Here Comes the Ride

by Lorena McCourtney

  “That is kind of . . . breathtaking."

  She started to step into the hallway, but impulsively I put a hand on her arm. “Pam, do you know something about Michelle’s murder that you aren’t telling me?”

  “You’re hoping for that confession?”

  “Not necessarily. But if you did it, confessing would be the best thing to do.”

  “I’m sorry if it disappoints you, but I didn’t do it. I didn’t have kindly feelings toward Michelle, you know that. But I could never stick a knife in anyone’s back, not even hers.”

  “Could someone else have the same suspicions you’ve had about your father’s death, or perhaps even know something for certain, and have killed her because of that?”

  “I can’t think of anyone except me who cared that much about his death. Maybe it was something else entirely.” A hint of that haunted look crossed her tired face again.

  “What kind of ‘something else’?”

  “I’m going to bed.”

  Chapter Twelve

  I made two fast trips to Sea-Tac the following morning, doubling up on passengers. That emptied the house, except for the Steffans, and got rid of the MOBs and bridesmaids from the inn as well. The sky opened up with a downpour that settled into a steady drizzle, and complaints about the weather were a bigger topic than murder. Which suggested to me that priorities among some of these people had all the depth of a smear of mascara.

  Apparently the authorities hadn’t requested that any of them stay. I wondered if that meant they were cleared of all suspicion, or if Detective Molino had decided he couldn’t get away with some en masse detainment order. Or if he already had the killer in his sights.

  There were still police cars and crime-scene people working the area, and yellow crime-scene tape encircled the entire tent now. Joe and Phyllis Forsythe had quickly accepted Pam’s invitation to stay at the house, and after lunch I helped them move from the inn. I was rather curious about why they were staying on. Was Michelle’s funeral really that important to them?

  I’d decided I preferred to stay where I was, so they got the Nautical Room, which Shirley speed-cleaned when the guests cleared out. Although not without some unflattering commentary.

  “That girl shed worse than a St. Bernard. I’ve never seen so much stray hair. And how could anyone leave fingernail polish blobs on the ceiling?”

  The shapely-footed bridesmaid had occupied the room. Maybe she had some secret ceiling exercise to keep her feet photogenic. Or maybe it was just that Hollywood people are big-time different from you and me.

  I talked to Fitz by phone a couple of times, and we planned to meet at the CyberClam Café that evening and use their Internet to see what we could dig up on both Michelle and guests. But late that afternoon, while I was returning from one last run to Sea-Tac, he called to say they’d picked up a last-minute overnight cruise with the Miss Nora, so he couldn’t make it.

  “What about all those flowers?” I asked.

  “I made up a bunch of bouquets and spread them around some nursing and assisted living homes.”

  Leave it to Fitz to think of something like that. Yes indeed, even a semi-disillusioned-about-men, sixty-year-old limousine driver might fall in love with such a guy. Although I wasn’t making ice-sculpture plans yet.

  Fitz said he’d call the next day when they got back to the marina.

  Shirley, in the midst of making baked salmon and potatoes au gratin for dinner, offered a glass of raspberry iced tea when I got back to the house. I guess by then I looked as if I needed a boost.

  I hadn’t seen Pam all day, but now, I was surprised to hear from Shirley, she was in the living room with her not-to-be in-laws and the Steffans, apparently being politely social. Or could she be doing a bit of sleuthing on her own? Was she wondering, as I was, why both the Forsythes and the Steffans were still here? I couldn’t think, even if the police had told Stan Steffan and his wife that they had to stay, that he’d knuckle under so easily. Didn’t he have some big meeting in LA scheduled for this evening?

  “What’s the deal with the Steffans?” I asked Shirley as I added a smidgen of sugar to the tea.

  “Mrs. Steffan came to tell me they’d be staying on for a few days, so I’d know how many to expect for meals. She said they’d decided if there was anything they could do to help with the investigation, they owed it to Michelle to do so. Michelle starred in one of their first big hits, and they were very fond of her.”

