An Affair to Dismember (13 page)

“Morning,” he said. Rubbing his eyes, he swung his legs over the side of the bed and put on his shoes. “Thanks for the bed. I got to go to the office for a few hours.”

“You want some breakfast?” I asked, and hated myself for my good manners.

“Thanks, Pinkie, but I need to finish up some reports before the baseball game. I don’t want my Sunday to be a total wash.”

I had forgotten it was Sunday. What a crazy week I’d had. The death toll was rising, and I wasn’t any closer to figuring out who had murdered Randy Terns or matching my neighbor. I walked Spencer to the door. He stopped at the threshold. Smirking, he patted my hair.

“Do your worst, Spencer,” I said. “Go ahead. Give me your wisecracks. I can take it. I know what my hair looks like in the morning.” It usually stood straight out in spiky curls about a foot from my head. Spencer’s hair was perfect, just slightly mussed, but still thick and wavy, a wet dream of hair.

“I kind of like it,” he said, his fingers weaving through my hair. “I like the unwashed look on women. You look like we did something other than sleep in your bed.”

I was distracted by movement in the corner of my eye. Holden walked over my grandmother’s lawn, his attention
on the scene in our doorway. I couldn’t read his facial expression. Whether distressed, angry, or jealous, it didn’t matter. It wasn’t good. I held back an almost compulsive desire to run to him and stick my tongue down his throat and explain that no matter what it looked like, I didn’t have sex with Spencer.

After staring at Holden a few seconds, I allowed my eyes to wander back to Spencer. He smiled right at me, as if he could read my dirty thoughts. I blushed beet red and looked at the floor.

“I see,” Spencer said. “Fair enough.” He removed his fingers from my hair and nodded to Holden. “Just remember what I said, Gladie. Stick to matchmaking and your friend over there. Stay out of my business. We got a deal?”

“Fair enough,” I said. I was getting good at lying to Spencer. It was almost fun.

Spencer walked down the front steps to the walkway, but Holden blocked his path. I could feel the testosterone build, a macho force field between them. They couldn’t be more different. One was light while the other was dark, one was borderline metrosexual while the other would be more at home at a lumberjack convention. But they were evenly matched, Holden a couple of inches taller, Spencer about ten more pounds of muscle. Spencer said something to him, and Holden’s face relaxed, but he didn’t move. Spencer walked around Holden, giving him a wide berth, and walked toward his car.

“What did he say to you?” I called out to Holden across the distance. He arched an eyebrow and walked quickly toward me, a determined look in his eye. He made up the distance between us, pushing me against the doorjamb, his body leaning into mine.

“I like trouble,” he said, his voice brushing against
my lips. My knees buckled, and I held on to him for support.

“He said that?”

“No, I did,” said Holden. He pulled me hard against him and captured my mouth with his. The kiss was long and deep. My head spun, and I saw rainbow-colored shapes behind my closed eyelids. It was like a Grateful Dead concert, but instead of music, my body was humming rather loudly.

“HE SAID that?”

“Yes, he said he liked trouble and then kissed me.”

I sat at the desk in the attic and shuffled blank index cards while I was on the phone with Bridget. I had called her immediately after Holden left.

“Then what happened?” she asked.

“Then he asked me out to dinner tonight, and he went home.”

“What did you say?”

“About what?”

“About dinner.”

“I think I said yes.”

“You’re not sure?”

“I think I had a little stroke.”

“Was the kiss that good?” asked Bridget.

“Yes.”

Bridget whistled. “You’ve got it bad.”

“I know. Grandma is going to be so disappointed in me. My first client.”

“That’s not important now. How tall is he?”

“About six foot four.”

“Good-looking?”

“Bridget, I had a stroke, remember?”

“Okay, he’s good-looking. Well, I think you should jump him,” Bridget said matter-of-factly. “You shouldn’t
be penned in by Judeo-Christian ethics that were made up by misogynistic men millennia ago.”

“He’s a perfect stranger,” I said. “I don’t know why he kissed me. I told him I had someone perfect for him. I guess he doesn’t think I’m a good matchmaker.”

“Yes, that must be it,” said Bridget, her patience wearing thin. “Wait till Lucy hears this. We need to set up an emergency lunch, but she’s out of town today. She tried reaching you all evening yesterday, by the way.”

