Blessed Is the Busybody (24 page)

As the cookies baked I made sandwiches and gathered a medley of fruits to put in the picnic basket. I added frozen boxed juices and a plastic bag of trail mix.

As I walked by I flipped to the next scrapbook page and glimpsed another picnic and another time.

The
picnic?

At the kitchen table I bent over the scrapbook, brow appropriately wrinkled. I recognized the scene, a public park near the new service center with a sycamore-lined brook and tables covered with gaily printed fabric. If I remembered correctly, the missing movie had been filmed in this same place.

Dolly had carefully typed “End of the Year Picnic at Shadyside,” and the date, “1982.” Of course it was possible the church had staged annual picnics at this same spot for some years, even though now we celebrate at Emerald Park, which has covered pavilions just yards from the springs itself.

I tried to remember details. Who had I noticed in the missing movie that might be in these photos? I examined them closely, and grew more certain this was the same event. There was something familiar about this scene, the way the tables were set up, maybe the way the participants were dressed. Preppy, moderately big hair.

I searched my memory. The day had been sunny, like this one. The number of people in this range. And I remembered something else that had caught my eye as I rushed through reels, a group of teens in stonewashed jeans and yes, Michael Jackson-style parachute pants, playing Hacky Sack just beyond the picnic table. My sisters and I had been champion Hacky Sackers in junior high school. We’d found it was a great way to attract guys. So I had noticed these kids, of course, and stored that away.

And here they were again.

Now that I was nearly certain this was the same picnic I took my time going through each photo and carefully reading Dolly’s commentary. I knew a couple of the people caught on camera. I recognized Fern Booth before I read that caption. Although her hair was longer and darker, she had the same disapproving glare.

Samuel wasn’t in the photo, but I recognized Harry in the corner of the next one. He was dapper now and he’d been dapper in his forties, something of a hunk, as a matter of fact. He had his arm around a young woman who was gazing adoringly up at him. I suspected Harry had not yet told the world he was gay.

I continued on, staring at photos, reading captions. I gave my unconscious strict instructions to stop me if anything seemed out of order. I turned the page.

I nearly passed right by the third photo. None of the people were familiar to me, and the names in the caption meant nothing. This photo had been taken at the outskirts of the action, where fewer people scurried by with plates of food or children in hand. But as my eyes flicked to photo number four, my unconscious shrieked a warning. I went back and looked more carefully, and there in the shadows, I saw two people.

One of them was Gelsey Falowell.

Maybe I wouldn’t have recognized her so readily if I hadn’t recently seen photos of the much younger Gelsey. But now, looking at the Gelsey who had lived in time between Gorgeous Gelsey and Grouchy Gelsey, I knew her instantly. Regal, sexy even in middle age and eighties shoulder pads, and as always, commanding.

But who was the man?

There were no captions, of course. Dolly had documented the people in the foreground, but not the two under the tree some distance behind them. I left to find a magnifying glass and located one in Teddy’s room. Back at the table I used it with no luck. The man looked the tiniest bit familiar. But not familiar enough that I could add twenty years and place him. The picnic was too recent for this to be Herb Falowell, who, according to my information, had died in the midseventies.

The rest of the photos, only four more, provided no further clues. Whomever Gelsey had been talking to remained a mystery.

And so what?

I closed the scrapbook and stared at my kitchen sink, which, like the floor, has not benefitted from recent technology.

Did any of this matter? Although I was fairly sure the movie had been removed from the storage closet, I couldn’t swear to it. Maybe someone had detected an advanced rate of decomposition and tossed that reel. Maybe someone had borrowed it to show friends. It was entirely possible this was the most innocent picnic of all time, and Gelsey was simply busy in the shadows writing a check to fund a guinea pig wing at the local animal shelter.

Or maybe, just maybe, the man beside her had something to do with Jennifer Marina.

The thought would never have occurred to me, of course, if the movie hadn’t disappeared after I viewed it and belatedly returned it to the closet. Or if the storage room hadn’t been ransacked. Or if Gelsey’s dislike of Ed hadn’t begun the same day I announced to the Women’s Society that I had taken the job of historian and viewed some of their old films.

And hadn’t I mentioned that I’d seen a picnic? Had that been the moment when Gelsey realized I might see something on the film, perhaps a film she hadn’t known was still in existence? Because, until now, no still photos of that picnic had turned up anywhere.

Almost as if someone had made sure to remove each and every one of them.

