Moving Can Be Murder (35 page)

But I didn’t. I hope you’re all proud of
me.

The opening night party for the show house
was a huge success.

Sister Rose was thrilled, especially when a
preliminary tally of the night’s receipts showed a gross profit of
$80,000. Wow!

My Beloved and I had hardly seen each other
all night, except across the crowded tent once or twice. But I did
feel his disapproving eyes on me when I raised my hand to bid on a
two-week vacation at a villa in Tuscany. This time, I didn’t ignore
his glare. I was smart enough, after all these years of marriage,
to know which battles to fight, and this wasn’t one of them.

In the crush of people, I lost sight of
Jenny and Mark, which could have been deliberate on their part. I
mean, who wanted to hang out with an oldster like me at a bash like
this?

The music had everybody on the dance floor.
Nancy whirled by in the arms of someone who definitely wasn’t her
husband, Bob. Even Claire and Larry made a valiant effort. Mary
Alice was nowhere to be seen, which wasn’t surprising.

I was just wondering if I’d have to
hitchhike back to our apartment when I felt a tap on my shoulder.
To my amazement, it was Detective Paul Wheeler. “I wanted to thank
you for your tip about Marcia Fischer, Mrs. Andrews,” he said. “You
were right, and I was wrong.”

Whoa. Quite an admission, coming from him. I
started to respond, but he melted away into the crowd before I
could. Of course, being so short, that was pretty easy for him to
do.

Something nuzzled the back of my neck. Then
My Beloved whispered in my ear, “Hey, gorgeous, wanna dance? I
haven’t seen you all night, and the band’s playing a slow one.”

I knew those dance lessons I gave Jim for
Christmas a few years ago would pay off.

So we took it nice and slow around the dance
floor, celebrating this wonderful night. And then we went back to
our apartment and celebrated a little more.

But I’m not going to tell you about
that.

An hour later, I sat in our darkened living
room/dining room/kitchen, Lucy snoring in the chair beside me.
Sleep wouldn’t come, despite the wine I’d had and, um, the
exercise.

So, naturally, I had to replay the events of
the party over and over in my head, especially my talk with Sara
Miller. Something just didn’t fit. Like that cute pair of shoes you
try on in the store, and they are soooooooo comfortable that you
have to buy them, and then you get them home, try them on, and they
hurt like the dickens. Has that ever happened to you? And, oh yeah,
you can’t find the receipt to return them.

I decided to talk things over with Lucy. She
was a great listener, and shared space with me as long as she got
more than I did.

“It was a great party, Lucy,” I whispered.
“Too bad you had to miss it.”

Lucy opened one eye and looked at me
reproachfully. I wasn’t invited, she said.

“Don’t feel bad, Luce. There weren’t any
other dogs there, either,” I said and stroked her head. “And you
and Ethel did go to lots of parties that Jim and I had at the house
over the years, remember? You really loved Bunco parties the best,
especially the leftovers. You got to sample all the neighbors’
cooking. But the kitchen doesn’t look the way you remember it.
Believe it or not, the kitchen counters are red!”

I closed my eyes and pictured my old kitchen
with its bead board cabinets, black granite countertops, and large
center island. A memory, quite unbidden, flashed into my head. The
Bunco party I’d hosted the night I listed the house for sale. All
the neighbors packed around my island, sampling the goodies. Sara
Miller, bragging about her top-secret family recipe, Great Aunt
Sharon’s Marvelous Meatballs. I could hear her saying, “I never use
frozen meat. I buy it fresh every day. That’s why my meals always
taste so wonderful.”

My eyes snapped open. But she’d brought the
Marvelous Meatballs to the party tonight. And she definitely said
she’d had the beef “languishing in her freezer” for a while and
wanted to use it up. This was, pardon the pun, food for more
thought.

“OK, Lucy, by itself this probably means
nothing,” I whispered. “But add to it the fact that Sara’s
son-in-law had a history of domestic violence. She had to know
about that. No matter what she said to me tonight, I don’t believe
that Jack’s basic personality changed when they moved to Fairport.
What if Sara saw Jack abusing Alyssa? As a mother, she’d want to
protect her daughter, right?”

Hmm. How did this fit in with the Marvelous
Meatballs? Because, somehow, I knew it did.

“This is too much for me to figure out
tonight, Lucy,” I whispered. “But I still can’t sleep. How about if
we put the television on really low, so it doesn’t disturb Jim?
Whatever’s on at this time of night is bound to be boring.”

I channel-surfed for a few minutes and
settled on Classic TV. Tonight was a real smorgasbord of shows:
Dragnet, The Ed Sullivan Show, and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. I
might have bags under my eyes in the morning, but at least I was
going to enjoy myself.

“Alfred Hitchcock was kind of a weird guy,”
I told Lucy, since these shows were way before her time, “but he
was a genius, too. You would have loved this one show about the
woman who clocked her husband over the head with a leg of
lamb.”

