“You need to keep an eye on your figure, young lady.”
I gave her a weak smile. “I didn’t have much. Just a half-dozen mini cupcakes, a pepperoni submarine sandwich, and then the all-you-can-eat dinner buffet special at the Golden Wok.”
She made a harumph sound.
I kept rubbing my stomach. “Ouch. Payback is no fun. I guess I have heartburn. Plus a bit of a headache. Too many cupcakes, followed by too much excitement in one day, chasing down clues and accusing people of murder. The usual sort of stuff.”
“What? What clues?”
“Nothing you need to worry about. I ran into the mail carrier a couple days ago—it was kind of a funny story, really—and one thing led to another. I thought I had some clues, but it turned out it wasn’t anything helpful. I guess I’ll leave the rest to Tony. Did he tell you who they’re looking at for this one? My father. Isn’t that the craziest thing you ever heard?”
“Hmm.”
I felt a paw on my foot and looked down to see Jeffrey looking up at me, his dark gray fur framing bright green eyes. I reached down and scooped him into my arms.
“Pam, when you do go, how about I take care of Jeffrey?”
Her eyes flashed for an instant, and her nostrils flared. She replied, evenly, “That’ll be fine. Jeffrey likes you better, anyway, because you’re young and energetic and you spoil him with too much fatty food and letting him do whatever he wants.”
I winced inwardly, knowing she was referring to my father’s attractive and younger physical therapist. I had the urge to argue with Pam, to say that Jeffrey liked me better because I spoke nicely to him and fed him twice as much cat food as she did, but I decided to let it go. The woman was dealing with enough as it was.
“Here’s an idea,” Pam said. “Why don’t you climb into a nice, hot bath and relax? You do look tired.”
“I should hit the hay.”
“Try a bath first. Trust me. You’ll sleep like a baby. And since your stomach is bothering you, I’ll bring you some antacids and a cup of tea. Won’t that be nice?”
Pam being so nice to me was confusing, but not unwanted. Some of my father’s girlfriends had been nice, and I usually appreciated their efforts at being motherly, to a point.
“Sure. I guess a bath sounds nice. Thank you. I can get my own antacids, though. I’m the one who ate all those chicken balls.”
She started pushing me toward the floor’s main bathroom, the one with the big soaker tub.
“Silly girl,” she said in a friendly way. “Let me take care of you this once. You poor dear. Growing up without a mother, taking whatever scraps of comfort you could from the weekly whore your father had running through here.”
“Uh…” I started to defend my father, then I looked at poor, sad Pam, bent over the tub adjusting the temperature of the water for my bath. She’d had her heart broken, and a little trash talking of the man who’d done it was not unreasonable.
“It wasn’t easy,” I said. “Pam, I hope things work out for you. I hope you get to travel and see everything you want to see.”
Without turning around to face me, she added some scented bath oil to the water and said, “Don’t you worry about me, dear. Once I set my mind on something, I make it happen.”
Jeffrey walked into the bathroom and announced his presence with a meow. Pam didn’t even look at him, which was reassuring, because I didn’t want to fight her for him.
He jumped up onto the closed toilet seat and then the bathroom counter, where he gathered his paws together neatly and wrapped them with his dark gray tail.
Pam dried her hands on the snowman-decorated guest towel, said she’d be back in a few minutes with my antacids, then left me to my bath.
Jeffrey watched the tub water rise with his bright green eyes. He let his eyelids droop, pretending he was relaxed, but he was faking it. The swirling water had him very concerned, but he was too cool to freak out.
I got undressed and climbed into the water. Who said Stormy Day couldn’t sit still and do nothing? Jessica did. And she was wrong. In fact, I would send her a text message and a picture of my feet in the tub to tell her I was doing my own meditation class.
I leaned out of the tub to grab my phone, but it wasn’t there. My purse was probably on the hall table where I’d set it when I came in.
No phone meant I had to sit still and do nothing. I settled back into the hot water.
