Murder Is Binding bm-1

by Lorna Barrett

  "Then there's no harm in me going with you. Here, try some of the soup." Angelica held out the spoon.

  Tricia tasted it, surprised at its robust flavor. She took another taste. It was even better than the bisque at Ed's-something only hours before she would have thought impossible. "Where did you learn to cook like this?"

  Angelica shrugged. "Let's get back to the subject of searching Doris's house. Do you have any latex gloves? We don't want to leave a bunch of fingerprints."

  "We don't need gloves. It wasn't a crime scene. I have no intension of committing a misdemeanor by breaking in if I can't find the key."

  "Party pooper."

  "Why are you so hyped to come along, anyway?"

  Angelica smiled coyly. "Because it just might be fun."

  Seven

  Doris Gleason's little white cottage had seen happier days, as evidenced by its peeling paint, rusty metal roof, and the overgrown privet that adorned the west side of the property. As Ginny promised, a gravel driveway circled to the back of the dark house, affording the perfect cover for Angelica's rental car. She killed the lights and the yard was engulfed by the night. The engine made tinking noises as the sisters waited for their eyes to adjust to the darkness.

  Angelica spoke first. "The woman didn't have a whole lot in her life, did she?"

  Tricia shook her head. "I wonder if she owned the place or if it was a rental. She probably spent more time at the Cookery than here anyway."

  "How long are we going to sit here?" Angelica asked.

  "Give me a minute," Tricia said, looking over the darkened yard. Now that they were here, poking around the dead woman's home seemed like a bad idea-more than that, creepy. Okay, the house was isolated, its nearest neighbor at least a quarter mile in either direction. With the drapes pulled shut there was little chance they'd be seen by passing cars, but just what did Tricia hope to find? A big red sign pointing to a will or an insurance policy?

  Tricia reconsidered their quest. "I think we'd better go."

  "Oh, come on," Angelica urged, "where's your sense of adventure?" She reached behind her and dragged out the convenience store bag, extracting the big orange flashlight they'd stopped to buy along the way. She fished out the D batteries and filled the empty compartment, switching it on. An ice white beam of light pierced the car's darkness.

  "Not in the eyes," Tricia complained, putting a hand up to shield her face.

  "Sorry. Now where'd you say the extra key was hidden?"

  "It's supposed to be under a fake rock by the back door."

  "Right." Angelica opened her door, but Tricia's hand on her arm stopped her.

  "Before we do anything else, here." She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a pair of latex gloves and handed them to Angelica. "I changed my mind. I decided you were right and we shouldn't leave any fingerprints behind."

  "Whoa. That's a first. Me, with a good idea? Can I stand the compliment?"

  "You're making me paranoid."

  "Where did you get them?" Angelica asked, pulling a glove over her left hand and flexing her fingers.

  "The hardware store. I bought them for a refinishing job I never got around to doing." Tricia put on her own set of gloves, got out of the car, and marched toward the darkened house. Angelica followed, their feet crunching on the gravel drive. Good thing it wasn't raining. Tricia didn't want to track in any detritus and leave any other evidence that they'd been there.

  The flashlight's beam whisked back and forth around the steps. "I don't see any fake rocks. How long ago did your little helper say it was that she used it?"

  Tricia went rigid. "I never said it was Ginny."

  "Don't give me that look," Angelica chided. "Who else would it be? You don't talk to anybody from around here except her. I'm assuming she either once worked for Doris or moonlights as a burglar."

  "Yes," Tricia reluctantly admitted, "she worked for Doris for a couple of months before she came to work for me." She explained why Ginny hadn't accompanied her on this little expedition.

  Drooping perennials and overgrown grass along the back of the house made it difficult to search for the pseudorock. "Be careful," Tricia whispered. "Don't step on the flowers. If the sheriff comes out here again, we don't want her to know someone's been snooping around."

  "I think I've got it," Angelica said.

  Tricia hurried over. Using the flashlight, Angelica held back a swath of grass. A little white plastic rock sat sheltered by the greenery. She lifted it up and a fat worm recoiled at being disturbed.

