“We have. No one there seemed to know her very well, but we picked up a copy of her employment application and will be checking the references.”
I didn’t say it, but I was pretty sure they’d be as phony as the references on the apartment rental application. I decided not to mention that list. It couldn’t help the investigation, and I’d rather not let Detective Harmon roll his eyes at how nosy I’d been.
“Did you ask about that man Kendra’s been seeing?” I asked.
Detective Harmon answered my question. “We did, but no one at Barney’s knows anything about him.”
“Or at least they weren’t telling us anything,” Detective Dixon added.
Which left me wondering if Detective Dixon thought someone there wasn’t telling all he or she knew, or if he was just trying to make up for Detective Harmon’s polite rudeness.
I knew I’d have a visitor as soon as the detectives were gone, and I was right. Magnolia rushed over. She was disappointed in how little I could tell her about the investigation of both the cemetery vandalism and Kendra’s murder. I was disappointed too.
So we sat there and commiserated about where the world was headed in a handbasket, and I was glad I still had the sturdy comfort of Harley’s bench.
14
Next morning I visited Cecile in the nursing home. She was feeling glum, and she didn’t even have a new joke when she insisted on giving me her prized necklace consisting of five blue ceramic starfish strung together. I protested, for several reasons, one of them aesthetic … but she said she couldn’t take it with her and I might as well have it.
“Cecile, you’re not going anywhere you can’t take the necklace for a long time yet.”
“I feel like I could go next week. Or tomorrow. Maybe in the next ten minutes.” She looked up at the ceiling as if expecting to spot a transporting angel waiting for her, but the sole occupant of the ceiling plaster was a scurrying daddy longlegs.
By the time we ate lunch in the dining room she’d perked up and decided to get a perm the next day. She said it was so she’d look nice at her funeral, but I suspected the fact that some interested glances from a rather attractive guy visiting Ellen Hooper may have had something to do with it. I looped the necklace around her throat, hoping she’d decide to keep it, and she did.
“I always feel so bohemian in this.” She fingered a blue starfish fondly. “I wonder what a group of starfish is called?”
“How about a constellation?” I suggested.
“A constellation of starfish. Perfect.” She spun her wheelchair expertly. “Now let’s go see who that guy was who was visiting Ellen, and if he’s single.”
*
Afterward I drove out to Parkdale Heights cemetery. The oblong of grass had been replaced over Thea’s grave, but the flat bronze marker wasn’t in place yet. I left a bouquet of snapdragons I’d picked from her flower garden. I gave Harley some snapdragons too, and then took a circuitous path to acknowledge some old Madison Street friends and a co-worker at the library.
It was beginning to feel as if I knew more people residing in cemeteries than in houses these days, and I left feeling a little glum myself.
I figure hard work is the best cure for glumness, so I tackled weeds and bugs in the garden when I got home. My thoughts were more on Kendra than on vegetables, however, so I guess it was no wonder that when Magnolia came over she asked why I was spraying my tomatoes with Pledge instead of bug spray.
“We have to keep our minds open to new ideas,” I said on a virtuous note. I started rubbing tomatoes, some looking as if they might ripen soon, and they did take on a lovely gloss.
I wasn’t fooling Magnolia, however. I hadn’t purposely set out to shine my tomatoes with furniture polish. It was one of those senior moment things.
“Are you still sleeping in the daytime?” she asked, her tone severe. Today she was wearing an enormous floppy-brimmed straw hat with a long pink ribbon that swirled like confetti around her knees.
“No, I’m not doing that anymore.”
“Good. If we start doing too many things like daytime sleeping and spraying our tomatoes with Pledge, people may start thinking we’re drifting toward the S word.”
The S word. Magnolia did a lot of crossword puzzles. I didn’t. The only S word I could think of was Saskatchewan, which didn’t seem particularly relevant here.
“Senility,” she said meaningfully.
Oh. That S word.
