by Katy Munger
A maid answered the door, her round face scrunching in on itself when she spotted my black roots and attire. Don't people understand that recycled thrift clothes are a fashion and social statement rolled into one? Jeeze, I was going to have to start wearing a sign.
I got even. I flashed my fake I.D. badge and scared the shit out of her. Adriana Mitchell was at the door within seconds. "Yes?" she asked, stretching the single syllable into three.
"My condolences on your husband's death," I said formally. Never hurts to suck up.
"Ex-husband," she corrected me in a syrupy drawl. "And I won't pretend to be upset. We parted ways long ago. How can I help you?"
"I'm a private investigator looking into his death on behalf of the woman whose car he was..." Well, how was I going to explain it?
Apparently no explanation was necessary.
"You're working for Mary Lee Masters?" my hostess said brightly. "A lovely woman. I met her at the benefit antiques show last year. I can't imagine what Thorny was doing in her car. It must have been quite a shock to poor Mary Lee, finding a dead person in her back seat like that."
"Who is it, Addy?" a musical voice called out from a back room. This was echoed by what sounded like a dozen more voices, all as high and fluty as dove calls.
"It's a private investigator, girls," Addy called over her shoulder. "And it's a woman."
I heard squeals and wondered what the hell I was getting into. A bevy of well-dressed middle-aged ladies emerged from a back room and pulled me into the house, escorting me to a huge screened-in back porch where you could hardly see the rattan furniture for the hanging plants. Coffee pots and mountains of those useless little sandwiches covered several card tables.
"This is my bridge club," Addy explained. "But we think cards are boring, don't we girls?"
I assumed the genteel yelping meant yes.
"A private detective is so much more exciting," one woman in a flowered skirt declared.
Another was more prosaic. "Tell us some good dirt," she demanded, flipping open a gold cigarette case with practiced efficiency. The cigarette dangled from between her bright red lips, bobbing up and down as she dragged on it to light it.
"I'm here to gather some good dirt myself," I cheerfully admitted. And why shouldn't I be optimistic? Hell, I'd fallen into a veritable gold mine of juicy indiscretion: a harem of women with nothing else to do but sit around and talk about other people's lives.
"Who do you want dirt on?" a plump woman with white hair asked. She looked distressed, as if scruples might enter the room at any moment. A clever distraction was in order.
"I'm famished," I announced, eyeing a plate of tea sandwiches.
The chorus of "Oh, pleases" and the rush to offer me boatloads of food did the trick. "I'm looking into Mr. Mitchell's background," I mumbled through a butter and ham sandwich square. "Trying to get a handle on who might have killed him."
"Wasn't it just awful?" one woman asked, leaning forward, her eyes glittering. "Do you know that Thornton forgot to change one of his life insurance policies? Why that thing was twenty years old and now Addy is going to get over $100,000 out of him. Is that a scream or what?"
The sighs of admiration that filled the room confirmed my suspicion that a goodly portion of the women present had been jettisoned by their husbands to make room for younger models. Addy was apparently the winner of their unofficial "milk 'em dry" award. She had managed to get a chunk out of her ex even after he was dead.
"That must have been a nice surprise for you," I murmured tactfully. It was a motive, after all.
"Oh, posh." Addy flapped a hand gracefully. "I don't need the money. My daddy left me plenty. But it tickles me. Thornton would be rolling over in his grave if he knew!"
The room exploded with tinkly laughter and I was struck by the absurdity of it: a dozen well-bred women simultaneously imagining the corpse of Thornton Mitchell rolling beneath the cold, cold ground. And finding it funny. The maid must think them all nuts. I know I did.
"Were you close to your ex-husband, Ms. Mitchell?" I asked.
"Oh, call me Addy," she insisted. "Addy Poole. My daughter saw him every now and then, but I haven't seen him or even used the name 'Mitchell' for years. Not since he took up with that one runner-up in the Miss Fuquay-Varina contest. Why, she turned out to be seventeen years old and I'd like to have died I was so embarrassed that an ex-husband of mine could act like such a fool. I went back to my maiden name. But I insist you call me Addy."
The murmurs of support that followed this statement were the cries of a curious form of sisterhood, an awakening of assertion that had taken hold of these women following their rejections. I admired them for it.
"Well, look," I said, gauging how long it would take to finish a plateful of the sandwiches vs. how long I had until I met Bill Butler. "I have another appointment later and I don't really know what I'm looking for, so maybe you could just let me know whatever you think might be useful to me in my investigation." Translation: start blabbing.
"Information about whom specifically?" someone asked, as if confirming a school assignment. "Just Thornton? Or can we talk about Mary Lee and that handsome Stoney Maloney, too?"
I held up my hands. "By all means. Include them if you like."
