It was at times like this that I wished Mom were taller. I knew she was buried somewhere within the mob of tall and even medium-sized passengers who had deplaned the flight from Seattle. I remembered the days when I was glad she was so short, especially when I first shot up past her. It was always hard to reprimand a person you couldn’t make easy eye contact with, even if that person was your daughter. It was embarrassing to point a scolding finger at someone several inches taller, and with broader shoulders. Mom’s trick was to have me sit whenever she was about to issue an order. She wasn’t about to deliver a “Clean your room, young lady” command while looking up at me.
Not that she delivered many edicts. Her strategy was to let me learn from my mistakes. When I was in middle school, I tripped and fell over the dirty laundry and odds and ends of tchotchkes on the floor of my room. The incident resulted in a sprained ankle, and caused me to miss a Saturday of ice skating on the lake with my friends. I’d kept the tidiest of tidy rooms from then on. I smiled thinking of that and became more eager to see her.
And there she was, peeking between two basketball-player-size guys who were helping her with her carry-on and her VIE-logo shopping bag from the airport in Vienna. I expected that they might swoop her up any minute and deliver her to me by air. She’d obviously made new friends, as usual. She seemed reluctant to leave them but managed to hurry toward me for a hug. A true Alaskan, she’d known enough to pack a windbreaker, scarf, hat, and gloves into her carry-on for easy access for the trip to the car and any other potential outdoor jaunt. She wore some of those items now.
During the long embrace, Mom whispered “Sweetie” and “How sad,” over and over, rubbing my back. Always the consoler, no matter what.
When we broke, she noticed my companion, who handed her the flowers I’d completely forgotten about.
“From Charlie,” he said.
“Thank you, Chris. How nice to see you.”
Only then did I realize I hadn’t told Mom that Chris would be with me. From the looks she gave me now, I knew she thought Chris and I were on a date. I mentally banged my palm on my forehead, as punishment for being so dumb. I knew I was in for some serious questioning once we got home.
“Sorry you had to cut your trip short,” Chris said. He’d overseen the transfer of Mom’s carry-ons to an airport cart while we waited for her major pieces of luggage.
“There’ll be plenty more opportunities to see the rest of Austria. I want to hear about the investigation. Was Kendra any help? Are you at all close to finding out who did this to my friend?”
We did our best to fill her in on all the progress we’d made. Unfortunately, it didn’t take long.
* * *
* * *
Once we’d found our way back to short-term parking and had Mom settled in the back seat with a baggie of the salted caramel cookies I’d made, she announced that she was going to nap. Right after she gave us the highlights of her first cruise, that is.
“Charlie, when all this is over, you have to go on a cruise. I highly recommend this line. Have you ever taken one, Chris?”
“I had all the cruising I could stand in the army, thank you.”
“Oh, that’s different. Did you have bathrooms with heated floors?”
“No, but Charlie has a heated steering wheel.” He caressed the wheel at the two and ten positions for emphasis.
“My steering wheel is his new best friend.”
“How about gorgeous views from the ship’s deck, right on your veranda? Oh, never mind, you’re going to tell me you can see Denali from your porch.”
“Close,” Chris said.
“I’ve got it. How about a putting green on the deck?” Chris gave her a “Me, golf?” look he made sure she could see in the rearview.
“Dad was happy with the green,” she continued. “He also loved having Internet access most of the time, plus a comfortable lounge right in our suite, with a television and newspapers from around the world. And snacks. Lots of snacks. You probably don’t want to see all the photos on my phone, so I’ll spare you, you Alaska snobs.”
“I’m glad you had a good time, Mom.”
“Uh-huh. I have to admit, I’m an Alaska snob, too, and I love our state. I think a lot of my enjoyment was just having all that free time with so many options. Movies, card games, a library, live music, dancing. Not that we did much beyond a token turn around the floor, but everything was right at our fingertips. And one stop was at a small town in Germany where there was a magnificent cathedral, St. Stephen’s, with an organ that has almost eighteen thousand pipes. Can you imagine?”
