The Busy Woman's Guide to Murder (20 page)

She snorted. “Hey, come on. Peanut butter becomes you.”

“Changing the subject. Did anyone at your yoga group talk about Tiffanee?”

“Sure. They all did.”

“And?”

Sally yawned.

“Nope. Not boring,” I said. “Murdered, you know. So what did they say?”

“She was a lovely, kind woman. A talented yoga instructor. A few people cried.”

I scowled. “Not a bully?”

“Quite dramatically changed apparently.”

“Do you think that can happen, Sal?”

She straightened up and thought for a minute. “Hard to imagine, but I suppose it might be possible. But I think you need to let it go, Charlotte. Stop obsessing about Serena and the rest of them.”

“I need a favor from you.”

“After my break tonight, I owe you. Have I told you I love you too? Not as much as I love Jack, because he gives me more hours, but quite a lot.”

“You and Benjamin know lots of medical practitioners here. Have you come across anyone who specializes in bullying?”

“Not again with that, Charlotte. What did I just say? You need to keep your nose out of this.”

“What I need is to help Mona. I should have done it as a teenager. I should have had the empathy and the guts. Now she’s in crisis. I’m not going to get involved in any other way, but I’d like to talk to someone who is a capable professional with no ax to grind or guilty feelings like me. Is that so ridiculous?”

Sally’s sigh was particularly dramatic, even by her standards.

I said, “Go ahead. Go for the Oscar, Sal. But it won’t hurt anyone for me to talk to a shrink about this.”

“A shrink may be just what you need.”

“I don’t understand why you are being like this,” I said.

“Like what?”

“Obstructionistic. And mean.”

“Mainly because I don’t think you should get involved. Someone is killing people. You are always getting involved in murders and putting yourself in danger. And you put Jack in danger too because he’ll do anything to help you.”

“I understand your point of view. All that babysitting time jeopardized if I’m six feet under. But I am trying to avoid exactly that by speaking to someone who is a professional. I’ll find out what is the right thing to do. Didn’t I just say that? And let me make the point again: If we had taken those bullies to task, Mona wouldn’t have had to deal with all this by herself. We are partly responsible.”

“Speak for yourself. Maybe they would have made her life even more hellish as soon as we turned around. Ours too.”

I gave Sally’s hand a quick squeeze. “We should have stood up for ourselves and each other too. And for everyone else who needed it. I feel ashamed that I didn’t do that. And I want to make up for it.”

Sally said, “Lucky for you I’m all mellowed out from yoga.”

“You’ll help?”

“Benjamin has a colleague, a psychologist who works with bullies and people who have been damaged by bullies.”

“Will I like her?”

“Him.”

“Same question.”

“I think so. But you’re not looking for a new friend. Just some expert advice. Right?”

She had me. “Good point. I just need information on the best way to deal with Mona. So that she’s not damaged any more.”

Sally said, “Unless Mona’s actually behind these hit-and-runs. She must have been so damaged by all that horrible treatment. But if she is, then you’d better just stay out of her way.”

“Pepper says Mona’s in the clear for both of them. But Mona seemed to have gone off the deep end and I need to know she’s not going to ruin her life or harm herself or someone else.”

On my way home that evening, I swung by Rose Skipowski’s place halfway up the steep hill on North Hemlock, hoping it wasn’t too late. I found Lilith knee-deep in an end-of-term assignment, but willing to stop for me. As for Rose, she was always up for an unexpected guest. She’d answered the door in an aqua and silver jogging suit with little heart-shaped rhinestones that added a bit of bling. Her running shoes were silver with matching rhinestone blingy bits. Really, you hardly noticed that portable oxygen machine.

“You’re looking splendid,” I said.

Rose twinkled. “I’m just back from my bridge club. Lilith’s got me back into a lot of my old activities. I feel like a kid of seventy again. But the girl’s a slave driver. A little snack for you, Charlotte?”

Rose had lemon sugar refrigerator cookies sliced and baking away within seconds of my arrival. I made the coffee, because while Rose makes the best cookies in town, she makes the worst coffee. I always have a plan.

“Sure thing,” Lilith said when I filled her in about the Serena conundrum. “I’ve worked in a lot of the facilities in town. I bet I know someone who’s employed at Riverview Manor. Or maybe someone who’s done a co-op assignment there. It has a great reputation.”

