Murder as a Second Language: A Claire Malloy Mystery (Claire Malloy Mysteries)

by Hess, Joan

  “Not without a full audit that goes back five years. Frances won’t even allow discussion. She, Sonya, Drake, and Willie have had what they call ‘executive’ meetings. The rest of us have no input. Frances would prefer to squelch the whole thing rather than acknowledge a scandal during her reign. I want to see Gregory hauled off in handcuffs and convicted.”

  “How much do you believe he’s embezzled?” I asked.

  “It’s impossible to tell because of the way the books are kept. From what I can estimate thus far, as much as forty thousand dollars.”

  I was taken aback. “That’s not exactly a fortune, Rick.”

  “It’s the principle of the thing.” His voice began to rise again. “It doesn’t matter if it’s a hundred dollars or a hundred thousand dollars. The man is a criminal!”

  Austin slid in beside me. “I hope you’re not talking about me.”

  I started in surprise. “Austin, please feel free to join us.”

  “I believe I did,” he said, flashing his teeth. He was dressed in a pale blue shirt, white suspenders, and a red bow tie—a patriotic motif of dubious taste. He held up his palm. “Rick, my man, how’s it going? You didn’t tell me that you and the alluring Ms. Malloy were having a little something on the side. You rock, bro!”

  Rick slapped Austin’s palm. “Only in my dreams, alas. Claire and I were discussing my problem with Gregory. I’m afraid she thinks I’m overreacting to a minor indiscretion. She’s off my list for the lynch party.”

  Austin draped his arm around my shoulders. “Don’t you worry, Claire. We’ll invite you to the reception afterward. We’d better not hold it at the Literacy Council. We’ll be drinking champagne, and Frances is obsessed with our stodgy Muslim students.”

  “I thought you had to work late every day.” I said to Austin. “Have I forgotten an obscure holiday?”

  “We finished shooting a commercial a couple of hours ago. You would not believe how difficult it is to keep penguins from pooping. They never poop in documentaries, but they were doing their business nonstop. You try to shoo them away, they attack. I have bruises all over my legs.” He winked at the waitress as she put down a mug. “Let’s have another pitcher, Angelina, and some chips.”

  “And you just happened to drop by here? What a coincidence.”

  “Coincidence? This happens to be my second home, my happy hunting ground. See that sweet brown thing over there in the corner? She hasn’t taken her eyes off me since I came through the gate.” He grinned broadly. “If she could ditch that brute, she’d be sitting here in a split second.”

  “The brute looks as though he plays varsity football,” I pointed out. “Did Rick call you earlier and tell you to come rescue him? I can’t believe I’m quite so scary.”

  Rick turned back when he heard his name. “Why would I be scared of you? You’re charming, attractive, intelligent, and witty. I may be a little nervous when Frances comes at me like a condor, but I’m beginning to adore you.” He was also beginning to get a teensy bit drunk, having consumed most of the first pitcher.

  “As am I.” Austin gave me a sloppy kiss on the cheek. “Ditch your husband and we’ll escape to a deserted island on the woolly backs of flying sheep.”

  “I prefer to fly first class.” I had to clamp down on my lip to keep from laughing. “How long have you two been friends?”

  “A long time,” said Rick.

  “Not that long,” said Austin.

  They looked at each other, grinned, and slapped palms. Austin grabbed the pitcher to refill their mugs and top off mine. “Somewhere between a long time and not that long,” he said. “We met when Rick joined the board of directors. Before that, Sonya and I were the only members under the age of fifty. She’s the personification of bitchiness behind her sugary facade. I don’t know what happened between her and Willie, but if Sonya ordered Willie to jump, we’d have to peel her honor off the ceiling.”

  I tucked that tidbit into a corner of my mind. “So both of you are convinced that Gregory has been stealing funds? Why not call the police and ask them to do an audit? They have a forensic accountant on standby.”