It was clear that Mom didn’t need an answer since she dozed off immediately after asking the question.
* * *
* * *
Mom was rejuvenated from her nap, which took the rest of the ride home, and Benny was the beneficiary of her newfound energy.
Benny had an excellent long-term memory. He remembered people he loved as well as people who irritated him. Trooper and Annie were among his good friends, but Mom was at the top of the list. For causes unknown to me, the woman who delivered our mail was Benny’s least favorite person. He made himself scarce whenever she rang the bell and handed me a package. I was sure he had his reasons.
Benny was more than ready for Mom. It was as if he’d known she’d be coming and took a nap at the same time as she did so they could play together. Unlike me, they were both chipper at one thirty in the morning.
After a sufficient amount of chin scratching, back rubbing, and eye contact with his old friend, he walked around the living room floor, his tail held high, its tip twitching in contentment. I heard the soft trilling he used in greeting.
Mom had brought Benny an elaborate wand toy with feathers and bells from a shop in Passau, a small German town where the ship had docked. A piece of colorful fabric cut in a circle with a stiffened edge, the toy was equipped with a battery-operated motor that propelled the feather around the edge at selected speeds. Benny chased it dutifully, meowing in gratitude.
Mom had more stories about people she’d met, plus two presents for me. One of them a tall hand-cut dinner bell made of western German crystal. I picked it out of its gift box by its exceptionally long handle.
“This is beautiful, Mom,” I said, running my hand over its intricate design. “But it’s so heavy. And long. This handle alone must be eight inches. How did you manage to carry it?”
“You know me. I can’t be discouraged by details like that. Dad calls me the most impractical shopper.”
“Let’s see if Benny likes it.”
I unwrapped the ringing device, a chain of glass beads with a crystal bead at the end. Benny, who usually bolted at loud noises, responded well to its lovely sound, adding his own purring to the chorus.
I needed to place the bell where Benny wouldn’t knock it over. Wonderful cat and companion that he was, he didn’t always respect the boundaries between my toys and his. For now, I put the bell back in its box and left it at ground level, under the coffee table.
The second present was a box of Belgian chocolates. For Benny’s protection, that one would be safe neither low nor high, but in a cabinet inaccessible to even the most agile of felines.
It would have been a grand celebratory homecoming if it weren’t marred by the reason Mom had returned early.
* * *
* * *
I thought I might have to shake Mom awake on Thursday morning, but Benny took care of that, walking all over her bed and settling on her stomach with a giant purr. Too bad he didn’t understand that not only had she just survived nearly twenty hours in airports and in the air, but her body thought it was still in Vienna, ten hours later. Or maybe he understood but didn’t care.
Breakfast was “a stack of Vermont,” Mom’s long-standing phrase, from an informal diner dictionary, for pancakes with maple syrup. I seldom made breakfast at home.
Why would I, when I had a staff at the diner to feed me? But it was fun to cook for my mom, Mrs. Evelyn Cooke herself.
“Excellent,” she said, pointing her fork at me while holding it close to her breast at the same time. Of course, I was pleased.
YOU NEVER OUTGROW YOUR NEED FOR PARENTAL APPROVAL wasn’t just a bumper sticker.
Benny was happy to have his daily dental treat without syrup. Benny’s taste in food was unusual for a cat, since he’d grown up with carefully selected leftovers from the Bear Claw. He ate quickly and slipped onto Mom’s lap, too full to even sniff at her plate.
We took a call from my dad, who was heading down to the ship’s dining room. He missed us but there was no question that he was looking forward to a steak dinner. “Beef, not moose,” he clarified.
