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

by Hess, Joan

  I was not inclined to scold him for such a juvenile prank, and almost offered to help. However, the wife of the deputy chief has to hold herself to certain standards. “All I can say is don’t get caught. Let’s go back to your scheme to have Gregory nailed for embezzlement. Any progress?”

  “Some. Gregory was at a conference when … Rosie’s accident occurred. He turned in an expense account voucher for four nights at the hotel, but he only stayed three nights. The conference had told him that they would pay all his expenses. He booked the flights himself and paid cash when he checked out of the hotel. The conference reimbursed him, as did we. That cost almost three thousand dollars. Gregory swears he has to fly first class so that he can work during the flights. He’s pulled that stunt several times in the last four years, but it’s difficult to find the receipts and expense accounts in the hodgepodge of boxes and stacks of paperwork.”

  “It may have something to do with the telephone bills. Willie tried to bring up the subject at the executive board meeting Thursday evening, but nobody would pay attention. Frances implied that she thought Willie was drunk.”

  “I paid attention to her at the potluck,” Rick said slowly. “She was onto something, and I told her so. Maybe I should have ignored her, too. Look what happened.”

  17

  “Okay,” I said slowly, “but before you go any further, have you told me the truth, the whole truth, and no surprises.”

  Rick grinned. “Everything I’ve told you today is absolutely true. Now, if you want the whole truth, I have to tell you about the escort in Bolivia and the drug dealers in Manila. In fact, maybe we ought to start with the blond cheerleader my senior year of high school. She drove a blue Mustang convertible that matched her eyes, and—”

  “I get the point. What did Willie say to you Friday about the phone bills?”

  “She needed the books before Frances’s meeting, so she went into Gregory’s office while he was gone and rooted through the mess. She stumbled across the phone bills, and they seemed too high. She’s been the treasurer since Moses came down from the mountain, and her memory’s not as bad as she lets everyone believe.” He stopped to chuckle. “She says it prevents people from asking her stupid questions. Anyway, she had a clerk get copies of the phone bills for the last ten years.”

  “They shot up when Gregory was hired four years ago?”

  “Not until about a year later. The board of directors voted to put an extension in the second office, although the teacher is part-time. It was a onetime charge of a little more than a hundred dollars plus the phone itself. Mysteriously, the phone bill doubled the next month.”

  I rubbed my nicely shaped chin. “Did Gregory have an explanation?”

  “No one knew about it. He wrote the checks every month and hid the amount under the supplies and incidentals, like the water-bottle charges, carpet-cleaning service, and another outdoor light for the parking lot. If anyone on the board had been sharp, he couldn’t have gotten away with it for the last three years.”

  “Did Willie figure out why the bill is so high?”

  “At the potluck, we were pinned in a corner and it was loud. What I gathered was there have been lots and lots of overseas calls. The long-distance plan doesn’t cover those.” His shoulders rose, and he made a face. “There shouldn’t be any overseas calls. Keiko used the phone once to call her family in Japan, but she told Willie and tried to pay for the call. Willie told her not to worry about it. That’s as far as we got before Willie realized the food was disappearing and jumped in line.”

  “There was no place to sit and eat in the classroom. Leslie invited her to her office, where, according to Leslie, they engaged in an inconsequential conversation about the students. That seems to be the last anyone saw of Willie.”

  “Someone doped her food or drink,” Rick said. “Leslie?”

  “I don’t know, but I suspect she’s involved in something that might have to do with the overseas calls.”

  “Please elaborate.”

  “I will, I promise,” I said, “but I need proof. Besides, why should I tell you everything when I had to pry your story out of you?”

  He popped the last bite of pastry into his mouth. “Perhaps we should have a look around her office.”

  “Are we going to break a window or go down the nonexistent chimney?”

  “I have a key. How could I prowl around Gregory’s office without one?”

