by Marja McGraw
“So I’ve been told.”
“Now, I understand you and your wife want to discuss the old boarding house with me. Is that correct? Well, have I got stories I can tell you! Those were some pretty wild years – oh my, yes.”
I wanted to get right down to business. Something about the way she was staring at Chris annoyed me. “We’re particularly interested in who your tenants were. Your nephew said he thought you still had your old ledgers with the tenants’ names in them?”
She turned a sly grin in my direction. “I might. What’s it worth to you?”
My mouth opened but no words came out for a moment. “I beg your pardon?” What could she expect from us?
“Just joking, darling, but I am curious about why you want the names. My old boarders shouldn’t have anything to do with your new restaurant, right? So why on earth would you want their names?”
The door opened and John walked in, giving his aunt a peck on the cheek before joining us. “I heard that last question, Auntie. I guess I should have told you what’s going on when I was here yesterday, but I wasn’t sure how you’d handle it.”
John wasn’t what I’d expected either. Tall and slender, like his aunt, he looked like he’d just stepped off a page of a fashion magazine. He was an older man, maybe in his late fifties to early sixties, but definitely a classy looking guy with his silver hair and mustache. He had almost a James Bond appearance. Suave, as they say.
Chris stood up and introduced himself and shook John’s hand. “We were asking your Aunt Chance about the names of her tenants before you arrived.”
John appeared amused. “Aunt Chance? Yes, she does like to use that name from time to time.”
“So, dear, tell me what this is all about?” Chance’s voice sounded softer and weaker as she spoke to John, and her face took on a less sure, more confused, expression. She seemed to sink into herself a little. “Why do these people need my boarders’ names?”
I wondered if she was putting on an act or if she actually changed gears that fast.
“First, how are you feeling today?” John asked. “Did you have a good night’s sleep?”
Chance’s voice grew stronger. “I had a good night, and now I want to know what’s going on. Would someone please tell me before I have a stroke, right here in front of all of you?”
John laughed. “Sounds to me like you did have a good night. They found a dead body in the basement of your old house,” he said bluntly.
Chance looked shocked. “Oh. Well. Um, other people have owned that house since I did. Why would you seek me out about this?” She sounded defensive.
I took the reins at that point. “It seems to be quite clear that the man was killed during the time you owned the house. We thought you could supply us with the names we need, and maybe remember if any of your tenants had problems with each other.”
“Are you the police? You sure don’t look like policemen.” Chance leaned forward and studied us closely, eyes narrowed. I noticed that she still used mascara. I had to correct myself when I noticed that she was actually wearing false eyelashes. One of them was crooked.
“No,” Chris said, “we’re not the police. The family of the man who was killed has asked us to look into this.”
“And who was killed?” Chance asked, settling back in her chair. “I’d like to know just who was buried in my basement.”
“Charles Blakely was buried in your cellar and we’re trying to find out why, which is the reason we’re here asking questions.” Chris sounded short on patience. I couldn’t understand why.
“Charles Blakely?” Chance had a faraway look in her eyes and her voice softened. “I always wondered what happened to him. He owed me a month’s rent when he disappeared. I never could figure that one out. He seemed so dependable. And now you say he was murdered and buried in my basement?”
“That’s right,” John said. “Now you know what this is all about. Are you okay? Do you need a glass of water or anything?” His voice was soft and caring, which surprised me since he’d been so blunt about the stiff in the cellar. He reached over and placed his hand on top of hers, patting it gently.
She seemed to shrivel into herself, and she lowered her head.
“Give her a few minutes,” John said. “She drifts off to sleep at the oddest times, especially if she’s upset. I had no idea she’d remember the murdered man. I should have known though, because not much used to get past her. It’s only lately…”
He was right about her sleeping. I heard a faint intake of breath and then a loud snore.
I turned to John. “May I ask how old your aunt is?”
Chance’s head popped up. “It’s rude to ask about a woman’s age, my dear.”
I laughed. “I’m sorry, but I thought you’d fallen asleep.”
She grinned. “I’m 90 years old and proud of it!”
This time when my mouth dropped open no amount of prodding from Chris could close it. “Ninety! I can’t believe it. You look so good! You must have been just a child when you ran the boarding house.”
She grinned. “I was. I was only nineteen when my parents bought me that house. They had money, you know. Now the money is all mine, and someday it will go to John. Anyways, they wanted me to earn my own living. They were ahead of their time,” she said proudly. “Actually, they wanted me to find a job and live in the house, but I thought, ‘What the heck, I’ll use the house to make my way.’ I could cook and clean, and it was the war years. Things were tough and people needed me and my home.”
“So you turned it into a boarding house,” Chris said, sounding more patient than he had a moment ago. “How many tenants did you have at a time?”
“Three – sometimes four. There used to be a garage on the lot that I turned into living quarters. It burned down when one of the boarders fell asleep. He’d been smoking in bed. He got out before the garage burned down though.”
“How did your tenants get along with each other?” I asked. “Were there ever any problems?”
