by Leslie Meier
I knew it wasn’t the job of the crime-scene techs to clean the house, but I was unprepared for the mess we found when we walked in. It felt like time had stopped and the party had just ended. It had only been two days earlier, yet it felt like weeks. This disheveled house with the Halloween decorations was from another time. It was terrible that the Davies had to come home to this.
We walked into the chilly hallway, then through the kitchen, which smelled so strongly of dried beer I had to hold my breath, and out into the yard. Flynn paced off the number of steps from the back stairs to the shed, coming up with twenty both times he did it.
Back inside, I followed the detectives as they roamed the first floor. The party had obviously raged principally in the kitchen and family room. The dining room was in less disarray, though there were overturned bottles and cans on the surface of the cherry dining table. The living room was in the best shape.
From there, we went back into the big entrance hallway. A glance around and then up to the ceiling confirmed my impressions of two days earlier. It was a towering space, made more dramatic by the staircase that ringed it and the large brass chandelier that hung down from the ceiling high above.
I stood on the second-story balcony while the detectives looked around the family bedrooms. I wasn’t an officer of the law, so it felt like it would be a terrible invasion of the family’s privacy for me to go in.
Then we climbed the stairs to Mrs. Zelisko’s apartment. Evidence of the police search was all around us. In the sitting room, the top of the desk had been cleared, and the empty drawers hung open. The seat cushions of the love seat and easy chair were askew. In the tiny kitchen, the cupboard and all four drawers were empty, their contents left on the small table and the only chair, and in piles on the floor.
In the bedroom, the covers had been removed from the bed and left in a heap on top of the twin mattress. The bureau drawers hung open, Mrs. Zelisko’s white underthings left in plain sight. I thought that, little as I knew her, Mrs. Zelisko would have been mortified. The small closet door was open. Inside hung five black dresses, two black jackets, and two black cardigans.
“Notice anything strange about this place?” Flynn asked me.
“There’s nothing personal,” I answered. The blank walls held no artwork or photos, and no empty hooks or light spots to indicate there had been any. “Were there any family photos on the tables or shelves that maybe your guys took?”
Flynn shook his head. “Zero.”
“It’s strange, because she spent so much time here,” I said. “She worked at home, except at the rare times she went to her clients’ businesses. Blair Davies said she heard Mrs. Zelisko moving around up here all day. She almost never went out except for errands and to services and meetings at the Star of the Sea.”
“The papers we took from the desk and the laptop will help untangle some of this mess with her clients, but there was nothing personal there, either,” Binder said.
“Weird,” I said.
“And unhelpful,” Binder added.
The last place we looked was the bathroom. “Mrs. Zelisko and her killer were hiding in here when Page and Talia came to look for her,” I said.
“Yes, that’s what we think, too,” Flynn confirmed.
“Was she alive or dead at that point? Was she killed here or in some other room?”
Flynn shrugged. “Not clear.”
“Why was she in her nightgown?” Binder wondered. “And why didn’t she go downstairs when she heard all the noise?”
“She was hard of hearing,” I told him. “I’ve heard differing accounts about how deaf she was.” I peered through the doorway. “This bathroom looks so ordinary.” The room was narrow and white. A clawfoot tub stood against one long wall. It had been fitted with a shower and a shower curtain holder. “Did you guys take the shower curtain?”
Binder walked into the room, looked around, and exited quickly. “We have it.”
We returned to the landing at the top of the stairs. It was so small the three of us could barely fit on it together. The railing height was barely up to my hip, and I’m short. It wouldn’t be code in a modern house. I had an uncomfortable feeling as I looked over the edge. However she’d gone down—flew, floated, or fell—Mrs. Zelisko had a long trip.
Something small and fluttery on the elaborate chandelier far below caught my eye. “Wait, what’s that?” Then more excited, I pointed. “I think I know what happened.” I gave one little jump, then immediately stopped. The landing was precarious enough without any sudden moves.
