by Edie Claire
She reached the mangled mess of paper, grabbed it by a corner with two fingers, and headed for the trash can. Half a dozen steps later, she stopped in her tracks. Warren’s newspaper fell from her other hand. She stared.
The object she held was burned. Two-thirds of it was charred beyond recognition, and the rest was soggy with frozen dew. But Leigh could still tell what it was. The spiral binding was largely intact, and the cardboard cover wasn’t so burned that you couldn’t tell it was purple. The whole upper left corner still had white pages showing, and some of them even had scraps of writing on them. Familiar writing.
It was Allison’s notebook.
Leigh’s hands trembled. A large part of her wanted to drop the horror and simply start running. But she knew she had to think straight. Evidence. It’s evidence. Be careful with it. She turned from the path to her trash bins and hurried back to the front door. Still holding the notebook with two fingers, she carried it inside and laid it on the table. Then she backed away from it, collapsed into a chair, and pulled a squiggling Chewie into her lap.
Allie’s a material witness to a suspicious death, Maura’s words tormented. They could see her as a threat.
Chewie snuffled out his grumpy sound, and Leigh realized she was holding him too tight. She relaxed her arms and let him down as a molten heat swelled in her chest. She stood again, scooped up the placemat on which she had dropped the remains of the notebook, and carried the whole mess to her bedroom. She hid it in a drawer, then walked back out and reclaimed her coffee cup.
“Nobody messes with my kids,” she announced to the room with a growl, her face flaming. She downed the rest of her coffee, grabbed her keys, tossed Chewie an extra treat, and fired up her car.
Nobody.
***
“Where are you calling from, Koslow?” Maura’s voice sounded from Leigh’s cell phone. The detective sounded unnaturally calm. That was weird.
Leigh looked around. “The street outside my parents’ house.”
A beat passed. “Why are you there?”
Leigh thought about the question. “I don’t know.”
Maura heaved out a breath. “Listen, Leigh. I know you’re freaked out right now. And you have every right to be. But I’m not sure this is a good time for you to be randomly driving around Pittsburgh.”
“It’s not random,” Leigh defended. “I went to the school to make sure Allison was all right. Then I called and left the message for you. Then I called Warren and hung up before he could answer. Then I drove to the vet clinic because I always drive to the vet clinic. Then I remembered my dad doesn’t go to work till noon on Mondays. Then you called back and the next thing I knew, I was here.” She paused. “Okay, so maybe the last part was random.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t be driving anywhere right now.”
“What else am I supposed to do?”
Leigh’s nerves were on a hair trigger. She was antsy. She needed to move, to do something. There was no longer any question that Allison’s notebook had been taken deliberately from its hiding place in Frances’s secretary. Someone had seen Allison writing in it, become worried about what it might contain, snatched it, and removed it from the house. All that was bad enough. But taking that same notebook, burning it to the point of mutilation while leaving just enough intact to keep it recognizable, then tossing it where Leigh’s family was sure to find it marked a whole new level of malice. Whoever did this was sending a message. A message to Allison, and to Leigh, and to anyone else who thought that what happened to Lucille might possibly be their business in any way, shape, or form.
Keep your mouth shut.
“I already told you,” Maura said, again with the preternatural voice of calm. “You’ve reported what you found. Now you let me handle it. You don’t need to do anything except what we already talked about. Keep Allie away from the Floribundas. All of them. She shouldn’t even visit your parents’ house, at least not right now. Go about your regular lives and keep Allie busy elsewhere. Act as if you’ve washed your hands of the whole business and have no interest in it. And if anything else troubling happens, call. Got it?”
Leigh’s feet drummed on the floorboard of her car. “Yeah.”
“Maybe you should go in and hang out with your dad for a while.”
Leigh smirked. “How about my mom?”
Maura paused. “Spending time with your dad would be better.”
