The next day, a new era dawned at Julie’s. A delivery van dropped off a clothes drier. The Junkluggers hauled off the old revolving clothesline in the backyard along with the garden gnomes and birdbath out front. Someone from Frankie’s Pool Service was surveying the backyard. I found occasion to wander over there. Julie was laughing with the pool guy until she saw me. Her laugh froze in its tracks.
“I deserve this,” she said. “Just because his Ma always hung out the clothes, just because his Ma went to old lady water aerobics at the Rye Y, that meant I had to do the same. Well, no more doing things Ma’s way.”
“I can’t blame you,” I said. “Although it does seem a bit soon. What if someone from Joey’s family comes by?”
“Oh, I don’t think they will. They’re pretty much through with me, except for maybe challenging the Will. Let them try, they won’t get anywhere. Ma ought to be figuring out how to stay in that house. Joey paid the mortgage each month. I guess she expected it would never end. And still, she acted like he wasn’t doing enough. Never good enough. Me either. Well, that’s all over and done with. Can’t wait until these fellows start digging,” she said. “You play your cards right, you’ll be joining me for a cool one on the deck. You don’t, you won’t.” At that, she turned and headed into her house. I returned to mine. Had Julie just threatened me?
I opened the junk drawer in the kitchen, where I dropped the pills last evening when I’d heard Dave’s key in the door. Something was not right about this. Joey’s sudden death could be explained. But then, all those pills that weren’t what they were supposed to be, just to be thrown away? I decided I’d take a drive to White Plains, check out the home office of Joey’s franchise, and pay a call on Joey’s accountant, Old Miss Flynn. Julie said she’d bought Joey’s supplements. Yeah, I could have asked Julie, but something about her tone when she talked about my possible pool privileges stopped me. I should have stopped altogether right then. Should have left all the pills in the trash. I’ve always had trouble letting things go.
I had no problem finding Joey’s Signs ’n Stuff. The address was on one of Joey’s magnetic business cards on the fridge, next to the one he’d made for Dave’s business. The store was in a strip mall on Route 119, the Tarrytown Road part in White Plains, not the White Plains Road part in Tarrytown. It was a good location, behind the Westchester Wine Warehouse, near the Apple Farm, a bowling alley, and Loehmann’s, all businesses with a lot of traffic.
When I walked in, I saw a woman in the reception area. If it was Miss Flynn, she sure didn’t look all that mousey or old to me. I recalled seeing her at the funeral service, way in the back, away from the family, and she hadn’t come to the house after for a plate of salami and cheese.
“Priscilla?” I asked.
She turned. “We’re not open for business,” she said as she fed papers to a shredder. “Death in the family.”
“I’m a friend of the family,” I said. “And I was wondering about this.” I showed her the bottle.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“You don’t recognize it? I thought you bought these for Joey.” I shook a few pills out onto the desk.
“Oh, those look like Joey’s old cholesterol pills. He said Julie started filling his prescriptions for him, some new generic formula, bigger pills, with no numbers on them like the old ones. She always seemed to be looking for more things to do for him. And the way he treated her, too.”
“How do you mean?”
“Didn’t you ever see the bruises on her arms?” she asked. “He was careful never to hit her in the face.”
“If you knew he was hitting her, why didn’t you tell anyone?” I asked. Could it be for the same reason I never said anything?
“I was going to, when he dumped me for that little stripper, because he used to hit me, too. But then he’d apologize. He could be so charming when he apologized. Plus, he promised to leave me the business, so of course I shut up. This place is a gold mine, and that’s not even including the franchise rights. I’m planning to close this office and spend my retirement getting writer’s cramp from endorsing checks.”
“It’s all yours, now that Joey’s gone,” I said. “And no sharing with anyone.”
“It was only a matter of time before he had that heart attack. Lucky for me I found out he was moving on again. Spending all that time with his new receptionist. She told me Joey was planning on filing for a divorce. His lawyer was preparing a new business plan to cut me out. I found a draft in the copier. I should have handled the paperwork, but Joey was hiding it from me. That receptionist wasn’t big on paying attention to details. I’m thankful for that now. Miss Receptionist could barely answer the phone, but that’s not what she was hired to do.”
