She gave an ironic shrug, took the handcuffs he held and cuffed her mother’s hands securely.
~ * ~
Numb from the cold rain-and from the emotional fusion of the meeting-Beth Anne listened as Heath recited to the older woman, “Elizabeth Polemus, you’re under arrest for murder, attempted murder, assault, armed robbery and dealing in stolen goods.” He read her her rights and explained that she’d be arraigned in Oregon on local charges but was subject to an extradition order back to Michigan on a number of outstanding warrants there, including capital murder.
Beth Anne gestured to the young OSP officer who’d met her at the airport. She hadn’t had time to do the paperwork that’d allow her to bring her own service weapon into another state so the trooper had loaned her one of theirs. She returned it to him now and turned back to watch a trooper search her mother.
“Honey,” her mother began, the voice miserable, pleading.
Beth Anne ignored her and Heath nodded to the young uniformed trooper, who led the woman toward a squad car. But Beth Anne stopped him and called, “Hold on. Frisk her better.”
The uniformed trooper blinked, looking over the slim, slight captive, who seemed as unthreatening as a child. But, with a nod from Heath, he motioned over a policewoman, who expertly patted her down. The officer frowned when she came to the small of Liz’s back. The mother gave a piercing glance to her daughter as the officer pulled up the woman’s navy-blue jacket, revealing a small pocket sewn into the inside back of the garment. Inside was a small switchblade knife and a universal handcuff key.
“Jesus,” whispered the officer. He nodded to the policewoman, who searched her again. No other surprises were found.
Beth Anne said, “That was a trick I remember from the old days. She’d sew secret pockets into her clothes. For shoplifting and hiding weapons.” A cold laugh from the young woman. “Sewing and robbery. Those’re her talents.” The smile faded. “Killing too, of course.”
“How could you do this to your mother?” Liz snapped viciously. “You Judas.”
Beth Anne watched, detached, as the woman was led to a squad car.
Heath and Beth Anne stepped into the living room of the house. As the policewoman again surveyed the hundreds of thousands of dollars of stolen property filling the bungalow, Heath said, “Thanks, Detective. I know this was hard for you. But we were desperate to collar her without anybody else getting hurt.”
Capturing Liz Polemus could indeed have turned into a bloodbath. It had happened before. Several years ago, when her mother and her lover, Brad Selbit, had tried to knock over a jewelry store in Ann Arbor, Liz had been surprised by the security guard. He’d shot her in the arm. But that hadn’t stopped her from grabbing her pistol with her other hand and killing him and a customer and then later shooting one of the responding police officers. She’d managed to escape. She’d left Michigan for Portland, where she and Brad had started up her operation again, sticking with her forte-knocking over jewelry stores and boutiques selling designer clothes, which she’d use her skills as a seamstress to alter and then would sell to fences in other states.
An informant had told the Oregon State Police that Liz Polemus was the one behind the string of recent robberies in the Northwest and was living under a fake name in a bungalow here. The OSP detectives on the case had learned that her daughter was a detective with the Seattle police department and had helicoptered Beth Anne to Portland airport. She’d driven here alone to get her mother to surrender peacefully.
“She was on two states’ ten-most-wanted lists. And I heard she was making a name for herself in California too. Imagine that-your own mother.” Heath’s voice faded, thinking this might be indelicate.
But Beth Anne didn’t care. She mused, “That was my childhood-armed robbery, burglary, money laundering… My father owned a warehouse where they fenced the stuff. That was their front-they’d inherited it from his father. Who was in the business too, by the way.”
“You grandfather?”
She nodded. “That warehouse… I can still see it so clear. Smell it. Feel the cold. And I was only there once. When I was about eight, I guess. It was full of perped merch. My father left me in the office alone for a few minutes and I peeked out the door and saw him and one of his buddies beating the hell out of this guy. Nearly killed him.”
“Doesn’t sound like they tried to keep anything very secret from you.”
“Secret? Hell, they did everything they could to get me into the business. My father had these special games, he called them. Oh, I was supposed to go over to friends’ houses and scope out if they had valuables and where they were. Or check out TVs and VCRs at school and let him know where they kept them and what kind of locks were on the doors.”
Heath shook his head in astonishment. Then he asked, “But you never had any run-ins with the law?”
She laughed. “Actually, yeah-I got busted once for shoplifting.”
Heath nodded. “I copped a pack of cigarettes when I was fourteen. I can still feel my daddy’s belt on my butt for that one.”
“No, no,” Beth Anne said. “I got busted returning some crap my mother stole.”
“You what?”
“She took me to the store as cover. You know, a mother and daughter wouldn’t be as suspicious as a woman by herself. I saw her pocket some watches and a necklace. When we got home I put the merch in a bag and took it back to the store. The guard saw me looking guilty, I guess, and he nailed me before I could replace anything. I took the rap. I mean, I wasn’t going to drop a dime on my parents, was I?… My mother was so mad… They honestly couldn’t figure out why I didn’t want to follow in their footsteps.”
