Kiki Lowenstein Books 1-3 & Cara Mia Delgatto Books 1-3: The Perfect Series for Crafters, Pet Lovers, and Readers Who Like Upbeat Books!

by Joanna Campbell Slan

  “Yeah,” I said. “This.”

  “Ali Lever Timmons threw a tantrum there in the hospital,” Detweiler said. “Mrs. Timmons’ brother didn’t say much. He’s a state employee up near Belleville, Illinois. Mr. and Mrs. Timmons live in Illinois, too, just across the river in O’Fallon. I gather the kids and their mother had been estranged, but they started talking to Mrs. Lever after she swore she was getting help. They asked if I knew a good cleaning service. I recommended that friend of yours, Mert Chambers. I think she’s over there right now to see what she needs. She’ll definitely have to rent a Dumpster, and bring in a flock of helpers.”

  Mert would call me and offer me part-time work. She was my former cleaning lady and my forever best friend. These days I helped her out whenever she had a big cleaning job. I also took in boarders when Mert’s pet sitting service needed an extra hand. The additional money fed Gracie, bought a few trinkets for Anya, and generally came in handy.

  “What happens next? For Marla? I mean after she gets out of the hospital? That is, if she comes out of the coma and can take care of herself?”

  “Her house is off limits until they get it cleared and cleaned,” he said. “Mrs. Lever can’t go back until it passes inspection. They were still rounding up cats late this afternoon.”

  “How many?”

  “Eighty-three so far. Five euthanized right away. The vet at the animal shelter will determine whether another dozen can be saved. All were undernourished. Most were sick with mites, mange, feline distemper, worms, and so on. As you know, at least one of them had died recently.”

  “That’s a lot of homeless cats.”

  “Cats? Did I hear there are cats that need homes?” My daughter Anya walked in on us. She looked a little surprised to see Detweiler, but bless her, she quickly covered her shock.

  “Honey, a pet is an expense. We can’t afford another animal right now,” I said, “besides—”

  I didn’t have the chance to finish. Detweiler’s phone, my phone, and the doorbell all started ringing at once.

  13

  “A corpse? In Marla Lever’s deep chest freezer? You mean an animal body, right?” I poured a glass of iced tea for Hadcho, who had shown up at my front door. Of course, I invited him inside and introduced him to Anya. Hadcho joined Detweiler and me at the kitchen table. In short order, both men gulped down their glasses of cold, unsweetened tea, so I put a kettle on the stove to make more.

  My hand shook as I brought my own glass to my mouth. Was it really possible that Marla Lever had shared her home with a corpse? A human body seemed unlikely. But another dead cat? Sure. That I could definitely see.

  “The corpse is human. Female. We’ve got ourselves a dead woman,” Hadcho said. “When we opened the freezer, the body was there, folded up under packages of ground meat frozen in baggies.” He spoke casually, as if he dealt with this every day. But even as he spoke, he kept pinching at the seam of his pants. His handsome features looked drawn and sharp, especially around his high cheekbones.

  I cradled my glass in my hands, and stared out the kitchen window at the pen that held Monroe, Leighton’s donkey. After Hadcho arrived and took a seat at my table, I had asked my daughter to take Gracie for a short walk around the yard. I also suggested that while she was outside, Anya should check on Monroe’s water since it was so hot. Digging in my chiller drawer, I handed her an apple to feed the donkey.

  That chore might keep Anya busy for half an hour.

  My method of diversion wasn’t subtle; I’ll admit. But Anya didn’t need all the gory details of what I mentally labeled “The Marla Lever Case.”

  “That new patrolman, what’s his name?” Hadcho prompted Detweiler. “Lambert? Yes, Lambert, like the airport. He screwed up. I told him to look everywhere. He says he opened the chest, but he didn’t rummage around. Didn’t look carefully. Saw packages of frozen food and slammed the lid.”

  “Ugh.” I glanced at my own freezer, about the size of a shoebox. No bodies there! No red meat, either. A.) I couldn’t afford it. B.) My daughter had become a chick-a-terian. That was our word for “a person who only eats chicken and no other meat.”

