Murder Ink

by Betty Hechtman

  It was lucky that I’d left a sticky note on my front door to remind myself to make sure the cat had food and water because I was so preoccupied by the time I left, I would have forgotten otherwise.

  I was already thinking ahead to my stop at the management company that handled our building, to see if I could connect with the Penny person Sara had talked about. They were only open for a half a day on Saturdays and I’d stop on my way to the train. I concocted a story that I hoped would get her to disclose the identity of whomever she’d shown it to.

  The receptionist was on the phone when I came in. She gestured with her finger that she’d be off in a moment. I tried to see inside the place, but there was a partition blocking off my view of the desks. When she finally hung up, I told her I was looking for someone named Penny.

  ‘Sorry, she’s not here. Can I help you with something?’ she said. This was not what I’d hoped for, but I was determined to make the best of it. I had to come up with a new story on the spot. One thing I’d learned when I’d written my mystery was that detectives didn’t have to tell the truth.

  ‘She showed a perspective buyer my condo on Thursday, and they left something at my place. I wanted to get it back to them,’ I said. The receptionist seemed disinterested and suggested I leave a note for Penny. I realized I had to make it seem urgent. ‘It was a bottle of medication. They probably didn’t realize where they dropped it. I only found it this morning, but what if it’s something life or death?’ I said. ‘I’ve tried calling Penny’s cell and texted her with no response, so I’m just trying to cover every base. Maybe she has an appointment schedule in her desk,’ I offered.

  The woman hesitated, but I could tell that she was weighing what I’d said. Finally, she got up from the reception counter and I stuck close to her as she went back into the office. All the desks were empty. ‘This is hers,’ she said, pointing at one near the wall. The top was clear and there were a few pieces of paper in the inbox. The receptionist seemed uneasy, but opened the top drawer and riffled through it. ‘I don’t see anything.’

  I sensed she was giving up and was going to show me the door. I’d made my detective Derek Streeter persistent and I was going to be the same. ‘Do you have some kind of master list of appointments?’ I asked.

  ‘I didn’t think of that, but you’re right.’ She was hesitating again. ‘I’m not really supposed to do this, but since it sounds like it could be an emergency.’ We went back to the front and she turned on her computer screen and started scrolling through something. ‘You said Thursday and where?’ she asked, and I nodded before giving the address. ‘Here it is.’ She read off the time and the location.

  ‘What’s the name?’ I asked quickly.

  ‘F. Poppins,’ she said, looking again. ‘And there’s a phone number. I can’t give you the number, you know, security. But I’ll call them for you.’ I was disappointed that the name meant nothing to me, but let her make the call. A moment later, I heard her ask for F. Poppins. There was a pause before she hung up and turned to me. ‘It was a hotel and they didn’t have anyone by that name registered. They were probably in town looking for a place and left.’

  I didn’t know what to think. What the receptionist said could be true, or it could be a fake name and a fake number. I really wished I could talk to Penny and get a description of the person. As it was, I didn’t even know if it was a man or woman.

  There was no choice but to give up for now. I thanked her and left, hurrying for the train station.

  I ended up on a local train that took forever to get downtown and I rushed the few blocks to Dance with Me. I just had time to leave my things and change my shoes before the hip-hop class started. The teacher introduced herself as Lola and said she was a substitute. She did the usual pitch that the class was meant to be fun. Like all the other classes, it started with a warm-up and then moved on to the dance moves. I did my best to follow along. We did some upward arm moves. There were more arm moves that I thought of as the hip-hop hula. We added feet with a running move and then squatting and rolling our hips around. Lola kept saying it was all about putting attitude into your moves.

  ‘What did you think of the class?’ Darcy asked, as I went past the reception counter. She was busy putting away a new shipment of ballet slippers.

  ‘I’m trying to think how to describe it,’ I said. ‘Maybe get your groove with attitude.’ I pulled out my notebook and was ready to write something down.

  ‘You look a little stressed? Is everything all right?’ Darcy asked.

