Death by Killer Mop Doll (An Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery)

by Lois Winston

  Lucille stood in the middle of the street. She leaned on her own walker, which she hadn’t used in months, while a reporter from ABC interviewed her. The other network reporters and camera crews stood off to the side, no doubt awaiting their turns.

  “Why don’t you haul them away and lock them up?” I asked Harley. “Don’t they need a permit to congregate or something?”

  “The mayor and police chief don’t want the negative publicity. Can you imagine how the networks would skewer us if we cuffed a bunch of semi-invalid old ladies and tossed them into lock-up?”

  Personally, I thought a night in lock-up might shock some sense into Lucille, but I saw the mayor’s and police chief’s point. Westfield was one of those New Jersey towns prized by Hollywood film companies for location shoots, and I was all in favor of Hollywood filling the town coffers to keep my taxes down. We certainly didn’t want to create a situation that gave the film companies an excuse to move to Chatham or Upper Montclair.

  “How long have they been here?” I asked.

  “Couple of hours. Eventually they’ll get tired and leave. At least, that’s what the mayor and chief hope.”

  “Have they made any demands?”

  “None that I know. They just took up positions and blocked traffic. Haven’t said a word except for your mother-in-law talking to the cameras. Wonder who called them?”

  “I’ve got a pretty good idea,” said Mama.

  I couldn’t disagree. I turned back to Harley. “Anything you want me to do?”

  “Nah. Just thought you’d want to know what’s going on. You can leave any time you want.”

  After we returned to the car, Mama asked, “What do you plan to do about her?”

  I thought for a minute before answering. How I responded to Lucille’s protest might negatively impact an already precarious relationship. “Nothing,” I finally said. “I’m going to pretend not to know anything about it. And so should you, Mama. Lucille acts too much like a tantrum-prone toddler. Let’s deny her a stage.”

  “What about all the TV cameras? This will be all over the six o’clock news.”

  I braked for a stop sign and turned to her. “Really, Mama, when was the last time I had a chance to watch the evening news?”

  _____

  I might not have time for the news media, but as it turned out, the news media had plenty of time for me. We arrived home to find additional reporters and camera crews camped in front of the house. They didn’t even give me time to get out of the car before shoving microphones at me.

  “Mrs. Pollack, what do you think of your mother-in-law’s protest?”

  “No comment.”

  “Is it true she was the victim of a hit and run?”

  No, actually she was the victim of an unsuccessful hit, but even Lucille didn’t know the truth about the accident that resulted in her coming to live with us, not that I was inclined to spill the beans to the obnoxious Barbie doll reporter currently invading my personal space. “No comment.”

  “Mrs. Pollack, would you like to make a statement for the press?”

  I turned to the reporter who’d asked that question. “Yes, I would.” They all clamored closer, their mics held in outstretched arms to capture my words.

  I paused for dramatic effect, then spoke, “You’re all trespassing on private property. Leave or I’ll call the police.” With that I took hold of Mama’s arm and pushed our way through the fourth estate gaggle and into my house, slamming the door behind me.

  “So much for pretending we don’t know anything,” said Mama.

  “We can still refuse to engage her in conversation about it,” I said. “Don’t bait her.”

  “Me?” Mama walked across the living room to where Catherine the Great was sunning herself in the bay window. She picked up the corpulent kitty and kissed the top of her head. “Really, Anastasia, I’d never stoop to that commie pinko’s level.”

  Really, indeed. But I kept my mouth shut as I executed a huge mental eye roll.

  Lucille’s shenanigans were the least of my worries, though. Staging protests came second nature to my mother-in-law. Rumor had it, she went into labor with Karl in the middle of a sit-in, protesting the country’s involvement in Vietnam. She’d refused to leave, even after her water broke. Karl was born under the arch in Washington Square. Literally.

