One Hot Mess (9 page)

“Who are you?” she repeated.

The pistol was short and black, but I'm told guns can kill you no matter what their size and ethnic background.

“My name's…my name's Beatrice,” I said, and found that for the literal life of me I couldn't remember my declared surname. Damn it!

“You're lying,” she snarled, and leaned toward me. The gun muzzle wavered a little. “What are you doing here? Who sent you?”

“What? No one sent me! I just—”

“Why can't you leave her alone? Why couldn't everyone just leave her alone?” she blurted, and suddenly she was crying, sobbing like a heartbroken child. She lowered the gun muzzle and wilted to the ground. I glanced toward my Saturn and considered making a dash for it. It seemed like the sensible thing to do. But my would-be attacker had slumped onto her elbows, weeping into the perfectly manicured bluegrass.

“Hey,” I said again, voice tentative enough to suggest I really wasn't nuts. “You okay?”

“No.” She was shaking her head. “No.”

I glanced toward my car again, thinking Harley was probably crazed with the need to save me, but not so much as a whisker showed through the window. “Can I do anything? Get you a glass of water? Call a friend?”

She glanced up, face etched with sorrow. “He sent you, didn't he?”

I chanced a careful step closer. “Who's he?”

“Her old man. She was married for…” She choked a laugh. “Jesus, for twenty years. 'Til Jess went off to college. She stayed with him 'til then, but even after that—” She shook her head.

I eased cautiously onto the grass beside her. “After that what?” I asked, but maybe she didn't hear me.

“I was always so proud of her. Smart, pretty, successful. Always wanted her to be proud of me, but…” Her voice trailed away.

I was nodding. I don't know why. “Do you think he had something to do with her death?”

She blinked at me, eyes shiny with tears. “What?”

“Her ex. Do you think he had something to do with your sisters death?”

She stared at me a full five seconds, then laughed out loud. The sound was choked and watery. She wiped her nose on her wrist, leaving the gun on the grass as she settled back on her haunches. “Who are you and what do you really want?”

I pondered that for a moment, glanced at the car, and decided I was more likely to be rescued by a swarm of wild bees than my ever-faithful hound. “I just…1 was hoping to find out how this happened.” I motioned weakly toward the garage. “Kathy's death.”

She staggered to her feet. “You a cop?”

“No.” I rose, too, thinking it might be a good idea to be upright in case she started taking potshots at me.

“A private investigator?”

“I'm a psychologist,” I said.

“Are you kidding me?”

“Sometimes it surprises me, too,” I said.

She scowled at me for an instant, then turned away and walked into the house, leaving the gun on the lawn and the door open behind her.

I stood there for a good three minutes wondering what a normal person would do, but I hadn't encountered a lot of normal in the past… well, lifetime, so finally I picked up the gun between my forefinger and thumb, turned, and followed her inside.

The house was as cute as a Cabbage Patch Kid. Carefully framed period photographs graced the entry. The walls of the kitchen were papered with tiny rows of flowers. Geraniums bloomed in the window above the sink.

The woman with the chestnut hair sat sprawled on a slat-back chair near the table, face blank, hand wrapped around a coffee mug.

“You take yours black?” she asked.

It took me a minute to catch up, but when I did I set the gun on the counter. “I don't drink coffee,” I said.

She glanced up as if startled from her sorrow. “Ever?”

“Not unless it's banned by the Diabetes Foundation.”

The shadow of a grin crept across her haunted face. “Who sent you?”

I pondered that for a second. “An old friend of hers asked me to look into her death.”

“So you really didn't know her?”

I shook my head, and she laughed a little.

“She always said I was too damn jealous, but she was so…” She drew a deep breath and gazed into the living room. The hardwood floor gleamed like honey. An untrimmed tree looked strangely naked against the bay window. “…so amazing. I told her I'd have to be crazy not to be jealous.”

