What can I say? Nothing. So I do not.
And thus I learn what my Miss Temple and her roommate Mariah were up to in the Teen Queen Castle while I was communing with Elvis in the attic.
Chapter 47
Filing Their Nails
Temple and Mariah had played possum until the blondes’ lightning raid on their bathroom was well over. Temple quickly found the added can of purported hairspray and tried it on a hand towel, which immediately turned as shiny and shellacked as a decoupage project.
“Liquid plastic spray,” Temple diagnosed. “Those witches wanted my new blonde hair turned into an impossible mess. Too bad we have serious work to do tonight, or X. C. would sneak in and adhere a few sleepy blonde heads to their pillowcases. They’re all featherheads anyway. But I have something else in mind tonight.”
They darted like dragonflies down the stairs to the first-floor hall, knowing where the cameras were positioned and trying to dodge them like bullets.
Mariah had insisted on coming along on this clue-fishing expedition and Temple, frankly, needed a lookout.
Now they stood outside the door to Marjory Klein’s former office and Mariah was facing the first challenge of her crime-solving life: crossing yellow crime scene tape.
You’d have thought she was Matt Devine being asked to commit a little mortal sin.
“I don’t know, Xoe. We’re not supposed to.”
“‘We’re not supposed to.’ Where would that have gotten Lewis and Clark? Lois and Clark for that matter. TV characters you’re probably too young to remember.”
“Am not. Reruns. They were almost hot.”
“Okay. ‘We’re not supposed to.’ Where would that have gotten—?”
“Ah … um … Reese Witherspoon in Legally Blonde?”
“Right. Well, I’m legally blonde now, and I say we crash this party.”
“Huh?”
Temple ducked under the tape and donned the thin latex gloves that came with her hair-dye product. The pros had ignored them to use their own professional-quality pairs, so Temple had appropriated them against a future need. She pushed against and opened an unlocked door.
Surprise! The cops were really lax. Or someone else had been here.
Mariah followed her inside, acting like Dorothy in the haunted wood: scared. As if she thought Mama Molina had some crystal-gazing globe that could follow her every move. Probably did.
Temple flicked on the mascara wand-size flashlight she always traveled with. A bright needle of light played over surfaces familiar to both her and Mariah.
“Too much to revisit?” Temple asked.
Mariah had insisted on accompanying her. Now the dark empty room made the reality of sudden death a more obvious deterrent than a thirteen-year-old might realize.
“No. And yeah. I guess. That poor lady! She just wanted me to do well.”
“We will do well. By her. She was the only consultant who imported her own file cabinets. I wondered why when I had my sessions with her. Let’s take a look.”
First Temple scanned the room for hidden cameras and mikes. She was getting good at spotting them. They’d stockpiled cloth napkins at meals and now distributed them around the room like demented waitresses. Over the lamps, the power outlets, lighting fixtures.
Besides, they kept the room’s lights off. Even if any cameras picked up intruders, they would be shadow puppets on a highly manipulated stage.
The file cabinets had always struck Temple because they were the Steel Case sort: heavy metal, with locks. This office’s decor was more wicker basket style. They were the two-drawer variety on wheels that’s easily overlooked as mobile work surfaces. There were three of them, all lockable.
That was the problem. Temple tried each one. Surprise. These drawers were locked.
“We need the keys,” she whispered to Mariah. “And they’ll probably be hidden.”
Twenty minutes later, Temple had explored every drawer and Mariah had finished her more imaginative search, usually up above or under something.
No keys.
“Why didn’t the police try the files?” Mariah wondered.
“Probably thought they came with the office and had nothing to do with Marjory. But we’ve seen all the other offices and no one else has these industrial-strength things.”
“Still, missing them is shabby police work.”
“Maybe the police checked them out and relocked them, then.”
“If my mom had been on the scene, they’d have been shaken upside down. Why hasn’t she shown up?”
“Probably to keep from ruining your big chance, remember? You made it pretty plain she wasn’t to interfere.”