  “Because,” Rick said in a lugubrious voice, confirming my suspicion about his flagging sobriety, “it would take months for an outsider to decipher the books. All the grants, the endowments, and contributions are comingled with the profits from the fund-raisers and membership drives, and half the checks don’t have notations. As you heard at the meeting, the board members with checkbooks reimburse themselves and write checks without consulting each other. Sometimes Keiko will pay a utility bill, then Gregory will pay the same bill because Keiko forgot to mark it as paid. That means we get bills and checks from almost everyone. At any given moment, half the checks are still outstanding. It’s his fault!”

  To avoid another outburst, I said, “You’ve been trying to sort out the books in the evenings.” I thought about the pranks that had taken place in Gregory’s office. The obvious candidate was seated across from me. “I presume you prefer to work when Gregory isn’t around.”

  “So?” Rick said defiantly.

  Austin came to his rescue. “You’re not accusing my good brother Rick of pilfering money from the petty cash box, are you?”

  “Good heavens, no,” I said. “I’ve heard some rumors about some mischief in Gregory’s office. Little stuff.”

  “He claims I hide things,” Rick said, “but that’s absurd. Have you looked in his office, Claire? He stacks folders on the floor until they topple over. Despite the nonsmoking policy, the room stinks of cigars. He brings in fast food and leaves half-eaten burgers in bags.”

  “Toby doesn’t clean in there?” I asked.

  Austin laughed as if I’d said something hilarious. “Master Toby went in there one time and then came out and asked if he could rent a bulldozer. Gregory told him to never set foot in there again. That resolved the issue.”

  Rick splashed beer on the table as he tried to refill his mug. “Wish I had a bulldozer,” he growled. “I’d chase Gregory around the parking lot until I’d flattened him like a crepe.” His eyes filled with tears as he gave me a blurry look. “I loved my cousin, I really did. She was my best friend. We told each other everything.” Tears dribbled down his face as he leaned forward. “Do you understand? Do you?”

  I nudged Austin, who stood up and said, “Guess what, bro? It’s time to go home. We’ll pick up a pizza on the way.” He went around the picnic table, slid his arms under Rick’s armpits, and pulled him up. “Put your arm over my shoulder. I’m going to help you out the gate and into my car. We’ll figure out how to fetch your car later.”

  Rick was mumbling as Austin took him to the parking lot. I sat back, trying to make sense of what had happened. There was no question that Rick was drunk, and for good reason, having gone through a pitcher and a half of beer at the speed of light. He was still mourning his cousin’s death. He loathed Gregory, but luckily for him, Gregory was not the murder victim. But why had he called Austin to chaperone us? The obvious answer was that Rick knew he had a drinking problem and was afraid he might blurt out something to me. I had no reason to think he might be involved in Ludmila’s death. If he’d met her, odds were excellent that he hadn’t felt any fondness for her. No one whom I’d encountered thus far had expressed any kind words about her, with the exception of Duke.

  I hadn’t had the opportunity to ask Duke when he had last seen Ludmila. She’d been expelled from the senior citizens center, but they could have stayed in touch. Duke had married a waitress, presumably a good deal younger than he. Maybe Ludmila had been harboring romantic fantasies. The image was so unsettling that I had to take a sip of the tepid beer. Maybe Duke’s wife was not pleased with a ménage à trois. Beer spewed out of my mouth as I imagined Ludmila standing on the end of the bed, shouting at her consorts. Please, no, I thought as I realized everyone was staring at me. Happy hour at the beer garden on a sunny afternoon.

  It didn’t seem tactful to drop in on Duke and h
is wife to discuss Ludmila. The Literacy Council was off-limits, and I was leery of visiting Bartek again. I wondered if he’d said something to Peter or if his house was under surveillance. Murders were often committed by family members or spouses. “Parenticide” was in the dictionary. I was less sure about “grandparenticide,” although it certainly deserved inclusion.

  The waitress interrupted my aimless and meandering thoughts. “You done, honey?” I nodded. “That’ll be sixteen fifty-five, not including tip.”

  Not only had I been deserted, I’d been stiffed.

  8

  When I arrived home, I found Caron sprawled on the sofa. She, her clothes, the sofa, and the floor were sprinkled with crumbs. From the evidence on the coffee table, she’d swilled three cans of soda, emptied a jar of salsa dip and a bag of chips, and finished the last of the leftover chicken. The TV was turned to a game show but muted. I hoped the EPA was on high alert for a potential meltdown.