The morning had slipped by and it was nearly time to head to the Frankels’ to deliver lunch. First I made a quick phone call to Jack, then I looked for a good place to hide the scrapbook, paranoia a new and worthy addition to my repertoire. I stored the book between cookie sheets in the drawer under my stove and went to find my purse.

Book Gems was humming when I arrived. Work is so much more fun when you’re not making it up. I helped three different customers choose books for gifts, discussed the merits of Julia Child and Marcella Hazan with another, and provided an impromptu story hour complete with a Curious George puppet so a harassed young mother could select a novel. We rang up more sales than I’d seen any other day.

On the fly Bob told me that since the protests seemed to be over, he was going to clear out the little back room and ready it for the painters. The experiment had been a failure. He didn’t ask for help, and I didn’t offer. I had a feeling Bob might want to fondle the books one last time before he packed them back to their publishers.

By five the crowd had thinned to almost nothing. Bob joined me behind the front counter and watched me ring up my final sale. When the young man left, Bob turned the sign and locked the door.

“Things are looking up.” He sounded delighted.

I was feeling more charitable toward Bob than I had yesterday. Gelsey’s murder was still a mystery, but at least now I was sure Bob hadn’t had any reason to murder Jennifer. My phone call to Jack had affirmed what Bob had told me yesterday. Jennifer could never have touched a penny of Herb Falowell’s money, no matter how hard she or her mother tried. The will was ironclad. Bob was the only heir. And Sax was in custody.

Suspicion about one murder is an improvement over two. I decided to enlighten him about Jennifer.

“You know they’ve arrested somebody for the murder of Jennifer Marina, don’t you?”

He looked surprised. “You’re kidding. And it wasn’t in the papers?”

“They put the
Flow
to bed
way
before midnight. You need to find a better source of gossip.” It was time to enlighten him even more. “Remember me telling you yesterday that Gelsey had a child before she married your uncle?”

“Yeah?”

“Jennifer Marina was that child.”

He stared at me, as if he couldn’t quite make this leap. “The dead woman on your porch?”

“That would be the one.”

“Come on. You’re kidding.”

“Not funny. True. And something you probably don’t want to tell the world.”

“I’ll be damned.”

Really, he was a first-class actor or a completely honest man. I decided to go for broke. “Jennifer had two children, a boy and a girl. Gelsey had grandchildren.”

He shook his head. “Did she know?”

“I don’t think so. Jennifer came to town to tell her, but she probably never got the chance.”

He cashed out in silence, making notes and tallying the day’s receipts. I left him to it and went through the store straightening and reshelving books, setting chairs back in place. I went for the vacuum cleaner and was plugging it in when he came to stand beside me.

“Where are the kids?”

I didn’t trust him
that
much. “In foster care.” I didn’t say where.

“And their dad?”

“A bum.”

“This has to be so hard on them.” He looked genuinely sorry.

“Has to be,” I agreed. “I hear they’re great. The foster parents want to adopt them, but they have three older kids they have to put through college. I don’t know if they’ll be able to afford to put two more through after that.”

“Tough break.” He pulled out his favorite prop and tapped the butt against his palm. “I haven’t been through Gelsey’s stuff. What do I know about women’s jewelry and geegaws?”

“Geegaws?”

He gave a humorless laugh. “I doubt she kept anything that mattered to Uncle Herb, but she might have. I need to go over there and see for myself.”

“I’m sure you’ll want to, before all the stuff goes up for sale.”

“How do you know about that?”

I told him about Lucy and our visit to Gelsey’s to appraise the house, but not about the documents in the secret drawer. I couldn’t see any reason Bob should know the seediest part of Gelsey’s history.

“You know about stuff?” he asked. “What it’s worth and all?”

“Actually, I was just in the house to help Lucy figure out what needs to be fixed up so you can make more money when you sell. But yes, I know a little about collectibles and antiques.”

“Would you know what might be good to pass down? That kind of stuff?”

“Heirlooms?”

“Maybe Gelsey’s grandkids would like something that belonged to her. Maybe it would help them feel like
they
belonged somewhere, you know?”

I was so surprised that for a moment, I didn’t know what to say.

“I could find somebody else,” he said. “To help me. If you don’t want to go back to the house.”

“No, no I’d like to.” Actually I also wanted one more shot at looking for the 8 mm movie, and Lucy wasn’t coming home until midweek. In the excitement of finding the secret drawer, we had forgotten to search the garage. I felt pretty sure if I found the film, I would understand a lot I didn’t understand now.

