Milkshakes, Mermaids, and Murder

by Sara Rosett

  The police officer consulted a list, then said, “Mrs. Avery?”

  I tossed the magazine on the table and followed him into the small office where the man in casual clothes sat behind a large faux-wood desk. A framed map of the apartment complex hung on the wall behind him. He reached over pictures of two kids, an open can of Red Bull, and several bobblehead figurines to shake my hand. “Detective Adam Jenson,” he said with a friendly smile. “You’re Ellie Avery?”

  I shook his hand and confirmed my identity, then took a seat in the chair in front of the desk.

  “So let’s get the preliminary things out of the way.” He took down my name and contact information.

  “Georgia?” he asked after I gave him my address.

  “Yes, we’re in town on vacation,” I said, which led to questions about where we were staying and how many people were in our family. I explained about Mitch’s delay, then fell silent. I realized I was gripping my hands together in my lap and made a conscious effort to relax my fingers. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t done anything wrong—I was still as jittery as if I were a guilty party. It was an instinctual reaction. Even if a cop pulled me over and I knew I wasn’t going over the speed limit, I broke out in a cold sweat.

  Detective Jenson put down the gold pen he’d used to take notes. “Okay, so tell me why you’re here.”

  “Because Angela called me this morning. She asked me to bring a purse to her apartment. She wanted me to leave it on her porch.” I explained how I knew Angela through her boutique, how we’d exchanged e-mails, and about the mix-up with the purse. “She also dated my brother a few times,” I said.

  Jenson didn’t say anything, just raised his eyebrows.

  “I don’t know much about that.” I figured it was up to Ben to share that kind of information with the detective.

  “What did he say about her?”

  “Ben? Not much. Until this morning, we’d hardly talked about her at all. All I know is they went out a few times.”

  Jenson wrote notes without looking up. “But you talked about her this morning?”

  “Yes. I thought it was odd that she didn’t show up last night at the hotel. I’ve bought other things from her and she’s always been prompt to answer any e-mails, and she shipped things as soon as she received payment. I’d never had a problem before, so it seemed strange that she’d offer to personally deliver the purse to me and then not show up, not even call.”

  “This is the purse?” Jenson asked, pointing to the corner of the desk where I’d placed it when I first came in. I’d been carrying it around since Carrie Sanchez’s cry had interrupted me when I was about to give it to Chase back at the apartment.

  “Yes.”

  He picked it up, looked through the pockets, and examined the exterior, then set it down.

  “She was very insistent that I bring it over right away. She sounded scared.”

  “What exactly did she say?”

  “I can’t remember it word for word, but she wanted me to bring the purse back.” I closed my eyes in an effort to remember. “I asked her where she was, and she said it wasn’t important. She said she was okay, but . . .”

  “But what?”

  “I didn’t believe her. She sounded afraid. I told her we were worried about her, and she said she was sorry.”

  Jenson glanced up, his hazel eyes intent. “Sorry for what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did she sound down or depressed?”

  “No. She sounded scared,” I repeated.

  Jenson flicked a look at me, then went back to his notes. “How often had your brother and Miss Day seen each other?”

  “I don’t know. A few times, I think.”

  “Was it serious?” Jenson persisted.

  “I don’t know,” I said with more emphasis. “You’ll have to ask Ben.”

  “Okay. Now,” Jenson leaned back in his chair as he said, “walk me through your movements from the time you left Georgia until this morning.”

  I described our drive down, sparing him the details of the argument the kids had gotten into over a Happy Meal toy they’d discovered stuck in the seat cushion—even though it was the most eventful thing that happened. I recounted our time at the beach, and how I waited at the hotel for Angela, then described how I’d seen the woman pushed off the hotel balcony. He listened, his face expressionless. He asked if I’d spoken to a police officer about what I saw, and when I said that I had, he simply made a note. “Anything else?” When I mentioned that Ben and I had gone to The Sea Cottage, he perked up. “Why?”

  “We were worried about her.”

  “I take it she wasn’t there.”

