Mahjonged (An Alex Harris Mystery) (8 page)

“Hello?” I called from the foyer as I took off my coat and placed it in the front hall closet. Despite the sunshine, the air felt cold and I had on a pair of jeans and a black turtleneck sweater. Black was my color of choice and I didn’t even want to think about what this said about me. The fact is most people look good in black and wearing black most of the time just made life easier. I was gradually easing in some browns and grays, but black usually won out. I softened it by wrapping homemade scarves around my neck though most of them had black somewhere in the pattern.

“Alex. I wondered when you would show up,” my dad said, coming into the hallway and wrapping his arms around me.

My dad, Harry Harris, was a kind soul with twinkling blue eyes. Everyone in my family was tall, except for Meme, and my dad was no exception. He kept in great shape having a membership to the same club I went to and taking every advantage of it.

“What a terrible ordeal, honey. I’m so sorry about that woman last night. What was her name?”

“Penelope,” I said into my dad’s shoulder. “Thanks, Dad. Where’s Mom?”

“Out shopping for tonight. What’s going on here this evening? I wasn’t told anything, just to leave. I take it that means you ladies are up to no good.”

Luckily he said this with a smile because I wasn’t sure how much I should tell my dad. We had serious business to conduct tonight and if he got wind of what we wanted to accomplish, he would put a major crimp in the evening’s plan.

“Nothing much.” I turned my head because my father could always tell when I was lying.

“Sure. Well, as long as your mother is here, I guess you can’t get into too much trouble.”

“Let’s go into the kitchen,” I said, quickly changing the subject. It may have been my idea to have this little soiree this evening, but my mother had promptly volunteered to host it. And I had seen the gleam in her eyes. Like I had with Meme, I thought I might be turning my mother into a nosy sleuth. Finding dead bodies just did something to a person and my mother was right there last night, front and center. If my dad thought having my mom around would keep a damper on things and keep everyone under control, he was in for a shock.

I led the way down the hall to the kitchen, keeping my back to my dad. “I’m starving and I have a bag of goodies from Kruger’s.”

My parents had recently done a minor renovation of their kitchen. Upgraded stainless steel appliances and a beautiful concrete countertop modernized the room substantially. It looked wonderful but they had managed to retain the same comforting ambience it held before.

After grabbing some plates and a couple of knives, my dad and I settled ourselves at the kitchen table still covered with the same table cloth and napkin holder in the center that had been there for years. Neither went with the new appliances, but I didn’t care. Despite the updates, my parents seemed stuck in the fifties and it gave me comfort.

I piled several slices of liverwurst on a chunk of crusty bread and lathered the other side with so much mustard I could no longer see any bread.

“Hmmmm. I needed this,” I said after swallowing a huge chunk.

My dad placed another slice of tomato on his salami and cheese sandwich just as the door leading out to the garage opened and my mother walked in.

I jumped up and went to help her. “Here, Mom, let me take those for you.” I placed two grocery bags on the counter and turned the heat on under the kettle while I was up.

“Alex, I didn’t expect you so soon,” my mom said as she put her keys down and pulled off a pair of gloves.

“I couldn’t stay in my house one minute longer. If you don’t mind, I’m going to stay here until John comes home.”

“Fine with me, dear. I couldn’t stay there on my own either.”

I spent the remainder of the afternoon cuddled up on the sofa reading the
New Yorker
, while my mom made snacks for the evening and my dad worked out in the yard, clearing branches and debris from the storm.

About a half hour before everyone else was due to arrive, I went into my dad’s home office and found a couple pads of lined paper and a bunch of pens with the name of some hotel or organization written on them. I don’t think my mother ever bought a pen in her life preferring to pilfer them from places she visited.

Forty-five minutes later everyone gathered in the kitchen filling plates with wedges of cheese, crackers, tiny eggrolls my mother fried up earlier, and veggies and dip. Meme brought a large platter of salami, olives and pickled eggplant. I was suddenly very hungry again and had to grab another plate.

After we stocked up on food and Sam pushed Michael and my dad out the door, we all marched into the living room and settled down. Dad had brought in a few more chairs from the dining room before he left and we needed them. I looked around at our assembled cast of characters and hoped I hadn’t included a murder in my invitations.

