Decorated to Death (10 page)

“Yes, Mrs. Daggert, it’s Jean Hastings. You know darn well who I am, and no, I am not wearing a disguise. My hair has always been this color, well, almost always, and these are precription sunglasses. Now let me in. I telephoned Mr. Bordeaux and he said it was okay for me to drop in on him. If you don’t open the door right now, I’ll tell your boss that you’re up to your old trick of telling fortunes again. I’d like to see you talk your way out of that.”

My threat worked. The massive front door slowly creaked open and I was ushered into the foyer by the eccentric housekeeper. Dressed from head to toe in black and with strands of colored beads in her stringy coal-black hair, on her neck, and around her waist, Lucrezia Daggert looked like a gypsy in search of a crystal ball.

“Wait here,” she croaked, tottering off in the direction of Horatio’s office. “And don’t move ’til I tell you, otherwise you’ll disturb the spell I put on you. I may be old but I still got the power.”

Less than a minute later, I heard Horatio’s deep laughter followed by Mrs. Daggert’s announcement that Mr. Bordeaux would see me now.

“Come in and close the door,” instructed Horatio. “That way we won’t disturb Mrs. Daggert. She’s recently taken up yoga and is into meditation.”

“I think she’s into more than that. If I were to guess, I’d say the cooking sherry. Why you put up with her, I’ll never understand. I practically had to promise her my first born to get in to see you.”

“Now, now, Jeannie, there’s no need to exaggerate. I think your problems with Mrs. Daggert stem from your misinterpretation of her sense of humor,” scolded Horatio with a twinkle in his eye.

“Okay, you win. The woman is a laugh a minute. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, I came to ask for your help in a very important matter.”

“Why do I have this feeling that it has something to do with Dona Deville’s murder,” said Horatio as he maneuvered his wheelchair closer to his desk. “Fortunately, I’ve got a bit of free time on my hands so I’m at your service. Why don’t we start with you giving me a brief summary of the case as you see it so far. That way I’ll have a better understanding of how I can be of help.”

That’s what I like about Horatio Bordeaux. He always cuts to the chase. With his unruly mop of salt-and-pepper curls, deep-set eyes, bushy beard, and wild taste in clothes, he has the look, and the credentials, of someone who has seen and done it all, from marching in 1963 with Martin Luther King Jr., to witnessing, firsthand, the 1989 destruction of the Berlin Wall. How he had time to party at Woodstock, ride horses in Ireland, and graduate with honors from Princeton is Horatio’s secret.

An hour later, I was on my way to Kettle Cottage with Horatio’s promise that he would get back to me ASAP with the background check on Vincent Salerno.

“I’m back,” I called out to Pesty, who was tucked under the kitchen table. She had her head resting on one of Charlie’s running shoes. Somehow she’d managed to get into the upstairs bedroom closet, find the shoe, and bring it down to the kitchen. For a dog who refuses to fetch any item that isn’t edible, going through all that trouble demonstrated how much the little Kees missed her master.

Sitting down on the floor, I called her over and gave her some one-on-one attention. I also told her how much I missed Charlie. Putting our two heads together, we both cried until I heard the sound of Mary’s car coming up the driveway.

“Come on Pesty, Aunt Mary’s here.” When the little ball of fluff failed to respond, I added, “You know, Pest, the lady with the purse-load of sugar cookies.” Still nothing.

Dragging Charlie’s shoe by the lace, Pesty crawled back under the round oak table. It was obvious to me that in Pesty’s mind, if she couldn’t have Charlie, then she would settle for the next best thing—something of his. In this case, it was his running shoe.

“It’s okay, girl, I understand,” I said to her as I gently pushed the shoe beneath her chin. “Maybe when I go to bed tonight, I’ll try it your way. If it works for you, then maybe it’ll work for me.”

Mary plopped herself down in the nearest kitchen chair, kicked off her white sandals, and yanked her white denim skirt up past her dimpled knees. “Dear God, it must be at least a hundred degrees out there. I forgot to leave the windows of my car cracked open and when I got in it after visiting with Charlie, the seats were so hot that I thought I was going to melt. By the time the air-conditioning cooled the car down, I was pulling into your driveway.”

“Hey, tell me about it. The AC in the van hasn’t worked since Memorial Day. But you know what they say—it’s not the heat, it’s the humidity. Would you like a bottle of water or ice tea?” I asked, moving toward the refrigerator.

“I’ll have what you’re having,” Mary replied, mopping her face with a white, lacy handkerchief, “that is, if it’s not a cup of coffee and a cigarette. How you can do that when it’s so hot is beyond me. That husband of yours is as bad as you are.”

