A long drink, a sigh, and she relaxed back, settling her feet on the arm rest opposite. A gate creaked over near the garage, but she didn’t look. Being emotionally tuned in to the easily irate Mickey Ross wasn’t what she’d have chosen, but Luci was not one to kick against the vagaries of life. And it was amusing to watch him struggle against it like a fish on a line. He couldn’t know she wouldn’t be reeling him in.
When they came into view, both he and Delaney looked grim and hot. Though Mickey still retained his powers of observation, Luci noted. For a long moment he stared at the bare patch in the corner of the garden, before following Delaney over to join her. What was his busy brain making of that, she wondered?
She snuggled deeper in the cushions and rotated her tired feet. When they were close enough, she gave them a sleepy smile, widening it to a grin when she noted their interest in her generously exposed legs. She gestured toward the birdbath, her voice purring as it left her throat. “Help yourselves—to some lemonade. Or I can ring for some tea or coffee?”
“Lemonade’s fine.” Delaney’s voice sounded a little husky and he still wasn’t looking at the birdbath.
Taking her time, her gaze on their wide eyes and slack jaws, Luci pulled her legs down, straightening enough to tuck them discreetly under her skirt. Then watched the red run up both their faces.
Delaney turned to pour, but Mickey, after a tug on his tie and a pause to clear his throat, nodded towards the raw ground. “What’s supposed to happen over there?”
“Miss Hermi claims it’s to be a gazebo. She wants the bride and groom to stand in it on the big day. Like cake decorations.” She tipped her head back, giving Mickey her best wide-eyed look.
Mickey met her look and had to smile because she looked so cool and fresh after the hot garage, and because the thought of Eddie in a gazebo was the silver lining to today’s cloud. “There is a God.”
Luci’s smile became edged with satisfaction, starting a different kind of heat coursing through Mickey’s mid-section. She snuggled down in the cushions with a movement that was feline and fetching. He stopped. Where and when had “fetching” found its way into his vocabulary? That place above his eye seemed inclined to twitch again, but before it could get going, Delaney put a cold glass in his hand. Mickey applied it to the spot for a long moment before taking a long drink.
“Uh, Luci.” Delaney rubbed his glass on his neck. “We need to talk to everybody connected with the house. Would your aunts mind if we commandeered a room?”
“You could commandeer the whole house and they wouldn’t mind. Minding isn’t in our programming.” She hesitated, then asked with a casual air, “Any ideas yet who did this?”
Delaney shrugged. “Not a clue. It’s too early to even guess.”
“What about my aunts? You don’t think they are involved, do you?”
“We’re not allowed to think until we’ve talked to more people.” Mickey took a long drink of lemonade, then grimaced.
So he did suspect them, Luci thought, noting how he avoided looking directly at her. She supposed it was a natural reaction for someone like Mickey, who liked things ordered, controlled. Neat and tidy. The clues lined up like obedient soldiers on parade. Of course she couldn’t let him pin this on her aunts.
“They didn’t do it, you know.”
Both men looked skeptical, though they tried not to.
“You’re sure about that, are you?” Mickey took another long drink. “Look, whatever your personal opinions about this, a body was found in their freezer on their property. That means we have to talk—”
“Talk? Don’t you mean interrogate?”
This time Mickey did look at her. “Talk. Ask a few questions. But if you’d like to call the family lawyer—”
Who was older than her aunts and still in love with Miss Theo. She didn’t think so. Luci straightened her body until her feet were on the ground, holding his gaze with her own the whole time. “I’ll just sit in on the talk, if you don’t mind?”
Suspicion flared in his eyes and narrowed them to slits. The little lines at the edges and on the bridge of his nose were kind of cute.
“Why would you want to do that?” he asked, his voice as suspicious as his face.
Luci widened her gaze, mixed in innocent and said, “Why, to help.”
“When hell—”
“Thanks,” Delaney interrupted smoothly. “But we’ll let you know if we need you.”
