Organized to Death (10 page)

“There’s got to be an interesting story behind all this,” Tina said. “Are the rest of the rooms still furnished?”

“Yeah. As I said, spooky. As if some family took off one day and never returned.”

“I wonder if Dr. Stevenson’s parents lived here? I bet that’s it.”

“Probably. And he just never did anything when they passed away.”

“How strange,” Tina mused, thinking at least the clothes should be cleared out. “We went to him from the time I was little. Never noticed anything odd about him. He did seem really big on preventative medicine. Always insisted on yearly checkups, shots up to date, that sort of thing. How about your family? Did you go to him?”

“No, we used Dr. Cohen.”

Toward the rear of the house, the room adjoining the master suite was fully furnished, as well. It appeared to Tina less dusty. It was obviously decorated for a man, with blue-and-white-striped upholstered chairs in one corner, a dark cherry-wood writing desk in another, and a four-poster bed against one wall. But there were no personal items or clothing. It had its own sleeping porch, which was furnished with a sagging couch and a wicker table. Another huge closet and large private bath completed the suite.

Two more bedrooms with no personal items, perhaps guest rooms, were across the hall. They had a connecting bath and were as dusty and cobwebby as the first room they’d investigated. All the drapes had been left open in these rooms.

At the back of the second floor, another room extended the entire width of the house. Empty shelves lined three walls. Two wicker chaises with faded flower-printed pads faced a fireplace, small drum tables at the right of each one and floor lamps slightly behind to illuminate reading material. The only odd thing in the room was an old-fashioned, four-drawer wooden file cabinet tucked into a corner. Tina walked over to it and tried a drawer. Locked. She wondered what secrets it might hold.

They stood, looking at the room, Tina fingering the worry stone in her pocket. “I wonder what Dr. Ted has in mind for all this space up here,” Tina said.

“I don’t know. Seems wasted, doesn’t it?”

“Yes. And an attic. Have you been up there?”

“No.” Sylvia shivered. “This is spooky enough.” She gave a little laugh.

A cobweb swung from the overhead lamp, and Tina felt as if a spider were crawling down her spine. “Let’s get out of here. I think I’ll only come up here on bright, sunny days! With an escort.”

Sylvia giggled nervously.

They rushed down the stairs, and Sylvia put the gate back in place. They gathered their purses and went outside, both taking great gulps of the fresh, ocean air. Sylvia carefully locked the door, and they said a quick goodbye.

Tina drove the few short blocks home, wondering why Dr. Ted hadn’t used the house as intended by Dr. Stevenson. It appeared that Dr. Stevenson had lived upstairs in the one suite, keeping the one with clothes and personal items as a shrine to his parents. Not exactly mentally healthy. And Ted had bought a condo in another old, converted Victorian down the street from where she lived. Strange. But then, she’d thought Dr. Ted seemed strange from the first time she met him. Now she had begun to think the same about Dr. Stevenson.

Her thoughts turned to dinner. She wondered who would be cooking tonight. It had been a long day, and she wished she could look forward to a well-cooked meal. Well, she still hadn’t eaten the Milky Way bar. She could eat it later, in her room.

At home Uncle Bob puttered in the kitchen, and Princess lay in her usual place in the corner. Her tail thumped as Tina entered, then she stood up to alert Uncle Bob that someone was in the room. He turned from the stove and gave Tina a huge smile. “How was your day, Kumquat?”

“Different,” Tina said. “I went from cleaning and organizing to checking out the upstairs, which was pretty spooky.”

“Hold on a second while I add some spice,” Uncle Bob said. He chose some basil from the rack and added just a bit to the tomato sauce simmering on the stove. It smelled heavenly. Tina sighed with relief. Spaghetti. Unless the spaghetti was way overcooked and the garlic bread burned, dinner would be fine. She would remind Uncle Bob to use the timer for the pasta, and Princess would alert him to its ring.

They sat at the table when he was done.

“You have your hearing aids in.”

“Yeah. I was hoping you’d be here soon.”

“Where’s Mother?”

“Upstairs.”

“Then the gang’s all here.”

“Yep. Maria just left.”

“Did she break anything today?” Tina stood up, opened the refrigerator, and pulled out the orange juice.

“What?” Uncle Bob said.

Tina turned to him. “Sorry. I asked if she broke anything today.”

