Killer, Paper, Cut (The Kiki Lowenstein Mysteries)

by Campbell Slan, Joanna

  As for calling my son a mulatto. A mixed breed. A mutt. I couldn’t believe the language my mother was using. "Can you really be talking about Erik? Cute little guy? Five years old? Just lost his parents? Big brown eyes? Loves to sing ‘The Wheels on the Bus’? Wants to be a cowboy when he grows up? Did you actually meet that wonderful child and not fall in love with him?"

  "Don’t be silly," said my mom. "I’m not about to fall in love with a little black boy. That’s the most ridiculous thing you’ve said all morning."

  Her words were a blow to my stomach.

  "Please leave now," said Brawny, pushing me out of the kitchen.

  "Promise you won’t hurt her," I said to Brawny, feeling caught between fear and fury. My palm itched with the desire to slap my mother across the face. Hard. I wanted her to feel the sting of my anger. To know how it stung and burned. How humiliating it was.

  I turned on my heels and started for the door. Just before I got to the dead end of the hall, I pivoted so I could look back. Brawny was squatted down so that she and my mother were eye to eye. Brawny was talking. A gold circle flashed, moving back and forth like a metronome. My mom was listening. Her head inclined. Her eyes narrowed, following the gold coin.

  Hmmmm. I wondered what Brawny was saying.

  My sisters had stepped out the side door, off of the dining room, which led to a brick patio. Catherine’s eyes were red-rimmed. I put my arms around both of them. "Thank you both for standing up for me and my family," I said. "All for one—"

  "And one for all!"

  Despite how miserable we felt, we laughed with this remembrance of a childhood chant.

  Chapter 54

  "Okay, that got my mother’s attention." I phoned Detweiler once Brawny dropped me off at the store. Clancy tactfully went to the sales floor so I could close my office door and talk to him with some privacy. I still couldn’t believe what had happened. It probably sounded like I’d lost my mind when I told Detweiler about the meeting. He was livid when he heard how abusive my mother had been. That turned to sadness when I shared what Catherine had said.

  "I wish I’d been there," he said. "I shouldn’t have let you go alone. I would have forced your mother to listen to reason. I don’t know how, but I would have done it. At least I would have given her a real talking to."

  "No need," I said. "Brawny took care of it."

  A silence. Then, "How?"

  "I believe she hypnotized my mother."

  More silence. Finally, "Come again?"

  "You’ll have to ask her, but after the fact, Brawny explained to us that she had hypnotized my mother. The father of modern hypnosis was a Scottish neurosurgeon named James Braid. Brawny says she used a trance-like state to help Mom become selectively attentive. With Brawny’s help, she would only focus on happy thoughts. On positive feelings."

  "Did it work?" he asked.

  "I can tell you that when the three of us walked back into the kitchen, Mom seemed peaceful and cheerful. She asked me when we’d be moving in. I told her and she nodded. She actually said, ‘If I can do anything to help, let me know.’ Can you believe it? Then Brawny and I went upstairs and took pictures and measurements. She has an app on her phone that functions like a measuring tape. Turns out, we don’t need any of my furniture. It might actually be best to store all of it and concentrate on packing and unpacking our clothes and toilet articles."

  "My parents said we can put everything in their garage."

  "That’s great! It will save us a bundle. We don’t need the furniture now, but we will want it eventually."

  "I can’t believe it. You’re actually sound upbeat," he said. "Considering what you just went through, I’m amazed."

  "Yep, me too. The thought of spending more time around my sisters makes me happy. As long as Brawny can keep Mom hypnotized or whatever, this might actually be an interesting adventure. One of the rooms upstairs used to be Clancy’s. It’s done up in pale grey and yellow. Anya would love it. There’s a large bedroom at the front of the house that would be perfect for us. Big bathroom attached. I’ll put Erik in a bedroom that they used for guests. It has a daybed with a navy rib cord spread on it. Catherine volunteered to make a couple of pillows out of red bandannas."

