Here Comes the Ride

by Lorena McCourtney

  I tried to take myself back to the scene of the wedding, to clear away the fogginess, and pinpoint details. Joe and Phyllis had been sitting up front. I could see the back of her limp blond hair, his inexpensive blue suit. The candles gave off a faint fragrance. Someone coughed. The pastor fingered his neck brace. How far away from Michelle were Joe and Phyllis? Had the processional yet reached them when the blast of fog erupted?

  Neither Phyllis nor Joe seemed athletic or aggressive enough to leap up and attack with a knife. Yet there were stories of people under stress who’d done the seemingly impossible, everything from lifting a car to swimming a river.

  “I’m going to go talk to Joe and Phyllis about this right now.” Pam sounded decisive, but her tone went vulnerably fifteenish when she put a hand on my arm and added, “Come with me, Andi. Please.”

  I didn’t argue that she should stand on her own. She put everything but the will back in the safe, and I followed her upstairs to the Nautical Room. She carried Phreddie, but set him down at the door and gave him a scoot to send him on his way. She knocked. No answer. Another knock, harder. Still only silence.

  “Maybe they’re down in the hot tub again,” I suggested. “They seem quite fond of it.”

  We started down there, but on the way we ran into Mrs. Steffan, who said the Forsythes had called a taxi to go downtown. “Phyllis thought she needed to find something more appropriate to wear for the funeral. Has the time or place for that been decided?”

  Pam managed a “Not yet,” and Mrs. Steffan said, “If there’s anything I can do to help, just let me know.”

  So the investigation with Phyllis and Joe fizzled for the moment. Pam went back to the office to look through more of Michelle’s files, and I decided this was a good time to talk to Shirley. She was in the kitchen rubbing a cross-rib roast with some special seasoning mix for dinner. The kitchen smelled of a delightful blend of garlic and onion and some more subtle spice I couldn’t identify.

  “I have some raspberry-flavored tea made,” she said.

  “Great.” I added a smidgen of sugar when she put the tall glass in front of me. I’d already decided I shouldn’t mention the startling revelation in the will. “Everything going okay?”

  “Well, I’m thinking I’m going to have to start looking for a job. I can’t imagine Pam keeping me on after everyone leaves.”

  “I’m sure she’ll help you with a good recommendation.” Okay, enough small talk. “Shirley, did the authorities ask you anything about the knife that killed Michelle?”

  “Me? No. They mostly asked about the guests and my relationship with Michelle, how long I’d worked here, that kind of thing. I’ve wondered about the knife, but it must not have been a kitchen knife, or they’d have been digging around in here for sure.”

  “I saw it. I don’t think I’m supposed to say anything about what it looked like, but it was, umm, an unusual type of knife, very fancily decorated, and probably quite valuable. Pam said she remembered that at one time her father had a knife collection, so we’re wondering if it could have come from there. Do you know anything about a knife collection?”

  “A collection? I think maybe her father collected guns. There are enough of them up in the attic. But knives? No . . . although, come to think of it . . .” She tilted her head, then crooked a forefinger at me to follow her. “Let’s take a look.”

  I followed her to Michelle’s bedroom. I’d wondered why Detective Molino hadn’t been in there with a search warrant, but with the crime scene outside perhaps they couldn’t think of anything to search for in the house.

  The first thing that hit me when Shirley opened the door to Michelle’s room was the fragrance, the same delicately heady scent that had always followed her. Most of the room was as feminine as the fragrance. King-sized, canopied bed draped with lush layers of pale blue chiffon. A window also draped with chiffon. The window through which the killer bees were supposed to have come?

  Shirley rushed over and flung the window open. “This place needs some air.”

  A flowery comforter and an acre of ruffled pillows covered the bed. Pillow heaven for Phreddie, although he’d undoubtedly never been allowed in here. Dressing table covered with lotions, perfumes, and cosmetics, the mirror with sides adjustable for views from all angles. Not what I’d personally want to confront first thing in the morning. One angle in a mirror at that time of day is bad enough. A TV hung from the ceiling so it could be viewed from the bed. A nightstand held a stack of DVDs.