He grinned at her. “Some gewgaw from your great-grandmother’s time your mother couldn’t bear to part with.”

Tina felt a twinge of guilt. The first thing she could remember Maria breaking had been a scary shrunken head brought back from Africa by one of her mother’s great-uncles. Tina had been about six when she told Maria she was afraid of it. Somehow the next week it had fallen off the wall in the dining room just as Maria was running the vacuum in that area and been crushed beyond repair. Tina began pointing out other things she thought were ugly, and one by one, Maria broke them all as she cleaned. Tina ran out of things she disliked, but Maria must have had her own list, because something got busted about once every two months. Tina was a bit surprised that her mother never caught on, as astute as she usually was. Then it suddenly hit Tina. Maybe her mother hadn’t been that fond of the gewgaws as Tina and Uncle Bob had always believed. Maybe after each one was destroyed, she was really thinking “Go, Maria, go!”

“So tell me about the spooky upstairs,” Uncle Bob said, jerking her back to the present.

Tina did. She wouldn’t tell her mother about her day, But Uncle Bob was always accepting of whatever Tina did. She basked in his approval.

When she finished, she asked, “What did you do all day?”

“Not much. Gave Princess a bath.” They both looked at the dog, who wagged her tail and panted a bit. “Oh, come here,” Uncle Bob said, and he patted her roughly when she stood in front of him. “Old softie.”

“Don’t you have a meeting tonight?”

“Tomorrow.” He sighed. “It will be about assisted listening devices. I’m not much interested—I’ve tried about all of them and not found them that useful, but I’ll go to socialize. It’s only once a month, after all.” Uncle Bob had joined the Hearing Loss Association of America way back when it had been called SHHH—Self-Help for the Hard of Hearing. He attended meetings faithfully. Nowhere else could he understand what was going on, so he’d dropped out of church, the men’s club, stopped playing golf, and hadn’t gone to a movie in decades. But at the HLAA meetings, they had computer-assisted live captioning. A young woman volunteer used a device like court reporters use to input what was said, and it showed up instantly on a screen for everyone to read. They also had an infrared listening system, and if needed, an American Sign Language interpreter.

Laura came down the back stairs in high heels and a yellow dress, so quiet they didn’t know she was there until she walked over to the table.

“You going out?” Uncle Bob asked.

“Not until after dinner. The Bunch is getting together to play Spades at Nora’s house.”

Uncle Bob and Tina looked at her in amazement.

“The Bunch never gets together except for lunch once a month,” Uncle Bob said. “You can set your watch, your calendar, and everything. Or am I missing something here?”

“Well, we decided to do something different. And Nora could use the distraction.” Laura sounded defensive.

“But it’s so soon after Crystal’s death,” Tina murmured. “They haven’t even had the funeral yet.”

“They haven’t released the body yet,” her mother said sharply. “It will be good for her—take her mind off it.”

“I suppose.” But Tina felt there was something more to it, something secret. She realized she’d always felt that way about the Bunch. Five women who seemed to be quite casual about their relationship because they never got together that she knew of except once a month for lunch. Laura didn’t see any of the others separately, and Tina doubted that the others did, either. And both Hank’s and Brandon’s mother disappeared every so often.

“What do you talk about, anyway?” Tina asked.

Laura had been about to take a sip of wine, but she put the glass down carefully. “Why, everything. What do women usually talk about?”

“Shopping, entertainment, their children.” Their children. Tina stared at her mother. “You talk about us?”

Laura’s laugh was brittle. “Of course. A bit. Nothing bad. You’re all good kids.”

“Crystal wasn’t that good,” Tina blurted, then slapped her hand over her mouth. “Oh, it’s wrong to speak ill of the dead!”

“Her mother thought she was wonderful,” Laura said.

Tina just stared at her.

“Mothers are that way, you know,” Laura said.

Tina was still speechless. Did her mother brag about her? The daughter she was always pushing to do something other than what Tina chose to do?

“Crystal was just like her mother, anyway, so Nora thought she was perfect,” Laura said.

“And poor Rachel was a thorn in both their sides.” Tina got up and stirred the spaghetti sauce. Keeping her back to her mother, she said, “There’s something more to the meetings of the Bunch than you’ve ever told me.” She spun around and watched her mother.

