No Way To Kill A Lady

by Nancy Martin

  “Give him some time to get over the prison stay,” Emma said. “He’s bound to be a little spooked for a while. He’ll snap out of it.”

  I doubted he was going to snap out of sudden fatherhood, however. All at once, Michael had a lot of issues to handle.

  We arrived at the New Hope Super Fresh market. Emma whipped her pickup into a parking space, and we left Toby in the truck with the windows rolled down a few inches.

  Just inside the store entrance, there was a line of people waiting to buy lottery tickets, so we skirted around them through the newsstand department. I saw a stack of newspapers with Aunt Madeleine’s photo on the front page. I grabbed a copy. The photo was forty years old and showed her at her most glamorous. An obituary—longer than the previously published terse announcement of her death—took up a long column.

  “Slow news day.” Emma peered over my shoulder.

  Below Madeleine’s picture was another photo—this one of Quintain’s battlements looking pitiful. The accompanying article included a braying headline: BODY IN THE BELFRY!

  “There’s no belfry in that house,” Emma said with scorn. “Don’t newspapers have copy editors anymore?”

  The caption under the photo said: “House of ill repute.”

  A photo of Michael and me—the one taken from the helicopter—appeared under the fold. The picture made it look as if he was abducting me. I tossed the newspaper into my shopping cart. We could read the articles at home.

  Emma headed for the bathroom, and I set off rolling the cart down the first aisle to choose an assortment of healthy fruits and vegetables, then proceeded to the fish counter. Emma caught up with me as we passed the bakery, where I noticed a gawky young man loading a white box with doughnuts. He caught sight of Emma, and his head nearly swiveled off his shoulders as he watched her stride past. Another young admirer, I supposed.

  After deciding to pass on fish, I headed for the olive oil section and spent several minutes choosing the varieties Michael preferred. He enjoyed cooking, so I made another circuit around the store to buy all his favorite ingredients. Now that he was home again, we’d have home-cooked meals instead of all the salads and prepared dinners I tended to consume if left to my own choices. Win-win for everyone.

  I managed to steer Emma away from the sugared-cereal aisle, but we lingered in the chocolate department to make our selections with care. Eventually we headed for the checkout. There, I scanned our purchases and prayed my bank account could withstand such a hit.

  The young man from the bakery had been waiting for us beside the self-checkout line. He had a freckled face and adorably prominent ears. In one hand he balanced the box of doughnuts. In the other, he held a single red rose, clearly purchased from the refrigerated cooler by the registers. He was even younger than Emma’s visitor last night. His sweatshirt featured a local community college.

  “Emma?” he said hesitantly.

  My sister paused in the act of piling broccoli on the conveyor belt and finally noticed him. “Oh. Brian. How you doing?”

  He blushed to the tips of his very large ears. “Emma, you’re—I mean, I didn’t know you were—I— You look beautiful.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ve been thinner,” she cracked.

  “No, I mean it. There’s nothing more beautiful than a woman in your condition.”

  “Thanks, kid, but there are days when I’d be a hell of a lot happier if I could see my feet.”

  “I want you to know that I’ll make things right. I’ll marry you.” He extended the rose to her. “We can be a family.”

  Emma eyed the rose as if it might have poisoned thorns. “That’s a real nice offer, Brian. I appreciate it. But I can handle this on my own.”

  “I—I want to do the right thing,” he insisted. “I’ll give you anything you want—a home for you and—and our child. Everything.”

  Emma ignored the rose. Instead, she lifted the lid on the bakery box and picked out a doughnut with orange sprinkles. “This’ll do just fine, Brian.”

  “But—”

  “It’s not your kid.” She chomped into the doughnut. “But thanks just the same.”

  Disappointed, Brian took his rose and his doughnuts and disappeared.

  “That was a very sweet offer,” I said.

  “Sure,” agreed my little sister. “I never turn down a doughnut.”

  “Em—”

  “Don’t start,” she said, her voice suddenly shaky.

  She grabbed the bags and pushed past me, striding out to the truck so quickly I couldn’t see her face. I followed, biting my tongue. She also needed time, I knew.

