Ditched 4 Murder

by J. C. Eaton

  “Spiritualist? You mean like those hippie guru guys?”

  “A little more legit, but you’ve got the right idea. My aunt can’t seem to remember who Louis hired. Some spiritualist from Sedona. She expects me to find him.”

  “Sedona? Good grief. That’s the mecca for cosmic hot spots, paranormal portals, and a whole lot of who-ha. Tell you one thing, there are more spiritualists in Sedona than cowboys in Montana. So how are you going to find your aunt’s guide to the metaphysical vortex?”

  “I’m not. I’m leaving it up to the gods to return Louis and let him bring his own spiritualist to the ceremony. Seriously, I don’t know. I honestly don’t know and I don’t have time to go traipsing up to Sedona to find one.”

  “That’s the first logical thing you’ve said since you got wind of that wedding. Good for you, Phee. Hold your ground.”

  I didn’t.

  Chapter 24

  A different hostess greeted us as we stepped inside Saveur de Evangeline. Same lithe figure as the other one and similar formfitting black dress and pumps. This one was a redhead and her chin-length hair looked as if it had recently been styled.

  “We have a reservation for twelve-thirty,” I said. “Under Plunkett.”

  “Not that I’m complaining, but why did you give her my name?” my mother said once we were seated at a small table near the rear of the room.

  “Because I think they’re getting tired of dealing with me and the wedding.”

  Even though many of the snowbirds had left for the summer, the place was still packed. Mostly women and the occasional couples’ tables. My mother scrutinized the menu as if looking over her tax returns.

  “I’m not paying fifteen dollars for a hamburger. Or twenty if they add bacon.”

  “No, Mother. I am. Order it if you want to.”

  After deliberating for a full five minutes, my mother decided to go ahead with the Burger Cabernet on brioche bun with garlic aioli.

  “I have no idea what all that stuff is, but I suppose I can always put ketchup on it.”

  I smiled at the waitress and ordered a quinoa and kale salad with goat cheese.

  “That’s sounds horrible, Phee. I wouldn’t even feed it to a goat!”

  “I’m sure it will be fine, Mom. Listen, we’re not exactly here to eat. I mean, we’re eating, yes. But the reason I came is because I think I can get my hands on some evidence in the kitchen.”

  “What are you going to do? Start rummaging around pots and pans? What kind of evidence? It’s not poison, is it?”

  “No, nothing like that. Look, I’ll explain later. Meanwhile, I’ll wander into the kitchen on the pretense I’m looking for the restroom.”

  “And?”

  “I haven’t gotten past that.”

  My mother looked over her bejeweled glasses to give me a menacing stare. “Be careful. They wield around sharp knives in there.”

  “I will. Meanwhile, just act normal and eat some of the French bread. And whatever you do, don’t decide to follow me.”

  I had to be quick, so I pushed open the kitchen door, took a few steps inside, and then pretended to drop my cell phone. That ploy had worked once before, at the Petroglyph Plaza, so I figured why risk something else.

  Taking a deep breath, I called upon what few acting skills I had to convey shock and horror. Not to mention dismay. Two chefs, who were standing a few feet from me, looked away from the stove for an instant. A sous chef who was cutting up some salad greens, probably my order, also turned to face me. Thankfully, Sebastian wasn’t among them.

  “Oh no! I can’t believe I dropped it.”

  Then, before anyone could say or do anything, I got down on the floor and scanned it for any sign of decorative pebble pieces, while pretending to look for my phone. I did have the foresight to bring a small envelope with me. While uttering “I hope it’s not broke,” I swept my hand all over the place, shaking the contents into the envelope.

  The three chefs started talking at once.

  “You can’t be in here. Health department codes.”

  “Someone help her find that phone.”

  “Hurry up. You must leave at once.”

  I shuffled over to another area, stretching out my arm and gathering all sorts of kitchen debris into the envelope. Darn, these sous chefs are messy. I kept having to remind myself this wasn’t as bad as rummaging through Louis’s underwear drawer or sifting through a dumpster, like I did last year for my mother.

  At least I had rubber gloves on that time.

