“What do you want?” she asked.
“I’m looking for a cleaning lady.” I looked around my tiny apartment, which was pretty neat and clean.
“Give me your address. I’ll be there at nine in the morning.”
“How much will it cost?” I asked her after giving her my address.
“I’ll tell you when I see the place.” She hung up before I had a chance to agree or disagree. Maybe that was why she had been fired and/or had quit—her grating personality. But nine in the morning was fine with me. Fortunately, I hadn’t dusted in the past week. I’d fix something for dinner tonight and make as much of a mess as I could when cooking for one.
I kept thinking about what Nancy had said about Margaret’s family fighting over who would fill Margaret’s shoes. How could I find out which of her siblings wanted to? I decided to call Orchard House and see if Kathy Brasheler was working. Hopefully, she wasn’t giving a tour right now and would have time to talk.
“It’s been the main topic of conversation around here,” Kathy said after I explained what I wanted.
“Why?”
“Three members of her family have been contacting every board Margaret was associated with, saying they were the one she wanted to take over for her.”
“So what’s the Orchard House board going to do?”
“Right now we’re on hold, trying to wait to see how things shake out. No one wants to offend any of these people.”
“Who would you pick if it was up to you?”
“I’d rather not say. But no one should assume that family position gives you power or that you can buy a position on this board. I’ll take smarts anytime.”
* * *
I couldn’t put off buying groceries any longer. If I kept eating fluffernutters and food at DiNapoli’s, I was going to have to buy a new spring wardrobe. So I drove over to the Stop & Shop. I decided I’d make pasta tonight. That ought to make a mess in my kitchen. I pushed my cart around the store and tossed in a baguette to make garlic bread, some candles, bubble bath, broccoli, and fusilli, instead of plain old spaghetti. I was reaching for ajar of sauce when someone tapped my shoulder. Seth.
He looked at my cart and picked up a candle and the bubble bath. “It looks like you have a fun night planned.”
“Dinner and a bath for one,” I said. I didn’t want to hurt anyone. Seth deserved better, and so did I.
“Sure you don’t want to make it for two?” He gazed at me with his incredible eyes, and I almost blurted out, “Yes, yes, I do.”
“Dinner, maybe. Bath, no way.”
“What about reversing that?”
I shook my head, lips firmly pressed together, to keep the blurting in. I reached for the sauce again.
“Let me teach you how to make a very simple marinara. It’s way better than that stuff.” Seth pointed at the shelf.
If Seth was willing to come over and spend time with me, that must mean I wasn’t the person of interest CJ had mentioned on the news. I was still ready to say no to all of it but since Seth’s family and Margaret’s family had been intertwined for years, I’d feed him and then pick his brain. “Okay. What do I need for the sauce?”
“I’ll bring the ingredients.”
“Seven?” I asked.
“See you then.”
* * *
Every time Seth was in my kitchen, it seemed smaller than normal. Seth and I kept bumping into each other as we prepared dinner. Maybe part of the bumping wasn’t by accident. I managed to chop the onions and mince the garlic without cutting myself. After sautéing the onions and throwing in the garlic for a minute, Seth added Chianti.
“That jarred sauce you buy won’t have Chianti in it,” Seth said. He poured each of us a glass while letting the wine cook off. He added tomatoes and turned down the heat to let it simmer. “We have fifteen minutes. What do you want to do?”
“Boil the pasta and fix the garlic bread.”
Seth grabbed me and whirled us around. “That’s no fun.”
I laughed but pulled away. “Neither is having just marinara sauce for dinner.”
Seth sliced the bread, which I arranged on a baking sheet and slathered with olive oil. He popped it in the oven, while I added the fusilli to the boiling water.
“Now we have ten minutes,” Seth said. “I can make you very happy in ten minutes.”
“Seven. The bread will be done then.” I set the timer. “Not enough time to make me very happy.”
We sat on the couch with our wine.
“So what’s on your mind?” Seth asked.
“Why do you think there’s something on my mind?”