I was about to pour two glasses of lemonade to go with the cheese and crackers when I realized what Mary had said. “Charlie had coffee and a cigarette? I can’t believe it. He hasn’t had a cigarette in over a year. How could he do that in the hospital of all places? Like everywhere else in this town, Garrison General is a smoke-free zone.”

“Who said anything about Charlie smoking? Honestly, Gin, sometimes you jump to the craziest conclusions. I only meant that Charlie had a cup of coffee when I was visiting him. One of his golf buddies brought a whole carry-out container of mocha lattes from the Koffee Kabin.”

“Golf buddies! Don’t tell me, let me guess. You spent the entire time watching golf on TV and never had a chance to talk to Charlie.”

“My stars, how did you know? Denny was there, too. It wasn’t all that bad. I managed to take a little nap between golfing bouts or whatever they’re called. I woke up right in the middle of somebody getting a hole in one. The way everyone carried on, you would have thought it was like a home run or a touchdown.”

“So what you’re telling me is you never had a chance to say anything to Charlie or talk about the Deville case and see how much he knows about my involvement in it?”

“Yes and no. I did tell him about our stumbling on the body. I thought that was a nice way of putting it. He didn’t seem very surprised. The only thing he asked was if you were upset about not getting the contract with Dona Deville. He never said anything about your being involved with the investigation. Apparently Martha Stevens, who seems to be in charge of Charlie’s rehab and physical thereapy, told Charlie that her husband Rollie has everything under control.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” I replied, lighting a cigarette. The last thing I needed was to have Charlie getting into a snit about my investigating Dona’s death.

“Of course, he wanted to know where you were today so I said you had a really bad headache and asked me to visit in your place.” Mary popped a cheese-topped cracker in her mouth and closed her eyes, savoring the blended flavors.

“And he bought that? He didn’t have anything else to say?” Knowing Charlie as well as I do, I found it hard to believe that he fell for the old headache bit. I had to wait until Mary took another gulp of lemonade before she regained her power of speech.

“Nope, that was it. Oh, he did say something when I was leaving. He said to tell you that pretty is as pretty does and that includes noses. Pretty silly, huh?”

“Whatever,” I replied. Well, at least I knew that he knew I’d stuck my nose into police business once again. Fortunately, thanks to the bee that stung Denny, my husband was not in any position to interfere in my ongoing investigation. But I also knew that I hadn’t heard the last of it from my husband. The only bright cloud on the horizon was that Charlie was in no condition to retaliate and our son-in-law, Matt, was too busy with his own case to be bothered with the Deville murder.

“Come on, Mary, drink up. We still have time before dinner to drop by Abner Wilson’s place. Last Saturday morning, he might have been out by the cottage doing what ever it is that he does with the equipment or painting stuff he keeps in the old barn and shed. It’s possible he overheard or maybe saw something that might help solve the case.”

“Okay, I’m done,” said Mary, draining her glass of lemonade. “Your van or my car?”

“If you don’t mind, let’s take your car. Like I said, the AC in the van is on the fritz. I don’t know if you’re right about today’s temperature, but it sure feels like it’s a hundred degrees.”

Reaching down to Pesty, I gave her a loving pat and a cracker loaded with cheese. I felt relieved to see that, in spite of her depression, she managed to eat the treat.

Once we were settled in Mary’s car, I sat back and waited for the cool air to do its thing. We hadn’t gone more than a couple of blocks when I knew the answer to the heat dilemma Mary encountered when she drove from the hospital to Kettle Cottage.

Drawing on my vast, unending supply of patience, I requested that Mary “turn off the bloody seat heaters,” which she did. The rest of the short trip to Abner Wilson’s house on Fourth Street was cool, quiet, and comfortable.

“We’re in luck,” I told Mary as we circled the block for the third time, “somebody up near the corner just pulled out. The space is big enough for a semi.”

Since Mary doesn’t exactly excel in parallel parking, she was relieved that, without any help from the two college boys who’d stopped to watch, she maneuvered the little PT Cruiser into the vacancy, leaving only a short walk from the car to the curb.

With summer in full swing, there was a noticeable drop in the number of college kids in and around Seville. The few who remained all seemed to be living on Fourth Street. Situated between two Victorian-style fraternity houses was a nondescript brick two-flat. It was one of several that had been built in Seville during the early decades of the twentieth century.

Mary and I had positioned ourselves in front of the screen door and were patiently waiting for someone, anyone, to answer. There were two doorbells to choose from and both were marked with the name Wilson. I assumed that because of his age and gimpy leg, Abner would most likely live on the first floor, so I had pushed the lower bell. Thinking the old man might not have heard it, I gave it another, longer push.