“I was busy. And my cellphone died, and Grandma decided to store all the plugs, wires, and chargers in the bread box. She says it’s safer that way. What a nightmare. Wires everywhere. It took me an hour to find the plug to the coffeemaker last week, but on the plus side, I did find the remote control to the VCR. Grandma’s behind on technology.”

“Gladie, you’re drifting,” Bridget said. She didn’t know the half of it. I had drifted far out. I was a polar bear on a sliver of ice.

“I know,” I said. “What did Lucy want?”

“She wanted to know what happened with the hunky police chief. Oh, crap. Gladie, what happened with the hunky police chief?”

“Nothing. Well …”

Bridget’s breathing grew ragged. “Well, what? Well, what?”

“We might have found a dead body.” And we slept together. I didn’t want to get into that, let alone Jimmy the Fink and Randy Terns’ gang. My head was swimming.

“No way!” Bridget screeched. “You’re the mysterious woman!”

“I’m the what?”

“The mysterious woman. It was on the news. A mysterious woman fled a murder scene.”

I gasped and choked on my spit. “Did they say it was murder?”

“I don’t remember. There was a dead body. But listen, they described you, hair and all.”

An icy feeling of dread crept up my body.

“You know what that means, Gladie? It means the killer knows who you are.”

“I need coffee,” I said.

“All right.”

“I need coffee,” I said, louder, my voice an octave higher than normal.

“All right. Get some coffee, and then meet me at Saint Andrew’s. You can volunteer with me today. It will get your mind off things, and you can tell me about the dead body and the live bodies.”

I put the phone down and gathered the blank index cards that I had scattered over the desk in my nervousness. Since I’d effectively gotten rid of my first client by dating him myself, I didn’t need the cards for matchmaking. Instead, I found myself jotting down a name on each card. By the time I finished, I had a card for every member of Randy Terns’ family and his gang. Any of them could have murdered Randy and Jimmy, except for maybe Jimmy, who was dead.

I wrote down what I knew about them. Peter, Jane, and Christy all had prison records. Peter seemed the most violent, with sexual assault. I had gotten a taste of his temper, and I had the bruises on my arm to prove it. Christy was a drug addict. It was completely possible for her to commit a criminal act while under the influence. Jane was a mystery—she seemed odd and bitter, but harmless enough if you didn’t count maiming Barbies. And what about Betty? Wasn’t it usually the spouse who did it? It was a stretch to imagine skinny little Betty taking on her husband, let alone Jimmy the Fink, but stranger things were known to happen.

Speaking of Jimmy the Fink, the gang angle was the most obvious. If Randy had hidden away money from his former partners, that would be a strong motive for murder. But why had they waited so long after the bank robbery to come looking for Randy?

By the time I finished, I had index cards spread out over the desk, but I was no closer to solving the murders. “What am I playing at? I’m no detective, and now I’ve made a mess,” I said out loud. I gathered the cards together into a file folder I marked “Terns” and slipped it in Grandma’s file cabinet between Sadie Symons and Joseph Thomas. Poor Sadie Symons. She was one of Grandma’s failures, dumped by the seemingly perfect Dr. Marchi with a Dear John letter, written in iambic pentameter.

I shut the file cabinet, and my brain cells fired all at once. How stupid was I? How could I have forgotten? I had Jimmy the Fink’s mail in my purse. I rifled through it quickly and found what I was looking for.

“THE BIGGEST cappuccino you’ve ever made.” I slapped my Visa card down on Ruth’s bar.

“You promised you were going Earl Grey,” she said with a scowl. “How much patience do you think I have? I don’t have long to live, you know.”

“Please, Ruth,” I said. “I need coffee. I’ve been going through a very rough patch.”

“Look at these people,” Ruth said with a sweep of her hand toward her store. Tea Time was packed with
New York Times
-reading patrons, sitting leisurely at her antique tables. “Half of them are drinking lattes. Lattes. Don’t you people know that coffee kills? A cup of tea soothes. When you were sick, what did your momma give you? Did she give you a cappuccino? No. She gave you a nice cup of tea.”

“My mother?” I said. “When I was sick, she told me to think happy thoughts and run down to the store to get her a pack of smokes. Please, Ruth, the coffee.”

