Moving Can Be Murder (28 page)

“Do you want to go to the collation, Mom?”
Jenny asked me.

“Collation? What’s that? I haven’t heard
that term before.”

“That’s when the people who’ve attended the
memorial service meet the family and express their condolences. The
church ladies usually serve tea, finger sandwiches, and
desserts.”

No way was I pressing my luck. So far Sara
Miller hadn’t noticed my presence, and I wanted to keep it that
way.

“We’d better skip that,” I said. “I think
we’ve done our duty.”

“Let’s go out the side door,” Jenny
suggested. “Everyone else is headed the other way.”

We made our way through the throng of people
with several muttered “Excuse me’s” and eventually found ourselves
outside, at the back end of the church, near the meditation
garden.

One other person had left the memorial
service the same way. She looked just as surprised to see us as we
were to see her.

It was Mary Alice.

I shook my head just a tiny bit as we hugged
and said our hellos, and hoped Mary Alice got what I was hinting at
– that Jenny had no idea about her connection to Jack. After all,
it wasn’t my place to share that information with anyone, even my
daughter.

“It was so nice of you to come to support
me,” I babbled. “Jim didn’t think I had any business being here,
but I felt it was something I had to do. If I’d known you were
coming too, we could have all sat together.”

Jeez. Was this making any sense? Even I
thought I sounded pretty stupid.

Mary Alice, smart cookie that she is, picked
up on my words immediately. “I figured you’d want to be here out of
some misplaced sense of responsibility. Me, too. I’ll always wonder
if I could have saved Jack that night. If I’d just looked in the
window and seen him lying there.”

“It’s very interesting to hear you say that,
Mrs. Costello,” said a male voice from behind us.

I turned around and …good grief. It was
Detective Paul.

“You mentioned a misplaced sense of
responsibility. I wonder if you meant to say, a sense of guilt.

“The medical examiner has determined that
Jack Cartwright’s death was not an accident. Somebody smacked him
on the head and left him there to die.

“I hope neither of you ladies,” Paul said,
glaring at Mary Alice and me, “have any travel plans in the near
future. We’re definitely going to want to talk to you both
again.”

“Don’t look at me that way, Mother,” Jenny
said to me, peering at me over her Maria’s Trattoria menu.

Mary Alice had developed a major migraine
after our confrontation with Detective Paul and begged off having
lunch with us. No wonder. Talking to Paul was liable to give
anybody a pain in the head, neck, and various other body parts. He
certainly was a cop who enjoyed lording it over people any time he
got the chance. And when you coupled that with my fear that he’d
discover the connection Mary Alice had with Jack Cartwright, well,
there wasn’t enough Advil in the world to relieve that stress
unless I wanted to risk a massive overdose.

I ignored my daughter’s comment and
concentrated on the menu.

“I’m going to have the fruit salad with baby
greens and gorgonzola cheese,” I said. “No point in having a heavy
lunch when we’ll be eating at the preview party tonight. Maria’s
doing the catering, you know.”

“Don’t try and change the subject,” Jenny
said. “I know what you’re plotting. And I’m not comfortable doing
it.”

I opened my baby blues as wide as I could
and feigned an innocent expression.

“It makes me nervous when you call me
Mother,” I said. “Like I’m in trouble or something. What happened
to good old Mom?”

“You were very quiet on the way over here
from the church,” Jenny said, “and I could tell the wheels in your
head were turning. I know exactly what you were thinking. And I’m
not comfortable with what you’re going to ask me to do.”

She sighed. “But I’ll probably do it anyway.
Go ahead, spring it on me. I’m ready.”

“Honestly, Jenny, I don’t know what you’re
talking about,” I protested. “What do you think I’m going to ask
you to do?”

“Call Mark and see if he’ll tell me anything
about the police investigation into Jack Cartwright’s death.
Without putting him into a conflict of interest situation. And
don’t deny you didn’t think of it. I know you too well.”

Actually, I hadn’t gotten that far in my
plotting and planning process. But it was a good idea. A very good
idea.

“And I’ll bet you also e-mailed Mike and
asked him to start an Internet search on Jack Cartwright, just like
he did last year when Daddy was in trouble.”

“You may not believe me,” I said, handing my
menu to the waitress after placing my order, “but I hadn’t thought
that far ahead.”

“You’re slipping, Mom. Just so you know, I
already e-mailed Mike and asked him to check out background info on
Jack. I got an automatic out-of-the-office response, saying that
Mike was temporarily away from Cosmo’s and would be back in touch
soon. Any idea what that’s about?”

Thank God, I was back to being Mom
again.

“No clue,” I said. “I haven’t heard from
him. But I’m sure he’s fine. At least, I hope he is. He’s been
known to maintain radio silence for a few weeks, and then get back
in contact. I refuse to worry about that.”

Liar, I thought. You will worry about it.
Just not right this instant. Too many other things preceded Mike on
my current worry list.

