by Ann Roberts
She tossed it back into the glove box, her urge to smoke squashed when she thought of Ari shaking her head in disappointment. Her mother had died of cancer, and although Lucia Adams had never smoked, Ari had constantly expressed how glad she was that Molly had given up such a deadly habit.
The drive to the Roosevelt Community Church took less than ten minutes, but finding a parking space took another twenty. She found a spot on Pierce Street and trekked over to the church on Third and Roosevelt. The Roosevelt Apartments cast a shadow over the church and she made a mental note to investigate its history since the owner was Sebastian King, one of the First Friday council members who’d voted against hiring her.
She found Reverend Glass and several parishioners tending the community garden that sat next to the church. When he saw her on the sidewalk, he relinquished his rake to a teenage boy and joined her.
He removed his wide-brimmed hat and wiped his face with a bandanna from his pocket. “Hello, Ms. Nelson. Would you care to join us?”
She smiled and said, “Next time I would be more than happy to wear my gardening clothes.”
His eyes narrowed. “I’ll hold you to that.”
“I have no doubt, Reverend,” she laughed. “I’ve heard some of your parishioners knew Ms. Wonders, and I’m hoping to speak with a few of them. Did you know her?”
“Not really. She didn’t attend services. Until she became homeless she only visited the Row on First Fridays. I don’t think she was ever really part of our community.”
“Why do you say that?”
“She adopted LGA and stayed over there. The people on the Row only knew her as Care, the woman who loved art and bought a lot of it. Damn shame,” he said. He reached down and picked up a discarded soda can and candy wrapper. “I don’t know why people can’t be more considerate.”
She followed him down the sidewalk to a trash can painted with Keith Haring figures. “I have to say I’m very impressed with how clean RoRo is.”
“That’s because a whole lot of people work very hard to keep it that way. First and Third Fridays are a blessing and a curse.” He continued to pick up nearby trash and she felt obliged to help. “We need the revenue but we could do without the boorishness, the obnoxious behavior and definitely the slovenliness.” He held up a discarded whiskey bottle to make his point. “This is our home and I wish more people would treat it as such.”
“So you live on the Row?”
“I do.” He pointed south toward a two-story building beside the church. “I live on the second floor above the tattoo shop.”
“That sounds interesting.”
“Usually it’s not a big deal. I don’t need much and I spend most of my time at the church or in the garden.”
Two young men approached, chatting and juggling bowling pins. Molly and Reverend Glass stepped off the sidewalk and they offered their thanks as they passed, never dropping the pins that sailed between them.
She chuckled and he said, “Only on the Row.” He looked up and down the street. “What this place has become in the last ten years is nothing short of remarkable.”
“You sound very proud of RoRo.”
“I am. The people who’ve been here since the beginning, people like Crosby Brunell, Sebastian King and myself, saw what this place could become. We had a vision. We stuck to it. We didn’t listen to those who told us to give it up. And now we have a community. Nothing is going to tear that down.”
He sounded like a preacher as he pointed in the direction of LGA. “If Tony Sanchez and the others can make it work on LGA, then good luck to them. But leave us out of it.”
“So you’re in favor of LGA having an art community, but you don’t want them joined together,” she concluded.
“Yes. We can share things like the expense for the trolley, but there should be two councils, two communities.”
“Do you think the crime on LGA might have anything to do with RoRo? Someone from RoRo making sure only one community survives?”
“I’m not sure what’s going on,” he said mildly.
She eyed him shrewdly. “Reverend Glass, with all due respect, I think you know everything that’s going on.”
He offered a little smile. “What you need to understand, Ms. Nelson, is that I try to stay above the pettiness. Often I’m called upon to mediate and do what the council cannot.”
“Which is?”
“Keep the peace,” he said simply.
“Your choice of words is interesting. Lev Rosenthal told me that he was put on the council to keep the peace.”
“That’s true, but he’s blinded by love now. He’s definitely in favor of the communities joining together.”
“I have to ask where you were last Thursday afternoon.”
“I was in the church praying.”
“Were you alone?”
“Unfortunately, yes, so I don’t have an airtight alibi for the time of Ms. Wonders’s death. I wish I did, but I don’t.” His matter-of-fact tone acknowledged he knew he was a suspect.
They returned to the garden and he pointed to a woman with flowing red hair. “I think the person who knew Care Kendricks the best is Maya Corbett. She owns MonOrchid.”
He waved at Maya to join them and made introductions.
“I knew Care, or rather, Ms. Wonders, very well,” Maya told her. “She was such a lovely woman, and Jonny too. Such a shame.” Her huge dangling earrings were made of stained glass and she wore a matching necklace over her T-shirt.
“I love MonOrchid,” Molly said truthfully. She and Ari had always made a point to stop in during their First or Third Friday visits. “Your displays are incredible.”
“Thank you,” she said humbly. “I wouldn’t mind talking with you. I think I knew her better than anyone except perhaps Tony Sanchez. They were very close. Do you have some questions you’d like to ask?”
They waved goodbye to Reverend Glass and headed across the street to the park. Molly steered them to an empty picnic table under the awning and away from the screaming children on the lawn.
