by Marja McGraw
“Interesting,” Chris said, nodding his head and rolling his upper lip under again. “But, of course, that doesn’t mean the stiff was knocked off in 1942. No telling how long the letter had been in his wallet.”
“Right,” the detective said, lips twitching again. “So now I do a lot of research and try to figure this thing out. Are you sure we haven’t met?”
“His skull appeared to have been bashed in,” Chris said, ignoring her question.
The detective merely looked at my husband, not confirming or denying his comment.
“Well?” Chris asked.
“I’ll leave that determination up to the coroner.”
“When can we start work on the house?” I asked.
“I’ll let you know. We’ll want to look around the house, too.”
Frustrated, Chris and I gave up and drove home, discussing what had happened. The discussion was relatively short because we simply didn’t know anything.
Constance agreed to stay for dinner when I invited her. Chris and Mikey settled down in front of the television, watching an old movie, and Constance helped me in the kitchen. She wanted to know what was going on, so I told her what little I knew.
“Okay,” she said, “your story is fascinating, but I can’t believe there wasn’t a second body. I mean, there were two concrete pads.”
“My reaction was similar to yours. Wow! How callous it is of me to be disappointed that there wasn’t a second body? I should be glad there wasn’t another set of bones.”
“You’re right, but I still wish there’d been more to the story. It feels like it’s not done.”
“It isn’t. We still don’t know who the guy was or what happened to him. Or who killed him.”
We both became quiet while we finished fixing dinner.
“Soup’s on,” I called when the food was ready.
While we were eating, Mikey finally asked why the police had been at the new house.
“There was a body in the basement,” Constance said. She made it sound so simple.
“Yeah, right,” Mikey said. “I’m not a baby anymore. You could tell me why the coppers were really there.”
“Coppers?” I laughed. “You’ve been spending way too much time with your dad.” Or was it me?
The mention of his dad did it. Mikey’s attention was nicely diverted again. We finished dinner and Constance headed home while my son went upstairs to take a shower and I washed the dishes.
I didn’t call Sharon because I had nothing to report. She, however, was persistent and called me during her date with Big D.
“Sharon, don’t you think you should be concentrating on Davey?” I asked.
“He wants to know what’s going on, too,” she replied.
I doubted that.
“Besides,” Sharon continued, “the sooner I can work on my story, the sooner we can try to find some kind of good publicity. I’ve already talked to my editor, and he’s going to give me some space on this one.”
I finally made Sharon understand that we didn’t know anything, and that I wasn’t about to make something up, and she went back to her date with Big D.
Mikey went to bed, and Chris and I fell asleep on the couch before getting up and going upstairs to our own room for the night.
***
Detective Riley showed up on our doorstep early the next day, before I’d had a chance to prepare breakfast. She wanted to see the paperwork we had on the house, which didn’t tell her a thing about anyone except the guy who’d owned the house before us.
“I’m going to have to research the house,” she said.
Sherlock and Watson were quite curious about the visiting stranger.
“Are these the dogs who found the body?” she asked.
“They are,” Chris said. “The smaller Lab is Watson, and Sherlock is the big one.”
“Nice dogs. Did you know labs are sometimes used for rescue?”
“I know,” Chris replied. “As a matter of fact, they saved a man’s life when our old restaurant burned down.” I detected a note of pride in his voice, which was not misplaced.
“Come on, kids,” I said to the Labs. “Let’s go outside.”
“You can leave them here, if you like,” Detective Riley said. “I have a female chocolate Lab myself. I like the breed. And I guess we have something in common. I named her Friday, after Sergeant Joe Friday of TV fame.”
I smiled and immediately began to take a liking to this woman.
“I’ve done some checking on the driver’s license,” she said, getting down to business. “If it does belong to the body we found, then his name is Charles Blakely. We’re searching for family or anyone who might remember him. Needless to say, we don’t have much to go on yet.”
I was surprised that she was sharing her information with us.
“Honestly, I don’t think this investigation is going very far. I’ll do what I can, but there are too many current cases to deal with and this one may go into the cold files for now. We’ve gone over the house, but nothing turned up.”
“What about the work we want to do? You didn’t tear out any walls or anything, did you?” I asked.
“No, the house in intact. I’ll let you know when you can begin construction,” the detective replied. “Just give me a little time. I’ve talked to the coroner and she’s going to fit this case into her schedule so we can move on to more current cases. In the meantime, relax and make your plans for your little restaurant.”
That sounded condescending, but I ignored it because I sincerely wanted to like this woman. I liked the way she was sharing information with us. I glanced at Chris and felt confident that he was feeling the same way.
“Well,” she said, standing up, “I’d better get busy. Too much to do and not enough hours in the day.”
“May I ask your first name, Detective Riley?” I asked.
“Janet,” she replied. “Janet Riley.”
My husband walked outside with Detective Janet Riley. Sherlock and Watson accompanied them. I watched out the window and saw Janet talk to the dogs and pat their heads before she left. Chris waved as she pulled away from the curb.
“Did you find out anything else?” I asked when he brought the dogs into the house.