“Excellent. I need to have someone who might have observed Serena at work and who might be closer to the situation than the administrators, who might know what’s going on. Bella Constantine is pretty plugged in. But I have a feeling that the personal-care workers might see things that she doesn’t. And they wouldn’t have a preconceived notion about Serena from the pastor and the rich husband.”

“Let me snoop around and get back to you,” Lilith said. “If she’s up to no good, someone will have noticed something. I’m sure I’ll have something by the time we meet at Hannah’s on Thursday morning.”

I enjoy sitting in Rose’s seventies-style living room. It’s like a time warp, right down to the ancient oversize answering machine. The first one in the world, possibly. While I was enjoying plotting with Lilith and stuffing my face with Rose’s unbeatable lemon sugar cookies, Rose had been unusually quiet. Finally she said sadly, “I know it happens, but it’s hard to believe that someone might hurt defenseless people.”

I nodded. “And good people don’t catch on in time.”

Rose said, “I only wish I could help.”

Sally delivered as I knew she would. Jack had joined me on the sofa after I got back. He’d been busy on the phone and online setting up a silent auction to benefit WAG’D—that’s Welcome All Good Dogs if I have failed to mention it. I knew I’d be asked to dig deep. And I would be making a good donation even if Jack didn’t turn the pressure up. Which he would. The doggies, freshly walked and dried off, snuggled in between us and promptly went to sleep. “I couldn’t find out anything about Serena and her change of personality,” Jack said. “I did make a few calls about the auction and kind of sneaked it into the chat.”

He polished off the lemon sugar cookies that Rose had sent home with me, leaving only the empty container. I cleaned it out and put it on the console to return to Rose. Now he was insisting on hearing all about the babysitting. “Not much to tell,” I said. I felt mean when I saw his face, and made up for it by describing every mildly amusing thing the kids had done over the hour and a half until they’d keeled over.

“Sounds like fun,” Jack said. “By the way, are you still hungry?”

I was debating whether to offer up the last container of B & J’s New York Super Chunk Fudge. By rights, neither one of us should have been hungry. The phone rang and I put that thought on hold.

Sally said, “You want a shrink. You got a shrink. Sam Partridge and please don’t make any of those ‘for the birds’ puns, because he’s heard them all.”

“I wasn’t planning on making bad puns,” I said, defending myself against something that hadn’t crossed my mind. Although I did have a mental image of Dr. Sam Partridge, and I was certain this real one wouldn’t run across a road in a random pattern when startled by a noise.

“He usually works out of his home office, but he has a clinic at the hospital tomorrow. He’ll see you at noon, if you don’t mind joining him while he has lunch. I was lucky that he picked up his phone when I called.”

Sally is so gorgeous that I couldn’t imagine any man who wouldn’t pick up the phone. She doesn’t like it when I say things like that, so I kept the thought to myself. “Join him? I’ll buy lunch for him.”

“Oh, that won’t be necessary. Ten minutes, no more. He’ll meet you in the cafeteria.”

“How will I know what he looks like?”

“He’ll recognize you.”

I suppose that was the one advantage of finding myself on television so often, even if it was usually me getting hauled off to the hoosegow in frog pajamas and pink fluffy slippers.

“Now it’s past my bedtime.” Sally hung up in the middle of what sounded like a yawn.

Wednesday morning, I had three messages when I got back in from the first dog “walk.” They like to be airlifted to do their business through most of the winter. Back home, dried off and rewarded with a tiny liver treat, they tilted their heads in interest, concluded there was no more food to be gained from listening, and headed back to Nap Central. They climbed back under their blanket to dream of spring and squirrels.

I replayed the first message. Mona was nearly impossible to understand. “I told you so! Why didn’t you listen to me?” That was the most I could get out of it. I was still trying to make out the rest of the blubbered message before she abruptly hung up. I still hadn’t learned where she was or what had triggered that particular call. Of course, that was cleared up by the second message. Pepper. “Well, bit of news for you. Not sure how you’ll take it, but it’s definitely serious. Give me a call.”

Naturally, Pepper didn’t pick up when I returned her call.

The third caller was Jack, phoning from the shop, where he’d been waiting for an early-morning delivery. “Holy crap. Something big has happened.”

Why must absolutely everyone play games?