Paper, Scissors, Death

by Joanna Campbell Slan

  Anger bubbled inside me, but I put it aside. My daughter needed me. “It’s okay, honey. You can tell me. What did you think about Mrs. Baker?” The last sentence came out more hushed and loaded than I wished.

  “I didn’t much like her.”

  Call me mean-spirited, but I was thrilled with her answer. “Did you see her often? I mean, did she join you and your daddy a lot?”

  “Yeah. Well, no, not really. I got pretty tired of it. She would act real mushy toward Daddy, and I really didn’t like that. Once I even said, ‘Excuse me. No PDA,’ and she didn’t know what that meant so I told her how there’s a rule at school about public displays of affection. She didn’t like that one bit. So I asked Daddy if … if he was going to leave us … divorce you and marry her …”

  “And he said?”

  “He said he’d never leave us. Ever. But Mrs. Baker said at least until I got older.”

  “She did?”

  “Yeah, I was scared. But Daddy got mad at her. Daddy said he’d never leave us. Ever. We were his family. Then Mrs. Baker got this mean look in her eyes and her mouth went all funny. I didn’t care. I hugged Daddy, and I told him I loved him. He said it again. He promised he’d never leave me, never leave us, ever—but he did, didn’t he?”

  The floodgates burst and the pain of the last six months, along with the strain of keeping a secret for years, swept through my child. Anya gave up trying to hold back her tears and let it all go. Shivering, quaking sobs vibrated her slender frame. I pulled her close, held her to my chest, and rocked her the way I had when she was a baby. Her sweet, tiny head with its peach fuzz had grown into a nearly adult-sized head of silky blonde hair, but the same intense love for my baby filled me. I wanted to protect her. I wanted to make it all right.

  And I knew I couldn’t.

  Now I had a motive for my husband’s death: George told Roxanne he’d never leave us. That must have really frosted her cake.

  But as I held my crying child, the person I wanted to kill wasn’t Roxanne.

  It was George.

  When I judged Anya to be cried out, I grabbed a washcloth, soaked it in cold water and wrung it nearly dry. I dabbed her eyes and forehead, wiped her nose, and gave her a kiss on the cheek.

  “Ready to eat? I invited Detective Detweiler to join us. He’s transferring photo files. That’ll help him figure out who broke into our house.” We leaned into each other, heads nearly touching, as we walked down the hall with linked arms.

  A fragrance lured us into the kitchen. The scene that greeted us stopped us in our tracks.

  In the middle of the table was a stainless steel mixing bowl of lettuce, topped with chopped tomatoes and carrots. Three places were set with plates, napkins, and salad forks. Instead of water glasses, there were coffee mugs of water.

  Detweiler stood in front of the stove wearing an apron and stirring an interesting mixture of spaghetti and sauce. Fresh baked garlic bread was arranged on a plate in a series of neat slices.

  Anya wiggled her mouth in an attempt not to smile and gave me a broad wink. She said to him, “Wow, you did a great job. I usually have to set the table. I’ve got all sorts of chores I’d be willing to share.”

  Detweiler flushed and pulled off the apron quickly. “Um, I couldn’t find your glasses. I hope you don’t mind me going ahead. I was kind of hungry and I figured you were busy.” A kindness in his eyes told me that he’d heard at least part of my conversation with my daughter.

  I shouldn’t have been surprised, the walls are thin and I’d left her door open.

  Well, welcome to my world, buster.

  “Have you ever eaten Persian spaghetti?”

  Anya shook her head.

  “Prepare to be amazed,” said Detweiler. “A friend in college taught me this. I doubt that it’s authentic, but it sure does a great job of stretching a little pasta into a big, hearty meal.”

  We sat down and ate. As if to distract us, Detweiler talked about growing up on a farm. Anya wanted to hear about the animals. She was particularly interested in hearing about the pond on his parents’ property. She was fascinated with bugs, frogs, snakes, fish, and all manner of critters. The kid was a budding vet or biologist. I liked hearing about Detweiler’s family, especially his mother and two sisters, whom he identified as quilters par excellence. Detweiler asked Anya about school. She admitted she had another end-of-year test to study for. He told her not to worry, that police would be cruising past our house at regular intervals to check on us. I smiled to myself a lot during the meal. For dessert, I pulled the mainly defrosted package of Girl Scout Thin Mints from the freezer.