  Hmmm. That didn’t jibe with the hostility of the conference between Michelle and Mr. Steffan in the Africa Room that Shirley had overheard.

  “Do you believe that?”

  “Mrs. Steffan said Stan was very upset, and I think she’d been crying.”

  So Stan Steffan was now going all sentimental and bighearted about Michelle, and didn’t mind losing out on his important meeting? Pardon my cynicism, but I couldn’t buy that. And just what kind of “help” did they plan to offer?

  Phreddie wandered into the kitchen, which apparently meant he was no longer confined to the attic. He stopped short when he spotted Shirley, however, and the fur on his back stiffened into a ridge, as if perhaps they’d had unfriendly confrontations before.

  She flapped her hands at him. “Scat, cat.”

  Phreddie scatted, and Shirley sat down at the kitchen table with me. “The Stan Man, as I heard someone call him, is about as sensitive as a turnip, but she seems nice. She made a point of telling me how much she’s enjoyed the meals here, especially my breakfast biscuits and rack of lamb.”

  “She seems like a friendly, down-to-earth sort.”

  “I’d guess she’s put up with a lot over the years. Offhand, I suspect the ol’ Stan Man is a skirt chaser big-time. Though I didn’t actually see anything to confirm that.” Shirley sounded disappointed with the admission. “He just seems the type.”

  “Doesn’t she have a first name? I never hear anyone call her anything but Mrs. Steffan.”

  “She seemed so friendly that I asked her about that. But she didn’t even tell me her first name—just said she preferred to be called Mrs. Steffan.”

  “Well, okay. Mrs. Steffan it is, then.”

  When Shirley went in to announce dinner, I went to my room to change out of my chauffeur’s uniform. It was almost dark by then, but the sky had cleared to a soft blue, and I decided there was still time to wash the limo. Roadspray thrown up by too many eighteen-wheelers on all those trips to Sea-Tac, plus a few too many visits by local seagulls here on the inlet, had dimmed its sleek elegance.

  I didn’t have the supplies and long-handled brush I use at home, but I looked in the garage and found car-wash detergent, a bucket, soft rags, and a stepstool to stand on. These were storebought “rags,” however, not the tattered remnants of old sheets and towels that I'm accustomed to. I drove around back of the house, turned on the yard lights, found a hose, and got started.

  Pam came out when I was about halfway done, by which time I had as much water on me as on the limo.

  “Hey, I’ll pay for a car wash,” she called. “You don’t have to do this.”

  I paused in scrubbing a hubcap. “Actually, I enjoy it. It’s kind of like playing in the sprinkler when I was a kid.”

  “Really? I never did that. We always had a pool. Can I help?”

  I started to say, no, never mind, but then I changed my mind. The physical activity might do her good. She hadn’t dressed for dinner and was in shorts and T-shirt. “Sure. Grab a rag.”

  So we companionably sloshed and scrubbed and rinsed, and I got a fresh supply of rags from the garage for drying. After the limo was back to its black-jewel gleam, I asked if she’d like to wash her bug. It was sitting over behind the garage, a hidden spot to which Michelle must have banished it.

  “Sure! Let’s do it.”

  So we scrubbed and polished the bug. It was a bit like trying to beautify a wart, but maybe cleanliness is next to godliness, even for an old VW beetle.

  Somewhere along the way
Pam stood back and said, “It’s really an awful color, isn’t it?”

  Under the yard lights, the yellow gleamed more egg-yolky than ever.

  “Any more awful, and you’d be pulled over for littering on the highway.”

  Pam rubbed the rusty edge of a fender. “I guess the only reason I never had it repainted, or got a different car, was because Michelle hated it so much.”

  For a moment I thought I heard guilt or regret in her voice, but then she shot a harsh blast of water at the windshield, as if she were determinedly rejecting regret.

  “You still think Michelle killed your father?” I asked bluntly.

  “I’m sorry I never told her I liked what she did with the Nautical Room. I’m sorry I did some other kind of . . . mean things. And I know it’s not nice to say bad things about the dead. But I still think she did it. Although I guess it doesn’t matter now, does it?”