“Oh, my, yes. Charles and another gentleman, whose name escapes me at the moment, were always bickering. I don’t think it was bad enough to cause a murder though. And then I once had two women there at the same time. They were jealous women and argued all the time. I finally had to ask one of them to move on.” She laughed. “They both moved out and rented an apartment together.” She stopped talking and appeared thoughtful. I wondered if she was looking into the past.
“Ah! I remember. The other boarder was Smokey Joe Turner.” She paused. “No, that was the one who burned down my garage, but it’ll come to me. The name of the one who argued with Charles, I mean.”
“Auntie, where would the box with your ledgers be? We can find more names there, I would assume.” John stood up, apparently ready to find the box in question.
“It’s in that storage shed I rented, up the street,” Chance replied, turning her face up to look at her nephew. “Why don’t you go fetch it while we visit?”
“Give me the key and I’ll go right now.”
Chance pointed to a bowl on the small breakfast bar that divided the living room and kitchen. “All of my keys are in that bowl. It should be marked.”
While they were discussing which key was for the storage unit, I turned to Chris and smiled. “This is turning into an interesting afternoon. If you’d seen Chance on the street, would you have ever believed she’s ninety?”
“No. She’s held up extremely well. She must have had something done to her face though. Don’t ya think?”
“Hard to say. Some women have good skin and look good no matter how old they are. I mean, she is wrinkled, but not as much as one would expect. And can you believe she’s still dying her hair at her age? I can’t blame her though. Why go down without a fight? She’s definitely a walking advertisement for taking care of yourself.”
“I do wish she’d quit staring at me though,” Chris whispered. “It’s disconcerting.”
That explained why he’d sounded
impatient with her. He was uncomfortable.
Chance turned back to us and John walked out the door. “He shouldn’t be gone for too long. The storage place is only a couple of blocks away, and I told him exactly what to look for. When I moved in here I put all of my belongings, except for what you see, in storage. I just didn’t have the heart to get rid of everything.
“Now, let me ponder this some. I can see the boarders’ faces in my mind, but I’m having some trouble with the names. I know the women were Esther and Adele, but of course I can’t remember their last names.”
“Don’t push yourself,” I said. “Your nephew will be back with the ledgers before long and from what he told me earlier, the names should be in there.”
“Over time I had a lot of boarders,” Chance said, tapping her temple as she spoke. “Too many to remember all of their names at the moment. People moved in and out all the time, except for a few who stayed for some length of time. Charles had been there for about a year, if memory serves, when he ran off – or at least I thought he ran off.”
Chris’s cell phone rang and he excused himself to take the call outside.
Chance and I talked a little girl talk, although frankly, she didn’t seem that good at it.
She sighed. “I never had any female friends,” she explained. “For some reason, women were always jealous of me. I was a knockout when I was young, you know.” I suddenly realized why I’d felt annoyed when we first started talking. She’d been flirting with Chris. She hadn’t been merely staring at him because of his resemblance to the real Bogey. I reminded myself that she was ninety and stifled a giggle.
“I’m sure you were. I can see it even now.”
“Would you like some tea, dear?”
“I’d love some, thank you.”
Chance stood up, appearing fairly agile, and headed for her kitchen. Actually it was more of a kitchenette; small but functional.
Chris returned and said the call had been from Big D. “He asked if we could come by the house in the morning. He says he’s found something that we might be interested in.”
“Well, if he’s found anything of mine, let me know.” Apparently there wasn’t much wrong with Chance’s hearing.
Chapter Seventeen
“Did Big D say what he found?” I asked. “I’m assuming it must have to do with Blakely or I don’t think he would have made a special call.”
“No, he didn’t say, but he had a lot going on, if the background noise was any indication.”
Chance brought the tea and cups out on a tray, serving us as though she had tea parties on a regular basis. “I’ve always preferred a good cup of tea to coffee,” she said. “I love the smell of coffee, but I never could develop a taste for it.”
There was no coffee table, so she set the tray on an end table and poured, passing us each a cup and saucer.
“How about telling us some of your stories?” Chris suggested, sticking out his pinkie and sipping from the small cup. “You said you had all kinds of wild tales.”
Chance studied him for a moment before sighing. “You look like Humphrey, but you sure don’t sound like him.”
That’s all it took. After curling his upper lip under and pulling on his ear lobe, Chris was off and running. “Okay, doll, here’s the deal. We found a stiff at your old flophouse, and now we’re gonna do some fancy footwork to figure out who sent this guy home feet first. See? We’re gonna be eyeballin’ anyone who was on the scene, and we’ll be playin’ hardball. See? The stiff could’a been a good Joe, or he might have been a gensel. Either way, it doesn’t matter. See? My gun moll and me, we’re gonna put the heat on, and someone – ”
Chance watched Chris closely while he spoke, a look of longing on her face. I felt uncomfortable again. My heart was telling me that she was just an old woman, but my mind was telling me that she was used to men responding to her. At the very least that was probably what it was like at one time. Old habits die hard.
