THE SOUND OF MURDER

by Cindy Brown

  Candy smoothed her nun’s habit as she hung it on the rack in the dressing room. “I kinda like my habit,” she said, smoothing the fabric. “Because—”

  “La la la,” I sang. “I don’t want to hear about playing ‘Naughty Nun.’”

  “Because,” Candy continued, “it’s so different from clothes anyone wears, yet you sort of disappear into it.” I wondered if she was referring to my tendency to get stuck in the costume, which I seemed to do with regularity. “It’s like you’re hiding in plain sight.”

  Oh.

  Oh.

  Perfect.

  CHAPTER 27

  It was Monday morning and way too early, but Bitsy had told me Hank was due at the posse at six a.m., so I dutifully got up at the crack of dawn, got dressed in my habit from The Sound of Cabaret, and drove Bernice’s golf cart to my first stakeout location. The cart wasn’t exactly what I thought of as a nun-mobile, but it did fit Sunnydale better than my VW, and I thought there must be nun golfers somewhere.

  I parked around the corner from Hank’s street where I could see his one-story Spanish-style house. My plan was to follow him to see if he cased any potential victims’ houses or did anything else generally suspicious. I had reread the chapters on tailing people in all my PI handbooks and brought the recommended gear: notebook, mini tape recorder, and camera. I also skipped my morning cup of coffee. “Don’t want to lose someone because you have to make a pit stop,” one of the books warned.

  After twenty minutes of waiting (during which I heartily regretted my no-coffee decision), I finally saw Hank back out of his drive. I slunk down in my seat so he wouldn’t see me. This was when I realized that golf carts are not the best vehicles to hide in. No doors, you know.

  Luckily Hank didn’t seem to notice. He drove to the posse station, parked out front and walked in the entrance.

  I pulled around to where I could see the official posse parking lot, where all the cop cars were kept behind locked gates. Though the posse was made up of volunteers, their cars were exact copies of Maricopa County patrol vehicles, down to the radio antennas and flashing lights.

  After a few minutes, Hank strolled into the lot, started up a car, and pulled out of the lot. I turned on my mini tape recorder. “Hank pulled out of the lot at 6:10 a.m., driving a posse car, license plate HDB 8913.” I waited for him to pass by, and pulled out behind him, staying as far behind him as I could without losing him.

  Over the next hour, I tailed Hank, making note of his route and of every house he slowed down in front of or stopped at. Twice he stopped for a smoke, once in a church parking lot, once near a golf course, both times looking around to make sure no one saw him.

  “Note to self,” I said to my tape recorder. “See if it’s against the rules for posse members to smoke.” I was pretty awake now, but when Hank pulled into a 7-Eleven I was really happy. Coffee!

  I didn’t know how long he’d be in there, so I needed to move quickly if I wanted a cup. I grabbed the spare pair of glasses I’d found at Bernice’s house, put them on as an added disguise, and dashed into the 7-Eleven.

  Or at least as far as the curb.

  Peering through Bernice’s glasses, the curb looked lower than it really was. Not only did I trip over it, I caught my foot in my habit too.

  “Oh dear, are you all right?” said the first woman who rushed to help me.

  “Have you broken anything?” said another man.

  “Are you European?” said another.

  “What are you talking about?” a woman (probably his wife) said to him.

  “You know any nuns around here who wear habits?” he asked.

  “Are you here for the golf?” said another woman, pointing to Bernice’s cart.

  “Ja,” I said, trying to disentangle myself from my habit. “Sprechen sie Deutsch?” I really hoped no one did speak German since I only knew the few words I’d learned from the play.

  “Olive?” said the next voice. Oh no. I peered up through Bernice’s incredibly thick glasses to see mirrored sunglasses. Hank shifted a full paper bag to one arm and pulled me to my feet with the other. Pretty strong for a sixty-something guy.

  “Almost didn’t recognize you in that getup,” he said. “Until I heard your voice.” Even speaking German? This guy was good. Or he’d been onto me for a while. “You should be more careful.”