Ruth grunted and moaned, but she relented and gave me the world’s biggest cappuccino in a to-go cup. It was heaven. Almost as good as Holden’s kiss, but with fewer repercussions.

I was about to leave when there was a thunderous crash at a nearby table. A slight young woman, no bigger than a ten-year-old boy, had dropped a teapot, breaking four china cups and sending three customers scattering, probably with third-degree burns.

“That girl,” Ruth muttered.

“Is she a new waitress?” I asked.

“My grandniece, Julie. Nice enough, but skittish as all get-out. She can’t even go into the supply closet. Claustrophobia, you see.”

I gave Julie a good look. She was petite like a Kewpie doll, with striking blue eyes and long red hair pulled back in a knot. I heard a
ding ding ding
sound in my head. Suddenly I had a feeling. I knew who would make Julie happy. It happened just like that. I had graduated. I was going to make my first match.

I ached to stay behind and speak with her, but I had promised Bridget I would meet her for lunch. Besides, I had things to take care of, and Julie looked like she would be single for a while longer.

I drove the couple of miles to Saint Andrew’s Shelter just north of the historic district, near the old mine on Farmer Way. The shelter for battered women was set back at the end of a narrow dirt road that wound through the forest, providing much-needed privacy for the women, who came from all over the Southwest to escape their abusive relationships. It was one of Bridget’s many causes.

The shelter was a compound of several buildings, all
one-story and painted white and cheery. The center of the compound was open, with a playground for the children and tables and chairs for the women to meet and have their meals when the weather was good.

Today was gorgeous, and it seemed that all the residents of the shelter were outside enjoying the day. I had been there before, and Sister Cyril, the den mother, recognized me and welcomed me with a bear hug.

“Thrilled you’re here,” she said. “Just in time for lunch. If Bridget ever takes a breath.”

Bridget was speaking to a group of around twenty women who were fingering their boxed lunches longingly as they politely listened to her diatribe.

“The inequalities of the sexes. You’re living proof of its existence,” she yelled. “You must turn to yourselves for help, not the patriarchal church that runs this place.”

Sister Cyril patted my arm. “Come and have a seat,” she said. “I’d love for you to meet Sarah. She’s new, and I think you two will get along real well.”

Sarah was in her forties. She had a cute bobbed haircut—and a huge shiner on her left eye. I took a seat next to her.

“I’m Gladie,” I said.

“I know. Sister Cyril told me all about you. All about your grandmother, in any case. She’s on some kind of committee with her. I’ve never met her.”

“She doesn’t get out of her house much,” I explained.

“I was like that,” said Sarah. “My husband never let me leave the house.” She shrugged and touched her black eye.

Bridget’s voice reached a crescendo. She shook her fist at the sky. “Rules! They talk about rules! Do we live in Abu Ghraib or something?”

Sister Cyril leaned over and whispered in my ear. “We all love Bridget. She’s one of our best volunteers, but she’s been going on for an hour and a half. It’s egg salad
sandwiches for lunch today. I’m afraid they’re going to turn and I’m going to wind up with a group of battered women suffering from food poisoning. We need to get on to lunch.” She fixed me with a pleading look I couldn’t resist.

I got up and shuffled over to Bridget, carefully avoiding her swinging arms, which she used to punctuate her speech on the everyday abuses of women in society.

“Psst, Bridget,” I said. “I’m here. I need to talk to you about the body.”

I startled her, and it took a moment for her to recognize me, but once her eyes focused, she smiled. “Oh, good,” she said. “I’ve been waiting for you. Hey, you look great. Lucy told me she found your stash of nice clothes. Nice dress.”

I looked down. I was wearing a black and white wrap dress. I had forgotten to go back to my normal clothes.

We sat down with Sarah to eat our egg salad sandwiches. With her there, Bridget and I had to hold off on discussing Jimmy the Fink. “Where are you from, Sarah?” I asked.

“She’s not allowed to say,” said Bridget. “It’s all top secret here to protect the women.”

“Oh, sorry.”

Sarah wiped her face with her napkin. “Don’t worry about it. I forget the rules, too. I’m just happy to be here, away from Don.”

“Was that your husband?” I asked.

“Yes. We were married for twenty years. You’re wondering why I stayed with him all those years.” She was right. That was exactly what I was wondering. “I didn’t have a choice.”

“But you did leave,” said Sister Cyril, taking a seat at our table.