Poppy Harmon Investigates

by Lee Hollis

  “That’s not my problem,” Poppy sneered. “You should’ve taken better care of it.”

  “You smug, greedy, two-faced bitch!” Iris wailed as she charged at Poppy.

  Violet hurtled herself forward, inserting herself between the two raving, furious women. “Ladies, please, let’s just calm down and talk about this.”

  “There’s nothing to talk about. She’ll never accept the fact that I’ve found love with her ex-husband . . . ,” Poppy responded.

  Gasps from the riveted onlookers.

  Adrenaline racing, Poppy glared at Iris, nostrils flaring, and delivered the final blow. “Face it, Iris, you never could satisfy him.”

  Iris looked as if she was about to blow.

  But instead, she shrank back and dissolved into a puddle of tears.

  Violet put a comforting arm around her and led her out of the bar.

  Poppy couldn’t help but admire Iris’s commitment. She had delivered a stellar performance. Perhaps she should have taken that up-and-coming director’s offer to make her a star more seriously back in Germany all those years ago.

  Violet was convincing, as well, which was admirable, considering Poppy was the only actress among the three of them.

  Iris may have worked as an exotic dancer and print model back in the day, but she had no formal training, and yet she was so believable playing the woman scorned. Poppy wondered if she might have gone through some real-life experience. Iris was always so tough and resilient, and she rarely showed any signs of vulnerability.

  Of course, Violet was naturally adept at playing a loyal and supportive friend, because that was exactly what she was.

  As for Poppy, it felt good to be acting again.

  Even if it was just for a case.

  Poppy glanced over at Esther Hamilton, who had leaned forward in her wheelchair by the bar, her White Russian in hand, and had watched the scene with rapt attention.

  With her audience still engaged, even though Iris and Violet had left the bar, Poppy marched straight over to Gladys Hackett.

  “Clearly, I’m no longer welcome at the house I’m sharing with Iris and Violet, so at the risk of being an inconvenience, could I stay with you for a few nights, Gladys, just until I find my own place?”

  “Of course, Poppy,” Gladys said. “I’m so sorry you had to go through that. I’m certainly not surprised by Iris’s inexcusable behavior! I never liked her!”

  Poppy resisted a smile.

  Even Gladys was enjoying her small but pivotal role in the melodramatic saga.

  The entire scene had been carefully staged and rehearsed beforehand in Gladys’s living room.

  And the curtain had been scheduled to go up at the height of happy hour during the Friday night mixer so they would have a full crowd.

  But they were really playing only to an audience of one.

  Esther Hamilton.

  Esther already knew where Gladys kept her spare key, and she also had the pass code to Gladys’s alarm system, so there was little question that Gladys Hackett’s home was next in line to be targeted.

  And if Esther set her sights on Poppy’s pricey diamond pendant and knew it would be ensconced in Gladys’s house, at least for the next few days, she might move up her timetable and strike sooner rather than later.

  And by the look on Esther’s face, it appeared as if Poppy’s plan had worked. She was already excitedly on her cell phone, immersed in a whispered conversation. Poppy could only assume that Esther’s son Sammy was on the other end of the line.

  Mother and son were spiritedly plotting their next move.

  And Poppy was banking on the fact that it was going to happen within the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours.

  Which was why she had already reserved a room at the world-famous Two Bunch Palms, a resort and spa in Desert Hot Springs, for Gladys for the weekend and had gifted her with a deep-tissue massage, an exfoliating facial, and a mud bath. She wanted to be sure Gladys was safely out of the way when the thieves struck. Poppy, however, had every intention of hiding out at Gladys’s house all weekend. Ready and waiting.

  Chapter 42

  Poppy was a pulsating ball of nervous energy as she sat in the dark with Iris and Violet that night, quietly waiting. She had made a very public pronouncement at the mixer the previous evening that she was having dinner tonight with the gentleman who had so generously gifted her with that Tiffany pendant, and she’d also added that she did not plan on wearing her prized piece of jewelry to dinner. She then had stressed that given the fact that a whole week had passed since she and her lover last saw each other, she would undoubtedly be out on the town very late, probably not arriving home until well past midnight, if at all.

