by Kelly Rey
I heard the frustration in her voice. "What do you mean? Where did you look?"
"The usual places," she said.
Not too helpful, since Maizy's usual places could mean anything from the DMV to Department of Defense.
"Let's just say she's not in the usual databases," she added.
"Did you ask Sybil?"
She didn't say anything, but her bobbing foot picked up velocity. I took that as a no. Also as confirmation that you can be too smart. I'd always suspected it.
"We'll go to her house," I said.
Maizy brightened. "Cool. She did say she'd be happy to see us again."
That wasn't how I'd heard it.
"Can you drive a little faster?" Maizy jerked her thumb backwards. "That stuff is practically stale now."
I hadn't noticed the box in the back seat. It was full of food, but not quite food. It was a dollar store off-brand haul including bran flakes, a loaf of squashed white bread and a bottle of supplements for menopause symptoms.
Hm.
I looked at her. "Running away?"
"Get serious," she said. "I'd never eat that stuff. I bought it for someone. Since I don't have a car at the moment, Brody Amherst said he'll deliver it for me if he can have the vitamins." She snorted. "He could use the help."
Considering that none of Maizy's friends was menopausal, I had a feeling I knew whom the intended recipients were of her dollar store spree.
"That's really sweet, Maize," I told her.
"Yeah, whatever." She pulled her hoodie up. "The gas pedal's on the right, Grandma."
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
"I'm glad you're here, Uncle Curt," Maizy said that night, on the way to Sybil's house. Maizy was driving Curt's Jeep. He was in the passenger seat. I was in the back, amusing myself by watching the wind ruffle Curt's hair. It didn't take much to amuse me.
Sybil's neighborhood was solidly lower upper class: not as ritzy as Oxnard's gated community, but far from Bitsy's tattered remnant of better days.
"I thought we might get stuck with Eunice again," Maizy added.
"What's wrong with Eunice?" I asked. Aside from fainting at pictures of Supreme Court Justices, that is. And her fear of public speaking. Everyone had a fear of public speaking. I'd read once that it ranked above death on the fear scale, which I could kind of understand. When you were dead, you didn't care much about humiliating yourself.
"She's not very brave," Maizy said. "I thought she was going to faint when Alston showed up."
Yeah, she kind of had.
"I thought she recovered pretty well," I said. "You just weren't there to see it."
"About that," Curt said.
"Huh." Maizy pointed. "Sybil's having a party."
We rolled to a stop at the curb and took a look. I'd expected the house to be less Dark Shadows than Oxnard's place, but not quite Jersey Shore, either. Every light in the house appeared to be on, and a thumping bass was rattling the windows. The sound of laughter and the intermittent clink of glasses drifted through the night air along with the smell of garlic and tomatoes and oregano, reminding me I hadn't had much for dinner.
It hardly seemed fair that I was out traipsing around the county in the dark while Sybil was whooping it up just days after Oxnard had groped his last. Clearly she wasn't worrying about who'd killed Oxnard. Because she already knew?
With Maizy and Curt behind me, I marched up to the front door and pounded on it. Instantly the music and laughter went silent. I glared through the frosted glass sidelight. No one in sight. "I know you're here!" I yelled. "Open the door!"
"No one home," a woman called out in a shaky voice.
I blinked. "Pandora?"
"Pandora's not here," Pandora yelled. "Go away!"
Fat chance. This had suddenly gotten interesting. I kept my finger on the doorbell until the door inched open and Pandora's eye appeared in the crack. "Oh, hello, Miss Jamie. You want to see Mrs. Sybil?"
I nodded. "Could you tell her we're here?"
Pandora's eye slid over in Maizy's direction, narrowing as she processed the blue hair, then widening as she processed Curt. Good luck with that. I'd known Curt for three years, and I hadn't been able to process him yet.
She pressed her cheek against the door, trying to block my view. "She isn't here. She hasn't been here for a few days."
"Of course she's here," I snapped. "I heard the noise. She's having a party."
