by Lois Winston
Before taking our leave of Kitty Pichinko I warned her about the phony FBI/detective duo of Remick and Craft.
Her eyes once again grew wide with fear. “Do you think they’re the killers?”
“We don’t know.”
Kitty pulled a pad and pencil from a drawer in her kitchen table. “What were their names again?”
“Craft and Remick.”
She wrote down their names.
“Remember,” I reiterated as we stepped from her apartment. “Only speak with Detective Loretta Menendez. Don’t allow two guys named Remick and Craft into your apartment, no matter what they tell you.”
She waved the paper at me. “I’ll remember. Thank you for coming, and I’m sorry I wasn’t more help.”
Blake and I gulped fresh air the moment we stepped out of Building Three. “No wonder Not-Sid only sipped tea and made for the exit as quickly as possible,” I said.
“Or maybe his quick exit had nothing to do with mothballs,” said Blake.
“What then?”
“Kitty Pichinko wasn’t worth the bother?”
“She had certain physical features Not-Sid deemed important in a woman.”
“Frumpy?”
“Sort of Rubenesque.”
Blake rolled his eyes. “She didn’t have the requisite Rubenesque bank account to match, judging from where and how she lives. I’m beginning to think your Client Number Thirteen was more interested in money than female companionship.”
“What about Sylvia Schuster? She’s living in an expensive senior facility. She’s got to have money. Why’d he pull a disappearing act on her? He certainly didn’t have time to learn her money is tied up in a trust or doled out by concerned family members or whatever.”
Blake mulled this over as we hiked around the building to the parking lot. “I don’t know, but something’s definitely not adding up. Your Sid was up to something, something that got him killed.”
As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t argue with Blake’s analysis of the facts we’d uncovered so far. Not to mention the appearance of two phony law enforcement officials. Perhaps once we’d interviewed all of Not-Sid’s dates, we’d have a clearer picture of what he was really after and who dispatched him to Saint Peter’s early bird special at the Pearly Gates Cafe.
*
Rudy Klingerhoff’s children worried about him. Ever since his wife died last year, Rudy had settled into hermit mode. His three adult kids, deciding he needed female companionship to draw him out of his self-imposed exile, had purchased a Relatively Speaking gift certificate for him. After much arguing, Rudy reluctantly agreed to partake of my services to get his kids off his back.
However, Rudy refused to let me take him anywhere other than to bowling alleys. Rudy loved bowling, both playing and watching others play, either at local alleys or on TV.
As it turned out, this didn’t prove as much of a problem as I initially anticipated. Thanks to my good friend Google, I discovered that New Jersey is populated with vast numbers of senior bowling groupies. Who knew little old ladies love little old men with big shiny balls?
So once a week for the past several weeks, much to my husband’s displeasure, we escorted Rudy to Linden Lanes. Blake’s dislike of bowling puzzled me, given the sport’s deeply ingrained history in television, going all the way back to The Honeymooners in the fifties and continuing to present day sitcoms. Maybe someone once dropped a bowling ball on his foot. He’d never say. Anyway, while Rudy showed off his ball skills to the ooh’s and aah’s of assorted single ladies and various jealous gentlemen, Blake would head for the snack bar and frown at his laptop screen.
Not only is Rudy great at sparing a seven-ten split, he’s also damned good-looking for a geezer. Cary Grant good-looking, complete with an athletic build, full head of silver hair, and black frame glasses. We’ve even had our share of swooning women (I now carry smelling salts with me,) but Rudy hasn’t shown an interest in any of them. All Rudy wants to do is bowl. Then return to his hermit cave.
“Rudy,” I said, after we picked him up later that afternoon, “if you don’t try to show some interest in a few of the women I introduce you to, your kids will just purchase another gift certificate.”
Rudy shrugged. “Fine with me. I’ll get to go bowling more. They took my car keys away, you know. Can’t drive myself anywhere.”
“I think they were worried about your depression,” said Blake.
