by Misty Simon
“What’s the secret, Tallie?” he asked as he sidled up to the counter with a vase of flowers.
And where did he get those flowers? “Why are you still delivering those?”
He snuck a glance at Gina before saying, “Monty dropped them off out front. It’s my job while I’m here trying to figure out things.” He slid the flowers to Gina. “These are for you this time.”
While Gina preened and yanked the card out of the bouquet so hard she almost ripped out the pansies, Max and I had a stare-down. I was not budging and, it seemed, neither was he.
“You need to go away,” I whispered out of the corner of my mouth while Gina was distracted with her posies.
“I’m not going anywhere until we know what is going on, or I find that money for you.”
“I don’t need your help.” In fact, I did, but honestly, I was getting in way over my head. I needed to just settle back and think about things for a little while. Now that I knew there was money, I needed time and space to think about where it might be, or where Waldo would have hidden it. He had certain hidey-holes, but I doubted any of them were big enough to stash the amount of cash he might have. And I had no clue on how to start looking. But now that the police part was done, having Max around was distracting me and not making things easier. Especially when he seemed to turn up everywhere he shouldn’t, exactly when he shouldn’t. Like in my dreams, wearing nothing but a smile.
“I think we should try to go to Waldo again and see if he’ll tell you anything,” he whispered.
“Perhaps I wasn’t clear on what a mess my marriage was. Waldo hates me and will only do anything that will embarrass me or make me feel less. He is not going to blurt out where the money is if he’s never shared before.”
Our whispered conversation had finally gained Gina’s attention. I tried to distract her. “Who’re the flowers from?”
“Just some guy I met last weekend. Nothing special.”
“That’s a good-sized bouquet for nothing special.”
“Meh, so what are we whispering about?” Gina fixed her gaze on me as I squirmed in my chair. What was I going to say?
“Game night!” I nearly yelled, then calmed down. “I was inviting Max to game night at your house and wanted to make sure he could come before I asked if it was okay with you.” Lame, lame, lame!
“Sure.” Gina looked baffled, but there was nothing I could do about it. She kept trying to catch my eye, but I was looking at everything but her. “Um, I hope you like nachos and Parcheesi. Nine okay?”
“Sounds good,” Max said with a smile in his voice.
What had I just signed myself up for? I had less than an hour to convince him not to go.
Chapter 10
Game night usually consisted of more than just games, but it wasn’t like Gina and I could compare our failures in the love department with Max sitting right there.
Instead, we played several board games and tromped Max until I was laughing so hard I feared I might fall off the couch. Or at least I was laughing hard until Gina brought up Waldo.
“So did your ex-bastard ask for anything more? He doesn’t want you to come clean his house, does he?” she asked as she picked up the card I had just put in the discard pile. Gina was fierce at Skip-Bo, so I would have to keep an eye on her.
I cleared my throat. “I already did that, so no, not again.” I reached into the plastic flowerpot Max had brought as a thank-you-for-the-invite gift. He’d said not to tell Monty, since it was from the grocery store and not the flower shop. I didn’t think Monty would have sold this particular arrangement anyway. Max had filled the bottom with Tootsie Rolls to mimic dirt, then bought a truly awful bunch of plastic flowers, probably from the dollar store, and “planted” them in the Tootsie Rolls. He’d also said that he thought I needed a real flower delivery, not from someone out to scare me. I admit it touched my heart, even though I wasn’t sure I wanted it to.
Unwrapping a candy, I tuned back to hear Gina snort in disgust. “You shouldn’t even have done that much.” She turned to Max. “You haven’t had the displeasure of meeting the ex, have you?”
“Ah, no.” He took an inordinate amount of interest in the cards in his hand. I could see he had an eleven that would go nicely on the top of the ten in the pile in front of him. Then I could use my twelve and the rest of the run in my hand to finish off the game.
He discarded instead, causing me to gust out a sigh. We’d be here all night.
“Well, I think that stun-gunning might have something to do with Darla’s death. The timing and the fact that they were done to two very nasty people makes me believe there has to be a connection.” Gina nodded to punctuate her point.
That’s what I thought too, but I wasn’t going to share it. It would only open up more conversation in this direction. I cast around in my mind for something else to talk about. Unfortunately, Gina was on a roll. With my apartment right across the street, I glanced over for inspiration and caught Mr. Fleefers’s shadow pass along the window blind in the bathroom as he strolled on the windowsill. I had left the light on in there for him in case he needed to do his business. He liked to stalk around the apartment when I was gone. A light bulb went off in my head.
“Are you going to still get a kitten?” I asked as casually as I could. Apparently not casually enough.
“Probably, but that isn’t what we were talking about, Tallie. Get your mind here in the room. I heard they were at some out-of-town restaurant together. Now Burton’s looking into why two people who hated each other were having dinner.” She looked at me. “You don’t think they were having an affair, do you? I don’t even want to imagine the two of them together.”