  Master bath with double sinks, jetted tub, double shower, marble counter with more powders and lotions. I peered through the open door of the walk-in closet loaded with clothes, everything from sequins to Spandex.

  “I didn’t come in here often,” Shirley said. “Michelle just let me know when she wanted the room cleaned. I figured she thought I was going to snitch a spray of her Faberge perfume.” She walked over to the dressing table and picked up a gracefully contoured bottle. “Though when you get up into the price range of this stuff it’s no longer perfume, it’s parfum. Here try it. Michelle isn’t going to care now.”

  She held out the bottle to me, finger poised on the spray button, but I backed off. Unperturbed, Shirley sprayed and sniffed her own wrist. “What do you think? Two hundred bucks an ounce?”

  I moved on to look at a wall covered with movie posters and professional glamour photos of Michelle. No Oscars on the curved table under the photos, but there were some other awards. It was an impressive display, and yet all it aroused in me was a feeling of squeamishness. Michelle’s shrine to herself.

  “Over here,” Shirley said.

  The corner she led me to wasn’t exactly a shrine to Michelle’s dead husband. It took up only a minimal amount of space in a corner at the end of a blue sofa. Perched atop a cherry wood cabinet, one formal photo of Gerald Gibson and another of their wedding. He was an ordinary looking guy with a longish face and receding hairline. I didn’t see any resemblance to Pam. In the wedding photo, his gaze focused adoringly on Michelle. She had a hand on his shoulder, perhaps to display affection. Perhaps to display that impressive set of rings we’d seen in the safe. Her gaze focused on the camera.

  A display case holding a collection of twenty or so arrowheads hung above the cabinet, labels indicating area of origin apparently meant to suggest Gerald had found them himself. Flanking it were plaques honoring Gerald from some builders’ associations. Shirley swung the cabinet door open.

  “Knives!” I said.

  “It isn’t really a collection,” Shirley said. “There aren’t that many. But maybe he had more and just kept the nicest ones. Or maybe Michelle got rid of most of them. They do look valuable.”

  There were eight knives in the display case, each one unique. The two on the bottom were hunting type knives, with blades of obsidian and handles of bone and carved ivory. The others were folding type pocketknives, but these knives had undoubtedly never seen anything as mundane as a pocket. The handles were of turquoise and silver, agate, gold, and coral, and the diamond-pattern on one was outlined with what I didn’t doubt were real diamonds. The knives were fastened to the white velvet background with clear plastic fasteners that didn’t intrude on the designs.

  “But there isn’t one missing,” Shirley pointed out. “See, they’re lined up evenly in pairs. There’d be an extra one left over if one had been taken.”

  There were also no butterfly knives. “May I take the case out of the cabinet?”

  “Sure, help yourself.”

  I reached for the display case, then thought better of just grabbing it. Carefully, using tissues from my pocket and touching the frame only on the corners so as not to disturb fingerprints, I removed it from the cabinet.

  I opened the latch and studied the area above the two rows of displayed knives. Two sets of tiny holes. I pointed them out to Shirley.

  “There was another knife in here!” she said.

  “Actually,” I said, “I think there were two more knives.”
/>   “What does that mean?”

  “I suppose it could mean whoever took them thought two knives missing would be less noticeable than one, because taking just one would leave an obvious empty spot.” That was the most benign of my thoughts.

  “Or maybe the person thought he might need a second knife. A backup for the murder!”

  Possible. Although knives didn’t tend to jam, like guns. But a neat-freak murderer who locked doors might conceivably want a backup knife just to be prepared. “Could be,” I agreed.

  “Or maybe . . .” Shirley began uneasily, and I knew our minds had jumped to the same track here.

  “Maybe the killer needs another knife—”

  She finished the thought. “Because he has another victim in mind.”