"No, ma'am. You heard my brother Carlos and my cousin Luis and their girlfriends, Louisa and Angel, and Angel's sister Tori and—"
I was beginning to get the picture. The picture was an image of Sybil skulking around Oxnard's mansion, probably laying out plans for her new furniture and changing the locks on the in-laws.
"Can we come in anyway?" Maizy asked. "We need to ask you some questions."
"About what?" Pandora asked.
"We're detectives," Maizy said. "We're investigating."
"Well," I said, "we're not exactly detectives. More like…" I glanced at Curt.
"Nosy neighbors," he said.
I elbowed him in the ribs. He grinned and shrugged at me.
"I don't know…" Her eyebrow folded down and she glanced sideways and back to us. "I'm a little busy. Cleaning up the place, you know. For Mrs. Sybil."
"Don't worry," Curt said. "We won't say anything about the party."
She looked him up and down. He stood his ground, hands in his pockets, a small encouraging smile on his face, as unthreatening as a six-foot-two block of muscle can be showing up unexpectedly at the front door.
I decided to give her a nudge. "Pandora, I think Sybil might have killed Oxnard."
The half of her mouth I could see fell open. "Mr. Thorpe is dead?"
The door swung open, and five minutes later, we all had plates loaded with linguini and meatballs and some kind of delicious crispy bread and plates of roasted red peppers. It was like the rehearsal luncheon all over again, except this time with hospitality.
When Pandora sat down across from us, I noticed for the first time what she was wearing. Or more specifically, what she wasn't wearing. Her maid's uniform. I recognized her outfit as the one Sybil had worn to the office. She'd even borrowed Sybil's jewelry, judging by the emerald whoppers clipped to her ears.
I noticed something else. The drapes were lumpy and had feet. The dining room table, under its festive green tablecloth, had two pairs of hands. And unless I was off my game, the refrigerator was wearing a toupee.
Pandora and company had made themselves right at home.
"What happened to Mr. Thorpe?" she asked when she'd finally run out of things to serve.
Maizy was too busy snarfing her linguini to answer. Curt lifted an eyebrow at me.
"Sybil hasn't told you?" I asked her.
Pandora shook her head.
"Oxnard was found dead in the pool." No need to mention who'd done the finding.
She frowned. "I don't understand."
Maizy looked up from her plate. "The pool part or the dead part?"
"The pool part," Pandora said. "Why would he be in the pool? He was deathly afraid of the water."
"But…" I trailed off. Why would a man who was deathly afraid of water install a swimming pool? It was one of those unanswerables, along with why is the sky blue and what happened to my puberty.
Pandora glanced at me. "You said you thought Sybil had killed him. But if he fell in the pool and drowned…"
"We think he had some help falling," Maizy said.
"And the first suspect is always the spouse," I told her, with all the wisdom gleaned from my few inept homicide investigations.
"But there are always others," Maizy added. "So where'd you go after the wedding?"
Pandora gave a start. "I went home, of course. I had no reason to stay once…" She trailed off.
My ears pricked up. Once there was no one left to pay her? Once she'd killed Oxnard? Once she'd sampled the wedding cake?
Maizy had heard it, too. "Once what?"
/>
"They paid me to cater the reception," Pandora said. "Not to clean up a pigsty after the fighting was done."
"What exactly went on at that wedding?" Curt asked me. "I thought you were kidding about that."
I did a Tell you later wave.
"Can anyone verify that you went home?" Maizy asked.
Pandora went a little pale. "I didn't go straight home. I went to the Dunkin Donuts and had some coffee and donuts."
"How long were you there?" I asked her.
She thought about it. "Probably nearly an hour. I needed to unwind, and I sat there reading the paper." She hesitated. "Am I a suspect or something?"
"We suspect everyone," Maizy told her. "It's what we do."
"Well, not everyone," I added. "That's a little bit of an exaggeration."
Pandora was shaking her head before I got the sentence out. "Don't be so sure, Miss Jamie. I heard Mr. Kantz and Mr. Thorpe arguing at the reception."
That must have been the argument before the food fight erupted.
"What were they fighting about?" I asked.
