"A wuss. Who you calling a wuss, asshole?"
"You, Garrity," he said, leaning across me to open the Jeep door. He smelled clean, like some kind of green soap. "Go on, get out now. I don't have all day to sit here and shoot the shit with you. I got a dog to feed."
I gathered up my slicker, the thermos, and the newspaper. "Maybe you're right, McAuliffe. Thanks. I'll let you know what happens."
"You're welcome," he said. "Maybe I'll call you to let you know about my river review, and to see how the surgery thing went. Maybe we could have some dinner and listen to my Jackie Wilson records. You like Jackie Wilson?"
"'Your Love Keeps Lifting Me Higher and Higher,'" I said. "Great tune. I'd like that a lot."
30
EDNA BURST INTO THE KITCHEN humming. Something was definitely going on. First of all, she was wearing a flowered polyester dress with puffed sleeves that my sister-in-law had given her for Christmas. She also sported a string of pink plastic pop beads that had been a gift from one of my nephews. And she was wearing a pink flowered hat I'd never seen before, and a suitcase-size straw purse Ruby had brought back from her cruise to the Bahamas.
I glanced up at the calendar on the wall. "Trick or treat, Ma?"
She took off the hat and put it in a plastic bag on the counter, stepped out of her shoes, and unpopped the beads. She lit up a cigarette and took a deep drag. "God," she moaned, "that tastes good." She backed up to me. "Unzip me, will you, Jules? I've gotta get out of this rag before any of the neighbors see me."
A pink high heel in each hand, she padded down the hall, still humming, leaving me in the kitchen inhaling a cloud of cheap-smelling perfume. I could swear it was Evening in Paris.
She was back a minute later, barefooted, dressed in a cotton housecoat. She puttered around the kitchen, fixing herself a cup of coffee, all the time humming some weird tune I'd never heard before. "What's that song, Ma?"
She sat at the table across from me, picked up the coffee cup, and inhaled deeply. She took a huge gulp, swishing it around in her mouth to taste the bouquet, then swallowing. "It's 'Love Lifted Me.' Inspiring, isn't it?"
The clothes, the hymn humming, all gave me an idea.
"Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and all the saints. I believe you've been to church this morning. What's the deal, Edna? You haven't been to mass since Dad died."
"I still haven't been to mass," she snapped. "I'll not step foot inside the door of Sacred Heart again until I go to a funeral for that old devil Joe O'Connor. When I think about him refusing to come to the hospital to give your father last rites, it still makes my blood boil. The old hypocrite!"
My father, Jack Garrity, had been president of the Men's Club at Sacred Heart, and head usher for years, until he and our pastor, old Father O'Connor, had gotten into a dispute over the christening of my nephew Devin. Devin's mother, Peggy, had been divorced before marrying my brother Kevin, and Father Joe said it wouldn't be proper to baptize her son, since she and Kevin hadn't been married in the church. Dad had been enraged, of course, and quit Sacred Heart in a huff. When he took a turn for the worse in the hospital, Edna had had to turn to the hospital chaplain, a young priest barely out of the seminary, to give Dad last rites. She'd never forgotten or forgiven the insult, and to tell the truth, neither had I.
"Well, if you didn't go to mass dressed up like a church lady, where did you go?" I asked. "I distinctly remember your saying you wouldn't wear that dress Peggy gave you to a dog fight."
"Extreme situations call for extreme measures," she said serenely. "I have been fellowshiping this morning at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints."
"You didn't!"
"Yes, ma'am, I did. Why else would I go out dressed like that?"
"No reason I can think of, unless there was a Mel Torme concert at the Fox."
"Funny," Edna said. "You're a very funny girl. See how hard I'm laughing? Ooh, stop, my sides are split-ting."
"All right," I said. "I'm sorry. Now tell me, what was the Mormon church like? Do they handle snakes or anything? And did you meet anybody who knew Kristee or that Collier guy?"
"It was like a Kiwanis meeting, for crying out loud. And the church, it could have been a Holiday Inn conference room, that's how much it doesn't look like a church."
"It's a Protestant church, Ma," I said. "And I read somewhere that Mormons don't believe in churchy trappings. They think they're too earthly."
