Mahjonged (An Alex Harris Mystery) (23 page)

All this time I needed a motive and what better one than having a case not go your way because of something Penelope did or didn’t do. It had to be Liz or Mia. Or Bert or Connie because of the affair. So, okay, I had two good motives. I still felt Bert belonged firmly on the bottom of my suspect list, but Connie finding out about his dalliance with Penelope boosted her to somewhere close to the top.

And then I remembered the picture of the man. How did the picture fit in? Or did it factor into the murder at all? Or was the man Mia’s father. Oh my God! Had Penelope had an affair with Mia’s father all those years ago? Was Penelope Mia’s long-lost mother? Jeez. All of a sudden I had tons of motives and twists and turns at every corner. I needed to calm down. All of this was pure conjecture. I didn’t even know if Liz or Mia had obtained legal counsel or even if a cause of action ever got filed. And if so, had the firm Penelope worked for handled the case for one of the parties? Was there an actual trial or a summary judgment? I was just speculating and I needed to get my facts straight. I also needed to stop using lawyer words.

My sister had some errands to run so she dropped me off at my parents’ after lunch. Dad was taking a nap and Kendall went to a birthday party. Dad left a note saying he took Henry over to Meme’s and so I headed over there.

I had been derelict of late keeping Meme informed of my snooping, but let’s face it, I didn’t have much to report. Until now. Now I had a ton of good stuff to tell her.

“Alex, what are you doing here?” my mother asked without even looking up from the cards in her hand.

“How was your lunch?” Meme asked.

“Delicious. We went to
Soprano’s
and I had cornmeal mush.” I put my purse down and picked up a cookie from a plate on the coffee table.

Meme and Theresa made up one team and my mother and Dorothy the other.

“Where’s Jean? And Henry?” I asked taking in the small but comfortable living room.

“In the kitchen,” my mother said. “Dorothy showed up so Jean’s taking a break.”

Darn. Jean was still here. I didn’t want to talk about my latest discoveries with one of my suspects in the house. Technically, I could probably scratch Jean off my list, but until I had all my facts checked out everyone but my family and good friends were still suspects.

I walked into the kitchen where Jean and Henry busily colored a page in a coloring book. Henry loved to color and so far we were lucky he only colored in books. The walls of my sister’s house had been spared.

“Auntie, look what Mrs. Malansky got for me,” Henry said. I noticed he colored with his left hand and was doing a good job of it. His right arm still gave him a lot of pain but no infection had set in and it was healing nicely.

Jean affectionately touched Henry’s hand. “I lost a pot of coins to your mother. I thought it best to come in here and color before all my money was gone,” Jean said with a smile. She had curled her pale red hair today and I noticed a bit of color on her lips. Getting out and hanging around with my grandmother seemed to do her a world of good.

As long as I had her here, there was one thing I could do. I went back out to the living room and got the picture from the grave and brought it back to the kitchen. It was just a copy and had turned out grainy but it still showed the man’s face clearly.

“Jean, could I ask you something?”

Jean put down the red crayon she used to color a bug and turned to me, picking up her coffee mug and taking a sip. “Sure. What do you need to know?”

“Yesterday at the funeral,” I stopped for a moment and looked at Henry but he paid no attention to us, “when we all filed passed the coffin with our roses did you notice anything?”

“Like what? A person? Do you think the killer was there?”

Well, yes, I did think the killer was there. I
know
the killer was there because it had to be one of us from the party and we were all there, but I didn’t say this to Jean. “No, not a person. Something in the grave?”

Jean gave me a funny look and I knew I didn’t make any sense.

“Here. Take a look at his,” I said as I handed her the picture. “Do you recognize this man?”

Jean brought the picture close to her face and then took her glasses off and looked again. “It’s not very clear.”

“No. It’s a copy. I gave the original to the police.”

“The original? I don’t understand, Alex.”

“I found this stuck under the coffin. I saw it as I walked by and dropped my rose.”

“Maybe it blew in there.” Jean studied the picture once again and then handed it back to me. “I’m sorry, Alex, but I don’t know who it is.”

“Chinese food,” Meme said walking into the kitchen. “We’re going to send out for a bunch of stuff. Henry? Does Chinese food sound good?”