“The department isn’t going to give this case a high priority. She said they’re going to have to take care of the basics and then the file basically gets stuck in a drawer. Maybe someday when time allows, it will be pulled out and looked at again. And then she said that I look familiar. I wonder how long it will take her to figure me out.”
“Do you think we’ll actually see her again? She probably won’t have any more business with us. We don’t have anything to do with this case.”
Chris appeared thoughtful. “I can’t explain it, but I think we’ll see her again. If for no other reason than because she’s curious about me, and she seems to like you.”
I thought his reasoning was skewed, but I kept my trap shut.
“I’m kind of surprised they didn’t find anything under that other slab yesterday,” I said.
“I asked her about that. She said there were scratches on the concrete that made it look like someone had used it to set things on. Like maybe they were heavy and dragged off when they were moved.”
“Huh. Could have been furniture or something. The second slab did seem bigger than the first one.”
“Are we still going to have some breakfast?” Chris asked.
“I’ll bet you’re starving by now. I’ll go put something together.”
“Never mind,” he said. “It’s getting late. I’ll just have cereal.”
“Are you sure? It wouldn’t take long to fix something.”
“I’m sure. We’ve got enough to take care of today without worrying about a late breakfast.”
“Have you asked Big D about getting the electricity turned on at the house?” I asked. “I don’t know if that place has new wiring or not. We certainly don’t want to have to worry about another
fire.”
“Yeah, one fire’s enough for a lifetime. I asked him about that yesterday, and he said he’d have to do some rewiring, so as soon as we can get back into the house…”
After breakfast we drove downtown to start looking at paint and wallpaper. I decided to pick out the vintage wallpaper first and then find the right shade of paint.
I looked at the floral patterns. There was one with a red background and white flowers. It was way too overpowering for a restaurant like ours. I wanted something that would set people at ease. One was a grey background with white flowers, but it looked like it belonged in a bathroom. I didn’t want wallpaper in our public restrooms because they get so much use.
Floral patterns on anything were big in the forties. I thought about looking for a wicker couch with a floral pattern seat cover to put out on the porch during the nice weather. I’d seen one in an antique store. In the meantime I settled on wallpaper with… What else, flowers and leaves, a la forties-style.
“You know, Bogey Man, sometimes I think I should have been born a lot earlier, like in the twenties or thirties.”
“And why is that?” he asked.
“Because I’ve taken to all things from the forties so easily. It was a simpler time. People were simpler. Life was better. Since I met you, I’ve learned so much about that era, and I really like it.”
“Simpler? They did dishes by hand, hung their laundry on a clothes line, no microwaves or frozen dinners when you were in a hurry, and there was a world war going on. You couldn’t use a phone on the run because there were no cell phones. No computers to pay bills online or to do research. There were so many things that you couldn’t do then that you can do now.”
“Less crime,” I said.
“Pamela, we found a body in our cellar, and he had a letter that was dated 1942 in his wallet.”
For at least a couple of hours, I’d forgotten about the body in the cellar.
Chapter Seven
The next morning I checked the newspaper to see if Sharon had written anything yet. There was nothing, and I was relieved. Chris and I were still trying to figure out how anyone could put a good spin on our discovery. It wasn’t going to be easy, and I wondered if it was even possible. There were two strikes against us – a fire at one restaurant and bones in the basement at the new location. I could see the headline. “Fire and Murder Plague Restaurateurs.”
Murder, most probably, although we didn’t know anything for sure yet. I wondered how I could get Janet Riley to share with us. Did I want her to share with us? Yes. I didn’t understand my motivation, but I wanted to get involved. I mentioned it to Chris.
“Oh, I can understand. You want to set the record straight and emphasize it happened a long time ago so there won’t be a cloud over the restaurant, right?”
I thought for a moment. “There’s that, but there’s also the idea of becoming involved in a real mystery. I guess I’ve spent too much time around you, Bogey Man.”
My husband smiled, after turning his lip under in his best Bogey fashion and pulling thoughtfully on his ear lobe. “This is an old mystery. Maybe it’s time to get out my Bogey duds and quit crying in my beer about the business. You’re right about us being hit by a double whammy though, but if we solve this murder that would certainly be good for business – I think. I can be a P.I. and you can be my gal Friday. Whadda ya say, cupcake?”
“How are we going to get Janet to tell us what’s going on?”
“You leave that to me. I think I can talk her into jawing with us.”
Without warning a feeling of fear overtook me. I could feel it in the pit of my stomach. We weren’t P.I.s, and we weren’t in an old movie. This was real life, even if the crime had been committed many years ago. The feeling left me as suddenly as it had hit me.
I watched as Chris pulled out the phone book and looked up a listing. He punched in some numbers and smiled at me.
“Who are you calling?” I asked.
He held up his finger, letting me know he’d talk to me in a minute.
“Yes,” he said into the phone, “I’d like to speak to Detective Riley. I believe she’s in the homicide division.”
“Oh,” I said.
Chris turned to me. “They’ve got me on hold. I’m simply going to invite Janet over to the house and suggest that she bring her Lab with her.”
