by Kelly Rey
"What's your idea?" I snapped.
"You need to call in sick tomorrow," she said. "This is a daytime plan."
If I took many more sick days, Howard's next hire would be a staff nurse.
"We have to get to Herman Kantz," Maizy said. "Only I can't get an appointment with him. They keep telling me we have to deal with his minions."
"That's probably true," I said. "Anyone in an executive position has minions."
"I don't deal with minions," Maizy said. "We need to see him. So we need someone even older than you to pretend to be our grandmother."
"What good is that going to do?" I asked. "We'll still get foisted off on the minions."
"Sure we will," she said. "At first. But when Grammy starts talking about her millions, they'll be speed dialing Herman's extension."
I considered it. "Wouldn't it be better if Grammy says she's a childhood friend of Herman's and just asks to see him?"
Silence on the line. Then Maizy said, "Yeah, okay, maybe that'd work too. But we still need a Grammy. Unless you want to—"
"No," I said. "I don't."
Eunice whistled softly to get my attention and launched into a complicated series of gyrations.
"Hold on," I told Maizy. I looked at Eunice. "What?"
"You're detecting again, aren't you?" she asked. "Let me help. I want to help."
"Let her help," Maizy said in my ear. "She'd be a good Grammy. She's even got gray hair."
I tried to lower my voice. "She's not a grandmother."
"She doesn't have to actually be a grandmother," Maizy said. "She just has to look like one. And she does."
My eyes rose to the top of Eunice's head. Gray hair, check. Droopy eyelids, check. Saggy neck, check. Drab-colored old lady sweater, check. The Earth Shoes were just a bonus.
"You'd have to pretend to be a—" I began.
"Done!" Eunice's face lit up. "I can't believe I'm going to be detecting again. This is so cool!"
"Grammys don't use words like cool," Maizy said. "They use words like delightful and educational and nutritious."
"This is going to be none of those things," I told her.
"You don't know that," Maizy said. "This could be highly educational. Pick me up tomorrow morning." She hung up.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The offices of Kantz and Cochran were in a three-story building nestled into a leafy grotto along one of New Jersey's most picturesque highways. Unfortunately, the picturesque part didn't start for another thirty miles, leaving the tenants with unparalleled views of bumper-to-bumper traffic and a strip shopping center.
I found a parking spot in the rear, killed the engine, and we climbed out of the car. Eunice adjusted her bosom, which was now located several inches lower than it had been when she'd woken up.
"Are you ready for this?" I asked her.
She bit her lip. "Do you think I'm ready for this?"
"You'll be fine," Maizy told her. "Just smile a lot and say 'dearie' after every sentence. Oh. I almost forgot." She scrounged around in her backpack and came up with a skein of yellow yarn, a crochet needle, and a starter foot of scarf. "Hold this. Tell him you're making him a scarf. Old women are always making scarves."
"That is so not true," I said.
"Why are you doing this to me?" Eunice asked. "I didn't know I'd have to do all…" She gestured the length of her body. "…this."
"What are you talking about?" Maizy said. "We're the ones who have to do the heavy lifting here. All you have to do is pretend you know this goober from a thousand years ago."
"But I don't know him." Eunice's expression was pure distress. "I don't think I can do this after all. I'm not cut out for a life of deceit."
"Of course you are," Maizy said. "You're a lawyer. Now listen up. Your name is Gertrude Moxley, and Herman gave you your first hickey."
Eunice's mouth dropped open.
I stuck my fists on my hips. "Seriously, Maizy? Why not go the extra mile and have him impregnate her?"
"An illegitimate baby?" Maizy stroked her chin, thinking. "That's a nice twist."
"We're not impregnating her!" I yelled.
Across the parking lot, a woman glanced our way and picked up her pace.
"I never had a hickey," Eunice said. She'd lost all the color in her face. Also, her left breast was about two inches higher than her right.
"You still haven't," Maizy told her. "It's called subterfuge. This guy is like granite. We need a way to get under his skin. Gertrude Moxley will get under his skin. She's done it before." She headed toward the entrance, tucking the blue hair under a baseball cap as she went.