  ‘Oh, no, does it show?’ I said feeling self-conscious. She seemed genuinely concerned and I considered telling her about my week, but she was also a client. I never wanted to give the impression that I was overburdened. I mentally went over the stress causers in my life. Let’s see … I’d adopted an adult cat – the first pet of my life; my relationship with one of my students had changed and was confusing; somebody might be trying to make me think I was losing my mind; I had a deadline to finish Rachel’s memory book with an impossible person to please; I had to create the publicity material for the dance gym from the notes I’d taken; and I had to see what was next with Evan. I parred it down and just told her about Rocky and making sure to reassure her that I was on top of the publicity project for the gym.

  ‘I should have it all for you next week. I’m still working on the bio for Debbie. We never seem to have time to talk. She’s a busy lady, always on her way out of the door. I need more about her background and her philosophy.’

  ‘I’ll tell her you want to talk to her on Monday and make sure she doesn’t leave,’ Darcy said. ‘Enjoy your weekend.’

  ‘You too,’ I said as I made my way out the door.

  Evan hadn’t called me to let me know if my invitation in verse had worked. I didn’t want to call him in case the news was bad, but I was also really curious. I knew what time Evan had booked the tour, so decided to do a little spying.

  The storm had left the air cool and fresh. The sky was an electric blue and contrasted nicely with the golden and red leaves on the trees that lined the wide street. I walked quickly and stopped when I got to the middle of the Michigan Avenue Bridge. Down below a crowd was waiting to board the architectural cruise. I looked through the people with my fingers crossed that I’d see Sally and Evan. The cruises only ran for a couple more weeks before it got too cold. I shivered thinking of how the river iced over during the winter.

  I didn’t realize I’d been holding my breath until I finally picked them out of the crowd, and I let it out in a gush of relief. Evan grabbed her hand and led her to the entrance. I couldn’t see her expression to tell if she liked the contact, but he looked super happy and cute with his floppy hair. I knew I’d hear from him afterwards. What would he want me to do next?

  I continued over the bridge to the Bellingham Hotel. I’d brought the piece I’d written for Richard Parker and was going to use it as an excuse for seeing Luke. I’d ask his opinion and by the way mention the money I’d heard he stood to inherit. I was curious what he’d say. When I got to the bar, someone else was working it. ‘Where’s Luke?’ I asked the dark-haired man.

  ‘Everybody loves Luke,’ he said with a smile. ‘Nobody comes in when he’s working and asks for me. The name’s Jax,’ he said offering his hand. ‘Are you a friend or one of his many regulars?’

  ‘Neither exactly. I’m Veronica Blackstone and I’ve been working on a celebration of life book for his wife.’ I shrugged. ‘But I’ve gotten to know him, so I suppose that makes me a friend.’ He offered me a seat at the bar. ‘I was hoping to show him something I’d gotten for the book.’

  ‘What can I get for you?’ he asked. The walk had left me thirsty and I asked for a sparkling water with a twist of lime. He gave me the drink and I went to check the messages on my phone. I laughed when I saw that Evan had sent me a selfie of him and Sally. The wind was blowing her hair into her face making it hard to tell if she was smiling or grimacing. Evan appeared thrilled.

>   I looked over the clientele. There were a few single men, drinking and looking at their cell phones. A woman sat alone at the end of the bar with an almost empty wine glass. She had the melted look of someone who’d drunk too much. The bartender stopped in front of her and swiped her phone off the counter as he did. He moved down the bar and I saw him doing something with it.

  He saw me watching him and as soon as he laid the phone back down came over to me. ‘I wasn’t doing anything nefarious. We have an understanding that we’ll use a patron’s phone to arrange a ride for them when they’d had too much to drink.’

  A few minutes later, the woman’s phone began to vibrate, and the bartender grabbed it and pointed something out to the woman. She gave him a boozy smile as he helped her to the elevator. ‘She even said thank you,’ Jax said to me on his way back, showing off a twenty-dollar bill.

  ‘I don’t suppose you have a nice story about Luke’s wife I could put in the book I’m doing,’ I said.