While we ate and talked I glanced around the room at the others and just like last night, I could find no reason any of these women would kill Penelope. With the exception of Judith. I hesitated asking her to participate, but not including her would upset Millie and everyone else, actually, so I did. I hated entertaining the idea Judith killed Penelope, but whom else? Only Judith knew the woman beforehand. But that wasn’t true. Bert knew Penelope and had problems with her. This made me feel better about Judith. As for the others, they were my friends and family so I mentally removed the rest off my suspects list and wondered what the police would think of my logic.

Then my eyes fell on Sam. Okay, of course Sam didn’t kill Penelope, but I liked giving her a hard time, most probably a subconscious retaliation for all the times she had tormented me as a child. I watched as she ate yet another eggroll, sour sauce dripping off her chin, and smiled. My sister was Henry’s mother and if she could keep herself from wringing his little neck all these years despite what he put her through, I felt certain Penelope could do nothing that would incite my sister to plunge a knife into her back.

So that left me and I knew I didn’t kill Penelope. If I wanted to kill anyone at the party, it would have been Mia with her constant yelling. As I took one more glance around, with the exception of Judith—and I hoped I could scratch her off my list by tonight—I could say no one in this room had killed Penelope Radamaker, which meant only one thing—somewhere amongst the four women I didn’t invite lurked a killer and, with any luck, by the end of the evening we would know which one of those four was guilty.

“
You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word. It is victory. Victory at all costs
.”

Sam gave me an eye roll. “Didn’t you use that one earlier this morning?” she asked me then leaned toward the chair where Judith sat and sighed at Judith’s questioning look. “Winston. Churchill. She quotes him. All the time.”

To Sam’s chagrin, Judith looked impressed and I smiled demurely. If I had a fan, right about now is when I would give it a gentle wave across my face.

“I did, but for the benefit of those who did not hear me earlier, I thought I would say it again.” Sam rolled her eyes again. “Fine. Forget it. You all know why we’re here.”

Mary-Beth placed her plate on the coffee table and turned to me. “Okay, Alex, you told me a bit about what’s going to happen tonight but mostly you gave me implicit instructions on what kind of cheesecake to make.”

“Cheesecake?” my grandmother piped up. “What kind?”

“Chocolate,” Mary-Beth said with pride and well she should. Hers was the best around.

“Not now, Meme,” I said. “We need to get started and then we’ll have cheesecake.”

My mother, who ran to the kitchen for a tray, walked around the room collecting everyone’s dirty plate. Once she finished the clean up, she and Dorothy brought out a pot of coffee and one of tea and placed them in the center of the coffee table, along with mugs, spoons, and sugar and milk. Everyone filled up a mug with their drink of choice and then I passed out paper and pens to all.

“Okay,” I began to an eager crowd. “Penelope Radamaker died in my house last night. What we want to accomplish tonight is to find out the reason why. Other than Judith,” I said turning to look at Millie’s mother and putting a smile on my face, “no one knew her until she showed up. We know nothing about her. Nothing at all. And presumably no one else did either, but yet she was killed.”

“It could have been a mistake, Alex,” Theresa said. “She wore red and so were a lot of the other gals. Liz wore red and Mia sounded like she wanted to kill her. Maybe in the dark she got mixed up.”

“Well, I thought about that, but in the dark how would anyone differentiate colors? Someone had a brown sweater on, and someone had on black. In the dark I think everything would just look dark,” I said looking around the room for confirmation.

“Yes, I guess it would,” my mother agreed. “Though Penelope did have a gorgeous head of red hair, but like with the sweater, in the dark you probably couldn’t tell. So how are we going to figure out what happened?”

“Judith, you’re the only one here who knows anything about Penelope,” I began hoping I didn’t sound accusatory. “Why don’t you give us a breakdown of how you met, tell us anything you know about her and then we’ll go around the room. I think at some point throughout the evening everyone here had a chance to play at least one round with her. Maybe she said something that might give us a clue.”

Everyone nodded in agreement and Judith began.

Judith Chapman pushed her highlighted hair over her ears and leaned forward. Millie looked a lot like her mom but where Millie had darker hair, Judith’s was light and with the highlights she looked more like a blond.