  Her personality aside, part of me admired Lucille’s dedication, passion, and courage when it came to standing up for what she believed in. I saw nothing wrong with protesting something that mattered. Our country was founded on such principles. However, her latest cause made me suspect she’d developed a Moses complex, expecting traffic to stop for her the moment she stepped into the street the way Moses had stepped off the shoreline and parted the Red Sea. That kind of behavior was not only nuts, it would eventually get her killed.

  Unfortunately, once Lucille made up her mind about something, nothing would sway her from her cause. Not a baby who decided to arrive at an inconvenient moment and certainly not our local police department. Lucille had taken on the NYPD. To her the WPD was no more a nuisance than a gnat to a gorilla. I don’t know why I’d thought a night in lock-up might bring her to her senses. Knowing Lucille, she’d look forward to lock-up, all publicity being good publicity. Who else would have called the press to both the center of town and my home?

  Lucille would always march to the beat of her own Kremlin Marching Band. Somehow we’d deal. Right now, though, I was more concerned with protecting the rest of my family from whomever killed Lou and attempted to kill Vince. I had no idea whether or not Lou and Vince were the killer’s only targets or if more killings were planned. Not knowing the killer’s motive made protecting us nearly impossible. How do you protect yourself and your loved ones from an unknown, mysterious assailant?

  The more I pondered my dilemma, the more my thoughts kept zeroing back to Lou’s finances. I thought that if I could solve that mystery, I’d be well on my way to figuring out the identity of the killer.

  Of course, Zack would say to leave all this to the detectives investigating the case, but how could I? When your family is in danger, you don’t sit back and wait for help to arrive. You do whatever it takes to protect them from that danger.

  I wondered if I’d overlooked some essential clue at Lou’s apartment, perhaps a clue that even Phillips and Marlowe had also missed. Mama still had Lou’s keys. I could run into the city, give the apartment a thorough search, and arrive home in time to cook dinner.

  “Why do you need Lou’s keys?” asked Mama.

  I told her my plan.

  “I’ll go with you. Two can search faster than one.”

  I really didn’t want Mama playing sidekick, but she’d made up her mind, and getting Flora Sudberry Periwinkle Ramirez Scoffield Goldberg O’Keefe to change her mind was as impossible as getting Lucille to accept someone else’s opinion. On anything.

  _____

  An hour later, thanks to reporters blocking my driveway, the ever-present Lincoln Tunnel backup, and cross-town gridlock, we stood in the outer lobby of Lou’s building. Mama pulled a key ring from her purse and proceeded to unlock the door that led from the lobby to the first floor hallway and staircase.

  “What are all those other keys?” I asked, noticing for the first time that the key ring held more than just the key to the foyer lock and the three deadbolts on Lou’s apartment door.

  Mama shrugged. “I have no idea. Lou just handed me an extra set of keys. He pointed out the ones I’d need to get into the apartment but never told me about the others. I suppose some are his office keys.”

  Which meant I could also search Lou’s office today. Forget dinner. I’d scramble up a batch of eggs for all of us when we got home. I wasn’t about to pass up the chance to do a bit of Sherlocking without fear of discovery by Sheri or anyone else connected with the show.

  Mama and I climbed up the two flights to the third floor. “Good.” I sighed in relief as we stood in front of Lou’s apartment door. “No cr
ime scene tape.”

  I wasn’t sure what I would have done had I found the yellow and black DO NOT CROSS warning crisscrossed over the entrance. Lucille might not mind an occasional night in lock-up for the cause, but I wasn’t about to learn first hand whether I did or not.

  “Why would there be crime scene tape, dear? Lou was killed at the studio, not in his apartment. This isn’t a crime scene.”

  I suppose Mama had learned that from watching Law & Order. Still, I wasn’t convinced and was relieved to discover I didn’t have to contemplate breaking the law to solve a murder.

  I didn’t know what I hoped to find, especially since I had no idea what to look for. Besides, Phillips and Marlowe had already searched the apartment. Was it likely two NYPD detectives would overlook or dismiss, a piece of crucial evidence? I had to do something, though, and right now the only something I could think to do was search through Lou’s belongings.

