by J. C. Eaton
“Hey there, cutie. Don’t worry. It can’t be anything life-threatening or an ambulance would be here as well as someone from the sheriff’s department. They’d either send a deputy or a posse volunteer.”
Jeanette’s beige and tan house with coral trim appeared to be fine as I approached Herb. No flames, no smoke, no nothing. Not even a branch out of place on her oleander and lantana bushes.
I walked toward him and took a closer look. Nothing. The fire department often changed smoke detector batteries for residents, but I seriously doubted they would arrive flashers and all. I was about to say something to that effect to Herb when Jeanette literally came racing out of her front door, her long blond hair flying all over the place and her arms flailing in the air.
“SNAKE! SNAKE! There’s a huge snake in my house! OH MY GOD! SNAKE!”
Seconds later, four firemen came out of the house. One was carrying a five-gallon bucket and another one was holding a long, pronged rod. The man with the bucket walked over toward Jeanette and spoke.
“It’s okay, ma’am. We’ve got him. Appears to be a king snake or a coral snake. They’re both pretty similar. The coral is venomous, but the king is harmless. We’ll release it in the desert.”
“Can you drive to Tucson and release it there? I don’t understand how something like this could have happened. This is a residential area. A residential area, for crying out loud!”
Jeanette was beside herself, and I could tell the fireman had all he could do to keep himself from laughing.
He bit his lip and tried to answer her. “Snakes can slip under a garage door, under a security door, or even get inside a tote bag that someone may have put on the ground for a few minutes. I wouldn’t worry about it. Chances are it’s a king snake. Anyway, you’re all set. Have a good morning.”
He immediately got inside the truck, snake in the bucket and all. The vehicle headed down the street, this time with its lights off.
Jeanette walked over to where Herb and I were standing. She was still visibly shaken. “I had just walked into the bathroom to put on my lipstick and there it was! All coiled up by the door to the clothes closet. I could have had a coronary. I swear, nothing like this has ever happened before. I feel as if that stupid book cursed all of us! And that librarian. Did either of you see her on TV last night? She practically took out an ad for the entire world to read that thing.”
I let out a breath and took a step closer to Jeanette. “Yeah, I saw the segment. And yeah, it did seem like she really was promoting the book. And the club, too. She invited everyone to attend on Wednesday.”
Herb let out some sort of grunt and mumbled, “That should be a real sideshow. Maybe I ought to mark it on my calendar.” He looked at both of us and added, “I was only kidding. That’s the last place I’d go. Anyway, glad you’re okay, Jeanette, and nice seeing you again, Phee. I’m going home for my morning breakfast. Have a good day, ladies.”
We stood silently as Herb made a beeline for his house, but I swore he gave me a wink just before heading to his front door. Jeanette, on the other hand, was flustered.
I gave her a pat on the arm. “Yikes. I imagine that really was scary, finding a snake like that.”
“Scary? That’s an understatement. I’m a complete wreck. Now I’m going to be looking under the beds, inside the closets, and in all the corners for the next month!”
“I’m sure you don’t have to worry. Snakes don’t travel in packs. They’re kind of loners, from what little I know.”
Of course, I did know that snakes got really weird around mating season, but I had no idea when that season was in Arizona. Spring? Summer? It was still late summer. I decided to change the subject and revisit the Stardust Theater’s movie of the week.
“Um, by the way, was that you sitting behind my mother and me at the Stardust Theater the other night? My mother adores those old musicals.”
“I didn’t see your mother or I would have said hello. I was sitting up front with a friend. We got there too late for any of the good seats and had to leave as soon as it was over. Didn’t even stay for the credits.”
For a second, I felt as if someone had let the air out of my tires. So much for pinning Edna Mae’s death on Jeanette. Then again, she could be lying. How on earth would I know? I decided to pry a bit more.
“I’m amazed you can still keep your sanity. I mean, with the carbon monoxide incident and now the snake. You can’t really believe that has to do with The Twelfth Arrondissement, do you?”