“Yo, lady, give it a rest. My uncle ain’t home and I’m trying to cop some z’s up here.”

Looking up from the tiny square of cement that was more of a stoop than a porch, my gaze fell on a young man whose unkempt long hair hid his face as he leaned out over the waist-high, second-floor sill of the opened window. From my vantage point, he looked as though he wasn’t wearing any clothes. It was only when he straighted up and turned away that I caught a glimpse of his low-riding jeans.

“Hey, come back here,” I ordered the retreating figure. “Where’s Mr. Wilson?”

The young man returned to the open window. “How the hell should I know? Do I look like his keeper?” he bellowed before disappearing from view.

If the twentysomething guy wasn’t a drama student, he should have been. Mary agreed with me when I said if our local theater group ever decided to put on a production of Tennessee Williams’s
A Streetcar Named Desire
, he would be perfect in the role of Stanley. I could almost hear his tortured and tortuous cry of “Stella!”

We were about to return to Mary’s car when I caught sight of Abner Wilson’s battered old truck turning the corner onto Fourth Street. I waved as he zipped past the house. He either didn’t see me or was deliberately ignoring me.

With Mary close on my heels, I threaded my way through the backyard jungle of rusted car parts, plastic bags of empty aluminum cans, and the skeletal remains of an assortment of nonworking household appliances. When the elderly handyman, and I use the term loosely, brought the ancient pickup to a halt in the alley behind the Fourth Street house, Mary and I were on hand to greet him. It was something the old grouch didn’t seem to appreciate.

“Hi there, Mr. Wilson,” I called out to him in the most pleasant voice I could muster. “If you’ve got a minute to spare, I’d like to ask you a couple of questions.” I followed the request with my best Doris Day smile.

The old man was having none of it. “Ain’t you got somethin’ better to do than bother me? Seems to me, you should be home where you belong and that goes for your friend, too. Women,” he said as if it were a bad word. He emphasized his contempt by spitting out a mouthful of tobacco juice. The disgusting brown liquid landed about two inches from my open-toed shoes. “We shoulda never given you the vote.”

It was clear to me that the cantankerous elderly man was doing his best to draw me into an argument. It wasn’t easy, but I ignored his caustic comment and obnoxious behavior. Instead, I folded my arms across my chest, looked him in the eye, and asked him straight out if he’d been in the vincinity of the old cottage Saturday morning.

Squinting his eyes and rubbing his chin, he seemed to be giving my question some serious thought. “Last Saturday, you say? Nope, never went near the place. How come you’re askin’ me somethin’ like that? What are you tryin’ to do? Take over the police chief’s job? I already told ’em I wasn’t there.”

Since I had the answer to my lead question, I saw no point in asking the second one about seeing or hearing something out of the ordinary. I also saw no point in sticking around Seville’s version of Green Acres.

I thanked the quarrelsome handyman for his time and was about to leave when he said something that stopped me dead in my tracks.

“If you see that Salerno fella, tell him if he knows what’s good for him, he’ll stay the hell off my property.”

“Salerno? Vincent Salerno? What are you talking about? I said, nearly knocking Mary into the wringer apparatus that dangled dangerously from the rusting remains of an old washing machine.

“That fella came snoopin’ around there yesterday afternoon. Being that it was Sunday, I was out at the barn. At first, he said he was interested in buyin’ a used ridin’ mower. That’s mostly what I do out there. I fix mowers and tractors.”

Reaching into the back pocket of his greasy bib overalls, Abner Willson pulled out a small, dented flask. Removing the cork from it, he wiped the top the container with the sleeve of his dirty work shirt and took a long drink.

“What did he say or do that makes you think he was snooping around?” I asked. “It could be that he really was interested in purchasing the mower.”

“Nah,” the old man replied, “if that was the case, then how come he didn’t buy it? You couldn’t beat the price. I was practically givin’ the damn thing away. Instead, he kept askin’ me questions about Saturday mornin’ around the time that the Deville woman was killed. I keep thinkin’ about it. That man was up to somethin’, you mark my words.”

My feeling that the bodyguard and his alibi were key to the case returned stronger than before. I watched as Abner Wilson once again lifted the flask to his lips. But this time he didn’t stop until the flask was empty. The liquor worked fast. Slurring his words, the handyman attempted to revisit the subject of a woman’s place in society.

“Come on, Mar, I believe this is where we came in,” I said, grabbing her with my one arm and waving good-bye to an oblivious Abner Wilson with the other. “If we hurry, there’s one more stop I’d like to make before I call it a day.”

