Murder for Bid

by Furlong Bolliger, Susan

  MURDER FOR BID

  By Susan Furlong Bolliger

  Martin Sisters Publishing

  Published by

  Martin Sisters Publishing, LLC

  www. martinsisterspublishing. com

  Copyright © 2012 Susan Furlong Bolliger

  The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without by monetary gain, is investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and is punishable by up to 5 (five) years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.

  Names, characters and incidents depicted in this book are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author or publisher.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by

  Martin Sisters Publishing, LLC, Kentucky.

  ISBN: 978-1-937273-91-0

  Editor: Kathleen Papajohn

  DEDICATION

  This book is dedicated to my husband and our children, whose love and support are my greatest joy. Also to Mom, Dad and all my siblings—you’re the best family a girl could ever have.

  Acknowledgements

  Writing a book is a huge undertaking. I couldn’t have done it without the help and support of my family. Along the way, I also had help from several writing pals and a discerning pair of second eyes. So, thanks to all my writing friends at Sisters in Crime and to Sandra Haven, editor extraordinaire, for finding my errors and keeping my plot on task. Thanks also to my friend Shawn for keeping me sane through the submission process. Last of all, a special thank you to my sister, Rebecca, whose entrepreneurial spirit and expertise in crafting, refurbishing and ‘up-cycling’ trash into treasure, inspired Pippi and all her wonderful projects.

  Chapter One

  Being my own boss beat the heck out of enduring the daily corporate grind. Of course, now I was dealing with a different type of grind and flies. Lots of flies.

  I was swatting at the little pests while I worked my way to the bottom of an industrial sized dumpster located outside a fixer-upper in one of the nicer neighborhoods of my suburb. True, insects and a certain amount of stench were the downsides of my new career, but I’d happily endure them if it meant I didn’t have to go back to my old job. Although, as my family and friends liked to remind me, my old job was respectable, not to mention cleaner and … well, they were right. At my old job, I rarely dealt with flies, just egomaniacs and profiteers ready to downsize, right-size, and reallocate at a moment’s notice. I preferred the flies.

  I was straining to move aside a wet piece of carpet remnant, when my cell rang. “Hello,” I answered, my voice echoing off the metal walls that surrounded me.

  “Hey, Pippi. I can hardly hear you. Where are you?” It was Sean Panelli, my on and off boyfriend. Currently, we were on.

  “I’m in a dumpster.” I continued poking around a broken piece of olive green counter top. All I saw was a few broken tiles and some rusty metal piping.

  “Any luck?” he asked, not missing a beat, as if it was normal that his girlfriend was inside a dumpster. And it was.

  “Not much.”

  “Want to do dinner? I’ll be done around five.” Sean carried a badge for the Naperville police force. We met early in my career as a used merchandiser when he picked me up for suspicion of theft. Some lady hadn’t realized that once garbage is on the curb it becomes public domain and called 911 when she saw me taking stuff from her cans. Long story short, she ended up looking like a fool and I ended up with an almost as good-as-new pair of hot stilettos that sold well on-line and a hot date too.

  “Sure,” I replied. “BonMarito’s at five-thirty. I’ve got to run; I see something interesting.” On the boulevard across the street, I spied what looked like several bags of clothes stacked next to a green rubber can. That could only mean one thing. Someone had cleaned out their closet.

  Climbing out of the dumpster, I made my way over to the rubbish pile, opened the first bag and began sorting. Most of it was thrift shop quality, but I did manage to tuck a few gently worn designer pieces under my arm.

  In the next bag, I discovered a man’s shirt, practically new, size large with double stitched seems. I was looking it over again, trying to figure out why someone would throw it away, when I noticed a stain on the underside of the collar. Lipstick—a deep crimson shade that only certain women could pull off. If I, with my red-head coloring, wore this shade I would look like a circus clown having a bad makeup day. I flipped my straggling curls from my eyes, brushed off my too long overalls that covered my too small Madras plaid shirt—well, maybe I wasn’t far off from that already, but what the heck.

  I turned the shirt over. Certainly it could have been easily cleaned with some stain remover. Why would someone toss such a high quality shirt into the garbage? My ever-so-vivid imagination kicked into high gear: This shirt was in the garbage for a reason. More than likely, the man who wore this was cheating on his wife. He threw it away in hopes that she wouldn’t discover that he was having a lurid affair with … his secretary, his young, beautiful, passionate, blonde secretary—a once-brunette whose preference for crimson stayed with her through the bleach job. Or maybe the wife found the shirt and threw it away in a fit of rage wanting to rid her home of the stain of adultery. Either way, there was going to be trouble at this house.

  I looked up. A two-story stone Tudor set back from the curb and surrounded by formal landscaping. No swing sets, balls, or big plastic toys. Well, at least the children wouldn’t suffer through the divorce.

  I smiled. I’d been told by many of my former teachers that I had an overactive imagination. Nowadays, I would be labeled with an acronym and heavily medicated.

  I shook my head, tucked the shirt in with the others. I continued searching through the bag.

  “Can I help you?”