  Gladys had also made a big show of leaving town for the weekend to visit her niece in Phoenix. However, in reality, she was already ensconced in a comfy room at the Two Bunch Palms spa and resort, once home to famed criminal Al Capone, and was probably at this moment relaxing in the mineral pool after her soothing mud bath treatment.

  Poppy sat at the dining room table and gripped her phone, finger at the ready, poised to dial 911 if or when Sammy did indeed show up. Iris and Violet sat across from her. Violet’s face was taut, and she clasped her hands together in uneasy anticipation. Iris was next to her, full of stoic determination and holding a baseball bat, just in case a weapon was needed.

  The silence was unnerving, and every time the lights from a passing car outside flashed through the window, all three of them jumped. And then, as darkness engulfed them again, they tried their hardest to relax.

  Finally, Violet spoke up.

  “The more I think about this, the less I like it! I mean, what if he’s got a gun and panics when he sees us and shoots one of us, maybe all of us!”

  “We’ve been over this dozens of times, Violet. We are not going to confront him. If he does show up, we are going to very calmly get up and walk out the back door and call the police and wait for them to arrive and arrest him while he is still inside the house.”

  “Are you sure he’s going to enter through the front door?” Violet asked.

  “Yes. He knows where the spare key is hidden. Once we hear him outside, we leave immediately.”

  “And if something goes wrong and he tries any rough stuff, I have this, and I am prepared to use it,” Iris promised, holding up the baseball bat.

  “I wish you would put that away. You’re not going to need it,” Poppy said.

  They waited another hour.

  It was now close to eleven o’clock.

  Poppy could see Iris’s eyes drooping.

  She was fighting to stay awake, but the late hour was making it harder and harder, and just when it appeared she was about to topple over in a face-plant, she let go of the baseball bat and it clattered to the floor, startling her.

  Iris bent over, scooped the bat up off the floor, and tried to remain alert. But then, after a few minutes, her eyes slowly fluttered and then closed again.

  Violet had reached over to gently shake her arm when suddenly they heard a rattling sound.

  It wasn’t coming from the front door, as expected.

  Someone was jiggling the door handle to the back door off the kitchen.

  Poppy sprang to her feet, alarmed, and whispered urgently, “He’s coming through the back door!”

  She couldn’t understand what had gone wrong.

  She had been certain Sammy would enter the house easily, using the key after retrieving it from where Esther had told him it would be, and then would deal with the alarm, the control panel for which was located right in the entrance, just past the front door.

  The door handle shook more violently this time, as the intruder continued trying to get inside the house.

  Iris snapped awake and sat frozen, the baseball bat in her hand.

  The fear was crippling.

  Finally, Poppy snatched the baseball bat from Iris, raised it above her head, and cautiously moved through the kitchen toward the back door.
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  As she approached, she noticed the intruder had stopped fiddling with the door handle.

  Had he given up and gone back around to the front of the house?

  She waited almost a minute.

  Staring at the door handle.

  Expecting it to rattle again.

  And then, once she was confident the intruder was no longer on the other side of the door, she carefully reached for the lock on the door and turned it to the left quietly to unlock it. She waited another few seconds and then whipped open the door, ready to strike with her bat.

  But there was no one there.

  She heaved a sigh of relief.

  And then someone tapped on the kitchen window from the outside, and Poppy screamed at the top of her lungs.

  A flashlight temporarily blinded Poppy, and then a figure appeared at the back door, dressed all in black. Poppy began swinging her bat like Derek Jeter at an all-star game and connected with the intruder’s right shoulder.

  He yelped in pain and went down on one knee, then covered his head with his hands.

  “Please, not the face! I’m an actor! My face is my fortune!”

  The voice was instantly recognizable.

