by Laura Alden
“Ten pounds,” I said dully. No way would I be able to compete with that.
“Or was it eight?” Marina hummed as she studied her spice rack. “Basil, oregano, and garlic? Or garlic, oregano, and basil?”
“I thought we were making tacos.”
“Change in plans, mah dear. If you’re going to catch up to that wretched woman, we need to feed you properly, and tonight properly means small amounts of pasta and large amounts of vegetables. Say . . .” She turned to face me. “Maybe Claudia killed Amy. If we can prove it, oh, like this weekend, she’ll get slapped in jail.” Marina’s face lit up. “Wouldn’t that be perfect? The food is bound to be fattening in there, so there’s no way she’ll win. And I bet that Tina helped out with Amy. Those two never do anything on their own. Tina’s only lost five pounds, but put her in a cell next to Claudia and I bet they do nothing but eat and eat and eat.”
Clearly, Marina had a different idea of what jail was like than I did. “And why would Claudia have any reason to kill Amy?”
Marina pointed a jar of rosemary at me. “Tina went along with Claudia, like she always does. And Claudia goes off half-cocked all the time. It could have been because Amy took Claudia’s parking space.”
“Amy didn’t have a car.”
With another wave of spices, Marina disregarded my objection. “Then she was still mad about something from twenty years ago. People like Claudia don’t need a good reason to kill, you know. Any old justification will do.”
I looked at her. “You’ve been trying to pin a murder on Claudia for years.”
She nodded furiously. “Wouldn’t we all be happier if that woman was tucked away where she couldn’t do any more harm? Last year she started that boycott of your store and almost put you out of business. The year before that she incited mob justice over the school addition. And remember the Claudia-inspired Troubles of the Tarver Tater Tots? How, I ask”—Marina tucked her thumb into the armpit of her invisible vest of an imaginary three-piece suit—“how can this woman still be roaming around free to do more damage to this fine country of ours?”
“Since you’re such an expert,” I said dryly, “how do you suggest we go about proving any of this?”
She lifted one eyebrow. “That, mah dear, is where you come in.”
* * *
Saturday morning I woke up with the sun streaming onto my face. The cat and the dog lay snuggled together at the foot of the bed. George opened his eyes to the thinnest of slits, saw that I was watching him, and bolted off the bed as if seven demons were chewing on his tail. He didn’t mind cozying up to the dog, but he didn’t care to be caught doing it.
I reached down to scratch behind Spot’s ears. “What should I do today, buddy?”
His deep brown eyes told me that he’d like me to spend the rest of the day scratching his ears, with perhaps an occasional rub on his tummy.
“The possibilities are wide open,” I told him. “If I were the paragon of virtue Marina says I am, I’d spend the day working on the papers the kids handed in for the story project.”
“Mrr.” George’s face appeared over the edge of the bed.
“Exactly,” I said. “Plenty of time for that tomorrow afternoon, when it’s supposed to rain. Today is sunny and supposed to get to seventy. Not a day to spend inside.”
I pulled George up onto the bed. He made a show of struggling, but then allowed that a human’s lap wasn’t such a bad place to be. Kneading my legs with claws I should have clipped a week ago, he settled down with a loud purr.
“And again, if I were the person Marina claims I am, I’d spend the day outside doing yard work.” I glanced down at my arm, eyeing the tan line halfway up my bicep, which was about the only tan line I ever got.
“But you know what?” I scratched George’s chin with my left hand and rubbed Spot’s belly with my right. “I’m not going to do any of that. I’m also not going to clean the house, do laundry, pay bills, or figure out the June work schedule. Lois and Yvonne are right. I could use a day off.”
George stopped purring and looked up at me.
“Shocking, isn’t it?” I rubbed my knuckles under his chin. He closed his eyes and the intensity of his purr went up by a factor of two. “And we can blame Marina, which is always nice.”
Her arch comment of “that’s where you come in” had been followed by a long litany of possibilities for me to explore. When I’d pointed out that she, too, could examine some avenues, she’d claimed to have done half the work just by coming up with the ideas. Plus, it was her in-laws’ anniversary. “Of course,” she said thoughtfully, “you could come to the party with me, feign an upset stomach, and then I’d have to take you to the emergency room.”