  Was there an undertone of menace in his carefully modulated voice? I couldn’t tell, and I couldn’t see his eyes through those damn sunglasses. I shivered a little despite my hot polyester costume.

  A packet of Twinkies started to slip off the top of Hank’s grocery bag, which was full of chips and cookies. Hank let go of me, caught the Twinkies, and stuffed the bag in his car. “Why are you dressed like that?” His walkie-talkie crackled and a voice said, “Stand by for a nine-oh-one.”

  “Ten-four,” said Hank, sliding into his driver’s seat.

  “It’s a promotion for the show.” I’d come up with this nun disguise excuse earlier, but now it sounded pretty lame. “Everyone,” I said in a loud cheerful voice, “come see The Sound of Cabaret at Desert Magic Dinner Theater. Dancing nuns!”

  “Didn’t she just say she was German?” someone grumbled.

  “With Marge Weiss, Arizona’s Ethel Merman!” I said, trying to distract from my gaffe.

  A few “oohs” from the crowd, then Hank’s flat emotionless voice from inside his patrol car: “Not anymore. There’s been an accident.”

  CHAPTER 28

  I raced over to Marge’s house as fast as Bernice’s golf cart could go. By the time I rounded the corner to the cul-de-sac, all of the official vehicles were gone. Hank couldn’t have been more than a few minutes ahead of me, but he, too, was pulling away. A few onlookers lingered. Wait, was that Carl Marks?

  I squealed to a stop in Bernice’s drive, but by the time I jumped out of the cart, the mustachioed man I thought I saw had disappeared.

  I approached a woman I vaguely recognized as a neighbor. “What happened?”

  She stared at me. “I didn’t know Marge was Catholic.”

  What? Oh, I was still a nun. “She’s not. I don’t think. It’s just—what happened?”

  “It depends on who you talk to,” said a silver-haired man. He pulled a pipe filled with tobacco out of his shirt pocket, extracted some matches from another pocket, and lit one. “There are two sides to this particular story, plus a few pertinent details.” He drew on his pipe a little to get it lit. “I found her.”

  “Is she okay?”

  “That depends on your definition of okay.”

  Arghh. I knew I could probably get a ton of information out of this storyteller, but I was not feeling patient. I took a deep breath and held it. Sort of like meditating, but not.

  “I was having my morning constitutional when I heard Marge’s dog barking up a storm. Not only that, but I heard another sound over and over—a man’s voice. It said, ‘Let’s go, Gorgeous! Let’s go, Gorgeous!’ Again and again.”

  I released my pent-up breath as quietly as I could and took another.

  “I rang the doorbell and knocked and knocked,” he continued. “No answer, just that dog and ‘Let’s go, Gorgeous!’ So I called 911. The firemen got in using her lockbox and found Marge on the floor in the garage, bleeding from the head. Must have had a tumble.”

  “But she’s okay?” The words came out in a whoosh with my breath.

  He puffed on his pipe thoughtfully. “I guess it’s understandable she’d be confused after a fall like that. But it’s more than that. The paramedics figure she got up for a glass of water or something, got confused and made a wrong turn, and fell down the step into the garage, where she hit her head. But that’s not what Marge says.”

  “What does she say?” I tried hard not to throttle the slow-talker.

  “She says somebody tried to kill her.”
r />   I had just parked Bernice’s cart in her garage when my cell rang. I didn’t recognize the number but I picked up anyway.

  “Ivy?” It sounded like Arnie. And it sounded like he was crying. “I’m at Sunnydale Hospital.” He took a big shuddering breath. “Marge is here.”

  “I heard.”

  “And she won’t see me.” He barely got out the “me.”

  “I’m so sorry, Arnie.”

  A few sniffles. “But here’s the thing.” An enormous honk of a nose blow. “She says she’ll only see you.”

