Fit to Die (27 page)

“Thanks for the compliment, dear,” I said to Peter, smoothing my plaster encased arm across my diminished belly. “I feel just terrific, too. We should have thought of this
sooner. If I'd done this in January, I'd look like a sixteen-year-old by now.” He didn't get my point. Lori did, I think. She backed away from my hospital bed, her baby blue eyes going dark suddenly as her pupils dilated.

My love handles were gone, and when I was finally discharged from hospital, I discovered that none of my old clothes fit me any more, which necessitated a couple of trips to the mall. That's where I discovered the Health Food shop and the interesting book on medicinal plants.

Peter was delighted with my newfound enthusiasm for healthy eating and gobbled up my veggie burgers and eggplant supreme. He especially liked the new green salad I'd invented, the one with a secret blend of herbs and spices. I encouraged him to invite Lori over, so I could get to know his “workout buddy” better.

“I can't believe you're being so generous. So understanding,” he said, and invited her at once. Over dinner, she explained that she was serious about retail and one day she would have a Fitness World store of her own.

“Go for it,” I said. “The future is yours, Lori.” In the kitchen, I was very careful to keep Peter's plate separate from Lori's and my own. Although he didn't know it, my husband was on a special diet. When he started to get sick, Lori called me up and asked if I thought maybe Peter should cut down on his workouts a bit. She was really very concerned. So sweet of her. I told her he probably just needed more greens in his diet.

He died in his sleep. The doctor explained that he'd had a massive respiratory shutdown, probably owing to overexertion. “Too much running on an empty stomach,” he'd said, and I'd nodded in agreement. Nobody thought to test for aconite, or monkshood, the pretty flower I had been cultivating in the garden next to the vegetables.

At the funeral tea, I served sausage rolls wrapped with butter-heavy pastry, and smoked salmon on sour cream slathered toast. Horns of phyllo pastry, bursting with fresh berries and kirsch-laced whipped cream jostled for position with profiteroles and drizzled caramel. Everybody we knew came, and everybody said how sad it was that Peter, who was looking so good, had died so young.

Lori was there, dressed in black, her ponytail secured with a black bobble-thing.

“I just knew he was working out too much,” she sobbed. “I forgot how old he was. We were having so much fun together.” She was really so sweet. I patted her thin wrist and offered her an eclair. Over by the stove, Dr. Herb Foote, the fellow who hadn't thought to test for aconite, stuffed a whole cream horn into his mouth and smiled at me. He had love handles.

H. MEL MALTON
is the author of the Polly Deacon mystery series, published by RendezVous Press, including
Down in the Dumps
(1998),
Cue the Dead Guy
(1999) and Dead
Cow in Aisle Three
(2001). She has published numerous short stories, articles and poems in periodicals such as
The Malahat Review, Grain
and
Chatelaine.
She is a great believer in the healing power of rich, high-fat food and doesn't indulge in exercise if she can possibly avoid it. Her two dogs, Ego and Karma, take her for a stagger in the bush twice a day and spend the rest of their time chewing on old manuscripts.

MELANIE FOGEL

On our last Tuesday Scrabble night, Mrs. D. handed me a sealed lavender envelope and asked me to keep it, “in case.” Two days later she was dead.

She was the type who always looked like she was on her way to church: lipstick, permed white hair, twin set and modestly high heels. For years we'd crossed paths in the building, at the mailboxes or in the lobby, never exchanging more than a nod hello. When we finally got into a conversation in the laundry room, she introduced herself as “Mrs. DesRochers.” I countered with “Annie Sapp”—let her figure out my marital status.

“You live in the basement, don't you?” she asked as she pulled folded clothes from a baby blue plastic basket, shook them out and placed them in the washer.

I answered in the affirmative, upending my green-garbage laundry bag into the machine beside hers.

“I guess you don't get much light down here,” she commented sympathetically. “Does the traffic bother you?”

“You get used to it.” What the hell was she after?