  “Matt! What the hell are you doing here?” Poppy screamed, dropping the baseball bat to the floor.

  Violet and Iris raced in from the dining room, breathless and scared. They settled down only when they saw Matt’s handsome face after Violet snapped on the light.

  “I couldn’t stay away. I was worried about you ladies confronting this guy on your own. So I lied and told Heather I had a callback for that national commercial audition back in LA, and came right over.”

  “How did you know we were even here?” Poppy asked.

  “I told him,” Violet said sheepishly. “I thought he’d want to know. And technically, he is our boss.”

  “No he is not, Violet!” Iris roared.

  “I’m glad you did call me, Violet. There’s safety in numbers,” Matt said. “We don’t know how dangerous this Sammy Hamilton can be.”

  “But you made your choice,” Poppy said. “I thought your relationship with Heather was more important than playing a detective.”

  “I adore your daughter, Poppy, and I want to make my relationship with her work, but I also love doing this, and I don’t think it’s fair that I have to choose between one or the other. After I dropped out, I couldn’t stop thinking about you three, and how we make a great team, and I really want to help solve this case, because it’s our very first one, so . . . here I am.”

  Poppy dreaded the tense scene ahead when Heather was inevitably told that Matt had willfully defied her ultimatum.

  But she had to admire his unbridled tenacity and his puppy dog devotion to her budding detective agency, and she was deeply touched by it.

  Matt went in for a hug.

  Poppy let him grab her and squeeze her like a homesick child reunited with his mother after two weeks at summer camp before gently pushing him away. Then he did the same to Violet, mauling her and telling her how much she meant to him. By the time he got to Iris, she had reclaimed possession of the baseball bat and aggressively used it to hold him at bay. So he got only two out of three hugs.

  Suddenly there was a beeping sound.

  It was the house alarm warning that the front door was open and someone had entered the house. They heard someone pressing a code on the alarm panel, and the beeps stopped.

  All four of them remained still in the kitchen.

  They heard footsteps approaching.

  And then the footsteps stopped.

  The trespasser had probably noticed the light on in the kitchen and was now wondering if someone was home.

  Poppy slowly raised her phone to call 911, but before she had a chance, without warning, a man in black jeans, black T-shirt, black sneakers, almost identical to Matt, except with a black wool hat pulled down over his face, with two holes cut out in the center for his eyes, rounded the corner and came face-to-face with the four people huddled in the kitchen, one brandishing a baseball bat.

  He turned to make a run for it, but Matt lunged forward, grabbed a fistful of his T-shirt, yanked him back. The burglar elbowed him in the eye in order to wrestle free, but Matt held on, howling in pain, and the two fell to the floor, then rolled across the linoleum floor until the burglar got the upper hand and managed to wrap his hands around Matt’s throat.

  Iris whacked him in the back with the baseball bat, and he cried in pain at the top of his lungs, toppled over, and landed facedown on the floor, moaning. As Poppy finally got out the call to 911, Violet found some large trash bag zip ties in a drawer and used them to bind the burglar’s hands together behind his back as he writhed on the floor in agony.

  “My back . . . I think it’s broken . . . ,” he wailed.

  “You’ll be fine!” Iris yelled. “Don’t be such a pussy.”

  Iris yanked the wool hat off his head, and just as they expected, underneath it was Sammy Hamilton.

  Once Sammy was under control, Violet rummaged through Gladys’s freezer, pulled out a frozen piece of steak, unwrapped the plastic, and then tenderly placed the steak over Matt’s bruised eye.

  Matt tried acting calm and collected but kept checking himself out in a small hand mirror he had plucked from his back pocket, to make sure the blow wouldn’t leave any permanent damage to his face.

  After giving the 911 operator all the required information, Poppy asked Violet for Esther Hamilton’s phone number and placed a call to her.

  “Yes?”

  “Hello, Esther. This is Poppy Harmon. I’m at Gladys Hackett’s house, and we have your son here. He was attempting to break in and rob the place, but I’m sure you already knew that. You should also know the police have been called and are on their way.”

