by Kelly Rey
"That was wonderful!" Eunice was beaming. "Wasn't I lawyerly? Except for the fainting part, I mean. I really think I can do this."
Her enthusiasm made me smile. "You didn't throw up or anything," I agreed.
She seemed surprised. "That's right, isn't it? I don't know what it is, but I feel comfortable with you two." She scooted forward on her seat. "Maybe I can help you out. You know, be your assistant. Since I don't have any files to work on right now."
"I don't think we need an assistant," I said.
"Give it some thought," Eunice said, warming to the idea. "I'm what you call an organizational thinker. Details are my thing."
"Let me think about it, okay?" I wasn't sure I wanted any more witnesses to my ineptness.
"You know where to find me," she said, satisfied for the moment as she looked out the window, humming gently.
"Speaking of details," I said to Maizy. "Didn't you forget to share a few?"
"Don't worry, I've got more," she said. "He's on a first name basis with SEC investigators."
"You don't want that," Eunice said. "That sounds like a big problem."
We rode in silence for a minute.
"Can we find out anything about Oxnard's financial situation? I asked.
"Sure," Maizy said. "There's no such thing as privacy anymore. What's on your mind?"
"Can we find out about that stock deal?"
"We can find out anything," Maizy said. "Except where Dusty Rose is."
"That's a pretty name," Eunice said. "I wish I had a name like that. It's hard being Eunice Kublinski."
"I feel you, sister," Maizy told her.
I rolled my eyes. "About that hidden hallway. You didn't mention any hidden hallway."
"Not important," she told me. "What's important is if Tiger Woods in there knew about it. He didn't seem too surprised when I mentioned it."
She was right about that. His granite expression hadn't changed a bit.
"The entrance is near the front door," she said. "Everyone would have thought he was leaving, except maybe he didn't. He admitted he was given a tour of the house. Maybe he sneaked into the hidden hallway and surprised Oxnard by the pool. Maybe Oxnard being near the pool was a happy coincidence."
Not for Oxnard.
"Except," I said, "why would Oxnard be near the pool if he can't swim?"
She shrugged. "Maybe Pandora was wrong."
"Then why would he drown?" I asked.
"Accidents happen," Maizy said. "Maybe he had a heart attack when Hermie was attacking him, and he shoved him in the pool. That would even look like an accident, right?"
"I guess," I said doubtfully. "But why wouldn't Oxnard yell for help if he was being attacked?"
"Because of the gun," Maizy said.
I blinked. "What gun?"
"The one Herman bought last year, right after he got his concealed carry permit," she said.
Oh, come on. "So you knew about his job and a hidden hallway and a permit and a gun," I said. "I'm starting to feel a little superfluous here, Maize."
"Not at all," she said. "You're the one with the car."
That made me feel much better.
"So according to his own timeline," I said, "it took him fifteen minutes to get from Oxnard's house to the country club. I think we should test that. We can start from the gatehouse; that's close enough."
"I'm all over it." Maizy stomped on the gas, and the Escort lurched forward, sucking wind like a vacuum cleaner and belching blue smoke out the rear.
Less than a half hour later, we reached Oxnard's gated community.
"If Herman killed Oxnard," I said, "I'm sure he was smart enough not to attract attention by speeding. Let's pretend to do the same. Does anyone know where Twining Valley is?"
"On Hidden Hollow Drive," Eunice said. "My brother used to caddie there when he was younger. I don't think Mr. Kantz killed anyone. He doesn't have the face for it."
"What does that mean?" I asked. "You can't kill someone with your face."
"That is so not true," Maizy said. "What about Medusa?"
"You had to use a mirror," Eunice said. "Then her face wouldn't kill you."
"So you have to walk around with a mirror all the time in case you run into a Gorgon?" Maizy demanded.
"Is that a problem?" Eunice asked. "Don't you powder your nose once in a while?"
"What for?" Maizy asked.
Eunice glanced at me.
I shrugged. "Five minutes gone," I said.
"The chef's name is Antoine," Maizy said.
"How could you possible know that?" Eunice asked her.