Eunice grabbed my sleeve. "How does she know that?"
I gave her a palms-up shrug. Truth was, I didn't know how Maizy did half the things she did.
"That's not important," Maizy said over her shoulder. "You just get us into the inner sanctum and fade into the background, and we'll do the rest."
I was pretty sure Eunice had the fading into the background part down pat. She'd gone with her own wardrobe for the occasion: a ghastly floral-on-navy print dress that hung nearly to her ankles and was baggy enough to accommodate Maizy's vision of senior femininity: ugly tan support hose and a ginormous old lady brassiere armed with pendulous water balloons so heavy they hung to the vicinity of her belly button and made Eunice's shoulders hunch forward. Her wig was steel gray. She wore little steel-framed bifocals and orthopedic shoes. She could have been my Grandma Grace, if you ignored the fact that she sounded like a storm drain when she moved.
I'd never been to a financial planner's office because I had no finances, but I'd pictured the experience as something out of Wall Street with a lot of shouting and jostling set to the soundtrack of money changing hands. I'd been wrong. The walls were soft yellow, the décor was modern, and the floors were gleaming hardwood. The waiting room held a small television tuned to a muted CNBC. A dozen or so gray-haired clients were seated there, reading or watching the TV or napping. A lot of them napped. Most of them napped. I could barely hear the Muzak for all the snoring.
A perky twenty-something redhead was stationed behind the horseshoe shaped front desk. Her desk plate read Deana. Her expression was warm and welcoming. "Can I help you?"
Maizy and I nodded at Eunice. Eunice's face went stark white, and her eyes started to roll back in her head.
Deana made a move to stand. "Is she alright? Do you need a wheelchair?"
"She's fine," Maizy said. She reached out and pinched Eunice's arm hard.
"Ow!" Eunice's eyes rolled back into place, and she grabbed her arm. "Res judicata!" she yelled.
Deana glanced at me. "I'm sorry, what was that?"
"Grandma says things sometimes," I told her.
"Ad vitam!" Eunice agreed.
Deana's expression was slowly morphing into one of sympathy. She lowered her voice. "Are you interested in a financial Power of Attorney for your grandmother?"
"We're open to it," Maizy said. "But first she'd like to see Herman Kantz." She elbowed Eunice. "Wouldn't you, Grammy?"
"Caveat emptor," Eunice said.
"Oh, I know that one," Deana said. She smiled at Eunice. "Were you a lawyer or something?"
"Lawyer," Eunice said. She slapped a business card on the counter.
"Isn't that nice," Deana said, reading it. "You still have some of your old cards." She hesitated. "This name sounds familiar. Isn't this the firm where that lawyer was killed?"
Eunice turned to me with an expression of pure horror.
I did a little head shake. "You must be thinking of someplace else," I said.
Deana shook her head. "No, I don't think so. It was Parker, Dennis and…someone else." She gnawed on her lip, thinking. A second later she snapped her fingers. "Heath! That's it. His name was Darren Heath. No, it wasn't." More gnawing. "Derek. No. Dabney?"
For God's sake. "Douglas," I snapped. "It was Douglas Heath."
"That's it!" Deana agreed. "Douglas Heath. He was murdered at the office. I read
all about it."
"I quit," Eunice said.
Deana stared at her.
"Cute, right?" Maizy said. "She thinks she's still a lawyer. Sometimes we find her down at the courthouse in her briefs. She gets confused. So." She clapped her hands briskly. "You want to let Herman Kantz know Gertrude Moxley is here?"
"But…" Deana held up the business card. "This says Eunice Kublinski."
"That's her married name," Maizy said.
I rolled my eyes.
Maizy leaned forward on her elbows. "The thing is, this is kind of important to her. She's traveled a long way just to see Mr. Kantz again. They knew each other as kids."
Deana beamed at Eunice. "Isn't that sweet."
"Hickey," Eunice said.
Deana frowned. "What's that?"
"She said hickey," Maizy said. "He gave her her first hickey. It was a whopper. Her parents wouldn't let her out of the house for a month."