  But for a woman in Emma’s situation, time was running short.

  In the front seat of the truck, Toby was barking and dashing from one window to the other. Normally, he was content to wait for us, but today he was frantic.

  “Take it easy,” Emma said to the dog through the glass, but he didn’t heed her.

  As we loaded the bags into the truck’s bed, a white Crown Victoria suddenly pulled into an adjacent space. A roly-poly man with a balding head got out of the vehicle.

  He marched over and said, “Nora Blackbird?”

  I was surprised, but polite. “Yes?”

  He stood several inches shorter than me. A cute fringe of white hair curled around the equator of his round head, but a not-so-cute bristle rambled down the back of his wrinkled neck. I guessed his age at eighty-plus. He flashed a badge at me, then dropped it quickly back into his pocket. “You’re under arrest.”

  The next thing I knew, he snapped a handcuff down on my wrist and pushed me toward his car. Toby’s barking went up an octave, and the dog threw himself against the passenger window.

  “Hey!” Emma turned, her arms still full of grocery bags. “What the hell are you doing, Grandpa?”

  “Hold on a second,” I objected.

  “Get in the car,” he commanded, holding both my hands behind my back and fastening the handcuffs tight.

  For as small as he was, he had all the right moves. I couldn’t wriggle out of his control. I was also a little afraid to fight too hard. He was so old I feared I might hurt him.

  In a heartbeat, he’d bent my head and shoved me into the backseat of his car. I sprawled across the seat, unable to catch my balance.

  “Just a damn minute!” Emma came after us. “What the hell’s going on?”

  The old man slammed the door. I struggled to sit up, hearing the two of them yell at each other outside the car. In another moment, though, he got behind the wheel, started the engine and pulled out of the parking lot so fast I tumbled back against the seat. I caught a glimpse of my sister dashing around to the driver’s side of her truck. She scrambled behind the wheel and tried to start her engine. But I could hear it grinding. Her truck wouldn’t start. Then I lost sight of her.

  My arresting officer spun his car onto the street and accelerated fast, putting a city block between us and the grocery store before I could manage to sit up. I looked around and suddenly wondered if maybe he wasn’t a police officer at all. His car had an air freshener dangling from the rearview mirror—Yankee Candle, coconut bay fragrance. His keys were clipped to a key chain that featured a smiley shamrock over the Notre Dame logo.

  A bumper sticker had been stuck to the dashboard. It read: MODEL TRAINS ARE AMERICA’S HOBBY!

  “Just what is happening?” I asked. “I have a right to know what I’m being charged with.”

  “Button your lip, missy.”

  “I will not,” I snapped. “Stop the car this instant.”

  “Pipe down,” he ordered. “Or I’ll charge you with resisting arrest.”

  “I haven’t resisted in the slightest! It’s you who’s resisting telling me what this is all about.”

  “I’m an officer of the law. I don’t have to tell you a thing.”

  If the whole situation hadn’t been so annoying, I might have been amused. I felt as if I’d been kidnapped by one of Santa’s elves. “See here. I know a thing or two.
You have to read me my rights.”

  “What rights?”

  He paused at a stop sign, which gave me a second to look around. I happened to see a real police cruiser across the intersection.

  I screamed. “Help! I’m being kidnapped!”

  Behind the wheel of the cruiser, I recognized Deputy Foley, the handsome officer who’d driven my sisters and me to Quintain. His crew cut and adorable pink ears made him unmistakable. When my abductor drove through the intersection, the deputy pulled out behind us. He hit the siren, which whoop-whooped twice.

  “Goshdarnit,” my kidnapper muttered. He pulled over to the curb and parked.

  Deputy Foley appeared at the window a moment later. He leaned down. “Aw, Pee Wee, what the hell are you doing?”

  The old man slumped down in the driver’s seat. “I haven’t done her any harm.”

  Foley peered into the backseat and blinked. “I know you. You’re one of those crazy Blackbird sisters.”

  “I’m not crazy,” I said. “I’m being kidnapped.”

