Regardless of the weather, there were four “Things To Do” on my mental list: eat; check on the pig lady; talk to MaryDell’s maid; and somehow get a copy of that detailed report that MaryDell said her committee had compiled. I definitely needed that report—and five copies of it—for the board meeting tomorrow or there’d be no real estate transaction on Friday.
Accordingly, keeping first things first, I headed my car toward the Sunnyside Up & Cup to get the breakfast I had missed by sleeping late.
“Hi, Jenny,” the hostess greeted me.
“Hi, Marge. Put me in a back corner, will you? Put me where nobody will see me and want to sit down and have a little chat. I’m feeling antisocial this morning.”
She nodded as if she understood the feeling well and said, “I’ll put you behind the kitchen door, facing the back wall. Nobody ever wants to sit there.”
“Perfect.”
I ordered an omelet with two kinds of cheese, green peppers, red peppers, onions, mushrooms, black olives, and chopped ham, along with hash browns, biscuits, orange juice, and coffee.
“How do you stay so skinny?” the waitress asked me.
“I worry a lot,” I replied.
While waiting for my order, I considered various plans of attack on MaryDell and her maid. A frontal attack was one possibility. I could just call and say, “MaryDell, I need that report … and by the way, I’d like to talk to your maid.” To which she’d reply, “I told you, that project is dead … and why do you want to talk to my maid?” So that was out.
The waitress appeared with my coffee. “Cream?”
“Please.”
I could skip the general and attack the troops, that was another possibility, which might mean calling every member of her committee until I found one who hadn’t gotten the word and who had a copy and was willing to lend it to me. That prospect seemed a little iffy, however, particularly since MaryDell wasn’t exactly known for recruiting independent thinkers to her committees. She was definitely a general who liked her soldiers to respect the chain of command, so all I’d be likely to get in response to such a request was, “Oh, you’d better ask MaryDell about that.”
The waitress brought cream and my orange juice.
“Marge couldn’t find you a better view than this?”
“Hello, wall,” I said, and she laughed.
Okay, skip the report for a minute, I thought. What about the maid? Maybe I could find out her name and call her at home tonight. Fine, except how was I going to discover her name, without asking MaryDell? It wouldn’t be any good to call people I knew to be friends of the Paines: they might know her first name, but it wasn’t likely they’d know her last.
“Here you go, Jenny.”
The waitress placed my food in front of me.
I attacked it with vigor.
As I swiped the last bit of melted cheese off my plate with my last bit of biscuit, the answer came to me. And if I was reading the situation correctly, I’d be able to talk to the maid and get the report at the same time. My brain felt alive again. It must have been all that good, old-fashioned, nutritious grease that did it.
I didn’t even mind the cold now. It actually seemed invigorating. I started my car with that virtuous feeling of “mission” that now and then overcomes me. The food and coffee had acted like amphetamines on me, filling me with energy and optimism: Derek would be fine, the murderer would be found, and the recreation hall would open to great fanfare in a few weeks.
“Your fuel is low,” the computer in my car informed me.
“No way,” I retorted. “I am gassed, man, and ready to roll.”
It did strike me that I was being a shade manic, but it beat the bone-dragging exhaustion I’d felt before eating. I slid into the first corner I came to, and fishtailed around it, murmuring “whee” under my breath. Before I put into action my plan of attack for conquering MaryDell and her maid, I would stop by Tenth Street to check on the old lady. If she was still in bad shape, I’d try calling the other “Montgomery” in her address book. Somebody was going to have to put Grace under a doctor’s care, but I didn’t think it should have to be me.
I parked in front of her house and walked up to her door with a fairly springy step.
“Mrs. Montgomery?” I called loudly as I knocked.
I rang the doorbell repeatedly and knocked again several times. It didn’t seem possible that she could have gone anywhere, so I thought she might be asleep, or hiding among her pigs and delusions, within her little house. Unwilling to give up without checking on her condition, I tromped around to the back. When I knocked on that door, my knuckles pushed it open. Startled, I let my knuckles continue to push it all the way back to the wall. This was not good. This, I did not like.
A clear view of her kitchen was before me.
The house was as warm as ever, as dirty as ever, but quiet.
“Grace?” I called out.
It was only the thought that she might be ill, or might have fallen, and need help that propelled me into the house against the good sense that screamed GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE in my head. My feet and knees tingled with a cowardly desire to race over to Marianne Miller’s house again.
I stepped through the kitchen, listening hard, my knees suddenly so weak I felt as if they were wading through thick water.
“Grace?”
I waded into the hallway and looked into her bedroom. Nobody home but us pigs. I pushed back the door to her bathroom, looked in, and did a double take. Her tub was half-filled with water, in which maybe a couple of dozen little porcelain pigs floated. I stepped closer and peered down at them. A few had swallowed too much water through their snouts or the holes in their bellies, and had sunk to the bottom, drowned. Was she so crazy that she took baths with her pigs? Did she play with them in the tub, like a child with his rubber duckies? On the bathmat, one of her true-crime scrapbooks lay open to a double page: on the left side, there was pasted the most recent article about the murder of Rod Gardner; the facing page was blank.