"Mr. Kantz gave her…" Deana's voice trailed off.
I glanced behind us. Still a few sleepers, but most of the clients had awoken and were tuned in to our conversation. One of the older men took off his glasses, cleaned them with his shirt hem, and stuck them back on to get a better look at Eunice. I couldn't blame him. She was bodacious.
"Chop chop," Maizy said, tapping on the counter. "Grammy's got to get to the salon. She's got a hot date tonight."
"Oh, I…" Deana's glance flickered to me. "I shouldn't…I really can't…"
Maizy turned to face our audience. "What do you mean, you don't want my Grammy's business?" she asked loudly. "She's just a little old lady who knits scarves. This is ageism!" She gave Eunice a pointed glance, and Eunice thrust the yellow yarn into the air like she'd just won the Super Bowl.
"Hey," Deana said, "wait a minute. I never said that."
I leaned across the desk. "Grandma's got money."
"A lot of money," Maizy agreed. "Show her, Grammy."
Eunice hauled a rubber-banded roll of bills from her bag and waved it around. I was pretty sure it was a twenty wrapped around a bunch of ones. "Quid pro quo!" she shouted.
"She's rich now," Maizy said. "And she's got satellite TV."
The client with the glasses blew into his palm, sniffed it, and smiled at her.
Suddenly Deana was standing next to me. "Hold on, now. You can't come in here and disrupt the office like this. I'll have to ask you to leave."
Maizy pulled a box of Girl Scouts' Thin Mints from her backpack and held them up. "Anyone else want us to leave?" she yelled.
A lot of gray heads starting shaking.
"Anyone want a cookie?" she asked them.
The shaking morphed into nodding. Big smiles all the way around. Thin Mints were infinitely more exciting than anything that had happened with their investments lately.
"You can't do that!" Deana said, horrified.
"Lighten up," Maizy said. "Let them enjoy the two minutes they've got left."
"That's quite enough of that," a voice said behind us.
Maizy and I turned to find Herman Kantz glowering at us.
Eunice crashed to the floor in a dead faint.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
"That was quite a performance out there," he said after we'd settled into his office. Maizy and I were in the client chairs. Eunice was sprawled on his sofa holding a bottle of Evian to her forehead.
The office was typical of that belonging to any late-middle-aged, overpaid, humorless autocrat. Heavy furniture, plush area rug defining a cozy seating area, walls the color of Bailey's Irish Cream dotted with photos of Herman with various local dignitaries. A golf ball on a tee in a little glass case sat on his desk, along with two legal pads, their edges precisely aligned, a gleaming silver ballpoint pen, oriented exactly one inch from the legal pads, a stack of mail at his left elbow, shuffled into an orderly pile one inch from the edge of his blotter. His blotter was one inch from the front edge of the desk. The phone was one inch from the top of the blotter.
I sensed a pattern.
"Hickey," Eunice moaned.
Herman Kantz ignored her. "Which one of you would like to tell me what that was all about?"
Maizy and I glanced at each other.
"You've heard about Oxnard Thorpe's death," I said.
He did a slight nod of assent.
"We're checking into it," I said. "We know you argued with him at the wedding. Can you tell us about that?" I was taking a chance in hoping that he didn't remember me sitting at the table alight in the glow of Sybil Sullivan's postnuptial charm, but it was a low risk chance. My life's experience had been that I was pretty forgettable.
Maizy gave me a Well done grin.
Eunice moaned softly.
"Don't tell me you three are police officers," Herman said.
Maizy shrugged. "Have it your way."
"We're detectives," I said quickly. "Private," I added.
"You don't look like detectives, either," he said.
"If we looked like detectives," Maizy said, "all those old people out there would think you're in trouble. They'd all be calling their lawyers to sue this place. See, we did you a favor."
"I can sue him," Eunice called. "Locus delicti!"
"If you wanted to talk to me," he said, "why didn't you just make an appointment? You didn't have to disturb my clients."
Sure, that was easy to say when we were already sitting in front of him, after sort of threatening a lawsuit, after creating a cookie frenzy, and after Eunice had wound up on the floor in a dead faint at his feet, her indefatigable bosom still in the unceasing ebb-and-flow of ocean waves.
