finished showering and was going to call Vera Mae to go over the day’s show when someone knocked at the door. Was it Miriam Dobosh? I peered out the peephole, feeling a little silly and saw a young girl, probably still in her teens, wearing a maid’s uniform. I relaxed and pulled the door open.

  “Hola,” she said shyly. Her nametag said Nina and she worked at the Seabreeze.

  “Hola,” I stood back. “Please come in.”

  “I am Francesca’s niece, Nina.” She looked nervous and was twisting her hands together in front of her. “Francesca told me that Lark is accused of killing Sanjay I have something you need to see.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a fortune cookie.

  “Where did you get this?” I turned it over in my hand.

  “Sanjay, he gave it to me. That night he was killed.”

  “He gave it to you?” I motioned her to the couch and she sat down. “Did it come as part of a take-out dinner?”

  “Si. I saw it myself. The dinner was on the bed. It was in one of those, how do you say–” she frowned, her eyebrows knitted together.

  “A Styrofoam container? Like this?” I jumped up and grabbed the Golden Palace container off the kitchen counter and showed it to her. “Si, si!” Nina nodded her head vigorously. “That’s it. That’s what I saw in his room.” She tapped the red logo in the center. “I remember this very well.”

  “How did Sanjay happen to give it to you?”

  Nina shook her head in disgust. “He called down to the front desk. He wanted more towels. I brought them in and when I arranged them on the towel rack, he tried to pinch me. You know, here. On the butt.” She made a face. “He was disgusting old man.”

  “And what happened then?”

  “I got out of there as fast as I could. He caught up with me at the door and said take this cookie for good luck.”

  “So you took it?”

  Nina’s mouth twisted. “I put it in my pocket and forgot about it. I was too busy getting out of there fast as I can.”

  “Nina, I’m so glad you told me this.” I took both her hands in mine.
/>   “I had to,” she said shyly. “I know Lark would never hurt anyone do that. I should have said something before, I didn’t think of the importance.”

  “That’s okay, Nina, now the police will know what to do. With your testimony, we can prove that there really was a sushi dinner in Sanjay’s room that night. It’s a good thing you brought this, better late than never.”

  “Mas vale tarde que nunca.” She grinned. “We say the same thing in Spanish.”

  She was about to leave when suddenly we heard a voice that turned my blood to ice.

  THIRTY

  “What a touching moment, don’t let me interrupt.”

  A chilled passed through me when I heard the low voice, the sarcastic laugh. It was one of those moments when you’re pretty sure you’re dreaming, but you don’t want to count on it.

  I whirled around to the sliding glass door that opened onto the balcony. It was wide open. Travis Carter was framed in the doorway and we locked eyes for a long moment. I stood frozen to the spot, raw terror clawing its way up my throat. My mind scrambled to make sense of what I was seeing.

  Then he walked into the living area and pointed a gun at Nina’s chest.

  “Don’t make a sound,” he said. He moved closer and stared at us. He had beads of sweat popping up on his forehead and I could feel the tension rolling off him.

  “Travis, you’re making a terrible mistake.” Nina was trembling beside me, making a little choking sound in her throat. I rested my hand lightly on her arm.

  Travis put a finger to his lips in a strange eerie gesture. His eyes were glazed, either from psychosis or drugs and I felt a stab of terror go through me. How could I ever reason with someone like this? He appeared to be deranged. Completely unhinged.

  Nina’s hand flew to her mouth and she gulped back a sob. She rattled off a barrage of Spanish and I couldn’t understand a word except mi dios, mi dios, which she repeated over and over.

  I felt like sobbing myself. If ever there was a time for divine intervention, this was it. I flattened myself against the wall as Travis came closer, the gun still pointed at Nina. “Tell Chiquita Banana here to shut up. Or I’ll silence her myself.”