  Shirley looked around nervously. So did I. The door was partly open, and we heard steps in the hallway outside. I rather wished Shirley had her rolling pin with her. But the steps passed on by without pausing. Still holding the display case of knives, I crossed the large bedroom and closed the door.

  “I think we’d better tell Detective Molino about this.”

  Shirley nodded.

  “Who’s been in here?” I asked.

  “Recently? Or before Michelle was murdered?”

  “Both. But before would be most important, because the knives were taken then. Assuming a knife that came out of this case is the murder weapon.” And I was quite certain it was.

  “Well, let’s see. Cindy was in here any number of times, I’m sure.”

  Of course. Cindy the BFF. “Uri?” I asked.

  She gave me a sharp glance, as if wondering exactly what I was suggesting, then a nod. “Yes, I think so. But once the guests arrived, any of them could have been in here. I know Michelle showed off her wall”—Shirley gestured toward the display of memorabilia—“to a few people.”

  “When they could also have spotted the display case of knives, and then come back to steal them later.”

  “Except that the knives wouldn’t be seen unless the cabinet door happened to be open,” Shirley pointed out.

  True.

  “Or anyone could have come in uninvited and snooped when Michelle wasn’t around. There isn’t a lock. They could have just accidentally run across the knives and decided to grab one. Two,” she corrected herself.

  “While looking for something else,” I mused.

  “Something else? What would that be?”

  “I don’t know. But someone searched the office last night, obviously looking for something. That’s why Pam and I were in there so early this morning.”

  I thought Shirley might suddenly say she’d had enough of this weird job, weird house, weird people, and murders, but instead she looked around, expression thoughtful.

  “I haven’t cleaned in here for quite a while. I think the room definitely needs a good cleaning.”

  “Cleaning? I don’t see anything that needs—” Then I caught her meaning. Cleaning. As in snooping. Looking for something the killer may have been looking for. I reversed my stand on the status of the room’s level of cleanliness. “Oh, yes, indeed. This room definitely needs cleaning.”

  We smiled at each other.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Still careful not to contaminate the display case with my own fingerprints, I carried it to the office to show Pam and suggest she contact Detective Molino. I expected to find her deep in Michelle’s files, but the office was empty.

  A glance outside showed why. There was Pam, flying down the driveway on her skateboard. I eyed the file cabinet. I had an urge to dig around in there, and I knew Pam wouldn’t object.

  I also had an urge to go out and fling my aging body around on that skateboard. The deciding factor was that old saying, slightly modified for the occasion.

  All work and no play makes Andi a dull sleuth.

  Perhaps, as Pam claimed it did for her, skateboarding would clear my mind and make me think better too.

  ***

  An extension of that old saying is that skateboarding makes Andi sore-bottomed, although I actually fell only twice, and neither was a real bone-crusher.

  “You’re doing great!” Pam called after my fourth run.

  I swooped toward where she was watching me from the gate. She was letting me start a ways up the hill now, and I was a little giddy with exhilaration. “Maybe I should buy my own board—”

  The glamour of that swoop dimmed when I miscalculated and rammed into her with all the grace of a pirouetting pig.

  She oofed and managed to keep us both from going down, then advised, “Maybe you shouldn’t invest big bucks in one just yet.”

  I had to agree. But I was improving!

  I was resting, sitting on the grass and letting Pam have a turn on the skateboard, when the gate opened to let a taxi in. Phyllis waved to me as it went by. Pam did a kickflip, then stood beside me to watch the Forsythes get out of the taxi at the front steps. They were loaded with packages. What was Phyllis planning, a triple change of costume mid funeral service?

  “Are you going to talk to them now?”

  Pam looked at her watch. “Shirley planned dinner for six o’clock, and it’s almost that now. I guess I’ll have to wait.”