I’d passed on the idea. I’d also passed on the whole concept of Claudia and/or Tina as killers. While I was willing to believe that, given certain circumstances, anyone could kill, I just didn’t see how it fit in here. That wasn’t any sort of proof, of course, but I wasn’t about to twist and warp the facts to fit Marina’s wacked-out theory. If there was any warping and twisting to be done, it would be to fit my own ideas.
“So if Marina’s theory is out, what’s left?” I asked George. The question was pointless. Cats don’t have opinions on anything that doesn’t have a direct bearing on their comfort. I looked at Spot. He heaved a doggy sigh and put his chin on his paws. In five seconds, he was snoring.
“You two are no help.” I slid out of bed and headed for the shower.
An hour later I was clean and breakfasted. In spite of my ambitions to do a total of zero chores, I backslid enough to bring the dirty clothes downstairs to the laundry room and to check e-mail. I started to log on to Yahoo to join the weight loss group, but the connection was slow and I gave up. Easy enough to do that later. All I had to do was remember.
* * *
After I took Spot for a short walk, I packed the backpack with a lunch, a beach towel, and my notebook, and wheeled my bike out of the garage. “Off like a dirty shirt,” I said, quoting a great-aunt. I swung my leg up and over and headed to Amy’s house. While I was sorting whites from darks from good-heavens-how-did-that-get-so-filthys, I’d realized something so very basic that I suddenly felt sorry for Jenna and Oliver, to have such a moron for a mother.
Basic fact #1: Amy’s neighbors were Lillian and Thurman Schroeder.
Basic fact #2: I’d already talked to the Schroeders, told them what I was doing (more or less), and enlisted their support. They knew how to reach me if something about Amy’s death turned up.
Basic fact #3: The Schroeders were Amy’s neighbors to the north.
Basic fact #4: There was a whole other set of neighbors to the south.
* * *
I dismounted from the bike, slid out of the backpack, and threaded it over the handlebars. The house south of Amy’s was what, once upon a time, had been called a starter home. What they called them now in this age of a bedroom and a bathroom for every person in the house, I didn’t know. Nearly unsellable, probably.
But though tiny, this particular house exuded an air of contentment. Maybe it was the lemon yellow shutters that were slightly oversized, giving an impression of generosity. Or maybe it was the perky annuals spilling from the terra-cotta pots. Or maybe the house really was content with its place in the world.
I wheeled my bike up the driveway, thinking that Richard would have had me committed if I’d ever said such a thing out loud. Which was one of the reasons he was now my former husband. Evan, on the other hand, would smile and say . . .
“Hello?”
I was so startled that my legs forgot they were next to a bike. My right shin ran hard into a pedal and I bit back a word that would have gotten my children into trouble. “Um, hi.”
A young woman had stepped out of the shadows between the detached garage and house. Her bright green tank top was filled out nicely by what she’d been destined for at birth, and the low-rise shorts showed off a waist that had never seen pregnancy. Youth bloomed in her cheeks and sh
ining blond hair. She smiled. “Don’t tell me you’re selling something. I’m a real sucker for door-to-door salespeople.”
“Selling . . . ?” I blinked at her, then saw that she was looking at my backpack. “Oh, no, I’m not selling anything. I’m horrible at that sort of thing. That’s my lunch, is all.”
“And here I was in the mood to buy something.”
I pushed at the backpack, setting it to swinging. “Five bucks will get you a half a peanut butter sandwich, some celery sticks, an apple, and a bottle of water.”
“That’s your lunch?” She made a face. “Sounds more like a snack to me.”
“Honey, who are you talking to?” A young man came around the corner of the garage, a rake in one hand, a pair of limb loppers in the other. “Oh, hi.” He stopped at his wife’s side, half a step in front of her.
