by C. R. Corwin
My own eyes eventually focused on the calendar on the wall. It was one of those pathetic calendars that men insist on putting up in their workspaces. This one featured a girl in short-shorts suggestively perched on a giant riding lawnmower. Each month’s photo, I supposed, featured a different half-naked nymph with another gargantuan piece of lawn-care equipment. Admittedly, mowing a 200-acre cemetery must be a lot more mind-numbing than mowing your grass at home, but never once while mowing my eighth of an acre have I fantasized about sex.
I slid my eyes to the other purpose of the calendar, the dates. I tried to see how many of them I could connect with somebody’s birthday, or death, or wedding, or divorce. I came up with only six. Then I remembered Gabriella’s very first story on the Queens of Never Dull. In that story Violeta said she was going to be seventy-three on August 17th. I dug a piece of paper out of my purse—a bank ATM envelope—and wrote a note to Prince Anton: What was the day and month of Petru’s birth? I handed him my pen along with the note.
The prince scowled at me then scribbled his answer. He handed the envelope and pen back to me. His answer: 8 February.
I smiled thanks and averted my eyes so I couldn’t see his. We already knew that Violeta had lied about her age, that she was not seventy-two at the time of her murder, but seventy-eight. And we knew she’d lied about a ton of other things. So it was not surprising that she’d also lied about the date of her upcoming birthday. Or had she lied? Was the 17th of August indeed her birthday? The day Violeta Bell was born? The day of her sex change surgery? None of this mattered, of course. Violeta was dead. Prince Anton was her brother. But when you’re waiting for a murderer to show up—well, you have to nip your anxiety in the bud with something, don’t you?
Another equally useless thing came to me while we waited. It was my own version of that tasteless ethnic joke about how many whatevers it takes to screw in a lightbulb. I’m sure you’ve heard it. Three. One to hold the bulb. Two to turn the ladder.
My version of the joke was this: How many people does it take to catch a murderer? The answer was eight. One old Romanian prince. Three policemen. Two reporters. One librarian. One photographer to capture all the fun.
And why did Detective Grant allow so many unnecessary people to come along on his stakeout? He told me he wanted Prince Anton there so he could keep an eye on him. He said there was still a remote chance that the prince was the murderer. “I don’t want his highness sneaking off while I wait for nobody,” Grant told me when he called me at midnight to make sure I didn’t oversleep. Weedy was there because both Grant and Alec Tinker wanted plenty of pictures. And if there’s a photographer, there’s got to be a reporter to make sure everybody’s name is spelled right. And why two reporters? Both Gabriella and Dale Marabout? Because there would be a very easy murder to solve if only one of them were invited. And why was I there? Because I’m Morgue Mama.
“Car.”
Grant twirled off the desk and leaned over the officer watching the monitors. “Very nice,” he whispered. “It’s show time.”
I checked my watch. It was only 6:15. There was no way in hell the killer could have gotten the paper at home, read Gabriella’s story, digested the gravity of it, and then driven way out there by a quarter after six. Which meant one of three things. One, that the killer was not one of the two people I thought it was, but an employee of the paper. Two, that the killer had been tipped off. Three, that the murderer was one of that evergrowing percentage of Hannawans who read the paper for free on our website. My betting was that it was three. The murderer got up early, as always, went online to read hellohannawa.com, as always, and got a big, big surprise.
I leaned back in my chair and tipped my head back until I could see the video monitors. I remained frozen in that awkward position for a good five minutes until the camera hidden above Violeta’s niche showed a blurry but very recognizable Barbara Wilburger. Ariel Wilburger-Gowdy’s totally unlikeable, tight-assed professor daughter. I gave myself a pat on the back. Not a real one. An imaginary one. I’d been right. She was one of the two possible murderers I’d expected to show up to dig the pistol out Violeta’s ashes. The other, of course, was Phil McPhee.
Barbara stopped in front of Violeta’s niche. She looked this way and that, like a school kid about to cross a busy street. She was wearing jeans and a man’s oxford shirt with the tails hanging out, the kind of outfit a woman wears when she’s going to repaint the bedroom. She was carrying a canvas beach bag.
Now, why did I suspect Violeta Bell’s murderer was either Barbara Wilburger or Phil McPhee? Like Detective Grant, I’d found no direct evidence. But I had found those little balls of pet fur. First, in Ariel Wilburger-Gowdy’s condo. In that beautiful brass wastebasket in the foyer. Second, in Phil McPhee’s office. In that kitschy wastebasket with the hand-painted ants. The common denominator, of course, was Barbara. That day Gabriella and I had visited Ariel’s condo, Barbara had made a huge, unnecessary fuss over the cat fur. She’d rolled the fur she’d raked off the sofa into a tight tiny ball. The peculiar habit of someone visibly uptight and angry. Someone with a high opinion of themselves and a correspondingly low opinion of others.
So when I later spotted those tiny balls of Shih Tzu fur in Phil McPhee’s wastebasket, I knew Barbara Wilburger had been there. And not just once. You don’t roll dog fur into tiny balls on your first visit. No, Barbara felt very much at home in the McPhees’ condo. Specifically in Phil’s office.