  “No. Cara, a woman who works there, told us Angela left early last night and didn’t show up this morning. She said it was unusual for Angela not to return texts or call in, if she couldn’t make it to work. We found Angela’s phone. That’s when Ben called Chase. He wasn’t worried.”

  “Really? Her brother wasn’t concerned?”

  “Yes, he said Angela had—how did he put it?—checked out before. He thought she’d turn up.”

  “Okay.” Jenson closed the notebook over the pen, then leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers together behind his head. “So, Mrs. Avery,” he said conversationally, “tell me about yourself.”

  “What?”

  “What do you do? Got any hobbies?”

  “Does this have something to do with Angela’s death?” I asked, confused by the abrupt change in tone, not to mention topic.

  He shrugged, his elbows still in the air. “It helps me get to know people. Gives me a feel for them. So . . . what are your interests? Your work?”

  “My hobbies? At this point, laundry and grocery shopping.”

  He smiled. “Not much spare time in your life?”

  “No. I’m a stay-at-home mom and I have a part-time professional organizing business.” That sounded mundane. I didn’t want him to think my whole life revolved around work and the kids. It pretty much did, but that didn’t sound too healthy. I had other interests . . . didn’t I? What else did I do? “I like to knit,” I said as if I were a game show contestant and I’d suddenly remembered the answer to a question. I toned my enthusiasm down a notch and added, “I’m not very good at it. My scarves tend to have no ending point. I’m in a book club, too. That’s about all I have time for.”

  He opened his notebook and jotted some notes. Was he seriously keeping track of my hobbies? He stood and escorted me out of the room. “Thank you for your time, Mrs. Avery.” He handed me a business card and said, “Please get in touch with me before you leave town.”

  Digital Organizing Tips

  File Names

  Be consistent and concise when naming files. Pick a short, identifying title for each file. “Jane Doe Resume” is easier to identify than “Resume.”

  Dates in file names can save you time, too. It’s easier to find your most recent resume if it’s saved as “Jane Doe Resume 2013.”

  If you abbreviate words in file names, use abbreviations consistently. “Family Budget 2013” and “Fam Bdg 2013” can be confusing. Also, if you use the search function to look for files, it’s easier to find a file named with a full word instead of an abbreviation because you might not remember exactly how you abbreviated the file name.

  Chapter Five

  I parked myself on the chair in the waiting room while Ben had his turn with the detective. By the time he was done, I’d flipped through all the gossip magazines and two women’s magazines. I was up on my movie star hook-ups—speculation ran high that Suzie Quinn and Nick Ryan were planning a secret wedding—and I was now aware of three suspicious symptoms that could possibly indicate I had life-threatening illnesses. The door opened, and Ben stepped out looking dazed. I tossed the magazine down and made for the door with him.

  We were already outside when Detective Jenson called out, “Mrs. Avery, you forgot this.” He came down the sidewalk, holding out the imitation purse, wh
ich I’d left on the desk in the office.

  I didn’t move to take the purse. “But it was Angela’s. She mentioned it when she called me.”

  He extended his arm farther. “At this point, it’s not relevant to our investigation. You can give it back to her brother. We can get it from him, if we need it in the future.” I could tell by his tone that he thought the likelihood of that day ever coming was about as possible as a severe snowfall blanketing Sandy Beach.

  “She mentioned it on the phone. Right before she died. It has to mean something. She was insistent about the purse . . . then she died less than a half hour later.” While I’d waited for Ben, I’d worked out the time in my mind. I’d gotten the call from Angela and driven straight to her apartment. My phone logged the call at eleven forty-five, and I figured it took me about ten minutes to get to her apartment since I went the traffic-free back way. Ben was still in the parking lot when I arrived, so it couldn’t have been much longer than that. We’d stood near Angela’s car and talked for a few minutes, then gone into her apartment. We’d only been in there a short time, probably less than five minutes, when Chase showed up. A few more minutes and we’d heard the screams from the parking lot.

