Death In Duplicate

by Valerie Wolzien

  “Which are still unsolved?” Kathleen guessed.

  “Apparently so. I mean, that’s what Nadine said.”

  “And you’re worried that a homicidal maniac is taking care of your grandchildren.”

  “Yes.”

  “So why don’t you just fire Shannon and find someone else?”

  “She saved Ethan’s life this evening.”

  “What?”

  “She saved Ethan’s life.” Susan explained what had happened earlier.

  Kathleen took a moment to drench five stained receiving blankets with Spray ’n Wash before tossing them into the washer and asking another question. “And you don’t think you could just ask her about what happened at the nursing home on Perry Island? I mean, it’s not an accusation.”

  “I’m afraid she’ll leave. She’s a wonderful baby nurse and she’s concerned about Chrissy and… and what if she hadn’t been here when Ethan started choking? He could have died! Kathleen, I just can’t risk it!”

  “But you don’t want a killer taking care of your grandchildren.”

  “No, of course not. I just don’t know what to do. If only I could find out more. I don’t know Nadine all that well, but I know she tends to be a bit emotional. Maybe she’s wrong about all this. What if Shannon just looks like the nurse who was a suspect or has a similar name or something?”

  “You know, I might be able to help you out. One of the men I worked with in the city retired to an island somewhere around here. I suppose it might be Perry Island.”

  “It could be! There aren’t many islands nearby. I mean, there’s Fisher’s Island, but I doubt if a retired cop could afford anything there.”

  “Well, we still exchange Christmas cards and I could check to see what the return address on the last one was.”

  “And you could call him and ask about the nursing home deaths.”

  “Susan, he probably doesn’t know anything, but I’ll try.”

  “Right away?”

  “I suppose anything is better than dealing with this mess,” Kathleen said, holding up a one-piece knitted suit covered with something that looked vaguely toxic.

  “This may be the only time in my life when I’ve turned down an offer to help with the laundry,” Susan said, removing the garment from Kathleen’s hand and tossing it into a pan of sudsy water to soak. “But I’m so worried about all this. If you find out anything, call tonight-”

  “What about the babies? Won’t the ringing phone wake them?”

  “Call me on my cell phone. I’ll just turn it on to vibrate and keep it with me.”

  “Fine. I’ll get going then.” Kathleen started for the stairs and then paused. “Are they gorgeous?”

  Susan knew exactly whom she was talking about. “They are! Completely, absolutely, totally gorgeous!”

  “No matter what I find out or don’t find out tonight, I’ll be over to see them first thing in the morning,” Kathleen promised, trotting up the stairs.

  Alone again, Susan reached for the unopened box of Ivory Snow and poured the required amount into the machine. She turned a few knobs and leaned against its smooth enameled side as the wash cycle commenced.

  The laundry took over an hour, but, despite her worries about Shannon, Susan found herself smiling as she folded immaculate tiny garments and placed them in little piles. Perhaps, she thought, examining her work, she should order one of those handwoven, gingham-lined laundry baskets from Martha Stewart’s Web site. It would look so much better than her old, ratty basket that still displayed the results of Clue’s teething many years ago.

  Susan sighed and picked up the basket. Balancing it on her hip, she started up the stairs. She would leave it in the hallway outside of the nursery so as not to disturb the twins and then take a quick shower.

  But she couldn’t even walk across her bathroom without moving the twins’ bath stuff. And how could she have forgotten about those towels with their dangerous fluff! She picked up the baby baths, dumped them in the Jacuzzi, sprayed them with lavender scented cleanser, rinsed them, and turned them over to drain. She put away the Johnson’s baby shampoo and Aveeno baby wash that Chrissy had brought and then grabbed her gorgeous new towels, rushed into the hall and dumped them down the laundry chute before returning to the bathroom and locating a set of older towels in the linen closet. Although not exactly threadbare, it had been years since they had shed loose fibers. She was hanging them on the brass towel bars when Jed came into the room, her cell phone in his hand.

  “Kath’s on the line,” he said, a puzzled expression on his face. “Why did she call your cell?”