Luci shrugged like it didn’t matter. “If you don’t think you need an interpreter—”
“An—” Mickey shook his head. “Why would we need an interpreter?”
“Last time I checked we all speak the same language,” Delaney added his two cents, though he looked more amused than affronted.
“Yes, but without the Seymour accent. It can be confusing.” She stood up. “I wouldn’t want you to be. Confused, I mean.”
“No,” Mickey said. “I’m sure you wouldn’t.”
Her eyes glittering with amusement, Luci showed them into a room at the front of the house. The front parlor, she called it. A subtle hint at the more than just personality differences that separated Mickey from Luci Seymour and her aunts.
Delaney went straight for the table, but Mickey paused just inside the doorway and looked around. The parlor was a clean room, with long narrow windows that overlooked the street and a decor that indicated no single personality had directed its planning. Dim and cool, the furniture was a mixture of old and new, good and tacky, trendy and venerable. Not unlike the Seymour ladies.
Delaney tested each chair for soundness before taking one that still creaked a protest when he sat down. He waited a beat, but when nothing happened, pulled out a notebook and a pencil with a nearly flat tip. He licked it, then looked up.
“Start with the help?”
Luci opened her mouth, but Mickey quelled her with a look. She closed her mouth, then curved it into a slight, unsettling smile.
“I’ll send them in.”
Was it his imagination or did her tone add, it’s your funeral?
Mickey picked a chair near Delaney’s but didn’t sit. “One at a time, please?”
Luci paused at the door. “Of course.”
When she left, he was sure it was his imagination that she took the light with her. He widened the gap between the curtains and then sat next to Delaney, removing his notebook and sharpened pencil.
Louise came first. A small dour woman, she was so thin, Mickey wondered if life with the Seymours had sucked all her animation out of her, leaving only this pale husk. Was the small chalkboard and chalk she carried an intimation of trouble ahead?
“Did you know she was mute?” Delaney whispered when she seated herself across from them without comment.
“No—” Though now that he thought about it, she hadn’t said anything to him when he’d come for the pig. With some unease, Mickey noticed that she’d already written her responses on the board: no, yes, I don’t know.
Despite these ominous signs, he trotted out his first question, her full name. By the time she’d squeaked her way through it, he and Delaney were twitching. And determined to limit their questions to ones she could answer with her pre-written responses. It didn’t help that they didn’t really know what to ask, since the only thing they knew for sure about their corpse was that he’d been shot, hosed, and then froze.
They both heaved sighs of relief when Louise left as silently as she’d arrived.
They took a short break, then summoned Boudreaux. He entered, some of the leaves from his fall into the azaleas still clinging to his person. Though vocal, they already knew he wasn’t a great communicator. Between his heavy Cajun accent and an apparent speech impediment, he succeeded in communicating only his agitation.
When the door shut behind his round form, Delaney turned to Mickey. “He knows something.”
“No shit. How do we find out what that something is?”
“Is it too late to take Luci up on her offer?”
“Great. Are we screwed?”
“Of course not. How hard can it be to question some old ladies?” Mickey asked.
There was a stir in the doorway and they looked up to find Miss Weena standing in the doorway dressed as Sherlock Holmes.
“My good Wats-men,” she said as she waved her pipe at them. “Why are you sitting around when the game is afoot?”
9
Over their muffelatta lunch, Donald went broody. Munching his sandwich, he stared ahead, his lids blinking to a rhythm only he could hear.
In between supplying him with food, Fern did some thinking of her own. It was obvious what Artie had wanted to remove from the Seymours before the cops found it. Now that his secret was out, would he still be able to get to the money hidden inside and pay them their money? Donald was confident it wasn’t over yet, but Donald was an idiot who didn’t want to leave his last job undone. Men and their egos.
Leaving Donald to his thoughts at the paper-littered table, Fern strolled over to the lunch counter for a refill on her coffee. As she waited she looked out the window. St. Charles was a pleasant prospect with its tree-lined vistas sliced by a picturesque streetcar. Only she wasn’t in the mood for picturesque. Not when what she wanted to see was a view of Luci Seymour in the sights of the Uzi.