I took a deep breath and rolled out a scenario. “Mrs. Zelisko is dead when the girls come upstairs. The killer hears them and drags the corpse into the bathroom. Then he’s trapped. He has to get out of the house, and he decides he has to get Mrs. Zelisko out, too.”
“Why?” Binder asked. “Why not sneak out himself and leave her for the Davies to find?”
“He must think the girls will be back, possibly at any moment. He can’t risk them finding her while he’s still making his escape.”
“He’s not a practiced killer,” Flynn surmised. “He’s panicking.”
“He grabs the top sheet off her bed and ties it around her,” I said. “He’s going to pretend she’s a ghost, a drunk ghost, and carry her out.”
“He Weekend-at-Bernie’s her!” The look on Binder’s face was priceless.
“Except it doesn’t go so well. She’s small, but probably heavier and certainly more awkward to carry than he assumes,” I continued.
Flynn got into the spirit of it. “He trips or loses hold of her, and she goes over the railing.”
“And down into the front hall.” Binder was buying it, or at least admitting the possibility.
“Not quite,” I said. “She’s hurtling down. Any kid who happens to be looking up, maybe talking to someone on the stairs above them, is going to see her and start screaming. Soon they’re all screaming and running out the door. But Mrs. Zelisko doesn’t make it to the floor. She catches on the chandelier, and the momentum swings her back and forth across the room. She falls off onto the stairs from the second to the first floor. She tumbles down from there, rolling the sheet back around her, and ends up on the landing. Depending on when a kid looks, she flies, floats, or falls.”
“In a swirl of white fabric,” Binder said.
“The kids have run off.” Flynn continued the story. “The killer walks down the stairs, picks up the body, goes out the back door, and sticks her in the shed. He’s bought a lot of time. The local cops don’t find the body until after ten-fifteen. He could have been home by then.”
“Or in a bar creating alibis,” Binder said.
“Or off the peninsula and halfway to Route 95, if he wasn’t from around here,” I said.
“Wasn’t from around here?” Flynn was surprised. “Based on our conversation with your shop-owner friends, there were probably a dozen people in town who may have wanted her dead. She couldn’t cover her tracks forever.”
We finally left the little landing and trooped down the stairs. “Something changed,” I said. “Four months ago, she went from skimming a little extra from Barry Walker, a perfect mark, and probably some others like him, to embezzling sales tax from Mr. Gordon and employee withholding and insurance premiums from Gleason’s. That was a much more dangerous game. She was bound to get caught.”
“A much more lucrative game, too,” Flynn said.
Binder stated the obvious conclusion. “She was preparing to run.”
“Yes.” We were downstairs in the hallway by then. “The question is, what changed four months ago?”
“The Davies moved to town,” Flynn answered.
“The Davies moved to town, and Mrs. Zelisko no longer felt safe,” Binder said. “The question is, why? We need to talk to them again.”
Flynn fetched a ladder from the shed. He put gloves on, climbed up, and pulled the piece of fabric I’d spotted from the chandelier.
“Sheet fabric?” Binder
asked from the ground.
“Uh-huh.” Flynn climbed down.
“We need to get it to the lab to see if it matches the sheet the body was wrapped in, but I think Julia’s solved a piece of the puzzle.” Binder smiled at me. “Thank you.”
Chapter Fourteen
I walked with Binder and Flynn back to the police station. As they were going in, Jamie came out.
“Julia! Great to see you. Want to have lunch?” He smiled like he was genuinely excited by the prospect.
“Sure. Do you have time?” Earlier in the fall, we had gone to lunch occasionally. I suspected Mom put him up to it, as a part of some “Dine with Poor Lonely Julia” program.
“I have to eat,” he answered. “We’re still rounding up kids who either were definitely at or were rumored to be at the party. And then, an hour ago, we got a list of Mrs. Zelisko’s bookkeeping clients. We’re calling all of them to set up meetings as well. I’m afraid they’re getting some not great news.”