That was like asking a hound dog if he wanted a bite of steak. They damn near attacked me in their frenzy to snag the prize. In the space of thirty minutes, I uncovered an astonishing amount of private information that all of the individuals involved would have been mortified to know the public knew. Well, maybe not Thornton, since he was beyond embarrassment at this point. (So was I, but I didn't have to die to get there.) Those women knew that Mary Lee went to a spa twice a year for long weekends to shed weight and that her hair was tinted regularly down at Marianne's by the proprietress herself, though in a back room so no one would know. One woman declared that, at a recent catered dinner party hosted by the Masters, Mary Lee had tried to pass off the culinary creations as her own. Others knew that she went through maids like firewood, hated a distant cousin for having an affair with her husband, was exceptionally stingy with her money, and had a running feud going with her own sister.
The others fared no better. Bradley Masters was a perfidious dog who had hit upon the daughters of nearly every woman present, whose indiscretions had recently turned to college co-eds, and who was known among the husband circle as someone guaranteed to screw up your business if you were stupid enough to entrust it to him.
General consensus held that Thornton Mitchell was a horse's ass, though Addy did have such lovely children, and that he could have been killed by half the fathers in the state of North Carolina. There was a brief but heated debate on how his toupee had grown increasingly obvious over the years and whether his siblings would bother to bury him in it. He had recently lost his touch when it came to real estate projects, they all agreed. One woman's son worked at a bank that had called in a construction loan and another's husband had lost money investing in a shopping center deal tied to Thornton. That was interesting indeed and I tucked the information away for further examination.
But it was the dirt on Stoney Maloney that interested me the most. I inquired as to whether he lived in the neighborhood and numerous voices assured me that he did.
"Right next to Elaine," one woman offered.
Elaine smiled, pleased with the attention. "He does indeed. He has a lovely yard. Of course, it's a gardener's work since he's so busy."
"Are you voting for him?" I asked out of curiosity.
"Oh, no," most of the women said, explaining they preferred to see a woman take the seat. Besides, their ex-husbands were all conservative and they were tired of being told how to—
"I'm voting for him," Elaine interrupted playfully. Her ploy worked. All eyes once again turned on her as she giggled.
"Why, Elaine. You're a Yellow Dog Democrat. How can you say—"
"Because he's so handsome," she admitted. "All that silver hair."
"Oh
, Elaine," one woman said in disgust and I was impressed. Until she continued. "That handsomeness doesn't do any of us any good. He's that way." She dropped her voice and managed to give the impression, without actually saying so, that Stoney Maloney spent his evenings dressed in tight muscle tee shirts dancing the night away with hordes of gay men on the rooftops of local discos.
"No, he's not," Elaine assured them, laughing with the superior air of one who has inside knowledge.
"Tell! Tell!" a dozen voices chorused at once.
"I think he has a lady friend and not one of those mousy-mousy types, either. His mama would split a gut if she knew."
The room leaned forward as one, all eyes riveted on Elaine. I took the opportunity to snag a deviled egg.
"Every Wednesday night for the past month, he's gone out of his house very, very late at night."
"How do you know?" someone asked.
"Because I was watching," she explained, mystified that there could be any other answer.
"Does he leave the house alone?"
"Of course he leaves it alone," Elaine said crossly.
"Then how do you know he's meeting a woman?" Addy asked.
Elaine had the good grace to color slightly. "I happened quite by accident to overhear a message on his answering machine when I was weeding my marigolds a week ago."
"Weeding marigolds in October?" one of the women cried. "Shame on you, Elaine! You were skulking."
The laughter that met this statement quickly gave rise to what sounded like a football cheer for details.
"It was definitely a woman's voice and she was saying that she couldn't wait to see her 'Rockman' later that night."
"Rockman?" a white-haired woman asked. "What does that mean?"
"Helen!" someone exclaimed. "You're not that old."
The pragmatic guest with the gold cigarette case translated with admirable brevity. "It means he's hard as a rock in bed, darling."
"Heavens," Helen said and fell silent. I wondered if Stoney had just scored another vote.
"Is this helping?" Addy asked me politely.
"Oh, yes," I said, nodding vigorously and chancing one more eensy-weensy bite of a chicken salad sandwich before I left. "Heaps!" And it was the truth. After all, Thornton Mitchell had been killed on a Wednesday night and Stoney Maloney had not been home at the time. Bill Butler would be impressed with what I had to offer.
However, an hour later, Bill Butler proved quite unimpressed with my morning's haul. It rather pissed me off, despite the way his green polo shirt accented his big brown eyes.
"We know Mitchell's business dealings were going sour and we also know where Stoney was that night," he explained when I was done relating what I'd learned. "We interviewed him yesterday."
"So tell me where Stoney was that night," I demanded.
"Casey, it's none of your business. And it's not important to the case."
"None of my business?" I asked incredulously. "The whole world is my business."
