Mahjonged (An Alex Harris Mystery)

by Elaine Macko

  I turned to look at Els. “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because Poppy worked in the French office then. We all lived in Paris and he came home every night. I remember distinctly he never traveled at all during that time. The Paris office kept him so busy and every night at dinner he would drill Wilhelm and me about our French lessons and he only allowed us to speak French. I was very glad to get back to Holland, but I admit knowing French serves me well working at the hotel. We didn’t move back to Amsterdam until almost the end of nineteen eighty-five. In October, I believe.”

  “Then this must be her little diversion,” I said.

  “But how did this picture end up in her grave?” Els asked.

  That seemed to be the million-dollar question and one for which I did not have an answer except the killer must have tossed it in there, but why? And then Lois said something that made Els and me turn to her and that creeping piece of ice started its crawl up my back again.

  “Maybe he came back.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  “Wait. What? Maybe he came back?” my sister asked the next morning. “What the hell does that mean and how does it bring us any closer to finding out who the killer is?”

  I shrugged. “It doesn’t, I guess. But it’s an interesting theory.”

  “But if the person who placed the picture in the grave is the killer, as you’ve hypostatized, then that means the killer is a man,” my sister said to me as she took a large bite of her toast.

  “But there was only one man at my party.”

  “Right. Bert. Oh my God,” Sam said as she put the muffin down. “Bert must be the man in the photo.”

  I looked at my sister and just stared. I couldn’t even manage an eye roll at this idiotic suggestion. “Twenty something years ago Bert would have been, let’s see,” I said, taking a long pause, “about twelve. Idioot.”

  “Oh, yeah, I guess he would be, wouldn’t he.” Sam started to giggle and I had to give in. Penelope seemed to like her men, but could she have been into boys? Yuck.

  “What are you laughing at Mom?”

  Henry came hopping into the kitchen. He liked not using his crutches and had taken to hopping all over the house. I didn’t know if it was a good thing to be hopping all over and shaking up his little insides, but he seemed no worse for wear.

  He came over to my side and I lifted him onto my lap. My sister had given him a good sponge bath the night before and washed his hair, carefully avoiding the cut on his forehead that would probably leave a scar. She told me he was quite proud of having a scar like Harry Potter. I sucked in the smell of him and wrapped my arms around him tighter.

  “You’re squishing me, Auntie.”

  “Oh, sorry, Henry,” I said easing up on my grip a bit.

  “I know. I keep squeezing the hell out of him myself,” Sam said to me.

  Would we ever get over almost losing him and let him get back to a normal life or was the kid destined to be pampered and hovered over for the rest of his days? Just then my father called from the living room. Henry hopped off my lap and took off in a shot.

  “Dad’s taking them to the library and Mom’s over at Meme’s playing pinochle with Theresa and Jean. What are you doing today?”

  “Going to the mall and then meeting Mary-Beth for lunch. Want to join us? If we leave now we can get some shopping in before lunch.”

  Several hours later, and with much lighter wallets than when we first arrived at the mall, Sam and I joined Mary-Beth at a wonderful little restaurant. Soprano’s had opened up a year earlier and no one knew if the name came from the fictional mob family in a very successful cable TV show or not. From the menu everything looked wonderful and after much consideration we all decided to have a concoction of carrots, celery, onions, and osso bucco cooked together in a tomato sauce enhanced with orange zest and then poured over a steaming bowl of polenta or corn-meal mush as Meme always called it. A generous heaping of freshly grated parmesan cheese tossed on top completed the dish and we ate with gusto.

  “Tell me all about Henry,” Mary-Beth said between bites. “Is he back to normal?”

  “You mean does he have the run of my parents’ home? Is he terrorizing his sister with his oozing wounds as he calls them? Is he talking non-stop and destroying all the raked leaf piles in my parents’ back yard? Then yes, he’s back to normal. Henry normal.”

  Mary-Beth reached over and placed one of her hands over Sam’s hand and her other over mine. “That child is a precious gift and as long as he’s back to normal, whatever normal is for Henry, then that’s all that matters.”