  “Your sister is crazy,” he replied. “She telephoned me last night. I could hardly get rid of her. Pee Wee, you can’t go around grabbing women off the street. You know that.”

  “I didn’t grab her.”

  “You did, too!” I cried. “He handcuffed me.” I tried to twist around to show the deputy my situation.

  Foley groaned. “Aw, for crying out loud.”

  He opened the door and helped me out. “Hand over the key, Pee Wee.”

  Reluctantly, the old man produced a small key, and Foley unlocked my handcuffs. “There,” he said. “No harm done.”

  “No harm done?” I spun around, almost sputtering with rage. “You’re going to let him go?”

  “He’s harmless,” Foley assured me. “He retired from the force a long time ago. Look, miss, driving around his old patrol route is good for him. And he keeps an eye on things for us. With all our budget cuts lately, we can use his kind of help.”

  “He wasn’t helping anybody today.” I rubbed my wrists. “He grabbed me out of the Super Fresh parking lot!”

  The radio on the deputy’s shoulder crackled. He reached to touch a button on the device and listened to a squawky voice for a second. When the squawking ceased, he said to me, “Look, Miss Blackbird, I’ve got things to do. Pee Wee probably thought you were up to something, so he put you in his car to calm you down—”

  “I was completely calm! Until he arrested me!”

  “He’ll take you right back to the Super Fresh, I promise. Won’t you, Pee Wee?” Foley leaned down to glare into the car again. Pee Wee looked down at his lap, lower lip protruding in a pout.

  Firmly, I said, “I’m not getting back into that man’s car.”

  “He’ll let you ride in the front seat,” Foley promised. “C’mon, I’ve got another call. You’ll be fine, Miss Blackbird. If you can handle being around that sister of yours, this guy is a piece of cake. I gotta go. Pee Wee, you apologize to this nice lady, okay?”

  Foley jogged back to his cruiser and waved good-bye.

  If it hadn’t started to rain, I’d have walked back to the grocery store. But a few cold drops hit the pavement around me, blown on a gust of wind. In a minute my hair was going to get wet. So I stormed around the front of the old man’s car and got into the passenger seat. I slammed the door.

  “Are you going to apologize?” I demanded.

  “Sorry,” he mumbled, head down.

  “What do you want with me in the first place? Or do you just go around grabbing whoever strikes your perverted fancy?”

  “I’m no pervert!” He flushed. “I had personal business with you.”

  “What kind of personal business? Just who are you, anyway? Surely your name isn’t really Pee Wee.”

  “Peter McBean,” he said. “Retired New Hope PD.”

  I had a soft spot for retirees, and I felt my anger start to deflate. “How long have you been retired?”

  “Twenty-two years,” he reluctantly replied.

  I gave Pee Wee McBean a more careful perusal. If he was telling the truth, he’d been a police officer back in the day when departments didn’t have height requirements.

  “What’s your personal business with me?”

  He sulked for a while longer. Then, still glaring out the rain-spattered windshield, he finally sighed. “It’s about Madeleine Blackbird.”

  That caught me off guard, and I couldn’t hide my surprise. “Aunt Madeleine? What about her?”

  “She died, didn’t she?” he asked gruffly.

  “Yes, in Indonesia.”

  “The newspaper said she died in a volcano.”

  “That’s what we understand, yes.”

  “Is that for real?”

  “I have no reason to doubt it. The volcano erupted last week, but we only learned about Madeleine recently. May I ask how you knew her?”

  “My wife,” Pee Wee said suddenly. “My wife worked for Madeleine Blackbird. She traveled with her.”

  Suddenly I realized Pee Wee McBean was struggling with his composure. His belligerent tone had turned hoarse, and his face was dark. His bushy eyebrows were drawn into a glower, but there was a distinct quiver in his chin.

  I almost reached out to touch him. “I’m so sorry,” I said. “You haven’t heard from your wife since the catastrophe?”

  “My wife was Madeleine’s maid, her driver, her companion—her everything! I have a right to know if—”

  “Hold on a minute. Your wife is Pippi?” I was astounded. “She was married to . . . you?”