I beamed at the pair. Though I was clearly no threat, he was instinctively taking the protective position. And, though I was at least fifteen years older than he was, she was threading her hand through the inside of his elbow, taking possession. First house, first yard, first garden. First love, maybe. I sent up a quick thought to whoever might be listening that their happiness last forever.
“Beth Kennedy,” I said.
“Travis Heer,” the young man said. “This is my wife, Whitney.”
There was a pause. The Heers looked at me. I looked at them. Since I was the one on their property, I needed to open the conversation. Unfortunately, since I’d somehow expected to meet another elderly couple, my brain was stuck.
“Um, I was a friend of Amy’s.” I tipped my head in the direction of her house, which was a fair distance away. At least one vacant lot sat between the homes, maybe two. Modern life being what it was, and Amy being what she’d been, it was possible they’d never even talked.
“That poor woman.” Whitney put her head against her husband’s shoulder. “I felt so bad for her.”
“Yeah.” Travis transferred the rake to his other hand and put his arm around his wife. “We were just starting to talk to her, and then . . . well, you know.”
“How long have you lived here?” I glanced at the sparkling clean windows. Once upon a time, I’d had windows like that, too. “I own the bookstore downtown and delivered books to Amy.”
“Oh, you’re the book lady!” Whitney said. “Amy talked about you.”
“She did?”
“Sure,” Travis said. “I remember. You brought her new friends, is what she said.”
It was simultaneously rewarding and incredibly sad. “She was a nice lady.”
“We moved in just after Thanksgiving,” Whitney said. “We took over a loaf of banana bread and asked her to dinner, but she said she was too busy.”
“Busy?”
“Yeah.” Travis let the loppers drop and rested the business end of the rake on the ground. “Said she had deadlines to meet, so she couldn’t do anything until spring. Then it was spring, and we went over and she said maybe in June, once it was really warm out. I kept thinking she was blowing us off. Whitney said she was just shy.” He looked at me, clearly wanting me to weigh in on the topic.
“Deadlines?” I asked.
“That’s what she said.” Whitney adjusted a strap of her tank top. “I figured maybe she was taking classes at Wisconsin. Lots of older people are doing that these days.”
The possibility of Amy venturing out of Rynwood, into Madison, and onto a large university campus was about as likely as me losing that twenty pounds. “She never said anything about taking classes.” But how much did I really know about Amy? “She didn’t talk about herself much, did she?”
They shook their heads in agreement. “We hardly spoke to her,” Travis said. “Just a few times. The only time she said much at all was a few months ago, just before the time change. It was really warm out that day, remember? Everyone in town was out doing yard work until it was pitch dark. Just when we were about to go in, Amy came out.”
Whitney nodded. “She looked like a ghost, all dressed in white like that.”
She’d almost always worn white. That, or very light pastels. More than once I’d been tempted to call her Emily, but if she knew about the habits of the reclusive Emily Dickinson, she didn’t need me to remind her.
“Yeah.” Travis grinned. “Scared the you-know-what out of me the first time I saw her wandering around at night like that.”
“She did that a lot?”
The pair glanced at each other. “I don’t know about a lot,” Whitney said slowly. “Amy wasn’t out there more than once or twice a week.” She paused. “Three times, tops.”
They were protecting Amy’s memory. I felt a warm rush of emotion toward these two youngsters. “I’m glad she had you as neighbors.”
“I guess.” Travis shifted his weight. Looked at the ground. “But it’s not like we did much.”
Yes, they had. They were too young to know it, but they had. “There’s nothing like a good neighbor,” I said. “Just knowing someone is there, keeping an eye out, is a very comforting feeling.”
Travis didn’t look convinced. “Not that Amy needed help. I mean, it’s not like she went away anywhere, or had lots of people coming over.”
“Just that one time,” Whitney said.
Travis and I both stared at her. “What time?” he asked.
“I told you about it, remember? That guy who walked all the way up the driveway? He looked like an insurance salesman, but she let him in the back door.” Whitney shrugged. “I only saw because I was coming home from work late that night.”
“When?” I asked.
“Oh, geez.” Whitney squinted. “Maybe the week before she died.”
“What did he look like?”