The soaker tub did have the perfect angles for relaxation. It was big enough for two people, and the water spigot was positioned along the side, so that a couple could sit in it, facing each other. That would be fun.
After a minute of relaxation, I decided to shampoo my hair. I grabbed the bottle, which was formulated to bring out the silver in naturally gray hair. I wasn’t sure if it would do anything weird to my hair, but it was purple and sudsy and smelled good—not too flowery, but not medicinal either.
As I lathered up and spiked my hair in a foamy mohawk for fun, I wondered how Logan was doing on his hot date.
Meanwhile, the other man in my life, Jeffrey, sat on the counter keeping a watchful eye on the water.
“Plenty of room for you in here,” I said, teasing him. He swished his tail and yawned, but didn’t move from his perch.
Pam knocked on the door and came in with a glass of white wine. She held one hand along the side of her face to preserve my modesty—not that I was all that concerned.
“I’ve got your antacids here,” she said.
“But that doesn’t look like tea,” I said.
“I checked the label, and you can take those pills with a little wine. I just opened the bottle to have a tipple while I pack my things. You must drink a glass, because you can’t let me drink alone. Reach out your hand and I’ll give it to you.”
“Hang on,” I answered. “I’ve just got to rinse the soap out of my hair. Set it on the counter, would you?”
She hesitated, but did as I asked, setting the pills and wine next to Jeffrey. Then she started gathering up my clothes from the floor.
“You can leave those,” I said.
“I’m starting up a load of laundry with darks and colors,” she said. “Let me put your stuff in with mine so I don’t waste half a load.”
I settled back and let her take my clothes. After she left the bathroom, I slid deeper into the tub and rinsed the sudsy spikes from my hair. When I came back up, Jeffrey had most of his face inside the white wine glass. He was either getting a good sniff or preparing to drink it.
“Jeffrey,” I admonished him. “You’re so naughty. That’s not cat juice, it’s people juice.”
He yanked his head back, then leaned down and sniffed the two tablets Pam had brought in. I sat up in the tub and started to reach for them, worrying he might try to chew on them.
My hand was wet, so I grabbed the guest towel and dried it off before handling the tablets. That’s odd, I thought. The tablets didn’t look like the usual chewable antacids my father kept in the house. Were these a new brand, or prescription pills for heartburn?
I glanced around for my phone, cursing myself a second time for leaving it by the front door. I had a software application on my phone that identified medications from a photo. The program had been on my mind since earlier that day when my father had been so loopy on his pills.
As I was pondering the strength and origin of these two tablets, Jeffrey reached out a sleek gray paw and started playing hockey. With three quick swats, he knocked one of the pills off the counter and into the wastebasket. I frowned at the wastebasket, which was full of used tissues. Yuck. That pill was a goner.
I reached for the remaining tablet, but Jeffrey had other ideas. He looked me right in the eyes with an expression of pure glee, then he gave the remaining pill a good swat. The tiny white pill sailed off the counter, over the wastebasket and toilet, and straight into my tub water. The pill made a tiny plop sound and sank from sight.
“He shoots, he scores,” I said.
Jeffrey sa
t up straight, looking very pleased with himself. I reached into the tub water near my feet and groped around in search of the tablet, but it had already dissolved.
I would have called to Pam, asking for a refill, but my stomach was feeling better already on its own. It must have been the warm water and all the relaxation. I reached for the wine before Jeffrey could knock that into the tub as well.
He settled down and watched me as I sipped the wine. I settled back and imagined the look that would be on Logan’s face when he found out I was his landlady. That would be priceless. Instead of dreading it, I was starting to look forward to it.
Time passed, and I succumbed to the relaxation. I was in no rush to get out of the tub, especially if it meant more uncomfortable conversations with Pam about my father and his playboy ways. I could hear her bustling around, packing boxes. I felt drowsy from the wine and warm water, but not quite enough to fall asleep.
Even so, when Pam tapped on the door, I quickly closed my eyes and nodded my head to the side. Whatever she wanted to talk to me about would have to wait. She tapped again, louder this time, then opened the door. I kept pretending to be asleep when she came into the room.