  Satisfied I had gathered the potential evidence from the floor, I stood, waved my phone in the air, and said something to the effect I was sorry I’d mistaken the kitchen for the restroom. I could hear the chefs talking to each other under their breath as I hustled myself out of there. Within seconds I was back at my table.

  “Well? Did you find what you were looking for?”

  “Shh. I’ll be right back. I need to use the ladies’ room.”

  The small envelope was safely tucked in my bag, and I didn’t want to risk having anything spill out.

  “I’m leaving my bag here. All I want to do is wash my hands. Now! And my knees.”

  “What were you doing in there? You make it sound as if you were crawling around on the floor.”

  “I was. I’ll tell you about it later. Oh, and we need to make a stop at Wanda and Dolores’s house. I need to take a good look at their reflective glass gravel.”

  “It’s better if you see it at night. Under the solar lights.”

  “I’m not thinking of installing it, Mom. I’m thinking that whoever—”

  At that second the waitress appeared with our food and my mother shifted all of her attention to the burger on her plate. “What’s this yellow stuff on my hamburger?”

  “That’s the aioli. It’s egg, garlic, olive oil, salt. . . .”

  “If I wanted that, I would have ordered an omelet. Who puts egg on a hamburger?”

  “Just try it, Mom.”

  From the moment my mother bit into the first mouthful until the only thing left on her plate were the brioche crumbs, she didn’t say a word.

  I leaned over and pointed to the empty plate. “So, what did you think?”

  “It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.”

  “Listen, I’ve really got to get back to work. When I drop you off, I need to take a quick look at Wanda and Dolores’s perennials. It’s urgent. Can you call them?”

  “We don’t need to call them. They’re home. It’s Thursday. Their cleaning girl comes on Thursday.”

  “They have a cleaning girl? And since when do you know everyone’s schedule? Oh, never mind. We’ve got to go.”

  I paid the bill, left a decent tip, and drove us back to Sun City West. I also told my mother what I had in mind. “So, um, you see why it’s so important for me to see that gravel and get a sample.”

  “Did you bring gloves? It’s bad enough you were scrounging all over the floor in that restaurant kitchen. Now you’re going to get dirt and who-knows-what all over you.”

  “I only need a small handful of those stone pieces.”

  “Black widow spiders can be underneath those bushes and all over those perennials. They had a story on the news the other night about someone doing some trimming and getting bitten. The man’s hand swelled up like a balloon. Don’t get too close.”

  I wanted to tell her gloves wouldn’t protect me from a spider bite, but it wasn’t worth the expenditure of energy to begin arguing over something like that with my mother. Instead, I let her talk as I pulled into “the compound.”

  Wanda and Dolores’s place was across the street from my mother’s house. A small Volkswagen Golf was parked in front, with magnetic signs on its doors that read AMAZING ANA THE CLEANING WIZARD.

  “Well, I’ll give you one thing, Mom.” I pulled over to the curb. “Nothing gets past you.”

  We got out and walked to their front door.

  “Amazing Ana,” a young, dark-haired H
ispanic lady, answered it and announced that the “señoras” were on the patio and that she’d get them.

  Seconds later, Wanda appeared. Short, late seventies or early eighties, white hair, capris, and a checkered shirt with an embroidered kitten on it. My mother introduced me and went on to explain that I worked for the investigator who checked out their perennials the other day and that I needed more information.

  Wanda couldn’t wait to show me their landscaping. “Imagine that.” She pointed to the newly planted bushes. “Dolores and I are positive we had a murderer running through them. And right after we purchased those costly glass rocks. At least our landscaper was able to restore everything.”

  As she and my mother began a lengthy discourse on murderers, bushes, and self-defense classes for seniors, I walked over to the perennials and helped myself to a bit of the decorative glass pebbles. I had an abundance of small envelopes, whose greeting cards were long gone. Much as I hated to admit it, I had picked up my mother’s habit of “saving important stuff in case you might need it.” This was one of those times.

  “Thanks, Wanda,” I said. “We’re well on our way to tracking down whoever killed Mr. Sizemore by the golf course.”