Pandora handed Curt a napkin. "I'm not sure. All I heard, Mr. Kantz told Mr. Thorpe to treat her right."
"Had Mr. Kantz ever been to the house to visit?" Curt asked.
Good question. I should've thought of it.
Pandora shrugged. "Not while I was there, but I went home after serving dinner. I'll tell you this—I wouldn't blame Mrs. Sybil for wanting someone else to talk to. Poor Mrs. Sybil." Her head lifted. "I mean Mr. Thorpe, of course."
Hm. That sounded like a clue. I put down my fork. "Pandora, did you like Oxnard Thorpe?"
She studied her shoes intently. "Certainly. He was good to Mrs. Sybil."
"Was he good to you?"
"Mrs. Sybil wanted me to stay on," she said. "And I needed the job."
Not quite the same thing. I felt the stirrings of suspicion. "Was he good to you?" I repeated.
Pandora shrugged. "Good enough."
I glanced at the drapes, the table, and the refrigerator. All feet, hands and hair were frozen in place. Probably everyone was eavesdropping as we discussed a subject that might be embarrassing to Pandora.
I eased back on the sofa. "Well, I didn't like him at all," I said loudly. From the corner of my eye, I caught Curt's small nod of approval.
Pandora's eyes widened. "You didn't?"
I shook my head. "He was always groping me. He's the reason I broke that vase, you know."
She grinned. "That was an ugly vase."
"Yes, it was." I smiled back. "He was a dirty old man, and I think she's better off without him."
Her smile faded. "He threatened to have me deported. I've been living in the U.S. for nine years. I made a good life here. And he threatened to report me to ICE."
"He did?" I stared at her. "Wait, are you—"
"I'm working on it," she said.
I wasn't sure where to go with that answer. It had never occurred to me that Pandora might not be in the country legally.
"Why did he do that?" Maizy asked.
She shrugged as if it didn't matter. "Mrs. Sybil talked him out of it."
I smelled a motive. But for whom, Sybil or Pandora?
"She said she wasn't about to go to the trouble of replacing me," Pandora added.
Charming.
"But why did he make that threat in the first place?" I asked quietly.
Her cheeks reddened. "He made many moves on me." Her voice dripped with disgust. "He thought because of my position, and his, that he could take advantage of me."
Something clicked into place, and it made deportation sound like the better choice. "Pandora, did he threaten to have you deported if you didn't sleep with him?"
Her lip curled. "I would never," she said vehemently. "I'm a good Catholic girl. I would never do such a thing." She shook her head. "Are you alright? Can I get you anything?"
I was far from alright.
I suddenly had three more suspects.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
"Remember I was telling you about Ryan last week?" Missy asked me on Thursday morning. I'd spent over an hour immersed in the glamour of typing interrogatories in a product liability case for Wally. Interrogatories are a part of the discovery process, written questions that each party has to answer within a proscribed time period. They're multiple pages of pure tedium and one of the least favorite parts of my job.
"You were also telling me about Matt last week," I said. "It's hard to keep track." I sent the pages to the printer. Good riddance.
She shook her head. "Matt is so two weeks ago." She gazed at the ceiling with a small smile, lost in the nostalgia of Matt.
"Ryan?" I prompted her.
She blinked. "Oh. Right. You know what we did last night?"
I had a pretty good idea, but I pretended to listen anyway while I thought about Bitsy Dolman and the Stepford Thorpes and Pandora. All four had surprised me. Bitsy was a sad case, a woman who had apparently once been well off, but had fallen on hard times and into a bottle. I wondered if Oxnard had been aware of her situation, and why he would have remained in contact with her. Didn't seem like that would benefit his public image, but when you were King of the Adult Diapers, your image wasn't exactly gleaming to begin with. Maybe there had been more to Oxnard than met the eye. Maybe the two really had been friends for years, and he refused to turn his back on her just because her star had lost its twinkle.
Or maybe she was one of those obscenely rich people you read about who had millions stuffed in the mattress while living like a pauper. Hard to know unless she went on a sudden spending spree or a local cat suddenly inherited millions.
"So then he got some mashed carrots…" Missy was saying.
