Mahjonged (An Alex Harris Mystery) (28 page)

I followed Reuben even though I already had my own copy in my purse.

“See? Right there.”

I looked at where Reuben pointed but didn’t see much.

He opened a small drawer in the center of the desk and pulled out a magnifying glass. “Right there, on that small plaque at the corner of the building. I can’t make out any of the words except one. Kerk. It means church in Dutch.”

I took the magnifying glass from his hands and sure enough it said Kerk. How had I missed it? And even if I had seen it, I would have no idea what it meant.

“Of course, it doesn’t have to be the Netherlands. It could be some other Dutch-speaking country or it could even be in the U.S. in some Dutch community somewhere.”

“No, I’m sure it’s Holland. Amsterdam.” I thanked Reuben again and left him to finish closing up the funeral home.

As I drove through the quiet streets of Indian Cove I thought about this latest revelation and realized with a jolt it didn’t mean a thing. So what? Penelope had a picture of the man, the two of them together with a canal in the background and it had very obviously been taken in Amsterdam, or at least a big city in Holland. So why did the fact this picture also originated in Holland seem odd?

And then it hit me and I almost swerved across the center lane into oncoming traffic, of which, luckily for me, there was none at this hour.

If the Mystery Man picture from the grave was taken in Holland about the same time as the picture I found in Penelope’s room, and from the look of the guy he seemed to be about the same age in both, then how did it get in the grave? Penelope was dead and couldn’t put it there herself. But it must have come from her collection. There must have been more pictures of Mystery Man in her house that I never found.

But someone did. And that someone had to be Els or Wilhelm. Or maybe Bert.

The next morning I sat at the kitchen table talking to my husband on the phone. I almost forgot the sound of his voice. He had good news. They had the part, the mechanic felt better and they were sure they could be on their way home in the next day or two.

Okay, so I didn’t actually sound overjoyed, which drew a few nasty looks from my mother, but I knew once he came home, my investigation would be shut down. Not to mention John had no idea someone had been killed in our home. Come to think of it, my marriage might be shut down as well. Maybe those rumors going around town were a premonition of things to come. I couldn’t dwell on the state of my marriage right now. I had a murderer to find and not much time to do it.

After my revelation last night I wanted to drive right over to Penelope’s home and ask Els about the picture, but good sense and proper manners made me change my mind. I warmed to the idea she had tossed it into the grave. The problem was she probably did it out of spite—finding more pictures of Penelope with a man not her father just pushed her too far—and not because she had killed Penelope.

But at least if I knew Els put it there, or maybe Wilhelm, then I could rule out Mystery Man and I could concentrate on other leads. What exactly were my other leads? With a start I realized I didn’t have any. I kept putting all my eggs in the Mystery Man basket. Now, if Bert found the picture in Penelope’s things that would be better. The fact he rummaged around in her stuff and was angry enough to toss the photo in her grave would mean he was mad enough to kill her. But if Bert found the picture, how would he have known it wasn’t a picture of Pieter? How would he know anything?

“Damn!” I slammed my hand on my placemat sending my mother’s piece of toast from her plate to the table.

“Alex, what the heck is wrong with you? And why weren’t you nicer to John?”

I looked properly chastised. “I was nice to him. I just want him to take his time getting home. You know, I don’t want him to drive too fast and get into an accident.”

“Who do you think you’re talking to? Somebody you just met? You want to continue putting your nose into things you shouldn’t.”

She had me there, but as I recall she attended the gathering on Saturday night helping to sift through clues. As a matter of fact, we had the little shindig right here with her hosting. Of course, I wasn’t about to throw this in her face lest the piece of toast get tossed into mine.

“Don’t you want to know who killed Penelope?” I asked while munching on my English Muffin.

“Of course I do, but I believe the police will find out in due time and with John back, it will probably happen sooner than later. He’s very good at his job.”

My mom got up and turned the heat on under the tea pot just as Sam came in with Henry.

“Hi, Grandma.”