“Yeah.”
This kept Mariah silent for a whole minute. “Mrs. Klein was a food freak,” she said suddenly. “Maybe it was for good and all but she was still freaked about it. She used to play with that fake fruit on her desk until I was ready to scream, or grab one and eat it. I bet—”
Mariah ambled to the basket of fruit on the desk and pulled out a plum (wax). From beneath it she pulled out a snake. “Hey, look!” A slim leather cord that ended with a trio of thin tiny keys.
“Brilliant thinking,” Temple said. “Where would a food freak hide something but under fake fruit.”
Temple grabbed the flimsy keys and tried them in sequence until all three file cabinets were unlocked. The open drawers revealed colored hanging file folders stuffed with a variety of colored file folders, each bearing a clear crystal tab indicating its contents.
“Reading rainbow,” Mariah commented.
“Seriously neat freak.”
Every food group, vitamin, study, and food additive had a file folder. So did every Teen Queen candidate.
Temple collapsed on the floor to read about her alter ego, Xoe Chloe, line by flashlit line. This wasn’t just a food plan (more fruit and fiber, less empty calories like soda pop), it was a psych sketch.
“Am I glad I’m not really me!” she told Mariah. “I show ‘clear antisocial tendencies magnified to chronic instability.’ Hey. I’m better at being bad than I thought.”
Mariah snatched the flashlight to study her file. “I’m the ‘typical only child’ who’s ‘hidden behind baby fat.’ I’m ‘desperately seeking a father figure!’ Coulda fooled me.”
“Listen, if Marjory Klein was so off about a fake personality like Xoe, she’s certainly off about a real person like you. Makes you wonder how off she was about everybody.”
“She did have a beans and legumes fixation.”
“To the point of mania. No wonder someone crammed some down her throat.”
“Look! Golly. Here under ‘Miscellaneous’ are some court orders.”
“About what?”
“Kids ordered into therapy with her.”
“Sad but true. Take a lesson from this, Mariah. You act like Xoe Chloe once too often and you’re sentenced to psychobabble.”
“I like Xoe. She’s way more fun than you are.”
“So are a lot of things that are bad for you.” Temple sighed. “Working with the dysfunctional stirs up ugly emotions, especially if you’re inept. I can see someone having a motive for murdering this woman now, I just don’t see who or exactly why.”
Temple ran her flashlight over another merry rainbow of folders. The light paused on a subject tab labeled “Indigestible.”
It was a weird category, so naturally she pulled it.
“Mariah! Look at this.”
“Do I have to? It’s on that long legal-size paper that’s so boring.”
“Right. Boring but important. This is a lawsuit.” Temple flipped back the pale blue pasteboard cover to skim the legalese inside. “Wrongful death. Someone sued her for malpractice! For … failing to prevent a fatal eating disorder, for creating it, actually. This is serious stuff.”
“You mean, someone hated her enough to bring a suit against her?”
“Exactly. Someone’s child died under her care.”
“We hear
about anorexia and bulimia and stuff at school. It’s gross, and also nuts.”
“And a heartbreaking, relentless condition. If someone thought Marjory Klein had contributed to his or her child’s death by starvation, they might just stuff a bunch of food down her throat until she choked on it.”
“I thought an allergy killed her.”
“Her own food peculiarities must have been known. Or the killer mixed some poison in. We won’t know the cause of death unless your mother shares it with us, and I can’t see why she would. You’d think this suit was still ongoing, or she wouldn’t have brought it along. But look at the date.”
“Nineteen ninety-one. I wasn’t born yet.”
“This doesn’t make sense.” Temple ran her thin line of light over endless legal phrases, then paged back to the beginning. “The dead girl’s name has got to be in here somewhere. Maybe it’ll mean something.”
Mariah hung over her shoulder, reading along with her.
“There!”
“Where?”