“I heard.”
He laughed. “I figured.”
We walked toward Gus’s, though we hadn’t discussed where to eat. We entered via the front door, something I almost never did, and climbed down the stairs into the big room, where the open kitchen, counter and stools, and candlepin bowling lane were. Beyond it was the dining room with its booths, fake leather banquettes, and stunning views of the back harbor.
The restaurant was moderately busy with the Sunday lunch crowd, and I hurried through to an empty booth. I still felt really weird at Gus’s. It wasn’t like I was afraid of running into Chris. When you break up with someone in a town this small, you know you’re going to run into them. Frequently. It was that the restaurant held so many memories. Chris and I had run the dinner restaurant there and eaten oh-so-many breakfasts. It was the place where we’d re-met when I’d moved back to town. The memories were in every corner of the space, and I couldn’t shake them off.
“Howdy, stranger.” Gus approached, order pad at the ready. No one in town except his wife knew how old he was, but he opened at the restaurant at five in the morning to feed the fishermen and stayed open until after three, seven days a week, eleven months a year.
“I live upstairs,” I pointed out.
“I give you your privacy.” He sounded indignant. Gus did a great indignant. “You’ve been scarce down here.”
“Busy,” I said, which was a total lie. Without the dinner restaurant to run in the off-season, I wasn’t busy enough.
“What’ll you have?”
For lunch, Gus serves Maine hot dogs, which are bright red for some reason, hamburgers, grilled cheese, BLTs, and PB&J. In other words, things you could make for yourself at home. He accompanies them with the world’s best French fries, and you can’t do that at home.
“BLT,” I said.
“Burger.” Jamie didn’t add rare, medium, or well-done. He was too experienced a diner to attempt to tell Gus how to cook a burger. You got ’em the way he made ’em, and you didn’t complain.
When Gus left, I looked around to make sure we wouldn’t be heard. Then I leaned toward Jamie. “I don’t get it. I mean, you know how Mrs. Zelisko lived. Third floor walk-up, no car, five black dresses, and a couple of sweaters. There is no way she spent the money she’d been conning people out of all these years.”
“For some thieves, the thrill is in the stealing,” he said. “Not in spending the money. Not in the money at all.”
I shook my head. “What I don’t get is how it happened. She’d just gotten to town when Barry Walker hired her. Barry’s disorganized, but she was handling his money. Why didn’t he check her references?”
“The Star of the Sea Catholic church,” Jamie answered. “She met people there, and they trusted her. Barry Walker was the perfect early mark. He was desperate for help. He didn’t ask a lot of questions. With each new client, it got easier to get the next one. These people all knew one another. Each of them expected that someone had done the due diligence regarding references and such. If no one actually had, how would they know? After a while, it was embarrassing to ask.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“Yup. It’s called affinity fraud. The original Ponzi’s victims were Italian-Americans from his own community. Bernie Madoff devasted Jewish foundations and charities. It’s how con artists gain trust. We get notices at the station all the time. Scam going through the evangelical community. Someone pitching fraudulent investments at Elk’s clubs. It’s how it’s done.”
Gus arrived with our food, and the conversation turned to more cheerful topics. Jamie was going to Florida to see his parents for Thanksgiving. We made a plan to maybe see a movie sometime.
Gus came back, and we paid him in cash, the only tender he accepted as legal.
“Headed upstairs?” Jamie asked as he rose to leave.
“No. I’m going to Mom’s. Page is still there. But before I do, I have an errand to run.”
Gus waved as we walked back through the front room. “Don’t be such a stranger.”
Chapter Fifteen
On my way to Mom’s, I stopped at our neighbors, the Goldsmiths. “Harley graduated from high school last year, right?” I asked June Goldsmith after we said hello. She’d been surprised to find me on her porch.
“She did. You would have been invited to the party, but I knew you’d be working out on Morrow Island.”
I swiped with my hand to let her know not to stress about it. “Was Harley at that big party here in town on Halloween?”
