“They asked you about that?”
He shrugged. “They asked me lots of things. Why?”
Time to stop beating around the bush. “Was it maybe about Toy Rasmussen’s violent death? You recall the name, right? The stager you hired? She was murdered,” I said.
“Just because somebody recommended her and I hired her doesn’t mean I’d—it doesn’t make any sense, anyway. Use your brains—why would I?” He glared at Sasha. “Only somebody who hates me, who has been jealous of me and has undermined me forever every way she could think of—including now—only that one person would even think that.”
The vanity of his paranoid and misplaced anger struck me. Sasha had been in his life—in fact, in his zip code—for only a few years. I hadn’t heard her mention him, even in passing, in two decades, let alone bad-mouth him. He had not been on her mind at all.
But she’d been on his. He’d demonized her, carried her with him through all the intervening years, making her the villain behind his every ache and pain. I had a moment’s panicked fear on her behalf, but he didn’t seem about to inflict physical harm.
“I can’t believe you told the police I killed her!”
“Which ‘her’ are you talking about?” Sasha asked quietly. “You’re lumping everybody together.”
“Toy,” he said. “Her. Nobody killed my mother except my mother. But they asked me about her, too. About the circumstances surrounding her death.”
“Well, that’s good,” Sasha said. “Finally.”
“What the hell are you saying? You did turn them on me, didn’t you? You told them I killed my mother? Is that what you said to them?” His skin had reached the color of a ripe eggplant, and I worried whether his head might explode while I watched.
“I only meant that they were finally considering the idea that somebody did her in. And I never said a word about you, Dennis, not because I think you wouldn’t or couldn’t, but because I never spoke with them about you or anybody else. Amanda and I found the…Toy. That’s when we spoke with the police. They found you on their own. I, for one, thought you were in Chicago, the way you said you were.”
“I had my reasons.”
“If you’re so innocent, even though you lied about where you’d be, why don’t you drop the huffy act and just plain say what your reason for being here and saying you were there might be?” Sasha’s color was darkening, too.
Dennis bit on his bottom lip as if to censor himself. “I had business, all right? Turns out, it was better trying to take care of certain things here, rather than in Chicago. I just—I didn’t want to be hassled, is all. By you. By anybody.”
Business. “What is it you do again?” I asked softly. “I thought you worked at Marshall Field’s.”
He waved that away with one hand. “Yeah, sure. You ever heard of the American Way? What’s it to you if I’m looking to be more on my own?”
“I think the police talked with you because you were Toy’s boyfriend.” I kept my voice in a calm, soothe-the-savage-beast mode.
“Were. Was. As in past tense. It was over.”
“Nothing quite like a ruptured romance to trigger other sorts of passions.” I watched his face move around the color wheel again. We were approaching crimson when he finally took a deep breath that calmed him enough to speak.
“It wasn’t like that. It was never a big thing, and then it was a friendly breakup. She moved here, what was supposed to happen? Look, I got her a job, didn’t I? If I hated her or wanted her dead, why would I do that?”
We both stared at him. I don’t think anybody blinked for much too long.
“Sweet mother of God!” he shouted. “Only you”—he scowled at Sasha again—“only you would even think of something that incredible! Like it was a setup? Something I planned? I can’t believe you said that—thought that!” He grew silent for a moment. “No. I can believe it. It’s just like you.” He stood up.
My muscles tensed and I got ready to spring, but he simply stood there, looming.
“Good thing the police aren’t as mentally disturbed as you are,” he said. “They know I didn’t do anything. Just make sure you don’t go to them with any more of your crazy, vindictive theories.”
“Or what?” Sasha stood up as well, looking at him eye-to-eye. There is much to be said in favor of being as tall as your enemies.
“I’m not wasting any more breath on you. Just stay away from me!”
“Stay away from you? You need help, Dennis. Look at me. I’m not in your city,” she said. “I didn’t burst into your apartment like a storm trooper. And I didn’t lie about where I had to be or was.”
“Where have you been, really?” I asked.