"I'll say they don't believe in churchy. They got no altar, no crucifix, no stations of the cross, no statues, not even a picture of Jesus, for crying out loud. I'm walking into the sanctuary, or whatever they call it, and I had to stop myself from genuflecting."
"Yeah, good thing. That might have caused some stares. So what was the service like?"
"It was just like your dad's Kiwanis meeting. They give you a program when you walk in. Then a guy they call Elder Something gets up and tells who's gonna talk. Next a couple of church sisters and a guy in a brown suit take turns talking about being a home teacher, that's the men, or a home visitor, that's the women. They sing a couple hymns. Then some pimply-faced teenage boys they call priests pass out communion."
"You didn't take it, did you?"
"Hell, yes. When in Salt Lake City, right? Besides, they bring it around to everybody. It would have looked funny if I'd refused. And all it was, was torn-up pieces of Wonder Bread and little plastic cups of water."
"I guess Mormons wouldn't pass out wine like the Catholics do. Then what happened?" I asked.
"That was it." She shrugged. "The elder gets up at the end and makes some announcements, then some of them leave and some of them go to more meetings."
"Were you able to talk to anybody?"
She took a deep drag on the cigarette she was smoking, then lit another and set it carefully on the edge of her ashtray. "Wait a minute," she said. "Spending an hour and a half in a church that doesn't allow smoking or coffee drinking or booze has my nerves really on edge. We got any Bloody Mary makings in the house?"
"I'll look," I promised. "If Neva Jean didn't drink it, I think I saw a can of V-Eight in the pantry."
"Anyway," Edna continued, "I sort of hung around after the service, or whatever they call it, and chatted up some women who were waiting for their husbands to come out of a meeting."
I poked my head out of the pantry. "Did any of them know Kristee?"
"No," she said. "They were older, in their mid to late twenties, with kids. But since she was single, they said they probably wouldn't know her."
"What about Collier?" I asked, emerging triumphantly with the V-8.
"Him they knew. Put a lot of Tabasco in that, all right? And don't use too much celery salt or I'll swell up like a toad. One of the women I talked to said Collier was a dedicated saint. He leads one of the singles groups and he's a home teacher, sort of an up-and-comer. Apparently, the Mormon church has a distinct hierarchy for members. But another woman, Eileen was her name, acted like she thought Collier was sort of odd, almost too zealous."
"Zealous is the word for him," I said, setting two Bloody Marys on the table. "What else did you find out?"
She poked her pinkie finger in the drink and licked it. "Could stand a little more lemon juice," she said. "But it's drinkable." She took a sip and smacked her lips appreciatively.
"Oh, yeah," she said. "I saved the best for last. This Eileen woman said Collier is especially dedicated to his temple work. She explained that to me after I told her I was thinking of converting. See, Mormons think they have to convert everybody in the world to their way of thinking in order to achieve the highest level of heaven. Their heaven is kind of like a Hilton, with different floors for different levels of believers. If you sign up enough people, you get to stay in the concierge level."
"I already know about that," I reminded her, "so get on with it."
"Eileen said Collier's girlfriend died recently."
"Kristee."
"She didn't mention the name. But Collier is going to have her
baptized in the Temple pretty soon, so—get this—he can have her sealed to him in marriage. They'll be married, even though she's dead."
"Holy shit," I said. "That's the kinkiest thing I've heard in a long time."
"Me too," Edna said. "Imagine what the wedding night would be like."
"For an old lady, you've got a pretty smutty mind, you know that, Edna?"
She blissfully sipped her Bloody Mary. "I prefer to think of myself as someone with an inquiring mind," she said. "And cut out that 'old lady' shit."
I tasted my drink, got up, went to the refrigerator, and fetched the lemon juice. I poured a dollop in Edna's drink and some in my own.
"You know, I figured this Collier guy was just sort of a harmless flake," I told Edna. "Maybe I should rethink that. But, hell, after all we know about Beemish and Shaloub, I still think with a little more evidence we can pin it on one of them. I mean, for Christ's sake, Whit Collier's an accountant. You ever hear of a homicidal CPA?"