“You need some time with Dr. Phil or somebody.”
“Been there. Still am.”
She nodded as memories came back to her. “From, like, twelve or thirteen on, I tried to stay as far away from home as I could. I did every after-school activity I could. Volunteered at a hospital on weekends. My friends really helped me out. They were the best… I probably picked them because they were one-eighty from my parents’ criminal crowd. I’d hang with the National Merit scholars, the debate team, Latin club. Anybody who was decent and normal. I wasn’t a great student but I spent so much time at the library or studying at friends’ houses I got a full scholarship and put myself through college.”
“Where’d you go?”
“Ann Arbor. Criminal justice major. I took the CS exam and landed a spot on Detroit PD. Worked there for a while. Narcotics mostly. Then moved out here and joined the force in Seattle.”
“And you’ve got your gold shield. You made detective fast.” Heath looked over the house. “She lived here by herself? Where’s your father?”
“Dead,” Beth Anne said matter-of-factly. “She killed him.”
“What?”
“Wait’ll you read the extradition order from Michigan. Nobody knew it at the time, of course. The original coroner’s report was an accident. But a few months ago this guy in prison in Michigan confessed that he’d helped her. Mother found out my father was skimming money from their operation and sharing it with some girlfriend. She hired this guy to kill him and make it look like an accidental drowning.”
“I’m sorry, Detective.”
Beth Anne shrugged. “I always wondered if I could forgive them. I remember once, I was still working Narc in Detroit. I’d just run a big bust out on Six Mile. Confiscated a bunch of smack. I was on my way to log the stuff into Evidence back at the station and I saw I was driving past the cemetery where my father was buried. I’d never been there. I pulled in and walked up to the grave and tried to forgive him. But I couldn’t. I realized then that I never could-not him or my mother. That’s when I decided I had to leave Michigan.”
“Your mother ever remarry?”
“She took up with Selbit a few years ago but she never married him. You collared him yet?”
“No. He’s around here somewhere but he’s gone to
ground.”
Beth Anne gave a nod toward the phone. “Mother tried to grab the phone when I came in tonight. She might’ve been trying to get a message to him. I’d check out the phone records. That might lead you to him.”
“Good idea, Detective. I’ll get a warrant tonight.”
Beth Anne stared through the rain, toward where the squad car bearing her mother had vanished some minutes ago. “The weird part was that she believed she was doing the right thing for me, trying to get me into the business. Being a crook was her nature; she thought it was my nature too. She and Dad were born bad. They couldn’t figure out why I was born good and wouldn’t change.”
“You have a family?” Heath asked.
“My husband’s a sergeant in Juvenile.” Then Beth Anne smiled. “And we’re expecting. Our first.”
“Hey, very cool.”
“I’m on the job until June. Then I’m taking an LOA for a couple of years to be a mom.” She felt an urge to add, “Because children come first before anything.” But, under the circumstances, she didn’t think she needed to elaborate.
“Crime Scene’s going to seal the place,” Heath said. “But if you want to take a look around, that’d be okay. Maybe there’s some pictures or something you want. Nobody’d care if you took some personal effects.”
Beth Anne tapped her head. “I got more mementos up here than I need.”
“Got it.”
She zipped up her windbreaker, pulled the hood up. Another hollow laugh.
Heath lifted an eyebrow.
“You know my earliest memory?” she asked.
“What’s that?”
“In the kitchen of my parents’ first house outside of Detroit. I was sitting at the table. I must’ve been three. My mother was singing to me.”
“Singing? Just like a real mother.”
Beth Anne mused, “I don’t know what song it was. I just remember her singing to keep me distracted. So I wouldn’t play with what she was working on at the table.”
“What was she doing, sewing?” Heath nodded toward the room containing a sewing machine and racks of stolen dresses.
“Nope,” the woman answered. “She was reloading ammunition.”
“You serious?”
A nod. “I figured out when I was older what she was doing. My folks didn’t have much money then and they’d buy empty brass cartridges at gun shows and reload them. All I remember is the bullets were shiny and I wanted to play with them. She said if I didn’t touch them she’d sing to me.”
This story brought the conversation to a halt. The two officers listened to the rain falling on the roof.
Born bad.…
“All right,” Beth Anne finally said, “I’m going home.”
Heath walked her outside and they said their good-byes. Beth Anne started the rental car and drove up the muddy, winding road toward the state highway.
Suddenly, from somewhere in the folds of her memory, a melody came into her head. She hummed a few bars out loud but couldn’t place the tune. It left her vaguely unsettled. So Beth Anne flicked the radio on and found Jammin’ 95.5, filling your night with solid-gold hits, party on, Portland… She turned the volume up high and, thumping the steering wheel in time to the music, headed north toward the airport.