When she invited me up to her place to wait while Coin-a-Matic laboured for us, I guessed she was lonely. I prefer a limited circle of acquaintances, and nosy old ladies are pretty
far outside the perimeter. But I was also itchy for another dose of the computer Scrabble game I'd been playing for six straight hours, so to prove to myself I wasn't addicted, I said okay.

She lived on the third floor, overlooking the parking lot. As we approached her door, a bird started chirping. “That's Bijou,” she said, smiling with a pride that could be mistaken for maternal. “He always recognizes my footsteps.”

Her furniture looked like she did: old, solid, highly polished; a Turkish rug for colour and lace antimacassars that probably dated back to the days of hair oil. She greeted Bijou, a turquoise and yellow budgie who welcomed her with an enthusiasm worthy of a Pomeranian, then went into the kitchen to make tea. I took the opportunity to read her bookshelves. Mostly historical romances and royal biographies. And
The Official Scrabble® Players Dictionary.

We spent most of the twenty-two minutes talking Scrabble. I discoursed on the delights of playing against a computer, but Mrs. D. wouldn't take the hint; she wanted a Scrabble date. She preferred afternoons, and I being a self-(i.e. rarely) employed librarian, could have said yes. But I like afternoons for the web, since it's slow in the evenings, so I lied about wanting to be home should a client call. We decided on Tuesday because it's a lousy TV night.

Mrs. D. proved an excellent opponent—better, in some ways, than my computer version, whose sound and graphics lacked the charm of her wit and hospitality. Despite the heavy old furniture, her apartment was bright and airy—a nice change from my Goodwill-eclectic pit. At first I went easy on her, but when she played
mangabey
and
flitch
back to back, the kid gloves came off.

That last Tuesday, she was distracted. Didn't bat an eye when I put
enquirer
on a triple word. During the four months
we'd played, we'd rarely gotten personal, so I didn't ask what was wrong. She gave me the envelope as I was leaving, and I said “sure” without comment. Then, on Thursday, I met the super in the garbage room and he told me she'd died. “Damn!” I said, somehow resentful she hadn't consulted me. Then, “Who's going to look after her bird?”

He shrugged. “She was your friend,” he accused.

Acquaintance, I corrected silently. But she had a couple of my books, as well as a key to my flat, as I had to hers, in case one of us locked herself out. “One of her relatives might take him. If she has any,” I said to a face neither hopeful nor helpful. “If he doesn't starve to death first.”

“Well…” He went back to emptying the blue box. He wasn't going to do anything for a tenant who couldn't tip.

I returned to my flat thinking I'd better retrieve my books before they got packed with whatever her next of kin would be taking. I could feed the bird at the same time.

•  •  •

The super hadn't told me about the police tape. I debated crawling under it, but that wouldn't tell me why it was there. So I called Bernie, the only cop I knew and the man who was likely handling the case, and for a change didn't have to leave a message.

“It's just a formality,” he explained. “I'm sure it was natural causes.”

The paper boy had found her that morning. When she hadn't responded to his knock as usual, he'd tried the knob. Bernie's scenario was that Mrs. D. had fallen, as old ladies are wont to do, and hit her head on the cast-iron radiator.

“C'mon,” I said. “There's nothing by the radiator she could trip over.”

“At that age, you don't need anything. A dizzy spell, your
knee buckles. She wore orthopedic shoes.”

“So? She was healthy as a horse. She used to take the stairs for exercise.”

“Yeah, but at that age. We see it all the time, Annie. Old people. Weak bones.”

“So you're going to save money on an autopsy by chalking her up to statistical probability?”

“No, we're waiting on the autopsy. She isn't high priority.”

Alone people never are, I thought.

“Actually, you might be able to help,” Bernie said. “You ever been in her apartment?”

“Plenty of times.”

“Good. Her door was probably unlocked all night. Get the superintendent to let you in and see if anyone took advantage.”

“Me? Didn't she have one of those ‘in case of emergency phone so-and-so' numbers?”

“You tell me. Apparently she's got a son someplace, but we haven't tracked him down yet.”