"I have contacts," Maizy said. "Plus I went to a little thing there a couple of months ago."
I looked at her. "You didn't tell me that."
"Not important," she said "And it'll never happen again."
"Was it a date?" I asked.
"Yes," Maizy said. "The sixth of February."
I rolled my eyes.
"Herman's favorite meal is boeuf bourguignon," she said.
"How could you possibly know that?" Eunice asked.
"Dude," Maizy said, "you have to stop saying that. No detective says that."
"She's right," I agreed. "A detective says why do you know that?"
Maizy shrugged. "The night was kind of a bust, so I decided to check out the kitchen. Turns out Antoine's a pretty chatty guy. He knows all the members through word association."
I nodded. "Like Brandon Broccoli?"
"Like Herman Bouef Bourguignon," Maizy said.
"Turn left at the next light," Eunice said. "Is Antoine married?"
"It didn't come up," Maizy said. "But he's like a giant, and he's got hair in his ears and a nose like a Koosh ball."
"I like tall guys who can cook," Eunice said.
Talk about looking on the bright side.
"Ten minutes," I said. "Are we close?"
"We're practically there," Eunice said. "It's just up around that curve."
Twenty minutes later, we pulled into the Twining Valley Country Club parking lot. Even that had the scent of old money, with its luxury cars and pricey landscaping.
"So a half hour," Maizy said. "Good call."
I watched a couple of men walk into the clubhouse. "So he couldn't have gotten here in fifteen minutes, but let's give him the benefit of the doubt and say he was wrong on that. Now the question is, did he come here at all?"
"Let's find out." Maizy got out of the car.
I got out of the car.
Eunice stayed put.
I leaned back inside. "Aren't you coming?"
She shook her head. "I think I'll sit this one out. I sprung a leak."
I grabbed some crumpled napkins from the glove box and passed them to her. She grabbed my wrist. "Take a picture of Antoine," she whispered.
I told her I would and followed Maizy around the back of the clubhouse and through the kitchen entrance into a raging beehive of activity.
We found Antoine in front of a huge six-burner stovetop working three pots and a sauce pan at the same time. He didn't seem too surprised to see Maizy. I got the feeling he'd seen her more than once before. And unfortunately, Maizy's physical description of him had been dead on. I pulled out my cell phone and took a quick picture for Eunice while he was busy devouring Maizy in a bear hug.
When he let her go, she rolled her shoulders around and moved her jaw back and forth, just to be sure. "We need to ask you something," Maizy said. "Was Herman Boeuf Bourguignon here on the night of the sixteenth?"
Antoine did some two-fisted stirring on the stovetop while he thought about it. Finally he shook his head. "Don't think so."
"Are you sure?" I asked. "Maybe he had something else for dinner."
"He never has something else," Antoine said. "Always Boeuf Bourguignon. And house red." He tapped his temple. "Antoine remembers." He hesitated. "Why?"
"We're solving a murder," she told him.
His jaw went slack. "HBB was killed?"
"HBB's client
was killed," Maizy said. "Oxnard Thorpe."
Recognition flickered across his face. "Oxnard Pasta Primavera is dead?"
"Guess so," Maizy said.
Antoine's lower lip began to tremble. "But he was such a nice old guy. When he sold the business last summer, he started living it up, coming in a couple times a week. Always ordered white truffles, and tipped a hundred dollars if we brought it to him poolside."
My ears perked up. "A hundred dollars?"
Maizy rolled her eyes. "Sold the business?" she asked.
Antoine nodded. "Told Gil he was happy to see it go. I don't blame him. Pay me a few mil and I'd be happy to spend my afternoons poolside, too."
"Poolside?" I repeated.
Another nod. "OPP didn't golf. He came in to use the pool."
"Like sit on the edge with his feet in the water, right?" Maizy asked.
"Wrong," Antoine said. "Like leering at all the pretty women from a deck chair."
That seemed about right for Oxnard.
And Eww.
"Did you ever see him swimming?" I asked.
Antoine frowned. "Well, no. I never saw him at all. Gil would take the truffles out to him, and he'd always say OPP had his eye on someone or other at the pool."