  “Probably not.” Someone else had already given Michelle a death sentence. But who? And why? I still felt there was something Pam wasn’t telling me. An unexpected thought occurred to me.

  “Do you really want to know who killed her, Pam?”

  She lowered the hose and looked at me. “What a peculiar thing to say!” She managed to sound aghast.

  “Which you’ve just avoided answering.”

  “Of course I want the guilty person caught. A murderer can’t just get away with it. In fact, I’ve been thinking, maybe you and I should get together and make up a list of suspects for Detective Molino.”

  From past experience, I figured the detective would greet presentation of any such list with the Pentagon’s enthusiasm for a to-do list from a housewife in New Jersey. But putting our heads together couldn’t hurt. Fitz and I figured on doing that anyway.

  “I think we need to consider all the guests, and I didn’t even know most of them. Though Michelle must have had a guest list somewhere.” After a moment’s hesitation, as if she was uneasy about snooping, Pam added, “I guess we could look in her office.”

  I remembered then what I hadn’t thought about since I’d done it. “I picked up the place cards that were set up for dinner at the reception. They must still be in the pocket of the uniform I was wearing. We can get all the names there.”

  She looked surprised. “Why did you pick up the place cards?”

  “I was just trying to be helpful, so people would feel free to sit and eat anywhere and not have to go around looking for an assigned place.” I’d planned to give the cards to Detective Molino, but I’d forgotten. Or maybe my sneaky subconscious had something like this in mind all along.

  But now, thinking of Theory #1 that had been espoused by some of the wedding guests, that a stranger could have come in and committed the murder, I added, “Maybe you can come up with names of people who weren’t necessarily guests— outside people, anyone with whom she’d had a problem or conflict.”

  “But someone like that wouldn’t have been at the wedding,” Pam said, in what, oddly, sounded to me like a sidestep. But what could she be sidestepping?

  We finished washing the bug and agreed that I’d come up to her attic room after I changed into dry clothes, but Stan Steffan met us in the hallway.

  “Could I talk to you for a minute, Pam?” He actually pulled off the dark glasses when he spoke, something that immediately put me on guard. It’s the kind of gesture someone makes if trying to appear all open and accessible. Not the Stan Man’s usual demeanor, which tended more toward a disdainful You’re in the way. Get off my planet.

  Pam held her hands out from her sides and turned up her palms. “I’m kind of wet—”

  “That’s okay. I don’t mind.”

  No thought that Pam’s wet condition might be uncomfortable for her.

  Pam didn't miss that either. “Well, if you don’t mind, then I’m sure it will be fine. Let’s go to Michelle’s office.”

  The sarcasm passed right over his head, and he motioned for her to lead the way to the Africa Room.

  I wished I had a reason to dust around the doorway so I could listen in, but since I didn’t, I went to my room, showered, and changed to dry jeans and sweatshirt. I found the place cards where I’d stuffed them in the pocket of the uniform that I’d wrapped in a plastic bag to contain the smell.

  Shirley wasn’t in the kitchen, but I ate a plate of leftover salmon and salad and then climbed the stairs to the attic room.

  Pam, in cotton pajamas definitely not of the honeymoon variety, opened the door. Phreddie was curled up on his $24,000 cat bed. I saw that the space beside the computer where Pam’s manuscript had been stacked was now empty, and I dumped the place cards there. Curious as I was about Pam’s meeting with Stan Steffan, I didn’t feel I had any business questioning her about it, but she jumped right in without my asking.

  “Mr. Steffan had a business proposition for me.”

  “What kind of business proposition?”

  “He said Michelle had wanted to invest in his new movie, and he’d agreed to let her do it. Then he said, under the circumstances, he thought it would be only fair to give me the same opportunity.”

  Pardon my continuing cynicism, but I doubted that “letting” Michelle or Pam invest was some big favor. Other guests had known he was having trouble raising money, and the term “blackmail” in regard to the money he wanted from Michelle had been tossed around in that conversation Shirley overheard.

