I had no idea what an executive officer did, but he made it sound like high praise, so I said, “Thank you, Admiral.” I drained my cup. “I’m happy to work under your command anytime. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to make sure the shuttle driver knows the route and that the signs are all posted.”
I carried out those tasks and then drove slowly around the community, watching as perhaps half of the homeowners buzzed their garage doors up and dragged outgrown, unneeded, unwanted, or otherwise excess stuff onto their driveways and lawns. I could have furnished my whole house with the lamps, chairs, headboards, dressers, tables, linens, knickknacks, and small appliances for sale. Of course, the lamp needed a new cord, the headboard’s brass needed lots of elbow grease and polish, the dresser needed leveling, the table refinishing, and the linens a good bleaching, but still. And the books! There were books at every other house, it seemed, ranging from pristine hardcovers to ratty paperbacks. I’d found a hardback Elizabeth George novel I didn’t own a copy of, and a paperback Travis McGee mystery I didn’t think I’d ever read, and asked the seller to put them aside for me. I knew I would be going home with ten or fifteen books for my to-be-read stack. One home had a pile of throw pillows I would check out later, and I called Lola to let her know there were twenty or so ceramic planters at another house. She could pick them up for a song and resell them at Bloomin’ Wonderful.
I made my way around the neighborhood, stopping to chat with people I knew and lots I didn’t. A boy on a Big Wheel zoomed down a sidewalk, and a large black cat with a white bib lurked under a garaged SUV, tail twitching back and forth. Grackles settled into the trees surrounding a lawn with a bird feeder and began their crackly gossiping. With sunlight slanting down and a cloudless sky, it was a beautiful day. Let the hordes descend, I thought, as my watch showed seven o’clock and the first shuttle arrived.
I’d been to the bank to get rolls of quarters and packets of ones and I was busy for the first hour distributing change to sellers who hadn’t planned ahead. I settled a dispute between two rival groups of high schoolers who both wanted the same corner for their soda and water sales, and helped an old woman roll a rack of what looked like 1950s–era clothes from her house to the sidewalk.
“This would look lovely on you, dear,” she said, “with your tiny waist.” She held up a nip-waisted jacket on a hanger. Moss green, it had padded shoulders and two big buttons crusted with sparkly rhinestones in shades of green, brown, and amber.
Beguiled by her comment about my tiny waist, I bought it for five dollars. She was telling another customer how becomingly a hat framed her lovely face when I walked away. I had to admire her sales technique.
I spotted Brooke and Troy looking at a crib and waved to them. Brooke’s smile looked forced and I suspected her dark sunglasses hid a hangover from last night’s bridal shower. Lola pulled over in the Bloomin’ Wonderful van to thank me for the tip about the planters she had just loaded into the van. Two houses farther down, I came across Maud, stripping line from a reel she was obviously considering buying. She looked ready for a day on the river in her waffle-weave red Henley, cargo shorts, and Tevas. Of course, Maud always looked ready for a hunting, fishing, snowshoeing, hiking, or skiing adventure.
“I love garage sales,” she said. “Did I ever tell you I once went for two years without buying anything—besides food and undergarments—other than at a thrift shop or yard sale? I still own some of those clothes—could probably make money off them at a vintage consignment store.” Her blue eyes, framed by crow’s-feet, had a reminiscent look. She handed the reel to the waiting store owner and said, “I’ll give you ten.”
“Why’d you do that?” I asked.
“Wanted to prove to my folks that their materialistic approach to life was shallow and crass. Of course, it didn’t stop me from letting them pay my tuition at Berkeley,” she added. “I was a hypocrite.” She said it matter-of-factly, obviously having come to terms with her younger self’s inadequacies long ago.
“Twelve-fifty,” the seller said.
“Done.” Maud handed over her money, accepted her change and the reel, and moved along with me.
Bargain hunters crowded the sidewalks and we stepped into the street. As we walked, I told Maud about my encounter with Anita Quinlan and my theory that she and Foster had conspired to kill Gordon.
