Murder on the Bucket List (10 page)

“We talked about this yesterday. You know how nervous you get when you're on television.”

“And remember I told you I'm over that.”

“How many waffles did you have?”

“Two. But I had healthy ones. Whole wheat with extra fiber.”

“Tell me you didn't use the butter pecan syrup with the artificial flavors.”

“Okay, I won't tell you. But they don't taste good without a lot of syrup.”

“You know what that does to your system.”

“I'm fine.”

Francine wasn't so sure. Between the tight girdle and the food, Charlotte was as much of a wild card as the paparazzi on the balcony.

The cameraman called to the assistant producer. “They're too close to the cop and too far from the pool.”

Kurt checked the monitor, then herded the group backward. Francine, Charlotte, Joy, and Mary Ruth shuffled obediently toward the pool.

“I can't swim,” Mary Ruth told Kurt. “I don't mind the shallow end, but being this close to the deep end makes me nervous.”

“We're not asking you to get in.” He clapped his hand over the ear that had the earpiece in. “Ohmigosh. We're going live in less than two minutes. Places everyone!”

Charlotte belched. “Whew. I hope I don't do that on camera. Maybe I shouldn't have had the tofu sausage.”

Francine was aghast. “You had sausage with the waffles?”

She nodded. “Tofu. Have you had it before? It's not very good. I had to drench it in the syrup to make it edible.”

Kurt waved his arms. “One minute. I want to see energy, ladies!” He danced around behind the cameraman, animatedly pointing at his exaggerated smile.

Marcy moved out of camera range, but she was no less animated. “Remember, you're the skinny-dipping grandmas everyone wants to know about!”

“Don't mess this up,” Joy snapped at Charlotte. “Look. You can see yourself in the monitor. Smile.”

Mary Ruth grabbed Joy by the shoulders. “This is awful! I look like a bowling ball with arms.”

Francine checked the monitor. The black catering pants and voluminous polo shirt Mary Ruth had selected were probably not a good idea. Nothing could be done about it now, though.

Suddenly the screen split and the women could see George and Robin.

“It's him!” Charlotte said. She burped and bent over at the waist.

“I don't want to do this anymore,” Mary Ruth said. She inched backward.

“Straighten up,” Joy told Charlotte. Charlotte did what she could.

Kurt held up three fingers. “We're live in three … two … one.” He pointed to Joy, who gave a big, toothy grin.

Francine couldn't hear the questions, but from the monitor she could tell the anchors were enthusiastic.

George must have asked Joy to introduce the group, because she stood to one side and pointed to Francine. Dutifully she put up her hand, waved at the camera, then backed off. That put Charlotte front and center. Mary Ruth, seeming to realize she was next, continued her rearward retreat.

Charlotte held a fist to her mouth. Her eyes were glassy. Francine could hear Charlotte's stomach heave as her name was called. “I need to get to the bathroom,” she said.

Charlotte took off without looking. Francine watched in horror as she plowed into Mary Ruth. The caterer teetered on the edge of the pool for a moment, then plunged into the water. Charlotte tried to regain her balance.

Francine glanced at the monitor. The split screen showed a close up of a terrified Mary Ruth floundering in the deep end. On the other side of the screen, the anchors clearly mistook the wild look in Mary Ruth's eyes. They kept repeating something and throwing their hands in the air in encouragement.

“Help me,” Charlotte screamed. She stretched out her arms. Francine grasped for her friend's hands but couldn't snag them in time. Charlotte fell in.

Kurt was now in full hysteria. “Jump!” he shouted. “Jump in!”

“Why? What are they saying?” Francine pointed in panic to the monitor where the anchors were having a good time.

“They're telling us to show them our stuff,” Joy said. “They want us to get in and pull off our clothes.”

Francine recoiled at the idea.

In the pool, Mary Ruth came out of shock. She clutched at Charlotte, dunking her in and out of the water like a sputtering buoy with silver curls. Francine jumped in the water to rescue her friends.

Charlotte managed to escape Mary Ruth and get over to the side, leaving the caterer floundering. Francine went underwater and came up behind her. She pushed her toward the ledge. Mary Ruth saw the ledge coming toward her and seized it, holding on for dear life.

Joy took hold of Charlotte's arm and pulled her out of the water onto the pool deck. Charlotte leaned up on her elbows. Her wig fell off her head and landed in front of her. With a huge belch, what remained of the waffles and tofu sausage came up all over
her wig and the pool deck.

The paparazzi went crazy.

Francine climbed out of the water, her drenched sundress clinging to her body.

Marcy started to applaud.

And before long, the balcony joined in.

fourteen

“Oh, for heaven's sake,
Charlotte, it was just your nerves, not food poisoning. No one is seriously trying to kill you, although Jud might be contemplating it.” Francine removed the wet washcloth from her friend's forehead.