  "And Brawny? Our own Mary Poppins?"

  "There’s a room with a sleigh bed and an old-fashioned quilt on it. I wish you could have seen her face light up. She loved it. I could tell she was determined not to ask for it, so when I said, ‘Gee, this would be perfect for you,’ she sighed with joy. There’s a Jack and Jill bath separating her room and Erik’s. Really, this will work out perfectly. The kitchen has everything that Brawny needs for cooking. My sisters volunteered to work with her to come up with a schedule of menus. They’ll pitch in with the food costs, but we’ll all eat together."

  There was another silence. One so long that I thought I’d lost him. "You there?" I asked.

  "I just wanted to say that I know this has been hard for you. Adding Erik to our lives. Surprising you with Brawny. And now, having to move. And I want you to know that you’ve been a real rock throughout this. You’ve really been wonderful. I can’t wait to marry you and spend the rest of our lives together."

  Chapter 55

  Margit would be in at noon. She would look over the paperwork from all three crops, the two for charity and the one Monday night, and work up an analysis of our profits and losses. I did my portion of the assessment, calculating the costs of our materials, estimating my time, and then making a note about any extraneous factors. Regarding charitable crops, I wanted to use a big red marker and write STABBING on the form. But I didn’t.

  I did draw a red box and write, "Laurel." Then I added a frowny face.

  Usually I perk up pretty quickly when I started thinking about my next project. Today, I couldn’t muster the energy. Even though I needed to work on a make-and-take for Friday, I was creatively out of steam.

  "I’ll take over the sales floor," I told Clancy.

  "Good," she said. "I’ve still got a few calls to make. People who were at that first crop."

  I groaned.

  At my worktable, I pulled out a Zentangle® tile and started to practice a new tangle. We’d added Zentangle sessions to our offerings, and I now presided over one each Thursday night. I really couldn’t call them classes because I had yet to take the training, but I hoped to soon. So instead, we took turns teaching each other a new tangle. That made the session lots of fun, but it was still a profit center for the store.

  Bent over my tangles on the square of paper, I didn’t immediately snap to attention when the door minder rang. When I looked up, Johnny Chambers was standing in front of me.

  "Johnny!" I squealed and ran to him, throwing my arms around his neck.

  He laughed. "How's the baby bump?"

  "Getting bigger every day," I said.

  "And your neck?"

  "Healing. How are you?"

  "Can’t complain," he said. However, his face is still thinner than it once was. He was still hurting from the gunshot wounds he’d taken at the slough, right before I shot and killed my husband’s old business partner. "Of course, if it hadn’t been for you, I wouldn’t be standing here. I won’t ever forget that."

  I let go of him and climbed back on my stool. "Your sister—"

  "Has her head up her butt. She cain’t back down from her high horse. I love her. She’s kin, but she’s always had a terrible time saying she was wrong. It’s a shame." Usually he didn't talk with such a backwoods twang, but speaking about Mert sent Johnny into some sort of default. I don't know why.

  "I went to see Laurel yesterday," I began.

  "And my sis made sure they ejected you from the hospital."

  "Word travels fast."

  "Right. I told her not to be so proud of herself. She didn’t do Laurel any favors at all. There’s no reason she should be angry with you."

  "Let’s change the subject. How’s Laurel today? She’s getting out, isn’t she?"

  "Y
eah," he nodded slowly. "That’s how come I came to talk to you. We’ve asked the cops to keep an eye out, but they don’t seem interested. They’re sort of holding a grudge against me."

  What we call St. Louis is actually a metropolitan area made up of many different municipalities. Each has its own governance and law enforcement community. Unfortunately, these entities don’t always operate in sync. In fact, a lot of important information slips through the cracks.

  I could sort of understand that the police department being fed up with Johnny. In his younger days, he’d been a hooligan. But he’d served his time up in Potosi. Now he and his family deserved the same protection that any law-abiding citizen had a right to expect.

  "I’m so sorry," I said, sincerely. "That’s got to be scary."