“None of your business,” he snapped.
Sasha plowed on. “Stay away from you? I’d love to—if you’d stop stalking me!”
“Stalking! I—” He simply shook his head. Maybe the airflow he produced would cool him down. He looked like a stroke waiting to happen.
I know about sibling rivalry and sibling conflict, but this was a rarefied subset. They were former short-term stepsiblings still at war. I hoped that Sasha and Dennis were not typical. “Hey, you guys,” I said. “Hey. This is a rough time. Simmer down.”
“Don’t involve me in anything else, do you hear?” he said. “That’s all I have to say.”
“What about the house?” Sasha asked. It was a valid question. It was not, however, a question Dennis wanted to answer. His color flared, he grimaced and fumed, but there it was between them: the house that was going to put money in his pockets.
“Sell it,” he said.
“And you won’t say I’m cheating you? I did something wrong or evil or malicious or—”
“Just sell it,” he growled. “Not that anybody’s going to rush to buy a place that had a murder in it.”
“Two,” Sasha said softly. “And I can reach you in which city?” she added.
He opened the door himself and slammed out. Sasha double-locked the door and turned to me with a long sigh.
“You were pushing it, dear friend,” I said.
She shrugged. “So was he. But I’m glad the police talked to him, and I hope they keep tracking him.”
“I thought you didn’t think him capable of violence.”
“Maybe I was wrong. Besides, Phoebe was killed in a cowardly way. That’d be like him. As for Toy—oh, I don’t know. I hate him and I’d like him locked up even if he didn’t do it.”
Democracy is sometimes so unfair. Locking up whomever we didn’t like is an enticing idea. But here we were, stuck with rule by law; and Dennis was gone, having managed to avoid explaining why he’d lied about his whereabouts after the memorial service. We had nothing more than we’d had before he barged in, and we couldn’t lock him up.
Therefore, by all the rules of fair play (because of course, life does play fair, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it?), I would now get my reward for good behavior. I pulled Phoebe’s purse out from under my thigh and opened it with a deep sigh of anticipation.
Phoebe’s credit cards were in one of those cunning mesh bags, a purple one. The wallet I’d started to extract before Dennis arrived was a slender number holding only bills, coins, and—my anticipation went into happy high gear—receipts. Now I’d find something. Sasha probably hadn’t even considered them.
I found lots of somethings, but unfortunately they were, without exception, extremely dull. Phoebe had bought stamps and gone to the supermarket—for those eggs on her list, I supposed. Also the ATM, where she’d withdrawn $200, not enough to believe anybody was threatening her or forcing her to make the withdrawal. She’d had lunch and left a 17 percent tip. She’d been to the dry cleaners and possibly still had clothing there. She’d bought something and pulled the tag off. It said it was a “Genuine Hoffer” and whatever that was, it said we should never settle for less. I sighed and tossed down the final contents, an appointment reminder for her dentist, a coupon for 20 percent off any purchase of towels at The Bubble
, and a fabric-covered button.
Sasha watched me with a bemused expression. “Dull, right?”
I felt a completely irrational wave of indignation. How could Phoebe have exited this world without an incriminating letter in her pocketbook? Why not a slip showing a huge withdrawal from the bank—or even an out-of-line huge deposit? What about a telegram, or a matchbook from a seedy-sounding nightclub? Wasn’t that supposed to happen? Why was nothing given me that I could cleverly analyze, that could provoke even a tiny “Aha!”?
Sasha was watching me, nodding. “You were warned,” she said. “And so, my friend, if you have no further need of me, and you can’t think of a way we can destroy Dennis without our going to prison, I will return to the editing job. I’d grumble about it, but they are paying me good money to work at breakneck speed.”
I stood up. “And you’re paying us good—”
“—not so good,” she reminded me.
“—you’re paying us pathetically small amounts of money to help you get to the bottom of this, and I’m afraid I haven’t been much help at all. My apologies.”