“Why? I embarrassed myself, not him.” She lay on the couch in her family room, one arm flung over the edge in despair. Her back-up wig, which Francine had retrieved from the bedroom, was slightly askew on her head. “I may die.”

“You won't, but his segment did. After you and Mary Ruth got out of the pool, the whole interview went to pot, and they never talked to him.”

“How would you know that? You rushed into the house to dry off.”

Francine took out her iPhone and flashed the screen toward her. “It's already on YouTube. You want to watch it? I can call it up. We had ten thousand hits last time I looked.”

“Great. It's been all of what, an hour? You'll probably get some kind of lifesaving award.”

Francine took the washcloth into the kitchen to wring it out.

Charlotte hobbled after her, straightening the wig. “Would you use your phone to do a search?”

“When I finish here.” She stood over the sink squeezing water out of the washcloth. “What do you want to know?”

“I want to know more about the Jake Maehler and Friederich breakup,” she said. She moved a couple of books off a chair and sat down at the small dining room table. “I thought about this last night after our meeting. We need a lot more details.”

Francine sat next to her and pulled out her iPhone. She Googled “Jake Maehler Friederich Guttmann.” After scanning the list, she selected a link to the
Hendricks County Flyer
. “I've found the
Flyer
article that came out after the breakup. It's dated June second.” She adjusted her glasses so she could read it. “It's a long article, but here's the pertinent part.”

Brownsburg's hometown favorite, NASCAR driver Jake Maehler, placed fifth after leading most of the race. His car had noticeable problems in the final two laps, enabling four drivers to pass him. Though he initially blamed head mechanic Friederich Guttmann, he later recanted his remarks. He attributed them to his disappointment at being so close and not being able to pull out the win. Guttmann refused to comment on Maehler's initial accusation of sabotage. There's no word on whether the two will work together for the upcoming midget car race at SpeedFest.

“What made Jake call it sabotage?”

She read through the remainder of the article. “Doesn't say.”

“Can you find something on when they got back together?” Charlotte asked. “That was more recent. Maybe the reporter added more when he recapped the first part of the story.”

Francine went back to the
Flyer
's website. They'd posted a lead story online about Friederich's death even though the paper didn't come out until tomorrow. The accompanying photo of him was just a head shot, but it still startled Francine. It had only been early yesterday morning that they'd found him dead. It was difficult to imagine. She read the important parts of the article to Charlotte.

Friederich Guttmann, an employee of Excalibur Racing, has been found dead at the house of Lawrence and Alice Jeffords, according to the Brownsburg police. The 55-year-old man, long known as the mechanic who nurtured local racing sensation Jake Maehler from the midget car circuit to NASCAR, is believed to have disappeared on Saturday. Police checked his duplex on Monday for clues to who might have murdered him. Neighbors say Guttmann's duplex had been up for sale for a month.

“We found the house in order, as though Mr. Guttmann left for the day and never came back,” recalled Detective Brent Judson. “There was no evidence of abduction or foul play. His only family lives in Germany and calls to them have not uncovered any clues as to why he was killed.”

Guttmann had been in the news following the Night Before the 500 midget car race when Maehler, for whom he had built a car, accused him of sabotage. The car faded in the last laps and Maehler lost the race he had led virtually from the beginning, placing fifth. Guttmann denied charges that he had tampered with the car, and Maehler later shrugged off his comments as being “hotheaded.” The two had reconciled recently when Maehler announced Guttmann was rebuilding his car for the SpeedFest race at Lucas Oil Raceway on July 26.

Maehler's sponsors, which included several Brownsburg retail businesses, declined to comment on Guttmann's death, other than to say how sorry they were that it had happened. However, speaking on the condition of anonymity, one representative said they had all been relieved when Guttmann and Maehler reconciled and Guttmann recommitted recently to being Maehler's mechanic for the SpeedFest event. He had termed them a formidable team. He declined to speculate on Maehler's chances now that Guttmann was dead. “I just hope the car was ready to go.”

Police encourage anyone who might have knowledge about Guttmann's death to contact the station.

Charlotte sat back in her chair. “Who wrote that article?”

Francine checked. “The editor. The earlier one was written by Jeff Kramer. I recognized his name. He's the one who usually handles sports stories.”

A china cabinet was next to the table. Charlotte got up and rummaged around in a drawer, finally coming up with pen and paper. She wrote down Kramer's name. “I'll call the paper later and see if I can talk to one of them.”

The animation in Charlotte's face made Francine think she was running through some kind of scenario. “What are you thinking?” she asked.

“I'm thinking, ‘What do we really know about Jake Maehler?'”

