“The investigator on Pickle’s murder wants to question her, but you know, she’s gone missing.” I glanced at the ingredients on the cookie package and cringed. I set the box back in the cupboard. “He can’t locate her.”
“You don’t say. This is very interesting.” Olga placed the bottle of vodka back in the open drawer, and closed it with one push. “She and Pickle, they, uh, you know. Had some fun between the bed sheets, if you are catching my meaning. Bouncing uglies?”
I was pretty sure the term was bumping uglies, but I didn’t want to reinforce the already uncomfortable image in my mind by correcting her. “Really?”
“Yes. They know each other from way back.” Olga waved her hand in the air.
“They’ve known each other a long time?”
“This is what I just tell you. Did you not just hear me? You need some flu bomb in your ears, I think.” She shook her head with impatience and I had the distinct feeling she wanted to smack me. “New York. Long Island. This is where they come from. Ed also. But Ed, he dead too.”
“The man the squirrel is named after? That Ed?”
Olga nodded. “Ed Sigmund.”
“How did he die?
“Heart attack. We were all very sad. He was good man.”
“So, all three of them knew each other in Long Island?”
“Yes.” Olga’s brows knitted. “You are asking many questions, aren’t you?”
“Well, a man has been killed.”
“This is true. If you want me to spill some beans, there are not too many to spill. This I know: years ago, they worked together at some place but here, they did not talk about the working. Personally, me,” Olga said, placing a hand on her chest, “I think they did not like this place where they worked. This is just sense I get.”
“They never mentioned the name of the company or anything?”
“Nope.” Olga slapped her thighs. “See, no beans.”
The phone rang at the receptionist desk. My first phone call of the day. “I’m on it.”
Olga followed along to assist me through the first call. She also provided a quickie course on how to send calls to voicemail because there was no one here to take live calls. Okay, Olga was around, but apparently she didn’t feel like taking her own calls.
“I am not in mood,” she said. “This murder business has formed a black cloud on my day.”
My cell phone chirped in my jeans pocket.
“What is this noise?” asked Olga.
“My cell phone. Someone just texted me.” I pulled the phone out to be sure it wasn’t one of the girls with an issue. I rolled my eyes. The text was from Guy Mertz, who, it turned out, was a lot needier than any of my three girls. Two more texts followed on the heels of the first. He was desperate to get my interview done that day and the earlier the better.
Olga fisted her hands on her hips. “Who is sending you these texts when you are busy answering phones?”
I wasn’t exactly busy answering phones, but I humored her. “Yeah, sorry about that. It’s Guy Mertz. He’s a crime reporter for Channel Ten.”
She nodded. “I know this man. He has the pointy nose and wears the hat and carries the umbrella. I like the way he tells stories. Why does he send so many texts to you?”
“He wants to interview me.” I slid my cell back into my jeans.
“About Pickle’s murder?”
“Well, that. And other things.”
“Like this hashtag nonsense and the rapping song?” Olga looked at me over the rim of her glasses.
I raised my brows and smiled at her. “So, you watch the news, huh?”
“No, I tweet like crazy. You text Mertz back—tell him he do interview in autumn garden in front of building. But he must give me autograph. No autograph, no interview.” Olga crossed her arms and nodded once.
Olga was beginning to grow on me. Her gruff, get-it-done manner was hard to take at first, but she didn’t seem mean or nasty. After getting Guy’s easy agreement to give Olga an autograph, and give the Nature Center some free publicity, the interview time was set for noon.
The phones weren’t ringing. I was quickly getting bored. I decided to tidy things up in the learning nook around the corner from where I sat. Some books had been taken from the shelf and not replaced. An adult baseball hat had been left on the floor. “Olga?” I called out. “Do you have a lost and found box somewhere?”
She scooted from her office to see what I was up to. When she saw the hat in my hand, her eyes lit up and she grabbed it. “That is not lost. That belongs to Bob.”
“Another volunteer?”
“No. Bob is my gardener.”