“two lines below where you’re reading. ‘hastity Cummings.’ Man, I’d like to die if my first name was Chastity! That’s worse than Mariah. I mean, think what the other kids would say the minute you got out of kindergarten.”
“Kids are teasing kids over words like ‘chastity’ in the early grades?”
“In Catholic schools they are. The thing about going to a religious school is you get all those nasty words like ‘lust’ and ‘adultery’ and ‘O-Nanism’ and stuff early. It’s all in the Bible.”
“Right. Being reared a Unitarian, I was cheated of all that early lurid class content. Rats.”
“What’s a Unitarian?”
“Unitarian Universalist. We see God and the world as inclusive and tolerant.”
“You mean you wouldn’t stone or smite anybody?”
“Right. Ours not to judge.”
“Somebody has to, or my mom wouldn’t have a job.”
“That’s civil law. That’s different. Anyway, I don’t get why this old suit is still in her active files.”
Mariah had pushed herself up to her knees to root in the file drawer again.
“Look! Here’s a sheet of paper that caught in the fold-over part of the hanging file.”
Piece was right. Just a tom-off triangle from one corner of a plain sheet of white paper. Not typed, written on. Just a date and a few scrawled words, the ends of three lines.
Maybe somebody had removed a folder in a hurry and a page had caught in the cardboard seam and pulled off. Recently, or ages ago.
Oops. Very recently.
“Ah.” Temple sat back on her heels while her moving flashlight told a fascinating if somewhat staccato story. The date read February 14, 2005.
This scrap was as timely as today. Only months old. Valentine’s Day. A favorite one for expression of sentiments sweet, and perhaps bittersweet, maybe even sour. Maybe even poisonous.
“Is it a valentine?” Mariah sounded hopeful. “Lots of people keep them. We do valentines at school but everybody’s chicken and girls send friendship ones to girls and that’s all. Boys would rather die than send a valentine.”
“Just wait.” Temple advised her. She frowned at the penmanship. Maybe her fake green contacts were coloring the ink, making it harder to read. She deciphered the few words ending each line:
I’ll never forget
… murderous bitch like you
… incompetent on national TV.
“That’s it,” Temple said after murmuring the words to Mariah. “That’s the motive. We better get this to your mother.”
Temple held up the scrap by her plastic gloves. “Thank God neither of our fingerprints are on it. Can you find the equivalent of a plastic baggie in this office … without leaving fingerprints?”
“Easy.” Mariah hopped up. “Mrs. Klein handed out ‘healthful snacks’ in plastic baggies from the little fridge behind her desk. Sliced rutabaga, can you imagine? It is to gag.”
Mariah was soon back with a baggie of sliced … Temple peered at the browning contents. Looked like shredded turnip greens and sliced medulla oblongata, or possibly liver. She dumped the mess into Mariah’s palms as she dried the inside of the baggie on her T-shirt hem and placed the paper remnant inside.
“My mom’s going to wonder if you’re passing on evidence of a threatening note or a salad.”
“Both.”
Mariah dumped her sticky handful into a second plastic bag of unknown nibblies. “We’d better throw this mess out upstairs.”
“Right. Now let’s hope we can make it back to headquarters without attracting any unwelcome attention.”
Mariah giggled. “You’re so funny. The way you talk. I don’t get why my mom considers you such an awful pest.”
“I haven’t a clue, Mariah. Sometimes moms are like that. Behind the times. Let’s blow this joint.”
First, they collected all their napkins. Then Temple used the flashlight beam to lead their way out. She shut it off before she edged the door open. Silence greeted the motion. She pushed the door open farther and heard nothing. Prodding Mariah out, she followed and slowly, slowly shut the door, turning to duck under the crime scene tape …
… and spied a black cat sitting right there in the hall, like a welcoming committee of one, feet primly paired, ears perked, eyes inscrutable.
For once it was not Louie. This cat was smaller, longer of coat, and gold of eye, not green.
But its face wore the same superior smirk! I see you.
“Oh.” Mariah reached out to pet the lovely thing but it darted away like a feral.