  There was a long silence on the other end.

  “Esther? Are you still there?”

  “Tell Sammy I’m calling a lawyer and he shouldn’t say a word to anyone!”

  “I certainly will,” Poppy said, then ended the call.

  She looked down at Sammy.

  “Your mother said the best thing you can do is confess.”

  “No . . . she wouldn’t . . . ,” Sammy moaned, trying to lift his head. “Please let me sit up. . . . The floor is so dirty.”

  The poor germaphobe.

  Matt reached down and lifted him up until he was sitting on the floor, his back against the stainless-steel refrigerator.

  “Your mother’s right, Sammy,” Matt said, patting him on the head. “It will be better for you if you just tell us everything you know.”

  Sammy was scared, and he was a mama’s boy, and, unfortunately for him, she wasn’t here to direct him with her orders, so he suddenly felt alone and vulnerable, and it worked to their advantage.

  He confessed to the burglaries.

  “Did your mother put you up to it?” Poppy asked sharply.

  He didn’t answer.

  “And did she tell you to write that warning in lipstick for me on the bathroom mirror when she found out I was investigating your crimes?” Poppy asked.

  “No . . . ,” Sammy protested weakly. “I did that on my own.... Mother wasn’t happy about that.... She said it was too risky. . . .”

  “And did you kill Olivia Hammersmith?” Poppy demanded to know.

  Sammy gasped. “What? No!”

  “You didn’t break into her house and discover she was there and accidentally push her too hard?”

  “No! No! No! I would never kill anyone!”

  “Was it your mother?”

  “What? That’s crazy! My mother is wheelchair bound! How could she do any harm?”

  Sammy fought his bonds, panic stricken, suddenly fearful he would be charged with murder.

  He was already going to prison for years.

  But at least he wouldn’t have to face the death penalty.

  If he was telling the truth.

  Poppy stared at his frightened, skittish face. He had pr
obably committed all these crimes in a desperate attempt to take care of his invalid mother, knowing the spoils of their haul would keep her in comfort for the remainder of her years left on earth.

  Sadly Poppy knew that despite Esther Hamilton’s advanced age, she would soon be arrested for her part in the burglaries.

  But when Poppy looked at Sammy, she didn’t see a killer. She saw a little boy anxious to please his domineering mother.

  And he was right about Esther.

  It was a stretch to imagine her physically getting the upper hand on Olivia Hammersmith. Or anyone else, for that matter given her handicap.

  Which meant, if her gut feeling was right, the real killer was still out there.

  * * *

  When Detective Jordan and his officers arrived and were quickly brought up to speed on what exactly had happened, they were far less inclined to believe Sammy Hamilton’s pleas of innocence when it came to the murder of Olivia Hammersmith. The detectives conveniently concluded that Sammy was lying to avoid a murder charge.

  What they did firmly believe, however, was that private detective Matt Flowers had heroically solved the case. They pushed Poppy, Violet, and Iris out of the way in order to clap him on the back, glad-hand him, and offer their enthusiastic congratulations.

  Matt was happy to take the credit.

  Which he did fervently.

  In front of the officers who were placing Sammy Hamilton under arrest.

  And before the swarm of reporters who showed up in front of Gladys Hackett’s house after hearing about the collar on their police scanners and live-streaming Web sites.

  Matt did offer a perfunctory nod in front of the cameras to his three loyal and dedicated assistants for their backup support, but at the end of the day, the Palm Leaf break-ins were officially solved because of one man—Matt Flowers.

  The press was also eager to believe that Sammy Hamilton had brutally murdered Olivia Hammersmith during a botched burglary, despite the fact that Olivia had never hosted a card game, so it was unlikely her house had ever been a target.

  As Matt winked at a fawning, blond, female TV reporter who had gushed about his prowess as an expert crime solver, he declared while smiling directly into the camera, “Case closed!”