Maybe even the identity of Jennifer’s father.

Because wouldn’t that be an awfully good reason for Gelsey to fear being seen in a photo with this man? Wouldn’t that be enough of a reason to steal the movie that would make him easier to identify? What other secret competed with this one? What else did she need to hide?

“I could go Monday evening,” Bob said. “I’m busy all day tomorrow. But Monday I could go after we close. We don’t have to stay long.”

Bob was giving me enough time to run an announcement in the
Flow
warning the world I was going to be alone with him in Gelsey Falowell’s house—or at least to tell Ed. This hardly seemed like a death threat.

“Sounds good,” I said. “And I’ll think about it between now and then and figure out what might be good to pass down.”

“Gelsey with a kid. And that woman on your porch the one.” He frowned. “I don’t know if you’ve thought about this, but maybe it wasn’t a coincidence.”

Now why didn’t I think of that?

17

On Monday morning I discovered how Deena had spent her hours in the fort with Maddie Frankel. She came down for school dressed in an old skirt of mine that dipped to her ankles, a dress shirt of her father’s which extended to her fingertips and a stocking cap that covered every inch of her hair. I was sure that across town Maddie was dressed the same way.

“I gather you’re making a statement?” I said as I dished up scrambled eggs.

“We’ve decided you’re right. Not an inch of our skin should show.”

“No Amish mother could be prouder.” I added toast to her plate and set it in front of her.

“We’re all dressing the same way.”

“All being the Meanies? Crystal won’t let Carlene out of the house.”

“We stick together.”

Since I suspected the outer layers covered her usual clothes and would come off behind some hedge on the way to school, I nodded. “You might want to make a will, just in case you die of heatstroke. Teddy will treasure your American Girl dolls.”

“You are so funny.”

“I’m counting on my sense of humor in the years ahead.”

Deena was easier to deal with than Ed. He had gotten home late last night, and right before he turned over to go to sleep, I’d casually mentioned my near-death experience. When he came downstairs this morning he was still angry.

“Aggie, what possesses you to do these things?”

“We’re carrying over from last night’s conversation?”

He poured himself a cup of coffee and held out the pot in question. I shook my head. I noticed he was dressed as if he was going to church, gray pants, green sweater over a subtly striped shirt.

“If you suspected this Keely woman knew something, why didn’t you just tell the police?” he demanded.

“I didn’t suspect. I wondered. Besides, what was I going to tell Roussos? That Brownie bought a birdhouse from a woman who also works at Don’t Go There? Anyway, I knew Keely wouldn’t tell Roussos a thing.” I held out the frying pan. “Do you want scrambled eggs with your argument?”

“I’ve got a clergy breakfast this morning, then I have work to do since I was away the whole weekend.”

“Ed, don’t be mad. It turned out okay.”

“Maybe you need a job you can really sink your teeth into.”

It’s amazing how fast the human species can go from zero to furious. I set a record. I slammed the pan on the nearest burner.

“Why, so I won’t have enough time to sleep, eat, and meddle?”

He sighed and set down his cup. He put his arms around my resisting body. “Listen, you scared me to death. What would we do if something happened to you?”

Back to zero, or someplace nicer.

After Ed left I considered his solution. Actually, I wouldn’t mind a job with challenges and financial security. The girls are in school full-time, I have a good education. It’s just that I’d like to set my own hours, so I can do all the extras that come up. Field trips, Christmas parties, Brownies. Maybe I’ll be able to find an important part-time job in Boston, or maybe I’ll just be forced to do laps on the super-mom track. Neither sounded very good.

I was elbow deep in dishwater when the telephone rang. I toweled dry and answered on the fourth ring.

“Hi Aggie, just following up.”

I recognized George Bentsen. I had called last week to let him know what Lucy and I had found at Gelsey’s house. He’d promised he would tell his PI pal Leo. Now we chatted a moment before he got to the point.

“I don’t have much for you, but Leo did find a little more. Seems Gorgeous Girls started life with a backer. It was a classy operation from the get-go. Nothing low rent about these girls. And you were right, it wasn’t just girls. A warm body for every taste.”

“What kind of backer?”

“Most likely mob related. Leo caught a strong whiff, but that’s about all. It came and went too long ago to dig any deeper without putting in a lot of hours.”

“Wouldn’t Gelsey have a real problem going out of business and moving to Ohio if the mob was involved? I mean, I watch
The Sopranos.
I saw what happened to poor Big Pussy.”

