Murder in a Nice Neighborhood

by Lora Roberts

  To my surprise, Claudia did not rip Drake’s head off— verbally, of course; she would never attempt physical violence. She simply picked up her pen, turned to a fresh page in her notebook, and waited silently.

  Drake took me through everything Pigpen had said, everything I had said. At least, what I thought I’d said. As in any event under constant scrutiny, the reality had been replaced by the official version. I couldn’t really tell any more if those were his exact words, my exact words. What I remembered with clarity about that evening was the quality of the light, pouring through the trees to gild the steep sides of the creek, highlighting the fall brilliance of the poison oak that clothed it. I remembered the smell of the pine trees and the way my pear had tasted. And that Mrs. Gaskell wrote of the graveyard that reared its stones under Charlotte Brontë’s bedroom window. And how Pigpen’s unwashed body smell fought with the mothball scent of his Goodwill ensemble.

  Drake wanted all that, too. He was the best listener I’d ever had. Certainly better than the lawyer appointed by the court to defend me from attempted murder charges against my ex-husband. Drake listened as if every action recounted, every thought rethought, would go directly into his bank account and be turned into gold.

  It was the same with my encounter with Alonso. What he’d said to me, and I to him, was incidental. How he looked, the way he clutched the paper bag to his chest as if I’d challenge him for the cereal samples he’d been stealing, the macabre way his new outfit mirrored Pigpen’s, even down to the mothball smell, were all displayed for Drake’s benefit and Claudia’s notes.

  “You mentioned the mothballs before.” Drake had a notepad, too, a very small one on which he made undecipherable marks with a mechanical pencil. He thumbed back through the little pages, dislodging a few, until he found one he wanted. “We contacted Goodwill,” he said, blinking at me from behind his glasses. “They don’t use mothballs.”

  “I smelled them,” I insisted stubbornly. “And they were both wearing relatively clean pants and newish-looking shoes. Pigpen had enormous feet.”

  Drake didn’t really seem to need his notes. “You said Pigpen wore a flight jacket over the kind of vest that comes in a three-piece suit.”

  “No.” I shook my head. “He wore a flight jacket. It was zipped. I didn’t see what was underneath, and I didn’t want to find out.”

  Drake made another notation and seemed to hesitate for a moment. “Well, here’s an interesting fact for you. The vest Pigpen wore matched the suit jacket Alonso had on when he died. Both of them had all labels removed. And you were right. Both smelled a little of mothballs.”

  I thought that over, but Claudia got there first. “So the same source provided their new clothes. So they must have been working together.”

  “What kind of work was that?” It didn’t make sense. “No one would bother to dress up to steal those cereal samples. Alonso was certainly doing it on a grand scale, but that kind of stuff is fair game, especially if it’s just crammed into the newspaper bin underneath apartment mailboxes.”

  “What would you think Pigpen and Alonso would do if they were given a temporary job, some money?”

  I hesitated. “If I were looking to bootstrap some homeless people, I wouldn’t have picked either of those two,” I finally said. “There are some that are on the street because they don’t have any choices, and there are some that have chosen the street.”

  “And Pigpen was the latter?”

  “Well, he wasn’t reliable.” I didn’t like having to dish about the street. There are remarkably decent people who have taken blow after blow from life until all they have left is a car or a shopping cart or just a blanket. They have stopped trying to elude their fate; they accept it at the same time that they turn away from it to drugs or liquor or whatever cheap escape their meager resources offer. Alonso had seemed to me to be coming from that perspective, handicapped by his rather trusting dimness. Pigpen, however, had been a natural-born bum, someone to whom work wasn’t worthwhile unless it was money for nothing. “If he’d ever gotten a job, I’d expect him to just take the first paycheck and drink it up and never show up again.”

  “Sounds like he was blackmailing someone, not working,” Claudia observed. “All that about going to the bank—he had something on someone, and whoever it was killed him.”

  “Like maybe knowledge of someone’s criminal record?” I forced the words out through my tight throat. “Maybe he told Alonso and that’s why I had to off him, too.”