Maud’s eyes lit up. “Excellent work, Amy-Faye. Now, how do we get them to confess? It’s too bad we’re not trapped on a train with them. Wouldn’t it be grand to get all the suspects in one place and present our theory?”
Maud sounded wistful, and I could see she really wanted to play Hercule Poirot and wow the suspects with our unraveling of the conspiracy, even the small two-person conspiracy that wasn’t nearly as exciting as the fictional one that resulted in Ratchett’s stabbing death. She turned to face me with a grimace. “I have a feeling the police won’t want to move without more evidence.”
“They don’t. I already talked to Hart.” I kicked an acorn and watched it skitter down the street before disappearing into a storm drain.
“We should bug their phone. I have a couple of devices left over from—”
“That’s against the law!”
She shrugged. “You’ve got to fight fire with fire. If the government has the means and the will to spy on its citizens, then the people have to—”
I stopped her before she could get too far on her hobby horse. “We’re not talking about the government,” I objected.
She looked as though she was going to continue arguing in favor of wiretapping the Quinlans, but Kerry hailed us from a yard across the street. Roman, arm still in a cast wrapped in bright orange tape, stood a few feet away, sorting through a box of video games. Maud and I crossed over.
“Great event,” Kerry said to me. She rattled a box of kitchen gadgets. “Maybe I can get my neighborhood to do something similar. I wouldn’t mind making a few bucks off some of the junk in my attic.” She considered a garlic press but set it back down with a muttered “Clutter.”
“I’d be happy to help you set it up,” I said.
“Have you told Kerry?” Maud asked me.
“Told me what?”
I shook my head and Maud summed up my suspicions of the Quinlans.
“That hangs together very well,” she said with a brisk nod. “I think you’ve cracked it.”
“Yeah, well, it won’t do Derek any good unless I can prove it,” I said. “The police—”
“Your hot detective?” Kerry asked.
“—are hung up on proof,” I finished, ignoring her.
“Then we should get them some.” Kerry put her hands on her hips. “How hard can it be? You’ve got two pissed-off people, both of whom seem eager to run down Gordon Marsh to anyone who will sit still long enough to listen. Didn’t you say the janitor had a drinking problem?”
“Well, the police found him drunk at the lake,” I said, “and I got the feeling he wasn’t really at an interview, like Anita said, but that doesn’t mean he was at a bar.”
“He was at a bar,” Kerry and Maud said together. “My father—” Kerry started. “My first husband—” Maud began.
Kerry and I stared at her. “You were married?” Kerry asked.
“Twice,” Maud said, looking amused at our astonishment. “A story for another time.”
I held up my hands, surrendering to their superior knowledge of drunks. “So, what’s the plan? Drag him to a bar, get him drunk, and pump him for details? Seems . . . unethical, to say the least.”
“We won’t have to get him drunk,” Maud said. “He’ll be drunk any time past ten a.m. if my ex is anything to go by.”
“One of us will have to make nice, get him talking about Gordon.”
“He knows me,” I said.
“And he might know my face,” Kerry put in. “My Realtor signs are on all those benches, a
nd he might have seen me at a city function or something. Not to say I’m a celebrity, but I’m pretty well known in Heaven.”
She tried to hide it, but I could see her satisfaction in that. Coming from one of the poorest families in the county, Kerry had worked and scraped and saved to go to community college and then get her four-year degree. Her Realtor’s license was the cherry on top, and she quickly became the most successful Realtor in a three-county area before marrying the former police chief, having two kids, and getting elected mayor when she decided town politics were too corrupt to allow the incumbent to continue in office. She had a lot to be proud of.
“Too well known to take a chance,” Maud agreed. “I’ll do it.” Her eyes sparkled with anticipation. “I’ll put on one of my old suits—I knew I had a reason for not letting Joe haul them to Goodwill—and feed the target a story about being laid off when my company got bought up. I don’t think I can say Gordon was involved—that might be suspicious, don’t you think?”
“Too much of a coincidence,” I agreed.
“I’ll let him buy me a drink, cry a little—”
I couldn’t imagine Maud crying.