  “Thank you, Mary-Beth,” Sam said softly.

  Mary-Beth took her hands back and started to eat again. “So, what’s new with the investigation?”

  I thought about this for a moment or two while I ate a few more bites of my lunch. What exactly was new with my investigation? “Truly, not very much I’m afraid. I keep running into brick walls, but I did discuss something with Els last night before I left, a new theory of sorts, and I need to get to the library to check a few things out.”

  Sam and Mary-Beth looked at each other and then back to me.

  “Well?” they both said in unison.

  “You’re not going to just throw that tidbit out there and keep the rest to yourself, are you?” Mary-Beth asked.

  “No, she’s not. I drove and if she wants a ride, she had better start spitting out details.”

  My sister’s threat was worth nothing. She may have driven us to the mall, but I had her car keys in my pocket, having picked them up when she dropped her purse while trying to find her cell phone. I’ve been telling her for years you need to have a lot of compartments in a purse to keep everything in its place, but she never listens.

  I wiped a bit of sauce from my chin. “Okay,” I started as I leaned on the table. “Penelope was a lawyer and I got to wondering whether or not she still practiced. Turns out she was of counsel to a firm in New Haven.”

  My two companions looked at each other and shrugged as if to say this new theory of mine hit another brick wall.

  “When I got home last night I did a search on my iPad of the law firm. It’s a relatively small practice and it specializes in medical malpractice.” I settled back in my chair and took a good-sized spoonful of my osso bucco waiting for the accolades to wash over me.

  “Medical malpractice?” Mary-Beth asked. “So what?”

  I sighed. I tried not to, but I couldn’t help myself. “Mia. Liz. The yelling and the screaming. The accusations of you killed my father, you killed my father.”

  “Oh my gosh! Did Mia hire Penelope?” Sam asked.

  “I don’t know. That’s why I want to go to the library tomorrow and look through old newspapers and see what I can find out. It all might just be a coincidence or maybe Penelope represented Liz. ”

  “Why don’t you just ask them if they hired Penelope?” Mary-Beth said.

  “Because I don’t want to tip them off. I want to go to them with evidence in my hand. And maybe Penelope had absolutely nothing to do with their case at all.”

  My sister pushed a strand of her lovely honey-colored hair away from her face and leaned forward with gleaming eyes.

  “This is good, Alex. All along we’ve been wondering what on earth could have possibly induced anyone to stab Penelope and now we have our answer. It’s so simple.”

  “It is?” I asked.

  Mary-Beth and Sam looked at each other and smiled and then they turned to me and said in unison, “Because she was a lawyer.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  Lawyers. They always get a bum rap. They’ve become a necessary evil in so many things and they don’t come cheap.

  But when you’re in some kind of trouble, legal trouble, the first thing you think of is finding a lawyer. So there it was, right in front of me. Both Liz and Mia more than likely needed a lawyer at some point after Mia’s father died. The hospital must have had a lawyer as well, though they probably had an army of
them on staff.

  All this time I needed a motive and what better one than having a case not go your way because of something Penelope did or didn’t do. It had to be Liz or Mia. Or Bert or Connie because of the affair. So, okay, I had two good motives. I still felt Bert belonged firmly on the bottom of my suspect list, but Connie finding out about his dalliance with Penelope boosted her to somewhere close to the top.

  And then I remembered the picture of the man. How did the picture fit in? Or did it factor into the murder at all? Or was the man Mia’s father. Oh my God! Had Penelope had an affair with Mia’s father all those years ago? Was Penelope Mia’s long-lost mother? Jeez. All of a sudden I had tons of motives and twists and turns at every corner. I needed to calm down. All of this was pure conjecture. I didn’t even know if Liz or Mia had obtained legal counsel or even if a cause of action ever got filed. And if so, had the firm Penelope worked for handled the case for one of the parties? Was there an actual trial or a summary judgment? I was just speculating and I needed to get my facts straight. I also needed to stop using lawyer words.