It took her a moment to realize she did see Luci Seymour—though not in the Uzi sights. She was getting on a streetcar.
“Donald!” Fern hissed. “It’s her!”
He freed himself from the table and trotted over just in time to see Luci Seymour passing in front of them, her distinctive profile framed in the window of the streetcar.
“Pack your camera, Fernie. We’re going to Disneyland.” He stuffed in his last bite of sandwich, wiped his face on his arm and looked at her. “Let’s follow that broad.”
Mickey had pretty much resigned himself to a state of permanent headache before they managed to persuade Miss Weena, aka Holmes, to sit down across the table from them. Her cupid’s bow mouth pursed in a manner that he suspected was supposed to be thoughtful.
“Before we go hunting we need to get some details cleared up, Miss Weena,” Mickey said, smiling in what he hoped was an encouraging manner.
“Of course.” She chewed on the end of the pipe, then removed it to point at them. “I’ve been giving this a lot of thought. With my law enforcement experience, deduction comes naturally to me.”
“Law enforcement experience?” Delaney asked like someone who didn’t really want an answer.
“As a security guard.” She gave him an encouraging smile. “Packing heat satisfied a deep need that I didn’t know I had until I packed it.”
“A...security guard?” Delaney croaked out.
Mickey just croaked.
“I had to cut the gig because I couldn’t keep the gun belt up. Kept falling down around my ankles. And if you loop it around your neck, it’s hard to get the gun out.” She leaned forward to confide, “That’s how he got shot.”
Mickey swallowed. “Shot—who?”
“My boss.” She looked at Delaney, whose mouth was twitching, but not producing words. “It was just a flesh wound.” She looked at Mickey, who knew he was doing the landed fish, gaping thing, but was unable to do anything about it. “He was too old for children anyway.”
It was, Mickey decided, a nightmare. An amusement park nightmare where you wander around getting on safe rides, but they all turn out to be the roller coaster to hell.
Delaney, dazed but trying, got up and pulled out Miss Weena’s chair.
“We’ll call you,” he said. He held the door for her. Mickey saw her give him a flirty smile, then pat his butt before sashaying out the door. Delaney shoved the door closed and looked at Mickey.
Mickey grinned. “Hey, you’re the one who thought they sounded interesting.”
Delaney shuddered. “I must have been out of my mind.”
Miss Hermi was a welcome relief, a brief respite in the Seymour storm. She didn’t try to squeeze anything, kept her distance, and tried to answer their questions. Her problem was a simple lack of interest. She wanted to talk about Eddie and Unabelle’s honeymoon, something Mickey preferred to never think about.
“It’s so important to get a good start to the marriage, don’t you think?” Miss Hermi’s voice flowed out her papery lips, like a gently babbling brook.
Mickey looked at Delaney, who looked as clueless as Mickey felt. They both shrugged, which she seemed to take as encouragement to continue.
“Men think all that’s important is good sex, but what about shopping? Sex is slam, bam, thank you ma’am, but you take mementos home with you.”
It was a wild guess, but Mickey had a feeling that Miss Hermi was probably responsible for the collection of National Park shot glasses scattered around the room. It was easier to focus on this thought than the one where Eddie was slamming, bamming or thank-you-ma’aming Unabelle. Or that sweet little Miss Hermi had just said that.
Delaney pulled himself together and managed to dig out the meager information that Miss Theo had jurisdiction over the freezer and Miss Hermi ruled the garden.
“We came through the garden,” Mickey said. “It was very—interesting.”
Pink flaked her cheeks. “Well, I do think it’s coming along nicely. In days past, I wouldn’t have chosen cement as a medium for expression, but it’s turned out rather well and far less costly than marble.” She frowned. “Not too sure about that gazebo, though. That was Reggie’s idea. He said it wouldn’t matter if it wasn’t in the middle of the garden, because I couldn’t cut down a tree, even for art’s sake. Normally I wouldn’t listen to a Seymour male, but Reggie’s a little less asinine than one might expect.”