The front doors swished open, followed by the sound of hard-soled shoes on the wooden floors. A moment later, Eric appeared.
“Please tell me you have come to take down the crime scene tape,” Olga said, obviously frustrated by the mess.
“Not yet,” Eric said, sending a smile in her direction. “I’m waiting until I get vital information from the medical examiner and a couple of other labs.”
“If the education naturalist recovers from her flu, she will want to hold our pond life preschool class Wednesday morning. We can’t do that with tape up!”
“I’ll do my best to have it down by Tuesday night, but I can’t make guarantees.” Eric turned his gaze toward me. “Barb, I’ve arranged for the precinct artist to come here this afternoon. I want you to work with him to draw a composite of Moyle. I’ll show the sketch around to the local homeless folks to see if I can’t dig this guy up and get more information out of him.” He pointed toward the back door. “I’m going to be at the pond for a few minutes.”
“Do you want some company?”
Eric slid me a sideways glance. “I suppose you want to tag along.”
I grabbed my jacket from the back of the chair. “If you insist.”
“May I be tagging too?” Olga asked.
Eric was obviously on the edge of being annoyed, but not quite there yet. “It isn’t going to be that exciting, but sure, if you want.”
Olga punched a button on the reception desk phone to have voicemail pick up, and we followed Eric down to the pond. Or, as close as the tape would allow us to go. The tape didn’t fence off just the pond itself. It went back into the woods several yards. We watched from the perimeter, close to the location where I had been standing when I spotted the body. “Why does the tape go back so far?” I asked Eric.
“That’s where he was stabbed, down that way not far from that fire pit.” With a lift of his chin he indicated an area through the trees. From where we stood, we could barely make out the round circle of stones and benches that comprised a popular Nature Center venue.
Olga interjected. “We call that the Story Time Circle. We use for preschool story time, only big kids like to have parties there with the beer and the doobie puffing.” She mimicked someone smoking a joint.
Eric pointed. “It appears there was a struggle just outside the circle of benches where the actual stabbing occurred. The body was dragged up here and placed in the chair the way you found him. We managed to get a good set of foot prints near the chair. The killer had to be a man or a very large and strong woman.”
I pointed to another far corner of the taped off area. “What happened there?”
“We have one smaller foot print—possibly your long-haired lady. I want to know if that person saw anything suspicious.” He drew an imaginary line of sight from that spot to the murder location. “Because anyone standing there would have a good view of both the fire pit and the pond.”
“This lady is Helen Moyer?” Olga squinted into the woods.
“That’s what we’d like to know.” Eric turned his attention to Olga. “But your volunteers are becoming difficult to locate.”
“So, what are you doing here now?” I asked Eric.
Eric shrugged. “Looking for anything we might have missed the first time.”
Olga and I left Eric to his work and walked up the pa
th back to the nature center. The phones got busier and before I knew it, Guy had arrived with his two-person crew.
Olga bounced around like a frenzied teen at a Beatles concert while the cameraman set up in the garden. The woman Guy introduced as a junior producer seemed to be doubling as lighting and sound assistant. She had me sign some papers in between rigging me with a microphone. After just a few light meter and sound checks, I was plopped in a chair. Guy had his serious face on. It started off easy, but when he asked me about Vinnie VanGo and the rap song, my dander came up. I shook my finger at the camera. “Vinnie VanGo, I hope you’re watching because I have some words for you, young man. Would you write a song like that about your own mother? I don’t think so! You should be ashamed of yourself. Personally, I think an apology is in order. That is what a real man with manners would do. Hashtag are you a real man Vinnie VanGo?”
Guy didn’t hide his surprise at my rant. He took a beat, then turned his own smile to the camera. “And I think that’s a great way to end my interview with the lovely and controversial Barbara Marr. Vinnie VanGo, she awaits your apology. This is Guy Mertz for Channel Ten news.”
As the crew packed up, Guy took a moment to sign a head shot for Olga. He looked at me as he did so, a grin on his face. “That was quite a statement, madam. You might as well have invited him to a duel. Did you have it rehearsed?”