“Just think,” she said, “if you’d been nicer to Mac, he might have hung around. And right now he’d be sitting in this chair instead of me, and you’d be talking about books and travel and doing the salsa together.”
“Salsa?” I repeated doubtfully. I thought salsa was something you ate, not something you did.
“Haven’t you heard? It’s the latest dance since the Macarena.”
No, I hadn’t heard. And since I was about ten dances behind the Macarena, I wasn’t really interested. “If Mac is big on salsa dancing, I’m afraid he’d have been disappointed in me anyway.”
“I don’t know if he salsa dances or not,” she said, annoyed. “Don’t be so literal, Ivy. You know what I mean. You’d be talking about doing exciting things together. You’d be doing exciting things together.”
“Have you heard anything from him?”
“He sent a nice thank-you card for our hospitality. And I don’t believe I’ve showed you the lovely vase he brought as a gift when he arrived.”
A very proper and thoughtful guest, she was telling me. A treasure I’d let slip through my fingers like melting Jell-O. “Where is he now?”
“He didn’t say. And the postmark was blurred even when I looked at it with a magnifying glass.”
I wondered if he’d mentioned me, but I wasn’t about to ask. Magnolia told me anyway.
“He didn’t say anything about you,” she said, obviously still miffed about my miserable showing in her matchmaking scheme.
*
Detective Dixon in a police car and three people in a white van from the crime scene unit showed up the following day. The detective came over to pick up the key to the apartment. He returned and said the crew would bring the key back to me when they were finished. I took the hint. I wasn’t supposed to run over and watch like a puppy hoping for a bone.
“You won’t be sticking around?” I asked.
“No, they don’t need me,” he said, although he seemed in no hurry to leave. “Though I wouldn’t mind having a glass of that iced tea you offered me one time.”
I went in the house for the iced tea. When I came back he was inspecting my tomatoes.
“These are exceptionally shiny tomatoes,” he said.
I didn’t explain my secret. Instead I asked, “Do you have a garden?”
“No, I live in an apartment. No place for a garden.”
“You could grow tomatoes in tubs.”
He went back to a lawn chair and sipped tea, and I could see he had something other than tomatoes on his mind. I sat beside him, letting silence do its work, and finally he came out with it. “I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but it is puzzling. And I figure you’re a person who can hold information in confidence … ?”
“Like a hacksaw buried in a chocolate cake.”
“None of Kendra Alexander’s references panned out. The employment references were from California jobs, and the companies don’t exist. Neither do her named next of kin. She also never went to the business college she listed.”
No surprise there, but I felt a kind of sinking in the pit of my stomach anyway. “Bottom-Buck Barney’s didn’t check on any of this when they hired her?”
“No. The manager, a Mr. Retzloff, said they tried her out on their computer, she knew what she was doing, and they hired her on the spot. With their pay schedule, I think their help changes as fast as flipping hotcakes, and they probably don’t do much reference checking. Although it may have helped that she’d just bought that Corolla from them and paid cash.”
I hadn’t known either of those facts, and the statement about cash surprised me. Although, on reflection, I decided it shouldn’t. She was new in Missouri. She needed a car. Why not Bottom-Buck Barney’s? And then why not inquire about a job? It was also reasonable that she’d brought cash from California to help her get started in a new place. Although California was definitely looking questionable.
“They promoted her to be Mr. Retzloff’s assistant, so she must have had good training and experience even if what she said on her employment application was … misleading,” I pointed out.
Whatever her shortcomings in the references department, I still felt defensive about Kendra. And it still struck me as odd that someone with her obvious competence was willing to work for low pay at a place like Bottom-Buck Barney’s.
“There’s more,” he said. He lifted the glass and jiggled the ice cubes. “Although all her references showed a California background, her place of birth on the application was given as Clancy, Arkansas. Arkansas records confirm that Kendra Kay Alexander was born in Clancy on October 26, 1980, to Alvin and Marcy Alexander.”