“Not your fault,” she said. “It helped to know you believed me. And it helps to know that the cops asked Dennis about Phoebe, too. Maybe they are beginning to have doubts about her death. And I was thinking that if both women were killed by the same person, which seems logical, and if both times that person wanted the same thing, then if—when—the cops find out who killed Toy, we’ll have our killer, too.”
That should have been consolation, but it wasn’t. I had no confidence in the murderer’s being found. Toy’s murder was too unscripted and messy, and Phoebe’s too speculative, too theoretical.
“Thanks,” I told Sasha.
“For what?”
“For being so foolishly optimistic. But keep your door locked,” I said. “Don’t let him back in, no matter what. Call the cops if he reappears. Don’t let your client in until you double check that’s who it is.”
“Oh, Manda, Dennis is all talk when it comes to me, couldn’t you tell? I mean he still wants me to make sure that house sells. How can I do that if he kills me first?”
“He’d cope with selling it himself. And he’d endure taking the entire profit.”
She looked at me intently, then nodded. “I promise,” she said.
“Good.”
When all you’ve got going for you is an optimistic friend for whom you’re grateful, you want, at the very least, to keep her alive.
Seventeen
* * *
* * *
Marc Wilkins lived with his replacement woman in the near northern suburbs. According to his schedule, he was teaching tonight, which was good since I couldn’t come up with a reason why Ruby Osgood would need to see him again, let alone at home. I was reverting to being myself, and I didn’t want to see Marc in any case.
Mackenzie was with me. We were multitasking. Sleuthing and dating. Kind of. Find out about Marc’s whereabouts the night Phoebe died, then enjoy dessert somewhere in town afterwards. Our kind of a date. En route, I filled C.K. in with my various encounters, including the strange one with Dennis.
“He’s here on business?” C.K. murmured. “Interestin’. Marshall Fields surely didn’t send him here. So ‘business’ has to mean money. He’s trying to dig up money in Philadelphia. Why here?” And then he was quiet for some time, working it through in his fashion until we pulled up to a garden-apartment complex that had seen better days. The grounds were sparsely planted, so that the winter landscape looked more bleak than it had to. The brick buildings’ shutters and occasional planter box needed painting.
“Lacks curb appeal,” I said. “I’m quoting the late Toy Rasmussen. Also doesn’t look as if Marc Wilkins is in the money as he’s reputed to be. Do you think Merilee’s claim that he spent his inheritance on the business is true?”
“Could be, in which case I grant him his idiot credentials. Or it may simply be that he wants to appear hard up,” Mackenzie said. “Easier on his wallet if he has less assets when he shows up in divorce court.”
“Either way, better for our case. His conviction that Phoebe stole money, and might have had it on her is surely a reason to have gone to see her, to be ‘M.’ He could have been looking for cash or for whatever form she’d converted it into.”
He laughed. “I hope you mean savings bonds, or a few shares of stock, not gold bullion or diamonds. How much money could she—if she had in fact taken any that didn’t belong to her—how much could a person extract from a pet-accessory business? Maybe she converted it into those gold-foil-wrapped chocolate coins or paste jewelry.” He lifted his hand to ring the bell. “Unless Marc’s completely crazy, he’d know she couldn’t have taken much.”
“He keeps saying she did. Maybe there were hidden costs—remodeling the building—buying the building.”
“That would have been still more insane. More likely his inheritance was small, and his lifestyle way over his head, and that’s why he’s living like this. Let’s see what his woman knows.” He rang the bell.
“What’s our cover story? What did you say when you made the appointment?” I whispered, admittedly realizing it was a little late for this question.
“That—”
The door was opened by a sunny young woman who looked like she’d just stepped off the stage of the Grand Ole Opry. She had poufed blond hair, and wore red cowboy boots, black jeans and turtleneck, and a vest that had “Ashley” written in red sequins. The jeans looked stitched to her flesh. “Hi!” she said. “I’ve been expecting you, even though I don’t know what I can tell you. I’m Ashley, Marky’s fiancée. Please come in.”