  ‘Only that the poor guy seemed devastated when she died. Of course, he kept it all under wraps here. He looks at his job as far more than making drinks. That’s why he’s the manager and so well liked. He always looks after all our patrons.’

  And one of them had become his wife. It made me wonder about his relationships with the others.

  ‘And you fill in when he has time off,’ I said, thinking back to when I’d stopped at the bar in the middle of the day. I knew that whoever had been next door to my place had been there in the late afternoon. ‘What about last Thursday? Did you take over for Luke?’

  He shook his head. ‘As far as I know he was here all day.’

  I made myself a late lunch when I got home and thought over my day so far. I’d completed one more dance class, Evan had gone on his date, and I was wondering about Luke. Was he really as he appeared to be? When I’d worked on their vows, he’d seemed easygoing. He wasn’t controlling or demanding. He’d seemed supportive of Rachel’s wishes. I’d gotten to know him more in the last couple of weeks and all I could say about him was that he’d been nice. The bartender’s explanation of why Luke hadn’t appeared so devastated made sense. He hid it behind the front he kept up for the public. You could say that Luke was perfect. But I was always suspicious of perfection.

  I went into my office ready to get down to work. Between the storm and my nerves, I’d basically wasted the time the night before.

  The deadline for the celebration of life book was looming and I had to get it together to give to Camille Parker in just two days. She’d turned into the worst kind of client. She was probably impossible to please and she seemed to take pleasure in making me feel lesser than. Even so, I wanted to do the best I could for Rachel’s memory.

  I checked my email, hoping there would be something back from the teachers. There was a note from the pet shop asking me to come in and meet a terrier named Reginald who was another hard-to-adopt. No details on why, but I was already getting worried for the dog’s future. I looked at Rocky and wondered if he’d end up with a dog roommate. Under that, there was an email from one of the teachers, who had sent some more photographs of Rachel and her students. I decided to expand the section about her teaching and to make it more emotional. I added onto the stories about Rachel’s generosity and wrote that Rachel could have taught anywhere, but she’d chosen a school where she could make a difference. I illustrated it with the photographs I’d just gotten of Rachel standing with the kids all hugging her.

  There was also an email from Luke with the photo of Rachel in the cheesehead hat. The picture was silly and made me smile. I wrote up the story Luke had told me about their trip to Wisconsin and included the picture. I looked over everything and when I got to the end of the copy, I made up my own quote and put it in. Never gone when you leave love behind. I played around with it until I got it in a font I liked and added some clip art of a heart and some flowers.

  I sat back and looked at the screen. I’d worked non-stop with no sense of time. Now I would let it sit overnight and give it a last polish on Sunday.

  I felt on a roll, so I moved on to write up what I had for Dance with Me. My notebook had plenty beyond just the descriptions of the classes. I had their mission statement and the fact they were a single place rather than a chain. There were scribbled down sentences that I hoped captured the personality of the place. For now, I set all of that aside, determined to work on the piece about Debbie Alcoa, so I could see what was missing and get it from her on Monday. I wrote up a draft and saw the holes in the piece. Grabbing my notebook, I wrote down that I needed to know when she started dancing and where she’d studied and something about her philosophy of dance and exercise. It was then that I saw that I left myself a note to ask her about Rachel, hoping she’d have something I could use. But now I realized it would be too late.

  I was about to start on a description of the hip-hop class since it was fresh in my mind when I got a call from Ed. He was so excited he could barely talk. He’d sent in one of his fictional dating show stories to a website devoted to a fictional dating program called Finding the Right Mate. They’d posted his piece and it had gotten a lot of likes. Now they’d asked for more. He had something ready, but wanted me to give it another look before he submitted it. I agreed to let him come by later, hoping he didn’t expect me to read his work out loud.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  I looked around as I hung up the phone from the call with Ed and was surprised to see that it had gotten dark. I’d completely lost the sense of time when I’d been working. It was commonly referred to as being in the flow and was a writer’s dream.

