Group, Photo, Grave (A Kiki Lowenstein Mystery)

by Slan, Joanna Campbell

  I didn’t blame him one bit.

  Sheila had a lot of good qualities; however, sensitivity was not one of them.

  She took her accustomed spot in a recliner, the chair that offered the most support for her still healing collarbone. I grabbed a chair from the dining room and brought it over so I could sit next to her, because that’s the easiest way to view an album. I handed her the shopping bag. The album was wrapped in tissue paper the same way we package every album that comes from Time in a Bottle. Even though the book wasn’t finished, it was still a gift, so I wanted this presentation to be special.

  Taking her time, she withdrew one piece of tissue after another. Finally, she opened the album. “Robbie? You should come see this.”

  He couldn’t hear her from his spot in the pantry. I don’t know why she didn’t realize that, so I said, “It’s okay that he isn’t here. The book isn’t finished. I was hoping just to show you the design and get your approval. I’m missing photos of you and the Jimmy Girls from your school days. I don’t have an explanation for where you came up with that nickname. Could you tell me?”

  Since he didn’t come and join us, she flipped the book open and started looking through it. I could tell she was happy. She’s not a big smiler, but the intensity of her attention told me she was pleased. That didn’t surprise me. She had micro-managed every item I’d created for her wedding, and I’d recycled many of those images for this album.

  Flipping through her childhood photos and a family picture of her with her parents, she paused at the blank space where I’d put a sticky note and jotted, “Jimmy Girls.”

  “Behind those doors in the bookcase, there’s an old album. It’s black.” She pointed to the first bookcase in the row of built-ins. I retrieved the album for her.

  “Someday soon, you need to let me scan these pages and put them on acid-free paper. This old stuff is starting to crumble, see? That’s because of the wood pulp in it. The pictures will suffer,” I said.

  “I’m not sure I want you to see this,” she said, holding the album so that the inside was hidden from my view.

  “Why?”

  “I didn’t like the way I looked.”

  “We’ve all changed over the years.”

  “No, I said I didn’t like the way I looked, past tense. I’m comfortable with who I am now.”

  “Is this about your nose job?”

  “Yes,” she said, but she didn’t offer to show me the photo. She kept the album on her lap, using the cover as a shield.

  “Since I know about your surgery, what difference does it make?”

  She glared at me. “For goodness sake, Kiki, use your head. It makes a difference because it was embarrassing. We got our nickname—the Jimmy Girls—because of Jimmy Durante. Remember his nose? He joked about it. All five of us had huge honkers. You can’t imagine the sort of teasing we endured. Day in and day out. We were young, sensitive girls, but even the teachers poked fun at us.”

  “Why? That doesn’t make sense. CALA values kindness and civility. They make a huge deal of those virtues.”

  “Today they do. Back then, people thought teasing wasn’t a big deal. ‘Sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me.’ Remember that? If I heard that once, I heard it a million times.”

  “I’m sorry you had to endure that, Sheila. That must have been awful. But I still find it hard to believe. You couldn’t possibly have looked that bad. Not you.”

  With a tiny “huh” of disgust, she thrust the album toward me. I took it from her carefully, worried about her range of motion and about the weight. I shouldn’t have been.

  There were only a dozen photos in that black book. Sheila had curated them, culled them down to the bare minimum. The images had faded, as I had suspected they would. The family room wasn’t well lit, so I had to squint to parse my motherin-law’s features in the picture. She stood at the back of a group shot, which also made it harder to see.

  When I did, I almost gasped.

  Her nose had been the size of a Greyhound bus.

  I’ve lived in apartments smaller than her nose was.

  Not only was it large, it also bent to one side. The size of it totally obscured her other features. Her eyes—one of her most stunning assets—were nearly non-existent by comparison.

  There are large noses that are lovely, but this wasn’t one of them.

  “Oh, my,” I said.

  “The surgery made a huge difference in my looks. My self-confidence soared.” She spoke very matter-of-factly. “All of us Jimmy Girls suffered until we had our noses done.”