“And he’ll spill his guts,” Kerry finished for her. “Men always do,” she added. “Women get a bad rap for spilling secrets, but in my experience it’s men who can’t resist yapping, especially if it’s something they’re proud of, or want credit for.”
“How do we find his bar?” I asked.
“Start with any watering hole within walking distance of his apartment,” Kerry suggested. “He won’t be driving—he doesn’t need a DUI on top of his other troubles.”
“When?” I looked from Kerry to Maud.
“Tonight,” Maud said. “Joe’s photographing geese in Canada, as if there aren’t enough of those pooping pests here. He won’t be back for a week. I was going to do my estimated taxes, but this will be more fun. It’s against my principles to fund a government that wastes my money the way this one does, but Joe insists. He says another stint in jail would send me round the bend.”
Another? I definitely needed to prime Maud’s pump with a bottle of good wine and hear the story of her pre-Heaven life.
“I promised Roman I’d watch that new zombie movie with him tonight,” Kerry said, with a sideways look at her son, now chatting (if one could call monosyllabic responses “chatting”) with a pretty redhead who was signing his cast.
“I’ve got a function,” I said.
“It doesn’t matter,” Maud said. “I can fly solo.”
“You should have backup,” I said, chewing on my lip. “Maybe I can let Al—”
“Pish. I’m having a drink in a bar. Nothing safer,” Maud said.
“You can’t do this by yourself,” I said firmly. I’d feel guilty if anything went wrong when I was the one who got her all revved up with my suspicions about Foster and Anita. “Wait until after I get the anniversary party going. I’ll turn it over to Al and meet you somewhere. Say, eight o’clock?”
“Fine. Foster should be good and plowed by then,” Maud said cheerfully. “I’ll go home and figure out which bars are closest to his place.” She strode off, a woman on a mission, gray-white hair swishing across her collar.
“You going to buy that?” A hopeful woman stood beside Kerry, pointing to the mushroom brush Kerry had been holding for several minutes.
“All yours,” Kerry said, handing it over. “I wish I could go with you tonight, but a mom’s gotta seize the moment to spend time with a teenager, especially a boy. Amanda wasn’t so bad, at least not until she got hot and heavy with Cormac. She used to talk to me about her classes, her friends. Not Roman, though. You’d think words cost ten dollars each, the way he doles them out, at least to me. One day, you, too, will be happy to watch a zombie movie if it means you might get three sentences out of your teenager.” She raised her voice. “C’mon, Roman.”
I laughed and called, “Enjoy the movie,” as she and Roman walked away.
Chapter 24
As it turned out, the anniversary wife came down with a migraine midway through the party and it broke up early. Al and I finished supervising departures and cleanup a little before eight. On impulse, I invited him to join me and Maud on the Great Foster Stakeout, thinking that Foster would be less likely to notice me if I was with someone.
Al agreed to accompany me with a degree of enthusiasm that gave me pause, but I couldn’t uninvite him. “We’re just having a drink together, making sure Maud’s okay,” I said. “No Rambo stuff.”
“Rambo?”
I tried to think of a more contemporary action hero. “No Iron Man heroics. Maud can handle herself.”
“I believe that,” Al said, clearly remembering some of his run-ins with Maud. “Are you wearing a disguise?”
“Sort of.” I had a floppy sunhat in the car that Mom had left there. I planned to stuff my hair under it, keep my sunglasses on, and hope the bar was dim enough Foster wouldn’t notice me.
“That apartment complex is by the university,” Al said. “I’ll bet he’s at the Long Shot. The only other bar that’s walkable is Steve-O’s, and no one over thirty goes there.”
I called Maud to give her that news and we agreed to meet at the Long Shot. Al was fairly bouncing in the passenger seat with excitement as we drove to the bar. “Chill,” I said when we arrived and got out in the parking lot. Neon lights advertising beer brands sputtered from the bar’s windows, and lamps in the parking lot gave plenty of illumination. The sedans and SUVs in the lot said it wasn’t a student hangout, and I began to hope we wouldn’t have to troll through several bars to find Foster. Maud arrived a minute after we did, and dismounted from her Jeep. I almost didn’t recognize her.