  "It sure is."

  I waited. What was his point? Was he here to ask me if I could get Robbie to phone the local law?

  "I heard tell that the police don’t have much to go on. That the forensics hasn’t given them a line of inquiry." Johnny rested his hands in his lap as he sat half on and half off his stool.

  I didn’t know how to answer, so I said nothing.

  "I was thinking that maybe you could poke around. No one will expect a pregnant lady to be asking questions or playing cop."

  I bit my lower lip and tried not to smile. Actually I’d been thinking the same thing myself.

  Chapter 56

  "What do you know about Laurel? Her life? Anything that might offer a clue as to the name of her assailant?" I said. I’d pulled out a sheet of white copy paper. Now I prepared to take notes.

  "You've met Father Joe," said Johnny. "Since they're a couple, she's been going to St. James on Sundays. She's taking classes over at Prairie Central. I got the name of her teacher here." He passed me a slip of paper with Brian Overmeyer’s name, phone, and office hours.

  I added this to my list, but I didn’t let on that I already knew about the teacher or her class.

  "This here is the name of the talent agency that books her for modeling and such." He handed over a business card that read: Star Bright Talent. Because he didn’t say she was a belly dancer, I didn’t ask any more about her second career.

  He squirmed a little on the stool. "You, uh, know that Mert’s her real mom?"

  "I’d heard something like that."

  "Our parents split up after we were born. Ma took me, just to spite our dad. She sent Mert to foster care because she didn’t have enough money to feed both of us. Mert bounced around from home to home. I ain’t never got the sense of all of it, and she don’t talk about it none, but it must have been pretty awful. She got raped. More than once. Got pregnant. More than once. She had Laurel, and they took the baby from her straight away. Laurel did okay with her first foster family, until she started having problems because of her diabetes. Then they didn’t want to deal with a sick kid. So she bounced around from place to place until Edith and Jasper Wilkins took her in. Edith has diabetes, too, so she knew how to care for Laurel. It was too much for Jasper. He up and left them both."

  Emotions pummeled me. I couldn’t imagine what Mert and Laurel had been through. Two generations of women who’d been tossed into the system and passed around like ash trays for people to put their burning cigarettes in. Clancy had once told me that she thought the old orphanage system was actually a better choice for kids than foster care. "At least at the orphanages, there were checks and balances. But once a child goes to a foster home, they are at the mercy of their foster family."

  "What about the social workers who visit the kids?" I asked. There’d been a social worker assigned to take Anya from me when Sheila decided I wasn’t a fit mother. It had been the lowest point in our entire relationship. Mostly I tried not to remember the incident, but this unpleasant conversation brought it to mind.

  "That’s like spitting in a lake," he said.

  "Johnny, you don’t know how distressed all this makes me."

  "It’s a big lump to swallow, ain’t it?" he said. "I know it sickens me. It’s a wonder that Mert ever forgave me for what happened to her. I was just a little shaver, but she coulda hated me because Mom kept me and gave her up."

  I nodded. "I’ve been wondering if she’ll ever forgive me, and now, hearing her history, I can sort of see why she might not. She’s been let down by too many people."

  "That’s true, but you don’t deserve how she’s treating you. It’s just not fair, and she knows it." Johnny’s smile was wistful. "And my sis misses you. You were a good friend. She jest don’t know how to kiss and make up."

  "Maybe if I figure out who stabbed Laurel, she’ll forgive me."

  "Maybe."

  "Or maybe not," I admitted with a sigh.

  He shrugged in agreement.

  Chapter 57

  After Johnny left, I shared my newfound information with Clancy. We drew up a chart and listed all the people we knew who were a part of Laurel’s life. We brainstormed motives. In the end, we decided that we didn’t have enough to go on. We simply didn’t know that much about Laurel’s life. Without better information, we couldn’t formulate any useful theories as to who stabbed Laurel or why she’d been attacked.

  "Maybe there’s a rival belly dancer," said Clancy. "Or a classmate who’s angry. Or an old girlfriend of Father Joe’s. Or a parishioner."