“Uh, Bogey Man, maybe you’re coming on a bit strong,” I interrupted. “I’m not a gun moll and I don’t know that we’ll be playing hardball. See?”
“Oh, yeah. Guess I got carried away.” He turned to Chance. “Sorry.”
She was leaning forward in her chair and grinning like the Cheshire cat. “Oh, I loved it. Do it some more, would you?”
“No, I don’t think so. How’s about you tell us a couple of your stories.”
“Well, I was going to wait for my nephew, but I guess we can go ahead. I wonder what’s taking him so long.”
“One of my questions would be, how did you get away with running a boarding house at so young an age?” I would think that could have been a problem for her. “If I were your mother, I would have worried about the men trying to take advantage of you.”
“I told everyone who rented from me that I was married and my husband had been sent overseas. They thought I was running the boarding house to support myself until my hubby came home. It kept the men at a distance because I told them what a big bruiser my husband was, and they’d better be nice to me or they’d catch it when he came back.”
“And that worked?” I asked. “Nowadays no one would care since the husband wasn’t in the next room.
“You bet it did. Not a soul ever bothered me. Well, there was one young man, but a friend of mine came by and put the fear of God into him. He moved out the next day.”
“Did you have to tell them you had a husband overseas?” Chris asked. “Couldn’t you have thought of something else?”
“Well, it wouldn’t be right for a single woman to rent out rooms in her home in those days. It would have been unseemly. So I made up a Mr. Murphy and everyone accepted that he was in the service. None of the neighbors knew any better. When I moved into that house I told them I was married so they’d leave me alone.” She chuckled. “It backfired on me until I started taking in boarders. All the women on the block kept checking on me and bringing me things. Oh, I knew they meant well, but I was a rather private person. I didn’t want to be bothered.”
“Didn’t the boarders bother you?”
“Oh, no. Those men treated me like a queen. I think it was because they liked my cooking. Well, that and my ‘big bruiser’ story. Besides, so many of them had a crush on me.”
This woman was full of herself, and had been since she was very young. I wondered how many of those crushes were real and how many were her imagination.
“What about the guy who had a problem with Charles Blakely?” Chris asked. “Do you recall what that was about?”
“I can’t remember his name, but I sure remember his attitude. There was a third gal who lived in the house for a time, before the two women who didn’t get along. Both men were interested in her, and one thing led to another, and before long they were at each other like little boys. There was name-callin’ and once there was even a fist fight. I broke that up real quick though.”
“How’d you break up the fight?” I asked.
“I threw a bucket of water on them, just like they were dogs.” She sat up straighter and appeared to be quite proud of herself. “Those two lamebrains never lifted a finger against each other in my house again.”
“Oh.” I had a feeling that when she was a young woman, Mildred Chance Murphy was probably a force to be reckoned with.
“What happened after their fight?” Chris asked.
“Nothing, really. The gal they were fighting over up and walked out without a how-do-ya-do, but at least her rent was paid up. The other guy started looking for somewhere else to live, although he took his time about it, and it wasn’t all that much later that Charles disappeared, still owing me money.” She clucked her tongue. “Had I known he was dead, I might have had less bitter feelings towards him.”
It was difficult to imagine Chance carrying anyone on the books. She struck me as someone who would have her hand out at the beginning of every month.
“Let’s see. I can tell you about Frederick. He was a real shy guy until he came h
ome drunk one night. He fell in the front door and…”
Chance was in the middle of her story when John returned.
“Where have you been, young man?” Chance asked accusingly, as though he was a kid who’d missed his curfew.
He grinned at her. “I stopped and made copies of some of the pages for Chris and Pamela. I know you, and I know you’re not about to give up your ledgers.”
“That was very smart of you, John. Now give them the pages, because I feel a nap coming on. All this talk about the old days has just about worn me out.”
“I’m sorry, Chance. We’ve overstayed our welcome,” I said, standing up. “We didn’t mean to tire you out like this.”
She turned her gaze on Chris and practically pinned him to the wall. “Nonsense. I want you to come back to see me again. Soon. I’ll tell you more about what went on in that house. Like when one of the men snuck a stripteaser into his room one night.” She chuckled. “That was a good story, and not one I’ll soon forget. And there was the guy who gave me the heebie jeebies. He was one scary fella. He lived there at the same time Charles did. You might want to take a look at him, now that I think about it. If he’s still around.”
“We’ll definitely be back,” Chris said. “I know we’ll have questions about some of the people on the pages from the ledger.”
John handed me the short stack of papers and winked. “Auntie does tire out easier now than she used to, and I’m glad you came to see her on a good day. When you’re ready with your questions, give me a call and I’ll set it up.”
I glanced at the top page and scanned it. “Thank you, John. We’ll call you as soon as we figure out what we’ve got here. It looks like she really kept detailed records.”
“That’s my Aunt Mildred, she – ”
Sounding irritable, Chance said, “Would you please start calling me Chance? Everyone else does and always has. What’s the matter with you, boy?”
John seemed very patient with his aunt. He knelt down in front of her and spoke softly, reminding her that no one in the family had ever called her Chance.