  My sister had some errands to run so she dropped me off at my parents’ after lunch. Dad was taking a nap and Kendall went to a birthday party. Dad left a note saying he took Henry over to Meme’s and so I headed over there.

  I had been derelict of late keeping Meme informed of my snooping, but let’s face it, I didn’t have much to report. Until now. Now I had a ton of good stuff to tell her.

  “Alex, what are you doing here?” my mother asked without even looking up from the cards in her hand.

  “How was your lunch?” Meme asked.

  “Delicious. We went to Soprano’s and I had cornmeal mush.” I put my purse down and picked up a cookie from a plate on the coffee table.

  Meme and Theresa made up one team and my mother and Dorothy the other.

  “Where’s Jean? And Henry?” I asked taking in the small but comfortable living room.

  “In the kitchen,” my mother said. “Dorothy showed up so Jean’s taking a break.”

  Darn. Jean was still here. I didn’t want to talk about my latest discoveries with one of my suspects in the house. Technically, I could probably scratch Jean off my list, but until I had all my facts checked out everyone but my family and good friends were still suspects.

  I walked into the kitchen where Jean and Henry busily colored a page in a coloring book. Henry loved to color and so far we were lucky he only colored in books. The walls of my sister’s house had been spared.

  “Auntie, look what Mrs. Malansky got for me,” Henry said. I noticed he colored with his left hand and was doing a good job of it. His right arm still gave him a lot of pain but no infection had set in and it was healing nicely.

  Jean affectionately touched Henry’s hand. “I lost a pot of coins to your mother. I thought it best to come in here and color before all my money was gone,” Jean said with a smile. She had curled her pale red hair today and I noticed a bit of color on her lips. Getting out and hanging around with my grandmother seemed to do her a world of good.

  As long as I had her here, there was one thing I could do. I went back out to the living room and got the picture from the grave and brought it back to the kitchen. It was just a copy and had turned out grainy but it still showed the man’s face clearly.

  “Jean, could I ask you something?”

  Jean put down the red crayon she used to color a bug and turned to me, picking up her coffee mug and taking a sip. “Sure. What do you need to know?”

  “Yesterday at the funeral,” I stopped for a moment and looked at Henry but he paid no attention to us, “when we all filed passed the coffin with our roses did you notice anything?”

  “Like what? A person? Do you think the killer was there?”

  Well, yes, I did think the killer was there. I know the killer was there because it had to be one of us from the party and we were all there, but I didn’t say this to Jean. “No, not a person. Something in the grave?”

  Jean gave me a funny look and I knew I didn’t make any sense.

  “Here. Take a look at his,” I said as I handed her the picture. “Do you recognize this man?”

  Jean brought the picture close to her face and then took her glasses off and looked again. “It’s not very clear.”

  “No. It’s a copy. I gave the original to the police.”

  “The original? I don’t understand, Alex.”

  “I found this stuck under the coffin. I saw it as I walked by and dropped my rose.”

  “Maybe it blew in there.” Jean studied the picture once again and then handed it back to me. “I’m sorry, Alex, but I don’t know who it is.”

  “Chinese food,” Meme said walking into the kitchen. “We’re going to send out for a bunch of stuff. Henry? Does Chinese food sound good?”

  Henry barely looked up. He was coloring animals from the Serengeti, from what I could tell, and they had his full attention. “Yes, please. Egg rolls.”

  “You got it, kiddo,” Meme said. “Alex, Jean?”

  “Not for me, Meme,” Jean said as she stood up. “My neighbor and I are going to an early dinner and then a movie, but thank you.”

  “Alex?”

  I had a big lunch but that was over four hours ago. Chinese food sounded great. “Sure. I’ll call Sam and have her bring Kendall over.”

  Jean kissed Henry goodbye and then left. I called Sam, and Meme ordered enough food to last for days.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  We stuffed ourselves with fried rice, crisp egg rolls, and spicy beef while I passed the picture around. Jean had been kind enough to get a coloring book and crayons for Kendall as well and the kids stayed in the kitchen working on their pictures and eating.