She wore a sharp gray suit with a skirt that skimmed her bare knees, and high-heeled pumps. She had smoothed her hair so it fell in an elegant swath against her jaw, and wore discreet but expertly applied makeup. I wouldn’t have guessed that Maud even owned mascara. She moved with assurance, like a woman who wore heels every day and ground subordinates under them, and grinned when she saw my expression.
“Didn’t know I cleaned up so well, did you?” she greeted me. “Hi, Frink.”
“You look like that actress in The Devil Wears Prada,” Al said, eyes round. “The old one.”
“Thanks,” Maud said drily.
“No one’s going to believe anyone fired you when you look like that,” I said, trying to soften Al’s “old” remark. “You reek of competence.”
“Don’t you worry—I’ll ‘loser’ myself up a bit.” Maud grinned. “I’ll go in and scout the place. If I’m not out in five minutes, assume I’ve acquired the target and come on in to enjoy the show.” Without waiting for us to agree, she strode across the parking lot, every line of her singing with power and confidence. I couldn’t wait to hear more about Maud’s pre-Heaven life.
Al started the timer on his watch, and I was relieved no one had said, “Synchronize your watches.” This whole thing was feeling too “James Bond meets the Three Stooges” for me already. A lone man and a pair of women in their fifties entered the bar while we waited, and then Al’s alarm went pip-pip-pip and he said, “She must have found him. Let’s move in.”
“Stop with the spy lingo, okay? I feel silly enough as it is.” Twisting my hair up and cramming the hat onto my head, I put on my sunglasses, even though it was almost dark, and we headed into the Long Shot. Al held the door for me, and I entered a dreary space where the order of the day seemed to be serious drinking. Utilitarian tables and chairs occupied most of the space, and a bar with five stools ran along one wall. The guy manning it wore a white T-shirt, none too clean, and an apron, ditto. A two-day growth of beard speckled his jowls. The odor of cigarettes hung heavy in the air, even though smoking indoors was illegal and I didn’t see anyone with a cigarette. I realized after a moment that it was leftover smoke, from decades back, so
aked into the wooden floors, vinyl chairs, and wallboard. Major eew.
On a Saturday night, the place was not exactly hopping, but it was decently busy. Four of the seats at the bar were taken, and several of the tables held men and women in various stages of inebriation. A small television high in one corner broadcast a college football game that a couple of people were watching, and a country lament thrummed from a jukebox. This place was no threat to Elysium Brewing, I decided.
I spotted Maud immediately, seated at the bar, shoulders slumped forward as she pounded back what looked like whiskey. One of her pumps was on the floor beneath the stool and the other dangled from her toes. Her hair was more disheveled than in the parking lot, her jacket hung off the back of the stool, and her posture made her the very picture of dejection.
“There’s Ms. Bell,” Al whispered. “Is that the target next to her?”
“Shh.” I studied the back of the man seated beside Maud and decided it probably was Foster. Black hair, a little longer than I remembered, a checked shirt, khakis, and high-end trainers. As I watched, he turned his head a fraction and said something to Maud. I recognized his profile.
“Yes,” I said. “Let’s snag that table over there.” I pointed to one that might be within hearing distance.
Al sprinted for it like he was trying to outrun Usain Bolt, and slid into one of the straight-backed chairs with black vinyl padding a second ahead of a man holding a beer in one hand and a bowl of popcorn in the other. I gave the man an apologetic smile and he glared before wandering to a booth closer to the television. “Way to be inconspicuous,” I muttered to Al.
“Sorry.” He looked abashed. “It’s my first stakeout.”
I rolled my eyes but didn’t say anything. Pulling out a ten, I gave it to Al and said, “Get us a couple of beers and some popcorn.”
He popped up eagerly and wedged himself between Foster and the man on his right to signal the bartender. He carefully avoided looking at Foster, but the way his head was cocked toward him, any moron could tell he was eavesdropping. Fortunately, Foster was snockered and more interested in Maud than in the skinny kid in the bow tie trying to get the bartender’s attention. I strained to hear what Foster and Maud were saying.
The Readaholics and the Poirot Puzzle Page 21
