Murder on Memory Lake

by J. D. Griffo

  “You what?” Alberta cried.

  “And in what universe is setting up cameras around a lake more important than sharing that tidbit?” Helen inquired.

  Joyce ignored Helen and instead asked Jinx if she had found any incriminating evidence on Beverly’s phone, but Jinx revealed that she couldn’t get into the phone because it was password protected. Normally that would be a problem, but since they had a notebook with all of Beverly’s passwords it wouldn’t be an issue.

  Alberta placed the kitty-covered notebook on the table, and Lola came bounding back into the kitchen as if Alberta had opened up a bag of her favorite treats. Jumping up on the table, she plopped down next to the notebook and started licking the image of the cat’s face.

  “Looks like Lola’s got a boyfriend too,” Helen quipped.

  “What?” Jinx and Joyce asked.

  “Never mind,” Alberta replied. She then picked up Lola and placed her on the floor. “And you know the table is off limits, missie. We have work to do.”

  Alberta started looking through the list of passwords, but couldn’t immediately find the one she was looking for. “She has lots of passwords, but they aren’t labeled clearly,” she explained. “A few of them have initials next to them though.”

  “Look for a ‘CP,’” Helen suggested.

  “What’s that stand for?” Alberta asked.

  “Cell phone,” the three other women said simultaneously.

  “Managia!” Alberta cursed. “Of course. What would I do without you three?

  Armed with a goal, Alberta reexamined the contents of the notebook and at the bottom of the first page found what she was looking for. “BevnDuke,” she said. “Try it.”

  Jinx typed in the letters and the cell phone unlocked. She let out a shriek that would have made Victor Frankenstein proud. “It’s alive!”

  The others immediately went into a mantra of “What’s it say? What’s it say?” as they formed a semicircle behind Jinx, peering over her shoulder to read the texts she was scrolling through.

  “Oh, I feel bad,” Alberta said. “These things are private, Beverly never meant for anyone to read them . . . except her and, of course, whoever they were being sent to.”

  “Pish posh!” Helen shouted. “Aiutati che Dio ti aiuta!”

  “I agree!” Jinx screamed.

  “You know what she said?” Joyce asked.

  “I’ve been brushing up on my Italian so I don’t feel stupido around you ladies,” Jinx explained. “Aunt Helen said something about God helping people or something like that, right?”

  “Heaven helps those who help themselves,” Helen confirmed.

  “Fine! So help us out, Jinx, whose texts are those?” Alberta asked

  “These are between Beverly and Marion,” Jinx answered. “There’s a ton of them and they are definitely NSFW.”

  “What’s that mean?” Joyce asked.

  “Um, not suitable for the workplace,” she said.

  Helen grabbed the phone from Jinx so she could read the texts more clearly. “According to these,” Helen started. “They were doing a lot more than just working.”

  “What’s that word mean, Hel?” Alberta asked, pointing at a text that Marion had sent to Beverly.

  “Gram, you don’t want to know,” Jinx said, grabbing the cell phone back.

  “Remember that thing Sammy always wanted you to do to him that you always refused to do?” Helen asked. “Well, Beverly did it every Thursday at noon.”

  “Caro Signore!” Alberta gasped. “I guess I’ll have to make sure that I have lunch plans on Thursday in case Marion wants to continue the tradition.”

  “Here’s a text from Lucy!” Jinx interjected, changing the subject.

  The mention of the dead woman’s name brought them all back to reality, to the real reason they had committed petty theft: They wanted to find out who murdered Alberta’s old, if not dear, friend. The exchange of texts between Beverly and Lucy revealed that they were much closer than Alberta and Lucy had ever been and shared lunch dates, movies, and the occasional weekend shopping excursion together. And that Beverly also knew about the TV Guide collection.

  “Look at this,” Jinx said, pointing to the phone. “Beverly asks Lucy if she was going to keep her appointment with Olive, and Lucy says yes.”

  “That means she was definitely planning on selling her collection,” Joyce said. “But never got the chance to do it.”

  “Whoever killed her saw to it that she didn’t keep her appointment,” Alberta surmised.