“Forget the cat,” Temple whispered. “We need to get home without anyone noticing us.”
In a house full of cameras this was always a problem. Which was why they headed first for the kitchen, then up to the room.
If any camera did capture some part of their wanderings, they could always claim a raid on the refrigerator.
Chapter 48
Recipe for Murder
Temple called Mama Bear as soon as they returned to their room.
The cell phone didn’t produce the strongest signal in the world in the bathroom with the water running, but secret agents had to get used to adverse conditions.
Mariah was in the outer room, reading the paper fragment through the plastic baggie and munching on a stash of julienned raw carrots she was allowed as snacks. Yum.
The hour was late and Temple felt some unkindly satisfaction at getting Mariah’s mother up.
“Yes.” The voice was so sudden and stern that Temple momentarily couldn’t decide how to begin. She wasn’t used to being barked at.
While she hesitated, Molina’s voice came back on the line even more demanding. “Who is this?”
“Ah, Xoe.”
“Xoe?” Apparently, her alter ego hadn’t made an impression on Molina. So much for a chance with the judges.
“Right. I’ve found some fascinating papers in the dead dietitian’s office. You should have them right away.”
“You.” Molina actually sounded glad about that. “What papers?”
“A lawsuit involving Mrs. Klein several years ago.”
“We know about that. My detectives did a background check and it came up. So you woke me up for that?”
“And a scrap of paper dated last February fourteenth. It sounds threatening. It apparently was torn off the contents of a folder as it was being taken out. Someone didn’t notice.”
“Valentine’s Day hate note, eh? That sounds more promising. No nice and neat signature, like ‘Your Killer,’ I suppose?”
Temple didn’t bother answering that bit of sarcasm.
“What were you doing in the woman’s office anyway? That’s still a crime scene.”
“I am, therefore, I snoop. I thought that’s what I was here for.”
“You’re here to keep an eye on Mariah. Where was she while you were on this law-breaking expedition?”
“Um, in our room, studying some paper
s and snacking on carrot sticks.”
“Carrot sticks! Commendable if out of character. I suppose your prints are all over that office now.”
“No. I used a pair of latex gloves, just like the pros.”
“Where’d you get—”
“They dyed my hair as part of the makeover but had their own gloves. And I never throw anything away, so …”
“They dyed your hair? All of it?”
“This is a makeover show.”
“What have they done to Mariah?”
“Nothing. Yet. Except make her work out and eat veggies.”
“Don’t let them dye her hair.”
“I’ll do what I can.”
“So you wore hair-dye gloves to search the office. Unbelievable.”
“And the paper scrap is in a plastic baggie fresh from Mrs. Klein’s office refrigerator. I had to throw out some guck to get an empty baggie.”
“That’s all right. Our crime scene people have already taken samples of everything in there for analysis.”
“So how do we exchange the evidence.”
“‘We’ do not. I’ll send Alch over in the morning. You know him, Mariah knows him, and one of you two should be able to pass him a baggie without undue attention.”
“We’ve got a window of opportunity between 8:15 and 8:30.”
“That early? I’ll have to call Morrie tonight yet.”
“This is beauty boot camp, you know. No laggards here.”
“Except the dead.”
Speaking of which, the line went dead.
Temple was slow in folding away her cell phone. Molina had sounded really growly when she’d first answered the phone, before she even knew it was Temple. Suspicious and growly. And something else. Temple called upon her theatrical background to conjure just the right word to describe the other note in the lieutenant’s usual gruff and businesslike tone. Anxious, maybe? No. Scared.
Temple shut off the water and pulled down the washcloths. She was hanging so many napkins and towels around suspected camera sites she felt like a laundress.
In the bedroom, all the lights were blazing but Mariah had tunneled completely under the covers and was lost in sudden, absolute adolescent sleep, her rear end humped up to make an island in the pink silk sea of coverlet.
Cat in a Hot Pink Pursuit Page 27
