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Authors: Isis Crawford

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“Duncan didn’t do it. He was framed,” Libby told her.

Misha shook her head. “Yeah. Right.”

“It’s true,” Libby insisted.

“Well, good luck proving that.”

“He was,” Libby told her.

Mis
ha patted Libby’s shoulder. “I’ll believe it if it’ll make you feel better.”

“It’s true,” Libby repeated.

“If you say so.” Tired of the conversation, Misha looked at the clock on the wall. “Spin class is starting in ten minutes. You want to come with me?”

Libby shook her head. “I’ve got to get back to the shop,” she told her. She didn’t feel it necessary to inform Misha she was going to have enough trouble walking to the van; spending another forty-five minutes riding a bike simply wasn’t a possibility.

Katrina was nowhere in sight by the time Libby made it to the locker room. Libby assumed she’d left, which at that moment was fine. She took a shower and dressed. Then she called her dad and told him what she’d found out.

Sean listened carefully to what his daughter had to say. He was smiling as he hung up. Now he had a direction to go in.

Chapter 28

I
t was a little after two in the afternoon by the time Marvin came over to pick up Sean and drive him to Katrina’s parents’ house.

“No hearse?” Sean said, looking at the green Taurus.

Marvin grinned. “Nope. It’s in the shop. This is my dad’s car.”

“I used to have one of these,” Sean said as he got in and closed the door. Then he told Marvin how to get there. Sean had known Katrina’s parents to say hello to when he was still on the police force, but that had been a long time ago and he hadn’t run across them in quite a while. Back then Katrina’s mother, Gertrude, had been a lunch lady in the Longely high school cafeteria while her husband, Bob, had been a long distance truck driver.

At least that had been the official story. The unofficial story was that Bob had something to do with the Gambino family. Sean had never believed the rumor. And in fact, one day while he and Bob were both pounding down a couple of beers Bob had explicitly told him that the story wasn’t true. Sean had believed him then—not that he had really cared one way or another as long as nothing went down in his jurisdiction, a fact he’d mentioned to Bob. But now he wondered if Bob had been snowing him, going on the offensive.

Which is what Rose had believed. After all, the trucking industry was nothing if not mobbed up and Bob seemed to have a fair amount of flash cash. But who knew? On the other hand, maybe Gertrude was a good household manager. Maybe Bob didn’t believe in banks. Maybe they played the lottery and won.

About ten years ago Bob and Gertrude had sold their house and moved down to Florida. Boca specifically. One version Sean had heard said that they both had retired, while the second version said that Bob had gotten into some sort of trouble with the Gambinos and had had to lie low for a while until everything blew over.

But whatever the truth, Gertrude and Bob had come back a couple of years ago and bought a neat little three-bedroom cottage on the edge of town. One of those classic white picket fence and red roof jobbies. Sean had heard through mutual acquaintances that neither Bob nor Gertrude had been fond of the alligators, the bugs, the humidity, or the white shoe brigade.

“Don’t go anywhere,” Sean told Marvin as Marvin pulled up in front of Gertrude’s and Bob’s house.

Marvin turned off the ignition. “Where would I go?” he asked.

Sean shrugged. “To get some coffee, maybe? I don’t know. I just don’t want to be left standing here in case they don’t want to talk to me.”

“Of course, they’ll want to talk to you. They invited you over,” Marvin replied. He reached for his phone, figuring that he’d stay in the car and catch up on some of the calls he had to make.

“Not really,” Sean said.

Marvin put his hand down and turned to look at Sean. “What do you mean ‘not really’?”

Sean took a cigarette out of his pack and lit one. “Not really as in they don’t know I’m coming,” he told Marvin as he rolled down the window to let the smoke out.

“How come?”

“Because I didn’t tell them,” Sean replied, watching the wind take away the plume of smoke he’d just exhaled.

“But why?” Marvin persisted. This seemed like a counterproductive approach to him.

“Think about it,” Sean told him.

Marvin did. Nothing surfaced.

“The element of surprise,” Sean prompted.

Marvin’s face lit up. “Now I get it.” But then he said, “I still don’t see how that’s going to help.”