“Well, I met Penelope about six months ago when she started coming to see one of the doctors I work for. At the time of course, I didn’t know what her condition was because I work in the office and I’m not a nurse, but she came in quite a bit and we started talking.”

“Was she real sick?” Meme piped up from her position on the sofa.

Judith considered this for a moment and I got the feeling she felt conflicted about divulging private information.

“Okay, everyone, listen up for a moment,” I said taking control of the conversation. “What we speak about tonight does not leave this room. We don’t go home and gossip with our neighbors about everything we hear this evening,” I said, pointedly looking at Meme and Theresa. “Understood?” After everyone nodded I continued. “Judith, I have the upmost faith in our police department, but they weren’t there last night. I really think something said last night must have triggered this killing because no one knew Penelope was coming to the party, at least by name, until she arrived. So I can’t see how anyone had planned to kill her. She must have said something that meant something to someone, and I get the feeling you don’t want to betray confidences, but we’ve got to find her killer.”

Here’s where I saw a dilemma. If Judith killed Penelope, then she would only tell us stuff which wouldn’t cast suspicion on herself. How would I know if anything Judith said was true or not? I could probably pump Millie at work and see if I got anything out of her which differed from what her mother would tell us, but as far as I knew, Millie never met Penelope until last night. I would take everything Judith said with a grain of salt and figure out how to verify it later.

Judith smiled at me. “I understand. I don’t want to gossip but if this would help catch her killer then I guess it’s okay. And anything I tell you tonight is what Penelope told me herself, as a friend, not something I found in her file.”

Millie reached over from her seat on the floor and patted her mother’s hand and then Judith started again.

“Well, like I said, she started coming to see one of the doctors and every time she came in, we would just talk and eventually, after one of her visits, we went out for coffee and then we did some shopping together and would have dinner a few times a month.”

“So why did she go to the clinic in the first place?” my mother asked.

“Oh, right. Yes, well, her husband had died about four months before she started coming to see the doctor. She told me she tried to cope with her grief but after a few months she still wasn’t sleeping, she felt depressed all the time. She spent most of her days just staying in the house. She knew it wasn’t good for her, so she came to see Doctor Katz and he prescribed a mild sedative for her and she seemed to be doing very well. He also suggested she see a grief counselor and I believe she went a couple of times.”

“But you said she came in a lot?” Sam asked. “And that was how you two became friends. Why would she keep coming in if she felt better?”

“I wondered about it myself, Sam, and I never asked her directly but I had my own suspicions. Doctor Katz is a wonderful doctor. He takes a lot of time with his patients, listens to them, never rushes anyone.”

“So she just wanted someone to talk to.” Meme nodded, looking around the room like she had just solved one of the FBI’s ten most wanted cases.

“Well, I thought so at first.”

“At first? So, that’s not why she wanted to talk with the doctor?” Mom asked, looking a bit confused.

“No. You see,” Judith leaned forward and looked around the room at each woman in turn. “It wasn’t so much she was lonely exactly, it was, well, I think Penelope was a bit of a man eater.”

“A man what?” Meme asked. “You mean she liked to bite?”

My mother rolled her eyes. “No, Mother, Judith means Penelope liked men. She was on the hunt for a new man in her life.”

Meme waved her hand. “Oh, so what? She was lonely. Her husband just died. She just wanted some male companionship.”

“Yes, I think she did but the trouble is Doctor Katz is a very happily married man. He is very good looking and I could see how Penelope was so attracted to him, especially in her vulnerable state, but from what I heard one of the nurses say, she wasn’t too happy about taking no for an answer. It got to the point whenever she came in, even if it was just to talk, Doctor Katz made sure one of the nurses came in the office. He didn’t want any hint of impropriety taking place. Penelope is, was, a beautiful woman and that hair of hers could turn any man’s head, so I wouldn’t be surprised if Doctor Katz felt an attraction, but he’s a good man. It was on her last visit, actually, she and I went out for coffee. I didn’t know at that time about her attraction to Doctor Katz and she never said anything. I only heard afterward. I never brought it up with Penelope and she didn’t bring it up either.”