I frowned, remembering my recent
conversation with Mark. “As far as Mark is concerned, when he
stopped in to see me…”

“Whoa. Wait a minute,” Jenny interrupted.
“When did you see him? You didn’t tell me that.”

“There’s been a lot going on,” I said in my
own defense. “I intended to tell you. Mark stopped by the apartment
a few days ago to apologize for what he said about Jim and me. And
also to ask for help in getting you back.”

Jenny’s eyes took on a dreamy look. “He
really asked you for help? What did you tell him?”

“I suggested to him that the best way he
could win you over would be to get me off Detective Paul’s suspect
list. He said that since it wasn’t his case, he wasn’t sure how
much he could do.

“Maybe you should follow up with him, Jenny.
What do you think? If you want to call him, it’s a perfect excuse.
Especially now that it looks like Jack was, well, you know.” I
couldn’t bring myself to use the word murdered.

“I don’t need an excuse to call him, Mom,”
Jenny said.

“As a matter of fact, we’ve already made up.
I couldn’t stay mad at him for long.”

Jenny grinned. “Mark’s so easy to be with.
Even our fights are fun. He’s so different from Jeff. What a
control freak he was.”

My maternal antenna immediately went up.
Take it easy. Don’t push her.

“Did I tell you that I’ve decided to write a
piece on domestic abuse in Fairport?” I asked. “It seemed like a
natural, since the show house is benefitting Sally’s Place. I’m
hoping the local paper will run it as part of the show house
publicity.

“I interviewed Sister Rose about the
problem, and some of the things she told me came as a huge
surprise. And I talked to one victim, who’d suffered abuse from her
boyfriend when she was only a teenager. I guess I’m pretty naïve. I
never realized it could happen to someone so young.”

I paused and took a sip of water. The
question I wanted to ask required very delicate phrasing, something
that’s definitely not my specialty.

I decided to risk it.

“I don’t mean to be nosy, sweetie, but,
well, you’ve mentioned several times that Jeff was kind of a
control freak. Did he…well…did he ever…?”

“I see where you’re going with this, Mom.
And the answer is no. He was a jerk, and always thought he knew
more about everything than I did, including what I should do with
my life. But I wouldn’t call it domestic abuse.”

I sat back in my chair. Phew. I would hate
to think I was as stupid as Marcia Fischer’s parents.

“Sorry if you think I’ve overstepped my
parental boundaries, Jenny. I guess after some of the things I’ve
heard from Sister Rose, I see domestic abuse possibilities
everywhere.

“Now, tell me, what’s up with you and Mark?
That is, if you want to tell me.”

Jenny laughed. “Talking about Mark and me
isn’t off limits for you, Mom. As long as I get to stop the
conversation whenever I think you’re getting too nosy. Deal?”

I nodded my head. A little info is better
than none, right?

“We’re not completely ‘back together’ yet,
but we’re going to the show house preview party as a couple
tonight. It’ll be our first official date since our fight.”

“I’m glad you two are working things out,” I
said. “And if you can find out any information about the Cartwright
case at the same time, that’d be great. I didn’t care for Paul’s
suggestion to Mary Alice and me about not having any travel plans
in the near future. We’ve both been above board and completely
honest with answers to all the questions he’s asked us.” Thank God
he hadn’t asked Mary Alice more pointed questions. So far.

“I hope Paul won’t be at the preview party
tonight.”

“The police weren’t on the official guest
list,” Jenny said. “Why should they be? This is a party, not a
trial. Don’t worry about Paul showing up. The only reason Mark will
be there is because he’s my date. I heard the event’s a
sell-out.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Everyone wants to get a
peek at the scene of the crime. Now that it’s officially a
crime.”

The server had just given us our lunch, and
it looked delicious. My fork was about halfway between the plate
and my mouth when a young man approached us and said, “Excuse me.
Aren’t you Carol Andrews?”

I squinted at him. “Do I know you?”

“I’m Rich Reynolds from Channel Seventeen.
The police have just made a statement calling the death of Jack
Cartwright a homicide.

“I’m wondering if you have any comment about
that? Since you discovered the body. In your house.”

Good grief.

Chapter 29

When life gives you lemons, turn it into
lemonade

and mix it with vodka.

“Who the hell are all these people and why
are they parked in front of our house?” Jim groused as our car
crawled up Old Fairport Turnpike. “I can’t even get into my own
driveway. If you hadn’t dithered so long about what to wear, we
would have been early.”

“Until the show house is over, it isn’t our
house,” I reminded him for the umpteenth time. “And if things had
gone the way they were supposed to, it’d be the Cartwrights’ house
now.”

I decided to ignore his dig about my taking
so long to get dressed, because he was right, darn it. I had
limited wardrobe choices since most of my “good clothes” were in
storage. I finally settled for wearing the same black suit I’d worn
to the memorial service, but I jazzed it up with some sparkly
jewelry I was lucky enough to come across in one of my suitcases.
And everybody in the New York metropolitan area knows that black is
THE official party color, no matter what season it is.