  ***

  Phreddie’s and my positions in the household had both been elevated. He had the run of the house now, and I was more guest than employee. I ate dinner with the others in the dining room. Uri and Cindy showed up too, reporting that there were still wires dangling all over the cottage. The dinner was superficially cheerful. . . . Isn’t the lasagna fantastic? What a great fall day. Wasn’t that a pod of orcas swimming up the inlet? But I sensed less cheery undercurrents.

  I saw Pam looking at her might-have-been in-laws from a different perspective now. Had they kept the truth of Sterling’s adoption from him? Had they killed Michelle in some misguided scheme to provide for him or hide the truth of his origins? Again I wondered why they’d stayed on. Michelle’s funeral didn’t really seem an important enough reason.

  Uri Hubbard mentioned that they’d had car problems, and their car was in the shop. They had a loaner, which Cindy was not happy with.

  “Will you be selling Michelle’s BMW?” Cindy asked Pam. “We might be interested in buying it.”

  “I don’t think it will be my decision,” Pam said, which brought an exchange of glances between Cindy and Uri. “But I’ll let you know.”

  This brief exchange surprised me. I’d thought there might be complications with the health club finances now that the main check writer was out of the picture, but this sounded as if the Hubbards’ finances were fine. On impulse I asked, “Is the grand opening for Change Your World still on schedule?”

  “Oh, yes,” Cindy said. “We think Michelle would have wanted it that way.”

  I looked at Stan Steffan, wondering what he’d been up to today, and a bombshell of a thought exploded in my head.

  Michelle and the Steffans went way back. She’d even lived with them. Mrs. Steffan was grateful that Michelle had never had an affair with her husband. But what if she was mistaken?

  What if Stan Steffan was Sterling’s father?

  What if Michelle had planned to give Sterling the whole scoop on his family background after the wedding? What if Stan Steffan was afraid that his wife’s tolerant attitude might not extend to cover this long-ago indiscretion, and he had to take desperate measures . . . murder! . . . to prevent the revelation? I thought back, trying to remember if he’d shown any particular interest, or wariness, about Sterling.

  Or did Mrs. Steffan, in spite of what she’d told me about a non-affair between her husband and Michelle, know there had been one? And decide on a better-late-than-never coup de grace? Could she even have known Stan was the father, and Stan himself, because Michelle had never told him, not known? I figured that even though Mrs. Steffan might have a high tolerance for her husband’s extra-curricular activities, not much got by her.

  And maybe sleuthing wasn’t my forte. Maybe I
should be writing soap operas, because Stan as Sterling’s father was definitely a soap-opera twist. Like a snake making a U-turn.

  I must have been staring at Stan Steffan, looking for some resemblance between him and Sterling, because the dark glasses suddenly swiveled to me, and he snapped, “No, it’s not a toupee. Would you like to give it a yank?”

  I dropped my fork in astonishment. Phreddie pounced on it under the table, and I had to fight him for it. I came up flustered and embarrassed. “I-I wasn’t thinking that at all!”

  Yet what I was thinking would probably shock him even more, so all I said was a lame and irrelevant, “I was just wondering if you ever did cameo appearances in your own movies. Hitchcock did that, didn’t he?”

  “Hitchcock was overrated.”

  The phone rang, and Shirley popped her head in from the kitchen. “It’s Detective Molino for you, Pam. Do you want to talk to him? Or call him back?”

  Pam pushed her chair back. “I’ll take it in the office.”

  “Maybe they’ve arrested the killer,” Joe Forsythe said.

  Could be. Although I doubted that. All my main suspects, except Sterling, were right here at this table, none of them under arrest. Was it one of these people whom Michelle had been afraid of?

  Pam came back from the phone call and said, as if it were an ordinary matter for dinner conversation, “Detective Molino said the autopsy showed Michelle’s death was caused by the single knife wound. Lab tests aren’t complete yet, but so far there’s no indication of any unusual drugs in the body. They’re checking out various leads.”

  We already knew one of those leads was Mike, because he’d told Pam he’d been questioned, long and hard. Pam and Mike were both afraid he might soon be arrested.

  “The body’s been released, then?” Phyllis asked.