“Up until that book landed on our club reading list, my life was pretty ordinary. I don’t know what to think.”
I tried to focus on what I was going to say next, knowing I’d probably never get another chance. “I don’t mean to be nosy . . . I mean, it’s none of my business . . . but, oh gee, this is what they always ask on those police shows . . . Jeanette, do you have any enemies? You know, like, say a jealous ex-wife or . . .”
Her eyes nearly popped out of her head and, for a minute, I wasn’t sure if she was going to tell me to “go and pound salt” or break down in a hysterical cry. “Jealous ex-wife? I have an ex-husband, but, believe me, no one would want to marry him. I can’t believe I ever did. And enemies? Whoa. That’s such a strong word. No, I don’t think so. But I did let go of my cleaning lady because her rates got too high and her work got too sloppy. We didn’t part on the best of terms. Although, I did say I’d give her decent references. And I once had a major disagreement with Shirley Johnson over who should be cast to play Christian Grey when Fifty Shades of Grey became a movie. Can you believe that woman told me I had absolutely no “film sense,” whatever that’s supposed to mean. But enemies? The kind of enemies who would try to kill me? Absolutely not. That’s why it all comes back to the book. That stupid cursed book.”
“You don’t really believe that, do you?”
“Like I said, everything around here was perfectly fine until that thing appeared on our reading list. Look, I’d love to stand and chat with you, but I’ve got to get going. Tell your mom I said hi.”
“Um, sure thing. Have a good day.”
Jeanette walked back to her front door; then I crossed the street and unlocked our door. I made a point of looking down to be sure there weren’t any snakes waiting to slither inside. Then I made another point of going right to the kitchen to see if the blue Mazda was going to pick her up.
Chapter 17
Forty minutes later, a second cup of coffee and no blue Mazda. I did, however, see Jeanette’s garage door open and her car backing out onto the street. It was a white KIA Sportage and looked as if it had just come out of the showroom. I had test-driven that same model earlier this year when I considered trading in my car but then decided against purchasing a new car. Didn’t need any more payments. I had enough bills on my desk to start a mini Leaning Tower of Pisa. Maybe Jeanette’s finances were better than mine. Maybe West Valley Home Mortgage Solutions was personal, not professional.
I looked at my mother’s kitchen clock. It was already past ten. I couldn’t afford to let the rest of the morning waste away. I was hell-bent on finding out if any toxicology tests were done on Minnie Bendelson since my “finned fish” theory was still in play, and I had to do a little more digging into Thelmalee’s unfortunate demise. I wanted to rule out any involvement with members of Thelmalee’s family. My mother had been quite emphatic about the fact Thelmalee’s relatives were “scavenging the house like seagulls tearing off barnacles from a ship.”
Since I wasn’t sure how to begin with acquiring a toxicology report, I figured I’d call Nate later in the day to ask him. That left me with Thelmalee. I had already checked the phonebook and had written down where she lived. Less than a mile from my mother’s place. I thought I’d drive over there, introduce myself as a friend, and offer my condolences to the family.
Grabbing my bag, I headed for the door, making sure there were no snakes in the vicinity before closing and locking it. My mother would never forgive me if Streetman ha
d an encounter with a snake. As I started toward Thelmalee’s, something dawned on me. It would be very rude to arrive without bringing something. Flowers wouldn’t make sense at this point, but food was always appropriate. A quick stop at the supermarket and I had a large bakery box of assorted cookies in tow.
The immediate area surrounding Thelmalee’s beige and blue ranch home looked like Costco’s parking lot. Cars everywhere. California plates. Arizona plates. Colorado plates. One vehicle, a black Dodge Ram pickup, was sitting in her driveway, its bed filled with furniture and boxes. Apparently my mother was right. The family was doing some picking.
