A Candidate For Murder (Old Maids of Mercer Island Mysteries Book 2) (7 page)

I never thought I’d actually be picking up Dana Finkle’s trash. For that matter, I never thought I’d be picking up anyone’s trash. But we met back at the Inn just before midnight to do just that. It was bitterly cold and had started to rain again. I had dressed in jeans, long johns, an undershirt and sweater and wore tennis shoes in case we had to run. I was probably overthinking this since our plan was just to drive up to the curb, empty the cans into the back of the Inn’s van and take off. But you never know what life will throw at you.

Dana’s husband owned a collection agency, and they lived in an expensive neighborhood overlooking Bellevue on the other side of the island. We parked a couple of houses down on the same side of the street. I was driving. Doe sat in the seat next to me holding a pair of binoculars, and Rudy and Blair were in the back seat.

“So how was it when David returned your computers this afternoon?” Doe asked hopefully. “Any plans for a second date?”

“He had someone else bring them back,” I replied with a distinct edge to my voice.

“I’m sorry, Julia,” Doe said, glancing my way. “He could just be busy on the case.”

“Did you call Dana?” Rudy asked.

“Yes. She said Christine Newall had called at the last minute and asked her to come over to discuss the campaign. So, she asked Trudy to go with her.”

“Who else knew she’d be gone?” Doe asked.

“Apparently no one. Clay wasn’t home, and she didn’t talk to anyone else.”

“And the storm was so bad, I doubt neighbors would have even seen her leave,” Rudy speculated. “I mean if you look around here, most of the homes are angled away from hers,” she said, glancing around.

“There’s still one light on upstairs and one downstairs,” Doe said, bringing our attention back to the task at hand. She was peering through the front window with the binoculars. “I wonder if that’s just for security, or if someone’s still awake.”

“That upstairs light is probably the bedroom,” I said.

A minute later, the front door opened. Dana appeared carrying something in each hand.

“Wait! There she is,” Doe said.

“What’s she doing?” Blair whispered, leaning forward.

Rudy scowled at her. “We don’t need to whisper, Blair. She can’t hear us this far up the street.”

“But what if she sees us?” Blair asked.

“She won’t see us, either,” Rudy hissed. “We’re too far away, and the interior of the van is dark.”

“Shhh! Let’s see what she does,” I said.

“She’s carrying something,” Doe said, watching her through the binoculars. “It looks like two trash bags.”

We watched Dana as she scuttled down her front walkway to the curb with a hood pulled up over her head. She glanced up and down the street in a jerky fashion and then dumped what she was carrying in one hand next to the Waste Disposal Company trash can. She looked up and down the street again and then opened the recycling bin and dropped the other bag inside. Then she turned and ran back up the walkway and into the house. The front door closed and a moment later, the downstairs light went out. Half a minute later, a different light went on upstairs.

“That was weird,” Blair said.

“Everything
about
Dana Finkle is weird,” I said.

We waited another five minutes, listening to the rain drum on the windshield. Finally, the upstairs light went out.

“Okay, let’s go!” Blair exclaimed.

“No, we have to wait,” I replied. “We need to give her some time to get to sleep.”

“And do what, exactly?” Blair complained.

Blair was leaning over my right shoulder, and I could smell the wine she’d had at dinner.

“Let’s just give her ten minutes,” I said. “Here, listen to some music.”

I switched on the radio, turning the sound down low.

“Oh great!” Blair snarled. “Can’t we at least have some country music?”

I happened to glance in the rear view mirror. “Wait! There’s a car coming.”

Quickly, I flipped off the radio and everyone froze. As the headlights approached, I noticed that the car was moving toward us very slowly and had a row of lights on the top.

“Get down! It’s a police car.”

Doe and I ducked down, while Rudy and Blair actually bumped heads in the back seat as they scrambled to get out of sight. Blair let out a yowl.

“Shhh,” Rudy said. “Now someone
could
hear you.”

We huddled in fear as the squad car passed by. A strong flashlight beam lit up our windows, flashing squiggly rain shadows across the interior. That made Blair squeal. Rudy shushed her again, and then the flash was gone.

Count to five.

I peeked over the steering wheel. The police car had passed and continued its slow progress down the street.

“Damn,” I said. “They’re patrolling the neighborhood. Probably because of Dana. I never thought of that.”