  A knock at the front door interrupted us.

  “Paris’s mother left town unexpectedly. You got room for her?” Mert held a blonde Pomeranian with a jeweled collar. Paris was wearing a sundress and a straw hat with tiny flowers around the brim. Mert handed over the dog and her traveling wardrobe case with the jeweled letters that spelled out PARIS. “I’ll get her food and crate,” she said.

  “Paris!” squealed Anya. “Hey, Mr. uh …”

  Detweiler followed her into the living room saying, “Chad.” He took one gander at Paris and froze. “What is that?”

  Anya explained how Paris was our most frequent boarder. My daughter took the little fluffball from me gently. Paris loved Anya and wiggled with delight.

  “What on earth is she wearing?”

  “Paris has an entire wardrobe of pretty clothes and accessories. She has a yellow polka-dot bikini, a Burberry raincoat, and short-shorts,” Anya chattered happily while holding the fashion victim under one arm. Gracie came over and sniffed Paris once before deciding this was your basic boring house guest.

  “Why on earth? She’s a dog, not a Barbie doll.”

  I laughed. “Yeah, well, don’t tell her owner. You’ll ruin the surprise.”

  Mert held her cell phone under her ear and was yakking her way up the sidewalk when Detweiler took the crate, a bag of food, and a monogrammed canister of yummies from her. Mert did a double-take, glancing at him, then at me, and almost dropping her phone. Watching the detective walk toward my kitchen, she sputtered, “Great Gravel Gerty, have mercy. Who is he? Did Santa leave him under your Hanukkah bush and you forgot to tell me?”

  Mert leaned closer to whisper, “And where can I get myself one jest like him? You been holding out on me. Yippee kai yai ay.”

  I loved her, but she could sure make me blush.

  Mert and I stepped inside as Anya explained Paris’s warped personality to Detweiler. “See, she loves to get yummies—” and Anya gave the fluffy pooch a small liver snap “—but she never, ever eats her treat right away. Instead, she buries it. Watch. Here’s a yummy, sweetie.”

  Putting Paris and her treat on the sofa, Anya stood next to Detweiler to observe. The overdressed dog raced from one end of the sofa to the other, dug for all she was worth, and shoved her head between the arm cushion and the loose pillow, doing minor damage to her sunbonnet.

  “Now, watch this.” Anya straightened Paris’s hat. The Pomeranian pranced to the far end of the sofa, leaving behind her buried treat. “I think I’ll sit here,” and Anya lowered herself onto the sofa cushion next to the hidden yummy.

  “Yip, yip, yip, yap, yip!” Paris threw herself onto Anya’s lap, turning in frantic circles.

  “What’s wrong Paris? Did you lose something?” Anya stood up and Paris began to dig at the sofa again, her small front paws moving at lightning speed. Poking her head between the cushions and whining, Paris was clearly beside herself, checking to see if her yummy had been disturbed.

  “Don’t tease her.” I felt sorry for the silly creature. But then, I knew how it felt to act like a dope in front of an audience. Especially when food was involved.

  Anya reached behind the pillow, retrieved the liver snap and handed it to Paris. The Pom took it gratefully and raced to the other end of the sofa so she could repeat the burial rites.

  “That’s something,” said Detweiler.


  Mert asked him about the break-in. I noticed her eyelashes fluttered double-time. I explained I’d called the landlord about security lights. “Good idea. Roger can install them tomorrow. He’s only got one class at Meramec Community College. How ’bout I send him over to Home Depot? He’ll bring you the receipt, and you can pay him back.”

  “I’ll pay him for his time as well,” I said.

  “Nuts. Make him a couple loaves of your banana bread. He loves them, and I won’t go through the bother. That’ll be more’n enough payment. He’ll be glad to do it for you.”