The door slammed. I jumped, turned, saw Julie standing there.
“No, that was certainly not what she was hired to do,” Julie said to Priscilla. Turning to me she said, “I saw you take those bottles of pills last night. I was wondering what you’d do with them. Thanks for not making me wait too long. Keeping an eye on you was already getting boring, and I’m not all that good at tailing people. Have you ever heard of I-287? You know, the cross-Westchester highway that lets you avoid all those ridiculous one-way streets in White Plains? I’ll take this now,” she said, grabbing the vial out of my hand. “Once Priscilla realized what Joey was up to, she was on my side. He would have made his new receptionist the beneficiary of his life insurance policy the second we were divorced, and I would have gotten nothing. I’m too old to go back to some bar, deal with those men. Strip club, gentleman’s club, casino, they’re all the same. We had a pre-nup. He’d asked if I’d been married or had any children when we met. I said no, but the part about no children was a lie. I thought it was a closed adoption, no one was supposed to know. He never would have married me if there was a child another man could use to involve himself in our lives.”
“He found out, though, didn’t he?” I said.
“Yes. The agency contacted us because my daughter was having a medical problem. I complained and they apologized for not being more discreet, but by then it was too late. I think Joey was as mad at himself for not finding out before we were married as he was at me for lying to him. So, end of marriage, invalid pre-nup.”
“He’s probably got something on you, too, right?” I asked, turning to Priscilla. She answered with a blush.
“And you,” Julie said.
I nodded.
“That wasn’t a question,” she said. “Joey had a file cabinet in the back of his closet. I found it when I was packing up his clothes to donate to Midnight Run. Don’t worry, I won’t tell Dave if I don’t have to. Joey wasn’t the nicest person in the world, and he was a heart attack waiting to happen.” She shook the vial in her hand. “What did you do with the rest of these?” she asked.
“You should dispose of these carefully,” I said, holding up the bag from my purse. “Or I would be happy to take care of them, the ones behind the house, too. I thought it was Priscilla who did this to get her hands on the business sooner rather than later.”
“It was a collaboration,” Julie said. “Helping me replace his cholesterol medicine with a useless supplement was Priscilla’s idea. Pure genius. Who knows how long it would have taken me to kill him with just those fake low-fat meals I was feeding him?”
MURDER IN A FAMILY
Stephanie Wilson-Flaherty
SO, it was January. Dead of winter. Long past the gaiety of the holidays and long before the burgeoning life of spring. A time of cold and gloom, depression and isolation. At least for a lot of folks. Not me, though. I’m a pretty cheerful sort. I keep busy and I’m ultra-nosy. If you’ve got a story, I’m gonna ask about it. I don’t push, mind you, and I’m no parish priest, but Sadie’s street-wise confessional is open 24/7. You want to talk, I’ll listen.
And so it was with the guy that lived down the street, about four houses down, in the basement. He hadn’t lived there long. Three, four months, maybe. The neighborhood is l
ike that. Some folks like me, we’re lifers. Other folks have moved in from the Near East, the Far East, the West Coast, the Midwest. You name it, Bay Ridge has it. So, a little while back, I became acquainted with that crazy guy on the block because of his habit of feeding all the stray cats.
You see, when I climb out the window onto the fire escape, I can see the backyards almost to the end of the block, and this guy proved to be so interesting, that I climbed out almost every day, even in the dead of winter, just to see him load up plates of food for the hordes of cats that clustered all around him.
And one day, I climbed out onto the fire escape, and he was in his yard, holding a big black cat, and he was weeping. I mean, great bursts of keening, followed by hiccups and sweeping nose-to-sleeve action.
For me, the call had sounded. Too far away to have a decent conversation, I scampered down the fire escape and climbed over the waist-high, intervening chain-link fences. Before topping the last one, I stopped, of course, to wait for an invitation. I am polite that way.
I said, “Hey, there, fella. Need some help?”
Well, my little acrobatics must’ve made some kind of impression, because this guy’s mouth was still hanging open without a sound emanating from within. His eyes were wide and his nose dripped. The cat, I noticed, didn’t move.