“Very few women would pass up seven minutes with me.”
I didn’t want to think about Seth and other women. “Does your bio say ‘incorrigible’?”
“No, but my mother always has. I could see you wanted to ask me something at the store when I offered to make the sauce.”
“I thought people around here called it gravy instead of sauce.”
“Some Italians do. My family isn’t Italian. Nice try changing the subject.”
“I’ve just been hearing rumors about infighting within Margaret’s family.”
“No surprise there. Who in her family wouldn’t want to be the next Margaret? She’s made quite a name for herself. People love power.”
That was what Kathy and Nancy had said. “Do any of them have financial troubles? Something to gain from Margaret’s death?” I couldn’t imagine that any of them did, but I was using my “Leave no stone unturned” philosophy.
“Not that I know of.”
“What about Nichole?”
“She’s doing fine on her own. Why ask about her?”
“I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on around here. Did Nichole use Juanita as a cleaning lady?”
“I have no idea. You’d have to ask her.” Seth looked at me, eyebrows drawn together. “Why are you so focused on the cleaning lady?”
I thought about it. “I’m not sure. It just seems like something is off with the woman who used to be her cleaning lady.” But why had I been so focused on Frieda, Juanita, and Margaret? My original idea had been to figure out who my stalker was. How had I let that slide? Because no matter what I thought about the cleaning women, I didn’t think they had anything to do with my stalker. I sniffed the air and leaped up. “The bread.”
I ran into the kitchen, grabbed a mitt, and hauled the baking sheet full of blackened garlic bread out of the oven. I looked at the timer. I had set it but hadn’t turned it on. Seth scraped the burnt parts off the pieces of garlic bread and handed them off to me. I rubbed a clove of garlic over them. “I can’t ever manage to pull off a dinner without something going wrong.”
“It’ll be fine.”
I threw together a salad, while Seth drained the pasta. He reserved a little of the water and added the pasta and a bit of the water to the sauce. We crammed everything onto my small table. Seth held my chair out for me, and I sat. He pulled his chair next to mine, and we dug in.
“Better than that grocery store stuff?” he asked.
“Way better.”
Chapter 26
After Seth left, I started to fill up the tub. I put my hair up in a sloppy bun and threw my clothes in the hamper. I had resisted Seth’s comments about how my tub was the perfect size for two and had pushed him out the door after a long sizzling kiss. A cold shower might be a better idea than a bubble bath. But really, he hadn’t pushed me that hard.
I tested the water with my hand before climbing in and sinking into the deep tub. I played with the bubbles, making bubble sculptures, and wondered about Seth. I leaned back, resting my neck on the edge of the tub and floating as much as I could. Seth and CJ were kind of alike. Both had good sides; both, because of their jobs, had things they kept from me. But maybe it wasn’t only their jobs. That was the problem: I didn’t completely trust either of them. I’d been so shaken by what happened between CJ and me last year that I still
didn’t trust myself. Margaret had trusted someone too much, someone she had let get close enough to kill her, but who?
I soaked until the water cooled. After putting my plaid pajamas on, I flipped on the TV but didn’t really pay attention to the singing competition that was on. I thought again about the connection, if there was one, between the person stalking me and Margaret. The problem was I couldn’t picture anyone I knew sending me the pictures or threatening me. James flitted into my mind, but I tried to push the thought away. Yes, I’d thought he might have feelings for me on occasion. Yes, he’d changed since he came back from his deployment. But I didn’t believe he’d changed that much.
I sat straight up and turned off the TV. James had said he’d report the most recent photo to the EPD for me. But Seth hadn’t mentioned it when he was over. And since Margaret had died, he’d been keeping pretty close tabs on anything concerning the EPD and me. I had no idea what any of that meant, except that I probably wouldn’t sleep well tonight, wondering.