"Is Gil here?" Maizy asked.
He shook his head. "Haven't seen him. He must be off today. I can ask him about OPP and call you tomorrow, if you want."
"Thanks, Tony." Maizy executed a standing high jump to plant a peck on his chin. "Catch you later."
I grabbed her arm as we headed back to the car. "You said you were only here once."
"No, I didn't," she said. "That's what you heard. See how it works?"
That wasn't an argument I could win.
"Do you think Pandora lied to us?" I asked.
"Everyone lies to us," Maizy said. "That's where the detecting comes in."
Eunice was napping in the back seat when we got back in the car. A big water stain darkened the left side of her chest, and it wasn't from her drooling.
"What are truffles, anyway?" I asked Maizy.
"Fungus," she said. "Expensive fungus. Especially white truffles. Very rare."
"How could you possibly know that?" Eunice had woken up.
"Now you're just embarrassing yourself," Maizy told her.
Eunice tapped my shoulder. "Did you get it?"
I passed my cell phone back to her. I heard a gasp, and then Eunice said, "The man is a god. Do you think you can introduce me?"
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I dropped off Eunice at her car and Maizy at her house and stopped at the supermarket to pick up nice, healthy frozen pizza slices for dinner along with a few necessities: Chips Ahoy, Butterscotch Krimpets, and a quart of French vanilla ice cream. I switched on the TV, fixed Ashley's dinner, slid the pizza in the oven, stashed everything else in its appropriate place, and headed straight for the shower.
I stood under the hot spray for as long as I could take it, rotating a few times for balance, and then climbed into my most worn sweatpants and sweatshirt and settled in with the pizza. The TV was showing an ancient black and white game show where a glamorous panel tried to guess the contestant's occupation. It was a diabolical premise because people were never what they seemed. But they did their best with it while I finished off the slices and moved on to doing ten minutes of triangle and warrior poses before settling into shavasana, allowing my entire body to melt into complete relaxation.
Except my body didn't want to relax. And my mind didn't want to stop spinning. After ten minutes, I decided yoga wasn't going to do it and found myself downstairs at Curt's door.
He answered the door in jeans, bare feet, no shirt, with a bottle of beer in his hand. We went into his living room, where Die Hard was on the TV. Alan Rickman and his henchmen were just crashing the party at Nakatomi Plaza.
"You know what I never got about this movie?" I asked, accepting the bottled water he offered. "Who takes off their shoes and socks in a public bathroom?"
"That's what you never got?" Curt dropped onto the sofa beside me. "Clearly you don't appreciate excellence in cinema."
I watched Hans Gruber with his perfect hair and immaculate suit and thought maybe I should work on that.
When the action moved to the conference room with Mr. Takagi, Curt lowered the volume and said, "So who killed Oxnard Thorpe?"
Which was the opening I needed. I put down the water bottle and told him about Herman and his problems, and Abigail and Alston's rampant entitlement, and Bitsy's eagerness to implicate Sybil, and the visit to Herman Kantz, and our conversation with the new love of Eunice's life. As usual, Curt listened without commenting, his attention fully on me.
"And you already know he threatened to have Pandora deported," I said. "Or so she says."
He nodded. "What's your impression of the brother and sister?"
"I'm not sure," I said. "I don't trust Abigail, and I get a coldness from Alston, but I think they genuinely loved their brother. I mean, they tried to defend him at the reception."
"Maybe big Al had a thing for Sybil and wanted his brother out of the way."
I gave him a look.
He shrugged. "Heat of the moment?"
Passion and heat weren't the two things that came to mind when I thought about Oxnard's family, but you never knew. Arguments happened, just like accidents did. Maybe they hadn't meant to shove Oxnard into the pool. Maybe they'd just pushed him a little, and he'd lost his balance. Or maybe Herman had held a gun on Oxnard, and he'd had the heart attack Maizy suggested and tumbled into the pool himself, saving Herman a bullet. And probably me as well, since I'd been just on the other side of the solarium glass at the time. A shiver ran through me.