“Actually, no. The words just spilled out. Do you think it will come back to haunt me?”
He chuckled. “Time will tell. If so, you know where to find me.”
I offered him a bemused smile. “Guy, you have a nose for stories. I’m sure you’ll find me.”
Guy handed the head shot to Olga and tipped his fedora. “Thank you for being a devoted viewer. Your support means the world to all of us at Channel Ten.” He waved and jumped into the news van.
As I followed Olga back to the entrance of the building, I detected a hint of cigarette smoke in the air. I didn’t remember either of Guy’s crew smoking. “Olga,” I said, “Did you smell cigarette smoke out there?”
“I did. Some old lady puffing away. She must have been a hundred. I shoo her away.”
The day, which had seemed slow to start, was now speeding away from me. I’d barely finished my lunch when Eric’s artist arrived. He sat beside me at the reception desk and worked on a laptop computer. Drawing my descriptions directly on the computer screen, he enhanced the image as he went along. He recreated my memory with a good deal of accuracy, and before long, the final product did look like Moyle. Eric could easily find him if any of the homeless people he showed it to had seen him.
While the artist used the restroom, Olga came out of her office. She peeked at the monitor and frowned. “Why do you have picture of my gardener on this computer?”
“That’s my friend Moyle,” I told her. “Do you know him?”
“Moyle? No. This is my gardener, Bob. He lives in my guest house.”
Chapter Twelve
Either Moyle had a doppelganger named Bob who maintained lawns in exchange for lodging, or Moyle was, in fact, Olga’s gardener. If so, I couldn’t imagine for the life of me why he’d tell her his name was Bob, but then again, I couldn’t for the life of me figure out Moyle, period. I held off phoning Eric to tell him I had a lead on Moyle’s whereabouts, opting to check it out for myself first.
Only, it had to wait until after I met Amber at the bus stop. Once she was home, I needed to skedaddle back to my house because Amber and I had a few finishing touches to make on her Cleopatra costume. I also wanted to see how Bethany’s day had gone. My fingers were crossed that no one had laughed at her or made her life miserable.
I screeched into my driveway just minutes before the bus stopped at the end of White Willow Circle. Roz wasn’t there to meet her boys, which meant she was still sick. I sent Amber into the house and told her I’d be there after checking in on Mrs. Walker.
Following Roz’s two boys into the house, I recoiled in horror. The place looked as if a war had erupted within its walls. Food bags and wrappers were strewn on the floor, a chair was overturned, and the kitchen. Oh, the kitchen.
“Hello?” Roz called weakly from her upstairs bedroom.
I climbed the stairs and found her in exactly the same position I’d left her two days earlier. “Are you feeling any better?”
“I think I’m worse,” she said, her voice deep from heavy chest congestion. “Do I sound worse?”
“You sound like James Earl Jones after a hard night of partying. Did you confuse the male hormones for your NyQuil again?”
She implored me with watery eyes. “Could you just put me out of my misery, now?”
I felt her forehead. Her fever seemed low grade, but it was still present. “Have you been to the doctor?”
She nodded. “Peter took me yesterday.” She made a sad attempt at finger quotes. “Just the flu. Just. I hate that word right now. He might as well have said, it’s just the apocalypse, because that’s how I feel. No drugs for this wretched disease.”
Roz wasn’t generally the dramatic type. She was in worse shape than I thought. I scratched my head. “Did you drink the flu bomb I brought over?”
“I’m sorry, I tried, but it was yucky. I’m too sick for yucky.”
She could probably use a big bowl of chicken noodle soup, but that was beyond my cooking skills. The Soup Kettle had just opened up in the Rustic Woods Shopping Center to excellent reviews. I could make a quick run for Roz. “I’ll go get you some soup,” I said, giving her arm a rub. “Is Peter taking the boys trick-or-treating?”
She nodded, and reached for a tissue from the box next to her on the bed. “He said he’d leave work early to get home and get them ready.”