Before I went to bed, I still had some work to do on the apartment. Even with the kitchen messy, the place still didn’t look like it needed much cleaning. Seth had offered to clean up after we ate, but I’d refused. The sauce splashed on the stove and the dishes in the sink worked for my visit from Frieda tomorrow morning. I got some dirt out of the pot with the indestructible plant a friend had given me a cutting of when she’d moved. The plant had stood up to large amounts of abuse, such as a lack of water. I rubbed the dirt onto the tub with the remaining bubbles until it looked a lot like a soap ring. I spilled a little more of the dirt on the floor and tracked it around a bit, carefully avoiding my oriental rug.
* * *
When I heard a knock on the door at nine in the morning, I gave one last look around the place, a bit proud of myself for the mess I’d made. I’d never had a cleaning lady before, so I wasn’t sure of the protocol. Should I leave or stay? There was another sharp rap. I opened the door, and Frieda brushed past me, lugging a bag full of cleaning supplies. She looked very different from her online photos. Yes, her hair still had the purple ends, but she was large enough to be a tackle for the Patriots. Maybe she’d been stress eating since her online pictures were taken.
“We didn’t finish discussing your prices on the phone yesterday,” I said.
“Well, if you expect me to be as cheap as that Juanita woman was, I might as well just go.”
“No. I didn’t—”
“She undercut me every chance she got and stole my customers.”
Interesting. “I heard there were a lot of problems with her, though.”
Frieda went into the kitchen and started unpacking her bag of industrial-strength cleaners on the counter. “You get what you pay for.” She looked around the room. “You really can’t take care of this place yourself?” She frowned at me, her heavy brows twitching on her protruding forehead. The word Neanderthal came to mind.
“Normally, I do, but I’m really busy with the February Blues garage sale on base. Things just got away from me.”
“Compared to most of my jobs, this place is spotless. You wouldn’t believe the condition of some people’s homes. They drive their fancy cars and wear their fancy clothes, but their bathrooms . . .” She paused and shuddered. “I’m not sure how they can live like that.”
“Would you like a cup of coffee while you work?”
Frieda looked surprised. “Sure, if you don’t mind. That’s nice of you. Some people don’t even want you to take a drink of water. Treat you like the dirt they’ve swept under their rugs.”
I busied myself making coffee. Frieda sure had a lot of anger built up. “Do you take cream or sugar?”
“No. Black is good. I can’t always afford the cream, so I stick with black so I don’t miss it.”
I filled two mugs and handed her one. “I’ll work on my computer and move around so I’m not in your way.”
Frieda took a sip of her coffee. “You don’t have to stay.”
“Thanks, but it’s easier to stay here.”
I went into the living room and fired up my computer. I approved a bunch of new members and banned a couple of people who weren’t following the rules. I was glad to see the new members. At first, after Margaret’s death, people had left at an alarming rate. But now there seemed to be a bounce back. I wasn’t sure if it was the whole “Everyone wants to see the train wreck” or if it was because I was the only online site in Ellington.
I had a request from James to join the group. Interesting. I’d be curious to see what he bought and sold. You could figure out a lot about the members just from their buying and selling habits. Who had kids, who liked antiques, who was into fitness, who always said they had money problems. Some really did have financial problems, and some didn’t. A lot of people seemed more interested in the bidding game than in the actual item being sold. I called it the “I’m a winner” syndrome—it made people feel good about themselves to get the item.
I’d been toying with the idea of setting up a site that was only for furniture and antiques. Sorting through all the clothing posts and toys to find things I was interested in wasn’t easy and the search function wasn’t optimal. The group was large enough that members had to scroll through a lot of posts to find what they liked. I just wasn’t sure if I had time to manage two different sites. It wouldn’t be so bad now, but once spring hit and I was doing more outside sales, it might be a problem.
A couple of hours later Frieda announced she was done. My apartment was filled with fumes, and my eyes were watery. As soon as she left, I’d fling open the windows, heating bill be damned. I wasn’t sure it was entirely Juanita’s practice of undercutting prices that had made Frieda lose business.
“Would you like another cup of coffee?” I asked her.