“Maybe somebody had a soft spot for her. Or the folks in charge were sure she would never breathe a word of any of it.”

And of course Gelsey had invented a reputation to protect and a life in Emerald Springs society. I supposed it made sense.

But something
had
happened to her in the end.

I told George about Jennifer and Sax, and my feeling Gelsey’s murder was part of this.

After I hung up the doorbell rang. I have entire weeks that are less intense than this morning.

Roussos was at the door wearing “my” leather jacket. I invited him in, hoping he would take it off so I could misplace it, but he only got as far as the threshold. He handed me a padded envelope. “I think you should be the one who decides what to do with this stuff.”

I peeked inside and saw all the secrets I’d liberated from Gelsey’s chest. “You don’t need this? It’s not in the record now or something?”

“It’s old news. I didn’t see anything that would help our investigation.”

“You don’t want this on file, do you? You’re trying to protect her.”

“A lot of people have access to our files and leaks happen. I don’t see a good reason to share this chapter of the woman’s life with the general public. Of course, if you hold on to that envelope for a while and put it away somewhere safe, that might be good.”

“That’s nice of you.”

“If I thought any of it was relevant, I wouldn’t be nice.”

I folded the envelope to my chest. “Any news yet?”

“We picked up the SUV early this morning. The tests could take weeks. Dubinsky spent a restless night and ate raisin bran for breakfast.”

“You don’t need another detective on the ESPD, do you? Ed thinks I need a job I can sink my teeth into.”

He was still shaking his head when he left.

I had already decided to take lunch over to the church as a peace offering.

Rain was threatening and there was a definite chill in the air. I cleaned out the vegetable bin and chopped everything, throwing it in a pot with water and canned tomatoes to make vegetable soup. Now I had hours to either clean a nearly clean house, find a hobby or job other than detecting, or play with the codes in Gelsey’s book. The decision was easy.

I took hot chocolate into the living room and made myself at home on the sofa. I have a knack for cryptograms. My sisters and I still sign letters and e-mails with code names we invented for each other. Last year Sid’s Christmas card message was written in the alphabet we devised as young teens to hide our exploits from our mother.

I thought it might be interesting to see if I could figure out any of the names of Gelsey’s clients, if indeed their real names were part of the code. Taking into account Gelsey’s lack of education, I doubted any unusual languages were involved. But I also doubted the codes were the simplest variety,
“A”
for
“Z”
etc. She had gone to some trouble to hide this information.

Unfortunately this wasn’t a newspaper puzzle and none of the usual clues were here. There were no single-letter words for clues or repetitious three-letter words like
“the”
or
“and.”
The letters following the nicknames were in groups of five. Gelsey might simply have made up a code at random, substituting one letter for another with no rhyme or reason, then hidden the key somewhere else. But somehow I doubted this. With this approach, losing the key can result in disaster. My guess was that she had used a phrase or name to base the letters on, the way Sid and I had based ours on “we hate Junie.”

I tried “Wanda Ray Gelsey,” which, when identical letters were removed, became “wandrygels.” Using this system
“W”
became
A,
etc. Then everything after
“S”
followed the normal alphabet, omitting letters that had already been assigned a substitute. With this rationale I made a new alphabet and tried to break the code of the first entry, after code name “Hazelnut.”

Three lines into it, I gave up. No pattern had emerged, and I had used up half an hour.

The idea seemed sound enough, although just a shade short of a shot in the dark. I checked the clock and the soup and came back to try some more. Using the same system I tried “Gorgeous Girls,” “Gorgeous Gelsey,” and plain old “Gorgeous.” Again, no pattern.

I tried “Las Vegas,” then “Las Vegas Nevada.” The soup was beginning to smell delicious. The code was unbroken.

Back in the kitchen I was finishing almond butter sandwiches to go with the soup when another idea occurred to me. I had just enough time for one more shot at the code before I took lunch to the church.

Back on the sofa I printed “Grandstand Hotel and Casino,” then decided to try the code with just the first two words. If this didn’t work I’d try the whole thing later.

I removed identical letters and was left with “grandsthoel.” I created my new alphabet, then began the substitutions, and slowly a man named Hazelnut began to emerge. Knute Green, who hailed from the Dayton’s Bluff neighborhood of St. Paul, Minnesota, liked blondes, expected an entire night of pleasure, and paid accordingly. He was a big tipper, with fairly ordinary tastes and a wife with money and no sex appeal.