The squad car disappeared around a corner.

“We’ll have to be careful,” Doe said, sitting up. “Maybe we should just go now, before they come back.”

“What do you think, Rudy?” I asked, glancing back at her.

She was adjusting a heavy, padded vest she’d worn under her coat. “Can we do it quietly?” she asked, throwing a skeptical glance at Blair.

“I can be quiet,” Blair whined loudly.

“Shhh!” we all shushed her.

“I thought you said no one could hear us,” she said in exasperation.

“If we’re talking in regular voices,” Rudy chastised her. “Not yelling at the top of our lungs. Half the neighborhood could hear you.”

“Fine,” Blair said in a pout.

“Okay, how are we going to do this?” Doe said. “There’s a compost bin, a trash can, the recycling can, and the bag she just brought out.”

“No need to go through the compost bin,” I said with disgust.

“I agree,” Rudy said. “But everything else should come with us.”

“Even the garbage?” I asked. “That’s most likely just empty potato chip bags. She
likes
her potato chips.”

“But we don’t know that for sure,” Rudy retorted. “We can’t take a chance.”

I sighed. “Okay. So who gets what?”

Both Blair and Rudy were leaning forward, looking out the front window. The way everything lined up at the curb, the recycling bin was on the left. The small trash can sat in the middle next to the compost can, and Dana’s trash bag sat at the right end.

“It will take two of us to lift the recycling can to dump everything in the back. How about Doe and I do that?” Rudy said.

Doe nodded.

“I’ll get the trash bag,” Blair offered quickly.

That left the garbage can for me.

“Great! I’ll take the garbage can. But I swear, she better have everything tied up nicely into individual bags because I am NOT reaching in there and pulling out Dana Finkle’s snot rags by hand. Even
with
rubber gloves.”

Chuckles from everyone but me.

“All right,” Rudy began. “Pull up right next to the curb, Julia, but don’t turn off the engine. Then on the count of three, we all jump out. Blair, you get the back doors open. Then we all grab our stuff, toss it in, close the doors, and we’re gone.”

Sounded simple enough.

“Okay, on with the rubber gloves!” Rudy ordered.

We all donned the gloves. I started the engine and released the emergency brake. The van rolled forward. We were only two houses away and across an intersection, so it didn’t take long to arrive at our destination.

I did as Rudy instructed. I put on the emergency brake and left the engine running. On the count of three, we threw open the doors.

I jumped out and rounded the front of the van, coming up to the passenger door. My goal was to cut in front of the recycling bin and go for the garbage can in the middle.

Bad choice.

Doe had just come out her door with her hood up and we collided. I rebounded back against the van, slamming the passenger door shut and falling to my right. I got wedged between the curb and the van. Doe lurched forward, falling against the recycling bin and knocking it over, which in turn knocked over the small compost bin. Rudy was just coming out of the van’s sliding door as I fell. She tripped over me and flew forward, landing face down in some compost, taking the small garbage can with her.

Meanwhile, as the rain pelted us, Blair had come out the back of the van and just stood there with her hands on her hips. “Really?” she sniped. “And you were worried about
me
making too much noise. You guys are like the Keystone Cops.”

Rudy got up stiffly and flicked something off her sleeve. “Let’s get this done. I’m soaked.”

Doe rolled off the recycling bin with a groan and got up, while I picked myself up off the street, wiping grit and dirt off the palms of my hands.

I struggled up onto the curb and righted the trash can and flipped open the lid. The pungent odor of rotting tuna from empty cat food cans wafted over me, making me gag.

Dana had a cat. Who knew?

Doe and Rudy righted the recycling bin and rolled it down the walkway and off the curb to the back of the van. I reached into the garbage can and grabbed two full plastic bags and turned for the van, leaving the cat food cans behind.

As Doe and Rudy tipped the recycling bin and unloaded it, a light went on in the house.

“Hurry up,” Blair ordered.

I quickly tossed in the two big bags of garbage. Rudy and Doe finished emptying the contents of the recycling bin into the van. They dropped it back onto the pavement, while Blair daintily placed her one bag of trash on top of everything else and closed the doors.

And we were off.

I drove like a mad woman back to the Inn, and not just because the interior was quickly filling up with the gagging smell of rotting food. I imagined a boogey woman named Dana following us like a banshee.