  “We thought about that.” Drake leaned back in his chair and took another bite of doughnut, chewing thoughtfully, as if our discussion was simply academic. “But there didn’t seem to be any reason why you’d kill to conceal your record. And what would be the point of blackmailing you? You don’t have any money.”

  “I have more than most of them,” I muttered. For the past few years I had told myself I was one of the people of the street, but now I realized that I didn’t want to be classified with losers and drifters. Secretly I had been that far more romantic figure, the fugitive. I was an outcast to my family—jailbirds were definitely not welcome. But I hadn’t really sought the company of my homeless companions. I had made my bus a home, even if it was ephemeral compared to the fancy real estate all around Palo Alto. I felt an intense longing for its snug illusion of security, for the sense that I was free, able to head out to fresh horizons at any minute.

  But something I’d stifled was rising to the surface, too—a need for people who knew and cared about me, for purpose that transcended the next stopping place. That was what had kept me in Palo Alto—along with the pretense that I was free to move on at any threat, I had enjoyed feeling like part of a community.

  “Liz?” Claudia touched my arm, and I realized that my cheeks were wet. “Do you need a break?”

  I shook my head and pulled a bandanna out of my pocket. “We aren’t finished until we figure out who did it, are we?” I tried a bright smile, and wasn’t surprised when it didn’t move my companions. “Trapped inside a murder mystery. Is it snowing outside?”

  That got a sour smile from Drake. “No, but we’re going to force doughnuts down your throat until you talk, shweetheart.”

  “No need for force.” I broke a piece off my buttermilk bar, but couldn’t bring it to my mouth. There was a lot I couldn’t seem to swallow just then. “Where were we?”

  “We were figuring out who Pigpen was blackmailing.” Claudia looked back through her notes.

  “But what could link Pigpen with Vivien?” I gave up all pretense of eating. “Why would anyone want to kill her?”

  Drake cleared his throat. “Some people will do anything for property.”

  “Vivien’s property? Who gets it?” I pushed the plate away and looked at the lukewarm dregs in my teacup.

  The quality of Drake’s silence alerted me to the danger. I looked at him, and the cold gray eyes were clearly visible behind the lenses. “In her will,” he said deliberately, “she leaves her house to you.”

  Chapter 27

  Claudia choked, and I absently pounded her on the back. I was seeing those black bars again, swimming closer and closer. Vivien had meant to give me a wonderful surprise on the sad occasion of her death, not a motive for murdering her.

  “How long have you known this?” I glared at Drake. He was the yo-yo master, and I was the yo-yo; one minute I was up there on his side, the next I was scraping the floor. If the purpose of his technique was to keep me off balance, he was doing a wonderful job.

  “It came through just before I came over here.” He stared back at me, unwinking. “You deny that you knew?”

  “I didn’t know.” The need for solitude, for time to adjust to all these changes, pressed me. “Poor Vivien. She meant to be so kind.”

  “Her will says something about the house being yours to sell or live in, though she hopes you will live in it.”

  “She didn’t like my living on the street.” I folded my arms and hugged them across my chest,
trying not to shiver. “She always wanted me to move into that cottage in the back.”

  “Why didn’t you?” Drake leaned forward, like some kind of twisted therapist.

  “Too much money. Not mobile enough,” I said dully. “I was afraid of getting an address.” The fear seemed stupid now. Either Tony had found me after all and was weaving this delightful plot to trap me, or I had given up the chance to help a very nice person. If I’d been living there, perhaps Vivien wouldn’t have been poisoned.

  Claudia got up and limped to the stove, returning in a moment with a hot cup of herb tea. “Drink this,” she said, glaring at Drake. “You’ve had a shock.”

  “It’s not as if Liz is suddenly rich,” he pointed out. “That old place needs lots of deferred maintenance. The only way you can afford it is to sell it, but you wouldn’t get enough out of it to buy a house around here.” He leaned forward again. “Of course,” he murmured, “you could go somewhere else, where things are cheaper—Oregon, or Colorado—”

  “No!” I clutched the warm cup. “How can this happen? How can a loving gesture turn me into an even hotter suspect?”

  Claudia looked at me, worried. “It’s a shock. But don’t collapse, Liz. Use your head. We’re going to get at the truth here, if you can help us.” She challenged Drake. “Who else knew that Liz was the beneficiary?”