My mother’s face brightened as she wrapped her arms around Henry.

“You smell so good this morning,” she said nuzzling Henry’s head of deep brown hair.

“Mom washed my hair with coconut shampoo. It leaves it shiny and easy to manage.”

“Tell Grandma the good news. You’ll be able to go back to school next week,” Sam said.

My mother’s face instantly drooped, as if someone had stuck a fork into it and let out all the air.

Sam put her hand on Mom’s shoulder. “He has to go back sometime.”

“I know,” my mom said, trying to hold back the tears.

After a few minutes my mom and Henry left the kitchen. They had completed a puzzle the day before and wanted to glue the pieces down so Henry could hang it in his room.

“Mom and her little boyfriend. He’s so attached to her.”

I sipped my tea, cradling the cup in my hands. “We were just like that with Meme.”

“Still are,” Sam said with a smile. “So. What’s on your agenda for today?”

I told her what Reuben found out about the picture and that John was coming home soon.

“Yikes. You had better hurry up and solve this thing.”

“Do you think there’s something wrong with me? I mean, getting so mixed up in murder?”

“No, cops do it all the time.”

“That’s their job.”

“Maybe you should have been a cop. You just got sidetracked with opening up our business,” Sam said, always the voice of reason.

“I just want to do the detective part. I don’t want to get shot at or anything,” I said as I wiped crumbs from my chin.

“I don’t think you get to pick and choose,” my sister said, grabbing the last bit of my English Muffin.

I stood up and smoothed down my skirt. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a murder to solve.”

Sam, with a mouth full of muffin, gave me the thumbs up sign before I left.

With my car idling, slowly emitting more pollutants into the atmosphere, I sat there trying to gather my thoughts. Okay, I needed to go over to see Els and find out about the picture. Of course, I already asked her and she said no, she hadn’t found any more pictures of Mystery Man in the house, but she could have been lying. Once again I asked myself why. If she had found more pictures and got mad and tossed one into the grave, big deal.

I gripped the steering wheel with both hands and gently banged my head on it. I didn’t need to bug Els any more. She had enough to do with selling the house and trying to get rid of all of Penelope’s stuff. I already asked her and she already answered. End of story.

So now what? I could almost feel John getting closer to Indian Cove and then my operation would be closed down. Think. I needed to think. I took the picture from my purse and gave it another look.

The picture I found in Penelope’s things showed another side of Mystery Man. In the picture he looked happy. Like maybe they had been out for a picnic or sightseeing in the city. In this picture he looked bored. Of course he could have just been tired of having his picture taken all over Holland, but it was obviously a different day as he had on different clothing. In the picture I found he wore a coat. The other, just a button-down shirt. So in one the weather was clearly colder than the other. Boy, I could really figure things out.

Something in my brain tingled. A thought started to form but then dissolved just as quickly. All of a sudden my car moved down the driveway. My subconscious took over and I pulled onto the street and headed over to Meme’s.

My grandmother and her gang where in full swing. Meme, Theresa, and Francis Haddock sat at the kitchen table playing three-handed pinochle.

“What brings you over so early in the morning?” Meme asked as soon as she finished making me a cup of Earl Grey.

“John should be home in a day or two and I can’t figure this thing out.”

“You better hurry up, honey. He’s not going to be too happy and wait til he sees the house and all the crime scene tape.”

“I feel like something is starting to come together and I just can’t focus,” I said, leaning back in my chair and crossing my arms.

Three white-haired little ladies stopped playing and looked at me. Then Meme got up and took a pad of paper out of a kitchen drawer and sat back down.

“Let’s go over everything again. You tell us everything you remember and I’ll write it down,” Meme said, all business-like.

Theresa reached across the table and grabbed the pad and picked up a pencil next to her cards. “Meme, no one can read your writing. Let me do that. You help Alex remember stuff. My memory’s not what it used to be.”