Laura paled, then took a quick sip of wine. Tina felt it was to cover up something. “We’re just friends,” Laura said weakly.

“Friends who only meet once a month, who never pair off and do anything. It’s not… not natural. It’s not the way friends act. You’re not all the same age, so you weren’t all in the same grade in school. There’s something else binding you together.” Tina had never thought this through before, and it surprised her as much as it did Laura that she was doing it now. “And where do Hank’s and Brandon’s mothers go every so often? I think you know. I think all of you know.”

“We’re simply friends who like to get together once a month. That’s all.” Laura stood, picked up her wine glass, and walked toward the stairs. “Call me when dinner’s ready. I need to freshen up.”

“Looks fresh enough to me,” Uncle Bob said.

Tina looked at him and laughed. Princess came over to be petted and Tina did so, absently.

“Do you know their secret, Uncle Bob?”

“No, Tina, I don’t, and if I did, it wouldn’t be my place to tell you. I’ve wondered, but Laura has never confided in me.”

“So, you’ve known there was one for a long time, but I just figured it out.”

He nodded.

“I wonder if it has anything to do with Crystal’s death.”

“I don’t see how,” Uncle Bob said, but he didn’t sound convinced.

While Uncle Bob put the pasta into a pan of boiling water, Brandon called and asked Tina out to dinner. He usually had to do that at the last minute because he never knew when a court case would take up his evening hours. Tina didn’t mind and rarely turned him down. She wasn’t seeing anyone else, if you didn’t count Hank, and she wasn’t sure whether she
could
count Hank. She knew Uncle Bob wouldn’t mind, either, and her mother would be pleased.

Brandon took her to what they still thought of as Johnny’s for dinner. It had been renamed the Atlantic Beach Club. Made sense since it sat right on the Atlantic beach, but “Johnny’s” was much easier to say. She liked it there and always ordered a daiquiri and the fried clams. This evening, when she asked for a second daiquiri, Brandon raised his left eyebrow.

He waited until the waiter walked away, then said, “Everything okay? You never have two drinks unless we’re celebrating something. Are we celebrating something I’m unaware of?”

“No. I’m just thirsty. And not for ice water. Brandon, do you know why the Lunch Bunch was formed?”

He thought for a moment. “They’re friends. What more do they need?”

“I think it’s more than that. They have a secret.”

“A secret society? You think they’re working for the government?”

She laughed. “No. That never crossed my mind.” She thought about it for a moment, then dismissed the idea. Why would the government need a bunch of women having lunch once a month? “No, it’s something personal. But I can’t imagine what.”

“I think you’re making something up that isn’t there.”

“Uncle Bob agrees with me. They have a secret.” She was positive now. “They don’t act like women friends, Brandon. They never see each other except at that once-a-month meeting. Except last night they got together to play Spades. Did you know that?”

“Spades?” Brandon downed the last of his martini. “No, Mother didn’t mention it.”

“Brandon, does your mother hover over you much?”

He thought for a moment. “Not particularly.”

“How about over Leslie?”

The waiter brought Tina’s daiquiri. Brandon ordered another martini.
It’s catching, this doubt,
Tina thought.

“As a matter of fact,” Brandon said slowly as the waiter walked away, “my mother does worry a lot more about Leslie than she does about me. I always thought that was natural.”

“I’ll bet Hank knows the secret,” Tina blurted.

“Oh, I don’t think so. Really, Tina, I’m not sure there is one. Crystal’s death has rattled you.”

That was true about Crystal’s murder. Brandon was good about picking up on things like that. And trying to shield her from any unpleasantness.

“Well, I think there’s a secret. I’m going to try to get the Lunch Bunch daughters to all have lunch together, see if we can figure it out.”

Brandon took her hand. “Why not just let it be? If there really is one, it might be best not to know what it is.”

Tina hadn’t thought of that. Why was the secret a secret? If it was good, there’d be nothing to hide.

She pulled her hand away from his and took a sip of her drink. She didn’t want to argue with him. “You’re right. If there is one, it’s probably bad.”

“But I’m sure it’s nothing,” Brandon said.

You didn’t see my mother’s face when I confronted her,
Tina thought, but she didn’t argue. Arguing with Brandon was like arguing with a… a stuffed penguin. And it annoyed the penguin, um, she meant Brandon.