I don't know why it took that long for the lightbulb to flash on, but it finally did. “So you were her…”

She waited for me to finish the sentence. I floundered around like a beached mackerel for a couple of stupid lifetimes and finally came up with “… partner?”

Her snort was neither ladylike nor polite. Standing up, she went to the coffeepot and refilled her mug. “God, that's a stupid term. It sounds like we were in harness together. Kat and Queenie.” She chuckled. “Not bad names for draft horses.”

She was babbling.

“I'm sorry. I just didn't—” I began lamely, but she was waving it off.

“It's all right. No one could figure out what to call us, even if they knew. And hardly anybody knew.” She was gazing past the geraniums through the spotless window.

“Why not?”

“'Cuz of Shithead.”

“Her… ex?” I guessed.

Taking a long plastic container from the refrigerator, she removed the cover and set it in front of me. Rows of shortbread stared back at me.

“Who's the friend?” she asked.

“I'm sorry?” I said, startled from my observation of the cookies. Shortbread's almost good enough to turn me Scottish.

“The friend who sent you—who is it?” she asked.

I didn't know how much to say, but she had been kind enough to refrain from shooting me. “His name's Miguel.”

She took a cookie, sat back down, and nodded as she ate. “Do you think I'm psychotic?”

“What?”

“I'm relieved that it's a man.” She sighed. “You're a shrink, right? Does that make me psycho? That I still care even…” Her voice watered up. She cleared her throat.

“I think you've been through a terrible shock.” When in doubt, spout gibberish.

She nodded again, jerkily. “The neighbor found her. Should have been me. I should have been around when she was in the shop, but she was usually so careful. Wore a face mask. Kept the blade shields in place.” She winced, fighting tears.

“Were the shields still in place?”

She cleared her throat. “No. She must have been having trouble with the saw again. Must have thought she could fix it herself. Could…” Her voice broke. She fought for control and won. “I should have been here, but she … she didn't want to live together. Said her daughter wouldn't understand. But it was really because of Shithead.”

“Her ex.” It would be nice to have one solid answer.

She nodded.

“Was he causing her trouble?”

“He used to—you know, name-calling, lots of yelling. But things have been quieter lately. She said she wanted to keep it that way, for Jess. Didn't want to cause a scandal. Like this is the Middle Ages or something.” She winced. “Kat hated confrontations.”

While this woman had no qualms about pointing a gun at a perfectly nice, if somewhat deranged, stranger. Love's funny.

“How long had you and…” I paused, stumbling over the words again.

“We were lovers,” she said.

“Of course. Yes.” Geez, I was a trained professional. And an adult. And generally not retarded. “How long were you lovers?”

“Six years.”

Wow. And I thought it something of a wonder that Harlequin and I were still together after a few months.

“I wanted to get married. Skip off to Vancouver and make it official, but she thought the announcement might show up in the paper. I told her if she loved me she'd do it. But I know she loved me.” Her brow wrinkled. “I know it.”

Doubt showed in her eyes. I wondered, perhaps uncharitably, if she had doubted enough to kill.

“So her relationship with her ex was pretty serene?”

“Nothing overt, but he always resented the fact that she'd ruined his perfect life.”

“How so?”

“They were the ideal family. Him a”—she made quotes in the air with her fingers—”real estate tycoon. She the perfect wife, the perfect mother. Then she ups and files for divorce.”

“How long ago was that?”

“Seven years. The town was abuzz.”

“Did you know her then?”

“I'm from Frisco. Just moved here after Crazy Bet.”

“Bet?”

“My ex.”

I nodded, wondering about Bet's gender but managing to keep my curiosity to myself.

The kitchen went quiet. The cookies watched me. The gun did the same.

I screwed up my nerve. “Do you think her ex-husband was somehow involved in her death?” I asked.