  I didn’t have the heart to tell her it was probably one shot in a million I’d get this right. She nodded at me as if acknowledging a real professional instead of a bookkeeper who couldn’t even keep her nose out of trouble.

  Wanda invited my mother and me inside for some iced tea. That was my chance to hightail it out of there and get back to the office so I could compare the rock granules.

  “Thanks so much, but I’ve really got to get going. Maybe my mother—”

  “I’d love to, Wanda,” my mother said before I could finish my sentence. “I had the most dreadful hamburger, and I need something to wash it down with.”

  Dreadful hamburger? She has got to be kidding.

  I started to open my mouth, but Wanda and my mother were already headed into Wanda’s house. I hadn’t noticed it before, maybe because we had been indoors, but my mother had changed hair colors. In the bright sunlight, the back of her head resembled a pallet of reds, oranges, and even some fuchsia. The fauvists would have been delighted.

  “I’ll call you later, Phee,” her voice rang out.

  I shouted back, “Thanks for the warning!”

  I couldn’t wait to see if those decorative lawn pebbles matched the remnants I managed to scoop up from the floor of Saveur de Evangeline and had to keep reminding myself to stay within the speed limit as I drove back to the office in Glendale. My mind was racing and the rest of my body was trying to catch up.

  “Augusta! Augusta! Whatever you’re doing at your desk can wait. I did this once before. With a sugarcane box. This is going to be tougher. Do you have a magnifying glass in your desk? Do you know if Nate does?”

  “What? What did you do with a box of sugar?”

  “Long story. I tracked down a killer. Well, maybe not a killer in the conventional sense, but someone responsible for having someone else drop dead.”

  “That sounds like a killer to me. And why do you need a magnifying glass?”

  “I’ve got to see if some glass pebbles match up.”

  Augusta looked up from her computer as if I had gone completely bonkers. It took me what seemed like two minutes to explain what I was doing. Even then I managed to leave out important details.

  “There’s a magnifying glass in the drawer by the copier, Phee. Now explain it again. You’re comparing these glass ornamental lawn pebbles with stuff you found on the kitchen floor of Saveur de Evangeline. I got that much.”

  “Okay. Fine. Look, Nate figured out that whoever killed Theodore Sizemore on the golf course ran through some recently planted perennial bushes at the home of these two ladies—Wanda and Dolores. They live right off the golf course. Now, here’s the important part. Wanda and Dolores had their landscaper put in this special kind of lawn gravel. Tiny decorative glass pebbles that reflect light in all colors so when their solar lights come on, the ground looks really neat.”

  “And this is what people are spending money on? Ornamental glass pebbles? Who’s going to see it at night except for the owls and coyotes?”

  “Forget that, Augusta. Listen. Nate found out Theodore Sizemore wrote a letter to Roland LeDoux, the owner of Saveur de Evangeline, canceling the funding for a new Saveur restaurant in Scottsdale. Sizemore was the backer. The restauranteur. Anyway, it gives Roland a darned good motive to kill off Theodore Sizemore. So . . . I figured that if it was Roland who did it, and he ran through those decorative glass pebbles, some of the pieces would get stuck to the bottom of his shoes and wind up on the floor in the restaurant. That stuff is like glitter. You can never get rid of it. My daughter is twenty-two, and I’m still finding glitter on the floor of my Mankato house. Not a lot, but it does show up.”

  “So, if I’ve got this right . . . you’re going to compare the stuff you picked up from the restaurant floor with the stuff you got from under those bushes.”

  “Uh-huh. That’s why I need the magnifying glass. To be sure. Oh, and a flashlight. We have a flashlight, don’t we?”

  “I do. In my desk. In case of power outages.”

  “Great. I’ll clear off the counter by the copier and get the magnifying glass. You get the flashlight.”

  “And if it’s a match?”

  I was about to say, “Then we know Roland LeDoux was our killer,” when I realized something. The letter was sent to Roland but addressed to someone else as well—Sebastian Talbot. And if the decorative glass pebbles were a match, then either of those two chefs could have killed their financier. But I had to get Louis Melinsky off the hook first.