She stood in the bathroom for a surprisingly long time, not moving. It was difficult for me to keep from giggling, but the longer she stood there, the more serious my predicament felt. I couldn’t crack now and admit I’d been pretending to sleep. What kind of a person fakes sleep to get out of social interaction? She kept standing there, making me feel less giggly and more disturbed. What kind of person watches a naked person sleep in a tub?
Finally, she left. I cautiously cracked open my eyes and looked around the room. Jeffrey walked over to the edge of the counter, carefully jumped down to the edge of the tub, and began drinking my bath water.
I reached out to pat his head, but the water dripping from my hand startled him, and he leapt back up onto the counter, nearly knocking over the seasonal candles on display.
He wove his way past the decorations and settled down, choosing the sink as the perfect place to curl into a round ball. As I admired how cute he was in the sink, something about the objects on the bathroom counter gave me an uneasy feeling. I looked at the holiday items and realized at least half of them were of snowmen. There were several candles in the shape of a classic Frosty the Snowman, plus ceramic figurines.
At the costume store, Mr. Jenkins had changed his snowman window display early so that the people of Misty Falls wouldn’t be reminded of the upsetting incident.
But Pam seemed to have not made that connection.
You would think that a person whose neighbor had been found stuffed inside a snowman would have the sensitivity to remove snowman-themed decorations from her home. Unless…
Unless Pam was the killer, and this was her version of a trophy.
I snorted at the ridiculousness of my imagination.
Then I lay very still in the tub, listening to her moving around just outside the bathroom door. Was it possible? I blinked, hoping to shake the paranoid thoughts, but the more I looked around at the bathroom’s decorations, the worse my paranoia got. There was even a joke greeting card on display, with colorful text declaring 10 Reasons Frosty the Snowman Is The Ideal Man.
Item #3 on the humorous card had been underlined with blue pen: Frosty would never leave you for a younger, hotter woman, because she would melt him.
Ordinarily, a card like that would make me smile, but in light of the situation, it made me frown. Pam had plenty of opportunities to murder Mr. Michaels, living right next door, but did she have motivation? If she was angry at anyone right now, it was my father, not some other man. Unless… she’d been having an affair of her own. Perhaps she tried to start one up, to get even with my father, and Mr. Michaels rejected her.
The idea was crazy. Preposterous. But murdering someone was crazy, and Mr. Michaels had definitely been killed by someone.
My gaze traveled over to the mug that was currently holding toothbrushes. Pam had decorated the mug herself, at one of those paint-your-own-ceramics places. I knew because I’d actually gone to the place with her. It had been during a previous visit home, when I was making an effort to get acquainted with my father’s new girlfriend. That night, I’d decorated my mug with yellow stars on a blue background. Pam, however, had drawn a snowman on hers.
I stared at the snowman looking down at me from the hand-painted mug and realized, with horror, that it had a lopsided grin.
The snowman hiding Mr. Michaels’ body had the exact same lopsided grin.
The killer had a signature.
What had Officer Peggy Wiggles suggested when I made my statement? That the snowman had appeared to be skillfully constructed. Almost as though… it had been built by a professional craftsperson or decorator.
Pam was a professional window display decorator, and she put lopsided grins on snowman.
Pam was the murderer.
The wood floor outside the bathroom door creaked. My heart pounded, and every nerve in my body shouted to do something at the same time. The signals were so intense and conflicting, I froze. A murderer was outside my door and I could do nothing.
I heard a voice in my head: play dead. I closed my eyes and tipped my head to the side, pretending again to be asleep.
Pam came into the room slowly.
Sweat trickled from my scalp down the side of my face. I prayed she wouldn’t notice, or would think I was just sweating from the water.
She stood there, unmoving. The idea of her staring at my naked body in the tub sickened me, but I didn’t dare move. Not until I had a plan.
“Look at her, crashed right out,” Pam said. “Those are good pills, aren’t they?”