I parked across the street to avoid getting blocked in on the off chance more relatives would be on their way. With my bag flung over my shoulder and the box of cookies under one arm, I made my way to the front door and rang the bell. My first impression of the family was ingrained in my head before I even laid eyes on anyone.
“Will someone get the damn door?” a voice screamed.
“What?” It was another screamer.
“Someone’s at the door! Can’t one of you idiots open the door?” Still another screaming voice.
“I’m in the middle of something! Maisy-Jayne, open the door for your mother!”
With an armful of cookies getting heavier each minute, I was beginning to have second thoughts.
“Maisy-Jayne! Did you hear me? Get the door!”
I pictured a sweet little girl with blond curls approaching the door and letting me inside. Instead, I found myself face-to-face with a girl about thirteen or fourteen who could have easily passed for a member of The Munsters or The Addams Family. Except, those kids didn’t have pierced eyebrows or a silver pin sticking through their lip. I don’t know what I would have done if my daughter had gone through the Goth stage. The sheer cost of makeup would have put me in the poorhouse.
The girl looked at me, turned away, and yelled, “I opened the stupid door. Now what?” I started to say something when she shrugged her shoulders, glared at me again, and walked out of the room.
Unsure of what to do, I closed the door behind me and took a step inside. It was a madhouse. An absolute madhouse. The TV was on, but no one was watching it. Two smaller children, a boy and a girl, were jumping on the couch and poking each other. A middle-aged woman was sitting on a cushion in front of a large cabinet, going through all of the contents.
“What about the mattresses, Carleen? Take ’em or leave ’em?” someone shouted from one of the bedrooms.
“If they’re gross, leave them alone. Otherwise, we’ll take them back with us,” came another voice from a different room.
The woman who was sifting through the cabinet started to walk toward the bedrooms when she saw me standing in the middle of the room.
“Are you the lady from the estate sale?” she asked.
I shifted my weight from one foot to the next as I looked around the room. The kids on the couch were using a large table lamp as a shield while they continued to poke at each other. At the rate these people were going, I doubted there’d be anything left intact for a sale.
“No, no, sorry, I’m not. I’m a . . . I mean, I came here to give my condolences to the family. Thelmalee was in the Booked 4 Murder book club.”
“That figures,” the mother said. “Look, we’re kind of busy right now. Got to get this place cleaned out and on the market. So—”
“UNBELIEVABLE! FREAKING UN-BELIEVABLE!”
The woman stopped and turned her attention to a middle-aged man whose stomach had seen one beer too many and whose razor was probably still in mint condition. The man went on ranting as if I wasn’t in the room.
“UNBELIEVABLE! Those worthless morons at the hospital sent us the wrong report. Good thing we got the right death certificate, or we’d never straighten this mess out. But look at this! Would you look at this?”
He shoved a legal-size paper at the woman who was about to throw me out of the place and stood back while she took a good look.
“Who the hell is Minnie Bendelson?” she screamed.
My jaw dropped open as if I were a pelican about to store a week’s worth of fish. It was all I could do to keep from saying anything.
“How am I supposed to know?” the man yelled back. “But they sent us her damn toxicology report. I don’t give a ripe tomato how she died, but the lawyers are itching to find out if it really was a swarm of bees that killed your mother.”
“Of course it was a swarm of bees, Lenny,” the woman said. “Everyone at the pool saw what happened.”
At that point, the two kids who were quickly wreaking havoc with the furniture noticed the big box of cookies I was holding. “Cookies! I want to eat them now!”
“Yeah, me too!”
The woman turned to me, pointed to the kitchen, and said, “You can just put them on the table. The kids will help themselves.”
As I walked to the table, she handed me the report and said, “Do you mind? Just throw it in the garbage since you’re going in there.”
“Hey, Lenny and Almalynn!” someone bellowed from the other side of the house. “Carleen and I need some help with these mattresses!”
“Can’t you get Maisy-Jayne or Frankie to do it?”
“Frankie’s sitting on the pot, and I don’t know where my niece has gone off to!”