  “What would I do without you?” I gave her a hug. I meant what I said, and she knew it. She whispered in my ear and pointed toward the kitchen where Detweiler was back at his computer, “He’s gorgeous. Man, he can play with my mouse any old day. Squeak, squeak! Hold me back. If love is a crime, lock me up.”

  I laughed. We made arrangements for her to retrieve Paris and said good night.

  Detweiler and Anya cleared the table, while the photos loaded. I rinsed out the pots, except for pausing briefly to peep over his shoulder at the images.

  He grabbed my arm. “I heard what your daughter said.”

  I froze. My skin tingled.

  He let me go. His eyes were steady, deep, and thoughtful. They were the color of a Heineken bottle held to the sunlight.

  “Sounds like Ms. Baker had motive. She couldn’t have been happy hearing your husband tell her they had no future.”

  I nodded. “Right. She had motive. And there was that scarf. But how’d she do it? The autopsy said he had a heart attack.”

  He ran his hands over his face. “Probably poison. Because of Thanksgiving, the autopsy happened four days after Mr. Lowenstein died. Even if we knew what to look for, it would have been hard to find. But after four days? Really tough. Especially if it was organic toxins.”

  My eyes blurred with tears. I rinsed a plate and set it down carefully. I had to ask, “You still suspect me?”

  “I still have a job to do. Sorry about the eavesdropping, but I’m glad I was here to listen in. You were surprised about your husband seeing Ms. Baker. Right?”

  “I didn’t want to believe he was cheating. Um, I had no proof. I figured I was imagining things.” My hand made lazy circles with my dishrag. Round and round and round. “I guess I fooled myself. I asked him once and he … he changed the subject. I didn’t press it. I sort of figured there was … might be … someone else. He sure wasn’t that … uh … interested in me.”

  “Why’d you stay with him?” His words held no malice, no hint of judgment, just curiosity.

  “I thought it was best.”

  “Best for you?”

  “For Anya.”

  The truth was I didn’t think I had a right to expect more out of life. But that was none of his business. That was my baggage.

  Time to change the subject. I pointed to the computer. “Which memory card are you on?”

  “If they’re labeled correctly, these are Ms. Baker’s pictures.”

  I watched the photos load, studied them for a minute, then returned to washing salad bowls.

  Creativity experts tell us water spurs our inspiration to new levels. Taking a shower or bath, even washing our hands, can unlock a portion of the brain devoted to ideas and imagination. When I get stuck on a page design, I get a glass of water. When I get totally scrap-blocked, I take a walk around a lake. That’s the only way I can explain what happened next. My hands were in water when it came to me.

  “Hey, wait a sec. Let me look at those photos.” I didn’t know what to call him. I felt awkward calling the detective by his first name. He’d given my daughter permission to call him Chad, but in my mind, the man sitting across from me would always be Detweiler. And I couldn’t bring myself to say his name.

  He brought up images from Roxanne’s memory card. One by one he clicked and enlarged them.

  I shook my head. “Not a single bridal shower picture among them. Let’s go through them again.”

  There were a variety of photos: two of the engaged couple kissing, a beach, a structure of white poles, and Roxanne standing on white sand next to a man wearing sunglasses and a red baseball cap. Whoever he was, he wasn’t George.

  I pulled up a chair and sat at Detweiler’s elbow. “Does that make sense to you? I mean, why bring your camera to a special event and not take pictures?”

  He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Maybe the card was full.”

  “She’s got a lot of poor quality duplicates on here.”

  “So?”

  “Okay, look.” I grabbed my digital camera and opened a photo. “Now look at this.” I opened another photo. “Same subject; not as good composition.”

  His forehead wrinkled. “I don’t get it.”

  I explained that scrapbookers love digital cameras because we take a lot of pictures. Let me repeat that: a lot of pictures. We’re always hoping for the perfect angle, the best setting, the best pose, the sharpest focus. And we’re willing to take tons of pictures to get what we want. Dedicated scrapbookers often snap pictures of the same subject in the same pose in both landscape and portrait composition.

  “Why?”

  “Landscape might work better in one layout but portrait might be better in another. You want flexibility. You want to choose the photo that works best on your page. So, like I said, we take lots of pictures. In fact, we take too many shots knowing we can delete the ones we don’t like. After all, we aren’t wasting film.”