  So, figuring ten minutes for driving, five minutes in the parking lot, and five in the apartment, that was only twenty minutes total. Twenty-five, at the outside. I’m sure the detective would check the time of Ben’s call to 911 about the breakin, but I bet it wouldn’t be much different from my estimate. Angela was alive at eleven forty-five, but dead at five after noon, possibly ten after. Somehow in that short span of time, she went from alive and worried to dead.

  “Sometimes it doesn’t mean anything. Everything we’ve got points to an accidental death,” Detective Jenson said. Ben briefly closed his eyes.

  He didn’t look good, and I hated to prolong the conversation—part of me wanted to hustle him out of there—but I couldn’t stop the question that popped out of my mouth. “You think she slipped and drowned?”

  “No, Mrs. Avery, I don’t.”

  He must have thought it was either an accidental overdose or suicide, I realized, thinking of what the cop at the pool had said about it being sad when “the lifestyle” got them so young. “Don’t you want to keep it, in case you need it later?” I asked as Ben shot me a look that signaled he wanted me to stop talking. I’d seen the same look on his face when he was six and I was eight, and I’d told Mom that he’d made Jessica Dunlop cry at recess.

  Detective Jenson sighed deeply. “If I take this, I’ve got to log it into evidence. It was not part of the crime scene. Right now, I only have your word that the victim spoke with you about it. Once it’s in evidence, it’s not coming out anytime soon. It will be logged and tracked until we decide we don’t need it anymore. We already have a boatload of evidence to process, most of it useless goggles and fins that people forgot at the pool. No use tying up my techs with more items to process. I’ll contact her brother if we need it,” he said as he pressed it into my hands and turned away.

  “Don’t you get it?” Ben hissed as we walked through the parking lot. “They think she overdosed . . . either accidentally or on purpose.”

  There are some things that only a blood relative can say and get away with. I decided I’d go easy on Ben because he had just pulled the dead body of a woman he knew out of a swimming pool. “Of course I realized that, but not taking it is lax police work.”

  “And you’re some sort of expert on police procedure?”

  “Well, I know a few things,” I said, hedging because my extended family didn’t know quite how deeply I’d become involved in several investigations in the past. Mitch knew all about it—we didn’t have any secrets from each other. Well, I had attempted to keep a few things from him, but that never worked out well, and I’d given up on trying to keep him in the dark. As for my family, there were some things they knew—it was hard to keep a secret when your name appeared in the paper—but for the most part, I’d glossed over the incidents, especially with Ben. He’d been out of the country so much and then busy with his flight training, I’d used the excuse that I didn’t want to worry/distract him. Besides, if he knew what I’d been up to, I would never hear the end of the Jessica Fletcher jokes.

  “From watching CSI? The Mentalist? Television is not a reliable source of information,” Ben said as he followed me up the path to Chase and Angela’s apartment.

  “I know that.” I knocked on the door. It immediately swung open to an empty apartment.

  “He’s gone, poor thing.” The female voice came from behind us. Ben and I turned to a woman with a lined face dressed in a plunging V-neck jumpsuit that revealed a generous swath of tanned, leatherlike cleavage decorated with densely spaced gold chains. If I were guessing, I’d say she had probably already celebrated her seventieth birthday. No matter what her exact age was, her white jumpsuit wasn’t age appropriate, as they say on those fashion makeover shows. Several geometric-shaped swatches of material were placed in strategic locations, creating cutouts at the midriff that showed more of her weathered flesh than I wanted to see. “Oh, it’s you again!” she said to Ben as she shook her Veronica Lake sweep of hair off her face and grasped his hand, pulling him close to her side.

  She looked up at him, her sunburned face breaking into a grin, sending deeper accordion-like wrinkles through her skin. “It’s terrible. That beautiful girl, dead,” she said, her expression shifting to sadness as she pressed her long burgundy nails into the back of Ben’s hand. “And Chase so troubled, he can’t bear to be here.” She managed to break eye contact with Ben and glanced my way. “I’m Honey,” she said, but didn’t offer a hand for me to shake.