  Chapter 25

  “Hold the flashlight steady, Augusta, and pray no one comes through the door right now.”

  “It’s the early afternoon lull. I doubt we’ll get people through the door. Everyone’s taking a siesta or something. Phone’s pretty quiet, too.”

  “Yeah, I noticed that once I started working here. Maybe it’s the desert heat.”

  “Your first summer?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I’ve got news for you. This isn’t heat yet.”

  “Aaagh.”

  I moved the magnifying glass over the pebbles as Augusta caught them with the beam of the flashlight.

  “Stop! Stop! Wait a second. Let me turn off the overhead lights.”

  In the next instance, Augusta gasped. “Wow! Did you ever see so many colors reflecting at once? It’s like a rainbow.”

  “It’s all over the counter. They’re all reflecting. Except for the pieces of dirt and green stuff. I think those are food particles. They better not be bugs. Take a close look, Augusta. Can you tell the difference between the pebbles I got from Wanda and Dolores’s house and the floor scrapings I picked up?”

  “The pebbles look the same. Not as many from the restaurant, and I’m no expert, but they look the same to me.”

  “Yeah. To me, too.”

  “Now what?”

  “Nate’s off to LA, so I can’t bother him . . . but there is someone I’m going to call. Have you got the number handy for the Surprise Police Department?”

  While Augusta looked up their number, I carefully put the contents back into two separate envelopes. One marked “Saveur de Evangeline” and the other “Wanda and Dolores.”

  Then, as if to prove siesta time was over, someone walked in the door. It was a client who hadn’t gotten the message Nate had to reschedule. While Augusta offered up apologies and a new appointment, I went into my office and tried to reach Officer McClure. If he could handle my aunt Ina, then a few decorative glass pebbles shouldn’t pose much of a problem.

  As it turned out, he was just coming off duty, but the dispatcher was able to catch him before he left for the day. I didn’t want to make it seem as if I was the one who had picked up this investigation, because that was the last thing I needed, so I kind of hedged around.

 
“I’m so glad I could reach you, Officer McClure. I’ll calling for my boss, Nate Williams, who had to go out of town suddenly. Anyway, our office has uncovered some evidence we think you should see regarding Mr. Melinsky’s possible involvement with the Theodore Sizemore murder.”

  That certainly got the officer’s attention. I went on to explain that if the same decorative glass pebbles were found on the floor of Louis Melinsky’s car, which was still parked in his garage, then it would prove Louis was at the scene of the crime and was the one who had trampled through Wanda and Dolores’s newly planted perennials. Of course, what I really had in mind was to exonerate Louis while offering up evidence that would point to the real killer.

  Officer McClure wasn’t taking any chances. “I take it all of the appropriate procedures were followed in securing this evidence?”

  “Procedures?”

  “You know . . . ensuring the evidence wasn’t tainted, getting appropriate permission, that sort of thing.”

  I could almost hear my mother saying, “I told you to wear gloves, didn’t I?”

  “Oh, I’m sure. I’m sure. But, er . . . it really doesn’t matter right away. I mean, basically, can’t you go into the Melinsky house and check his car? If there’re no decorative glass pebbles by the driver’s side floor, then looking at our evidence really wouldn’t matter. I’d hate to have you waste a trip to Glendale.”

  “All right, Miss Kimball. I’ll see what we can do. Should we require your evidence, please be sure it’s kept secured.”

  “Certainly. Naturally. Secured.”

  I put the two envelopes in my file cabinet and went back to my real job of handling the accounts. True to my word, I stayed late to get caught up on my bookkeeping. When I got home, there was a message from my mother telling me to forget having dinner the next night with my aunt and cousins because they’d be too tired after a long day in Jerome. I couldn’t even remember agreeing to have dinner with them on Friday and I certainly had no recollection of them saying they planned on visiting Jerome.

  When I thought about it, it didn’t seem to make sense. Judy was petrified of heights, and driving along those switchback roads in Jerome without any guardrails was enough to scare the most seasoned Arizona driver, let alone someone who only used mass transit in Boston.