Leigh almost laughed. She’d always known that Detective Maura Polanski possessed a professional “talk-you-off-the-ledge” demeanor for use on the job, but experiencing it personally was too bizarre. Leigh much preferred being sworn at.
“I need to burn off some energy,” Leigh replied. “Call me if… Well, just call me.”
“You know I will,” Maura soothed. “And you keep in touch, too. I mean that, Koslow.”
Leigh frowned to herself as Maura rang off with no signs of rancor. Being treated with such kid gloves could only mean the detective thought Leigh was on shaky emotional ground.
Well. If the shoe fits.
Leigh hopped out of her car. She really did need to burn off energy. She took in a lungful of the winter air, then set off running around the block. Since she was not, and never had been, someone who ran for exercise, the challenge was significant. The sidewalk was cracked and buckled by tree roots, she was out of breath before the first stop sign, and — most maddening of all — her body jiggled in all sorts of places it didn’t used to jiggle. But she was antsy. And she was furious. And she ran all the way around the block and back to her parents’ house despite the fact that by the finish line her ribcage was screaming with pain and she was gasping for air.
She sat down on the steps by her parents’ back door and rested there until she caught her breath. Her body was exhausted, and she was no longer antsy. She was still furious, but her anger was no longer hot. She found that it was settling down to a more controlled, calculated simmer.
Excellent.
Leigh rose, then simultaneously knocked and turned the doorknob. “Dad?” she said. “It’s me.”
Randall Koslow would keep her head level. He always did, which is why in times of crisis her subconscious always led her to the vet clinic. But he should be home now, most likely sitting at the kitchen table enjoying the Post-Gazette with his morning coffee.
Leigh looked around the small kitchen. It was empty. But the rest of the house clearly was not. Multiple voices drifted in from the living room, loud and getting louder.
“Well, I don’t trust her. She’s still a newcomer!”
“What do we really know about her anyway?”
“Hear! Hear!”
Leigh froze in place. She’d know those scratchy, cranky, screechy voices anywhere. It was the Floribundas.
She crept silently to the doorway and paused again, listening. Her mother was talking now.
“Oh, fiddlesticks! There’s no need to be turning on Olympia. She may be new to the chapter, but she’s done nothing to make us doubt her loyalty to the cause. I think we should tell her. She’s bound to find out anyway.”
“Find out what, Frances?” Anna Marie’s lofty voice purred sardonically. “I don’t believe we’ve said what we’re talking about. Have we?”
Jennie Ruth belched.
“Oh, let’s stop pussyfooting,” Virginia ordered. “We all know what we’re talking about. We’re just afraid to talk about it.”
“Speak for yourself, dear,” Delores piped up in her usual saccharine tone. “I believe that honesty purifies the soul. Why, even those with the darkest stains on their characters can benefit!”
“You!” Virginia bit back. “You wouldn’t know honesty if it bit you on the bum. Paying cash under the table for—”
“Well, hello there,” Randall greeted, making Leigh jump a foot. Her father had just emerged from the steps to the basement. He shut the door behind him with a clunk and smiled at her. The voices in the living room went quiet.
“Hi, Dad,” Leigh returned. She
was happy to see him, even if his timing was terrible. But it was clear that he would not be staying. He was wearing his coat and his car keys were in his hand. “Where are you off to?”
“Emergency surgery,” he replied. “That old collie the Mackeys have always refused to spay has finally come down with a pyo, and it sounds like she can’t wait.” He threw a nod toward the living room and lowered his voice. “Glad you came by. Your mother could use some time alone with you.”
Translation: I don’t suppose you can get these whackadoodles out of my house before they drive my wife even more insane, please?
Leigh sent the appropriate unspoken message back.
I can try, but I’m no miracle worker.
Randall smiled at her as he walked out. “Thanks, Leigh.”
No sooner did the back door close behind him than Frances’s most annoying sing-song voice called to her from the living room. “Leigh, dear? Is that you? Would you like to come join us?”
No. No, I would not.