  It only took me ten minutes to get to the hospital parking lot, even via golf cart. I parked, jogged to the hospital entrance, stopped at the information desk to find out where Marge was, and made my way to the ER, where she lay in bed behind a curtain. Along the route, people were inordinately polite to me. Probably because I still wore the nun habit. It would have taken me twenty minutes to get there if I’d tried to get out of the dang thing.

  Marge’s eyes were closed. Aside from the gauze bandage wrapped around her head, she didn’t look too bad, partly because of her perma-tan. I mean, it would be hard for her to look pale.

  “Marge?” I said softly.

  Her eyes flew open. “I’m Jewish,” she said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And I’m not confusing. Convening. Converting.”

  Ah, the nun’s habit. “Marge, it’s Ivy.” I got closer so she could see me better.

  “Is it nighttime?”

  A window was visible from Marge’s bed. The sun shone brightly in a cloudless sky.

  “It’s morning.”

  “Then why are you wearing that?” She nodded at my outfit, which I wore as a costume for the show. At night.

  “Oh. I was…undercover. How are you feeling?”

  “Like someone used my head for a…you know, that game you play with alleys and gutters and pins?”

  “Bowling?”

  “Yeah, a bowling ball.” Marge gently touched the back of her head and winced. “Listen, chickie.” I was relieved to hear the old nickname. Maybe everything would be okay. “I need you to do a couple of things for me. First of all, they’re not going to let me go home for a few days. Lassie needs someone to take care of him.” Lassie was a him? “But he doesn’t do so well in other people’s houses. You’ll need to move into my place for a while.”

  I nodded. I’d call Bernice, but I was pretty sure she wouldn’t mind if I kept an eye on her house from next door, especially under the circumstances.

  “The second thing—God, my head hurts.”

  “You want me to get a nurse?”

  Marge looked at me blankly. “What for?”

  “To give you something for your head?”

  “Nah, I’m fine.”

  I wasn’t so sure about that. “You said there was a second thing you want me to do.”

  “Yeah.” Her hands plucked at the cotton blanket covering her.

  “Marge,” I said gently, “the second thing?”

  She scrunched her forehead in concentration, then looked at me, her eyes focused again. “You’re a detective.” I was about to object, but this didn’t seem the time. “I want you to find whoever did this to me.”

  “Did what, Marge? Can you remember?”

  She screwed up her face again. “Not really. I just know there was someone in my garage.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Lassie. He started going apeshit, barking like a crazy dog. I got up to see what was going on and heard something in the garage. I opened the door and stepped out and someone came at me.”

  “Did you see who?”

  She shook her head. “That’s all really foggy. I just remember a shape where it shouldn’t be, then I heard Lassie hitting that damn doggie doorbell Arnie gave me.”

  “Doggie doorbell?”

  “It’s a big plastic button. You train the dog to push it when he wants to go out. Arnie recorded his own voice on it so it says, ‘Let’s go, Gorgeous!’ Lassie hit it again and again, over and over. I bet that’s what scared the intruder away.”

  And what the neighbor heard. I smiled when I made the connection.

  “That’s right.” Marge had a glimmer of the old sass in her eyes. “Not only did Lassie rescue me, I was saved by the bell.”

  CHAPTER 29

  After throwing my sweaty disgusting nun’s habit into the washer at Bernice’s house, I walked next door to Marge’s. Her house was similar to Bernice’s: stucco exterior and red tile roof, but the front yard boasted a patch of grass shaded by a Palo Verde tree, all surrounded by a short decorative iron fence. Maybe for the dog?

  I felt a thrill of nosy excitement as I unlocked the door with the key Marge had given me. I loved snooping and I’d never been invited inside Marge’s house. I stepped into the cool interior. The click of toenails on the tile announced the dog, who rounded the corner in the entryway and skidded to a stop. I couldn’t tell right away if Lassie was a he or she, but I could tell the dog wasn’t a collie. It was a black pug. Lassie looked at me, then walked around me and peered out the open door.