“You think not having wheels is going to make me less depressed? They complain I never go out. How can I go out without wheels?”
Rudy had a valid point, but he’d have to fight this battle with his children. “Maybe they’ll give you back the car keys if they see you’re making an effort to socialize.”
“Fine. I’ll make an effort.”
“Glad to hear that, Rudy.”
Word of Rudy’s good looks, single status, and bowling skills had spread throughout the area, and each week we arrived at the lanes to find a larger crowd than the previous week. Which is why I wasn’t surprised to find one of Not-Sid’s dates in the crowd of spectators.
As Rudy readied himself to throw strikes and Blake settled into a chair to grade papers, I approached Maureen Boland. Mrs. Boland held the title for the largest casabas of any of Not-Sid’s dates. Unfortunately, they hung down around what would have been her waist, had she possessed a waist.
Like Kitty Pichinko, Maureen Boland wouldn’t win any senior citizen beauty pageants. However, she tried to disguise her deficits with enough makeup for an entire chorus line of Rockettes and an overabundance of precious bling. I could pay off my mortgage with what dangled from her ears, draped around the many folds of her neck, and covered each of her beefy wrists and fingers.
“I don’t suppose you’re here to deliver my stock certificates,” she said as I approached her.
Uh-oh. “Stock certificates?”
“For the initial public offering of Windergy. Wind is the new oil, according to your uncle, and was he ever right.”
“You gave Sid money for a stock purchase?”
“Fifteen thousand dollars. Now I’m kicking myself for not having invested more. Windergy stock has soared a hundred and twenty points over the last few weeks. Too bad the rest of the market isn’t following suit.”
Maureen Boland would soon be kicking herself for an entirely different reason. She’d also probably dropkick me right out into traffic.
“Mrs. Boland, how about if you and I find a nice, quiet place to talk?”
“Not now. I came to watch Rudy Klingerhoff. We went to high school together. Did you know Rudy was the first and only Union High student to bowl a perfect game in the history of the school league?” She sighed. “And he’s still just as gorgeous as ever.”
“Mrs. Boland, I—”
“I had such a crush on him,” she continued, staring at the man in question as she spoke. “But he was a senior, and I was a lowly sophomore. He didn’t even know I existed. I heard his wife died. That’s why I came today. Maybe he’ll notice me now.”
“We really need to talk, Mrs. Boland.”
She pulled her attention away from Rudy and directed it to me. “If you don’t have my papers, we have nothing to talk about. Tell your uncle to deliver them when he gets back from Aruba.”
“Aruba?”
“That is where he said he was going on vacation, isn’t it? When is he due back?”
I glanced around. Everyone else was paying attention to Rudy. I tried to catch Blake’s eye, but his head was bent over his laptop. My mental yell for help failed miserably. I took a deep breath and blurted out, “Sid isn’t in Aruba, Mrs. Boland. Sidney Mandelbaum is dead.”
“Dead?” Maureen yelled loud enough that everyone whipped around to stare at us, even Rudy Klingerhoff. “What about my stock?”
EIGHT
Blake came running at Maureen’s scream. He tossed me The Look, shook his head, then helped me maneuver her toward a booth at the snack bar.
“You h
ave to get me those stock certificates,” demanded Maureen once she’d calmed down.
I quickly explained the situation to Blake, hoping he’d devise a plan of action for dealing with Maureen Boland. I only knew two things for sure: One, Not-Sid hadn’t purchased any stock in Maureen’s name, and two, Blake wasn’t about to cut her a check for her lost funds.
“I’m afraid we have no way of doing that,” was all Blake said, falling way short of the mark.
Maureen zeroed in on me. “You’re his niece, aren’t you?”
I hesitated. “More like distant kissing cousins.”
Blake rolled his eyes heavenward.
“I don’t care how you’re related,” said Maureen. “You get yourself over to his apartment and find my stock certificates.” She fisted her hands and slammed her sausage-like forearms onto the table. “Now!”