“Me neither, but I don’t think so. Can we talk about something else? Burton won’t leave me alone about the whole thing because I found her. I was just hoping for a night off.” I promised myself I would spill everything to Gina tomorrow when I had it all straight in my head. There were too many players in the pool right now for me to keep everyone straight. And I didn’t want Gina to know anything at this moment that could get her hurt. Max could take care of himself. Gina probably could too, but there was a part of me that wanted to protect her to make up for the time I’d been away and snotty.
From the corner of my eye, I caught the way Max lifted an eyebrow. I wasn’t playing his game when I had a real one in front of me. I drew a card, got the eleven Max wouldn’t put down, and ran the table with the rest of my cards.
Sitting back, I took the final sip of wine in my glass and was ready to call it a night. But Gina wasn’t ready to let go yet.
“I heard through my uncle someone might be after the money we always thought Waldo had hidden. Someone from the state tax bureau came sniffing around town the other day, and Uncle Fred, being the county tax collector, was put on the hot spot for a few unanswered questions.”
Well, that was not good. I turned wide eyes on Max. They weren’t supposed to be making noise yet. That was the whole reason Max had come, to gather his own information before an actual case was opened. But we weren’t any closer to finding the money. This could go from bad to horrendous in a short time.
“Have they questioned Waldo?” I asked cautiously. I didn’t think Waldo would bolt with the money, but couldn’t be sure. With someone being brave enough to kill Darla, and someone else brave enough to stun Waldo and tie up Katie, our town was approaching something more than it had ever been before. Gone was the quaint, little, safe town. Now almost anything was possible.
“Not that I know of, but it might not be long before they do.”
This was in no way good. The timetable to get to the money just got shorter.
* * *
“You did not have to walk me home.” I cradled my potted “plant” of candy and garish flowers in my arms. Gina had insisted I take it with me and I hadn’t argued with her. I was nearly certain I would never throw this thing away, not matter how gaudy it was. It had been super-sweet of Max to put it together. I migh
t not tell him that, since my feelings were completely confusing to me, but that didn’t stop me from thinking it.
“You don’t know if it’s safe out here anymore.” Max walked alongside me without actually touching me.
His words echoed my earlier thoughts enough that it made me shiver in the cool night. “I’m sure it’s fine, and really, it’s right across the street.” Gina lived above her shop too. Our small town boasted many three-story buildings where apartments took up the top two floors. Gina had taken advantage of that and had essentially made herself a two-story house above the Bean. It was a heck of a lot nicer than my own studio apartment, but then Gina owned hers and I did not.
I tried to leave Max at the back door. He made that impossible by insisting on walking me up the two flights of stairs to make sure everything was okay. I was not, however, going to invite him into the apartment. And because of his insistence, now I was going to have to walk him back down to lock the door behind him, and then back up by myself. Well, at least that would be my exercise for the day.
I turned the key in my lock, and it gave with much less resistance than before. My brother must have finally changed the mechanism like I’d asked him to. It sucked to have the door stick when I had my hands full of groceries and couldn’t get it to budge.
I stood on the threshold, sure I was not going to invite Max in. He tried to invite himself in, but I pushed him out. “It’s all good, now let’s trudge back down the stairs so I can lock up behind you and then I get to climb the stairs again.”
“You’re so good at it, though.”
Had he been watching my butt while I took the stairs at a steady pace that wouldn’t leave me out of breath? A flush started at my neck and I ignored it. I was not going to even think about that. This time I could watch him walk down and then I could walk back up alone.
The view was not bad on the way down. Not at all. I assigned my shortness of breath at the bottom of the stairs to all those steps.
“I’ll talk to you later, then.” I shooed him out the door, then stood in the doorway while he was one step below me on the veranda that wrapped around the old house.
“We’re going to need to formulate a plan on how to get Waldo to talk. If we can’t find that money, I can’t guarantee they won’t take it all and demand more.”
“They’d do that?”
“I won’t say definitely, but I can’t make any promises if we don’t get to it first.”
The thought of that made my stomach churn. I had to put more effort into getting the location of the money out of my ex-husband. I had cast enough doubt on my part in either crime to hopefully lead Burton in the right direction and get him to stop sniffing around me. It was time to concentrate on Waldo.
“I’ll see what I can think up, and you do the same thing. I have houses to clean tomorrow, but I’ll get in touch with you at some point in the day.”
He raised that eyebrow again, this time radiating skepticism. There was nothing I could do to alleviate it. So I didn’t try. Instead, I shut the door in his face and ran back up to the apartment. There had been something in Darla’s diary that struck me just now and I wanted to see if I’d remembered it correctly.
Treading the stairs again, I noticed the carpets needed a good cleaning and several of the brass bars that kept the runner in place needed a good polish. They were dulled with a scuff my mother would not be happy to see. I’d do it tomorrow. Tonight, I was weighed down with everything going on.
I let myself into my dark apartment, flipped on the lights, and started yelling like the dead had come to my place for a party.
* * *
“I told you that you should have let me walk you in.” Max paced back and forth as Burton and two other men went through the apartment, turning tables back over and righting chairs.
Someone had come in and trashed my apartment and I wasn’t sure yet which feeling took precedence—being pissed that someone dared, or fear that someone had been in my place. I certainly did not need to be taken to task by Mr. Tax Ninja.