I was glad to hear something about Kendra checked out.
“Except there’s a peculiarity. Kendra Kay Alexander has been dead for two years. She died of leukemia, according to the death certificate. She’s buried there in Clancy.”
It took a moment for that information to hit bottom. It landed like a cast-iron skillet slamming a cockroach.
“You mean our Kendra was using someone else’s identity?” Our Kendra had stolen someone else’s identity? I was horrified, yet, by now, not surprised even by this.
“She acquired a copy of the Arkansas birth certificate and used that to get a driver’s license here in Missouri.”
“Wouldn’t they have asked about a license in some other state, maybe say she had to give up the old one?” I asked.
“She took care of that by claiming she’d never had a license before. She took the written and driving tests, passed, then bought the car under the Kendra Alexander name.”
“She seems to have thought this through rather thoroughly,” I said. “How about a Social Security number?”
“She had that too. The real Kendra Alexander’s real Social Security number. But we had the authorities down in Arkansas show the photo you gave us to the parents, and they have no idea who this girl was.”
“Do you think she just picked a name at random? Maybe visited cemeteries until she found dates that looked suitable and then went after the documentation?”
“It’s certainly been done that way. But the fact that she had the right Social Security number suggests inside information.”
“So you have no idea who she really is?”
“Not yet. Her fingerprints aren’t on file. So she’s not in the criminal system, has never been in the military, and has never held any of various jobs that require fingerprints and would get into the FBI system.”
This certainly explained why Kendra—I’d always think of her as Kendra, I suspected, even though I now knew she was someone else—was so secretive about herself and her past. Why she didn’t want her photo taken. Again I came back to the idea that she must have been hiding from someone. Unsuccessfully.
“Has anyone checked out the bridge over Hangman’s Creek where I heard someone toss something over?”
“A county sheriff’s deputy and I went out there. We didn’t find anything.”
Not surprising. A splash doesn’t leave a trail to follow.
“I did drive through the cemetery. Not a pretty sight.” Detective Dixon sat there silently for several minutes, while we both digested his revelations. Then he unexpectedly changed the subject. “You go to church, don’t you?”
I was momentarily pleased that my Christian foundation showed. Then I remembered that I’d told him about church and God being with me in the cemetery. “Yes. As I’d mentioned, Kendra was planning to go with me, just before she disappeared.”
“Yeah, that’s right.” He gave me a thoughtful appraisal. “But I think I’d have known even if you hadn’t told me that.”
“I’m glad to hear that. I accepted Christ as my Savior when I was ten years old, and the Lord has been my guide, companion, and comforter ever since.” I also had to add regretfully, “Not that I’ve always lived a perfect Christian life.”
“It’s what I saw in your guts, maybe, that told me something. As if you have a strength beyond your own to draw on.” He squirmed in the lawn chair, as if he was uncomfortable with this line of conversation. Not usual cop talk. “Anyway, I’ve been thinking maybe I’d start going to church.”
That was a much more pleasant surprise than the others I’d received today. “I’m pleased to hear that.”
Then I realized he’d ended on an expectant note and was waiting for me to invite him to my church. I dragged my feet, uneasy with that. “Have you ever been?”
“To church? Well, of course I have.” He straightened in the lawn chair, as if I’d implied he was an unwashed heathen and wouldn’t know a hymn from a haiku. “Whenever we visited, Grandma and Grandpa took us to a Sunday school around here somewhere. I even remember memorizing some Bible verses.”
“That church is gone now. The freeway off-ramp goes across where it was.”
“And I’ve been a few times since. For a while I had a girlfriend who belonged to a church near the community college, and I went with her sometimes.”
“Often?”
“Well, like … once or twice, maybe.”
“That church might be a good place to go again, then.”
“Our breakup was a bit … hostile. I don’t think I’d feel comfortable there.”
Okay, here it was. Time for me to jump in and say brightly, “Why don’t you come to my church, then? We’d love to have you.”