Softly, I repeated my question.
His mouth snapped shut; then he said, “Help?”
“Help,” I repeated and made my way over the last little fence into his yard.
“Help?” he asked again.
“Yes, help.” I am very patient with the distressed. “Do you need any help?”
At that, his face seemed to crumple, and he hiccupped. “Baby,” he said and held out the obviously deceased black cat. “Nobody can help Baby, now.” He started to cry again.
“Don’t cry,” I said, divining a bit about the state of my neighbor’s mental capacities. “Baby’s in Kitty Kat Heaven now, eating tidbits up in the clouds, and chasing little angel mice.”
He looked at Baby, then me. Sniffled. Wiped his nose on his sleeve. Hiccupped. “Really?”
“Yep, really.” I fib whenever it seems like the right thing to do.
He seemed to chew on that, rather like a dog gnawing on a bone. After a moment, his face cleared. “Well, okay, then. Maybe that’s all right. Baby likes mice. Do the mice have little angel wings?” he asked, looking hopeful. “If they do, they might look like birds. Baby likes birds, too.” He positively beamed.
So, the guy, whose name turned out to be Ralph, and I took care of poor Baby—hacking through the frozen ground enough to give her a nice little burial in the corner of the yard, wrapped in one of my old pillow cases. By then, Ralph and I had become better acquainted. I learned that he was forty-something, plump-ish, orphaned, an only child with a blonde buzz cut, pale blue eyes, a sweet smile, and limited social skills. A little yellow school bus took him away to somewhere he called “school” Monday to Friday, and the rest of the time he was on his own, except for the cats.
Being curious, I started bundling up and popping down the street every few days to check up on Ralph. Without emergencies, I was free to use the front door, since, although I am amazingly fit for my age, I don’t regularly vault chain link fences. I’d bring Ralph the odd sack of cat chow, a box of cookies, and even some leftovers if I’d cooked up too much of something. Not that I’m a good cook. I boil water, I stick in pasta, I open a can of sauce, and I grate cheese. Until summer, when I can grill out on the fire escape on my not-so-legal hibachi, that’s about it except for frozen dinners— I can nuke with the best of them. But Ralph doesn’t seem to mind my limited abilities, so we chow down on my excess grub and chat in his basement apartment’s efficiency kitchen.
“Sadie,” he said one day, when I was blowing on my fingers to defrost them from exposure to the bitter cold, “guess what happened today?”
“Okay,” I said and plunked my butt down on one of his kitchen chairs to unpack my latest load of spaghetti. “I’ll bite. What happened?”
“Sister called,” he said, and pulled out a fat and decidedly old-fashioned mobile phone.
Well, color me confused. “Sister?” I said. “I thought you were an only child.”
“I am,” he said. “She’s just Sister. You know, like Baby was Baby.”
“Okay,” I said, sort of sensing the capital S in sister. “But Sister is not a cat, right?”
He giggled and said, “No, silly. Sister is a girl, but she’s the sister I wish I had. And she’s coming over tonight. Can we save her some spaghetti?”
Hey, I used to be a Girl Scout. Always prepared and all that stuff, and who could resist the notion of meeting the person who Ralph always wanted to have as a sister. My imagination ran riot. So I just heaped some more pasta into the microwave-safe bowls from my six-quart plastic storage container. When I bring dinner, nobody goes hungry.
We’d just finished setting out the food when the doorbell rang. Ralph beamed and scurried down the hallway to the front door and brought back Sister.
Well, let me tell you, Sister was a major surprise. Even my imagination didn’t cover Sister in real life. At least six-foot in low-rise boots, hair bleached to a stiff, straw-like ’do, muscular neck revealed when she unwound her woolly scarf. When she shed her coat, the body of a linebacker clad in a skintight, long-sleeved, blood-red sheath emerged.
Ralph clutched her outer garments. “Hey, Sister,” he said and nodded at me, “this is Sadie. She makes great spaghetti.”
Sister gave me the once over. “Spaghetti?” she asked as Ralph went away to hang up her coat.
“Gourmet,” I said, not batting an eye. “Best in Brooklyn.” I waved her to a seat. “We saved you some.”