  The apartment was much the way we’d left it three and a half weeks ago. The empty bottle of Glenlivet still stood on the coffee table, the mail still scattered around the table and couch. I walked over to Lou’s desk and opened the file drawer to find the folders containing Lou’s will, insurance policy, and brokerage statement all still in place. I guess Phillips and Marlowe hadn’t found anything amiss with them either.

  I pulled the brokerage statement from its folder and studied it. Last time I’d focused on nothing other than the bottom line—all those numbers to the left of the decimal point. This time I started at the top. “Oh. My. God.”

  “What is it, dear?” Mama stood behind me, looking over my shoulder.

  I pointed to the name of Lou’s brokerage firm. Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC. How had I missed that? “I suppose now we know what happened to all of Lou’s money.”

  Like many other New Yorkers, Lou Beaumont had invested his life’s savings with the man responsible for pulling off the largest Ponzi scheme in history. I checked the date on the statement. November 30, 2008. Less than two weeks before Madoff’s arrest. I suppose Lou had held onto this last statement all these years as a reminder of the fortune he thought he owned.

  This explained why Lou wasn’t paying the alimony he owed his ex-wives and why he’d bought Mama a cheap diamond. Had he not died, I wonder how long he would have tried to string Mama along with false promises. Or maybe the man had lived in total denial, unable to accept the fact that his fortune wasn’t worth the paper this last statement was printed on. We’d never know.

  _____

  “To the studio?” Mama asked as we exited Lou’s building.

  “Home,” I replied.

  “I thought you wanted to search through Lou’s office?”

  “Not anymore. We’ve unraveled the mystery of his finances. What would be the point of searching through his office?”

  Mama gave me one of those looks that translates into did-I-really-raise-such-a-dense-daughter? “To discover who killed him, of course.”

  “Don’t you think that if there were some major clue concerning Lou’s killer lurking within his desk drawers, the police would have discovered it by now?”

  “Like they discovered he’d been swindled by Bernie Madoff ?”

  “I’m sure they already know. I’m the one who didn’t look closely enough at that brokerage statement the first time we were here. Besides, it doesn’t seem likely that Lou was killed over his finances.”

  “What about those money-grubbing ex-wives of his?”

  “First of all, only one of Lou’s ex-wives complained about money. Rochelle said she took a lump sum when she and Lou divorced, and we never talked to any of the other wives besides Francine.”

  “She certainly seemed bitter enough to kill.”

  “But it was old news, Mama. Why would she wait years after the fact?”

  “Maybe she wasn’t desperate enough until now. She did look like she needed some corrective plastic surgery.”

  “I think Francine’s problem is that she’s had one too many plastic surgeries. The woman has a face only the late Michael Jackson could have loved. Anyway, if she’d killed Lou, she would have been arrested by now.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “For one thing, she didn’t strike me as someone with enough gray matter to plot a murder and get away with it. More importantly, the building has surveillance cameras at all the entrances. If Francine had showed up at the studio that day, she would have been caught on camera.”

  Mama finally conceded. “I suppose you’re right, dear. Might as well go home and see what kind of trouble the commie pinko has gotten herself into since we left. Do you think she’s still blocking traffic? Or maybe the police finally hauled her off to jail.”

  Mama relished that idea a little too much. I understood she and Lucille would never get along, but the discord they created in my home only added to the stress in my life. Each took too much pleasure in egging the other on.

  Part of me wished Mama and Lou had married and ridden off into the sunset for whatever time they would have had together—with or without Lou’s millions. There would have been a lot less bickering at Casa Pollack.

  _____

  We arrived back in Westfield to find the news vans gone from the street but my house overrun with Daughters of the October Revolution.

  Eighteen

  The Daughters of the October Revolution, none of whom had been alive during the actual October Revolution of 1917, had taken over my living room, dining room, and kitchen. Some of the women assembled picket signs; others pecked away on laptops; still others yakked on cell phones while stuffing envelopes.