Mom was ready with further thoughts on the investigation into Oliver’s murder. And I was eager to hear her take on Oliver’s beginning, wondering if she was surprised that he’d been adopted. At the same time I remembered that I hadn’t told her about his three names. That we knew of. What a job it was to keep track of everything in a murder investigation. Not the least of our problems was remembering who knew what information when. I decided to start a special notebook to keep track of things—or maybe I would ask Trooper for a sit-down and a summary of everything he had learned at Trooper School. I supposed my mom could give me the same kind of training from her crime-fiction habit.
Mom began with the adoption issue.
“Strangely, I never gave it much thought, how he had no family except Kendra. And no friends, it seemed, except girlfriends, and the occasional vendor or regular patron that he’d chat with, sometimes eat his lunch with. Like Manny, of Manny, Moe, and Jack. We were close when it came to the diner, both working hard and wanting it to succeed. But we didn’t socialize together. Heck, your dad and I didn’t socialize, period, except for the occasional dinner out when he had a client to impress. A few times on a holiday, if Kendra didn’t come up from Anchorage, Oliver would join us. Or maybe they both would, but that was rare.”
I never gave much thought to how hard my parents worked. Neither of them had a nine-to-five, no-homework kind of job. They didn’t take weekends off, or even a day, unless you could count my middle school piano recitals and the parent-teacher conferences they were subjected to. Funny that it took a death to bring that home.
“As you saw,” my mom continued, “I couldn’t even remember what Kendra’s job was.”
“Real estate, as you now know.”
“I’m sorry that trip didn’t get you much information. But you did get a nice long ride with Chris.”
I reached down and held out a tuna treat for Benny, thus putting that thread of conversation to rest. Benny gave me a knowing look, as if to say he knew I was using him as a distraction, not giving him a treat out of the goodness of my heart.
I moved on to Oliver’s names, how Chris and I had tracked him from Quinlan to Blanchard to Whitestone. I described our visit to his home, leaving out the inauspicious, nearly smoking gun ending. I promised to show her the two volumes that had all the earmarks of a cookbook he was writing.
“Remind me later this afternoon,” I said, aware of the approaching chapel time.
“I feel awful that I didn’t know all this. What kind of employer, mentor, friend was I? Not the caring kind, that’s becoming obvious.”
It was my turn to help absolve my mom. “How could you have known? Did you hear what I told you about the way he secured his environment? Cameras, guns, noisemakers so you couldn’t sneak in? For all we know, even the name changes were designed to keep anyone from getting too close.”
Benny had gone off somewhere and now crept back in. My guess was that he heard my mom’s sobs, as soft as they were, and came back to comfort her. I moved my chair closer, and the three of us shared a few moments of despondency and hope together.
* * *
* * *
The usual wardrobe panic set in, as it did whenever women were expected to show up at a special event. It didn’t matter whether the event was a high school prom, a movie date, or a funeral service. Today, Mom and I helped each other pick out outfits that were serious, but not morbid; cheery, but not too cheery.
We decided purple was a go-either-way sort of color, and we layered accordingly, with lavender underpinnings and black winter coats with floral scarves. Not identical twins, exactly, but close.
I’d half expected Chris to call with an offer to drive us. I had a mixed reaction when he didn’t. On the one hand, his absence would get me out of a discussion about him with my mom; on the other hand, I wanted to see him again.
“Would you like to stop at the Bear Claw before the service?” I asked.
She shook her head no. “I thought it would be good for us to get to the chapel a little early, while people are milling in the lobby, and see what we can find out. We don’t have nearly enough clues to suggest who might want Oliver dead.”
“You mean interview people in church?”
“It’s not exactly church, sweetie. It’s a nondenominational chapel for weddings, funerals, other services, I’m sure. Where to sit?” she said. “We should leave the front pew for Kendra, naturally, and maybe Gert? I believe she’s Oliver’s most recent girlfriend?”
“As far as I know. We haven’t been able to contact Lana.” Reporting to my mom added a different dimension to my project. Through no fault of hers, I felt like a failure, as if I should have made a citizen’s arrest by now, perp-walking Oliver’s killer into Elkview’s two-trooper station.