That blank page gave me a chill that even the overheated house couldn’t warm.
I walked back out into the hall, dodging the dangling pigs.
“Grace?”
I turned the corner into the living room and collided with her.
She was hanging from the ceiling.
I shrieked like a stuck air-raid siren. I batted her body and the myriad pigs away from me and stumbled back down the hall, through the kitchen, out the back door, down the steps, into the backyard. I was screaming, and I kept on screaming. JesusJesusohJesus.
I ran down the alley to the back of the house next door and hammered. Nobody answered.
I raced to the next house. Nothing.
By the time I reached the third back door, I was screaming “Fire” at the top of my lungs, hoping somebody would hear me and call 911. There was nobody home at the third house, either. I thought desperately, Doesn’t anybody stay home anymore? When I bolted for the next house, I suddenly realized it was the corner house. Perry Yates’s brown saltbox. I stopped, not quite so panicky that I couldn’t hate the idea of going to him for help. But I was now closer to his house than to any other; it would be inexcusable of me to take the time to run somewhere else.
At first, it didn’t seem as if anybody was home at Yates’s house, either, and I ran from his back porch to try the houses on the other side of the street. Hell, this was getting ridiculous, I thought wildly—I could have gotten help faster by getting in my car and driving to the police station!
“What do you want?”
I turned around again, to find him standing in his doorway, staring at me. He stepped out on his porch. I was not so out of breath myself that I didn’t notice that he was, too. He was wearing a brown parka, brown work pants, and snowy galoshes.
“I can’t even shovel my own front walk without interference from you people,” he said. “I could hear you yelling all the way down the street. What kind of trouble are you causing now?”
“Your phone,” I said, pushing past him. “Where is it?”
“Hey, get out of my house!”
I turned on him viciously. “You’ll be pleased to know there’s been another murder on this block, Yates. Now may I use your phone to call the cops?”
“There.” He pointed. “On that table.”
I punched in the number. Yates walked in and stood over me. In a stilted, angry tone, he said, “You’ve got a lot of nerve saying that to me.” But when I glanced at him, I saw that his eyes were sending another message, a triumphant one, which was: “I told you so.” He didn’t ask me who had died but stood close by, listening to my hurried conversation with the first cop who answered the phone.
“Poor Grace,” he intoned when I hung up.
I brushed past him again and went out front to stand on the sidewalk to wait for the detectives. I couldn’t stand to be in the same room with him. And if the killer came after me, he’d have to do it outside, in public, in broad daylight. Stalwart, that’s me. My knees caved in, and I collapsed ingloriously to the sidewalk. That pathetic old woman—her worst nightmares had come true and at the hands of the one “crazy person” she trusted. I sat on that ice and sobbed like a frightened, sorry child until the first police car rounded the corner. When I saw them, I stood up on my waxed-paper knees. I took off a glove and wiped at my cheeks with cold fingers.
26
Since he had been promoted, Geof didn’t often make house calls, but he arrived with all four tires sliding for this one. The first thing he said to me when he joined me on the sidewalk in the snow was, “Honest to God, Jenny.”
“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” I said humbly.
“I thought we had,” he retorted. “Are you all right?”
“Oh, I’m always all right,” I said, half-disgusted. I greeted the other detectives I knew: “Hello again, Frank.”
“Jenny.”
“Hello, Ailey.”
My old nemesis, Ailey Mason, smiled slightly and said, “I think this is where I came in.” Like Geof, he’d married recently, and the change had improved him. He was still a pompous young ass, but he was a happier ass now and a little mellower as a consequence. I thought his bride must be slipping molasses in with his oats.
I was allowed to leave soon after I told them everything I had seen, said, touched, and done in the vicinity of Grace Montgomery’s house.
With a nod to me, Frank and Ailey walked off together to assist the investigation.
“Jenny,” Geof said, “are you sure that Ms. Miller said she knew Mob? You’re sure she told you that he used to hang around this neighborhood?”
“Of course I’m sure. Why?”
“Because none of the neighbors recognized him from the photograph the officers took around this morning. If he panhandled regularly, you’d think they’d remember him. So I’m wondering if she’s got him confused with somebody else, or maybe she did know him but from somewhere else.”
“What did she say about the pictures?”
“She hasn’t been at home to ask.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know.”
He dug into his inside coat pocket and came out with a piece of paper that was folded into quarters. He unfolded it and handed it to me, saying, “Here’s a copy of the photograph his sister gave us, Jenny. We’re passing these out around town, so you might as well have one, too.”
I took it, staring at the visage of the bearded, wild-haired man who stared suspiciously back at me. The young man in the other photograph had looked a little hurt, unhappy, and puzzled; the older man in this one looked out-and-out crazy and not a little dangerous. According to the small print, he was six feet two inches tall and weighed between 190 and 210 pounds, and when last seen he had brown hair, brown eyes, and a graying brown beard. This was somebody you’d definitely notice—and probably try to avoid—if you spotted him on the street.
“I’ll watch out for him, Geof.”
“In more ways than one, if you please,” he said. “Do you think he saw you, Jenny?”
“I have no idea, but what difference would it make anyway? I didn’t see him.”