Francis Haddock put up a hand and got up and walked into the living room. A moment later she returned with Meme’s laptop. Yes, my grandmother had a laptop and a wireless Internet connection. Sam and I bought her the laptop for her last birthday and she had promptly installed the Internet service and proceeded to find every card game known to man out there in cyber space. Sometimes she stayed up all night playing cards online with people in other countries.

And obviously Francis knew what she was doing. I watched in awe as the woman powered the thing up and opened up a blank Excel worksheet. Who were these people?

“I could type eighty-eight words a minute back in my day,” Francis said. “You start talking Alex, and I’ll enter the data into columns under each of the suspect’s name. Then we can create a pivot table or apply a filter and see what comes up.” At my stunned expression Francis smiled. “I like to keep all my household accounts in order. I also like to keep track of all the books I read by author so I don’t buy books I already read. You forget a lot of stuff at our age,” she said and Meme and Theresa nodded their agreement. “Excel works wonders.”

I should probably have consulted these three sooner, I thought with a sigh. Maybe the killer would already be behind bars. I got up and refilled the kettle, leaning against the counter until it boiled. That done, I took my second cup of Earl Grey back to the table and thought. “Okay, we have five suspects,” I began. “Liz, Jean, Mia, Connie, and Bert. All agreed?”

“Well, we know it wasn’t any of us,” Meme said looking around the table, “and your mother can get real uppity when she loses a game but I can’t see her stabbing someone over it. And Dorothy wouldn’t hurt anyone and neither would Millie or her mother, Judith.”

At the mention of Judith I wondered if I had been negligent in my sleuthing. Judith brought Penelope to the party in the first place and was the only person there who had a personal relationship with her so who better to have a reason for killing the woman? But the only reason I could fathom was jealousy over the doctor and nothing had panned out on that front. I mentally slapped myself. I eliminated Judith because she was Millie’s mother. I don’t think the police would do that. And then I brightened. The police wouldn’t do that. They would investigate her and look at her with total objectivity and they obviously hadn’t come up with anything either. I was in the clear, but maybe another visit to Judith was in order anyway.

“And your friend Mary-Beth is such a nice young woman. I’m sure she didn’t do it. She didn’t even know the lady who got killed. None of us did,” Theresa said bringing me out of my thoughts.

“So that’s everybody. It had to be one of the five,” Meme said with authority.

“We’re forgetting about Sam. She was there, too.”

My grandmother looked at me. “Well, now, maybe we have a sixth suspect.”

We let that hang in the air a minute and then had a good laugh at my sister’s expense.

“Where shall we start?” Francis asked with fingers poised over the keyboard.

“Just start talking, honey,” Meme said. “Tell us everything you talked about with everybody, tell us where they live and everything you can remember about their houses or offices. Maybe something you saw and forgot about is the missing piece of the puzzle.”

It sounded like a good plan and so I began talking while Francis’s fingers flew over the keys. And after several hours we had compiled enough information on each of the suspects worthy of a CIA terrorist operation.

It was too bad Francis Haddock didn’t want a job, because I could keep her busy forever. The woman truly had amazing skills. Not only had she listed all my ramblings by suspect but she had sub categories based on home, personality, possible motives, etc. She even managed to figure out who played with whom for most of the hands on Friday night. She made a few moves and the data all sorted itself out quite nicely. I could now compare what I had learned about each person next to another or I could look at one person’s total profile at a glance.

I must admit I felt quite pleased with myself for gathering so much information. Up until now I felt I didn’t have anything, but from the looks of it, I had plenty. I just needed to figure out what it all meant.

“I think we need some food before I look through all of this,” I said to the group.

“I have some soup in the freezer but not much else,” Meme said as she stood gazing into an almost bare refrigerator. “Theresa, we need to go shopping tonight.”

“I’ll call Sam and invite her over and tell her she has to bring lunch,” I offered as I picked up the phone and dialed Always Prepared.

Forty-five minutes later my sister showed up with tons of sandwiches, containers of soup, and some cookies for dessert. While we ate I pulled the laptop over and kept looking at the data hoping something would pop out at me.