I parked the van in the garage. Rudy’s sleeve had filled the van with the aroma of beef and onions, so that by the time we got the doors open, we were all coughing and hacking.

“God,” she said, climbing out of the van. “I’m throwing this coat away.”

“Sorry, Rudy,” I said, apologizing for the accident. “Let’s leave everything until tomorrow.”

“Copy that,” Rudy said. “I think my arm’s starting to putrefy anyway.”

Rudy grabbed her purse and hurried out of the garage. Doe and Blair murmured their goodbyes and followed. I closed up, stealing glances around me, hoping no one was watching.

Back in my apartment, I took a shower to wash off make-believe Dana cooties and to warm up before getting ready for bed. When I stepped out of the shower, I was surprised by the smell of rose water trapped in the small confines of the bathroom, along with a cold blast of air that raised goose bumps on my skin.

I jerked my head from side to side.

It had to be Elizabeth, the wife of John St. Claire, the original owner of the house. Although she was long dead, her favorite fragrance still followed her around, and she seemed to like to make appearances in my bathroom.

Elizabeth had died in the fire that also killed her eldest son Fielding, her daughter, Chloe, and their dog, Max. While Elizabeth, Chloe and Max continued to haunt the house, no one had ever seen Fielding. I suspected he was still there, perhaps just shy.

All of us had seen Elizabeth at one time or another. She was often seen strolling through rooms on the ground floor, or coming down the stairs. Once, she’d passed right through Mayor Frum when he and I were talking in the living room. Mayor Frum hadn’t seen her, but reacted as if someone had just poured ice water down his back. Since we were alone, I allowed the moment to pass without comment.

For whatever reason, Elizabeth had attached herself to me. I thought it was because, like her, I was the woman of the house. She would occasionally show herself to me in my apartment, even try to communicate with me. After Martha died, she had struggled mightily to inform me through a bizarre game of charades that Martha had been poisoned. She kept wrapping her ghostly hands around her throat and gagging.

A few times she had left cryptic messages scrawled in the steam left behind on my bathroom mirror after a shower. As I watched now, I was rewarded with the beginnings of another message, and my heart rate stepped up a notch as I wrapped a towel around me.

A line began to appear in the steam, tracing what looked like a picture. Once Elizabeth was done, I stared at the drawing with my brow furrowed. It appeared to be the picture of a bird.

And then she was gone. The fragrance. The steam on the mirror. The cold air. All gone, and I was alone again in my bathroom.

I got into my pajamas and climbed into bed a few minutes later, puzzled. What was Elizabeth trying to tell me? It could have been a game. But usually, she was trying to give me a message. I just had no idea what it was.

I had trouble falling asleep, partly because I was keyed up, and partly because I kept picturing poor Trudy Bascom being bludgeoned to death. No one deserved to die like that, not even Dana. But what kept Trudy’s image scrolling through my head was the fact that someone hated Dana enough to want to inflict that kind of harm on her.

It was well after 1:30 by the time I finally fell into a troubled sleep. I was awakened a short time later by my phone. I reached out and grabbed my cell phone off the bedside table and mumbled a garbled hello.

“Julia! Are you okay?” April asked.

I sat up, dislodging Mickey, who liked to tuck himself under one arm. “Yes, I’m fine. What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know,” she said with a deep sigh. “Something woke me up. I…had a dream…or something. I thought you were in trouble.”

April lived in our guest house, but I hadn’t told her about our sojourn to steal Dana’s trash. I knew she wouldn’t approve. I also didn’t want her to talk me out of it. So I wondered if she was just receiving a belated sighting of the Keystone Cops routine.

“What exactly did you see?” I asked, sitting up against the headboard and rubbing my eyes back to life.

She took a deep breath. “You…and the dogs, barking. I don’t know what it meant.”

“Was
I
in danger?”

“I’m not sure,” she sighed. “But I thought you were in trouble of some kind.”

“Hmmm,” I murmured.

“What?” April asked.

“I had a visit from Elizabeth tonight after my shower. She drew the picture of a bird on the bathroom mirror.”

“Nothing else?”

“No.” I replied. “And the only bird we have is Ahab. Was Ahab in your dream?”

“No,” she said. “Just the dogs.”

“Well, I’m fine. You go back to sleep,” I told her. “And I’ll call you if I even hear an owl outside my window.”