Henry barely looked up. He was coloring animals from the Serengeti, from what I could tell, and they had his full attention. “Yes, please. Egg rolls.”

“You got it, kiddo,” Meme said. “Alex, Jean?”

“Not for me, Meme,” Jean said as she stood up. “My neighbor and I are going to an early dinner and then a movie, but thank you.”

“Alex?”

I had a big lunch but that was over four hours ago. Chinese food sounded great. “Sure. I’ll call Sam and have her bring Kendall over.”

Jean kissed Henry goodbye and then left. I called Sam, and Meme ordered enough food to last for days.

We stuffed ourselves with fried rice, crisp egg rolls, and spicy beef while I passed the picture around. Jean had been kind enough to get a coloring book and crayons for Kendall as well and the kids stayed in the kitchen working on their pictures and eating.

“Alex, if this is the same man as in the picture you found in Penelope’s closet then it must be important to why she got killed,” my mother said. “Dear, pass me another wonton, please.”

“I have another theory I want to share with you,” I began while pouring more tea into my mug. “You all know Penelope was a lawyer and I got to thinking about it.”

“I bet you think she got killed because no one likes lawyers,” Meme said.

“That’s exactly right. Everyone hates lawyers,” I agreed.

My mother shook her head. “But Penelope wasn’t still practicing, was she? I got the impression she retired.”

I took a bite of my rice and then wiped my chin. “According to her stepdaughter, she was of counsel to a firm in New Haven and by a strange coincidence that firm happens to specialize in malpractice suits.” I took a minute to scan the faces around the table to see if this latest revelation registered. Sam had already heard about all of this at noon but the others took a minute to chew it over.

“Liz and Mia,” Meme said.

“Right,” Dorothy said. “Alex, you mean one of them killed Penelope?”

“Well, let’s not get carried away. I don’t even know if Penelope’s firm represented either of them. I’m going to the library tomorrow and see what I can find in back issues of the newspaper. I want to talk with both of them but I want to have my facts first. Plus, I have another idea.”

Henry came hopping into the living room asking for more rice. My sister got up and followed him back into the kitchen with rice and broccoli. The kid loved his veggies.

“Okay, I filled his plate up again so he’s good for another few minutes,” Sam said, as she came back and took her seat on the sofa. “So what’s your other idea?”

I pushed my plate away and picked up my mug. I settled back into the sofa and looked around the room. “What if the man in the picture is Mia’s father? And Penelope was her mother?”

“I thought her mother died?” my mom asked.

I shook my head. “No. She told me her mother left telling Mia’s father she just wasn’t ready to have a child. Her father and aunt raised Mia.”

“How would Mia know Penelope was her mother?”

“Okay,” I said leaning forward, “What if Mia hires Penelope’s firm to represent her when her father dies. Her mother is long gone but all these years her dad has shown her pictures. So she hires the firm and in walks Penelope to represent her and she recognizes her but doesn’t say anything.”

“And then what? She waits for you to have a mahjong party so she can stab her?”

I rolled my eyes at my sister. “No. She comes to the party and then she sees Liz and it gets her all upset over her father and then there’s Penelope and she just can’t take it anymore, thinking about how her father died and how her mother left her. Her vulnerability took over.”

“But Honey, wouldn’t Penelope recognize her own daughter?” my grandmother asked me.

“She left when Mia was a baby. Maybe not,” I said.

My sister shook her head. “No. A mother would recognize her child. If someone took Henry away from me right now and twenty years later I saw his picture, say, on a wanted poster at the post office, I would recognize him in a minute.”

“Stop that! He’ll hear you,” my mother admonished her oldest daughter.

Theresa put her plate down and looked at me. “But Penelope would have recognized the name, Alex. Whether she recognized Mia or not, she would have recognized the name.”

“She’s got you there, honey,” Meme said before she picked up another half of an egg roll.

I thought about this for a moment. If Penelope was indeed Mia’s mother, she would have recognized the name, if not the person. “But maybe she just didn’t want Mia to know she was her mother because she felt guilty about leaving her.” I could see my latest and not-so-greatest theory going down the drain.