Or at least that was the condensed version. I stopped translating halfway into it. Clearly Knute Green had told his sympathetic “escorts” enough to make blackmail a cinch. I bet somewhere along the way, the big tips became big payoffs.

I couldn’t believe I had found the key words. I was darned good at this. Maybe the CIA would offer me a job I could “sink my teeth into.”

“Tomboy” turned out to be a businessman named Elton Tompkins, from Murray Hill, New Jersey. I felt no need to translate anything else about Elton. “Tarzan” was some poor guy named Horace. Maybe Johnny Weissmuller had been a favorite at Gelsey’s movie theater in Hollins Creek. Or maybe “Tarzan” liked to pound his chest or swing on vines in the bedroom or call all his escorts Jane. I hoped it didn’t have anything to do with chimps.

I didn’t have time to translate another word because I had wasted minutes patting myself on the back. I probably wouldn’t find anything important here, but at least I had proven that all those years of communicating secretly with my sisters hadn’t been a waste.

I carried the envelope upstairs, leafing through the photos again as I climbed. In my bedroom I stopped at the window and examined them closer. One of the women in the group of three blondes looked vaguely familiar, but probably only because she was trying so hard to look like any number of silver screen bombshells of the period. By the same token, one of the men in the photo at the window looked vaguely familiar, too, but probably because he reminded me of publicity photos of the young Brad Pitt. This one had been snapped with a telephoto lens and was, at best, blurry.

I buried the envelope under my mattress and went back downstairs to pack up lunch.

At the last minute I decided to take Dolly’s scrapbook with me and show the picnic photos to Harry. He had been at the picnic, and it was possible he might remember seeing Gelsey with a mysterious man. The only other person I’d recognized from those photos was Fern Booth, and I preferred to avoid her.

Ed’s office door was closed, and Harry, in a Coogi sweater and black twill trousers, told me Ed was on a marathon phone call. I set the picnic basket on his desk and pulled out the scrapbook, delighted with my luck. I really didn’t want my husband to catch me snooping so soon after our argument.

“Trivia quiz,” I told him. “The year was 1982. The scene, Shadyside Park.” I flipped open the scrapbook and put it on his desk next to the basket. “And here you are. Weren’t you a hunk?”

He raised a brow. “Look at that tan. I must have spent some part of spring in Florida that year.”

“Do you remember the picnic?”

“I remember her.” He put his finger on the woman staring up at him. “She was the daughter of the minister. And she decided I had never married because I just hadn’t found the right woman.”

“It wasn’t a good time to be yourself, I guess. Or a good place.”

“I got tired of the charade and came out of the closet a few weeks later.”

“That was one way to stop her, huh?”

He smiled a little.

“There’s another photo I thought you could help me with.” I flipped the pages. “There’s no caption for the people in the background. Can you identify them?”

Harry leaned over and squinted at the photo of Gelsey and the mysterious man. “That’s Gelsey, isn’t it?”

“I thought it was. I just wondered. I can’t place the man.”

Harry leaned closer. He shook his head slowly. “I’m sorry, Aggie, but it was more than twenty years ago. He doesn’t even look familiar.”

“Darn.”

“You need to go easier on yourself. It’s a good idea to update the archives, but nobody expects this level of commitment.”

I let him think that was the only reason I cared.

Ed finished his call, and I set up our picnic on his desk. Two committees were meeting in the parish house, and we were interrupted three times. Our religious education director needed to be sure that Ed and I liked the design for new robes for the children’s choir. I did, but I was pretty sure my girls wouldn’t.

Sally came in to tell us she was going to serve out Gelsey’s term as chairman of the Women’s Society board. We told her sincerely she would do a terrific job.

As I tried for the third time to tell Ed where I was going that night and why, Harry came in.

He looked distraught. “The spring social committee is frothing at the mouth.”

I brushed bread crumbs off my palms. “In October? Isn’t it a little early for a meltdown?”

“Gelsey took the crystal punch bowl and cups to her house for safekeeping. Now they’re afraid the whole shebang will be sold with the contents of her house.”

I remembered the punch set from the social last May. Huge, beautifully faceted lead crystal. The committee raised money to buy it several years ago and considered it a treasure. And now that Harry mentioned it, I remembered seeing the bowl and cups in a cupboard in Gelsey’s dining room. For once, sticking my nose where it didn’t belong had been a good thing.