  "Oh, ick!"

  "Grow up," Tricia warned, still whispering. The key was embedded in the dirt, bringing a small clod with it as Tricia picked it up. "Nobody's used it for a long time."

  "Why are we whispering?" Angelica asked.

  Tricia cleared her throat. "Come on."

  She wiped the dirt from the key, stepped up to the back door, and inserted it in the lock. She turned it, grasped the handle, and let herself in. Fumbling around the door, Tricia found the light switch, flipped it, and a meager glow emanated from the kitchen's single, overhead fixture.

  Angelica crowded against her. "Move over."

  The tiny off-white kitchen was tidy with signs of a life interrupted. A newspaper sat neatly folded on the white painted table. A solitary coffee-stained mug occupied the dry stainless-steel sink. A stack of opened mail on the counter awaited consideration. Dusty footprints marred the otherwise clean, but dated dark vinyl floor-no doubt those of the sheriff and her deputies.

  "Prisons look homier than this," Angelica offered.

  She was right. Not a picture, an ornamental hanging plate, or even a key rack decorated the bland walls. No curtains, just a yellowing blind hung at half-mast over the room's only window. Tricia fought the urge to pull it down completely.

  "Creepy," Angelica muttered.

  "My sentiments exactly. And how would I feel if this were my home being violated by a couple of strangers?" Tricia wondered aloud. Still, she swallowed down the guilt and stepped into the darkened, narrow hallway, with Angelica so close on her heel she could feel her sister's breath on the back of her neck.

  The light overhead flashed on, and Tricia's heart pounded. She whirled to find Angelica with her hand still on the switch. "Sorry."

  Tricia ground her teeth, hoping her glare would scorch.

  "Looks like a bedroom here," Angelica said, poking her head into a darkened room. She found that light switch, too. The smell of old paper and leather permeated the space. A twin bed wedged into the corner was made up, the patchwork quilt covering it the only splash of color in the room. On the small nightstand next to it was an open book and a pair of reading glasses, looking like they awaited their owner. The walls were floor-to-ceiling bookshelves stuffed with old tomes, while stacks of homeless books stood in front of the bottom shelves. Tricia stepped closer to examine the titles nearest her.

  "Are they cookbooks?" Angelica asked eagerly.

  Tricia shook her head. "No. But wow-!" She picked out a dark volume, holding it reverently as her trembling fingers fumbled to turn the pages for the copyright information. She let out a shaky breath, throat dry, making it hard to speak. "It's a first edition."

  "Of what?"

  "Dickens. A Tale of Two Cities. "

  "Must be worth a few bucks, huh?"

  Tricia turned on her sister, ready to lecture, but the passive expression on Angelica's face told her she didn't have a clue about antique books, their intrinsic value, and there was no way she could readily explain it, either. "Yeah, it's worth a few bucks." She drank in some of the other titles, their brittle leather covers and the gold lettering on their spines making her catch her breath. Alcott, Alger, Emerson, Hawthorne, Melville, Thoreau, Twain, Whitman-the quintessential collection of nineteenth-century American authors. The only author missing was Edgar Allan Poe-and a good thing, too, or Tricia might have been tempted to-

  "My God, if they're all first editions, there's a fortune in this room alone."
<
br />   "I thought you said Doris only sold cookbooks."

  "That's what her store was dedicated to, but obviously her taste in literature was much more discerning."

  Angelica shrugged. "If you say so," and she trotted out of the room. Tricia fought the urge to touch each and every one of the spines, and backed out of the room, turning off the light and silently closing the door with a respect usually held only for the dead.

  A trail of lights led to the living room. Angelica stood in the middle of the worn and dingy, putrid green wall-to-wall carpet, sizing up the space, which, like the bedroom, was primarily a storage place for books, though the shelves here seemed to hold mostly contemporary fiction. "Lousy taste in furniture," she said at last, her gaze fixed on the olive drab sofa, its lumpy cushions and sagging springs declaring it a reject from the 1960s. "You'd think with all those valuable books, she'd live in a space to show them off."

  "Maybe that was the point," she said. "She could only afford them if she lived like this."