“Let’s put aside this scenario about Penelope being Mia’s long lost mother for the moment,” my mother started. “Alex, if Mia had already met Penelope through the lawsuit, they would have acted like they knew each other and they didn’t. I don’t remember Penelope saying,
oh, hello, Mia. Nice to see you again
.”

My mother had a point. “True. Well, how about this,” I said, still trying to make this theory work, basically, because I had nothing else. “What if Mia never actually met Penelope but just knew she worked at the firm and maybe saw her one day walking down the hall but never got introduced to her.”

“Maybe, but you said Penelope worked on a consulting basis. Would she have actually been around the firm very often?” Sam asked.

“Or,” Meme said, “maybe Penelope worked for Liz, not Mia.”

“Right! So Mia saw Penelope with Liz at some deposition or something but Penelope didn’t really take much notice of Mia,” I said, but again without much conviction.

“I don’t know, Alex, I would think a lawyer, no matter which side they represented, would know who the various parties were,” Sam said, and I had to agree with her.

I mulled a few things around in my head while my mother went to make a pot of coffee and boil some more water for tea. Meme had cannoli for dessert which she and Theresa had picked up this morning. Sam took the kids into Meme’s bathroom and got them ready for bed and put them into their pajamas and then popped a DVD into the player in Meme’s bedroom for them.

Once we all settled back in the living room I tossed out my next great idea.

“You know, maybe the lawyer thing doesn’t factor into it at all. Maybe the man in the picture was Mia’s father. Maybe he had the exact same picture in his collection of mementos and Mia saw it at some point and then she comes to my party and who else should be there but the woman in the picture, her mother, who left all those years before.”

“You know, it could work,” Sam said. “Penelope didn’t strike me as the baby type, not with those fancy clothes. I could see her deciding to give the baby to the father and leaving.”

“We’re forgetting about Liz in all of this,” my mother said.

“How so?” I asked.

“Well, I don’t think Penelope was old enough to be Liz’s mother, though you never know these days, but maybe Penelope represented Liz and things didn’t go her way,” my mother shrugged.

“But there again, they would have acted liked they knew each other and they didn’t,” Sam said.

“Maybe they just hated each other so much because of the trial and Liz had had enough and stabbed her,” Dorothy said.

“No, nothing happened to Liz. She didn’t lose her job after Mia’s father died. She eventually quit nursing, but not because she had to,” I explained.

“So if Penelope represented Liz, and then nothing happened to Liz, that would make Mia even more upset over everything and when she saw Penelope she just lost control,” Sam said. “My money’s on Mia. Don’t tell Millie I said that.”

“No. Penelope and Liz gave no indication they knew each other,” I said shaking my head. “If Penelope represented either Liz or Mia, they kept it well hidden throughout the evening.”

“Then maybe you’re right. The lawyer business doesn’t come into play at all and Penelope was Mia’s long lost mother,” Sam said.

“This is just all pure conjecture,” I sighed, my mind getting confused and reverting to lawyer speak again.

“I don’t envy you, honey,” Meme said. Looks like you’re going to be real busy tomorrow at the library.” My grandmother patted my hand and then took a big bite out of her cannoli.

There are a lot of good reasons why I love living in Indian Cove and one of them is, unlike most towns, our public library actually opened on Sunday. The bad thing was it didn’t open until one.

Michael showed up early to pick up his family and Henry told him he thought they should live with Grandma and Papoo, as Henry called my dad, all the time. My sister warmed to the idea what with having my mom cook all the meals and helping out with the kids. Geesh. What a mama’s girl she was.

Who was I kidding? I quite liked being back in my parents’ home as well, having dinner on the table after a long day, having someone to talk to in the evenings in case John had to work late. And I couldn’t forget the laundry. That was the best thing, having all my stuff cleaned and ironed and placed on my bed. If John didn’t hurry up and get home, he was going to find me and all my belongings back in my old room.

So with my partner in crime back to her own home and my parents off to brunch and a movie, I was on my own. I didn’t want to go talk to Liz or Mia until I had more information from the library. I had already shown the picture to Jean, and Millie had called saying her mother didn’t recognize the man in the picture. So now what?