  “Sorry, it’s just me.” I shut the door. “Want to go for a walk?” Lassie’s whole butt wagged. “Let’s go find your leash.” He or she snorted in agreement.

  A niche in the entryway held an abstract statue made of red and purple glass. On closer inspection, I could see it was an artist’s rendition of the comedy and tragedy masks. Pretty cool.

  Didn’t see anywhere Marge might put a leash in the entryway, so I padded down the white-tiled hall. Lassie pushed ahead of me. I rounded the corner and walked into a big open room that looked like it served as living room and dining room, with an open kitchen attached. Lassie stepped on the red plastic button by the patio door. “Let’s go, Gorgeous!” I recognized the sound, and not just from Marge or the neighbor. I’d heard it the day I had come over to check on Marge, the morning I hoped she and Arnie were making up.

  “Let’s go, Gorgeous!” The pug’s buggy little eyes pleaded with me. I slid open the door. “There you go.” Lassie ran out the door to another small patch of grass and lifted his leg. Definitely a he.

  Lassie trotted back inside, relieved. Me, I was the opposite of relieved as I stared past the dog at a turquoise nightmare. Marge had forgotten to tell me she had a swimming pool.

  I’d figure out what to do about that later. I shut the door. Lassie stood near what must be the door to the garage, looking at me meaningfully from beside an empty water bowl. I picked it up, then opened the door. This must be where Marge…

  The bowl dropped from my hands. There were bloodstains on the step, on the concrete floor of the garage, on the doorframe. Correction: there was blood. Still wet. The sweet metallic scent of it filled my nose.

  I held my breath, thinking I might be sick. Instead, after a few seconds, a switch flipped on in my brain and I began looking at the scene clinically. It looked like Marge had hit her head on a small brass hook fastened into the doorframe—for keys, maybe? Most of the blood was on the top of the step, but some had dripped down onto the garage floor. There were smears and dog prints, plus several sets of partial footprints. The paramedics? Or an intruder? I followed some of the prints to a door that led to a small side yard landscaped with gravel and a few morning glory bushes. I stared at the gravel, which looked slightly disturbed. Were those footprints or coyote tracks? I made a mental note to keep Marge’s little tasty pug close by and went back into the garage. More prints led out the garage door. I pushed the button for the opener, waited for the door to rise, and walked outside, where I could see more faint footprints already fading in the Arizona sun. Seemed unlikely an intruder would exit this very visible way. I suspected Marge’s rescuers made the prints while getting her into the ambulance.

  I walked back into the garage, closed the door, and stared at the scene. I’d never
thought about who cleaned up the blood. Paramedics would need to get victims to the hospital, so I suspected it wasn’t their responsibility. I was afraid it was mine now.

  A cold nose nudged my shin. When Lassie realized that I noticed him, he ran back to his water bowl, which was still where I had dropped it on the garage floor.

  “Sorry, buddy.” I picked up the bowl, stepped around the blood, and went through the door into the kitchen to get some water for the poor thing.

  That’s when I noticed the first list, written on a large fluorescent yellow Post-it and stuck to the counter between the sink and the coffeepot. It said:

  1. Throw out old filter full of coffee.

  2. Fill coffeepot with water to top line.

  3. Pour water into back compartment of coffeemaker.

  The very detailed list went on, ending with, “Put CINNAMON in coffee. Smell or taste before adding!!!”

  Looking around, I noticed another Post-it stuck above a desk. On closer inspection, it was a list of instructions on how to pay bills, down to affixing the stamp. Another one in the hall prompted Marge to make sure she had her keys, driver’s license, and insurance card in her purse. And one mounted near the front door reminded her to take keys and a poo bag when walking the dog. The last line read, “The dog’s name is Lassie.”

  Oh, Marge.

  CHAPTER 30

  “Do you know how to clean up blood?” I admit it wasn’t the most romantic opening, but I did kiss Jeremy “hello” right afterward. And being the nice fireman-type he was, he took my question in stride.

  “I do,” he said, stepping into Marge’s foyer. “Is everything okay?”