  “She didn’t want to wake up the babies,” she explained, taking it. “Hi, Kath. Did you find out anything? Well, did you ask him to check around and let you know if he does find anything out?” Susan listened to the answer and Jed returned to their bedroom. A few minutes later, Susan found him sitting on the edge of their bed, playing with his new camera.

  “Look at this. I think I got some great shots of Rosie. Ethan had his back to me and I was afraid he’d wake up if we turned him over.” He held out the camera. “Go ahead. Just press the button on the back. The arrows indicate the direction you want to go.”

  Susan took the camera from him and stared at the screen that displayed the enchanting image of her granddaughter. “We have a problem,” she said quietly, going through the photos. Since Rosie couldn’t roll over yet, they were pretty much identical and didn’t take long to review.

  “Could it wait until the morning? I hate to admit it, but those kids wore me out. I’m exhausted.”

  Susan didn’t answer immediately. She knew she should share what she had learned about Shannon with her husband, but he had just said he was exhausted, and, to be honest, she would rather tell him after she had figured out what they should do. Of course, she owed it to him to be honest. Their marriage was based on honesty, on decisions made jointly. She opened her mouth to explain, but the screams from next door prevented anything further.

  “My God! Listen to the lungs on those kids,” Jed exclaimed, pulling his pajamas out of his dresser drawer. He tossed them onto the bed, then headed toward the bathroom.

  “Jed, don’t you think-?”

  “If you’re going to suggest that we volunteer to take care of the babies, the answer is no, I don’t think we need to. They have a nurse. They have two parents. We’re the grandparents. We’re supposed to play with them and spoil them, not spend the middle of the night taking care of them. Not unless we have to.”

  “But-”

  “Susan, you do what you want, but unless a miracle happens and Chrissy and Stephen find an apartment they love at a price they can afford that is available immediately, my guess is that they’re going to be with us for a while-”

  “Which will be wonderful!”

  “Which will have its wonderful aspects. It will also be demanding and exhausting and difficult and I, for one, don’t want to lose any more sleep than is absolutely necessary.”

  “I guess the kids will yell if they need us.”

  “I’m sure they will.” Jed walked into the bathroom. “And they have Shannon to depend on too, remember” were his last words before the door swung closed behind him.

  Susan put her cell phone down on the nightstand and retrieved her nightgown from beneath her pillow. It was one of her favorites, made from soft white lawn. She had bought it at Liberty ’s on her last trip to London. She looked at it, sighed, and headed for her dresser. She really didn’t want to get up to help with the twins, but, if necessary, she would and she’d be properly dressed. She rummaged around in her dresser until she found the tailored taupe cotton pajamas her mother-in-law had sent on her last birthday. She looked a little like a prisoner in a penal colony wearing them, but the twins were too young to notice the resemblance.

  By the time Susan was ready for bed, the house was calm. Kathleen’s call had done nothing to still her worries about Shannon and she expected to have trouble falling asleep. She was
wrong. The problem was staying asleep.

  Susan was fairly sure she hadn’t been asleep for more than an hour when the twins began to cry again. Jed rolled over, groaned, and put a pillow over his head. She was about to do the same when she heard something hit the wall in the hallway outside of their bedroom. It sounded as though someone had dropped something… or someone! She jumped out of bed and ran to the hall.

  Stephen was kneeling on the floor, rubbing the rug with one of the receiving blankets she had just washed, dried, and folded.

  “Stephen?”

  “I knocked Rosie’s bottle against the wall and the top fell off,” he explained, looking up. “And I think her patience is wearing a little thin,” he added as the crying became even louder.

  “Where’s Chrissy?” Susan asked.

  “She’s feeding Ethan, and Shannon is downstairs cleaning up the kitchen. I meant to put the pan I used to warm the formula in the sink, but I dropped it, too.” He looked sheepish. “You must think I’m trying to destroy your house in just one night.”

  “I think you’re exhausted.” Susan swooped down and grabbed the cloth from his hand. “I’ll take care of this later. You go tell Chrissy that there will be another bottle of formula coming up right away. Then you go to bed. You’re supposed to be at work tomorrow, right?”