“We could check his website.” Francine tapped in Jake's name. The website came up. She scooted over next to Charlotte so the two of them could look at it together. The main page showed Jake climbing out of his midget car, helmet off. The biography page showed him in his driving suit, standing next to the car with the helmet in the crook of his arm.

“Boy, he's a handsome one, isn't he?” said Charlotte. “Let's check his publicity photos.”

“Wait a minute.” Francine scanned the written bio. “Did you know all this about Jake?”

“What?”

She pointed to the screen. “That he had a single mother and that she died of cancer early in his life? That he came here from St. George, Utah, to live with his grandmother and that the two of them eked by on social security? That's so sad. And his grandmother died before he made it into NASCAR.” She read more of the bio that covered how Friederich was a friend of Jake's grandmother and how he'd helped mentor the boy in racing. “No wonder Jake was loyal to Friederich.”

“Yeah, but imagine how Jake would have felt if he thought Friederich was not being loyal when he came back. He would have been angry. Now let's take a look at those publicity photos.”

Francine touched the screen and thumbnail photos of Jake in various settings came up. Several of them had female models. All of them had something to do with a sponsor.

Charlotte reached over and touched one of Jake on the beach. The photograph filled the screen. He was standing next to a woman in a blue flowered bikini, her oversized breasts practically spilling out her top. She had her hands on his bare chest, and he had a smirk on his face like he was used to this kind of attention and enjoyed it. His outfit consisted of surf shorts and flip-flops. They came from a shop in Brownsburg.

Charlotte tapped her cane on the floor. “Boy, I'd like to see that photo on a bigger screen. Look at his abs!”

The two women went through Jake's publicity photos for a few more minutes. His muscular body was captured from virtually every angle. “He doesn't seem to have many sponsors,” Charlotte said, “but he does his best to work them into the photos.”

“What he knows how to work is the camera. I'm not sure I should be looking at these pictures,” Francine said.

“Why not? You read
People
magazine at the beauty shop, and there are always pictures of actors showing off their bodies. I don't think Matthew McConaughey owns a shirt.”

“I guess.”

“And anyway, it's not like Jonathan isn't a hunky husband. If they had a contest for hot men his age, I'd send in his photo.”

“Charlotte!”

“Well, I would. You're a lucky woman.”

“Okay, I am. But these photos feel … exploitive.”

“Not exploitive.
Sex
ploitive.”

“Exactly.”

“So Jake has an image to protect. Can we do anything with that?” She pointed at a photo of him in front of a stock car, sans shirt, working on the car's souped-up engine. “If he wants to show he's worthy of sponsorship, he's probably got to do stuff like this.”

“But he's a race car driver.”

“When Helio Castroneves won
Dancing with the Stars
, it changed everything. Teams need to attract sponsorship money to stay competitive, and Helio proved it doesn't even have to be racing-related. Winning is all about who has the most cash. As long as every team has a
good
driver, money is the differentiating factor. Money buys the car, the technology, the crews.”

“I thought you loved Helio,” Francine said.

“I do. And he's a
great
driver. With him, Penske has the perfect combination. I'm just saying that having a good driver who can attract sponsorship money is way more important than having a great driver who might be ugly or dumpy.”

Francine set the iPhone on the table and mused. “I can see where Jake Maehler would fit into that scenario. So he doesn't have any big sponsors, and he's not winning. We know he doesn't come from a family with money. Far from it. Where's he been getting his money?”

“I'd bet there'd be a few women who'd pay to spend time with Jake.”

Francine frowned at her. “It would be so sad to think Jake needed to resort to being a gigolo to pay the bills. In fact, I don't believe it. He seems better than that.”

“I didn't say he was a gigolo, but you have to be free-thinking if you're going to be a detective. You've got to keep your mind open to all possibilities. Anyway, I'm just trying to wrap my head around this whole thing. We have so few clues to go on.”

“You expected them to just pop up? Do they ever do that in the books you read?”

“Not in the good ones.”

“Then you got the first-class mystery you wanted. You know what they say: be careful what you wish for.”

“Thanks a lot, Francine.”

The grandfather clock in the living room chimed. Francine counted the hours, then double-checked her iPhone. She stood up. “It's ten o'clock! I've got to run. If I'm going to get to the gym in time to catch Jake's trainer before he gets busy, I need to leave now.”

“What'd Crystal the Pistol tell you, besides his schedule?”

“Nothing. I played it low key and didn't ask too many questions. She told me the best time to catch Brady was before he taught spin class, which starts in an hour.”

“Then you'd best go. In the meantime, I'm going to get hold of Jeff Kramer at the
Flyer
. Maybe he can shed some light on what evidence Jake might have had when he described Friederich's actions as sabotage.”