Sean restrained himself from saying what was on his mind. As he did, it occurred to him how much easier life would be if he could go places by himself. Instead he explained his strategy as patiently as he could. “Obviously,” he said to Marvin, “they might not want to talk to me about what I want to talk to them about. This way they won’t get the opportunity to refuse.”

Marvin thought about turning the ignition back on and decided not to. “They can still refuse,” he said, stating the obvious.

“Yeah,” Sean countered. “But in my experience,” he said, pulling out the age card—after all, what was the point in being old if you couldn’t use it once in a while?—“it’s harder to do that when you talk to people in person. It’s way easier to hang up the phone on someone than to slam the door in his face.”

“So you do know them,” Marvin said, meanwhile thinking about all the paperwork he’d left behind and the time he was going to spend driving Sean here and back when he could have been in his office clearing off his desk and how this might turn out to be a waste of time investigation-wise. Unfortunately, this month was turning out to be a busy one for the funeral home.

Sean took another puff of his cigarette, then nodded. “I did and I do. But even if I didn’t the dynamics remain the same.”

“Is this going to take a long time?”

“Not to state the obvious, but I guess that depends on whether or not Gertrude and Bob will talk to me.”

“If they’re home,” Marvin said.

Sean pointed to the green Subaru parked in the driveway. “They’re home.”

And with that Sean flicked his cigarette out the window and got out of the hearse, using his cane to lever himself up and off the seat. Then he made his way over the grass verge, onto the sidewalk, and up the flagstone path. He walked up the concrete steps and rang the bell.

While he waited he took note of the excellent paint job on the front of the house and the wreath of dried flowers and twigs on the door. It looked like something Gertrude had either bought at a crafts fair or made herself. A moment later Gertrude answered the door. She was wearing an immaculate flowered apron over her jeans and a stretched out, long-sleeved pink polo shirt. No one wore aprons anymore, Sean reflected as he wondered what Gertrude was making. Judging from the aroma, Sean was guessing tomato sauce.

“Yes?” Gertrude said as she squinted at him.

Sean reflected that she’d aged since he’d seen her last. Her hair had gone gray and she’d developed jowls, bags under her eyes, and a tire around her waist, all the accessories of age, as his friend Inez liked to say. But then he supposed—no, he knew—that the same could be said of him. Probably even worse, if the last picture Bernie had taken of him was to be believed.

Sean extended his hand. “Sean Simmons, ma’am. I don’t know if you remember me but I used to be—”

“Oh yes.” Gertrude cut him off. “The chief of police.”

Sean nodded.

“And your girls baked those wonderful cinnamon rolls,” Gertrude continued, her smile wideer smilening. “The ones with the filberts.”

“They still do,” Sean told her.

Gertrude beamed and patted her middle. “I’m trying to stay away from them. They’re too good.”

Sean patted his middle in turn. “Unfortunately, I can’t.”

“So what brings you here?” Gertrude asked, changing the subject.

“I’m working on the Mike Sweeney case,” Sean began, but Gertrude cut him off before he had a chance to finish.

“I thought you were retired,” she asked, her voice going cold.

Wow, Sean reflected. Talk about a change in attitude. Could we use the word
hostile
? Although, he reflected, the hostility made sense given what Libby had told him had happened to Katrina’s parents.

“I am retired,” Sean told her. “I’ve gone private.”

“As in private detective?” Gertrude asked, smoothing down her apron.

“Exactly. And my daughters help me.”

Gertrude raised both eyebrows, giving him a quizzical look. “They cook and detect? That’s rather an odd mixture, don’t you think?”

“Possibly, but they’re really quite good at this kind of thing,” Sean told her. And they were. Not that he was prejudiced or anything.

“Are they as good at detecting as they are at baking?” Gertrude asked.

“Not quite,” Sean conceded. “But almost. Give them another couple of years and I’ll match them up with anyone.”

Gertrude pressed her lips together while she thought about what Sean had said. Then she asked for clarification. “You said private, didn’t you?” she inquired after a minute had gone by.

“Yes, I did,” Sean replied, not liking the direction things were taking.