She thought about that for a while. "No, but you remember Sam Arnold, the CPA who lived across the street from us in Decatur? Married to Mary Pat, that cute little blonde? One time your dad and I were at the Taco Bell down at the airport and he came in there dressed up like a hooker. Had on a gold lame strapless cocktail dress, sling-back heels, a long black wig, and some of those Lee Press-on Party Nails. Your dad like to died; he wanted to leave before Sam saw us. But I walked up to him and said 'Sam Arnold, what in God's name are you doing?'
"At first he acted like he didn't know me. But I stood right there and faced him down. You know what he told me? He pulled me out of the burrito line and whispered that he was working undercover for the FBI."
"You're making this up."
She put her hand over her heart. "If I'm lying I'm dying."
"What happened?"
"What do you think happened? Mary Pat found out he'd been wearing her best clothes to fast-food places all around the Perimeter. Broke the zipper on her black velvet Christian Dior sheath and stretched her Charles Jourdan pumps all out of shape. She divorced his ass in a New York second. So don't tell me about CPAs."
31
SUNDAY NIGHT, my friend Paula came over. We cooked steaks on the grill, made a bushel basket of popcorn, then had ourselves an Alfred Hitchcock double-header on the VCR, with Notorious and North by Northwest. It was after 1 A.M. when we got Cary Grant down off the face of Mount Rushmore, and by that time we had also killed most of a bottle of Wild Turkey, so I was exhausted.
But sometimes I do my best work in my sleep. In my dreams that night I went over and over the Ewbanks murder, making lists of all the leads we needed to pursue.
Monday by 8 A.M., I was up, dressed, and on the phone. I wasn't cheerful, mind you, but I was up and working. When Neva Jean, Jackie, Ruby, and the Easterbrook sisters straggled in around 9 A.M., I had the day's schedule all lined up.
"Jackie," I said, "get out of that House Mouse smock. You're going over to the Beemish house on West Paces Ferry."
"Are you nuts?" Edna said. "They fired us. You crashed Lilah's tea party and called her husband a murderer."
"I know, but when I was over there Saturday I noticed the place was a sty. Their live-in Jamaican girl doesn't know squat about cleaning. So Home Sweep Home, a wholly owned subsidiary of the House Mouse, called Lilah Rose this morning and informed her of our introductory offer of a twenty-five-dollar whole-house cleaning."
"When did we form a subsidiary?" Edna asked. "This morning."
"You are nuts," Edna said. "We'll go broke at that price."
"This is strictly a one-shot deal," I promised. "Here's the setup, Jackie. Lilah Rose has a Junior League meeting this morning, and it's the babysitter's day off. She'll leave the key under a big urn by the door. Hit the major crud first: you know, vacuum in the living room and den and mop the kitchen real fast. Then you start the real work. I want you to look in every corner of that house for a file folder full of papers labeled L'Arrondissement, two-carat diamond earrings and some Georgian silver. That's the stuff with all the curlicues and crap on it. Check in the safe too; here's the combination."
"How'd you get that?" Edna said.
"Beemish told it to me," I said. "Kristee figured out the combination because it was the kids' birth dates. I've got a feeling that after Beemish killed Kristee he faked the theft of the jewelry and stuff for the insurance money. And if he killed her, he probably got the business files back too. Ardith told me she never saw Kristee with any files.
"Now, Baby and Sister," I said loudly, "I've got a special job for you too." The Easterbrooks don't work every day, but they love it when we give them a new job. Makes them feel important.
"You're cleaning a townhouse that belongs to a man named Whit Collier," I told the sisters. Home Sweep Home is giving him a two-for-one cleaning deal. "It's over in Garden Hills. You're looking for the same things as Jackie: some fancy women's jewelry, some silver coins, and a file on L'Arrondissement." I spelled it out for them, and they dutifully wrote everything down.
"Mr. Collier will be home when you get there," I said. "So get right to work cleaning. As soon as he leaves, you can start searching. He'll be at work all day, so you should have plenty of time. You find any weird religious literature or anything out of the ordinary, you let me know, OK?"
"All right," said Baby. "But you ain't fixin' to have us work for no twenty-five dollars a day, are you? Sister and me, we made more than that doing day work. Twenty-five dollars don't pay the gas on our car."
"No, Baby," I said. "I'll make up the difference. You two go on over there and get started. And make sure you get a key so we can go back if we need to."