"The problem is," I said, "I don't know who actually left the reception and who just pretended to leave. The place is huge, and there's a hidden hallway that runs the length of it."
"Sounds like something his family would be aware of," Curt said.
I nodded. "Probably Pandora, too. And Sybil for sure. Even Herman admitted knowing about it."
On the TV, John McClane was making his barefoot escape from the restroom to the upper floors of Nakatomi Plaza.
"How's this," I said. "Maybe Alston and Abigail planned to stay the night rather than drive home. And they fought with Oxnard about Sybil after she left. Things got out of hand, and he fell in the pool by accident, and they panicked and ran off." Well, maybe ran wasn't the right word. Shuffled. In tandem.
Curt went to the kitchen and came back with another beer and a bag of pretzels. "Or," he said, "Sybil shoved Oxnard into the pool herself after catching him with that girl he cheated with."
"Dusty Rose," I muttered. I shook my head. "Dusty's gorgeous, but I don't see it. Not with Oxnard." Although we hadn't tracked her down yet, either, so I could only wonder about her alibi.
"You don't know her," Curt pointed out. "You don't know any of them."
Something occurred to me. "You know, Oxnard recently met with Howard to discuss changing his will."
Curt frowned. "Did Sybil know about that? She might have had reason to accelerate his death if she stood to inherit millions."
"She knew," I said. "She came into the office with him. But she wasn't there when he met with Howard. She'd stayed downstairs, with me."
"We can assume he put his wife in his will," Curt said. "Why don't you take a look at it?"
My mouth twisted. "I can't find it. No one's asked me to type it. And Eunice lost Howard's notes. So there's no way of knowing what changes he was making."
On the TV, John McClane scurried barefoot around the upper floors of Nakatomi Plaza.
"There is another possibility," Curt said. "Could be we're completely wrong and it'll turn out to be a break-in gone bad."
"It's a gated community," I said.
"Gated communities are only as good as the security," Curt said.
The idea didn't feel right to me. A stranger wouldn't have known the house well enough to get in and ou
t and kill the homeowner in between without being heard or seen by people left behind. Namely, Maizy and me. And a stranger wouldn't have known that Oxnard couldn't swim. That knowledge would be confined to family or friends.
Besides, we had enough suspects just from the wedding. We didn't need to add a homicidal burglar to the mix. Bad enough we had a homicidal wedding guest.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
On Monday morning, I almost didn't mind that Eunice's Legume was parked in my space. I parked beside it, crossed the lot under a warm late spring sun, and opened the back door.
I was immediately trampled by a fifty-something couple, the woman being propelled with a firm fist to the lower back by her grim-faced husband. Followed by Eunice, calling "Mr. and Mrs. Wilfork, please reconsider!" She flapped several legal-sized pages at their backs, but that only pushed them faster toward the black Mercedes parked in the spot nearest the door. Howard's spot. Mercifully, Howard wasn't in yet to witness whatever this was. With any luck, Wally wasn't, either.
I stepped in between Eunice and the Wilforks and shut the door firmly, letting the couple escape. "Do we need to discuss?"
Eunice drew up short, her shoulders drooping. "I thought I'd talked them into it."
If it was a hasty exit and an ethics complaint, she may have. I steered her away from the door.
She slumped across the room while I booted up my computer. "I don't understand it," she said glumly. "They have the perfect case. They just didn't understand my concept."
I stowed my handbag in the bottom drawer. "Which was what?"
Her face brightened. "Discrimination."
Finally, valid grounds for a lawsuit. I recalled Doug Heath had once sued a strip club on the grounds that it hired only dancers of generous frontal proportion, thus discriminating against lesser endowed girls. He'd hoped to make it a class action suit, but couldn't find enough plaintiffs, even though he'd scoured every strip club in New Jersey in a diligent search. "Was he applying for a job?" I asked.
Eunice blinked. "How would I know? I met them at the supermarket. Arguing." She cleared her throat. "In the condom aisle."
Oh. Oh, my.
"It seems they didn't carry his…um…size."
"They come in sizes?" I asked.