  He threw up his hands in frustration. “I still don’t get your point.”

  “Look carefully. Roxanne has duplicates she should have easily dumped to take more pictures. But she didn’t.”

  “Which means?”

  “Well …” I drummed my fingers on the table, a habit my mother abhorred. “Well … maybe she didn’t intend to take pictures. Maybe she was using her camera as an album. What if she planned to show someone an image—or images? Maybe she didn’t care about taking pictures of the shower.”

  Detweiler tensed. “If you’re right, there might be an image here—” he tapped the screen “—that someone wants badly. So badly they broke into your house to get it.”

  My heart did a hop-skip-and-jump. Suddenly, I felt woozy. I stood up, got us both glasses of cold water, and took a sip. Was Sheila right? Was I endangering my child? Was I so quick to disagree with anything my mother-in-law said that I hadn’t been fair? Calm down, I told myself. Think this through.

  “Okay, someone has my computer. Now he thinks he has all the copies of the images. No reason to bother me again.” I rubbed Gracie’s head. Anya and Paris were watching television in the other room, but Gracie had taken a liking to the policeman and was nestled between our chairs. Her big head alternated resting on my thigh and then the detective’s.

  Detweiler spoke quietly, raising his fingers to count off his points. “Mr. Lowenstein might have been poisoned. Someone shot Ms. Baker. Your house was broken into. There’s something weird going on with these photos. Maybe I spoke too soon about you being safe.” He gave me a long, thoughtful look. “By the way, I nailed your window shut.” He jerked his head toward my scrapbooking room. “That’ll do for now.”

  He flipped open his phone and talked in a low voice. I could make out the gist of the conversation: he wanted the local cops to be especially watchful—and he explained why.

  When he finished, I said, “I own a one-hundred-twenty-pound dog. I have a fenced-in back yard. We’ll be fine.” I talked big, but I was quaking in my boots. Our new theory had me worried.

  “The local police will watch the house tonight. But at the very least, you need security lights. Anyone can get in through these windows, but with security lights, they’ll think twice.”

  “Mert’s son will pick them up and install them tomorrow. After I get permission from my landlord.”

  “Get those lights up right away.”

  I didn’t argue with him about calling Mr. Wilson first. In my brief career a
s a renter, I’d learned my landlord wasn’t always reasonable. Once again, being poor put me at risk in ways I’d never stopped to imagine.

  We had only fifteen more pictures to copy. Detweiler’s mouth settled into a scowl. “Hand me your cell phone. And does Anya have a cell phone? Get it for me.”

  I did as I was told. George had gotten Anya a kid’s cell phone last year. At first I thought it an extravagance. But because the CALA campus sprawled over 100 acres, the phone facilitated tracking her down at after-school activities. In the wake of her father’s death, the phone helped my daughter feel more secure. Sheila loved being able to speed-dial her grandchild. When she offered to take over the payments, I gladly acquiesced. She might have rescinded her offer if she’d realized how much I liked being able to call my daughter at her grandmother’s house without my mother-in-law’s interference.

  Detweiler programmed his number into both our phones. Handing one back to Anya, he told her, “Anything happens that bothers you, anything at all, hit number nine and call me. Doesn’t matter what time of day or night, okay?”

  She studied him. “Are we in danger? Is something wrong?”

  “No, Miss Anya,” he said, “but what use is it knowing a police officer if you can’t call him when you need him? Say a big bully picks on you on the playground, or you see an older kid drive too fast through the school parking lot, or you hear a noise at night and you get scared, I’m your man, all right?” And he concluded with a grin and a goofy thumb-to-the-chest gesture that made her laugh out loud.

  “Hear that, Paris? We got police protection.” Paris was wearing pink striped pajamas and fuzzy house slippers. The dog was better dressed for bed than I would be.

  “Honey,” I said. “As hot as it is, how about letting Paris sleep nude tonight?”

  When girl and fashion-plate left the kitchen, Detweiler sank back in his chair and covered his face with both hands. “I could never be a parent. Here I’m trying to make sure she’s okay, and instead I scared her.”