  “Yes, but Chrissy is tired, too.”

  Susan smiled. What a wonderful son-in-law! “Don’t worry about Chrissy. I’ll make sure she has a long nap tomorrow, or I should say today. You go on.” She hurried downstairs, not giving him time to argue with her plan.

  Years ago, when her kitchen had been remodeled, Susan had reserved a corner of the room for a small built-in desk. She did a lot of the household paperwork here, using the space to pay bills as well as look up recipes in her large cookbook collection that was shelved nearby. Shannon was standing in front of the desk as Susan entered the room.

  “We need another bottle of formula,” Susan announced.

  The nurse started, dropping whatever it was she held in her hand. “I… I’ll get it done right away.” Shannon hurried toward the stove.

  Susan glanced at her desk. What had Shannon been examining in private? There were a half dozen cookbooks on her desk, but only two books lay open on the pile: Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume One, and Susan’s address book.

  SIX

  NO ONE IN THE HOUSE GOT MORE THAN A COUPLE OF HOURS of uninterrupted sleep that night. As daylight finally penetrated the slit between the curtains, Susan gave up and got up. Jed and Clue were still snoring when, dressed in the warm clothing required to spend any time outside during spring in Connecticut, she slipped from the room. She noted the stain on the carpet and the splash on the wall as she walked around two bulging plastic bags that seemed to have sprouted in the hallway overnight. She was too tired to deal with any of this without a large mug of coffee. She needed it so much that she imagined she could smell the tantalizing brew wafting up the stairs.

  But she wasn’t imaging the full pot of coffee steaming in the coffeemaker-or the enticing pan of what looked like homemade cinnamon rolls cooling on the counter. Or the young woman sitting at the table reading the New York Times who jumped to her feet when Susan entered the room.

  “ Shannon?”

  “Mrs… Susan, I hope you don’t mind. I was just waiting for the rolls to cool a bit before I frosted them.”

  “No… I… Do you always get up early in the morning and bake?”

  “Well, I always get up early in the morning. One of the reasons I’m a good baby nurse is that I have insomnia. It’s easier to take care of newborns if you don’t need a lot of sleep,” she added, smiling ruefully. “I hope you don’t mind me taking over your kitchen like this. I’ve been cooking breakfast for Stephen and Chrissy since the twins came home from the hospital. She’s so tired and cooking is one of my hobbies. It relaxes me.” She glanced over at the floor-to-ceiling bookshelf. “And I couldn’t resist your cookbook collection. You have so many books on baking. I hope you don’t mind me going through them.”

  “Of course not,” Susan replied. “If you’re interested, there’s a complete collection of bound Gourmet magazines on the shelves behind the door in Jed’s study. I bought them at an estate sale a few months ago.”

  “Oh, that sounds like fun. Thank you.” Shannon stood up and walked over to the counter where the rolls were waiting. “I usually put a bit of vanilla in the frosting.”

  “So do I.” Susan poured herself a cup of coffee. “Have you always been a baby nurse?”

  “I-”

  “ Shannon, could you come upstairs?” Stephen appeared in the doorway, a towel wrapped around his waist. “The babies are both yelling and I have to get ready to leave for the city and the dogs need to be let out.”

  The nurse reacted instantly. “Right away,” she said on her way out the door.

  “I’ll frost the rolls,” Susan called after her. Was Shannon hurrying toward the twins or was she anxious to get away before she had to answer Susan’s question? “Would you like some coffee, Stephen?” she asked.

  “I think I’d better pass. My train leaves in less than half an hour and I sure don’t want to be late my first day on the job. Will it be okay if I put Rock and Roll out in the backyard until Chrissy can take care of them?”

  “Of course. And if you need coffee, you can always stop at one of the coffee places at Grand Central after you get into the city.”

  “Yeah. I guess.” Stephen grabbed his towel as Rock and Roll dashed by, let them into the yard, and then hurried up the stairs after Shannon. Susan looked at the rolls and the bowl of frosting, gulped down half her coffee and, despite the early hour, reached for the phone and called Kathleen Gordon.