Phil McPhee was an experienced philanderer. He knew the dangers of romancing his lovers in the bed he shared with his wife. The daybed in his office was a much safer venue. And so were the mats in the fitness room. I was sure that’s why Violeta Bell showed up down there in the middle of the night in her frilly underwear. She was expecting to find Phil. Instead she found Barbara. And Barbara made her take off her robe. And she wrapped it around her little .22 pistol. And she shot Violeta Bell dead.
Phil McPhee was a lot like my late husband. Way too much testosterone. Precious little conscience. Multiple mistresses were the norm. If my theory was right, Phil was carrying on with Barbara Wilburger and Violeta Bell at the same time. Violeta was hardly a spring chicken and Barbara anything but sexy. But a snake like Phil would get a thrill out of bedding one of his wife’s best friends at the same time he was bedding the daughter of another friend.
At some point, Barbara found out about Phil and Violeta. Instead of dumping Phil, or murdering Phil, although either in my book would have been the sensible thing to do, she opted to murder Violeta. Clearly the professor of business ethics was not one of those people who practiced what they preached.
And the fitness room was the perfect place to kill Violeta. If indeed it was where Violeta often met Phil for their monkey business, all it would take to get her there at that hour, on the Fourth of July when firecrackers were booming all over Hannawa, was a note under the door, or an email, or whatever signal Phil used to summon Violeta to the mats. Barbara certainly had a key for the Carmichael House, and from what Gabriella and I saw that day we visited, permission to use the parking garage. Barbara also would have known about all the skeleton keys hidden all over the place. Oh yes, the fitness room was the perfect place.
And not only because of the ease in luring Violeta there. It would let Phil know in no uncertain terms that hence forth, his only woman on the side would be one Barbara Wilburger. Forever and forever. And now a hidden camera was about to catch Barbara remove the gun she used to commit murder from the ashes of the woman she murdered.
Grant and I watched as Barbara struggled to get something out the front pocket of her jeans. It was a key. She put it between her teeth for safekeeping. She took a pair of rubber gloves from her bag. They weren’t the surgical gloves you’d expect a murderer to wear. They were the bright yellow kind you buy in the cleaning aisle at the supermarket. She wiggled her fingers into them. She took the key from her teeth. She unlocked the glass door covering the niche. She put the key back between her teeth. She
knelt on the floor. She pulled a black trash bag from her beach bag. She shook it open and arranged it on the marble floor, so that the bottom of the bag was flat and the sides stuck up about a foot. She removed Violeta’s urn from the niche. She carefully lowered it into the trash bag. She got on her knees again. Looked this way and that again.
Grant reached under his jacket and took out his gun. The uniformed officer leaning against the wall by the door readied his gun.
Barbara took the lid off the urn. She carefully put it next to her knee. She untied the twist-tie. Inserted it between her teeth, next to the key. With her thumbs she spread open the plastic bag inside the urn. She drilled into the ashes with her index finer. She slowly lifted the gun out. She lowered it into the trash bag. She took the twist-tie from her teeth and refastened it on the plastic bag. She put the lid back on the urn. She took the key from her teeth. She bent over and blew off whatever ashes may have floated onto the urn. She put the key back between her teeth.
Weedy readied his weapon of choice, a big shiny digital camera that could click a zillion pictures a second. Gabriella clicked her pen and scribbled on the cover of her notebook, to make sure she had plenty of ink. Dale Marabout looked at her with disdain.
Barbara put her hands around the urn. She slowly stood up.
Prince Anton couldn’t see what was happening on the monitor. But he could watch us watching. His eyes were bouncing back and forth between Grant and me like one of those Kit Kat clocks with the big Ping Pong ball eyes.
Barbara put the urn back in the niche. She took the key from her teeth again. She locked the niche door. She slid the key back into her jeans. She knelt and pulled the sides of the trash bag together. She rolled the bag up around the gun. She put it in her beach bag.
Detective Grant whispered “Go!” The officer by the door reached for the knob. He gave it a hard twist and yanked the door open. Grant, already in motion, rushed out. The officer followed him. Weedy, too.
Weedy wasn’t supposed to follow them. He was supposed to do what the rest of us were doing. Crowd around the monitor and watch.
Barbara swung around wildly, nearly falling down. We couldn’t see Grant and company, but apparently she could. She took a few quick steps back. Grant and the officer came into view. They were holding theirs guns in front of them with both hands the way they do on real television. They looked like a pair of bowlegged dowsers trying to find water. Grant’s command to “Stop right there!” echoed through the columbarium.
Barbara did not stop right there. But instead of running in the other direction, she darted right past Grant and the other officer. They twirled and pointed their guns. But they did not fire. In a second they, too, were out of the camera’s view.
There was a lot of shouting now. And the banging of feet on the marble floor. The officer watching the monitor with us raced out. We all raced after him. And Barbara Wilburger raced right past us. She headed down another long hall of niches. We were all chasing her now. Weedy was clicking pictures like a maniac.