  “He said he was going to let her invest a million dollars. An even million.”

  If I could whistle, I would have, but I’ve been whistle-challenged all my life. Though another thought occurred to me. “A million strikes me as a lot of money, but I don’t think it would go far toward actually making a movie.”

  “You know that old politician’s saying. A million here and a million there, and pretty soon you’re into real money. Maybe he needed it for seed money, something he could use to raise more or get a big loan.”

  “Did Michelle have that kind of money?”

  “Probably. She seemed to be throwing a lot of it around on the new fitness center, though I heard the three of them arguing one time about what that big sign was costing.”

  “Are you interested in Mr. Steffan’s offer?”

  “I don’t have a clear idea of what my financial situation is. I’ll have to contact the legal firm over in Olympia that handles the trust fund. But offhand . . . I doubt it. I don’t think I’d be comfortable investing money that way.”

  Good thinking. Investing in a movie struck me as about as sound an investment as buying real estate on Mars. “I overheard one of the MOBs say—”

  “MOBs?” she interrupted.

  Oh dear, I hadn’t meant to reveal that unlovely little acronym. “Mothers of bridesmaids. I’m sorry. It just seemed easier than trying to keep their names straight.”

  “Never mind. I started thinking of the bridesmaids as the Four Stooges because I never could remember their names.”

  MOBs. Four Stooges. We smiled at each other in rueful conspiracy.

  “But then there turned out to be only the usual Three Stooges at the ceremony,” she added. “I never did know how I lost one.”

  I explained about Michelle’s efficient re-balancing of the procession when one groomsman went AWOL. “Could the ousted one have been peeved enough for murder?” I wondered.

  “I wouldn’t think so, but who knows? Do you know who she was?” She fanned through the scattered place cards.

  “If I do, I can’t think of her name at the moment. What I overheard was a MOB saying that Stan Steffan was having trouble raising money for his new project. Which makes his ‘offer’ look like something less than the investment of the year.”

  “And I overheard a couple of bridesmaids saying you had to watch out for him. That he had roving hands.”

  Which went along with Shirley’s observation about skirt-chasing. No rave reviews for Stan Steffan here.

  “Are you thinking there may have been something going on between him and Michelle?�
�� I asked.

  “Maybe way back sometime,” Pam said. “But not now.”

  “Not even if she was trying to get into his current movie?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Pam suddenly stalked across the room and swept the place cards to the floor. “I wish I’d never even thought about getting married! I wish I’d spent the summer backpacking in Italy. Or living in my VW and being a bag lady for the summer. Then none of this would have happened.”

  “You don’t think there was some sort of cosmic justice in what happened to Michelle? That maybe she got what was coming to her?”

  “I’d rather she were alive so there’d be a chance I could find out if she killed my father! This way I’ll probably never know.”

  Not the most noble of reasons for regretting Michelle’s death, but I was relieved that she wasn’t taking some ugly satisfaction in it.

  “Are you sorry your relationship with Sterling seems to be—” I broke off, trying to pick a suitable word. “Stalled?” I suggested finally.

  Unexpectedly, she smiled at my choice. “My bug stalls. Airplanes stall. Sterling and I are roadkill. But I don’t think you’ll find either of us shedding buckets of tears.”

  “I have to admit I’ve been curious about your relationship. It didn’t really look like a, oh, fairy-tale romance.”

  “Sterling definitely isn’t into fairy tales. Or anything else you can’t put under a microscope and examine. He’s twenty-nine. He has a lot of responsibility with his work, and he’s very busy. I know he often stays at the lab until ten o’clock at night. He’s also efficient and practical. I think he figured it was time to get married and start a family, but he didn’t want to bother with dinners and movies and romantic walks on the beach. I was acceptable and available without all those bothersome details.”

  “Why were you so ‘available’?”

  “I wanted to get control of my trust fund. I wasn’t happy at Dartmouth. I was supposed to be working toward a degree in mathematics—”

  “Michelle’s plan?” I guessed.