  My head snapped up and I saw a man, a fit forty-something with dark grey hair, staring at me from inside a black BMW convertible.

  “Just leaving,” I murmured, dropping all the clothes and high-tailing it back to my own vehicle—a vintage Volvo station wagon. Nothing worse than being caught digging around in someone’s garbage. Legal, yes; cool, no.

  Once I was sitting safely behind the wheel, I looked back and saw him park his car in the drive and strut back out to the curb. With a puzzled look, he examined the shirt, scowled, and in one sudden jerk, tore it in two. He then stomped back to his car, yanked a set of clubs out of the backseat, and stormed off to the house.

  I almost laughed aloud. Caught! Served him right, the cheater. I hoped the missus divorced him and took him for everything he was worth, including the Beemer.

  After my encounter with “Mr. Cheater” and a morning of no treasures uncovered, I lost enthusiasm for scavenging and called it a day. Besides, dark clouds were building and the sky looked like it would open up any minute, so I headed for home.

  Twenty minutes later, I pulled into the alley behind my parents’ house. Out of five daughters, I was the only one who still lived at home. Well, not actually in their home, but close enough, above their garage. I parked on a tiny cement pad wedged between my father’s vegetable garden and a rust spotted swing set that somehow had survived five daughters and several grandchildren, none from me, as my mother liked to remind me.

  Our house was one of the oldest in the neighborhood. It was a 1920’s Craftsman bungalow,
large enough for a family of seven, but not big enough to be considered pretentious. A low slopping roof opened up to my favorite part of the house, a deep porch with a swing and several wooden chairs. My mom had hung potted geraniums between the chunky white porch pillars, their bright hues setting off the home’s forest green color. Although the trim paint was peeling and a few shutters needed to be righted, my parents had taken good care of our home through the years, keeping up on the minor renovations without changing the structural bones of the house. As a result, the house, even though it sagged a bit with age, seemed charming. At the rate I was going, I wasn’t sure that I’d be able to say the same for myself in ten years.

  Behind the house, I made my way up a set of rickety wooden steps that led to the above-garage apartment. The apartment, renovated in the early eighties, was a compact one-room efficiency, modestly decorated and heavily accessorized with piles of my re-purposed stock for sale.

  Despite the open windows, it must have been a hundred degrees in my apartment. I stepped over and past my sales item stacks, flipped on some fans and headed for the shower. After slipping into my most comfy sweats, I fixed a quick snack and sat down at my computer to access my on-line banking account. Money wasn’t rolling in, but I had managed to sell enough on my on-line auctions to stock my fridge for another week.

  “Phillipena!”

  I cringed. My given name reminded me of a something belonging to a stuffy English lady or countess. My father had chosen it after giving up on having a son to name after himself. As a child inflicted with a speech impediment, I never could pronounce the ‘l’s’ so my name came out sounding like Pippi—which stuck. Especially since, at the time, one of my teachers was reading Pippi Longstocking in class and I just happened to have the same unruly red hair as her.

  “Yeah, Mom?” I turned to see my mother, decked out in her normal power-suit and pearls, had poked her head through the doorway.

  “I’m surprised to see you home so early.”

  “The weather’s looking bad. I thought I’d come back and catch up on some computer work.”

  “I see. Do you want to eat dinner with us? Your dad’s making chicken parmesan.”

  I loved food almost as much, no maybe more, than scavenging. Especially Dad’s chicken parmesan. “Not tonight, Mom. I’ve got a date.”

  That caught her interest. She ventured through my apartment, sidestepping from one clear spot to the next like a city girl avoiding cow piles in a cattle yard. Mom was the powerhouse—and a power to reckon with—in the family. In the early eighties, she acquired her realtor’s license and began selling single residences at a dizzying pace. In the past thirty years, she’d acquired four brokerage firms and over a hundred agents.

  “A date? With whom?” My mom always used proper grammar.

  “Sean Panelli.”

  “Oh, that nice detective. I like him.” Of course she did. It was my mother’s goal to get all of her girls married and settled into a respectable life. Mary Frances and I were the only ones who had yet to succumb, and Mary Frances had a good excuse; she was a nun.

  “You’d like anyone, Mom.”

  She ignored me and went on, “I haven’t seen him around for a while. I thought you two had broken up. I can’t seem to keep up with your love life. Aren’t you ready to just settle down with someone?”

  Yeah, right. Like that was going to happen any time soon. I shrugged.

  “Anyway,” she continued. “I’m glad you and Sean are back together. He seems like a nice man, and, well … he does have a steady job.”

  She tilted her chin down, raised her eyebrows. I knew that look and I wasn’t in the mood to hear another lecture. When my parents weren’t trying to marry me off to a man with potential, they worked on persuading me to go back to a respectable profession, in particular the one I used to have. No way.

  “Geez, look at the time. It’s getting late and I need to get my work done and get ready to go out.”

  “So what are you wearing tonight?”

  I hesitated, caught by my own excuse.

  Mom recognized my lack of answer for what it really was: I hadn’t even thought about my outfit. Fashion, for myself anyway, just wasn’t on my radar.