Marc’s fiancée led us into the small living room with the panache of a baton twirler at the head of the band, and waved us onto the sofa. “I made cheese crisps,” Ashley said. “Please, sit down and let me serve you. You must be thirsty. We have wine, sparkling water, beer, some of the hard stuff, coffee, tea, soda?”
This must have been her apartment. Marc had simply moved in. It had a young, temporary look, with posters tacked to the walls, board bookshelves balanced on concrete blocks, and carpeting that had been provided by a stingy landlord many years and tenants ago. I spotted the familiar girth and print of a “Fifteen-month Student Datebook” atop the bookshelves, along with a heavy text with “Abnormal Psychology” printed on its spine. I wondered where she was going to school.
I also wondered what on earth Ashley saw in Marc Wilkins. At this point, as her tenant, he couldn’t seem her ticket to an easier life. He was a good-enough-looking man, especially if you liked a slightly dangerous darkness about the features, a withdrawn sullenness. But he was twice her age and a pompous letch, and even if her wardrobe could stand a redo, she was a great-looking, energy-filled young woman. Why him?
It took a while until our many assurances that we were comfortable and loved her cheese crisps and that sparkling water was precisely what we’d wanted satisfied her hostessing needs.
“How can I help you?” Ashley then said with open eagerness. I wondered if she’d been receptive to the appointment because we were much-needed entertainment. Maybe she was already a little bored with sulky Marc. Poor girl. That man was going to make all those bubbles in her personality go flat.
“We’re investigators workin’ on the Phoebe Ennis case,” Mackenzie said. “We wanted to clarify a few things with you.”
“Case?” Her eyes widened. “I thought—I heard she committed suicide. Why is that a case?”
“Just an expression,” Mackenzie said. “Shorthand for case file. Did you know the deceased?”
“Not really.” Ashley’s cheeks reddened. “Not well. She—she came to see me once. She was upset about Marc and me.” Ashley shrugged. “She said she wanted to talk sense with me about that, but really, she was just meddling. Marc said she really wanted him to loan them more money for the business. He’d had this inheritance. It wasn’t that much, but it was nice enough, and he’d pretty much loaned the wh
ole thing to those two women. I guess because Marc’s wife was her partner, Phoebe was in a weird place, but still. She didn’t have to come insult me, as if I were…She blamed me for Marc’s decision to stop loaning them money, but I’ve never taken a cent from Marc. It wasn’t my fault the business was failing. From everything I heard, it was her fault. All her fault.”
“It must have upset the two of you, financially and emotionally, the way everything was tangled,” I said. “Business and marriages and romances.”
Mackenzie looked sideways at me, and I stopped. Maybe the kind of investigation we were pretending to do didn’t touch on human emotions. “You understand that it wasn’t a loan,” he said. “Of course he anticipated sharing in the profits, but it wasn’t ever a loan. Marc was the third partner. He put up the money to start the business.”
“Marc did? It wasn’t a loan?” Ashley looked at me, then at Mackenzie, her eyes slightly squinted. She looked as if she’d been left out of lots of loops and she was only now becoming aware of it.
“One question we have is whether you’ll be making a legal claim against her estate,” Mackenzie asked gently.
“Me? How would I? Marc would be the one to do that, I’d think.”
“Will he be home soon?”
She checked her watch. “Not for several hours. You’ll have to talk to him tomorrow. He’s teaching tonight. The thing is, we aren’t married, so I…I don’t have any legal standing in this.”
“You’re his fiancée, correct?”
She shrugged. “Something like that.”
“I asked because there is some confusion surrounding the disposition of her estate,” Mackenzie said.
I have noticed that the two small words “her estate” calm and focus people. It did now, too.
“What kind of confusion?” Ashley asked. “And please, have more cheese crisps. I made way too many and they don’t keep well, they get greasy, and Marc gets all angry if I’ve made things nobody eats. He’s always saying, ‘waste not, want not’ and ‘a penny saved,’ blah, blah.” She looked at us. “He checks what he calls my ‘waste quotient’ in the trash and garbage cans every night, can you believe it?”
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