  I needed to stall while I made a decision. I’d promised Peter not to go to the Literacy Council, although I hadn’t specified for how long. I hadn’t been there since Friday afternoon, so I’d lasted forty-eight hours thus far. “How did you get it?” I asked, feigning interest. Peter wouldn’t necessarily find out that I’d revised my promise to mean “not in the next forty-eight hours.” Well, maybe forty-six hours, but I wasn’t going to quibble over details.

  “I asked Willie to let me make a copy of hers. She’s had doubts about Gregory for a long while, but she didn’t know what to do. Drake said he was too busy running his department. Frances abhors the scent of scandal; she’d rather bury her head in the sandbox. Sonya refused to listen, and Austin’s not the most reliable guy in the county. She was pleased when I promised to investigate.”

  I could delay hedging my promise for a while, but we had to search Leslie’s office before the next morning when she showed up to teach. I told him about Rosie’s friend Lilac Benjamin and suggested we visit her first.

  He didn’t fall for it. “Yeah, I’d really like to talk to her, but the Literacy Council’s five minutes from here. Leslie could be there now, shredding her files and erasing damning evidence on her computer. Is that what you’re worried about, Claire? I assure you I can fend her off if she attacks us with a letter opener.”

  “No,” I said, unwilling to explain. “We can’t stay more than fifteen minutes, though. The police may be keeping an eye on it, and I don’t want to be dragged off to jail.”

  “We’re members of the board of directors, and I have the key. I think we’re safe from doing hard time for breaking and entering.”

  “Yes, but we need to be quick. I’ll leave my car here and ride with you.” If a patrol car drove by, the officers might note Rick’s license plate. If they came to the door, he could wave his key at them to his heart’s content. I’d be in a dark corner, listening to my heart thud.

  The parking lot was empty. I suggested to Rick that he park across the street, but he didn’t bother to respond. The lights were off, and the interior was dim. Rick stuck his all-powerful key in the lock, and we went inside. I trailed after him as he went down the narrow space and tried to unlock the door of Leslie’s office. His key wasn’t all that powerful, it seemed. “I have access to Gregory’s office,” he said, irritated. “This key is supposed to unlock all the doors.”

  “She may have had the lock rekeyed without telling anyone. Keiko’s the only person who might need to get inside when Leslie’s not here. The storage room is so small that Leslie keeps some of the boxes of workbooks and copy paper in a corner of her office.”

  This time he trailed me as I went into Keiko’s unlocked office and sat behind her desk. Some of the drawers were neat; others had free-range paper clips, rubber bands, a large assortment of makeup, pads of sticky notes, and keys attached to white ID circles bound in aluminum. I sorted through them and found one marked LB. “This should be it,” I said as I handed it to Rick. “Go try it.” I remained seated, looking at the scraps of papers with scrawled notes, some written in Japanese letters. I closed the drawers and studied her desk. Unlike in her drawers, everything was neatly aligned and in its proper place. She had a large monthly calendar stained with coffee rings and what appeared to be mustard. She’d jotted down phone numbers, the dates of the board meeting and of the potluck, my name (ahem), and rather elegant doodles. Nothing appeared to be worth a second look. On little more than a whim, I lifted up one corner of the calendar and saw a folded note. I pulled it out, hoping it wasn’t highly pers
onal. It read, “Waterford keeps calling. Tell him I resigned and went to Canada.” Although it was unsigned, I knew it was from Leslie.

  I leaned back in the chair and closed my eyes. I was trying to come up with anything but the obvious when Rick came to the door. “What’s wrong, Claire? I thought you wanted to be out of here as soon as possible. Are you going to join in the fun or take a nap?”

  “I never pass up an opportunity to snoop with a handsome guy who lies to me so eloquently.” I returned the note to its hiding place and rose with the grace of a cherry blossom.

  “I didn’t lie to you,” Rick said as we went back to Leslie’s office. “I lied to everybody. You just happened to be there—and frankly, my dear, I didn’t know if I could trust you. Austin’s the only one who’s heard the whole story.”

  “Is that why you called him to rescue you at the beer garden?”