Holy cow. Was that it? Did Sara hit Jack
over the head with the beef tenderloin and then freeze the
evidence?

Oh, Carol. You’ve really lost it this
time.

What did Sara do? Bring a beef tenderloin to
our house the night before the closing, and during the final
walk-through with their real estate agent, say to Jack, every so
sweetly, “Do you mind standing still for just a minute while I hit
you on the head?” Smack him, and leave?? And what about the
Realtor? Jeez, you’d think she would have noticed something like
that, no matter how fixated she was on getting her commission at
the closing.

No, you’re crazy. You’re way over the top.
You’re wrong.

Except. How about this? I remembered reading
about the tragic death of a young woman a few years ago. She had
been in a skiing accident, fell, and hit her head, really hard.
Initially, except for a minor headache, she appeared fine. But she
died, because the blow to the head had done terrible damage that
the doctors didn’t initially pick up on.

It was possible. Yes, it was certainly
possible. Sara could have witnessed a violent incident between Jack
and Alyssa in her kitchen, and in an effort to save her daughter,
smacked Jack on the head with whatever was handy -- the beef
tenderloin she’d purchased at the market that day. He could have
fallen, even been unconscious briefly, then come to. All apologies.
It won’t happen again. I was out of control. Blah blah blah.

Jack meets the Realtor, does the
walk-through, and appears fine. The Realtor leaves. Jack collapses
in our living room, and dies.

Yes. It was plausible. Just as plausible as
Marcia Fischer. Maybe even more so.

But would Paul Wheeler believe me? Because I
had absolutely no proof.

I had to get some evidence. Because Paul
wouldn’t pay any attention to me if I had nothing to back up my
wild theory.

I looked at the lighted dial on the kitchen
microwave. It read 2:12. That would be a.m., in case you were
wondering. I rapidly calculated that today, Saturday, was garbage
pickup day in our part of Fairport, if residents chose to pony up
and pay the exorbitant fees the local trash haulers demanded. In
our fair town of Fairport, garbage pickup wasn’t included in our
taxes. So residents either went to the dump – excuse me, the
transfer station – or they paid some guys lotsa money to haul away
their trash. I was betting that Sara was of the latter
persuasion.

And if I found a certain cellophane wrapper
from a particular piece of meat, perhaps Paul would take my new
theory seriously. I wasn’t sure if cellophane would show traces of
human blood or hair – yuck! – but it was worth a try.

I need to tell you all something about
English Cocker Spaniels. First of all, they look absolutely nothing
like their American cousins who are -- dare I say it? – much more
common. Think Springer Spaniels, only smaller, and you’ve pretty
much got a snapshot of the breed.

And they eat, well, everything. I mean,
everything. I don’t want to gross you out and tell you about some
of the things the girls’ve chomped on in our yard over the years.
But suffice it to say that Tucker, one of our earlier English
cockers, once ate an entire loaf of whole wheat bread – including
the wrapper – while I was packing our car to go to the beach. Need
I say more? And I’d match their olfactory powers against a
bloodhound’s any day, especially where meat was involved.

So I knew that if I needed a partner in
crime for the upcoming caper – which would involve going through
Sara Miller’s garbage can, placed at the curb, Lucy was my number
one choice.

I had to act fast, because the clock was
ticking and the garbage guys arrived soon after sunup – 5 a.m.

I jumped up from the chair. Lucy growled at
me. She doesn’t like to be disturbed when she’s sleeping. Until she
heard the magic words. “Come on, Lucy. Wanna go for a walk?”

She looked at me. And clearly telegraphed,
Are you crazy? Do you know what time it is? It’s dark out
there.

“Lucy,” I whispered desperately, “I need you
to go with me. It’ll be fine. I promise you. And when we get back,
I’ll give you a treat.”

That did it. She jumped out of the chair and
ran for her leash.

I clipped it on her collar and headed out
the door. In my pajamas. Oh, well, no time to worry about making a
fashion statement. And I was confident that my chances of running
into somebody I knew were slim to none.

“Look casual,” I said as we snuck out the
apartment door. Lucy sent me a look that clearly said, I’m a dog.
What you see is what you get.

Naturally, Lucy took her sweet time on our
late-night walk, stopping to sniff and investigate each blade of
grass and bush along the way. At least, that’s how it seemed to me.
And trying to get her to move once she found any interesting trash
which had been placed along the curb in anticipation of the morning
pickup was a challenge, no matter how much I tugged at her
leash.

Oh, joy. We were finally in front of Sara’s
house and – bummer – no trash can. Sara preferred trash bags, and
there was one large one at the end of her driveway. That meant I
either had to haul it back to the apartment and go through it
there, or do a quick spot check and hope what I wanted was near the
top.

Better get it over with. I knelt down,
opened the bag and let Lucy take a good sniff inside. I was so
intent on my task that when a police officer shone a flashlight on
me and demanded to know what the heck I was doing, I was, well,
surprised.

Who knew going through other people’s
garbage at 3:00 in the morning could be interpreted as criminal
behavior?