“How did you come to know Ms. Wonders?”
Maya smiled and the sun caught the stained glass in her earrings, nearly blinding Molly. “We met about three years ago. She and Jonny came into MonOrchid during a photography exhibit and bought several pieces. It’s always good business to get to know customers, and we spent quite a while chatting about photography. They’d just moved here from California. Jonny needed to be in a dry climate for her health.”
“What was wrong with her?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know and I don’t know that she knew really. Sometimes when they’d come by Jonny was using a cane, and the last few months before she died she looked awful.”
Molly thought about the thick file folder stuffed with information. “Did she ever talk about the VA?”
Her expression shifted and her eyes widened. “Oh, yes. She ranted about the VA not helping her at all, and it showed. I wasn’t surprised when she died. Do you know she committed suicide?”
“Yes,” she said softly. “You said they bought several pieces of art. They weren’t homeless at the time?”
“Oh, no. They talked about their condo. Jonny always called her Care.”
“So you knew that her real name was Care Kendricks?”
“Uh-huh. That was the name on the AMEX card they used to buy art.” She motioned to the buildings surrounding the park. “They bought from all of us.” She paused and her shoulders sank. “After Jonny died Care disappeared for a few months. We all noticed. Our profit margins noticed,” she chuckled. “Then one day she appeared alone, carrying a little backpack. She wandered through the gallery, and when I approached her she acted as if she didn’t know me. Then we talked a little longer, and it was like she came into focus. She told me Jonny died. I extended my condolences and she left. A few days later I was walking back up Roosevelt and I saw her Dumpster diving on Fourth. I couldn’t believe it.”
“She hadn’t told you she was li
ving on the street?”
“No, she didn’t mention it at all. I was mortified.” Maya touched her heart and said, “If I’d known when she came through MonOrchid, I would’ve been more insistent about helping her.”
“Did you approach her that day?”
“Of course! And again, she wasn’t herself. She was disoriented and she just stood there mumbling.” Maya held up a hand. “That’s not true. She wasn’t mumbling. She was singing.”
“What was she singing?”
“‘Seven Wonders’ by Fleetwood Mac. Told me her name was Ms. Wonders. She started to get really agitated. She balled up her hands and she got in my face. I’d never seen her like this. I didn’t know how to react so I just stepped back to see what would happen.”
“And what did she do?”
“She fished a half-eaten sandwich out of the Dumpster and put it in her backpack. Then she shuffled back onto Roosevelt. I followed her for about an hour. She just wandered around and finally came here to the park and sat on that bench over there.” Maya pointed to the bench closest to the life-size art. “When she opened her backpack and pulled out that disgusting sandwich, that’s where I drew the line. I went and sat next to her. By then she was coherent and the aggressiveness was gone. I asked her where she’d gotten the sandwich and she said Carly’s Bistro. I told her it wasn’t from Carly’s, and she held it up and studied it. Then she just started shaking and crying.
“I took her to MonOrchid and fed her. She told me about how she’d found Jonny hanging from the ceiling fan. She was completely despondent. Said she couldn’t ever go back there. I let her stay at MonOrchid that night, but around two in the morning I got a call from my security company saying the alarm was going off. I came down here and found the front door unlocked and Ms. Wonders was gone. She’d set off the silent alarm when she left.”
“When was the next time you saw her?”
She disappeared to a faraway place and Molly watched the sun glisten against her earrings. “I would say it was two weeks.” She nodded. “Yes, this was about the time I ran into Tony Sanchez. Apparently she’d gone over to LGA, which is why I hadn’t seen her. She was living over there. Tony was making sure she had a place to sleep.” Maya stared at her. “It’s just so hard to help someone who doesn’t want to be helped. It’s like she wanted to be homeless, and when she wasn’t lucid it was impossible to reason with her.”
“Are there any other artists or merchants on RoRo who knew her as well as you?”
“Perhaps not as well as me, but there are a few who knew her and Jonny. I’m thinking of Shay at Carly’s Bistro, Naomi at Bodega and Juan at MADE.”
Molly glanced at her notes. There was still a missing piece. “You don’t have any idea where her pension checks were going?”
Maya looked surprised. “I never thought of that. I knew she was in the military, both she and Jonny. That’s a good question.” She tapped a finger against her lips and said, “You know, the downtown post office is only a few blocks away. Maybe they send her checks to a P.O. box there.”
Recognizing she had zero authority to ask for records, she still made a note to check the post office on Monday. “When was the last time you saw her and did you notice anything different about her?”
“You know, I rarely saw her anymore, but last Wednesday I saw her by the Roosevelt Apartments. She said something about an investigation. How the next day was pie day.”
She looked up from her notepad. “Pie day? Pie like you eat or pi like the math concept?”
Maya threw up her hands. “I have no idea. I assumed she was a little confused and let it go.”
“She was investigating something?”
“That’s what she said, but she said a lot of things. The VA conspired against Jonny. She was going to be Stevie Nicks in her next life… all sorts of stuff. I wasn’t sure what to believe. What I can tell you is that when she was all there, she was one of the sharpest people I’ve met, so if she really was investigating someone, I’d be worried if I were them.”