“
Speaking
of birds,” she said with a chuckle. “Okay, but be careful and call me if you need me.”

“Will do.”

I hung up and tried to relax back into the bed, feeling uncomfortable at April’s phone call. The fact that she had had a vision right after someone had been brutally murdered on the island wasn’t good news.

As Mickey pushed his way back under my elbow, I stroked his head and contemplated April. We’d been friends since college. When Graham announced he wanted a divorce shortly after finishing renovations on the Inn, I’d asked April to join me in the business. Word of her baking skills quickly brought in customers, making her orange scones legendary. She was living in Bellevue with her husband at the time. He was retired from the surgery department at the University of Washington Medical Center. Shortly after, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. April had cared for him as long as she could, but eventually had to put him into an expensive care facility. He died just before Christmas, and it was then that I’d learned that he’d also left April deeply in debt.

Fortunately, right around the same time Jose´ decided to move out of our guest house and in with his boyfriend. This gave April a chance to move in and save some money. But something changed after her husband died. She was quieter and more solitary. She and her husband had been together since high school. And although he’d been a very successful surgeon, the disease had impaired his judgment before he’d been diagnosed, forcing him to make a myriad of bad decisions. I suspected she was not only lonely, but embarrassed by her financial situation.

My eyelids began to droop, and I dozed off, only to be jerked awake a few moments later by the musical tones of the song,
Rock Around the Clock
. It had been the ringtone on my mother’s cell phone before she died, and I came suddenly awake.

No one would claim my life was normal. But one of the strangest parts about it was that during Martha’s murder investigation, my deceased mother had begun calling me on her cell phone. At first, it had totally freaked me out. But in the end, she had helped to keep me safe during those dark days, although her cell phone had been destroyed in the process. So I was surprised to hear her ringtone on my phone.

I sat up and grabbed my phone, but this time my hand shook as I answered it. “Hello.”

“Julia!” my mother snapped. “What’s happening? Are you okay?”

My excitement at hearing from my mother again was cut short when I realized she was repeating April’s question.

“What? You, too? What’s the big deal? I’m fine.”

“What d’you mean, you too?”

My mother had been a big smoker and had died from emphysema. For as long as I could remember, she spoke in a husky, Lauren Bacall voice, with a slight mid-western accent.

“April just called and asked me the same thing. What are you two seeing that I can’t?”

“I don’t know what April saw, but I just had an overpowering sense that you were in trouble again. There was lots of commotion. Barking. Squawking. Why would that be? What did you get yourself into this time?”

My mother and I had always sparred. It’s what we did when she was alive, and apparently, things hadn’t changed much just because she was dead. “Why do you always assume that
I’m
the one who gets me into trouble? Maybe it was someone else’s fault.”

“Are you kidding?” she snapped. “Don’t forget that just a few weeks ago you were being held prisoner in the basement of a church because you’d gotten involved in a murder investigation.”

I sighed. “No. I haven’t forgotten. But this time someone tried to kill Dana Finkle.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake. Who cares about that?”

“Mother!”

“You don’t like her any better than I did. By ‘tried to kill,’ I assume you mean they failed.”

“Yes,” I replied.

I told her about Trudy and my email account. My mom had been pretty tech savvy before she died.

“Wow,” she exhaled. “That’s got to be a piece of bad luck.”

“That’s just what Goldie said,” I commented. “But you mentioned squawking. Did you hear Ahab?”

“I don’t know if it was Ahab,” she said. “I just heard a bird squawking.”

“I’m not a target, Mom. But I think someone was trying to set me up for the fall.”

“Okay, Button,” she said with relief, using my childhood nickname. “Good to know. Well, not good for Finkle’s campaign assistant, but you know what I mean.”

“Yes, I do. Thanks. I just haven’t heard from you since Christmas. It’s good to know you’re still looking out for me.”

“Always,” she said. “Now, I have to go.”

“Mom.”

“Nope, gotta go. Take care of yourself.”

And with that, she was gone. I was left to look at the cell phone as I had so many times before, befuddled at how she could contact me from the other side and frustrated that I never got enough time to talk to her.

I slammed the phone back down on the bedside table and flopped back onto my pillow, eyes wide open, my brain humming.

Two warnings in a matter of minutes, along with Elizabeth’s pictograph in the bathroom mirror. How could I sleep after all of that?

I couldn’t.

I needed chocolate.