  “Chase is gone?” I asked, since Ben was occupied with trying to pry his hand out of her grasp. I glanced inside the open door and saw that the flower arrangement had been knocked off the end table. The beautiful flowers now lay in a puddle of water on top of a magazine splayed open on the carpet.

  “Yes. As soon as he answered the questions from the police, they let him leave to make arrangements at his job. He’s off to get someone to cover for him at work for the day. I told him I’d keep an eye on things.” Honey’s gaze followed mine, and she dropped Ben’s hand, then hurried inside, casually pushing the door open the rest of the way with the palm of her hand. “What a shame. Beauty should never go unadmired,” she said with a significant glance at Ben as she bent to pick up the vase of flowers. I thought she was fishing for a compliment, hoping for a comparison of her beauty to the flowers, but Ben was flexing his fingers and didn’t notice.

  She righted the vase, shoving the flowers back inside, then pinched the wet magazine between her thumb and first finger. “So sad about the puppy,” she said, and I saw it was a magazine about dogs. “I guess Chase will have to call the breeder and tell them it’s off,” she said as she dropped the magazine in the kitchen trash, then filled the vase with water. “I’m sure he can’t keep a dog himself. He’s gone too much.”

  “So Angela had decided to get a dog?” I asked, a feeling of sadness sweeping over me. Everything had happened so fast. It hadn’t really set in that Angela was dead. She’d been so enthusiastic about the puppy. It was hard to believe I wouldn’t get an e-mail from her in the next few days with an attachment of a puppy photo.

  Honey came out of the kitchen and nodded. “I’d never heard of the dog she was getting. Whiney or rhymey. Something like that. She was so excited, bless her heart. Could hardly stop talking about it when I saw her at the mailbox yesterday.” She put the vase down and examined the flowers. “Oh, I hope the card didn’t get wet.” She fluffed the flowers into place, then plucked the card from the plastic pitchfork holder. She flicked a long nail under the flap and pulled it out, saying with a little wrinkle of her nose, “Cards that come with flowers are like postcards, they’re meant to be read. Nope. It’s fine.” She waved it around for us to see its unmarred state.

  Honey squinted, held the card at arm’s length, and read aloud,
“Let’s meet and discuss your find.” Her forehead crinkled like a crepe paper streamer. “It’s signed Monica. Well, that’s . . . interesting.”

  I wondered how close a friend Honey was to Angela. I hoped Honey was an acquaintance because she didn’t seem sad at all. In fact, she was downright cheery. She replaced the card and turned to us. “I’m sure Chase wouldn’t mind you waiting for him here, or you could come over to my place.” She fixed her gaze on Ben like a puppy anxious for attention.

  We were still standing in the doorway. Ben took a step backward. “No, we have to go. Appointments. Places to be.”

  “What a shame.” Her gaze transferred from Ben to me as he moved out of her line of sight. Her gaze locked onto the handbag, and she closed the distance between us.

  “Is that a Leah Marshall bag? From her fall line? Oh, I’m so jealous.” She ran her hand over the fake leather.

  Ben said, “Yeah, if you could give—”

  “It’s a knockoff.” I cut Ben off.

  “But not a bad one.” She traced one nail along the stitching on the strap. “Nothing that would stand out.”

  “Thanks for letting us know Chase isn’t here,” I said, moving outside and then down the sidewalk. “We’ll catch him later.”

  Honey pulled Chase’s door back to the closed position, then leaned on her own doorframe and waved languidly.

  “Why didn’t you give the purse to her? She could pass it on to Chase,” Ben said when where were out of earshot.

  “Did you see the lust in her eyes? It would have gone straight into her closet, and Chase would never get it back. She didn’t care that it was an imitation.”

  “Well, you could have left it in Chase’s apartment.”

  “Yeah, and she’d be in there two seconds after we left, to take it. You saw how she walked right in.”

  Ben grabbed my arm and pulled me to a stop. “Ellie. What is up? It’s just a purse.”

  I blew out a sigh. “It was what Angela asked me to do. The detective may not think it’s important, but Angela asked me to return it and now she’s dead. It’s the least I can do.”