Molly flipped her notebook shut and looked around the park. “What do you make of the situation between RoRo and LGA?”
Maya withdrew at the question. The woman who had been so helpful and animated with her responses disappeared. She bit her lip and chose her words carefully. “What many in the RoRo community do not understand is that LGA is going to happen regardless of what we want. We have an opportunity to shape it, and we’re not taking it.”
“Do you have any ideas about who’s responsible for the crime?”
She glanced up and down Roosevelt as if she were associating artists with the buildings they inhabited. “Not really. Most of us are just trying to get by. We don’t have the time or the inclination to be vindictive. We tend to let the council speak for us. But sometimes things happen.”
“What do you mean?”
She stretched her legs out from under the picnic table as if she was preparing to go. “Sometimes people tend to throw up roadblocks against LGA, and LGA’s done the same to us, so it’s all fair in love and war.”
“What kind of roadblocks?” Molly probed.
She waved a hand. “I really shouldn’t say. But it’s silly, and if we joined with LGA it would all go away. But most people don’t share my opinion, which is why I tend to keep it to myself. So if you ever tell anyone I am in support of joining with LGA, I’ll deny it.”
With that Maya made her farewell.
Chapter Eight
Despite being wrapped up in a murder investigation, Ari was enchanted by the Scrabble property. Chynna had unlocked each of the four identical cottages, and Ari envisioned huge potential with the right concept linking everything together. As she went about her business of running Sunday errands, the notion of purchasing Scrabble continually crept back into her mind, and she chased it away with the scolding thought that it was sheer madness to entertain the possibility of purchasing not one, but two properties on LGA. She could hear the stern warning her financial planner would give her.
She finally called Jane for her opinion, knowing her best friend was always candid. “Do you think I’m nuts?”
“Not at all,” Jane said. “You just need to find the right four businesses to go in the cottages and a primary draw for the big building. You’d get your money back every month and you’d be helping LGA. I myself might have an idea for one of those cottages,” she said mysteriously. “Just do it!” she shouted before she hung up.
Perhaps she would. She unloaded the groceries and thought about Chynna as a viable suspect. She seemed forthcoming as she answered her questions, but she knew a practiced liar hugged the truth with at least one arm. She couldn’t imagine how upset Chynna must be over losing her dream. She’d gone to a tremendous amount of effort with the property, bringing in the cabins, designing the patio and renovating the coffeehouse. Ari could certainly picture her throwing a rock at Brown’s Diner or planting a smoke bomb. And she’d confirmed that Ms. Wonders carried a notebook, which she imagined had a strip of Velcro to secure the pen she saw at the murder scene. Where is it now? Why was Ms. Wonders watching Chynna so intently? And Chynna was standing right outside the murder scene watching the drama unfold.
She finished putting away her groceries and glanced at the kitchen clock. The matinee was at two and it was already twelve fifteen. She trudged to the shower, dreading the afternoon. Tears joined the water that streamed down her face until she realized she was already grieving a loss that hadn’t happened yet. She and Molly might still have a chance.
Her cell phone was ringing when she got out of the shower. Molly. “Are we still on?” she asked abruptly, dripping water all over her bedroom hardwood.
“That depends on you. I need to keep working on this case and I can’t afford to lose an afternoon sitting in a movie theater.” She exhaled audibly. “But I also really need your help, Ari. You found the body and there’s probably stuff you saw at the crime scene that you haven’t even realized are clues.” Her tone was forcef
ul. “I have a meeting with Tony Sanchez. Sundays are his only down time, so he said he’d talk to us. I also thought we could stop by Brown’s Diner. They stay open until three. Then we could stop at the Bikini Lounge and talk with the manager. Will you help me?”
She closed her eyes. “Molly, I really don’t think I can do this. I don’t think I can just be friends.” She sat down on the bed, the wet floor forgotten. Her statement was met with silence so she babbled on. “Seeing you on Sundays these last few months has reminded me of how much I enjoyed parts of our life together.”
“Only parts?” Molly asked, but she heard the playfulness in her voice.
“Well, yeah, you know what the rest of it was like.”
“True,” was the breathy reply.
“I guess that’s why I kissed you.”
“Uh, I kissed you,” Molly objected.
“Uh, no, I kissed you.”
“That’s not the way I remember it.”
She sighed, pleased that Molly was so adamant about being the aggressor. “Fine, you kissed me. So do you regret it? Was it a mistake?”
Molly laughed, clearly embarrassed. She finally said, “No, I don’t regret it.” She cleared her throat and asked, “So you want to be more than friends. You’re going on record with that?”
“Yeah, I’m on the record. It’s killing me that Yoli is getting to see the best version of you. I mean you were great before, but now you’re freaking awesome.” She shut her mouth and stared down at her towel. “This is not the way I imagined this conversation. I just got out of the shower and I’m sitting here in my towel, dripping water everywhere.” She heard nothing and she wondered if they’d been disconnected. “Molly?”
“You think I’m awesome?”