  He smiled. “Vivien used a standard will form from the stationer’s, so there was no attorney involved. Her son died, you told me, in Korea, so she had no relatives to consider. According to Liz, she wasn’t told. So it seems, no one knew about it. At least, no one’s come forward.”

  “Delores Mitchell,” I said suddenly.

  “Who?” Claudia wrote the name down on her pad.

  “That woman we saw today—you know, old Stewart Mitchell’s daughter. I know Vivien took one of her workshops. Maybe Delores knows something about her will.” I remembered something else. “Yes, and I won’t get the house anyway,” I said triumphantly. “Vivien had taken a reverse mortgage. Those people will get the house.”

  “They’ll put it up for sale,” Drake said after a thoughtful silence. “But I think the way that works is they get their advance plus interest out of it, and the rest of the proceeds go to the residual legatee.” He wrote Delores’s name down too. “I’ll check it out.”

  “So both you and Vivien knew this Mitchell woman.”

  Claudia gnawed on her pen. “Who else did you both know?”

  “Hard to say.” I was finding it difficult to focus. The hot tea helped. I closed my eyes. “That developer. Ted Ramsey.”

  “Ramsey’s a friend of yours?” Drake looked up from his notes. “I didn’t know that.”

  “He’s not my friend.” I struggled to be coherent. “He swims at the same time I do. I met him a couple of times, once when I was taking Vivien to class. He was after her house. Promised to find her a nice studio in one of the ritzy retirement homes around. She was too nice when she turned him down—he kept thinking she just needed a little more persuasion.”

  “So he wanted her place—why? He doesn’t do single-family stuff.” Drake made a few notes.

  “He had options on a couple of other houses next to hers. The one around the corner belonged to Eunice, the other woman in my writing group that just died. She had a big lot with a small house and her backyard intersected with Vivien’s,” I remembered yesterday’s awkward moment. “One of the other neighbors, Carlotta Houseman, is really gung-ho to move into a retirement place. She was feuding with Vivien because she thought Vivien was going to queer the whole deal.” I surprised myself by yawning.

  Claudia caught it. “You’re tired,” she said, putting down her pen. “Why don’t you take that nap now?”

  “We’re not finished.” Drake directed an intimidating stare at Claudia. She didn’t back down.

  “Liz is.” She was right. I felt exhausted, in spite of the long sleep the night before. My head throbbed, my eyes felt sandy. I wanted to crawl into my bus and hide in my sleeping bag while crying a couple of gallons of tears for everything that had gone wrong in the universe over the past two billion years.

  “I’ll come back for dinner,” Drake announced, knowing, I guess, that if he waited to be invited he would have a good, long wait. “I’ll bring a pizza or something. You ladies are not thinking of going out, are you?”

  “We women,” Claudia told him, heaving herself to her feet to accompany me, “are going to nap and recruit our subconscious brains to do the hard work of figuring out what has been going on here. If the pizza smells good enough, we might let you in.”

  “Lock the door after me,” he ordered, taking another doughnut out of the box and following us out of the kitchen. “Don’t let anyone else in. If you remember anything pertinent, don’t call up potential blackmailers and tell them about it. Let me know. Let me know if anything worries or bothers you or anyone wants to talk to you. I don’t want any accidents happening here, understand?”

  “You come in loud and clear, Detective Drake.” Claudia stopped in the doorway of the room she’d assigned to me. “We’ll see you later.”

  I barely remember falling onto the bed. Sleep was deep and welcoming, like a thick blanket between me and the rest of the world. I didn’t want to dream, but of course I did.

  Vivien was standing at the counter in her kitchen, which by the alchemy of dreams I knew was actually my kitchen now. But there she was, fixing me a snack, smiling over her shoulder like she used to do. When she turned around, I saw that instead of the usual plate of sliced cake, she was holding a bowl of cereal, its black blobs of raisins floating in milk. Behind her on the counter was the little sample box. A feeling of horror grew slowly while I stared at the bowl held in her gnarled hands. Reluctantly I shifted my gaze, and there was Alonso, clutching the bag to his chest, glaring at me accusingly. Vivien, too, had lost her smile; she looked as if she disapproved of something. Her hands began to tremble, and I reached for the bowl before the milk could slosh onto the floor, but it receded as I reached, until I wasn’t in the kitchen anymore and Vivien, blown before me like a wispy kite, was rapidly borne out of sight. Alonso began to mutate, his face dripping and changing in a grotesque kind of acid flashback. I knew what he would turn into, and told myself to wake up, but not before Pigpen’s dead face confronted me, his expression somehow sly, the open eyes filmed over.