  Turning my attention to her friends, I could barely figure out who was who. Only one other woman had a nose as bad or worse than Sheila’s. “Okay, I see Leah, Toby and that’s Ester in the front. So is that Miriam standing beside you in the back row?”

  “Yes,” said Sheila. “Poor Miriam. She was as ugly as I was.”

  I couldn’t dispute this. The other girls sported big noses, but the shape and size of the schnozzles on Sheila and Miriam were disfiguring.

  I dithered. I wasn’t sure whether I should include this picture or not. While I tried to decide what to do, Sheila interrupted my thoughts. “I guess it doesn’t matter now. Robbie actually met me before I had my nose done. You are welcome to take the photo, although I’d really rather have you bury it than show it off.”

  “What happened to Miriam?” I asked. “How did she die?”

  Chapter 43

  Before she could answer, Robbie stuck his head around the corner. The dark circles under his eyes reminded me of cast-off tires under the harsh glow of Sheila’s overhead lights. “I talked with Hadcho,” he said. “The situation isn’t good. Prescott has named you a person of interest, Sheila, because of the invitation found in Dr. Hyman’s pocket.”

  “But we didn’t put him on the invitations list!” Sheila said.

  Now he stepped into the room and sank down into the chair closest to Sheila’s. “Hon, we look like liars. We told Prescott that we didn’t invite Dr. Hyman.”

  “We didn’t!” Sheila puffed up like an angry barnyard hen. “I didn’t. Did you, Kiki?”

  “Never met the man. Like I told you earlier, I went over the list I have in my computer and his name isn’t on it.”

  “There’s only one way this could have happened. The killer or an accomplice must have put his or her invitation into an envelope and sent it to Dr. Hyman. Tell you what—ask Hadcho to check out the envelope,” and with that, I opened the wedding album to the page where I had included a sample of the invitation and the matching envelope. Unhooking the page so I could pass it to Robbie, I explained, “I customized every one of those envelopes with a rubber stamp. See? That image of the two flowers intertwined? With your names under it? I had that custom-made for Sheila. Remember?” and I turned to her. “You approved it yourself. We wanted to put punch-art flowers on the envelopes. Those would have been 3-D, but the post office was going to charge extra, because they couldn’t go through their machines, so we settled for the customized rubber stamp. To make each envelope I stamped on the image and then hand-colored it with markers.”

  “Every envelope?” Robbie sounded skeptical.

  “Every envelope,” I assured him. “Trust me, there’s no customized envelope sent to Dr. Hyman. Can’t be. No way.”

  He nodded slowly. “I see what you mean. How about if you explain that to Hadcho. He’s not on the case, but he’s still in contact with the officers who are.”

  “Certainly.” When he handed his phone to me and clicked it onto speakerphone, I told Detective Hadcho what I’d explained to Robbie and Sheila.

  Hadcho’s response was a grunt, but I’m accustomed to his way of non-talk talking. “Too bad we can’t go to all the guests and force a show of invitations,” he said.

  “Invitations and envelopes,” I said. “The killer must have been sent an invitation. So you can cross off the wait staff, the musicians, and the photographer. And the rabbi and pri
est. It would have to have been someone who was on the guest list. This also means the murder was premeditated. The murderer went through quite a bit of trouble to get Dr. Hyman to the event where he could be killed. That might tell you something about the weapon. It had to be portable. Easy to hide. Or something so common that no one would notice. Have you figured out what he was killed with?”

  “No,” said Hadcho. “The ME says it could have been a skewer, like they use for shish kabobs; a long nail, such as a ten-penny nail; a screwdriver; an icepick; an awl; a small gauge knitting needle; a small wooden dowel; and possibly a hat pin, but not likely.”

  “But the ME hasn’t narrowed those down?” asked Robbie. “Surely if it was a dowel or a bamboo skewer there’d be splinters. Also there’s a wide variety of circumferences in that listing. Has he decided exactly how wide the hole is that killed Dr. Hyman?”