“You’re assuming he thinks logically.”
“Oh. Right.”
“What are you going to do about the recreation hall now?”
“I’m going to go ahead and make my pitch at the board meeting tomorrow and then leave it to the trustees to decide. It would certainly help if you’d catch this guy, Lieutenant.”
“We’re doing out best, Citizen Caine.” He leaned over to kiss my lips.
“I love you,” we said at exactly the same time.
“Jinx, you owe me a Coke,” we said, also at exactly the same time. Without knowing in advance that I was going to do it, I suddenly found myself leaning against his chest. Our arms went around each other, and I started crying again. Geof comforted me by stroking my hair and repeatedly kissing the top of my head. After a few minutes of that unseemly public display, the police lieutenant escorted me back to my car. I waved at him. He waved back at me. Jeez, I thought, as I drove off, thank goodness I married a cop who doesn’t embarrass easily.
I drove home to change clothes before launching my next mission, which was to interview Mary Dell Paine’s maid and to get a copy of that report.
Although I might be able to accomplish it dressed as I was, there was a fair chance that I’d be stuck out in the cold in my car for a while, so I wanted to put on more and warmer clothing, just in case. While I had stood at the curb with Geof, I had discussed with him what I planned to do. He hadn’t objected, particularly since police officers were guarding the front and rear entrances to the Paine house just in case Mary Dell’s brother showed up there. “But, please,” he’d begged, “don’t find any more dead bodies, all right?” I told him that had never been my life’s ambition in the first place.
I was a little worried about my timing, though. For one thing, I only had this afternoon and this evening to get my hands on that report in order to have it for the board meeting tomorrow morning. For another, I didn’t know what hours the maid worked. She might leave before I got to her. Even if she lived in, this might be her day off. There were any number of unknown factors that might foil this “Detective 101” course plan of mine, including the possibility that I might not be able to stand the cold for very long.
At home, I removed my dress and slip, but left on my bra and panty hose. I pulled long thermal underwear over them, then added long wool socks. Then I slipped on a pair of thick wool harem pants, gathered by elastic at the ankles, and a tightly knit wool ski sweater that had, in the past, managed to keep me warm even on icy mountain slopes in Vermont. I started downstairs, but the phone rang, and I trotted back into the bedroom to answer it.
“Hello?”
When nobody answered, I said “Hello” again, then hung up. Must have been a wrong number, I decided, since the only heavy breathing had been mine. I was too young to be so winded. I should enroll in a spa. The problem with that, though, was that aerobics always seemed to me like God’s way of explaining boredom. And if I wanted to lift weights, I could have children.
In the kitchen, I fixed a pot of coffee. While it perked, I put together a crunchy peanut-butter-and-raspberry-jam sandwich on thick wheat bread and wrapped it in a plastic bag. I put that, along with a banana and a small bag of Fritos, into a brown paper sack, to which I added three double-fudge brownies. That gave me all the food groups: crunchy, salty, sticky, and sweet. The phone rang again.
“Hello,” I said.
This time whoever it was hung up on me first. I hate it when people do that; if they get a wrong number, the least they can do is apologize for bothering you.
The percolator gave its final, weak little burble, telling me the coffee was ready. It was Geof who had talked me into going back to an old-fashioned aluminum percolator, by avowing that it got and kept coffee much hotter than any drip system could. He was right. I filled a thermos with the aromatic, steaming brew.
>
Now I was almost ready for camp. But what would a wise camper need for those long, boring stretches between archery and canoeing? Notepaper and pen—I stuck those in the paper sack along with the food—and a good book. I ran back upstairs and retrieved from my bedside table Too Close to the Edge, which was proving to be a terrific police procedural by Susan Dunlap. I figured it was just the thing to inspire me—maybe even give me a few tips—for the snooping job that lay ahead. I also put carefully into the bag an envelope in which I stuck the “before” and “after” pictures of Kitt Blackstone.
I carried my provisions into the hallway, where I ended up having to sit down on the floor to pull on my boots with the sheepskin lining. Finally, I pushed my fattened arms into a ski jacket that was lined with dyed black rabbit fur (about which I always felt guilty, although why about the rabbits and not about the sheep?) and elasticized below my butt, clamped on sheepskin earmuffs, and covered my head with a red wool stocking cap.
Before putting on gloves, I looked up MaryDell Paine’s phone number and called it.
The maid answered: “Paine residence.”
“Hello,” I said in a chirpy voice. “I’m calling on behalf of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. May I speak to Mrs. Paine, please?”
“I’ll see if she can come to the phone.”
That was all I needed to know, so I hung up.
I put on ski gloves, picked up my car keys, thermos, and paper bag, and left the house. I was as bulky as Frankenstein’s monster and walked just about like him, too. Clump, clump, clump.
Also, I was sweating.
“Come, Igor,” I said, and shut the door behind me.
It was four o’clock, and I was not feeling nearly as cheerful as I was pretending to be. But being of good cheer can also, in certain circumstances, serve as a useful diversion. I didn’t go so far as to whistle while I worked, but I tried like hell to forget for a while what I had seen and heard in Grace Montgomery’s house that horrible afternoon.