  “Also too, from what the cell phone is telling us, that person looks to be Beverly,” Joyce declared.

  The horror of Joyce’s statement sunk into Alberta’s mind slowly like poisonous quicksand. “Oh dear God,” she muttered. “Do you really think Beverly could’ve killed her friend just for a collection of old magazines?”

  No one really knew how to answer such a bizarre question. To avoid having to respond, Jinx next scrolled through the list of phone calls and found some information that could potentially contradict everything they had just learned. Marion’s name only appeared on two calls, both of which were made by Beverly, and besides Lucy there was only one other name that popped up with startling frequency.

  “I think Beverly might’ve been two-timing Marion,” Jinx announced.

  Stunned, Alberta asked, “Why do you say that?”

  “Because she exchanged over fifty phone calls with some guy named Sal DeSoto in one four-day period,” she said. “And there’s a ton more between her and Sal in her deleted phone calls list, which she, you know, never deleted.”

  “You think Beverly was having an affair with Sal, while she was having an affair with Marion?” Joyce asked.

  “Beverly was definitely not having an affair with Sal,” Helen said, definitively.

  “Why do you think you know everything?” Alberta yelled.

  “I don’t know everything!” Helen yelled back. “But I do know this.”

  “How?” Alberta shouted. “How do you know this?”

  “Don’t you recognize the name, Berta?” Helen asked. “Sal DeSoto is Father Sal!”

  “Oh my God, Helen!” Alberta cried. “You do know everything!”

  “You really know this Sal, Aunt Helen?”

  “Know him? I worked with Father Sal for over thirty years,” Helen confirmed. “He’s many things, and celibate is one of them. Why do you think he’s such a cranky SOB?”

  “But if she wasn’t having an affair with Father Sal,” Joyce started, “why was she so tight with a priest?”

  “Because she had something to confess!” Alberta declared triumphantly.

  “That must be it! Beverly did something bad, she felt guilty about it, and she needed to confess her sins!” Jinx exclaimed. “And who better to go to for confession than a priest?”

  “Pure conjecture,” Helen barked.

  “There’s only one way for us to find out the truth,” Jinx said.

  “What’s that, lovey?” Alberta asked.

  “Looks like Sister Helen is going to have to come out of retirement.”

  CHAPTER 14

  A cane scottato l’acqua fredda pare calda.

  A few hours later, Sister Helen returned home after an emotionally draining day at work.

  “I need a drink,” Helen announced, “And make it a strong one.”

  “How about some mango-flavored vodka?” Joyce suggested.

  “I need something stronger,” Helen said. “Make it apple.”

  “How is apple stronger than mango?” Alberta asked.

  “Don’t question me, Berta!” Helen shrieked. “I just had a visit with the ghost of my religious past, and it wasn’t a pleasant experience.”

  Jinx poured Helen a healthy glass of apple-flavored vodka and placed it on the table in front of her. “I’m sorry you had to come face-to-face with the life you left behind, Aunt Helen, but it was the only way to find out the truth. Tell us what happened and don’t leave out any details.
”

  Helen took a swig of her vodka and let the apple-infused warmth linger in her mouth before swallowing. Once she felt the burn start to spread out to the rest of her body, she was ready to tell her story.

  When she sat across from Father Sal in his office, Helen was reminded of everything she disliked about the Catholic Church. While she had devoted her life to near-poverty and charitable service, this priest was sitting, quite literally, in the lap of luxury. As a realist, Helen understood that helping the unfortunate while living like Mother Teresa in the bowels of Calcutta was hardly practical or, in her estimation, necessary to teach God’s word. However, she also didn’t think it should be preached from an ergonomic, Italian leather, fully reclinable chair with three-speed massage control. From the soft buzzing sound that had filled the spacious office, Helen surmised that Sal had the setting on low.