Barbara reached the door at the end of the hall. It was locked. She froze. We formed a half circle around her. Grant was panting like James after his walks. “Bag on the floor,” he ordered. “Then you.”
Barbara got the instructions wrong. She swung the bag and hit Grant in the head. She tried to plow through us. Gabriella grabbed her around the waist and twisted her to the floor. The two uniformed officers quickly holstered their guns. One pinned Barbara’s arms. The other pinned her legs.
Dale Marabout started screaming at Gabriella. “That was not your job! Jesus—I can’t believe it! That was not your job!”
Gabriella was rubbing blood off her forehead. She’d landed hard. “Marabout,” she said. “Shut the fuck up.”
Dale wasn’t about to. “You watch. You write. You don’t tackle.”
Weedy clicked away.
The officers rolled Barbara over. Grant handcuffed her. They stood her up.
Barbara had apparently considered the possibility that she’d be caught. She had a story ready. “My mother killed her,” she said. “I knew she put the gun in there. I was just protecting her. Obstructing justice.”
Good gravy, she’d even considered what they should charge her with. I knew better, but I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. “Oh, come on! Ariel Wilburger-Gowdy a gun owner? That seems a little far-fetched!”
“She’s not the Miss Nicey Nice everyone thinks,” Barbara snarled back. “She’s a witch.”
Grant wasn’t happy. He recited the Miranda Warning to both of us.
We both ignored him.
“You were having an affair with Phil McPhee,” I said. “And so was Violeta Bell. You found out and killed her.”
“I’m a tenured professor!”
“The fur balls prove it,” I said.
Barbara recalculated. “Phil McPhee killed her. When she found out about me—that Phil and I were in love—she went nuts and threatened to tell his wife.”
“And so he had no choice but to kill her?”
“I didn’t know until after the fact.”
Barbara Wilburger was some piece of work, wasn’t she? First she was protecting the mother she hated. Now she was ratting out the man she loved.
The two officers led Barbara out. Grant put his arm around me. Whispered in my ear. “Now, what’s all this about fur balls?”
24
Tuesday, September 19
It was only a straw sticking out of a little plastic cup, but from my point-of-view, flat on my back in a hospital bed, still woozy from the anesthetic, it looked like some huge and horrible tool of torture. And Ike, with his big Republican smile, looked for all the world like a sadistic medieval inquisitor. “Have some apple juice,” he said.
I’d just had my tonsils out. I didn’t want any apple juice or ice cream or vanilla pudding or anything else. I just wanted to go home and hide until the shame wore off.
He aimed the straw at my frown. “Be a good girl.”
I shook my head no. A little too hard. My throat started throbbing like I’d just swallowed a cactus.
He wiggled the straw between my lips. I surrendered and took a sip. It did feel good. “See there,” he said. “Dr. Ike is going to take good care of you.”
“I wish you were a doctor,” I squeaked, enduring the pain in order to get my sarcastic remark off. “Then I could fire you and get a new one.”
He stuck the straw back in my mouth. “There’s no getting a new Ike Breeze.”
I changed the subject before things got too gooey. “Paper?”
I hadn’t had time to read the paper that morning—I had to be at the hospital at six—so before being carted off to the tonsil-yanking room, I’d asked Ike to make sure I had a paper to read the second I woke up. He held up the front page so I could read it. The headline across the top made my throat feel so much better:
Gun Dealer Identifies Professor
“Glasses, please.”
Ike took them out of his shirt pocket and put them on my face with the skill of a blind optometrist. I read Dale Marabout’s story:
HANNAWA—A Chippewa Lake man has identified Professor Barbara Wilburger as the woman who bought a .22 pistol from him during a gun show at the Wayne County Fairgrounds, police said.
Wilburger, 55, who teaches business ethics at Hemphill College, was arrested August 30 at a Bloomfield Township cemetery after she removed a .22 pistol from the burial urn of slain antique dealer Violeta Bell.
“I saw that picture of her being led off in handcuffs and thought, ‘Hey, I know that lady,’” said retired county sanitation worker and firearms collector Bruce Bilbowski, in a telephone interview yesterday with The Herald-Union.
There were some things in Dale’s story that I already knew, of course. That Barbara Wilburger already had been charged with first degree murder. That her request for bail had been denied. That she was rusting away in county jail awaiting the hearing to set her trial date.
Other things I did not know
. Things that made her conviction all the more likely.
I did not know, for example, that gun collectors like Mr. Bilbowski do not have to have a license to sell their personally owned firearms at gun shows. And because they are not licensed dealers, they do not have to do a background check. However, they are required to ask their customers for a photo ID. The law-abiding Mr. Bilbowski did just that. Moreover, the serial number on the gun he sold Barbara Wilburger matched the serial number on the gun she fished out of Violeta’s ashes.
“I checked the obits for you,” Ike joked, forcing me to take another sip of apple juice. “No Dolly Madison Sprowls. So don’t let all that good news you’re reading make you think you’ve died and gone to heaven.”
I rolled up the paper and swatted him.
Ike got that look in his eye. “I know this was a hard thing for you to do, Maddy. Both James and I appreciate it.”