A vision floated through Leigh’s head of her now twelve-year-old daughter, sitting behind a metal and plastic desk at her middle school, writing an essay on pony care or looking forward to getting a candy-cane gram from a secret admirer. Allison had no idea that at some point during the night, some deranged nutcase — quite possibly one of the deranged nutcases sitting in her grandmother’s living room right now — had flung her scorched notebook out the window of a car in a cowardly attempt to intimidate the Harmon family into silence.
But Leigh knew it. And the more she thought about it, the angrier she got.
She stepped out into the living room. She made eye contact in turn with her mother, Virginia, Anna Marie, Delores, and Jennie Ruth. Then she sat down, crossed her legs, and smiled.
“Yes,” she answered her mother smoothly. “Yes, I would like to join you.”
Chapter 18
Back when Leigh’s favorite soap operas were still on TV, she had an ongoing fantasy of being teleported into the middle of a tense romantic scene. She would be magically integrated into the cast so that the couple in question already knew her and were not surprised by her presence. Once there, she could fix everything. She would tell the guy straight out that the paternity test had been tampered with, and that the baby was his, not his brother’s. And she would tell the woman that the guy never did have an affair with her supposed best friend — that it was all a plot dreamed up by her evil mother-in-law. Leigh could cut off two months’ worth of plot angst at the knees and push those characters straight into their Happily Ever After.
It would be so gratifying.
Right now, sitting in her mother’s living room in the midst of five-sevenths of the remaining Floribundas, she felt a giddy surge of power. An evil, giddy surge of power.
“So,” she asked innocently. “What are you ladies up to today?”
The Floribundas exchanged some incredibly obvious guilty looks.
“They’re helping me to pack up the decorations, of course,” Frances answered, gesturing to the boxes and piles around them, which Leigh honestly hadn’t noticed. “Yesterday we all agreed to rest up, although of course I did give the house a thorough cleaning. But today all the borrowed decorations have to come down so that we can return them to the Flying Maples as soon as possible.”
“They were the ones who called 911 about the anthrax,” Virginia said matter-of-factly.
“We know nothing of the kind,” Frances argued. “That could have been anyone.”
“It could have been. But it wasn’t. It was them.” Virginia insisted.
“Oh, will you stop with that?” Anna Marie snapped. She had stepped down to ordinary mascara this morning as opposed to false eyelashes, but her foundation was still so heavy it cracked at every wrinkle, and she wore the same ancient, flip-style wig. “If the Flying Maples really wanted the tour to be a failure, why would they loan us all these lovely decorations in the first place? If you ask me, those women saved our skin!”
Virginia, Delores, and Jennie Ruth all gasped in affronted horror.
“I daresay we could have managed,” Delores proposed primly. “The house was received wonderfully well. Everyone has said so! There were only a handful of people still here when Lucille passed, and they have no idea how close they came to being poisoned themselves.”
Frances dropped the macramé reindeer she was holding. Its bells tinkled as it slid off her lap and onto the floor. Frances hastily scooped it back up again, acting as if nothing had happened, but her face was visibly paler.
Leigh’s own cheeks grew hot. “When I came in earlier,” she said conversationally, picking up a piece of bubble wrap and enfolding a tacky gold candle trimmed with fake snow and plastic holly, “it sounded like you were trying to decide whether or not to tell Olympia that Lucille wanted to defraud her insurance company.”
She kept her eyes up, even as she wrapped the candle. Noting the women’s reactions was important.
Jennie Ruth’s response was as expected, which meant the usual: her eyes were blank and her mouth hung open. From the rest of them Leigh expected various degrees of panic. And from one of them — she dared to hope — a flash of guilt.
She should have known better. The Floribundas never made anything easy.
Virginia’s horse face practically shone with ghoulish delight. Leigh could see the same thrill in Delores’s china-doll visage, but at least Delores attempted to hide it. And although Anna Marie’s face didn’t change much — perhaps due to excessive Botox treatments — her blue eyes sparkled with obvious interest.