“I’ll probably recognize Lana. I met her a couple of times.” Mom tapped her fingers next to the mug holding her second cup of coffee. “It might look strange if we’re not up front, but I’d like to be far enough back to be able to see the other guests, to catch their expressions and so on.”
First Chris, and now my mom. Did everyone in Elkview know more about detective work than I did? I guess a journalist and an addicted crime-fiction reader trumped a manager of a diner in that regard, even one with a year of law school under her belt.
It must have been thinking of my year of law school that triggered a decision. While Mom stepped away for a moment, I made a call to Chris.
“Hey, what’s up?”
“I only have a minute while Mom is out of the room, but there’s something I have to do.”
“You want to give Kendra the papers.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“I do, too.”
What I’d hoped to hear.
“I can hand them off at the service. It might be the last time I see her. I can say I found them in his Bear Claw desk,” I said.
“She’ll never believe you.”
“So what?”
“I like the way you think,” he said.
“But not the cookbook,” I said.
“No, not the cookbook. It’s practically part of the investigation.”
“I like the way you think,” I said.
* * *
* * *
Mom came back, and seemingly out of the blue came the question she’d had probably been waiting all morning to ask.
“So. Chris?” She smiled, cocked her head, and raised her eyebrows. “Huh?”
“What about him? He offered to drive me to the airport.”
“Uh-huh. And you went to visit Kendra yesterday. Together.”
“Remember when I told you he’s interested in helping Trooper? Trooper deputized both of us.” We laughed at my retelling of the ceremony involved. “Chris knows the sorry state of law enforcement resources. And, you know, he is a journalist. I’m sure eventually he’ll get a story out of all this.”
“So that wasn’t a date last night?”
“Not at all. Just an airport pickup.”
There was one more unresolved issue in my mind. I hadn’t told my mom
about my run-in with Oliver the day he disappeared. I needed to confess how I’d kept the truth of our argument from her. I’d wanted to wait until Oliver waltzed into the Bear Claw, ready to go back to work as usual after one of our spats, and my parents had returned from their cruise, to tell her about it. If at all. But with Oliver never coming back, it was impossible for me to keep this from my mom.
I spilled it all, right up to Oliver’s storming out and her phone call a couple of hours later. “I just wanted to add a little chocolate,” I said, trying to keep the whine out of my voice.
I shouldn’t have been surprised at her response.
“Sweetie, I’ve known Oliver since he was younger than you are now. I knew he wouldn’t take a recipe change lightly. And, most of all, I knew you wouldn’t want to spoil our trip by telling me. Thank you for that.”
Like the days when she applied bandages to my scrapes, she never failed as Healer in Chief.
FOURTEEN
I’d been wrong in my assumptions about the Chapel of Atonement. Far from giving off a negative vibe, the property featured a lovely courtyard with strips of garden on either side of a large fountain and arched entryway.
Flowers bloomed everywhere—not easy to do in Alaska. If I hadn’t been so intimidated by the formality of the setting, I’d have reached out to verify that the shrubbery and flowery arrangements were organic and not plastic. In fact, I suspected there might be small heaters, since the courtyard was so much more comfortable than the twenty-ish degrees outside.
The main altar was visible from the foyer, illuminated by light coming through a beautiful stained-glass window. Biblical quotations adorned the walls; a large panel offered the entire twenty-third psalm, “The Lord Is My Shepherd,” meant to soothe the hearts and minds of mourners.
Eventually, maybe.
I’d followed my mom as she entered the foyer and joined the group that had gathered around Kendra. The man next to Kendra, whom I assumed to be her husband, looked familiar to me, but I couldn’t say why. I wondered about the marriage I’d just arranged in my head, since Kendra’s surname was the same as her parents’. I remembered that from the anniversary picture and article Chris and I had found in an Anchorage newspaper. It was still possibly her husband next to her. Many women kept their own names. I was embarrassed to think how I’d once envisioned myself as Mrs. Charlotte Jamison.
Mousse and Murder Page 13