“Like an insurance salesman.”
I would have laughed, but her face was straight. “Um, what does an insurance salesman look like to you?”
“You know, insurancey.” She hunched her shoulders and dropped her chin to her chest. “A little squirrelly, a little weaselly.”
Must be she’d never met Glenn Kettunen, owner of the company that took care of most of Rynwood’s insurance needs. A former college football player, and bald as the proverbial billiard ball, Glenn was also the extrovert’s extrovert.
“That’s not an insurance guy,” Travis said. “That’s an accountant. Insurance guys are sales guys, really. Not squirrelly at all.”
“Whatever.” Whitney didn’t seem to care that Travis had corrected her in front of a near stranger. “He wouldn’t have turned my head in a crowd, is what I’m saying.” She grinned up at her husband.
“Did it seem as if she knew him?” I asked.
“All I know is she let him inside her house at seven o’clock at night.”
“Do you remember what he was driving?” I asked. “Size, age, make? Anything?”
She shook her head. “A sedan, I think. I don’t remember cars much. Sorry.”
There was no use being annoyed at her. It wouldn’t help, and besides, I had the same tendency regarding cars. “Color?” I asked hopefully. Sometimes I remembered a car’s color. Well, if it was yellow or red. Almost all the other car colors looked pretty much the same to me. I couldn’t even consistently name the color of my own car. In the sun it look greenish-gray, when cloudy it looked grayish-green. Did that make it green, or gray?
“Maybe white.” She looked over at Amy’s driveway. “Or silver. Could have been that funky beige color.”
Which was basically no help at all.
“Do you think I should tell the police?” Whitney asked.
“And tell them what?” Travis blew out a short puffy sigh. “That you saw some skinny guy go into Amy’s house? That he might have been driving a white car? No, wait. It was silver. No, beige. Give me a break.” He rolled his eyes. “Go to the cops and they’ll start laughing before you walk out the door.”
Whitney looked at him. “Don’t be a jerk, Travis. I’m just trying to help.”
“I know, honey, but—
”
They had a short stare down. Whitney won, of course. “Yeah, okay,” Travis muttered. “I didn’t mean to make fun of you.”
“Yes, you did,” she said comfortably, sliding her hand into his. “And at some point tonight you’ll have to fall asleep.”
“Aw, Whitney, don’t be like that.”
She patted his arm, smiling. “Then quit making fun.”
I smiled back at her, wishing I’d had her husband-management skills at her age. If I had, maybe I wouldn’t be divorced now. Of course, if I hadn’t been divorced, I wouldn’t be enjoying Evan’s company every—
“Uh-oh,” I breathed.
“What?” Whitney’s sharp-eyed gaze went a shade sharper. “Did you think of something?”
Oh, boy, had I.
“Just something I forgot to do.” Like calling Evan first thing this morning to discuss dinner plans. I fished a business card out of the backpack. “Here. If you remember anything about Amy’s visitor, or anything about Amy that you think might matter, give me a call. I know, um, people at the police department and I can talk to them.”
“Good.” Whitney slid the card into her minuscule front pocket. “I’ve never actually talked to a cop, you know? Not like a real conversation. They seem scary, somehow, in those uniforms, and all that stuff on their belts. Like they’re not real people. I’m sure they are,” she said quickly. “If they’re friends of yours, they must be, right?”
I gave my head a single, sharp shake. “More like acquaintances.”
“Oh, I get it,” Whitney said, not getting it at all. “Hey, do you really think that guy had something to do with Amy dying?”
“It was accidental,” Travis said. “She was allergic. How could anyone have anything to do with it?”
I didn’t know. But there was something wrong about how she died. Amy would never have gone outside at that time of day unless something was terribly, terribly wrong.
Unfortunately, I was the only one convinced of that.
Chapter 11
Though Sabatini’s was crowded every evening of the week, on Saturday night the line snaked through the lobby and out onto the sidewalk. The scent of oregano, hot tomato sauce, and cooking pizza dough permeated the air so thickly that I was pretty sure I was consuming calories just by breathing.