  Since Anya tends to be too thin, I hoped and prayed she would never meet a chicken, close up and personal, so she wouldn’t harbor compunctions about having one for dinner. On her plate. Not as a house guest.

  Detweiler leaned against my kitchen counter, crossed his long legs at the ankles and sipped his tea. “Ease up, Stan. With all that mess it would be easy to overlook something. Mrs. Lever packed stuff in every nook and cranny. Junk was stacked to the ceiling, too. So Lambert missed something in the freezer. Big deal. You hadn’t released the scene.”

  “No, I hadn’t. But I had escorted that cleaning lady—what’s her name — through that dump so she could get an idea of that with which she’d be dealing.”

  “Mert Chambers.” I took the kettle off the stove and poured hot water over tea bags in an old teapot. As an afterthought, I pinched off a stem of mint from the pot in my windowsill. When it hit the water, a fragrance cloud enveloped me. The herb would add flavor and make the drink more cooling to the senses.

  “Yes, that’s the one,” Hadcho said. “The cleaning lady, Mert Chambers. We did a walk through. She asked me if I’d emptied out the freezer. I told her we hadn’t, not yet. She made me look inside. Said she didn’t want any nasty surprises when she unplugged it. I opened it and shuffled a few packages around. Moved a couple bags of ground meat to one side and found myself staring down at a head full of hair.”

  “Who was it? I mean, who is the dead person?” I knew I shouldn’t ask. In fact, I shouldn’t have been included in this conversation at all. As soon as Hadcho came to his senses, he’d realize that. Apparently, the heat had gotten to him, too.

  “We don’t know yet. It’s up to the crime scene people. I didn’t fish around for an ID because I didn’t want to mess up the scene. Better to leave it to the techs. No one would be able to identify that citizen just by looking. Injuries to the face and all.”

  “Blech.” I gagged a little. “Totally gross.”

  “I forgot that you’re a civilian.”

  A civilian. Right. That was a pretty good definition of my status. I was definitely not cut out for a career in law enforcement.

  Detweiler walked over to my kitchen window and checked on Anya. He smiled at me, reading my mind. “She’s fine. She’s giving Monroe a tummy rub. I can see her from here.”

  I glanced down at my phone and saw I’d missed a call.

  “If you two will excuse me, I’m going to see what Mert needs. Probably wants help cleaning the Lever house.”

  “Tell your friend thanks a lot for messing up my crime scene,” Hadcho said.

  That ticked me off. “My friend saved you a lot of grief. She’s a professional. She’s good at her job. So your flunky didn’t do his. Whoop-de-do. Mert did hers.”

  “What makes you think your pal saved me a lot of grief?” Hadcho wrinkled his brow.

  “What if we had unplugged the freezer and didn’t get back to it? What if stuff started to defrost? The remains would have been a lot harder to process, wouldn’t they?” Over the years, I’d had enough experience with appliances on the blink that I could imagine the mess.

  “I suppose that would have been better for Mrs. Lever,” grumped Hadcho. “Her house. Her freezer. Her victim.”

  “Stan, you know that’s a leap,” said Detweiler in a warning tone.

  “Just because she hoards cats doesn’t make her a killer.” I poured the freshly brewed tea into a carafe and added ice cubes to the mix.

  “Whether she is or isn’t,” Detweiler said to his partner, “we’re lucky Kiki and her pal found the woman. From what I heard, Mrs. Lever and her kids have an on-again off-again type of relationship. Who knows how long it would have taken for someone to report her missing? Another day in this heat and we’d have been stuck with a corpse in the bedroom and a human Popsicle in the freezer. When the power company tu
rned off her electricity—which would have happened eventually—our corpse would have turned to goop.”

  “I bet goop is hard to identify. Compared to a human Popsicle, that is,” I said.

  “All right already. So Mrs. Lowenstein and her friend did us a favor. Satisfied? I’ll play nicely. But we’re spinning our wheels until we get an ID on the body,” Hadcho said.

  “What’s the last report from the hospital? Any word on Mrs. Lever’s condition?” Detweiler rinsed his glass out.