  “Hello, dear.” I entered the room with the same trepidation I’d feel if I’d been sent into the cage to feed the lions.

  “I have to tutor tomorrow.”

  “That’s the cause of the display of abject misery and despair? You knew the Literacy Council would open in a couple of days. Where’s Inez?”

  “How would I know? She hasn’t called or answered a text all afternoon.”

  “So you’re worried that she was abducted by aliens and whisked away to a distant galaxy. Now I understand.”

  Caron lifted her head long enough to douse me with radiation. “Why do you insist on trying to be funny, Mother? Trust me—you’re not. Anyway, Annabelle saw her at the movie theater in the mall with a guy from the Latin Club. What’s more, she wasn’t wearing her glasses. She was dressed in really short cutoffs and a tight T-shirt and swaggering like a model. Then again, Annabelle failed home ec in ninth grade. She flambéed her brownies.”

  “Good for Inez,” I said.

  “Why did I know you’d say that? I must be omniscient! Wait until I tell everybody. Nostradamus must be rotating in his grave.”

  “You don’t think twice about abandoning Inez when you have a date with Joel,” I said, refusing to react to her sarcasm.

  “That’s not fair,” Caron retorted. “We all hang out together at the mall. Inez tags along, just like everybody else.”

  “Did Inez tag along when Joel took you out to dinner to celebrate your three-month anniversary? How about when you two went to the play at the college?”

  Caron stood up. “That is so Not The Point. I need to go call Jiang, Nasreen, and Yelena. At least I don’t have to call Ludmila.” She marched toward the staircase, her shoulders quivering with indignation. “Oh, and Keiko left a message for you on the answering machine. The receptionist quit, and Keiko wants to know if you can cover until they find somebody else.”

  “Wait,” I said as she started upstairs. “Have you given your statement to the police yet?”

  “Yeah, after you left, Jorgeson called, and I went to the PD. Some guy with a beer gut asked me a bunch of questions. It took all of fifteen minutes, since I don’t know anything useful. Ludmila didn’t exactly confide in me. Afterward I went by Peter’s office to see if the PD wanted to reimburse my travel expenses with enough money for lunch. He gave me ten bucks.”

  “Did the two of you talk?”

  “Do you think we used sign language?”

  “Did he ask you about me?” It was increasingly difficult to hide my annoyance.

  “He just wanted to know if you were upset about what happened at the Literacy Council. I said that if you were, you were doing a fine job of hiding it and were running around trying to solve the case under his nose, thereby embarrassing him and the Farberville Police Department for the umpteenth time. That pretty much covers it, Mother. I need to make those calls. Go make boeuf à la barf or whatever. I guess I’ll be here for dinner every night until Joel gets back.”

  Now I knew why Peter was so well informed about my activities. I’d reared a freckled Mata Hari and married a man who had no scruples about coaxing information out of her for a measly ten dollars. Caron, at least for the last month, was planning to major in political science. She would never succeed in politics unless she learned how to negotiate. I would have given her fifteen dollars not to blab to Peter.

  On a brighter note, Bartek’s house was not under surveillance. I had a legitimate excuse to spend the day at the Literacy Council. I would find a reason to go to Duke’s house and continue our conversation about Ludmila. Feeling much better, I took a package of ground beef out of the freezer and stuck it in the microwave to thaw. Caron and I would dine on boeuf avec fromage on buns, with fries, salad, and the Key lime pie I’d hidden in the darkest corner of the freezer.

  La vie—c’est belle.

  * * *

  I appeared at the Literacy Council at nine o’clock. Keiko must have seen me through her office window, because she came bounding out of her office to throw her arms around me and squeal, “Oh, thank you, Ms. Marroy! You are so very wonderful to come and help. Everything is a big mess. The police went through all the files and left them in piles. I need to contact all the students and let them know we can have classes again. I cannot find the files for the tutors. I put a message on our Web site, but nobody looks at it.”