The Thorpes, on the other hand, hadn't waited long to dust off their sense of entitlement. They were an interesting pair. On the face of it, Alston seemed to be the one in control. He even looked the part. But beneath the surface, it was Abigail who wielded the power. And she definitely had a steely side. The problem was how to find out for sure where they'd been when Oxnard had been killed. I didn't know if I could.
And then there was pious Pandora, who'd hosted a kegger when Sybil had gone off for a few days and who seemed to have pretty good reason to want out from under Oxnard's wrinkled thumb. She knew her way around the Thorpe mansion, which gave her opportunity. She was under his constant threat of deportation, which gave her motive. And she could have easily gotten close enough to give him a good shove into the deep end before calling it a night. But had she?
"…and a pink tutu…" Missy said.
As far as motive went, I couldn't see any reason that Bitsy would want to kill Oxnard. She probably didn't stand to inherit anything. As far as I knew, they didn't have any business dealings together. And I just couldn't see it being a crime of passion.
Pandora had motive, and she had opportunity. But she almost certainly wouldn't benefit from Oxnard's will, and I couldn't see her killing him just for the thrill of it.
But Abigail Thorpe's motive slapped me in the face. She'd latched herself firmly to Oxnard's money, and he'd had the gall to go and get married, probably depriving her of it. I'd seen enough movies of the week to know that money was always a motive.
Which brought me to Sybil. She had the very same motive, plus a simmering side dish of revenge for Oxnard's diddling with Dusty Rose a possibility. Of course, she could have gone with the accidental death theory instead of agreeing to let Maizy and me investigate his death. Then again, maybe she was setting up a defense for what might be waiting down the road. Sybil struck me as cold and vengeful, but definitely not stupid.
And speaking of Dusty Rose, why would someone who looked like her diddle someone who looked like Oxnard? Unless…
I tried to recall my first conversation with Dusty in the kitchen at Oxnard's mansion. She'd mentioned her big break, and there'd been contracts on Oxnard's desk, but I couldn't remember the names on them.
"…and that's how Ryan and I discovered a n
ew use for tube socks," Missy finished.
I stared at her. She gave me a small smile and turned back to her monitor.
All this not knowing left me with a whopper of a headache. It didn't improve when Eunice wandered downstairs as I was spell-checking Wally's complaint, encouraging the program to ignore such red flag words as "innards" and "entrails."
I noticed a big red welt on her forehead.
"Justice Ginsburg," she said when she caught me staring at it. "Are you busy? I have a summation I want to practice."
"Can it wait?" I asked. "I have to get through these files."
"Maybe I can help," she said. "I'm a pretty good typist, and it'll give me something to do."
"You're a lawyer," I told her. "Lawyers always have something to do."
She shrugged. "Not this one. Wally took the Dollarz file away from me."
I looked up from my monitor. "What? Why?"
Another shrug. "He didn't like my legal theory."
Neither did I, but geez, it was her first case, and Wally snatching it away seemed wrong.
"He must smell money," Missy said. "Is this the emancipation case?"
"Illegal imposition of curfew," Eunice said glumly.
"Maybe he'll give it back." I said. "Mora Dollarz doesn't seem too easy to deal with."
"I don't think so." She bit her lip. "I think I'm going to be fired."
"You haven't even been here a month," I said. "How could you get fired? You haven't done anything."
"That's the problem," she said. "Howard knows I didn't do that will."
And she hadn't been fired?
The phone rang. I held up a wait a minute finger and answered it.
"I've got an idea." Maizy. "Only we'll need some help. You're old, but not old enough."
I ignored that. I was usually three steps behind Maizy, but I had an idea where she was going this time. "No," I said. "We don't need an idea. We just have to go back to Oxnard's to talk to Sybil."
"She's not going anywhere," Maizy said. "She's got a pool and thousand thread count sheets."
"But I've got to see that contract again," I said. "I think it could be important. Dusty Rose could be a suspect, too."
"Of course she's a suspect," Maizy said. "They're all suspects. Your learning curve is kind of a straight line, isn't it?"