  “At the time, I didn’t trust you, but I’d figured out that you’re one tough broad. I was afraid that if you tried to pin me down about my mythical cousin in Oregon, I might lose control and get emotional. I didn’t trust myself, either.” He gestured at Leslie’s computer. “It’s password protected, and there’s no way I can break into her files.”

  I sat down to go through her drawers. The smaller ones had folders of worksheets, class rosters with notes in the margin, a map of the United States, and another folder filled with letters from grateful students. The bottom drawers, one on each side, were locked. “Damn it,” I muttered.

  Rick looked up from his squatting position in front of the bookcase. “What?”

  “The large drawers are locked, and I didn’t see any little keys in Keiko’s office.” I rechecked the unlocked drawers and felt underneath the middle one in case she’d taped it there. “We are not going to pry them open, and I don’t have my burglary kit with me. Whatever she’s hiding is going to stay hidden for now. Let’s go.”

  “She has a whole lot of government booklets about immigration and citizenship. Is that significant?”

  “It would be if you’d been able to discern her password so I could look at her e-mails and files.”

  For some reason, Rick took my remark as an insult. “I don’t know her. I don’t know her birth date, her current and past telephone numbers, her Social Security number, her mother’s maiden name, or her wedding anniversary. I don’t suppose you have any hackers on call?”

  I did, but I doubted Caron and Inez could ferret out the password without the same information. “I don’t want to confront Leslie until we have enough evidence for a warrant. She might delete the files.”

  “You haven’t told me what’s in these files or why she’s making overseas calls.”

  “Because I’m not sure,” I admitted. “I have a very feeble theory, that’s all. Let me think about it tonight. Do you have any friends in the CIS?”

  “I have a friend in the regional passport office, who’s been able to expedite visas for me. I’ve dealt with people at several American consulates. There’s an American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong. Bunch of guys in ties that take us out to dinner and offer perks of a licentious nature. The ambassador throws holiday cocktail parties. But the CIS? I’ve never had anything to do with them.”

  “Then you have a homework assignment. See if you can find someone named Waterford who’s employed by them. I don’t know his first name or where he’s located, but you might try Phoenix.” I paused and shook my head. “Not that I know if he works for the CIS. It’s one of the more feeble premises in my theory.”

  His look had a tinge of dubiousness. “I’ll see if I can find out anything. Do you want to swing by the hospital?”

  “After that, will you come up with something else to do to avoid meeting Rosie’s friend? Have a snack in the hospital cafeteria? See if Sonya’s car is parked at Gregory’s house? Track down Austin and ask him to come play with us?”

  “I know that whatever she says will upset me. We could take a bottle of wine with us as a gesture of hospitality.”

  “It’s Sunday, and the liquor stores are closed. All right, we’ll go by the hospital and say hello to Willie. If you don’t want to meet Lilac, you can go home and watch some golf tournament on TV. There’s a show about restoring antique motorcycles on later.” A good wife listens to her husband, especially when she needs to sneak out of the house.

  “The hospital and this Lilac woman,” Rick said. “What kind of name is that?”

  Uninformed about lilacs, I had little to say as we drove to the hospital. Because Sunday afternoon was prime visiting time, we were lucky to find a parking place in the same area code. I felt a distasteful dribble of perspiration in the middle of my back as we trudged uphill to the main entrance. Rick stopped at a desk and ascertained Willie’s room number. We rode the elevator with people holding flower arrangements, helium balloons with perky messages, and bags of contraband. The confined space reeked of pastrami.

  When the elevator doors slid open, Rick took off confidently toward the ward. I wished we’d stopped in the gift shop for flowers, although Willie might have preferred a discreet flask. I spotted a uniformed officer seated in a chair in the corridor. I was quite pleased when I recognized him as one of the men Peter had sent to supervise Caron’s party Friday afternoon. He stood up as we stopped.

  “Sorry, no one’s allowed to go into this room,” he said.

  I gave him a wounded smile. “You don’t remember me? You attended a swimming party at my house a couple of days ago.”

  “I was on duty, ma’am.” His voice was shaky, and his ears were turning red.