<
~ * ~
JANE HADDAM
Edelweiss
From Creature Cozies
Looking at her now, you’d never guess that Edelweiss was once an abandoned cat, dumped at the back door of the Naugy Doggy pet shop in Naugatuck, Connecticut, with the rest of a litter of kittens that nobody seemed to want. These days, she’s fat, furry, and arrogant, and her dietary requirements resemble the main menu at the Golden Door spa. Unfortunately, she doesn’t much like having her picture taken — she seems to think the camera flash is an unspeakable indignity — and she’s iffy on small boys, especially the one in our house. Taking this picture required a whole role of film, the help of a few friends, and banishing my younger son to his room. When the photo session was over, she installed herself under my coffee table and refused to come out until the turkey in the oven was done. Maybe she should have her name changed to Greta Garbo.
—JANE HADDAM
That morning, the air was hot and muggy and thick, the way it can be only in central Florida in the winter, and Miss Caroline Edgerton was taking her cat to work. Shelley Altman saw them coming out of Miss Edgerton’s front door at seven forty-five in the morning, the earliest Shelley had ever seen Miss Edgerton head to work. By now, Shelley knew everything there was to know about “Miss Caroline,” as the paperboy called her, right down to the size of her underwear and the pattern she preferred at Victoria’s Secret. It was funny to think of Miss Edgerton shopping at Victoria’s Secret. She was sixty if she was a day, and she was probably a virgin on top of it. Shelley hadn’t found any birth control any of the last three times she’d searched the house. She’d been particularly looking for it, too, because Amanda absolutely insisted that that was one thing they needed to know. Was Miss Edgerton a virgin? Was she a lesbian? Was she anything at all besides a dried up old prune of a hag who had dedicated her life to making things miserable for girls who were younger than she was and prettier than she had ever been? It mattered, Amanda said, because the answers might change their minds about what they had decided to do. It was one thing to murder a woman who was nothing more than a waste of light and air. It was something else to murder a tragic victim of life’s circumstances. Maybe Miss Edgerton had once had a lover who had died in a war — Vietnam or World War II, whichever. Maybe Miss Edgerton had always wished and hoped for a lover but had been too poor or too ugly to get one. Maybe Miss Edgerton was pining right now for some young man at her office, who would never look at her because she was far too old. Whatever it was, they had to find out, just in case it made her less than the best of candidates. It wasn’t as if they were shy of people who deserved to be dead. Matahatchee was full of them. Amanda could name six right off the top of her head, and that was without going any farther afield than Main Street.
Out in the driveway next door, Miss Caroline Edgerton had put her cat very carefully into the cat carrier that she kept in the back seat for whenever she needed it. Her cat was named Edelweiss, because it was as purely white as some silly flower that grew in Switzerland, and it didn’t like going into the carrier for any reason whatsoever. Shelley was always a little surprised that Miss Edgerton didn’t take her cat to work every day. She surely lived with it like it was surgically attached when she was home. Sometimes, when Shelley looked into the windows at night, Miss Edgerton would be sitting in the big club chair in the living room with Edelweiss draped around her neck like a feather boa, the both of them watching something mind-numbingly boring on PBS. Shelley didn’t care if Miss Edgerton was somebody who had had a tragic life. She hated Miss Edgerton with everything inside herself, much the way she also hated Mrs. Keller who taught English at school and Mrs. Partree who ran that youth group at the Methodist church. Shelley’s parents went to the Methodist church. They made Shelley go with them. Twice a year they made Shelley go on a Bible retreat with the youth group, too. By now, Shelley had read through the really good parts of the Bible almost as often as she had watched Natural Born Killers — but only because she wasn’t allowed to watch Natural Born Killers in the house.
Miss Edgerton had Edelweiss safely in the cat carrier and the cat carrier safely on the floor of the back seat of the car. That was the safest place for Edelweiss to be if there was ever a car accident. Miss Edgerton came around front and got in behind the wheel. Her car was a trim little Volvo sedan, in navy blue, which matched her business suit today. Miss Edgerton always looked businesslike, even though she didn’t work at anything any more important than being a secretary.
Shelley moved away from her bedroom window and sat down on her bed. Her school clothes were hung on her closet door. Her makeup was laid out on the vanity table in front of the beveled mirror that
was supposed to be good for making sure you covered up your flaws and imperfections. Her fingernails were bright green. It seemed impossible to her that she should have to get up and go out and spend the day at Matahatchee High School, where she was only a sophomore and not considered very important by the other girls in her class. Amanda was important. Amanda was so important, she was already a varsity cheerleader, and secretary of the student council, and a member of the Key Club. Once a month, at least, Amanda had her picture in the Matahatchee Echo, which was the school newspaper. Amanda was a peer tutor. Amanda was an anger management peer counselor. Amanda sang in the choir at church. Sometimes, when Shelley thought about killing somebody, Amanda seemed to be the very best one to kill. Then Shelley would think about Miss Edgerton and change her mind. It was just that the waiting was making her crazy. It got to the point sometimes when she couldn’t seem to make herself think. Now she got up and got her bright blue halter-top off its hanger and started to put it on. She didn’t know if she was glad to live in a place where it almost never got cold. She hated halter-tops. They made her feel as if someone were about to scrape away her skin.
The Best American Mystery Stories 2006 Page 9