And Riverview United would love to have him. They’d jump on young, personable, good-looking Detective Matt Dixon like a Bottom-Buck Barney’s salesman jumping on a guy waving an inheritance check from a rich uncle.
I could say some good things about Riverview United. That it had a magnificent building, with enough stained-glass flowers and doves to impress Michelangelo. A terrific choir, lots of young people and activities from bowling to barbecues. A senior pastor, several associate and youth pastors, and a nursery run by a registered nurse.
But not a cross in sight, and Christ-centered messages scarce as pennies in the collection plate. At my church, Detective Dixon might learn about getting empowered through self-reliance, but he wasn’t going to learn much about salvation and the eternal consequences of not having it.
Then it hit me. If I was reluctant to invite Detective Dixon to my church because of its deficiencies in leading a newcomer to Christ, what was I doing there? The thought that had been lurking in the depths of my mind, like a knitting needle in a mattress, rose up to jab me.
“Actually, I’ve been a bit … dissatisfied with the church I’ve been attending. I’ve been thinking about trying to find a different one. Maybe smaller. Maybe one not quite so … busy.”
“There’s a little brick church out on the other side of town, beyond my apartment building. I don’t know what kind. I jogged by there one Sunday morning and heard them singing. One guy was really off key, but they sounded enthusiastic.”
Harley used to be as off-key as a garage-sale piano. But no one ever sang more enthusiastically. “I doubt the Lord subtracts points for being off-key.”
The detective gave me a sideways glance. “Want to give it a try?”
It took me a moment to realize he was suggesting we go together. And even if I hadn’t just realized I wanted to find a different church, I’d have said yes. There’s something to be said about the character—and potential—of a young man who’s willing to tackle a churchful of strangers with a faux grandma in tow. I suddenly wished I did have a granddaughter to introduce him to.
“I think I would,” I said.
We agreed on this coming Sunday. He offered
to come pick me up, but I said going to a new church wasn’t quite like visiting a morgue, and I could make it there on my own.
I gave him several tomatoes before he left, advising him to put them in a paper sack to help them ripen. I didn’t point out that one had an amazing resemblance to Barbra Streisand’s profile. But I did tell him he’d better wash them thoroughly before he ate them. I was uncertain about both the taste and nutritional properties of Pledge.
After a woman from the crime scene unit returned the key, I figured I’d save Magnolia a trip and went over to her place.
Geoff was off somewhere getting a valve fixed on the motor home, and Magnolia was writing a letter to a Scottish man who might be a descendant of her great-great-grandfather’s second cousin. Neither geographical nor relationship distances ever dampened Magnolia’s enthusiasm for possible genealogical connections. I spotted what was apparently Mac MacPherson’s gift vase on the sideboard. Very nice. Decorated with the obligatory magnolias, but discreetly so.
I gave her the not-surprising news that the evidence-collecting crew hadn’t informed me if they’d found anything helpful in Kendra’s apartment. “Of course, they probably don’t know anything yet,” I added. “Everything has to go to a lab.”
I didn’t pass along the information Detective Dixon had given me about Kendra not being Kendra, since that was confidential. Magnolia tapped her chin with her old Parker pen filled with turquoise ink.
“You know, I’ve been getting some vibes about this situation,” she said.
Considering that before we knew Kendra had been murdered, Magnolia had expressed the view that Kendra might be in some sort of trouble, I couldn’t totally discount her vibes. “About Kendra?”
“About her car.”
This was a new one. Even Magnolia had never come up with vehicle vibes before.
“What about the car?”
“Well, I’m not sure.” She squeezed her eyes shut, which apparently helped connect her to the vibe world. “She had the hood of her car up one time when we were walking by. She was leaning over as if she was looking for something in the engine. Geoff asked if anything was wrong, and she said the engine sounded funny, and she was wondering if the spark plugs were in backwards.”
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