Gertrude smiled unpleasantly. “Good. So that means I don’t have to speak to you if I don’t want to, doesn’t it?” Gertrude hadn’t spent hours watching reality TV crime shows for nothing.

This was not what Sean wanted to hear. “That’s correct,” he said, because he couldn’t think of a way to spin the truth and make it sound plausible. Unfortunately. “But I was hoping that you would want to.”

Any trace of the sweet old lady who had answered the door vanished. “Why?” Gertrude spat out. “That son of a bitch got what he deserved.”

Sean was slightly taken aback by her virulence. He moved his cane slightly to ease the pressure on his shoulder. “I can see why you would say that given the situation,” he told her in his most soothing tone of voice. “But I’m working on behalf of Duncan Nottingham.”

If Sean thought that was going to bring Gertrude around to his side, he had another think coming. It did quite the opposite, in fact. Gertrude’s scowl grew.

She said, “Frankly, I don’t care if Duncan fries.”

“He may be innocent,” Sean protested.

Gertrude waved Sean’s objection away. “No. He’s not. He’s a scumbag. Between him and Mike Sweeney and Liam, Katrina’s worthless husband, they may as well have shot us. It’s lucky Bob and I have the shirts on our backs left and aren’t out on the street begging. In fact, that whole group can go to hell. They’re all responsible. I don’t care what happens to any of them and you can tell them I said so. Corned Beef and Cabbage Club, indeed.” She sniffed. “They should call theould calmselves the Worthless Pieces of Garbage Club.”

“Okay,” Sean said, changing tactics. “But I bet you care about your daughter.” He had one gambit left and he was determined to use it.

“My daughter?” Gertrude said.

“Yes. Your daughter,” Sean replied.

Gertrude tried to stare Sean down. “She doesn’t have anything to do with this,” she stated in a hard, flat voice. “And don’t even intimate that she does.”

“That’s what I want to talk to you about,” Sean said, taking a step inside the house before Gertrude could stop him. “After all, she was part of this.”

Gertrude went into full glower. “That’s a horrible thing to say,” she told Sean. “How can you even imply something like that? In fact, I’ll sue you for libel if you do.”

Now it was Sean’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “Have I touched on a sore spot?” he asked. “Because it seems as if I have.”

But before Gertrude could reply, her husband did.

“What’s this I hear about Katrina?” Bob demanded, his voice preceding him as he charged out of the back of the cottage. “What’s she done now?”

A second later he’d joined his wife in the hallway. Time had been even unkinder to Bob, Sean reflected. Bob had lost most of his hair and gained about fifty pounds, making him look like a bowling ball with a head and skinny arms and legs attached to it. Actually Sean thought he looked like one of those figures Bernie used to draw when she was eight. Art had never been her forte. There had been a small circle on top of a bigger circle with lines for arms and legs sticking out. But Bob’s fat was hard fat, biker fat, and despite all the padding, Sean could sense that the strength that Bob had had was still there and that being on the receiving end of one of his punches would put him down and out.

“She hasn’t done anything, Bob,” Gertrude told him.

“Really?” Bob said to his wife.

“Yes, really,” Gertrude replied.

“I’d say that bankrupting us is something.”

“That’s not her fault,” Gertrude protested.

“If you don’t mind, Gertrude, I would very much like to hear what Mr. Simmons here has to tell us. Hey,” Bob said when Sean didn’t say anything. “I asked you a question. What’s Katrina done now? She’s my daughter and I think I have the right to know.”

“Nothing, as far as I know,” Sean confessed. “That is, other than exercising poor judgment in picking out a marital partner.”

Bob’s jowls quivered. “Then why did you say what you did?”

“I was merely positing a possibility,” Sean said, taking a leaf from Bernie’s book of infuriating phrases.

“Positing a possibility? What does that mean?”

“It means he’s guessing, Bob,” Gertrude said.

Bob took a deep breath and let it out. “I know what it means, Gertrude.”

“You said you didn’t.”

Bob raised his eyes to the heavens. “God, grant me mercy.”

Gertrude’s shoulders sagged. “I was just trying to help, Bob,” she told her husband in a voice that quavered slightly.

“Well, don’t,” Bob said, turning to Sean. “So you lied?”