  A terribly graphic Italian phrase had popped into her head: A cane scottato l’acqua fredda pare calda. Roughly translated into English, it meant “A burnt child dreads the fire.” It also meant that the burnt-out former nun dreaded revisiting the rectory, and a shiver went down Helen’s spine as she felt the first sparks lick at her feet. She didn’t want to be in this impeccably decorated office, sitting opposite this impeccably decorated priest, but she didn’t want to disappoint her niece. And although she would never admit it out loud, she didn’t want to disappoint her sister or sister-in-law either. As a modern-day spinster and, most undeniably, an Italian woman, family was vitally important to Helen. So instead of running from the impending inferno, she fanned its flames.

  “If I remember correctly, this is your favorite,” she said, placing a bottle of Chardonnay on top of the mahogany desk. “I didn’t have room for glasses in my pocketbook, but I believe you keep some in the lower left-hand drawer of your desk for special occasions.”

  “You remember correctly,” Father Sal replied, opening the drawer. He placed two small, gold-rimmed tumblers onto his desk, and then produced a bottle opener. After he uncorked the bottle of wine, he declared, “I guess this can be considered a special occasion.”

  As Helen sipped her wine, she watched Sal pour his second glass. Everything she despised about the man came into focus. She knew that as a former nun, or simply someone who considered herself Christian, she shouldn’t despise anyone for their appearance, but she thought Sal was an illustration of the Catholic Church’s hypocrisy.

  She noticed that his fingernails were not only manicured but supported a sheer topcoat of polish. The two gold rings on his left hand, one sporting a diamond, the other a ruby, were more expensive than all the items in Helen’s jewelry box, and his thick black vintage eyeglasses looked like something her own father would’ve worn, but she could tell Sal’s were made by a current designer and, therefore, overpriced.

  Somehow the wrinkles on his face had been smoothed over, and Helen wasn’t sure if he was wearing makeup or if he visited the same Botox doctor Enza frequented. And just like Enza’s, his eyebrows were perfectly arched thanks to an expert plucking. His hair was the same bottle-black color, without the hint of gray that surely should have appeared on top of his sixty-seven-year-old head. Nothing about Father Sal’s appearance was honest, but she was hoping that the conversation would be different, which is why she poured him a third glass of Chardonnay the moment after he had finished his second.

  “So are you enjoying civilian life, Helen,” Father Sal asked. “Or do you clamor for the days of discipline and rigidity that is our norm?”

  Helen smiled and adjusted her eyeglasses. She wanted to tell the pompous priest that he knew very little about leading a rigid or disciplined life, but opted to maneuver the conversation into Sal’s preferred territory: gossip.

  “It’s a bit of an adjustment, I will admit, but I’m keeping busy and doing things I didn’t have a chance to do as a nun,” Helen said. “Like reconnecting with old friends.”

  Father Sal raised his glass and placed his right hand over his heart. “Ai vecchi amici,” he praised. “To old friends . . . like you and me.”

  Helen swallowed hard and replied, “Yes, just like you and me.” She took a quick sip of wine to wash away the bile that was rising in her throat and added, “And Beverly LaStanza.”

  The mention of Beverly’s name caused Sal to have a choking fit and almost topple over backward in his chair. Finally upright, he clutched his desk to maintain his balance and chugged the last of his wine to maintain his composure. “You know Beverly?”

  “Bev and I go way back,” Helen lied. “Such a sin about her and Marion though, isn’t it?”

  Luckily, Sal was as emotionally weak as Helen remembered, and all he needed was a gentle push to help him cross the line and break priest-penitent privilege. It didn’t hurt that he had never learned to hold his liquor and was already inebriated, but Helen refused to feel bad about being an enabler if it got her the desired results. And as the words quickly poured out of Father Sal’s mouth, she knew this reluctant return to her religious past had been well worth the visit.

  “She was like a German clock, that one,” Father Sal began. “Every Wednesday and Saturday she would be first in line for confession at twelve-thirty on the dot and every confession was the same. Bless me Father for I have sinned . . . with my boss. I tried to tell her that premarital sex with an unmarried man couldn’t be considered that big of a sin for a woman of her age, but Beverly, as I’m sure you know, Helen, is an innocent soul, almost childlike.”

  Helen had no idea if Beverly acted her age or her shoe size, but she agreed with Sal in order to keep his monologue flowing. “She could be a regular Shirley Temple.”