  Angelica shook her head. "Not my life choice."

  Nor Tricia's. Still, it was a choice she could understand. "I'll take the desk. You want to investigate the rest of the house?"

  "Sure."

  Tricia was glad to note the drapes were heavy, effectively blocking the light so it wouldn't be visible from the street. Knowing that gave her more confidence to inspect the cherry secretary that stood defiantly against the west wall. It was tall, topped with a glass cabinet that held an antique glass compote, several more old books, and a silver mercury glass vase with hand-painted roses. Tricia grasped the pulls and opened it. The cubbies inside were stuffed with envelopes, a checkbook, and other assorted papers-not Doris's doing, as evidenced by the tidiness of the rest of the house. Had the sheriff been in a hurry when going over the house's contents? Maybe she'd found what she was looking for and had shoved everything back in the pigeonholes with more speed than efficiency.

  Utility bills, bank statements, magazine subscription notices, but no last will and testament. Abandoning the top section, Tricia opened the first drawer. Extra checks, a phone book, pens and pencils, paper clips, scissors-typical desk fare.

  The next drawer held more receipts and the minutiae of a busy life. She sorted through the papers and found a stack of five or six paper-clipped statements from New England Life Insurance Company. Tricia glanced over the information. Policy Number 951493. Insured's Name: Doris E. Gleason. Plan of Insurance: Whole Life, issued six months previous. Nowhere on the statement did it list who the beneficiary was, probably for security reasons. Tricia took the oldest one, folded it, and slipped it into her pocket, then replaced the others.

  She opened the last drawer without enthusiasm. In it were a little pink photo album and a bulging string envelope. The album drew her attention. She picked it up and opened to the first page to find a fuzzy black-and-white photograph of a baby. In fact, the book was dedicated to the child, whose features quickly changed from nondescript to the all-too-familiar features of Down syndrome.

  The string envelope contained receipts and canceled checks, each of them referencing the Anderson Developmental Clinic Group Homes, located in Hartford, Connecticut. The letters referred to a Susan Gleason as "your daughter."

  "Oh boy." If Doris had no other living relatives, who would take on the responsibility for her mentally disabled child? Would the young woman-oh, no longer young, she realized-lose her spot in a group home? End up on the streets, homeless?

  "Trish! Come and see all these wonderful old cookbooks," Angelica called.

  Tricia replaced the album and envelope, closed the drawer, and wandered toward the back of the little house. She found Angelica, book in hand, in another small room crammed with boxes and shelves.

  "Look, it's the Household Bookshelf, an all-in-one cookbook from 1936. Grandmother had a copy of this in her kitchen. I remember how I loved to read the recipes in it. See this, they used to call bread stuffing bread force-meat. There must be a dozen variations." Angelica looked up at Tricia, her eyes aglow with the same kind of pleasure Tricia had felt in Doris's other book storage room. "Wouldn't it be a kick to try them all?"

  Tricia had thought Angelica's infatuation with meal prep had been a recent development. Why hadn't she known her older sister had been interested in cooking even as a little girl?

  Angelica closed the book, replacing it on the shelf before her. "Wow, there's-" She ran her fingers along the row of books. "Twelve copies of it. Where did she get them all?"

  "Estate sales, tag sales-pickers. Doris might've been collecting them for years."

  "It's too bad she's dead," Angelica said wistfully, "I'd love to buy a copy of it from her. And look at all these others. The Boston Cooking-School, The Settlement House. I've always wanted an old copy of the Fannie Farmer cookbook. I've only got a soft-cover edition." She sighed and looked away, embarrassed. "Did you find any sign of heirs? Maybe they'll have an estate sale and I can get copies of some of these old books."

  "Looks like her only living relative is a retarded daughter living in a group home. I couldn't find anything to the contrary."

  "Oh no. That poor woman."

  Did she mean the daughter, Susan, or Doris?

  "Find anything else of interest?"

  Tricia shook her head. "You didn't happen to see a copy of American Cookery, by Amelia Simmons, did you?"