“She never mentioned him.” An estranged son wouldn't know if anything was missing anyway. Was I really the only person close enough to her to know? I told him I already had a key and asked if it was okay to touch stuff.

“We don't put tape up for decoration,” Bernie said. But despite the possibility of theft, he was in no hurry to send in the forensic team. “She was old, Annie,” he reminded me.

“What are you saying, Bernie? That she was senile? Because she wasn't. She beat me at Scrabble all the time.”

“She was eighty-two.”

That surprised me. “So what?”

“You sound like you'd rather she was murdered.”

I just didn't want her dismissed. “She wasn't a dotty old lady,” I said.

Bernie paused to grind his teeth or something, then said, “Take a look around, don't touch anything. And don't break the tape,” he warned before hanging up.

Bernie and I had met during the investigation of my nephew Ivor's murder, which got me more involved with family affairs than I'd been in decades. We aren't friends, but he finds my thought patterns useful on occasion. He says my brain's wired differently, so I make connections he wouldn't. I once told him it's an occupational hazard of subject indexers, but only once. I don't want him calling the National Library when he needs a consultant.

I hadn't told Bernie about the envelope; it must have Freudian-slipped my mind. I hadn't even opened it, as if that act would make her death more real, even though—or because—I was pretty sure this is what she'd mean by “in case.”

Because Mrs. D.'s newest piece of furniture dated from around 1952, her flat looked like a scene from a PBS
Mystery!
My eyes zoomed in on the chalk outline under the window opposite her front door, travelled to the big bloodstain by the head, then panned up to the red smear on the radiator. There was nothing in the area she could have tripped over or stumbled against—unless you count sixty-inch shears a hazardous product.

The place definitely looked different, and it wasn't just poor Bijou huddled silent in his cage like a street person in a doorway. The middle cushion of the sofa had a dent in it, something I'd only ever seen after having sat there myself. The doily on the back of the wing chair was off kilter, and the cut-glass ashtray wasn't quite centred on the coffee table. I bet myself that, because of cutbacks, Bernie wouldn't dust for fingerprints unless he had good reason to.

Hands in the back pockets of my jeans to avoid
inadvertently touching anything, I went up to the birdcage and said, “Hi, Bijou.” He looked at me with a baleful black eye. “Guess you miss your mom, huh?” He responded with a slow blink. The cage was uncharacteristically messy, as was the area of carpet it stood on—chaff and gravel and feathers all over the place. Something like my apartment, although not so cramped and literally shittier. The food and water containers were the kind with long tubes that you filled from the top, and my conscience eased when I saw they were far from empty.

I scanned the room from this angle. Bijou's cage stood about three feet behind the wing chair, and three feet in front of and to the side of the window over the radiator. I tested the distance. Mrs. D. might have stumbled on her way to talk to the bird, but she couldn't have hit the radiator. In the light coming from the window, I could see smears in the ashtray, as if it hadn't been properly wiped. Maybe Mrs. D. made an extra effort when she expected company, but that didn't sound like her. She'd struck me as the kind of person who ironed nightgowns.

Bijou hopped off his perch for a snack, and I noticed his water cup had things in it I couldn't, and didn't want to, identify. On the assumption the cops would skip dusting the birdcage, I removed the container to clean it, but in the kitchen, the gleaming sink and counter tops needed protection. On TV the cops always use a handkerchief; I figured the kitchen towel would do.

There was no kitchen towel.

In the bathroom, there was no bathroom towel.

Who steals towels?

•  •  •

“Not everybody ties them through the fridge door handle,”
Bernie told me when I called him. I hadn't realized he'd taken in so much of my flat the couple of times he'd been here.

“She had one with roses on it that was strictly decorative,” I told him back. “Even that's gone.” I'd confirmed that after I returned to Mrs. D.'s apartment, having cleaned and filled Bijou's water container at my place.

Bernie mulled that over a moment. “Nothing else missing?”

“Hard to say, since I couldn't touch the doors and drawers. But she must have had a visitor.” I told him what I'd spotted. “Unless your people sat on the sofa or used the ashtray.”

“Or she did.” He sounded insulted.