“The one where Mrs. Zelisko was murdered? No, thank goodness. Harley’s at UMaine Portland. She decided to stay on campus for Halloween weekend.” June looked at me expectantly, wondering where the conversation was going.
“Did Harley leave her yearbook home, do you know? Could I borrow it overnight?”
Whatever June Goldsmith had expected me to say, that wasn’t it. “I’ll quickly check her room.”
She returned within minutes with the book, bound in “Busman’s High blue” faux leather, and handed it to me.
“I’ll get it right back to you,” I said.
“No hurry. I don’t expect Harley home until Thanksgiving.”
When I got to Mom’s house, Page was at the kitchen table, textbook open, worksheet in front of her. School again tomorrow.
I sat down next to her. “Do you have a lot to do?”
She bit the eraser on her pencil. “Almost done.” There was a sheet of math problems in front of her, and she appeared to have a couple left.
“Great. When you’re finished, come find me.”
Mom was in the sitting room off her bedroom, watching Sunday programming on PBS. “Julia, what are you doing here?”
“How come you still have Page?”
“She’s upset. Sonny and Livvie both have work tomorrow. It’s hectic in their house in the mornings. They thought it might be better if Page had some quiet time here and a little space before she had to go to school and see all those kids. There’s bound to be a lot of chatter about the party and the murder. Livvie dropped clothes and her schoolwork off earlier. “
I thought about mornings at Livvie’s house. Sonny would be long gone, off to help his father pull his lobster traps. Lobsters were scarce in November, and the weather would make work on the boat miserable, but the price the co-op paid was commensurately higher. Livvie would have her hands full getting Jack dressed and delivered to daycare before she went to her job at the pottery studio. She wouldn’t have time to give extra attention to Page.
Livvie’s busy life contrasted starkly with my own. Empty apartment. No restaurant to run. Empty. Dark. Still. What was I doing with my life?
“You didn’t answer my question.” Mom brought me back into the moment. “What are you doing here? You know you’re always welcome, but you weren’t expected.”
There was never any point in trying to tiptoe around my mom. “The police still haven’t identified all the kids who were at the party. I got a yearbook from June Goldsmith.
I want to go through it with Page to see if she recognizes any of the photos as people who were there.”
My mother pursed her lips and squinted at me. “Is that a good idea? I’m supposed to be letting Page settle down and get ready for the week.”
“I think it is!” I left the room before she could object further.
Page and I met in her room, behind a closed door. I wasn’t doing anything wrong, and Page seemed a whole lot happier about this activity than doing her homework, but I didn’t want my mother to feel the need to interrupt.
I explained to Page that she hadn’t seen Howard Davies at the party. “But,” I said, “you did see someone. Someone dressed like they were older going up the stairs not long before you and Talia went to look for Mrs. Zelisko. I thought we could look through this yearbook to see if it was someone who’s already graduated. Did you see his face at all?”
“I’m not sure. I may have seen it earlier, you know, before I saw his back going up the stairs.”
We went slowly through the pages of the yearbook containing the senior photos. Page shook her head, no, no, no, with each turn of the page. It didn’t mean none of the kids had been at the party. It only meant she didn’t recognize them, but it didn’t represent progress. We looked at the rest of the book, including the photos of teams, clubs, performances. Page did recognize lots of those students and said some of them had been at the party. But in every case she’d already given the kid’s name to Binder and Flynn.
When we closed the book, I sighed.
“Don’t be sad, Aunt Julia,” Page said. “Even if the man I saw wasn’t Mr. Davies, he was a grown-up. He isn’t going to be in this yearbook.” Her face brightened, “Let’s see if we can find anyone on my Instagram.”
“Do you have your phone?” I was surprised.
“No.” She rolled her eyes. “But I can sign onto my account from yours.”
“Didn’t Flynn ask you go through your social media on that first morning?”
“Yes, but I didn’t know what I was looking for.”