  "That was the book stolen from the Cookery. Why would it be-? Oh, you think the killer might have brought it back here, hidden it amongst all her other stock?"

  "He or she can't very well sell it. Not without drawing attention to themselves. Let's take a minute and look. Then we'd better get out of here before our luck runs out."

  It took longer than a minute, more like fifteen, but it wasn't until she'd scanned nearly every title in the room that Tricia was satisfied Doris's precious treasure was not buried among her less valuable stock.

  Ready to go, she found Angelica's attention had returned to one of the copies of the Household Bookshelf. "You okay, Ange?"

  She nodded. "It just seems so sad to leave all these old books here alone, knowing their owner will never come back. They might never be loved again."

  Touched, Tricia leaned in closer to her sister. "I've never heard you talk about books that way before."

  Angelica's expression hardened. She sniffed and threw back her head. "Ha!" She pushed past Tricia, heading back for the kitchen. "Probably something I picked up from you these last few days. I'm sure it'll wear off."

  With one last look around the crowded room, a frowning Tricia turned off the light and pulled the door closed, just the way it had been when they'd arrived.

  Eight

  Deception wasn't Tricia's strong point. Not when she'd been seven and blamed Angelica for a vase she'd broken, nor when coming up with excuses to avoid dating high school jocks who couldn't spell, let alone comprehend, Sherlock Holmes.

  She paced her kitchen, cell phone in hand, until the clock on her microwave read 9:01. Did a cell phone number come up on caller ID and would it also reveal her name as well? She didn't think so, which was why she'd decided not to use her regular phone. She punched in the number, listened as it rang three times.

  "Good morning. New England Life, this is Margaret. How can I help you?"

  No long wait on hold? An actual American, not a native of some foreign land earning pennies an hour?

  "I…I-" Tricia hadn't come up with a plausible story, so she told the truth. "I need to find out a beneficiary on one of your policies."

  "Do you have the policy number?"

  "Yes." She read it off, heard the tap of a keyboard in the background. "Doris E. Gleason. Did you wish to report her death?"

  "Uh, yes. She died three days ago."

  "Are you authorized to act on her behalf?"

  "Um…yes."

  "You'll need to provide us with a copy of the death certificate and copies of letters of administration. Are you Ms. Gleason's executor?"

  "Not exac
tly. I'm a friend. I need to track down her next of kin and I thought-"

  "I'm sorry. Privacy laws prohibit our giving out sensitive information of this nature. Please have Ms. Gleason's attorney or executor contact us with the necessary paperwork and we will inform the beneficiary the death has occurred."

  "Oh. Okay."

  "Thank you for calling New England Life."

  Click.

  Rats!

  No sooner had she turned off the cell when her apartment phone rang. "Hello."

  "Trish, it's me, Angelica."

  "How did you get this number?" Was it too early to already feel so annoyed?

  "I figured you'd never give it to me so I read it off the phone and wrote it down last night." Very smart, and she sounded oh so smug.

  Tricia examined her empty coffee cup and poured herself some more. "Isn't this awfully early for you to be up, Ange?"

  "I've mended all my evil ways. Age does that to you."

  Hadn't Mike said something similar? Always a bookworm, Tricia had never had any evil ways to mend.

  "Besides," Angelica continued, "I know you're only free during the hours the store isn't open. This is my only window of opportunity to talk to you until tonight."

  "So what do you want to talk about?"

  "Nothing really. I just wanted to tell you I had a great time last night. I felt like one of the Snoop Sisters."

  "You remember that old TV show? It couldn't have lasted more than one season, and we are both far younger than any of its characters."

  "I do admit I was a mere infant, but it was one of Grandmother's favorite shows. And anyway, you know what I mean." She actually giggled.

  Tricia glanced at her watch and sighed. "What else do you need, Ange?"

  "When are you going to call Doris's insurance company?"

  "I already did. It was a bust."

  "You're kidding."

  "No, I'm not."

  Silence for a few moments. "Give me all the info," Angelica demanded.

  "What for? They told me I needed a death certificate and all kinds of other documentation before they'd give me any information. And they only want to talk to Doris's attorney or executor."