  “No. Prescott didn’t think about that. The other detectives have tried to talk to him, but he’s refused to listen to any suggestions. Prescott isn’t exactly the sharpest fish hook in the tackle box, if you get my drift. He copied this list and told the detectives to go back to Mr. Haversham’s house and look for these things. Outside. In the grass. Can you believe it?”

  “That’s ridiculous. He released the scene. It’s not like the murderer was likely to leave a bloody awl in a flowerbed. Maybe in a trash bag. Did he search those?”

  “No. Believe me, I suggested that,” said Hadcho. “He’s never run an investigation like this, and he’s making mistakes left and right. He’s so busy granting interviews about how his—your—office should be run that he’s not focused on directing the efforts of the detectives. Worst of all, he just doesn’t listen to what anybody has to say!”

  “Keep your head down, Hadcho. If he learns you’ve been talking with me, he’ll make you pay.”

  “I realize that,” said Hadcho. “Hey, Kiki, where can I get a copy of the right envelope? Maybe they brought in the bogus envelope and entered it into evidence. If they did, I can compare it to a copy of the bona fide item. That should make it pretty clear that you and Mrs. Holmes didn’t send the doc his invite.”

  “Of course I kept one. I have it at the store.”

  Chapter 44

  Although my fingers itched to text him, I didn’t send any messages to Detweiler about Prescott. This was a big day for him, and he would have his hands full. After breakfast he and Lorraine had a meeting with Erik’s pediatrician. Then came lunch with Erik’s kindergarten teacher. After that, they would go to Erik’s school, where Erik was attending summer camp.

  Not only was I eager to hear more about Erik’s world, I also wanted to learn the boy’s reaction to the album I’d made. Anya had her fingers crossed that Erik would love the Spiderman insignia on the backpack and the stuffed animal she’d chosen for him—a turtle in honor of Turtle Park and Dodie.

  All in due time, I told myself. But patience has never been one of my personal virtues. In fact, I think it’s highly overrated. You wait too long and your ice cream will melt. Trust me on this.

  I walked into Time in a Bottle, signaled to Margit that I’d be ready in ten minutes for her meeting, let Gracie out, checked on my construction crew, grabbed a bottle of cold water, and sat down next to my co-worker’s desk.

  Shortly after she came to work at the store, Margit had carved out a makeshift space where she could keep her paperwork. She’d appropriated a blank portion of the back wall. By adding a faux wood-grained Formica desktop, we converted a pair of two-drawer file cabinets into a desk. Over that, we added a cork board, with a strip of peg board along the top. Above all that we positioned three shelves on an adjustable system. These held three-ring binders neatly labeled with such information as suppliers, outstanding orders, special orders, and so on. The weekly work schedule was in a plastic sleeve, pinned to the corkboard in a spot that never varied.

  At first, the corkboard was bare except for the occasional piece of paper that needed to be filled. But as Margit became more settled, she added postcards of Germany, a pattern to a knit sweater she liked, and a lovely photo of her mother in her youth. When Margit pinned anything to the cork, she did so at exacting right angles, which tickled me to no end. Since she liked labels so much, for her birthday I had found papier-mâché letters to spell her name. These I collaged with scraps of paper in her favorite colors, green, yellow and red. She loved my gift, and her name marched proudly across the top of the corkboard.

  A three-tiered inbox on the desktop proper was labeled with incoming, pending, and to be mailed. Since she didn’t have a supplies drawer, I’d grouped cans, collaged them with her colors, and hot glued them to an old lazy Susan. In these, she kept scissors, a stapler, a ruler, a magnifying glass, pens, and pencils. Along the bottom edge of her corkboard, she’d added a strip of clear pockets cut from a shoe bag. In these pockets, she’d put stamps, coupons, menus, and paperclips.