  Thirteen folded walkers cluttered the foyer. Like my mother-in-law, none of Lucille’s cohorts needed the aid of a walker. I knew that from my previous encounters with the Daughters of the October Revolution. They all managed to navigate fine on their own or with the use of canes.

  “Look at that,” said Mama, waving her arm in the direction of the commie klatch. “They don’t need walkers. They just used them as sympathy props. Talk about manipulating the press!”

  I realized that when we saw them blocking the intersection, but I hadn’t bothered to mention it to Mama at the time. She already had enough ammo in her verbal arsenal to fire at Lucille. I didn’t need to hand her more.

  I stepped into the middle of the living room. “What’s going on here?” I asked.

  A woman I recognized from previous encounters with the Daughters of the October Revolution glanced up from her computer. If Touchstone ever decided to do a remake of The Golden Girls, they could cast Harriet Kleinhample as Sophia. The woman was a dead ringer for Estelle Getty, right down to her diminutive stature and oversized attitude. She’d only have to act herself to clinch the role.

  “We’re organizing our campaign,” she said. “You have any more 24-lb. bright white stock? Recycled, of course. We’re almost out. I only found half a ream downstairs.”

  “You helped yourself to my office supplies?”

  “For the cause. Lucille said you wouldn’t mind.”

  I took a better look at the items scattered around the dining room table. All mine. My paper. My stapler. My glue gun. My markers. Right down to my computer printer plugged into Harriet’s laptop and spewing forth page after page of full-color, high-quality printed flyers that were quickly drinking up my last color ink cartridge.

  I pressed the cancel button on the printer, then the OFF switch.

  “Hey! I was still printing.”

  “Not anymore.” I pulled the plug, wrapped the cord around my hand and hoisted the printer into my arms. The thing weighed a ton. How in the world had gnome-sized Harriet Kleinhample dragged it into the dining room?

  “Wait until Lucille hears about this!”

  “Why wait? Where is the rabble-rouser?”

  Harriet shouted at the top of her lungs, “Lucille!”

  By this time all the other Daughters of the October Revolution had stopped their typing, stapling, yakking, and stuffing to gla
re at me with one collective Lucille-type glare. They must practice that look at their weekly meetings.

  We waited, me hugging the printer to my chest, the Daughters continuing to shoot me with their en masse evil eye.

  “Anyone see Lucille?” asked Harriet.

  The eleven other women looked questioningly at each other, all shaking their heads.

  “She’s probably in the bedroom, taking a nap,” suggested Mama, “while her minions do all the work. Want me to go wake her?”

  “I’ll do it,” I said. “You’d enjoy yourself too much.” Not trusting Harriet, I placed the printer back on the dining room table but kept the cord as I headed toward the bedroom. Mama followed me.

  We’d only gotten halfway across the living room when we heard the toilet flush. I stopped and waited for Lucille to reappear.

  “Your daughter-in-law refuses to let us use the printer,” said Harriet, the moment Lucille rounded the hallway into the living room.

  Lucille immediately got up into my face and started yelling at me at the top of her lungs, her face and neck turning a mottled maroon. “We have important work to do, and you’re not going to stop us.”

  I kept my voice at a normal level, refusing to stoop to her tantrum level. “I’m not stopping you from doing your important work. I’m simply reclaiming my possessions. Take up a collection, and do your important work on your own dime. I can’t afford your nonsense.”

  Purple quickly replaced the maroon of Lucille’s neck and face. “Nonsense? How dare you! Our work is far more important than yours!”

  “My work keeps a roof over your head and food in your belly, Lucille. Don’t forget that. You’re welcome to leave at any time if you don’t like the living conditions here.” I grabbed the printer off the table and started for my bedroom.

  “Give me that!” Lucille grabbed for the printer and tried to tug it out of my arms. “You have no right! Lives are at stake here, and all you care about is yourself. You’re selfish, Anastasia. You always have been. My son never should have married you. You were never good enough for Karl.”