  I disengaged myself and looked around. There were only a few students in the lounge area. Leslie came out of her office, gathered them up, and took them into her classroom. I had not blipped on her radar screen. I went to the doorway.

  “We are all very upset about what happened to Ludmila,” Leslie was saying. “I know that in some cultures, it’s considered best not to speak about tragedy. In this country, it’s encouraged. Does anyone want to say something?” She waited for a moment. “Then I’ll start. I feel as though the Literacy Council has been tarnished by this crime.”

  An Asian girl waved her arm. “What is ‘tarnished’?”

  “Made dirty!” said Jiang. When I’d seen him earlier, he seemed to be simmering with anger. Someone or something had turned up the heat, because he was near his boiling point. Even Leslie was unnerved.

  “That’s right, Jiang,” she said. “Would you like to add to that?”

  His arms crossed, he shook his head and slunk down in his chair. I hoped he wasn’t a closet samurai. Keiko, Leslie, and I were not going to subdue him if he pulled out a razor-sharp sword and began slashing. I eased back and found Keiko in her office.

  “Same drill as last time?” I asked. “Answer the phone, take messages, hand out forms?”

  Her eyes were wet. “Oh, Ms. Marroy, this is too much for me. No one is telling me anything. The board members came on Tuesday and stood around talking to each other. Gregory came in and talked to your husband, and then Leslie came in and did the same. No one is talking to me except to demand that I find files and folders and time sheets for the tutors. The schedule is different every day. I don’t know who is here on Monday evening or Wednesday morning or anytime!” She grabbed a tissue from the box on her desk. “I think that I will quit. I will stay at home and make sushi for my children.”

  I stared at her. “You have children? How old are you, Keiko?”

  She recovered from her emotional outburst and smiled at me. “How old do you think I am, Mrs. Marroy?”

  “You look like you’re about fifteen,” I said.

  “I am two times that. Kazu is eight and Rie is six. My husband is Australian. We are here because he is putting in a new computer system at the Sell-Mart corporate headquarters. He works for a big company in Tokyo. We will be here for two more years, since he has to fly to distribution centers all over the country and teach the new system. After that, he will be transferred to a European center to do the same. I took this job to keep myself from getting lonesome. Now I want to be lonesome all by myself.”

  “I understand, but you should probably wait a few days before you make a decision. The police will determine what happened to Ludmila. The students will drift bac
k, and everything will be back to normal.”

  “Like hell it will,” said Keiko. “Please excuse my language, Mrs. Marroy. Most of the students have e-mail addresses, and I have notified them. Then there are some who don’t. This is a list of their telephone numbers. You need to call and tell them that the Literacy Council is open. I need to look for the tutors.” She dropped to her knees and began to sort through files. “I know you are here, my lovely tutors. Where are you hiding?”

  I poured myself a cup of coffee in the back classroom, noting that the door to the copy room was festooned with yellow tape, and took a seat at the receptionist’s desk. I located a pen and a notepad. I made sure the stapler was armed. I listened to Leslie leading a conjugation drill: I swim, you swim, he swims, etc. Keiko’s list seemed to grow longer as I looked at it with a sour taste in my mouth. I had felt no sympathy when Caron and Inez had to call their respective students. Faced with the same dilemma, I wanted to crawl under the desk and stay there until everyone went home. Which would make for a long day, I told myself. Leslie had assured the girls that all the students spoke some English, but she assumed that the students would answer the telephone.

  As it turned out, half of my calls went unanswered. Those who answered seemed to understand me, although I was just as willing as they were to pretend they did. There were about forty names and numbers on the list. When Gregory came in, I was down to the last ten. I decided they could wait.

  “Good morning,” I said.

  He stopped. “Good morning, Claire. Are you the permanent receptionist? Seems rather menial for someone with your talents.”

  “I’m volunteering until Keiko finds someone else. Have you recovered from Tuesday morning’s tragedy? Such a shock.”

  “It was a nightmare.” His face was pale, and there were dark half-moons under his eyes. “The detectives kept me here all day, asking questions and searching my office. I don’t know what they thought they’d find. At least they didn’t come across another dead bird or a death threat. I’d have a hard time explaining that.”