  Rick glanced at me, then stepped into the doorway. “Willie, you’re looking a lot better. Feeling better, too?”

  The policeman opened his mouth, but I said in a low voice, “I haven’t told Deputy Chief Rosen about your conduct with the nubile young creatures in bikinis—not yet. We’re close friends of the patient, and I think she’ll prefer not to have to shout across the room. Don’t you agree?”

  “I’ll have to go in with you.”

  “No, you’ll have to stay right here. If either of us pulls out an ax, you can spring into action.” I gave Rick a light shove as I entered the room. “Hey, Willie, I’m so glad you’re better.”

  “They’re doing one final round of blood tests just to be sure. If everything’s copacetic, I can go home in the morning. This place is gawdawful. The PA system barks all night. When my glucose bag needs to be replaced, the machine beeps like a giant cricket. I seem to be the only one who hears it.” She turned her attention on Rick. “Enough about me. Did you find out anything of significance about … the anomaly?”

  “I told Claire, so you can speak openly. I studied the bills yesterday, and something’s fishy. I called the overseas numbers, but ninety percent of them were disconnected. I got voice mail with the rest. Will the Literacy Council reimburse me when my telephone bill arrives?”

  “Sure, drop the bill in Frances’s lap. She’ll love it.” Willie studied me for a moment. “Well, Claire, do you think Rick and I are delusional, that we’re persecuting poor Gregory?”

  “Not at all. He’s a crook.”

  “Do you think he murdered Ludmila?” she persisted in her sternest courtroom voice.

  Had I been in the witness chair, I would have been too terrified to speak. I cleared my throat. “I don’t know. It seems to be a matter of who turned on the lights and when.” I would have elaborated, but a nurse came into the room.

  “Out, both of you,” she said in a tone devoid of any hint of loving, tender care. She looked capable of lunging at us with a syringe if we dared linger for another second.

  The young officer pretended not to notice us as we came out and turned toward the elevator. When we were out of earshot, Rick said, “Who turned on the lights? Really?”

  “Could you and Austin see the Literacy Council from your booth at the sports bar?”

  “We sat at a table, and the window blinds were closed. Would you care to explain the importance of the
lights?”

  “I need to explain it to my husband first, but I have to find the right time. He’s annoyed because he knows I’m once again meddling in affairs best left to the boys in blue. Not that he wears blue, mind you. He usually wears a suit and tie. He does have a lovely blue dress shirt that goes well with the tie I gave him on his birthday.” By this time, we were halfway to Rick’s car. I let my voice fade, but I was prepared to resume rambling if he asked me the same question.

  I gave him directions to Lilac’s house and then gazed out the window. He made a few innocuous comments about the weather and his bank’s softball team. I responded politely. I was relieved to see an SUV parked in the driveway. A man was pulling golf bags out of the rear section, and a woman was carrying a suitcase toward the house. I told Rick to park and then hurriedly got out of the car and caught up with the woman before she reached the front door.

  “Are you Lilac Benjamin?” I asked, panting a wee bit.

  “You must be Claire Malloy. My daughter texted me yesterday after you left.”

  She was a pretty woman, dressed in shorts and a blouse. She wore a visor with the logo of a country club on her short blond hair. Most importantly, she appeared to be a reasonable sort.

  “I hope this doesn’t distress you, but it’s about Rosie Whistler.” I gestured at Rick, who was fidgeting. “This is her cousin, Rick Lester. You may know him as Paddy.”

  Lilac stared at Rick. “You’re Paddy? I didn’t expect to ever meet you. I heard so much about you from Rosie. If she hadn’t shown me your letters and postcards, I wouldn’t have believed you were real. Can you really dance on the head of a pin?” She dropped the suitcase, barely missing her foot. “Wow, this is such an incredible surprise. You’d both better come inside. My knees are shaking, and I’m light-headed. Is it too early for a glass of wine?”

  Rick pretended to frown as he looked at his watch. “About an hour early, but this is an auspicious occasion that merits breaking the rule. Please let me take your arm, Lilac. Where would you like us to sit?” They went into the house.