  "I have to admit that all those women from the church are pretty scary. They’re like priest groupies, and they’re just plain hateful."

  "And at least one of them has mental illness," said Clancy. "But wouldn’t that be sort of obvious? They haven’t made any secret of how they feel about Laurel."

  I had to agree with her. "Of course, maybe they don’t care if they’re obvious. They seem to think they’re doing God’s work. They had a real martyrdom complex going."

  "They’re signing up for the Thursday night Zentangle crop," said Clancy.

  "Really?" I hadn’t looked at our list of attendees.

  "Yes." She handed me the paperwork. "Whatever else you think about that horrible night, we sure came away with a bunch of new customers."

  "Wow," I said. "That’s just creepy."

  "Sort of," said Clancy. "But it’s not any creepier than gapers’ block on a highway, is it? People love seeing an accident as long as they aren’t involved in the carnage. It’s just human nature."

  "Let’s get back to our brainstorming," I said. "Could be that Laurel helped clean with Mert and someone got angry. She and I have worked as part of Mert’s crew before. Could it be that someone on the wait staff hates her for some unknown reason? Or possibly she was in the wrong place at the wrong time and any one of us could have been attacked? The officers who interviewed the wait staff didn’t have any leads, but that doesn’t mean that the waiters are all terrific, peace loving people. One or two of them might be working under false names."

  "Or it could be that one of our croppers had it in for Laurel," said Clancy. "Maybe that cropper could have been biding her time, waiting for the chance to get Laurel in a situation where she could stab her."

  "Or someone from her past could be holding a grudge against John Henry Schnabel. Since they’re such close friends, maybe that person has been hoping for the chance to hurt someone who matters to John Henry."

  "Or it could be that Laurel’s assailant once asked her for a date and got shut down. It’s not like she doesn’t attract attention."

  "This is overwhelming," I said. "What’s even worse is the realization that no one will be watching over her when she goes back to her apartment. Here’s the address. Johnny told me it’s in South County."

  I handed Clancy a piece of paper in Johnny’s scrawl with a street address that neither of us recognized.

  "Yes, well, South County is a big piece of real estate," said Clancy. She massaged her temples, because she’s prone to headaches. She was elegantly dressed. Her black pencil skirt grazed the bottom of her kneecaps, exposing a small swath of black hose that ended at a pair of nice boots. "Maybe you ought to turn a
ll this over to Detweiler and Hadcho."

  I had on a man’s blue oxford cloth, button-down shirt and another pair of black maternity pants. Yes, I do most of my shopping at Goodwill, and it probably shows.

  "I could give this to the guys, but as you know, this isn’t their jurisdiction. They’re just helping Murray as much as they can. Since Hadcho was a first responder, that’s the excuse they’re using to stay involved. If Laurel had died, God forbid, they might have assigned the case to the Major Case Squad. That would have allowed them to go wherever they needed in search of evidence. But since she’s alive and recovering, the investigation is staying in the same jurisdiction where it occurred. Hadcho and Detweiler can ask how the investigation is coming, and follow up when Murray requests, as a courtesy to him, but they can’t do the legwork. They can’t work the case itself."

  Clancy stared down at the list on the desk. Her handwriting is incredibly neat. "There has to be an answer in here somewhere. Or with Joseph Tinsley."

  "Or with Mert."

  I stared at the list and closed my eyes. "I have an errand to run. I need to hire a belly dancer for Detweiler’s bachelor party"

  "Really? So you’ve decided to marry the guy and make an honest man out of him?" asked Clancy. A mischievous smirk played on her lips. Given that she was wearing a cashmere twin set and pearls, that grin looked totally out of place.

  "Yes, ma’am. As soon as I can get a spare moment, I think I will tie the knot."

  "You better hop to it, and go get your errand done," said Clancy, "because Margit will be here in an hour. You know how she gets when you aren’t ready to go over your paperwork with her."

  Chapter 58