  I did wake up then. The dream’s lingering horror settled over me thickly. I had that groggy, befuddled feeling that comes from sleeping in the daytime. More than anything, I wanted a swim. It was just past one; the pool would still be open for laps.

  It didn’t take long to strip and put on my suit. Claudia was sleeping; I could hear from the foot of the stairs her deep breathing and occasional delicate snores. All this was a strain on her, and she wasn’t in the best of shape to begin with. Obviously she needed her nap more than I’d needed mine.

  I pulled sweats over my suit, rolled up a towel, and looked at the back door lock for a minute. The key was in it. Drake would definitely say it was dumb to go for a swim. I wanted to pretend that didn’t matter. But to let the antagonism between us color my self-preservation—that would be dumb.

  The phone was in the kitchen. I closed the door so I wouldn’t wake up Claudia. Drake answered himself, impatiently, as if he’d been interrupted in devising a solution to the national debt.

  “Drake. I’m going to Rinconada Pool. I’m riding Claudia’s bike—it’s less than a mile. I’ll be finished in an hour or so, and bike back.”

  “You’re out of your gourd, lady.” His breath hissed through the receiver, diving down my ear. “You don’t go anywhere or do anything.”

  “I’m letting you know,” I pointed out, realizing how much easier it was to talk to him without his well-honed, inquisitive presence. “I could have just left, and no one the wiser.”

  “Where’s your keeper?” He sounded seriously annoyed. “I thought the formidable Mrs. Kaplan was going to guard you like a Rottweiler.�
��

  I couldn’t help the smile. At least he wouldn’t see it. “She’s getting some rest. I’m not going to bother her, and neither are you.”

  “So it’s not clear who takes the Rottweiler role, is it?” The sounds of paper being shuffled, or perhaps shoveled, filled the receiver. Then he spoke again. “I haven’t taken a lunch break yet. I’ll pick you up in a few minutes. Don’t wait outside, and lock the door when you come out. I’ll take you to Rinconada and bring you back.”

  “I’m touched.” A flat voice, reciting orders—I had lived too many years with that already. “Such concern for my well-being. Next time, I won’t tell you first.”

  “There might not be a next time.” The frankness was brutal. “Your possible futures include a couple of scenarios that would severely limit your movements.”

  “You mean jail.” I leaned against the wall. “So I’m pretty much under house arrest right now, is that it? I’m surprised you don’t have someone posted here.”

  There was a brief silence, time enough to deduce the bull’s-eye. “I’m not talking about jail,” he said finally, as if exasperated. “I’m talking about death. Wait inside until you see my car. It’s a—”

  “I remember your car.” My mouth wanted to say something else, but my hand hung up before I could betray myself. I scribbled a note for Claudia and left it in the middle of the kitchen table. Then I unlocked the back door and relocked it after me, pocketing the key. Drake might be concerned for my safety, but he also regarded me as chief suspect. There was sure to be a policeman lurking somewhere. I was in no danger, and there was something I had to do.

  My bus was out of sight behind the garage. I ran my hand along the side, feeling the ridges on the metal from my inexpert attempt at painting it last summer. The curtains were pulled back, as I’d left them after tidying up after the assault. The cardboard window still showed its hole from the previous night’s breakin; I hadn’t yet gotten around to fixing it. I unlocked the door and checked that the cooler door was propped open to air and that everything was in its place. The boxes of files stashed on the floor under the pull-up table gave me a pang. It was as if the life I’d shaped for the past few years was over already, with only a big question mark to take its place. I had found my little rut so comforting, so secure. Now I knew that comfort and security had been delusion and illusion. There was no going back. There might be no going on.