“Oh, you’re smart,” I said. “You’re going to make it social instead of business, and you’re going to use the dogs to do it. I like your plan. Besides, I kind of took a liking to the detective.”
“I know. She seemed to like us, too.”
Chris held up his finger again and I knew that Janet had come on the line. I listened while he talked to her, suggesting that she come over for a barbeque. He told her she could bring a date if she wanted to. And then he suggested the she bring her chocolate Lab, too, to play with Sherlock and Watson.
“Her name is Friday,” I whispered, remembering that she’d made a comparison about our dogs’ names.
“Your Friday and our Sherlock and Watson should get along,” he said. And then he did some listening.
“Uh huh. Well, since we aren’t working at the moment, any day would be fine with us. I’ll tell Pamela.” He paused again and wrote something on a piece of paper. “We’ll be looking forward to it.” Pause. “She’ll call you.” They talked for a moment longer and Chris hung up.
He handed me a piece of paper with a phone number on it. “Day after tomorrow, Wednesday. Tuesday and Wednesday are her days off. And she wants you to call her and let her know what she can bring. She sounded like she was glad to hear from me.”
“Is she going to bring anyone with her?”
“Probably. She had to check with her friend to see if he’s available. She sounded grateful that we suggested she bring Friday with her. She said she doesn’t get to spend as much time with her as she’d like.”
“I feel like we’re using her,” I said, regretfully.
“We are, but you said you like her, too, so it’s a win-win situation all the way around. Right?”
“Right.”
“By the way,” Chris added, “she said that we can go ahead and begin our construction.” He chuckled. “She’s playing right into our hands. She said she’d update us on the body when she sees us.”
“Holy cow, Bogey Man. Can things get any better?”
He grinned and picked up the phone, punching in some numbers. “Hey, Big D, we’re in business. We can start work as soon as you’re ready.”
I immediately found an old envelope and began writing out a grocery list, tuning out Chris. I wrote down hamburger and then scratched it out. Spare ribs. That was the ticket. We wanted to have a good day with Janet and ribs would win her over. I had no doubt. I knew that barbequed ribs would win Mikey over, too. I wanted him to be on his best behavior while Janet was visiting. We needed her to open up to us, and I thought I might enjoy a friendship in the process.
I cleaned the house, which didn’t really need it, and left to pick Mikey up at school while Chris checked to see if the barbeque needed cleaning.
“We’ll stop at the grocery store on the way home,” I said before leaving. Chris had nodded at me and opened the lid to the barbeque, seeming distracted. He took his outdoor cooking seriously.
With the shopping done, Mikey and I drove home. Chris met us outside and helped carry groceries inside before the two men in my life retreated to the back yard for a game of catch.
And that was our day. It was quiet and it was normal. I liked it.
***
The next day I waited until a reasonable hour before calling Janet. Being a cop probably meant she worked long hours and I wanted to let her sleep in before bothering her.
Her phone rang three times before she answered. “Hello?”
“Hi, Janet. This is Pamela. I thought we should touch bases about the barbeque.”
“Oh, hi. I’m looking forward to doing something for fun for a change. And thanks for le
tting me bring Friday. She needs to socialize with other dogs from time to time. What can I bring?”
“You don’t get to go out very often?” I asked. “Why is that?”
“I’m a cop, and so is my boyfriend. ‘Nough said. Sometimes we’re lucky if we get to see each other at all.”
“Well, I guess that’s the price you pay, although I don’t know what the rest of us would do if it weren’t for people like you.”
“Thanks. I do my best. So, really, what can I bring?”
“How about a salad?”
“That’s all?” she asked. “I’m a pretty good baker. How about a dessert?”
“Okay, surprise us. We’re having barbequed ribs. Bring whatever you’d like, and I’m sure we’ll enjoy it.”
We chatted for a few minutes before we hung up, and I felt like I’d known this woman for a long time. She was easy to get along with. I was looking forward to Wednesday. Cop or no cop, she was still a woman and enjoyed talking girl talk.
After I hung up Chris told me he was going to meet with Big D. “We need to get things up and running. My savings aren’t going to last forever.”
“I still say I could get another job as a waitress,” I suggested. “It’s really not a big deal, and it wouldn’t be forever.”
“Nope. Absolutely not. We’ll work this out, I promise you.” Was it male pride or did he care about me that much? I had a feeling it might be some of both.
While it was nice to have someone tell me I didn’t need to go find a job, I felt a bit guilty for not doing just that. However, I had no doubt that with Big D in charge of remodeling, it wouldn’t be all that long before we could open for business again. I was hoping that it wouldn’t be more than a few months.
“Why don’t you take Sherlock and Watson with you?” I asked.
“Not this time. I need to concentrate on what Big D has to say. We want this done right, and we want it done as soon as possible. I don’t want any distractions.”
Chris left and I let the dogs in the house. “You should have heard your person talking,” I said. “He had the nerve to call you two distractions. Can you imagine that? You’re no more distracting than a small hurricane.”