She stared through me. Tension bloomed like Canadian thistles. Her lips twisted up in a smile, her eyes narrowed. “God, I'd love to see him swing.” She said the words through gritted teeth with enough venom to make my skin crawl, but finally she drew a breath and focused on me as if just remembering I was there. “No,” she said. “It was bad luck. Just dumb, bad luck.”

HAD RARELY SEEN more vitriol stamped on another's face, and yet Queenie had been certain her lovers death was an accident. Why? Had Kathy had some sort of medical condition that made such an incident more likely? Or was Queenie simply unable to consider anything more heinous?

Questions roamed around in my head as I pulled away from the big Victorian. I told myself to head home, to let it go, but I found myself, instead, at a McDonalds. A sign on the door spoke of employment opportunities and promised to build the leaders of tomorrow.

Harley and I shared a Big Mac. I ate most of it; I've seen
Super Size Me
and try to be a responsible mom. But he was
still hungry after the burger, so we decided to share a cone. “Hey,” I said to the leader of tomorrow who was slumped behind the counter. I was banking on the fact that small-town folk would be acquainted with one another. “Do you happen to know where Kathy Baltimore lives? I ordered a chair from her a couple months ago and was hoping to pick it up today.”

I was blindly fishing for information, but she just stared at me with all the energy of a catatonic loggerhead and shrugged. Tomorrow, I decided, was in big-ass trouble.

I returned to my Saturn, where Harley and I continued our lunch. I ate the ice cream. He had the cone. Neither of us ate the paper wrapper.

After our meal, we turned toward home, but I couldn't quite force myself to leave town. Instead, I stopped at a little shop called Flower Power. I roamed amongst the greenery and fake rocks for a while, wishing my thumb wasn't as black as a politician's soul, until a gray-haired lady with appropriate-size hips finally ran me to ground.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“Ummm, yes, how much is this…” I pointed to the nearest plant but couldn't think of a word for it.

“That's a dracaena,” she said.

“That's right,” I agreed, and nodded judiciously. “It'd look just perfect on the oak stand I ordered from Kathy Baltimore.”

Her face froze. “I hope somebody already told you.”

I gave her my Oscar-winning blink. “Told me what?”

“Kathy passed away just a few days ago.”

“No!”

“I'm sorry. Did you know her well?”

“Not at all. I'd just ordered the one piece from her.”

“It was a terrible shock for everyone.”

“How awful.”

“It was. A terrible tragedy. She was such a lovely woman. Had a beautiful house on Parsley Street. Fixed it up herself. Filled it to brimming with geraniums and old turn-of-the-century photographs.”

“How did she die?”

“Well, you know she had the shop.”

I nodded.

“They said she fell into her saw. Just passed out and all of a sudden toppled forward.”

“Oh God.”

She shuddered. “It makes me just sick to think about it. Fran says there was blood everywhere.”

“Fran?”

“A neighbor.”

“Don't tell me she found her.”

“Oh, no. Eldred Ernst found her. He lives next door to her. Said the saw had been running for a week. Probably went to complain. Eldred's…” She shook her head. “Well… I don't like to speak poorly of anyone.”

“So she was dead when he found her?”

“Oh, my, yes.”

“When was that?”

“Tuesday night. I didn't find out until Wednesday morning.”

“And the saw had been running for a week?”

“That's what Eldred said, but he's such a… Well, I don't like to bad-mouth anyone, but he once called the police because Maxie ran through his yard. Called the
police.
Said Maxie was a menace.”

“And Maxie is …”

“My schnauzer. Wouldn't hurt a flea.”

“So how long had the saw really been running?”

“I can't say” she said. “But it's a terrible shame. A terrible shame.”

I moved on. Everyone I met agreed it was a terrible shame, except tomorrow's leaders, of course, who were catatonic.

Remembering Queenie's words about Kathy's marriage, I looked in the housing section of the local paper. Kevin Baltimore, real estate tycoon and shithead, had four properties listed. I circled the picture of a humble little split level and drove to his office.