“I don’t need a scolding, Max. If that’s all you’re going to do, then I made a mistake calling you and you can head right on back out. You can see the door from here.”
He stood with his arms crossed and his feet spread. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Something inside of me sighed in relief, but I was not going to share that with him.
“Fine. Make yourself useful and make some coffee then.”
He gave a narrow-eyed stare before he went off and did as asked. Picking carefully over the littered floor, I made a beeline for the drawer in the kitchen. I should have looked there first to see if someone had taken Darla’s diary. Because my house had been ransacked, I hadn’t thought of anything but the destruction.
Now that I did, I was happy to find the diary was still taped to the underside of the counter above the drawer. I patted it before leaving it in its place. Taking it out now would be a disaster, as it would call attention I did not want. For the last ten minutes I had been trying to come up with a way to ask Burton if he’d followed my trail of bread crumbs to finding out who Darla had previously been. Despite racking my brain, I still hadn’t come up with a good way to do it.
Maybe later. Now I had to see if anything else was missing. On a quick pass, the answer was no, but I couldn’t be sure. With the destruction, there was no way Mr. Fleefers would be anywhere in the vicinity, so I could be assured he was prowling somewhere else. I had seen him walk across the window about thirty minutes ago during our card game, so that made me feel better. He was probably just roaming one of the many corridors or playing in his favorite corner of the attic.
“You see anything not here, Tallie?” Burton sidled up to me, hitching his pants above his waistline.
“I don’t see anything missing. I don’t have a lot to begin with. It looks like whoever it was just tossed the place.”
“Any idea what they might have been looking for?”
I deliberately made myself not look at the kitchen drawer and lied through my teeth. “Not that I know of. And I don’t exactly have anything valuable after the divorce.” Which reminded me of Waldo. Did someone think I might know where the money was? Who else would know about the money? Darren? Did he also notice the diary was gone and hoped to come and find both? Maybe he shouldn’t be given the pass I had given him.
“Well, you be careful. We’re going to head out, but I don’t like this. There’s nothing else I can do right now, though, and we’re too small of a department to focus on this when we have Darla’s murder to figure out still.” He scratched his head and peered at me. “You haven’t been asking more questions that you aren’t supposed to be, have you, girl?”
“No, no, of course not.” Just taking things I shouldn’t. And keeping secrets I shouldn’t. I would flush in about two seconds if I kept thinking about it and give myself away. Instead, I focused in on Max making coffee and how right he looked standing in my kitchen. That wasn’t any better for my mental stability.
“What’s the guy doing here, again?” Burton said in a low voice only I could hear.
“I called him to come back because he’d walked me home. I didn’t know my home looked like this when he left. I don’t know why he was the one who popped into my head.”
Thankfully, my parents lived a few blocks away and so did both of my brothers. I’d be swarmed right now if they knew this place had been broken into.
And then I groaned because I heard my mom coming up the stairs, yelling. Yeah, I probably should have called them. If someone had gotten into my apartment, it meant they could have entered any other part of funeral home. I was in for a long night.
* * *
I hadn’t been wrong to anticipate a long evening. I just hadn’t calculated exactly how long it could be until three a.m. showed up and Max told my mother and father he would be sleeping on the couch in case anything else happened.
My father had given Max a long look that made me want to tell him t
hat of course I wasn’t a virgin. I’d been married for six years and I could take care of myself. Fortunately, I said neither and the whole family left after my brother had a short chat with Max involving furious whispering and a few dour looks from Jeremy. Good God, did none of them trust my own judgment and my inability to attract men anyway, except for the slimy ones who hid money and caused a ruckus?
And then I was left with Max, who grabbed me into a hug before I could walk away from him.
“I was scared for you,” he said into my hair. Without another word, he took the sheets in my hands, made the couch, and promptly started snoring as soon as he lay down.
I pulled the Murphy bed out of the wall and laid there for another hour listening to his deep breathing before I finally drifted off myself. Tomorrow I had things to do and people to talk to. I wanted that money and I wanted to know what the hell was going on before one more crazy thing happened.
* * *
Carrying my vacuum cleaner into the infamous Ellen’s house, I planned on using the time with my earbuds in and the magic wonder-vacuum in my hand to sort out the parts and pieces I had at my disposal. I needed to see if I could make any connections. Part of me was still sure Darla’s death had to do with her not really being Darla. How had the woman kept that a secret in a town with more gossips than a high tea?
One more thing to add to my list to ponder. I got to work on the first floor, picking up after Ellen and her husband. Would it kill them to straighten up the house themselves before I got there? Why did I have to find socks stuffed in the couch and cups on every available surface? Yeah, I was a maid, but I was really only hired to do the deeper cleaning. However, I couldn’t do that if the whole place was also a mess on the surface.
Halfway through the house, I heard a shrill whistle. Popping an earbud out, I turned to find Mr. Ellen behind me. Actually, it was Mr. McKay but I thought of him as an extension of his busy wife, not the other way around.