  In short, her workspace was a sacred spot dedicated to the muse of organization. As I pulled up my chair, I couldn’t help but smile about how precise Margit was. I liked that about her. I would never be so tidy, but after working with her, I aspired to a higher level of neatness. Whereas Clancy had become my fashion icon, Margit was my organizational skills mentor. Both women brought much more than friendship to my life.

  From a drawer in the pending tray, Margit withdrew a debriefing form that I’d been working on for our Monday crop. If there wasn’t a form for a job, Margit invented one.

  To my comments, she had added a collated version of the evaluation forms. We always asked customers to rate the “make-and-take” on a variety of variables. I handed over a sample of the project, a handout, and a cost breakdown.

  Reviewing the form, Margit told me that we’d had three newbie customers who had come to the class solely for cardmaking ideas. Calculating our costs, including my time and supplies, she proudly confirmed the profitability of the event. As a follow up, she would email the newbies and offer them a coupon on their next store visit. She also showed me the sales tally for the event. We deducted the cost of supplies that I “gifted” to Cara, a deduction we agreed was totally worthwhile. I noted any glitches, including the fact we should have made more cardmaking kits for our customers. She suggested that I create an entire line of these.

  By the time we finished our debriefing, we decided that particular “make-and-take” was worth repeating. Some projects weren’t. Although at first it seemed just nitpicky, I’d come to realize how valuable her assessments were. Thanks to Margit’s careful analysis, our profitability had increased. Sometimes I grew tired of justifying absolutely everything, but the benefits outweighed the hassle. Adding Cara Mia to our team for the small net cost of supplies proved another wise move. Before she agreed to work with us, I had wasted hours coordinating what food we’d serve. Scrapbookers just can’t crop without food! It’s as necessary as adhesive.

  But now Cara handled that portion of our crops, which freed me up to do what I do best…being creative.

  After checking on my construction crew, I went back to work on Sheila’s album. Understanding Sheila’s sensitive, I added the old Jimmy Girls photo on a separate page under a flap. That way it was there, but not there. Sheila could be honest about her nose job if she so desired, but casual viewers wouldn’t see a picture that embarrassed her. I still didn’t know what Miriam had died of. If it turned out to be something like breast cancer, I might want to make a page with a pink ribbon on it to memorialize her. I jotted a reminder to myself and stuck it inside the appropriate hanging folder.

  A glance at the clock told me it was time to shift gears. I worked on the make-and-take for our Wednesday crop, a flipflop album. This project was cute-as-all-get-out, even if I do say so myself.

  Using fun foam (sheets of flat, brightly color foam for crafters), I had created a flipflop, the ubiquitous footwear of summer. The sole of the sandal formed the back cover of the album. Using two brightly colored rings, I added a dozen inside pages. The resulting
project fit all my high standards, those attributes my croppers have come to know and love: fun, funky, and adorable!

  As Margit and Clancy waited on customers and answered never ending questions about out construction project, I “kitted” or put together the supplies so that each of our guests could make a cute flipflop album of her own.

  “How many have you made?” asked Margit, standing next to my shoulder.

  “Fifteen.”

  “We only have twelve guests coming to our crop tomorrow. The adoptive parents’ crop,” she reminded me.

  “That’s true, but we always sell extras. Besides, I wanted to make one for Erik. This will be his first summer with us.”

  “How is he? Have you heard anything? Seen any photos?”

  “No,” I admitted with a sigh. “Not yet. I have to keep reminding myself about the time difference. But I don’t mind telling you how nervous I am. What if he doesn’t like us? What if he can’t make the adjustment? How do you win the heart of a five-year-old boy?”

  Margit’s eyes softened as she put a gentle hand on my shoulder. “By being yourself, Kiki. You should know that by now.”

  Chapter 45

  When my phone rang, I was sure it was Detweiler. I scooped it up and answered, “Hello, my love!”

  “Your fault!” screamed my mother. “Tell them to let me go! Right now!”

  “Mom? Is that you? Where are you?”

  “The county jail!” and she hung up.