  “Hi Kath. It’s me. Did you hear anything else?” She picked a corner off a cinnamon roll and popped it in her mouth as she listened to the answer to her question. “You told him to call if he learns anything, right?” She pulled a second, larger piece from the bun. “Anytime. We’ve all been up most of the night. Okay. See you soon then.” She hung up and grabbed a knife. Sometimes it was easier to think on a full stomach, she told herself as she pried the largest cinnamon roll from the pan and dipped it into the frosting.

  Like most people living in the affluent suburbs north of New York City, the Henshaws had many people working for them in and around their home-cleaning women, window washers, caterers when they gave a large party, carpenters for small remodeling jobs, plumbers, roofers, painters, landscapers, and swimming pool cleaners to name a few. The list was long as they kept their large colonial style home in tip-top shape. But this, Susan realized, was the first time anyone other than family or house guests had actually lived with them.

  She didn’t like it. She knew Shannon had been looking at things on-or near-her desk last night. What if this burst of enthusiasm over baking was all a cover-up for her snooping? Susan bit into the bun and frowned. Shannon did, however, know how to bake. The cinnamon roll was excellent. And the kitchen was remarkably clean. Shannon would have to be in her kitchen frequently if she was fixing the babies’ formula as well as meals for Stephen and Chrissy. But if Shannon stuck to the nursery and the basement and the kitchen… Except that she wouldn’t. Susan had just given Shannon an excellent excuse to spend time in Jed’s study-which is where all the family’s financial records were kept. And she would also be taking care of the dogs, which meant she’d be following them into every corner of the house and yard.

  Susan stopped eating and stared at her coffee cup. They didn’t know anything about Shannon-except that she might have been a suspect in an unsolved murder investigation-but Shannon was in an excellent position to discover a lot about the Henshaws. Unless Susan gave up sleeping at night and going out during the day, Shannon could easily look around at her leisure. She stood up. Maybe Kathleen hadn’t been able to discover what happened at the nursing home yet, but Susan might have another source of information about Shannon. All she needed to do was find a corne
r of the house where she could make a private phone call.

  It turned out that Jed’s study wasn’t all that private after all. First Jed appeared to kiss her good-bye on his way to the train and tell her that he had put Clue in the backyard with the mastiffs. Then he reappeared with the news that the dogs needed to be fed when she got a chance and that he might be late for dinner tonight. Chrissy came in to rummage through the large pile of suitcases, boat bags, and equipment that had been piled in the corner when they arrived yesterday and had yet to be unpacked. After finding what she wanted, she disappeared back upstairs only to reappear almost immediately searching for a phone book. Shannon had walked by the open doorway a few times carrying bottles, clean blankets, and the like but did not enter the room. It was fortunate that Susan’s end of the conversation was limited.

  The call took every bit as long as Susan had anticipated and she was just hanging up when Kathleen appeared in the doorway, a half-eaten cinnamon roll in one hand, a mug of coffee in the other.

  “Susan, I can’t believe you. With everything that’s going on around here, you get up early and bake.”

  “Not me. Shannon made those.”

  Kathleen raised her eyebrows. “Really? They’re as good as yours.” She closed the door behind her and flopped down in one of the pair of wing chairs beside Jed’s large mahogany partner’s desk. “I haven’t learned anything new,” she announced. “But it’s possible we’ll hear something after my friend makes a few phone calls.”

  “I’ve just gotten off the phone with Blues-”

  “Who? Oh, Chrissy’s mother-in-law! Did you call her or did she call you?”

  “I called her. I’d already dialed the number when I realized what time it is in California and I was afraid I was going to wake her, but it turns out that she was up studying the stars.”

  “I didn’t know she was interested in astronomy.”

  “I think it’s more astrology that interests Rhythm and Blues. But that’s not important.” Susan glanced at the closed door. “I called her to ask about Shannon. After all, they hired her for the kids so I figured they must know a lot about her. But-”