“That’s good.” I didn’t tell her about the condition of the house downstairs. No need to risk making her sicker. “Be back in a few,” I said from the doorway.
Roz rubbed her red nose with the tissue. “You’re the best friend ever.”
A best friend might have tackled that dirty kitchen, but I had a long list of my own duties to perform. I returned the chair to its upright position, picked up all empty food bags and wrappers, shoved them into an overflowing trash can, and turned off the television while guiding the boys to the table for homework. Then I ran home to check on Bethany.
I found both girls in the family room watching TV. Bethany was curled on the couch and Amber sat on the floor eating cereal from a bowl.
I plopped down beside Bethany and gave her a little tickle. “Watcha watchin’?” I asked her.
She flinched from the tickle, but didn’t take her eyes from the screen. “A documentary on the history of Halloween.”
“Do you have homework today?”
“This is homework. It’s extra credit.”
“Oh? For what class?”
Finally, she pulled her eyes away from the television and addressed me slowly, as if I were missing a few marbles. “History. Hence, the history of Halloween.”
Of course, I wasn’t missing any marbles. I knew exactly what I was doing. Most moms do. By asking a stupid question, I succeeded in getting her attention. I moved into the real reason for our talk. “Speaking of school, how did things go today?”
She shrugged. “Fine.”
“No problems?”
Amber garbled around cereal and milk. “Only if it’s a problem that Kyle Harris asked her to be his date at the party tonight.”
Bethany’s face flushed and she scolded Amber. “I told you that I wanted to tell her myself.”
I knew when to back off. Bethany’s day hadn’t been agonizing, and I knew Kyle Harris—he was a cutie. We’d discuss the house rules for middle-school dating another day. “So, do I need to take you or is he…”
“I’m meeting Kyle there.”
Smile on my face, I stood. “That works. Okay, I’m running to get soup for Mrs. Walker.”
Amber and Bethany shouted in unison. “Get some for us!”
Good idea. I grabbed my keys
and started the car. Before backing out, I dialed Peggy to see if she was still down with the flu. Her answer spoke volumes.
“What year is it?” she croaked.
“You sound awful.”
Peggy paused. “Who is this?”
“Peggy, it’s Barb.”
“Oh, hi Peggy. I’m sick and the cows are in the field. Can you call me after the Queen comes?”
“No, Peggy, you’re talking to Barb. I’m Barb, you are Peggy.”
“What? Peggy, you’re breaking up.” She coughed into the phone. “There’s a horse in my room. Can you call Hoss or Little Joe?”
“Sure. No problem.” I hung up and added another order of soup to my list.
Apparently, half of Rustic Woods suffered from the wretched virus because the line at The Soup Kettle went out the door. I overheard several familiar tales of illness while waiting to order.
When I went to pay, the teen working the register eyed me oddly. Finally, she gasped out, “You’re That Barbara Marr, aren’t you?”
I cringed as heads turned in my direction. In a lowered voice, I confirmed her identification. “Yes. Yes I am.” I cleared my throat. “How much is the total again?”
She looked at the register. “Twenty-three fifty-seven. Can I have your autograph?”
I handed her my debit card. “You’ll get it when I sign for the charge,” I joked.
She laughed, but made sure I signed the receipt and two napkins. One for her and one for her mother. It seemed my celebrity status crossed generations.
Finally, I left with enough soup for a small army. The sun was setting by the time I’d finished dropping soup off for Peggy and Roz. When I returned home, Amber greeted me with a menacing scowl.
“I’m sorry, honey,” I apologized, heaving my own Soup Kettle paper bag onto the kitchen counter and grabbing spoons from the drawer. I removed a lid from one container and set it in front of her. “Look, your favorite, chicken noodle.”
She snatched the spoon from my hand. “What took you so long?”
“Mrs. Walker and Mrs. Rubenstein are both still really sick. The line was long, and then I had to go to both of their houses to deliver the soup.”
Dial Marr for Murder Page 8