Leigh saw no guilt anywhere.
“Oh, my,” Virginia said with a rather girlish giggle. “Are we being frank, then? My word, Frances, I didn’t know you had such loose lips!”
“Said the pot to the kettle!” Frances retorted. She threw her daughter one of her most severe disapproving looks, but it had the opposite effect than intended. Leigh was only too happy to see her mother get her mojo back.
“Well, does Olympia already know too, then?” Anna Marie asked, sounding annoyed. “Perhaps we’re wasting our time with all this pussyfooting.”
“No,” Frances replied confidently. “Olympia has no idea of Lucille’s… plans. I’m sure of that. But as I said before, she’d bound to find out soon. It’s going to wind up being part of the investigation.”
“Not necessarily,” Anna Marie hypothesized. There were decorations all around her, but she wasn’t doing a thing. Sitting in the wing chair in her flaxen wig, shiny gold-threaded woolen sweater, and bright red slacks, she looked like a blond Cleopatra again. “There wouldn’t be an investigation at all if Little Bobby wasn’t such a blooming idiot.”
Murmurs and tut-tuts of agreement sounded from all around.
“I mean honestly,” Anna Marie went on, “it’s not that what Lucille suggested wasn’t tempting, you have to admit. Lord knows Eugene and I could always use a little extra. But even if you weren’t worried about sending your soul straight to hell, there’s still the likes of Bobby to deal with. I wouldn’t trust that imbecile to strangle a chicken!”
“Mortal sin!” Jennie Ruth bellowed.
Evidently, Leigh was not the only one who was surprised to hear her speak, because the other women all turned and looked at her for a moment. Nonplussed, Jennie Ruth immediately shrank back in her chair.
“Well, I’m Presbyterian myself,” Virginia contributed, wrapping up a plastic snowman lamp, “but you do have to ask yourself, how wrong is it if the party in question wants to go?”
“One might consider it a kindness!” Delores chimed in, folding her hands angelically beneath her chin. “A service to help a dear friend’s last wish come true, to provide for the financial security of her beloved child. And yet, if you did help her, the law would have every right to throw you in a cell with an ax murderer and take away your underwear.”
The women all blanched.
Virginia cleared her throat. “Yes, well. Be that as it may, I still don’t think it’s suc
h a horrible crime. Not that I want any part of it, mind you,” she clarified, looking at Leigh. “I’m just saying nobody loses, really.”
“The insurance company loses,” Frances pointed out. “A swindle is a swindle, Virginia.”
Virginia scoffed. “Insurance companies make plenty of money. You’re not getting me to feel sorry for them. Why, they’ll cover Harry’s little blue pills without a peep, but when I want to try the latest female enhancement—”
“Camptown ladies sing this song, doo-da, doo-da!” Delores sang loudly, putting her fingers in her ears. She shot a look at Jennie Ruth, and the other woman immediately smashed her palms over her own ears.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Frances said peevishly. “Do hush up about that, Virginia. We’ve all heard it before. This is a serious matter!”
Virginia hushed up, and Delores stopped singing. Cautiously both Delores and Jennie Ruth uncovered their ears.
Virginia quit was she was doing and studied at each of their faces in turn. “Indeed it is,” she said in a whisper, her gray eyes twinkling mischievously. “Come on, ladies. ’Fess up. Somebody here helped Bobby. Who was it?”
Leigh held her breath. She watched the other women’s faces carefully, but much to her annoyance, now they all looked guilty.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake, Virginia,” Anna Marie said with a laugh. “If one of us did do something illegal, we’re certainly not going to admit it now! Why would we?”
“But I want to know!” Virginia replied, whining like a child. “I can’t stand it! Shouldn’t we stick together?”
“There is no together!” Frances said hotly. “Not in this!”
“Perhaps it was Sue,” Delores suggested pleasantly. “She’s always had a strong stomach.”