I tried to explain that I didn’t have a key to Not-Sid’s apartment. Hell, I didn’t even know for sure where Not-Sid lived. He sure didn’t live at the address he’d given on his Relatively Speaking application. That apartment at the Cedars of Lebanon Retirement Center had belonged to the real Sidney Mandelbaum, and he’d died of kidney failure two weeks before I met Not-Sid.
Of course, I didn’t mention any of that to Maureen Boland. Instead, I took the chicken’s way out and said, “I’ll do my best.” Which wasn’t exactly a lie. Really. I was doing my best. My best to figure out who’d knocked off Not-Sid. Now I had double incentive. Not only did I need to find his killer to save my business, I needed to find his killer to keep from getting implicated in whatever fraud the slimy flimflam artist had perpetrated on Maureen and who knew how many other innocent victims.
Maureen didn’t ask how Not-Sid had died. I guess all she cared about was her missing stock. I still had the murder hurdle in front of me. Along with telling her to expect a visit from the bogus duo of Craft and Remick.
To say she didn’t take the news calmly would be one of my more gargantuan understatements.
“The killer probably has my stock certificates.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “How do I know you didn’t knock off your uncle to steal my stock?”
“Would I have told you what happened if I did?”
“That could all be part of your grand plan. You get me my stock, or I’ll sue you for everything you own.”
Great. I so wanted to worry about a lawsuit on top of all my other problems.
Just then whooping and shouting erupted from the spectators watching Rudy bowl. Maureen glanced up at the electronic scoreboard. “And now you’ve made me miss Rudy bowl a perfect game!”
I wondered if I could make it up to Maureen by reintroducing her to her high school crush, but one look at the scowl on her face told me I’d better not push my luck. What little of it remained.
Maureen leveraged herself out of the booth and headed for the crowd surrounding Rudy. I buried my head in my hands and moaned. “Why me? All I wanted to do was earn some money while writing romance novels. I thought I was helping people, but I’ve made a mess of everything. Their lives and ours.”
Blake stroked my hair. “We’ll get through this, Gracie.”
“How? You heard her. She’s going to sue us. We’ll lose everything. And how many more Maureens are out there? We still need to speak with Mary Louise Franklin, Leila Raffelino, and Suzette Stephanovich. What if Not-Sid scammed them as well?”
“One step at a time, Gracie.” He pulled me into his arms and kissed the top of my head. He couldn’t fool me, though. Blake was worried. Big time. Otherwise, he’d be blasting me over my “harebrained” business scheme and how he should have forced me into closing up shop before I’d ever met Client Number Thirteen. However, Blake Elliott wasn’t the sort of guy who rubbed salt in his wife’s open wounds—as much as he probably wanted to right about now.
We huddled together in the booth, watching from afar as Maureen literally plowed through the crowd surrounding Rudy. “That’s one determined woman,” said Blake.
“That’s what scares me.”
Whatever Maureen said to Rudy didn’t go over well. He turned his back on her and immediately began chatting up another woman in the group surrounding him. Three of her together wouldn’t have added up to Maureen. The woman was no more than five-foot-two and a hundred pounds. Her ginger hair fell in soft waves to her shoulders, and she wore only a hint of makeup. Maureen glared at them both, then barreled through the gathering and stormed out the exit.
“Interesting,” said Blake.
“At least we know Rudy has discerning taste in women.”
Rudy continued chatting with the ginger-haired woman long after Maureen had departed. When his adoring throng began thinning out, he escorted her to the snack area.
“This here’s Veronica,” he said. “We’re going to get us a bite to eat. She’s got a car. You kids can take off.”
Would it be too much if I bowed at Veronica’s Easy Spirit-clad feet? Probably so. But that’s how I felt at the moment. I wanted nothing better than to hightail it out of Linden Lanes, rush home, curl up in bed, and not wake up until the credits rolled on this Wes Craven horror that had become my life.
As it turned out, I barely had time to kick off my heels once we got home, let alone burrow under a pile of quilts. Within ten minutes of arriving back at the house, Detective Menendez accompanied by two uniformed officers, appeared at our door, warrant in hand.