“Reggie?” Mickey pulled the name out of her jumble of words. “I don’t think anyone’s mentioned Reggie?”
“Well, he’s easy to forget when he’s not here. He’s in Cleveland. He has business interests there. When he gets back he’s giving the bride away. In the gazebo. After he finishes it, of course.”
“Of course,” Mickey echoed, looking at Delaney. Cleveland. Luci had said something about Cleveland last night. Something about her neighbor. He realized what he was doing and gave himself a mental shake. Focus, Ross. Focus on Reggie. He might not have the legs Luci had, but he could be a real, viable suspect.
Even after twenty minutes exposure, and twenty years living in New York City, Fern couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing. Perhaps it was the sluggish economy that had driven the mall manager to attempt the Christmas in August theme, complete with several truckloads of imported snow and, inexplicably, ten Elvis impersonators.
The snow was piled next to the escalator and heaped to resemble a mountain slope, with plastic evergreens randomly impaling the white surface for realism. Then the pile was opened up for snow play to hundreds of children. The only person who seemed surprised when the children ran amok was the organizer of the event.
Next to the snow hill was a gaudy stage where the Elvises were assembled, each attired, like the stamps, to represent a different period in Elvis’s life.
Beside her, Donald choked for the third time. Fern looked at him. Judging by the amount of eyeball white showing, he was approaching heart attack level. Not that she blamed him. It had been a long, discouraging day, broken only by that brief moment of hope when they picked up the Seymour woman’s trail at the streetcar stop. Why she had to visit four malls besides this one, not to mention ride the bus across the bridge over the river—
Fern’s blood pressure wasn’t doing so hot either. Oh, how she wanted to do her, Fern thought, staring at the now-hated profile browsing in a store across from them. This hit was taking on the trappings of a Quest. Something to do for the pleasure as much as for the money.
But first she had to get Donald calmed down. Or he woul
d do her right here in the mall in front of everybody, and they’d never get to Disneyland.
“Why don’t you sit on that bench there, Donald, and I’ll get you a Coke or something?”
He nodded, and she paused only to make sure of her bearings before heading for a food counter she could see in the distance, her orthopedic shoes not protecting her aching feet from the stone floor. As she collected their drinks and made her way back to where Donald waited, she could hear the discordant wailing of the Elvises turn into synchronized sound. Easing through the crowd that had gathered, she could see an Elvis in black leather with slicked-back hair crooning a love song into the mike.
But no sign of Luci.
“Here.” Fern shoved the drink at Donald and scanned the crowd. “Where is she? We haven’t lost her, have we?”
Donald ignored Fern’s impatience, taking a long drink before answering morosely, “Nah, she’s still there. In the front, by the stage.”
Fern craned her neck, her height enabling her to see over most of the crowd. “Where—?”
Then she saw her. She was, as Donald said, right at the front and center, in the heart of the action, swaying to the music, a look of appreciation lighting her face.
Fern didn’t blame her for the appreciation. He was a fine Elvis, especially in the hip area. Fern turned to Donald. “You know, he kind of reminds me of you. Give him a switchblade and a gat—”
Her voice failed, so she gave Donald a grim, misty smile. His narrow shoulders squared, and without speaking, Donald stood and pulled her against his beer belly, steering her around their corner of the court with an air of sleazy aplomb.
When the music faded into applause, he stopped and looked up into her eyes with a look that peeled away the years, leaving a young thug and a rebellious girl facing each other once more.
“Oh, Donald!” Fern’s scant chest swelled with her sigh. She started to lean her head on his scraggy shoulder, but he stiffened and pushed her away. “Donald?”
“Damn! She’s gone!” He frantically scanned the crowd. “Damn the woman! We lost her, Fern!”
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