  My cell phone pinged announcing a text. Sara had some leftovers from dinner and was offering them to me. I gratefully accepted since I’d suddenly noticed I was hungry. I’d barely hit send and there was a knock at the door. I opened it expecting to see my neighbor, but instead it was Ben.

  ‘Oh,’ I said surprised as I reached for the plate, hoping to thank him and then shut the door.

  ‘I have orders to watch you eat it,’ he said. ‘She wants to know what you think of the dish, or so that’s what she said.’ There would be no peace from Sara unless I let him follow her orders.

  ‘C’mon in,’ I said stepping aside so he could enter. He had the blank expression again and I wondered if he’d gone back to his old self.

  ‘This was another makeup dinner from the missed one on Tuesday. As soon as she heard I had the day off, she said Mikey was asking for me.’ He looked at the plate I was holding. ‘It’s really good. Pasta with vegetables. Ours had meatballs mixed in.’ He stopped and smiled. ‘Fine detective I’d make. It wasn’t until now that I realized she’d planned these “leftovers.” She had to set aside some of the pasta and vegetables before she added the meatballs.’ There was some light in his eyes and intonation in his voice now and he was back to being the new and improved Ben.

  ‘Very crafty of Sara,’ I said, smiling too. ‘But I’m glad she did. It’s better than whatever I could come up with from my refrigerator. It’s pretty bare.’

  ‘I think that’s my fault,’ he said with a guilty look, referring to the dinner I’d given him the night before.

  ‘That’s OK and, even if it was, you made up for it with this.’ I held up the plate before glancing around the living room. ‘I guess I could eat it in here, so you’ll be freed of your duty quickly.’ I grinned to make sure he understood I was joking and offered him a drink.

  ‘Don’t go to any trouble,’ he said.

  ‘I have coffee, tea or more sparkling water.’ He seemed disappointed and probably thought I meant beer or something alcoholic. ‘I have wine,’ I said quickly, remembering the bottle I kept for cooking. ‘All I can tell you about it though is that it’s red and adds a nice taste to my vegetable stew.’

  ‘Sounds good to me,’ he said. I went back to the kitchen and got him a glass of the wine and myself one of sparkling water.

  When we were finally seated, Rocky came in. He walked to the balcony door an
d looked at it with interest.

  ‘What’s that about?’ Ben asked, watching the cat. I’d been so focused on getting to my work, I’d forgotten all about the storm the night before and how the door had blown open and I’d realized how somebody could have come in. It was embarrassing and I wondered if I really wanted to tell Ben about it. Now that I’d taken care of the problem, it wouldn’t happen again anyway. But I also felt I owed him since he’d tried to help me figure out how someone could have come into my place.

  ‘The door blew open last night during the storm and he probably got a whole feast of outdoor smells and wants them again.’ I gathered up some of the pasta on my fork. ‘And in the process, I realized that’s how someone could have come in.’ Ben got up and walked to the door, looking out through the glass portion.

  ‘I must have left the door unlocked. I never really thought much about it since this is the third floor and unless somebody scaled the wall of the building or managed to climb the tree out front without breaking the branches and falling out of it, there’s no way to the balcony.’

  ‘Except from the apartment next door,’ Ben said.

  ‘I knew the people who lived there before and well, it’s been empty for a while now. And I didn’t think that anybody would ever try to get in.’

  ‘You should talk to the real estate person – the one who Sara saw in the hall.’

  ‘I already have,’ I said. I was still holding the forkful of pasta and finally took a bite. It was delicious.

  ‘And?’ he said. ‘You’re not going to leave it at that.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to stop mid-story, but the pasta smelled so good and it was sitting on my fork.’ I put the fork down while I told him about my trip to the management office. ‘There’s nothing to prove that F. Poppins wasn’t a real potential buyer looking at the place across the hall. I’m back to thinking I did just imagine the pictures.’ Before he could comment the doorbell rang. There was nothing bell-like about it. It had more of a buzzing sound. Whoever had arranged for the doorbells must have picked out the most irritating choice. The only good point was that it was impossible to miss.