“My computer?” I asked as I stared at the piece of paper she handed me. “Why do you want my computer?”
“It’s part of our investigation into the murder of our John Doe.”
“But I already gave you all my files.”
“Gracie, don’t argue,” said Blake. “Just turn over your computer.”
“But my manuscript—” When had I last backed up my files? What if the police somehow corrupted them? “Is it okay if I copy some files first?” I asked Detective Menendez.
“I’m afraid not, ma’am.”
Ma’am? I didn’t like the sound of that. When had I morphed from Mrs. Elliott to ma’am? Did they know about Maureen Boland and her missing stock certificates? Had she called the police and accused me of colluding with Not-Sid?
“Gracie?”
Blake, Detective Menendez, and the two officers were all staring at me, the officers stone-faced, the detective with annoyance, and Blake with concern. As for me, my feet had bolted themselves to the hardwood floor of my foyer. I couldn’t produce my computer because I couldn’t move.
“Gracie!” Blake grabbed my upper arms and shook me out of my stupor.
“Okay,” I said, tugging myself away from him. “You don’t need to manhandle me.”
“I was trying to shake some sense into you. Get your computer for the detective.”
“Actually, sir,” said Menendez, “I need to retrieve it myself.”
Blake led Menendez upstairs. I followed behind them, the officers following behind me. “When can I get my computer back?” I asked.
“When our techs are finished with it.”
“Are we talking hours here or days?” I asked.
“Depends what they find.”
“It’s not like there’s anything about Not-Sid that I haven’t already handed over to you.” How many minutes could it take for them to figure that out?
“We’ll let the techs be the judge of that, ma’am.”
There she goes with that ma’am again. Not good.
Blake and I stood in the doorway of our shared office while Detective Menendez helped herself to my laptop. Then she stepped over to Blake’s desk and scooped up his laptop, which he’d only moments earlier placed there.
“That’s mine,” said Blake.
“The warrant stipulates all computers in the home, sir. We’ll need to search the rest of the house.”
If The Look could kill, Blake would be arrested for wife-icide.
“Do you want dinner?” I asked after Menendez and her posse left with our computers.
“Only if it’s
liquid.”
Relatively Speaking was quickly turning my husband into an alcoholic. Yet another heaping pile of guilt for me to add to all the other guilt weighing me down.
“All your files are on the college server, right?”
“That’s not the point.”
“Then what is the point? It’s not like they’re going to find anything incriminating either of us in Not-Sid’s murder or anything else. We’ll have our computers back in no time.”
“The point, Gracie, is that this little business venture of yours has turned our lives into something out of a bad reality TV show.”
“What happened to ‘we’ll get through this, Gracie’?”
“We will. What remains to be seen is if we’ll get through it with both our sanity and our bank accounts intact.”
I suppose I couldn’t expect Blake to refrain from dumping salt on my ouchies forever. After all, the guy’s only human, and I’d certainly given him ample reason with the current mess I’d created. Still, a supportive hug right about now would have been nice. Instead, he stormed off back upstairs, and I headed into the kitchen to throw together a dinner neither of us would probably eat.
*
Three hours later the doorbell rang. Parents live in dread of two things when their kids aren’t safely ensconced under their roof. One is the late night phone call; the other is the late night ring of the doorbell. Both always send chills up my spine. Tonight the chime shredded what remained of my already frayed nerves. I jumped, the book I’d been trying to read (with little success) flying from my hands and landing in the middle of the family room.
Blake reached across the sofa and placed a hand over mine. “Relax, Gracie. One of the kids probably decided to come home for the weekend and forgot to bring a key.” He set aside his book and headed for the front door.
Did I buy that? Not for a moment. When had either of the twins last forgotten their house keys? Not since middle school. Besides, it was only Thursday night, and both Connor and Brooke had Friday classes. They wouldn’t dare cut so early into the school year, not with a college professor father.