  “Ah, but sadly, she turned into a Shirley Temple Black,” Sal replied, downing his fourth tumbler of wine.

  Helen had no idea what Sal meant by his comment, but again she chose to play along. “Black as charcoal, that one,” she said.

  “I tried to warn her, Helen, I truly did,” Sal professed. “But she wouldn’t listen to me. Oh no, no, no, she was beyond my grasp and that of our church because she was in love with Marion and was convinced that he loved her and was going to propose to her simply—and here’s the kicker—because he had promised that he would. Can you believe she could be so gullible? She could sometimes think like a child, as if what she was told was the truth. But as the years went by and Marion didn’t produce an engagement ring to slip on her finger, she realized that her fantasy of upgrading from the boss’s secretary to his wife was slipping away, and it was time to take matters into her own hands.”

  Father Sal paused so Helen pushed. “Did she propose to him?”

  “No, she decided to get revenge.”

  “What kind of revenge are we talking about, Sal?” Helen asked. “Venial or mortal?”

  “Oh Helen, how I wish I knew. How I truly wish that I knew,” Sal replied. “But that’s the last thing she said to me when she made her confession on Wednesday, that she was going to get her revenge, and I haven’t seen her since. It’s been a whole week and I’m dying from the suspense. Talk about a cliffhanger. Who cares about who shot J.R.? I want to know what Beverly did to get revenge on her lover!”

  Finally, Helen and the priest had something in common.

  * * *

  After she conveyed all this information to the rest of the gang, the women were more convinced than ever that Beverly possessed the temperament and the motive to be Lucy’s killer, but also that Marion was a wolf in perfectly tailored sheep’s clothing.

  “Be careful, Alberta,” Joyce said, pouring out four glasses of the apple-flavored vodka. “I spent my career working for and with men like Marion and they cannot be trusted. They’re friendly on the outside but rotten to the core.”

  Alberta knew that she could be naive where men were concerned, having spent her entire life with only one man, but she was nonetheless confused. “Beverly was the one whose heart was filled with revenge and Marion’s the villain?”

  “It’s not that cut and dried, Gram, and two rights
don’t make a wrong,” Jinx said, placing a plate of lasagna in front of her grandmother. “But the only reason Beverly wanted revenge is because Marion lied to her for so many years and took advantage of her.”

  “If I had a nickel for every time I watched a new secretary get taken for a ride by some executive,” Joyce shared. “Heck, I’d be richer than I already am.”

  “I understand what you’re saying and I know that those types of things happened and, unfortunately, still happen in the workplace all the time, but I know Marion, and he’s different,” Alberta said. “I just have a hard time believing that the quiet man who took me out for a friendly cup of coffee, who has also proven to be a respectful businessman, is this evil bellimbusto.”

  “Stop living in the past, Berta. Evil can be subjective, but a gigolo . . . not so much,” Helen said. “And the facts are proving more and more that that’s what your boss is.” She ate a piece of Jinx’s lasagna and wasn’t as confident. “I wish I could be as certain about this food. Jinx, honey, what is this?”

  “Vegetable lasagna with gluten-free pasta,” she informed.

  “Again with the gluten-free!” Helen yelled.

  “I promise you Aunt Helen, you’ll get used to the taste.”

  “But why?” Helen yelled even louder. “Why would you want to get used to such a bad taste? Gluten-free anything makes no sense unless you’re allergic to it or have that celiac disease. Any other reason for eating the stuff means you don’t have normal taste buds.”

  “It’s called healthy living, Hel,” Joyce interjected, swallowing a huge mouthful. “I like it.”

  Shaking a fork at Joyce, Helen replied, “That’s because you’re only Italian by marriage and you don’t know any better!”

  “I will say, lovey, that it’s an improvement over your last attempt,” Alberta conceded. “But mainly because I don’t think you can ever have enough vegetables. Remember Great-Grandpa’s vegetable garden he had out on the fire escape in Hoboken, Helen?”

  Helen pushed the plate away from her and cried, “Don’t try to lure me away from the topic at hand with happy memories, Berta, it won’t work!”