“Might as well. I got nothing better to do.” She eased onto one of my two kitchen chairs and rubbed her knee before scooting closer to the table. I glimpsed her swollen ankles before she stretched her feet out under the table. If it wasn’t for getting half of CJ’s retirement pay and the alimony he’d insisted upon, I might be doing some kind of hard labor myself. Although I tried to stick most of it into savings, over the winter I’d had to use some of it. My dream of returning it all to him someday had faded just a bit.
I poured two cups of coffee and took them over to the table before sitting across from Frieda. She traced one of the flowers on the vintage tablecloth covering the table with her finger.
“Do you collect these things?” she asked.
“Yes. I like them. They’re cheery. Especially on a gloomy day.”
“I don’t have the money to collect them. It’s why I wanted the one like my grandma’s so bad.”
It made me pause. For all of Frieda’s complaints about money, she had doubled the price of the tablecloth Margaret was selling without batting an eye, as far as I could tell, and had ended up paying far more than the actual value. It made me wonder if that was really why she’d wanted it or if she had just needed an excuse to go see Margaret.
“Why did you quit cleaning for Margaret?”
“I told you she fired me. For all her money, that woman was tightfisted when it came to her own expenses. She might gift this person or organization some huge sum, but she clung to her personal budget like she didn’t know where the next dollar was coming from.” Frieda took a long drink of her coffee. “She figured out if she kept changing cleaning companies, she could use their specials and coupons so she didn’t have to pay as much.” Frieda scooted her chair back and pushed off the table to stand up.
“Then once she saw Juanita’s ad on your site, she kept on using her.” Frieda scowled. “I stopped over once a couple of weeks ago, after Juanita left. I tried to convince Margaret to take me back on. I pointed out to her how much more I did and what Juanita had missed. Let me tell you, Juanita did half the work I did. And the place didn’t smell good and clean, like yours does.”
“Have any guesses as to who would be mad enough to kil
l Margaret?”
“Maybe Juanita. Margaret agreed to take me back.”
Chapter 27
I watched out the window as Frieda made her way down the sidewalk. She was the first person I’d found who had a connection to both Juanita and Margaret. She seemed pretty angry. Had Margaret really agreed to take her back, or had Frieda killed the competition? I knew that the police had spoken with Frieda after the murder, but I wondered if she’d shared any of this information with them. Frieda climbed into a nice-looking black SUV. As soon as she pulled away from the curb, I flung open the windows to alleviate the fumes.
I realized I probably needed to tell CJ all of this. I knew I was being paranoid, but on the off chance that I was the person of interest mentioned in the news report, I didn’t want to go to the station. I called CJ but couldn’t get through, so I left him a message. I also mentioned the incident on base yesterday, just in case. Just in case what? I asked myself. Just in case James is your stalker? Just in case James hasn’t reported it? I was beginning to think I was the demented one. Then I left a message on CJ’s cell phone, which I didn’t normally like to do. While I waited for him to call back, I updated the garage sale site.
If CJ wouldn’t talk to me, I really had to be the person of interest. Get a grip. He’s probably busy. Half the time he didn’t tell me stuff, anyway. But just in case, I had to track CJ down. I had to force him to listen to me, in person and alone. That way I’d have a chance to point him in other directions. I looked online. The Ellington Police Department basketball team was playing the Bedford firefighters tonight at Bedford’s middle school. I’d go there to see him.
* * *
At eight o’clock that night I sat in my Suburban in a far corner of the middle school parking lot. The basketball game should be over soon. I’d parked out here in hopes that CJ would spot me and that no one else would. People started trickling out of the school. CJ came out a few minutes later with a large group of laughing people. Either they’d won or they were really good sports. I willed CJ to look over in my direction as the group started to break up and the people headed to their cars. If worse came to worst, I’d follow him home, but I preferred not to do that. If I was the person of interest, it wouldn’t look good for him to be getting phone calls or visits from me. And I really hoped he was alone. I’d abort the mission if anyone got in the car with him, especially if it was the redhead Carol had mentioned.
All Murders Final! Page 15