Sister glanced at the soup bowl-sized portion at her place and laughed. She flexed a huge bicep. “See this?” she asked. “That bowl only fills one. I ate more than that when I was a toddler.”
She had a point, so I gave her my rueful smile and headed for the storage container. Plenty more pasta in there. When you grow up with nuclear threats and the aura of the Cold War, you tend to stock up on food, even if you’re not crazy enough to dig bomb-proof shelters under the mountains of Colorado.
So we ate and chatted. After a while, I decided that Sister merited a glass or two of my emergency stash of cheap Chianti. Plus, I wanted a few sips myself. Ever since I’d been doing the spaghetti thing, I’d started keeping a case at Ralph’s for the occasional glass—not that Ralph has any. I’d never seen him touch a drop of alcohol since I met him. Anyway, as they said in WWII, loose lips sink ships, but in Sister’s case, I merely learned a few very interesting things.
Under the influence, and with no objection from my buddy Ralph, Sister spun a tale of life in upstate New York where both she and Ralph grew up. Seems that Sister was raised down the block. Knew Ralph’s mother and father, and even baby-sat for Ralph on occasion. Also knew that both parents had been murdered in a particularly brutal way. Hatchet. Yep, just like Lizzie Borden’s infamous whacking and hacking of her parents in Fall River, Massachusetts. Okay, okay, don’t remind me of the differences, including the fact that Ralph was ten and the scene of the crime was upstate New York, because you don’t hear of an axing or hatcheting, or whatever you want to call it, every day of the week.
In any case, ten-year-old Ralph took the rap. Apparently, something had pushed him over some mysterious edge. According to Sister, Ralph was a somewhat normal kid before the Incident, but not after. Following years of psycho counseling, halfway houses, and supervised, group home living, Ralph was on his own, living on disability checks here in Bay Ridge and attending a daytime facility for folks with special needs.
So now I had to wonder—was Ralph really a psycho? Did he kill the kitty he called Baby? Did he make a habit of killing things he loved? Was Sister safe? Was I?
“I don’t know why you brought up all that old stuff, Sister, Sadie will be bored,” Ralph said, toying with a really long spaghetti str
and. He twirled it up on his fork. Straightened it out. Twirled it up again.
Bored? Not in this lifetime. Actually, this was some of the most interesting stuff I’d heard in a long time. Even for Brooklyn, this was an amazing tale.
“It’s all right, Ralph,” Sister replied. “Our Sadie seems reliable. She feeds you and visits you. Plus, she’s from Brooklyn. The big city. Big city people understand all about crime.” She gave me the eye. “Right, Sadie?”
Well, I wasn’t sure what to say. Brooklyn is big, we have three million-plus souls. There is crime.
“Sister’s right, Ralph,” I said. “I understand a lot about a lot of things.” Which really meant, I was going to hit Google on my computer to look up hatcheting murders in New York State when I got home. If I got home.
Long story short, Sister left soon after, apparently satisfied that her former babysitting buddy was safe and happy. Ralph slurped up the rest of his pasta, and I went home with a lot on my mind.
THE phone rang in the middle of the night, and I bolted up out of bed and headed for the living room. Yeah, don’t say anything, I am one of those dinosaurs with a land line. Not that I answer it. I let the message machine filter all my calls. So I listened.
“Is this Sadie?” the disembodied voice asked.” This is the New York Police Department and we are responding to a call with the contact information of the name Sadie, no last name given, and this number.”
I grabbed the receiver thinking: NYPD? Oh my god. “Hello, yes, this is Sadie, officer. What can this possibly be about?” Actually, I was totally freaked out. Between fragile family members, a gazillion friends with issues, and a ton of acquaintances with problems, I sense disaster every time I hear a phone ring.
“This is about a Ralph. He says Ralph Smith. Lives on Eighty-fourth Street in Brooklyn. Can we talk to you?”
“Holy mackerel!” I said,” I’m Sadie and I live just down the street. Of course, we can talk. Ralph is a friend of mine.” Well, folks, I had just committed myself to the cause of Ralph. Friend is not a word I use lightly.
Family Matters Page 18