  “Not good,” Hadcho said. “The docs figure it for a stroke, aggravated by heat prostration and dehydration. Something or someone tripped the switch in her fuse box and turned off her A/C.”

  “Seems pretty convenient.” I refreshed the ice in Hadcho’s glass and poured him more tea.

  “What do you mean?” He thanked me and raised an eyebrow.

  “I bet Marla Lever hasn’t had visitors in ages. How come her A/C stopped today? When she expected us? I could tell she didn’t want us to come, but she didn’t flat out say, ‘No.’ She did tell me she was nervous about getting her lawn mowed. But she didn’t say anything about the air conditioning being out, and that would have been first on anyone’s list. Especially considering this heat wave and how closed up her place was. And the smell. I mean, it was bound to be bad under any circumstances, but without A/C it was stifling.”

  Hadcho downed his glass of iced tea in two long gulps. “Remember, we’re dealing with a whack-job here. Hoarders are delusional. She probably thinks she’s the next Martha Stewart.”

  “But she was nervous about your visit, right?” Detweiler asked me. “Maybe she was nervous about someone reporting her to Animal Control.”

  “I don’t think so. We all knew she had cats. Lots of them. She brought photos to the store to scrapbook. That’s how we met her. Sure, she had a few pictures of her kids, both when they were young and after they’d grown. But only about four of those. Mainly she had pictures of cats. I think for her, the large number of pets was, well, normal. She never mentioned a specific number. What’s the pathology of this? Of animal hoarding?”

  “There are all sorts of theories,” Detweiler said. “Some psychologists think it’s a type of OCD. Others say it has aspects of borderline personality disorder and addiction. A new theory suggests it’s an attachment disorder. There seems to be a lot of support for hoarding being a delusional disorder. Animal hoarders rationalize away reality. She might have told herself that a large number like that was normal. Or that she was doing them a favor.”

  “But the timing.” I shook my head. “That’s what gets me. Why’d this have to happen when we were planning to visit?”

  “Because you’re lucky,” Hadcho said with a grin. “Lucky, lucky, Kiki Lowenstein.”

  14

  The cops thanked me for the iced tea, and then they left, freeing me to call Mert.

  “Are you in or out?” she asked.

  My friend could be a woman of few words. Mert was one of a kind, a powerhouse of energy, and a pragmatist to the core.

  “You bet I’m in. I can use the money. Rebekkah slashed my hours.” With the phone tucked under my ear, I rinsed out Gracie’s dish, scalded the sink and cleaned my countertops. Anya had showered and gone to bed. I was alone in my kitchen, and free to talk to my BFF candidly.

  “That’s ‘cause you honk Rebekkah off.” A slurp told me Mert was drinking a Bud Light, one of her favorite after work treats.

  “The feeling is mutual. I used to really, really like that kid, but a little bit of power has gone to her head. When I do go in, she dumps all the grunt work on me. The stuff she doesn’t like to do.”

  Mert chuckled. “What is it that she likes doing?”

  “As soon as I figure that out, I’ll let you know.”

  “You do realize this will be an ugly job. But you’ll get extra pay.” There was a clanking sound as the phone bumped up against the many earrings Mert wore.

  “Because it’s ugly?”

  “No, because we have to wear biohazard suits.”

  “You are kidding!”

  “Nope. With all that cat ca-ca spread all around, we might pick up something nasty. Don’t want us breathing that stuff, neither. You know how much it’s going to cost ‘em to get that house cleaned out?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Forty grand.”

  “Wha-what?”

  “Yes, ma’am. This is the second time they’ve had to take the place down to the bare nubbins. You shoulda heard her daughter yelling about it.”

  “Why not just bulldoze the house?”

  “Because Marla Lever owns it, not her kids. If it were up to them, that’d be Ladue’s newest teardown.”

  “But they have neighborhood ordinances, don’t they? Most neighborhoods do.”

  “Yep, but they’d have a go ‘round with Marla, she’d get stuff up to snuff, and then let it slide again. At least that’s what the daughter said.”

  “Who’s paying for the clean-up?”

  “Marla took a second mortgage out on her house a while back.