“Oh, do you want me to take you to the hospital so you can visit with Charlie?” asked Mary as we climbed into her car. “That’s no problem. In fact I was going to ask if you’d like to have dinner with me and Denny tonight. He’s taking me to that new restaurant over in Springvale. Our reservation isn’t until eight thirty, which gives you plenty of time to visit with Charlie before going to dinner with us.”

“Thanks but no thanks. To begin with, the stop I was referring to is the Birdwells. You can just drop me off at Kettle Cottage. And in regard to your dinner invitation, if it’s all the same to you, I’ll take a rain check on it. Pesty’s down in the dumps and I think she needs some TLC, so I’m having dinner with her. I thought I’d surprise her and have Milano’s deliver her favorite meal—lasagna with meat sauce and extra cheese. Oh, and a pint of spumoni. She loves spumoni.”

“What’s with the stop at the Birdwells? Don’t tell me you’re going to confront Mr. Salerno. My stars, that could be dangerous. If he is the murderer, what’s going to stop him from killing you? Maybe not right then and there, but later when you’re not expecting it. You should wait until you hear from Horatio before doing anything like that. At least then you’ll have a better idea of who and what you are dealing with, for heaven’s sake. Use that brain of yours that Charlie is always bragging about.”

And that’s what I love about Mary. Just when I think she’s a real bubblehead, she comes up with better advice than TV’s Dr. Phil.

“Okay, you win. Home, James,” I said as I lit a cigarette, opened the passenger window in the car and wondered if the little Kees would enjoy eating in the dining room for a change.

As things turned out, I didn’t have to make that “one more stop” after all. Instead, the mountain (or in this instance, information concerning the mountain) came to me.

I’d almost finished clearing away the remains of the Milano’s dinner when, to my surprise, Ellie Halsted called out my name as she knocked lightly on the back door of the kitchen.

“Come on in, it’s open,” I called out, forgetting that while it was true for the top half of the Dutch door, the same could not be said of the bottom half.

Because Ellie was a first-time visitor to Kettle Cottage, she found my invitation to be rather confusing. Tossing the empty spumoni container in the trash compactor, I hurried over to the door, unlatched the lower portion, and welcomed the girl into the kitchen.

My idea of treating Pesty’s depression with two of the little Kees’s favorite things, food and attention, worked. It was a truly pesty Pesty who greeted Ellie Halsted with a series of happy barks and the usual demand to be noticed and petted.

“Gosh, I love your kitchen and the colors you used—antique gold with touches of chocolate brown, crimson red, and apple green accents. I feel as though I’ve been transported to Tuscany. The walls look absolutely ancient, and I mean that in the nicest way,” Ellie remarked.

“Why thank you,” I said, pleased that nearly five years after the makeover, my kitchen still elicited positive comments from visitors.

I invited Ellie to sit down, which she did on the padded window seat. “I’ve always dreamed of having a window seat like this but somehow it never worked out. Mother and I had very different ideas when it came to home decor. I’ve always favored American country while Mother preferred Scandinavian.”

“Oh really? Is that what she had in mind for the old cottage?” I asked, curious to know if what I’d hoped to do with the place would have jelled with Dona’s ideas.

“Yes,” Ellie replied, “she wanted the entire interior paneled in white, bare wood floors, modern furniture, and no window treatments of any kind. She also wanted to put in a sauna, an exercise room, and of course, an outside deck complete with a huge hot tub. She said that she wanted the place to look as though it had been plucked from a rural town in Sweden.”

“If you don’t mind me saying, I think your mother missed the mark and confused Scandinavian practicality with modern minimalism, but that’s neither here nor there. I’m sure that you didn’t come here seeking decorating advice. So what’s on your mind?”

Ellie sighed as she reached down and gently stroked Pesty’s furry coat. “Oh, Mrs. Hastings, I hate to bother you and all, but I’ve asked everyone else and you’re the last person left. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Ask me what?” I said, stealing a quick look at the kitchen clock. I had to watch my time if I was going to visit Charlie. The hospital visiting hours were from one to three in the afternoon and from seven to nine in the evenings. So far my visiting record left a lot to be desired.

“When was the last time that you saw Vinny, you know, Mr. Salerno?” Ellie Halsted’s face reflected the concern that I could hear in her voice.

“Let me think a minute. I guess it was yesterday at the Sunday breakfast buffet at the Birdwells. Why?”

“Because,” said Ellie, shaking her head as if she herself could not believe what she was about to say, “he’s missing.”