"Ruby, you do the Eshelmanns and the Browers, like always."
After the first gang of mouses left, Neva Jean slammed her Mountain Dew can down on the table with a vengeance.
"What about me?" she demanded. "I wanna help too."
"I've got plans for everybody," I promised.
Just then I heard a car door slam outside. "Good," I said. "That sounds like our new House Mouse."
There was a timid knock at the back door.
"Come on in," I sang out.
A week in jail had left Ardith Cramer looking like she'd been rode hard and put up wet. Her skin was a mess, and her hair, although at least clean, looked like it had been combed with a toothbrush. She wore a pink T-shirt, so new and loose you could see the folds from the store package on it, and a cheap pair of new blue jeans, along with the tennis shoes I'd bought her. She carried a paper sack full of her belongings.
"Sorry if I'm late," she said. "After the bond hearing, Dinesh stopped and got me some new things to wear. I'm gonna burn these clothes I wore to jail."
Neva Jean and Edna eyed Ardith with open curiosity. She stared down at her feet to avoid meeting their eyes.
"Ardith Cramer," I said, "meet Neva Jean. You already know Edna."
Neva Jean and Edna told her hello.
"Mrs. Garrity," Ardith said, "I'd—uh, like to apologize to you for the way I acted that time in the motel room. I was scared, and I was sick, and I guess I was pretty nasty. I'm sorry about that."
"It's all right, hon," Edna said. "You did act like a bitch, but now that I know the circumstances, I can understand why you did us that way. But what was wrong with you that you were sick?"
Ardith grimaced. "I had a terrible bladder infection. I've had them before, but this time it was awful."
"You had the bladder infection?" I said. "Edna found a pill bottle in your bathroom. I'm afraid she sort of searched it while she was in there. At the time, we were working for the Beemishes and thought it proved that Kristee was living there with you."
"So that's what happened to the pills," Ardith said. "They had to give me another prescription in jail." She laughed bitterly. "There is no way Kristee would have stayed in that dump of a motel. See, I didn't have any money to go to a doctor, but I knew what kind of medicine I'd taken for the infection before. Kristee got the name of Mrs.
Beemish's doctor from a pill bottle in her medicine cabinet. She just called the drugstore on Pace's Ferry and told the pharmacist she was Dr. So-and-So's nurse and was calling in the prescription. Then when Kristee picked up the medicine, she just charged it to Mrs. Beemish's account."
"Ballsy," I said in admiration.
"Yeah," Ardith said, her eyes misting. "Kristee was always doing stuff like that. She had no fear."
"So," Edna said briskly, trying to change the subject before Ardith broke into tears. "You're going to come to work for us?"
Ardith looked at me questioningly. "That's what Callahan says. My lawyer told the judge this morning that I had a job here, which proved I had ties in the community and wouldn't jump bail."
"You do," I said. "Neva Jean here is going to take you on her jobs today. Monday mornings she cleans an eight-thousand-square-foot house in Druid Hills. Belongs to Ezra Zimmerman, the head of the psychology department at Emory University, and he's a total nut when it comes to bathrooms. He's got four, and he wants them all as sterile as a hospital operating room."
"Yeah," said Neva Jean, snapping her gum. "I hope you like the smell of Pine-Sol, honey, because we're gonna use about a gallon of it this morning."
"I can stand it," Ardith said. "Callahan, what about my room? Dinesh said you had something to tell me."
"I talked to that motel manager until I was blue in the face. The upshot of it is that with the arrest and the newspaper story about where you were living, and the cops searching the place, he doesn't want you back. He had the room cleaned and threw out all the stuff the cops hadn't already confiscated. But for right now we're going to have to find you another place to live."
She seemed unconcerned about her belongings. "Any place is fine," she said. "But I've got no money for an apartment deposit."
"We got that worked out, honey," Neva Jean said, taking Ardith by the arm. "There's an itty-bitty apartment up over Swanelle's body shop over here on De Kalb Avenue. It ain't much, just a bedroom with a curtained-off toilet, sink, and shower stall and a hot plate for a kitchen. But Swanelle says you can stay there till you get back on your feet. How's seventy-five dollars a month sound?"
Every Crooked Nanny Page 22