"Who disturbed them?" Maizy asked. "They got Thin Mints. Everyone likes Thin Mints."
"So what did you argue about with Mr. Thorpe?" I repeated. I wasn't there to discuss cookies. Everyone knew Do-si-dos were the best.
"We didn't argue," Herman said. "We talked."
That's not the way I remembered it. I remembered the drink in the face that launched a food fight and ended in murder.
"Okay," I said. "What did you talk about?"
"I wished him well in his marriage," he said.
I lifted an eyebrow. "He didn't seem to take that well."
He did a slight shrug.
"What made him angry?" I asked.
"Business talk," he said. "A stock purchase, to be more specific."
That wasn't specific at all.
"Did you fight about No Flows stock?" Maizy asked. "It's down like 30% this week. They're going to have to sell a lot of diapers to make that up. And diapers cost a lot of money."
"I'm not at liberty to say," he said.
"It wasn't a question," Maizy said. "I know they cost a lot of money. My Uncle Odi wore diapers, only my Aunt Bea bought him Pampers 'cause they were cheaper than No Flows. They leaked a little, 'cause Pampers don't come in Ginormous Baby size, but she sewed two of them together and sent him off to watch football in his man cave all dry and happy."
I stared at her.
Herman stared at her.
Eunice lifted her head and stared at her.
"At least," Maizy said, "until he tried to change that light bulb and electrocuted himself 'cause he was standing in a puddle while he did it."
I cleared my throat. "Can you tell us where you went after you left the wedding?" I asked him.
He turned to me. "I went to the club. I had some dinner and took driving practice."
"What club would that be?" I asked.
He steepled his fingers. "Twining Valley Country Club. And that's not unusual. I often go there on Saturday nights. I've been a member for thirty years."
"Then I'm sure you ran into people you knew," I said levelly. "People who can confirm the time you got there."
Something flickered across his expression. Could have been annoyance. "I have nothing to hide. I got there at roughly quarter to ten."
I did some quick math. Wedding at nine, food fight at roughly nine-thirty, filet mignon at nine forty-five. I needed to find out how close
Twining Valley was to Oxnard Thorpe's mansion. Then I needed to find out who could confirm his time of arrival.
"Had you been to the Thorpe home before?" Maizy asked him.
"Not that I recall," he said.
"Seriously?" Maizy said. "You never went over for caviar?"
Herman studied her for a moment. "Maybe once or twice," he said. "For dinner with Oxnard and Sybil."
"There you go," Maizy said. "Was that so hard? It's a nice place."
"I suppose," he said.
He supposed? Where'd he live, the Taj Mahal?
"They give you a tour?" she asked. "The kitchen, the pool, the hidden hallway?"
Oh, this was too much.
"I suppose," he said.
The guy was starting to really irritate me. Almost as much as being out of Maizy's loop.
Eunice had hauled herself off the sofa and was standing behind me, still clutching the skein of wool and listening raptly.
"Pretty smart," Maizy said. "You can go from the foyer to the backyard without even being seen. He had it built for access to his safe room, right?"
I'd assumed she'd done the usual self-tour: peeking in medicine chests and clothes closets and kitchen cupboards. I hadn't realized she'd drawn up floor plans. I'd have to have a long talk with her about her egregious invasions of privacy. And then have her design me a house.
Herman didn't answer her. But his lips had tightened, and his steepled fingers had collapsed and interwoven each other into one solid fist under his chin.
Maizy wasn't done. "Be a handy way to get from the pool to the naked David without being seen."
I heard Eunice whisper, "Naked David" to herself almost reverentially.
The phone did a little melodic bleep and Herman snatched it up. He listened for a few seconds, said "I'll be right there," and hung up.
"That was smooth," Maizy told him. "Deana called right at fifteen minutes. She's like a housebroken puppy."
"We're through here," Herman said, standing.
Eunice stabbed her finger in the air. "Res ipsa loquitur!"
"Get out," Herman said.
We got out.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