  “Alex, if this is the same man as in the picture you found in Penelope’s closet then it must be important to why she got killed,” my mother said. “Dear, pass me another wonton, please.”

  “I have another theory I want to share with you,” I began while pouring more tea into my mug. “You all know Penelope was a lawyer and I got to thinking about it.”

  “I bet you think she got killed because no one likes lawyers,” Meme said.

  “That’s exactly right. Everyone hates lawyers,” I agreed.

  My mother shook her head. “But Penelope wasn’t still practicing, was she? I got the impression she retired.”

  I took a bite of my rice and then wiped my chin. “According to her stepdaughter, she was of counsel to a firm in New Haven and by a strange coincidence that firm happens to specialize in malpractice suits.” I took a minute to scan the faces around the table to see if this latest revelation registered. Sam had already heard about all of this at noon but the others took a minute to chew it over.

  “Liz and Mia,” Meme said.

  “Right,” Dorothy said. “Alex, you mean one of them killed Penelope?”

  “Well, let’s not get carried away. I don’t even know if Penelope’s firm represented either of them. I’m going to the library tomorrow and see what I can find in back issues of the newspaper. I want to talk with both of them but I want to have my facts first. Plus, I have another idea.”

  Henry came hopping into the living room asking for more rice. My sister got up and followed him back into the kitchen with rice and broccoli. The kid loved his veggies.

  “Okay, I filled his plate up again so he’s good for another few minutes,” Sam said, as she came back and took her seat on the sofa. “So what’s your other idea?”

  I pushed my plate away and picked up my mug. I settled back into the sofa and looked around the room. “What if the man in the picture is Mia’s father? And Penelope was her mother?”

  “I thought her mother died?” my mom asked.

  I shook my head. “No. She told me her mother left telling Mia’s father she just wasn’t ready to have a child. Her father and aunt raised Mia.”

  “How would Mia know Penelope was her mother?”

  “Okay,” I said leaning forward, “What if Mia hir
es Penelope’s firm to represent her when her father dies. Her mother is long gone but all these years her dad has shown her pictures. So she hires the firm and in walks Penelope to represent her and she recognizes her but doesn’t say anything.”

  “And then what? She waits for you to have a mahjong party so she can stab her?”

  I rolled my eyes at my sister. “No. She comes to the party and then she sees Liz and it gets her all upset over her father and then there’s Penelope and she just can’t take it anymore, thinking about how her father died and how her mother left her. Her vulnerability took over.”

  “But Honey, wouldn’t Penelope recognize her own daughter?” my grandmother asked me.

  “She left when Mia was a baby. Maybe not,” I said.

  My sister shook her head. “No. A mother would recognize her child. If someone took Henry away from me right now and twenty years later I saw his picture, say, on a wanted poster at the post office, I would recognize him in a minute.”

  “Stop that! He’ll hear you,” my mother admonished her oldest daughter.

  Theresa put her plate down and looked at me. “But Penelope would have recognized the name, Alex. Whether she recognized Mia or not, she would have recognized the name.”

  “She’s got you there, honey,” Meme said before she picked up another half of an egg roll.

  I thought about this for a moment. If Penelope was indeed Mia’s mother, she would have recognized the name, if not the person. “But maybe she just didn’t want Mia to know she was her mother because she felt guilty about leaving her.” I could see my latest and not-so-greatest theory going down the drain.

  “Let’s put aside this scenario about Penelope being Mia’s long lost mother for the moment,” my mother started. “Alex, if Mia had already met Penelope through the lawsuit, they would have acted like they knew each other and they didn’t. I don’t remember Penelope saying, oh, hello, Mia. Nice to see you again.”

  My mother had a point. “True. Well, how about this,” I said, still trying to make this theory work, basically, because I had nothing else. “What if Mia never actually met Penelope but just knew she worked at the firm and maybe saw her one day walking down the hall but never got introduced to her.”