  Her daughter has signing privileges. Get this, Marla’s got a quarter of a million bucks in the bank. Her kid said Marla used to have more, through an inheritance, but most of the dough has gone to lawyers. I guess old Marla keeps fighting to keep her animals.”

  “What’s her daughter like?”

  “I wouldn’t cross a street to say hi to Allison Lever Timmons. She ain’t the nicest person I’ve ever met. She thinks her you-know-what don’t stink, probably because she’s got a hot-shot job in an investment firm. I think she’s an executive secretary. Maybe she was born with her nose stuck up in the air.” Mert chuckled. “But, hey, she’s under a lot of stress. Her mama keeps collecting animals and junk. Ali keeps getting dragged into it. She’s the one authorities call and complain to, ‘cause her momma won’t listen. The time before this it was birds. Parrots, finches, crows, canaries, wild birds that shouldn’t have been kept in cages. They was flying all over and pooping wherever they wanted. Before that, old Marla collected fish. But they all died when the power went out. Stunk to high heavens. Can you imagine?”

  I had sympathy for Ali Lever Timmons. “I don’t want to imagine it. There’s nothing she can do?”

  “What? Commit her mother? For what? For hoarding? I don’t think that goose would fly.”

  I got off the phone feeling raw and unsettled. After brewing myself a cup of chamomile tea, I sank down on my sofa and reviewed what I knew about Marla. I cast my mind back to the day we’d met.

  15

  Six months prior…

  The big Valentine’s Day rush was over, and the shelves at Time in a Bottle needed restocking. I carried a basket full of new papers to put on our racks. Usually this was a task that fell to Bama Vess, Dodie’s other employee, but Bama and her sister had gone on a vacation. They’d rented a cabin in the Ozarks.

  I wished I had the money to do something similar.

  The door minder rang and in wandered a woman who immediately brought one word to mind: Gray. Her complexion was murky, and her face was closed under a cloud of frizzy gray hair. On her feet were worn and dirty tennis shoes. The hem of a dingy white blouse hung crookedly from under a plastic see-through rain coat. A thick but grubby fisherman sweater drooped on her, the sloppy size visible through the plastic. Over one arm she carried a tired purse that once had been the color of cement. Her pants had faded to a shade between black and old iron.

  “Welcome. May I help you find something?” I asked in my best yippee-skippee voice. Early on, I decided that I would treat every customer like visiting royalty. Living is hard and judging is easy.

  “Looking,” she said, dropping the word “just.”

  “Enjoy. There’s so much to see. Our customers’ projects are on the clothesline strung around the top of the walls. We also have displays on top of the shelving units.”

  She nodded and followed my pointer finger upwards. With her head tilted back, Marla stared
at the page displays that ran the perimeter of our store. As her eyes made progress, she did a slow shuffle, moving in a circle. “Those are really something!”

  “Don’t forget to check out the top of the display shelves.”

  Marla shifted her gaze so she could take in the pages I’d created and mounted on foam core board. When she got to the display for a new class called “My Life Highlights,” she moved closer for a better view. “My, my,” she said. “Pets! Animals! I thought scrapbookers only took photos of their families.”

  “Aren’t your pets part of your family?”

  “Family,” said Marla. “My babies.”

  “That’s how I feel about my pets, too. I love all sorts of animals.” With that I reached under my work table to withdraw a small album labeled “Critters.” Inside were pictures of the box turtles that had once been such frequent travelers on our roads, but were now scarce. I also had a photo of a blue-lined skink who had lived in our woodpile in Ladue, a pair of squirrels who raced up and down our maple tree, a bullfrog that Anya caught in a local pond (and released!), crawdads that her pre-school class caught, a turtle sunning itself on a branch sticking out of the pond at St. Albans, and one of my favorites, a family of skunks.

  “As you can see, I’m really into animals. So is my daughter. See the skunks? My daughter and I were on Wildhorse Creek Road, near St. Albans, when they crawled out from under a drain pipe. I stopped the car to let that mama and her babies cross the street. My daughter went nuts. She wanted to take them home. If I hadn’t hit the door lock button, she’d have gone after them, for sure.”

  “Cats?” Marla asked. “I’d like pictures of my cats. In an album.”