  “Try wearing something nice, maybe a skirt. It wouldn’t hurt to put a little more effort into your appearances and try to look more lady-like. Especially if you want to keep him interested.” She gave me a motherly pat on the shoulder before wheeling on her respectable, lady-like three-inch heels and picked her way back through the clutter, not bothering to right a stack of books she knocked over on her way out the door.

  I sighed, set my work aside, and began digging through my closet for a skirt.

  *

  Later that evening, I was at the restaurant sitting opposite Sean in a cozy corner booth. The décor in BonMarito’s was nothing special. Red was the theme. Red and white oil-cloth covered tables, red vinyl seating, red carpet, and just to add some class, little red flickering candle holders on every table. But the pizza … it was the best in town.

  I had taken my mother’s advice and worn a black mini, with a white blouse unbuttoned just low enough to see a glimpse of the black lace camisole underneath. Sexy, but not desperate. Unfortunately, my efforts were backfiring as it was hard to look sexy while I squirmed from one butt cheek to another, trying to keep my bare legs from sticking to the vinyl seat.

  “Are you alright?” Sean asked, watching me squirm. I silently cursed my mother.

  “Fine, thanks. What’s new at work?” I loved to listen to Sean talk about his job. Police work was so fascinating.

  “Nothing,” he sighed. “A couple of petty robberies, some vandalism, and one missing person –Alzheimer’s probably.”

  “You’re complaining?” I asked, trying to control some runaway cheese as I lifted my second slice off the tray.

  “Yes. If something big doesn’t happen soon, I’m going to lose it.”

  “You can’t be serious. You’re hoping for a big crime. Like maybe someone will get shot, or something?”

  The corners of his mouth turned up in a half-grin. “Well, it would break up the monotony.” Sean was an inner city transplant. After ten years on the Chicago police force, he moved to the burbs to get out of the Vice Division and into Investigations. It was a slower pace, but he seemed happier using his talents as a major crimes investigator. Ten years in Vice is a long time and it had taken its toll on Sean. He was usually as broody as an old hen, strung tighter than a drum, as closed as a shut door, as quick-tempered as a hornet, but as sexy as an underwear model. All the metaphors I loved in a man.

  We ate in silence for a while, savoring every bite. My dates with Sean were always comfortable. It was like we’d been together for years. Actually we had been. Well, at least on and off. It was a hard relationship to understand. One thing for sure, if I ever married the guy, I’d have to keep my maiden name. Pippi Panelli sounded like one of those tongue twisters my speech therapist made me practice in grade school.

  “What are you thinking about?” he asked. Sean had known me long enough to get used to my long absences from conversation.

  I bit my lip and chuckled, “Nothing important. I’ve got to tell you about what I found today. I was over on Cedar where they’re doing all that new construction.”

  “Uh, huh.” he mumbled, shaking cheese all over our pizza, which irritated me since I didn’t really want cheese on my slice. I fought back a biting comment and continued. “Anyway, I found this great shirt. It was like new. The only thing wrong was a lipstick stain on the collar.”

  “Great. Good for you.”

  “No. That’s not it. Don’t you get it? It was in the garbage. That could only mean that it was thrown out because it was evidence.”

  “Evidence?” He raised a brow. “Of what?”

  “Of cheating. The man was cheating on his wife! Probably with his secretary.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding. You found a shirt with a lipstick stain on it and yo
u automatically assume that the guy is having an affair? What about his wife? Maybe it was her lipstick.”

  “Then why’d he throw it out? Why not just wash it?”

  Sean shrugged. “Maybe he didn’t want to bother with it. You know, not everyone is as frugal as you.”

  This was true, but I just didn’t buy it that someone would throw out that nice of a shirt. I was just about to continue the debate when the tone of Sean’s cell interrupted.

  “Panelli.” He removed a notebook and jotted down a few things. “I’ll be right there.”

  I quickly shoved down the last bite of my pizza. Sean rose and threw a couple of bills on the table. “Sorry. I’m going to have to take you home.”

  “What’s up?” I muttered with a full mouth.

  “A homicide.”

  My eyes bulged. “Homicide? We were just talking about how there are never any of those around here. Weird. I’ll ride with you.”

  “No you won’t. I’m taking you back to your place.”

  “I won’t interfere. I promise.” I crossed two fingers over my heart.

  “That’s what you said last time I let you ride.” He was referring to the time I was riding with him and spotted a purse snatcher who, as it turned out, was just some guy chasing down his wife because she had left her purse behind—an honest mistake.

  “My place is out of the way, you’ll have to double back. That’ll cost you time.”

  “That’s alright. Let’s get moving.”

  “Please!” I begged.

  “Stop! You’re making a scene.” He looked around, embarrassed. “All right. You can ride with me. You’re right,” he glanced at his phone, “I really don’t have time to take you back anyway. I’ve got to get there and help secure the scene.”

  I squealed with delight. I’d do about anything to get a glimpse of a crime scene, a quirk that I’m sure stemmed from the fact that I’d read too many mystery novels and logged too much time in front of the television watching crime TV.