“All right! All right! We’re coming!”
“I’m calling the damn hospital first,” the man whom I assumed was Lenny shouted out. “Then I’ll be back to deal with mattresses.”
In the midst of what I could best describe as a Jerry Springer episode waiting to happen, I quickly folded the report and shoved it into my bag. By now, the two kids had dumped most of the bakery cookies on the table and floor, and I was itching to get out of there.
“Um, well, sorry for your loss,” I mumbled. “Good luck with the, uh, mattresses and your report. Nice meeting you.”
I was out the door and crossing the street toward my car when a slender woman who looked to be about my age walked over to me. She was wearing a long, loose-flowing peach tunic and all I could picture was one of those kids tugging at it asking her if she brought them any candy.
“Hi! Are you with the Kirkson family? I’m Sherry Fairchild from Sherry and Jenny’s Fare Estate Sales.”
She waved her hand in the direction of a light blue minivan that had an estate sale sign on its door, and I acknowledged it.
“Sorry. No, I, um, er . . . I was just dropping off some cookies for the family. They’re all inside.”
“Oh, you must have been a friend of the deceased. My partner, Jenny, was the one who set this up. I’ve never met the family, but Jenny said she didn’t want to deal with them.”
Gee. Big surprise there. I took a quick breath and didn’t say anything.
“That’s so unlike my partner. Frankly, I’m a bit skeptical of what I’m about to encounter. Any ideas?”
“I never met Thelmalee Kirkson’s family until today, but I think they’re going to be a handful.”
“I just hope they don’t have an overinflated idea of what items are worth. Sometimes people put outrageous price tags on all sorts of things for sentimental reasons,” Sherry said.
“The family didn’t strike me as having a whole lot of sentimentality, but then again, I was only with them for a few minutes.”
“From what my partner described, I feel as if I’m walking into a den of pickpockets and scavengers.”
I wanted to add the word “rude” to the description, but simply muttered, “Uh-huh.”
“Jenny even told me one of the sons-in-law was furious his mother-in-law died because she had been giving them a portion of her social security each month and, according to him, ‘some stupid bee ended the gravy train,’ whatever that was supposed to mean.”
“Um, Thelmalee Kirkson died of an allergic reaction to a bee sting.”
“Oh dear. So her death was really unexpected. How sad. And you know what else? The other son-in-law complained that now no one was g
oing to be making the payments on his new truck. Good grief. I dread going in there. Anyway, here’s my card in case you ever want to hold an estate sale.”
I took the card, put it in my bag, and thanked her. She hadn’t realized it, but Sherry Fairchild had just eliminated the extended Kirkson family as suspects. The “pickpockets and scavengers” didn’t want Mama’s “gravy train” to make its last stop.
That left me with my original suspects and some tangible evidence. All I needed to do was find a motive that would link them to Thelmalee’s murder. I also needed to rule out the possible murder of Minnie Bendelson. Thanks to the Kirksons, and a blunder at the hospital, the answer to that question was safely stowed in my bag. I couldn’t wait to read what it said, and the perfect place was just a few minutes away at Bagels ‘N More.
I arrived as the lunch crew was starting to trickle in. There was a great corner table by the window, so I made a beeline for it and plunked myself down. As the aroma of hot garlic and cheese filled the air, I realized how absolutely famished I was. Much too ravenous to read a report without food in my stomach. Thankfully the service was fast. Wiping the last crumb from my onion and cream cheese bagel, I reached for the document. Within seconds, I was lost. Why couldn’t I be tracking down someone’s accounting nightmare and not a medical one?
Obtaining a toxicology report and being able to understand it, as I quickly learned, were two different things. I read it over and over again between sips of coffee, each time understanding less and less. The same could be said for my smartphone. If I had any idea how to snap a picture of the report and send it to Nate, I would have done so immediately. Learning how to use that phone was “on my list,” but, like so many other technological things, it stayed there indefinitely until the device was rendered “outdated.”