I kept very still, even though I was shocked to hear Pam talking to the cat like he was a person.
I prayed for her to leave the room, but she didn’t go. I heard the crinkle of her clothes as she leaned over to take a closer look at me.
“Hey,” she said, right by my ear.
I held steady and didn’t flinch.
She sniffed and said, “People who take sleeping pills and a glass of wine shouldn’t get into hot baths.”
Sleeping pills? Even under the hot water of the tub, my blood chilled with the sense of danger.
The pills she gave me. They hadn’t been antacids after all. But what Pam didn’t know was that one sat in the garbage bin and the other was dissolved in the water around me.
Her clothes rustled again as she stood up. I heard drawers open and close, objects being sorted through and then chucked into a box. She was packing up her things from the bathroom.
Jeffrey gave her a curious meow from his spot in the sink, like he was asking her to share her thoughts. He repeated the meow, reminding me for a moment of Officer Peggy Wiggles, repeating the same questions during my statement.
I knew from my father that the tactic worked. Deep down, most people don’t want to keep their terrible secrets. With the right kind of invitation, they’re relieved to unload.
Jeffrey meowed again, this time with more accusation.
“Stop your nonsense,” Pam said to the cat. “Don’t look at me like that. I know you saw everything. Stop judging me. I had good reasons to do what I did.”
She chuckled to herself, making my blood turn even more chilly.
“If only we could fix human men the same way we do cats,” Pam said. “But until that day, when our society becomes so enlightened, we’ll just have to take care of the dirty old fools, one at a time.”
She made more noises, tossing a few more items into her cardboard box, then sighed.
“What about this one?” she asked the cat.
I could barely keep breathing. What about this one? She was talking about me.
The cat meowed.
“Good idea. We’ll wait and see for a bit. She could easily slip under the water on her own. Plenty of young women go that way. And it certainly would serve her father right for his foolishness.”
Now the sweat was streaming from my scalp, tickling down the side of my face.
Pam’s clothes rustled as she hovered over me.
Chapter 33
I kept very still, thinking through my options as Pam leaned over me in the tub. Pam wasn’t much bigger than me, and she was a lot older, but she had one huge advantage over me.
Pam was stone cold crazy.
It was still possible I could get away from her, and get out of the bathroom to safety, but I had to be smart. My advantage was the element of surprise. She didn’t know I was awake.
I groaned and rolled my head from one side to the other, like someone who really was asleep. Through my closed eyelids, I saw the light shift as she startled and jumped back.
Again, I groaned and made a smacking sound with my mouth. “Sweet and sour chicken,” I moaned. “No more. Mmm. Cupcakes.” I settled down with a sigh, like I was still fast asleep.
Pam muttered under her breath about giving the pills a few more minutes to kick in, and then left.
My eyelids flew open.
Jeffrey, still sitting on the bathroom counter gave me a startled look, as if to say we should both get the heck out of here, immediately.
Leaving the plug in the drain, I slowly climbed out of the tub, making the smallest movements I could so I didn’t alert Pam with splashing sounds.
I stood by the closed door, heart pounding, listening as Pam packed up more cardboard boxes, somewhere between me and the exit. She was also between me and my phone.
I couldn’t have an encounter with her. If she saw that I was awake, she’d know I heard her confession. There was no telling what she’d do to protect herself. For all I knew, she could have a weapon out there.
That left me with just one other option: the bathroom window. The bathroom was on the ground floor, and the window wouldn’t exactly be an easy way to leave the house, but I could do it.
Pam had taken my clothes, so I grabbed the only thing available—a floral, terry-cloth bath robe—and slipped it on. The bathroom door was closed, so I reached over to lock the handle and buy myself some time in case Pam came to check on me. Unfortunately, there was no locking mechanism on the doorknob. I should have known that. My sister and I used to chase each other around the house playing cops and robbers with water pistols. My father got so tired of us breaking door handles that he removed all the interior locks we hadn’t already broken.
Death of a Dapper Snowman Page 18