  “Dang right. Why should that be such a big surprise?”

  “I can’t . . . I never realized—good heavens.” I was flabbergasted by this development. “I had no idea Pippi was married.”

  “We got married when she first came to town,” he said gruffly. “We met right there at the supermarket. She told me there was some mix-up, and she needed a green card, and I—well, I thought she was real nice. We didn’t get to spend much time together, though. She mostly lived up at that castle with the Blackbird lady. I don’t care what anybody has to say, she was a respectable woman. We planned on spending our retirement years riding around in my RV. But then she ran off, and I never heard from her again.”

  I was amazed to learn Pippi had been married.

  “What do you mean, respectable?” I asked.

  “Just what I said. There was never any funny business with her.”

  I tried to process that information. I didn’t want to be the one to tell the poor man it was likely his wife hadn’t run off to Fiji, but had died in Madeleine’s elevator.

  My concerns about being kind didn’t matter much, though.

  The next words out of his mouth were: “What I want to know is, did the Blackbird lady leave anything to my wife?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “In her will. Am I going to inherit something from the Blackbird lady now that she’s gone? I mean, my wife put in a lot of years for that family. They owed her something, right?”

  At last, I realized his morning mission to grab me hadn’t been generated out of grief for a beloved wife, but rather greed.

  “I don’t know. We haven’t seen the entire will yet. It only just . . . Look,” I said as gently as I could manage, “how about if I contact you as soon as we learn the specifics?”

  He squinted at me. “How can I trust you?”

  “You have my word.” I cleared my throat. “See here, you can’t go around impersonating a police officer whenever you feel like it. You could have telephoned me like a civilized person, and I’d have told you anything you want to know.”

  “I doubt it,” he snarled. “What’s in it for you?”

  Making such a repulsive person understand that I wasn’t in the habit of cheating people was starting to feel like an impossible mission. So I ended up saying very firmly, “You’ll just have to trust me, Mr. McBean. In the meantime, I think it’s best if you take me back to my sister. Immediat
ely, if you please.”

  For a moment, I thought Pee Wee had more to say. He worked his jaw, then suddenly started the car, flipped on the windshield wipers and drove back to the grocery store. With the panache of a former officer of the law, he whipped into the parking space beside Emma’s truck.

  She was outside, oblivious to the rain, pacing the asphalt and yelling into her cell phone. When she saw me in the passenger seat of the old car, she terminated the call and shoved her phone into her jeans. Then she yanked open the driver’s-side door and grabbed Pee Wee by his lapels.

  “Get out of the car, you little weasel. I’ve already called the cops. They’re going to arrest your ass any minute.”

  “Calm down, Em.” I bailed out of the cruiser. “We’ve already spoken with Deputy Foley.”

  Her fists remained knotted in McBean’s jacket. She seemed happy to have a target for her pent-up anger. “Oh, yeah? What did he have to say?”

  “Well, I don’t think he’s going to be phoning Libby for a date anytime soon. And he asked me to take pity on Mr. McBean.”

  Pee Wee snarled, “I don’t need your pity!”

  “McBean?” Emma repeated with a taunt in her voice.

  “Pee Wee McBean.”

  “Hell.” She released his lapels. “I can’t be mad at a guy with a name like that. He’s suffered enough already.”

  I got out of the car. “Let’s just go,” I said to my sister.

  “I can’t. My damn truck won’t start. Wait—Pee Wee, do you have something to do with my truck not starting?”

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out a distributor cap. Silently, he handed it over to Emma.

  “I should have known,” she muttered. She opened the hood and replaced the vital part.

  I leaned down to look at Pee Wee. “Look, I think the police are going to come to talk to you soon. To—well, as they investigate Madeleine’s death, they’re going to learn more about Pippi. If you’d like to talk with me after you’ve seen them, you should come to my house. Ring the doorbell like a civilized person. I live at Blackbird Farm. Do you know where that is?”

  “Wasn’t that place condemned a few years back?”

  With that nasty parting shot, he put his car in gear and pulled out of the parking lot, leaving me fuming in the drizzle.