"Apparently you think so," he said. He had ordered the crab cakes at my urging and, thanks to my fortification with several pounds worth of tea sandwiches, I had thus far managed not to wander over onto his plate with my fork in order to compare seasonings. "Look," he said, as if peeved that I hadn't done better, "I asked you to lunch to see if you had learned anything useful that might help me out."
"Sure you did," I said ominously and flashed him a sunny smile. If you can't seduce them, confuse them. That's my motto.
"What's that supposed to mean?" he asked suspiciously.
"It means it's time for you tell me something," I said. "I already told you what I know. It's not my fault you're overlooking the importance of my information to the case." I smiled again. He was still confused.
"Look," I spelled it out for him. "Did you check the husband's alibi thoroughly? I mean, double-check it?"
"We're working on it," he said impatiently. "But I got a feeling he's clean."
"Can't you tell me anything about the case?" I complained, hoping for his ex-wife's sake that he wasn't as stingy with his alimony payments.
"I can't comment on the case right now. It's at a critical stage."
"Really? How critical?" I innocently popped a hush puppy in my mouth and chewed while he fidgeted. I swallowed and decided to surprise him. "In other words, Mary Lee Masters is no longer a suspect. You've arrested someone else and now you're questioning him."
"Maybe." He looked uncomfortable.
"And Ramsey Lee won't say a thing."
This time he looked astonished. "How did you know that?" he demanded. "Is there a leak in my department?"
"No leak," I promised. "I'm a detective, remember? I'm great at putting puzzle pieces together."
"That's too big a piece to pull out of the air." I was a little put off by the suspicion in his eyes. I'd hate to get on his bad side.
But it didn't stop me from persisting. "Really? How's this for a puzzle piece? The SBI has determined that Thornton Mitchell was shot along the banks of the Neuse where his head hit a pile of rocks, then dragged through the sand and dumped in the trunk of his own car before being driven to Mary Lee's house. Because the spot where he is killed is across from land belonging to Ramsey Lee—and because the SBI has a boner the size of Cleveland for said Ramsey Lee—he's been arrested. They've wanted to nail him bad ever since he got off light for blowing up that development project and this is their big chance."
"You are going to tell me how you know that," Bill warned. He glared at me but it was exciting rather than intimidating. I knew I had it right. And I knew something else as well.
"They're wrong, Bill," I assured him. "I won't tell you how I know where he was killed or who the SBI arrested. But I will tell you that you're wrong."
"What makes you so sure?"
"Ramsey Lee wouldn't blow a man away with a shotgun. He'd use a rifle or a crossbow and it would be clean, right through the heart. He wouldn't even have had to leave his own land to do it. He'd have been able to stand across the river and fire away. And he damn sure wouldn't have dragged him through the sand like that and parked the corpse in Mary Lee's driveway. Why would he? What does he have against her? And why drag the body off that piece of land at all?"
"Because it's across from his own land. The fact that the body was moved is essential."
"It certainly is," I agreed. "But not to Ramsey. Because he didn't do it. But someone did and I'd like to know why it was so important to get the body off that land."
"Ramsey's a good collar," Bill insisted. "He has a connection with Mitchell. He has a record as thick as this table."
"He has a surveillance folder as thick as this table," I corrected him. "He has a criminal record about as thick as Shorty's dingaling. Which is to say, maybe one teeny weeny centimeter wide."
He ignored me and continued. "Well, explain this then: they found Mitchell's car on his land."
"What?" I asked. "They found Mitchell's car on Ramsey Lee's land?"
"Yeah, Sherlock. Does that convince you?"
"Yes," I said, nodding my head. "That I'm right." He rolled his eyes and I continued. "They find his car across the river from where he was killed? How did it get there? By ferry? Someone drove that car and dumped it on Ramsey's land on purpose. It's not exactly a convenient dumping spot. In fact, it is the single least convenient spot of all. They'd have to drive about fifteen miles out of the way and cross a bridge and double back. What kind of crap is that? And why would Ramsey leave the car on his own land? He's being set up and so are you. You guys are acting like idiots."
I sounded sure because I was sure—and Bill finally got the message.
"What are you on to?" he asked, his tone changing from anger to curiosity. We were getting somewhere at last. "Come on," he asked as nicely as he could. "Give."
"I gave it all to you already," I said with a shrug. "And you can either work with me or work against me. But if you don't want to end up looking like a fool with those SBI guys, I'd stick wit
h me, kid. I'm going to find out who did this."
Chapter Six
We ended the lunch crabbier than the cakes, leaving my hopes for romance in ruins and me even more determined to embarrass the whole lot of those overtestosteroned jerks. I was the most intrigued by Bill's comment that he knew where Stoney had been the night Thornton Mitchell was killed. Why wouldn't he tell me? Identifying the cave girl to Stoney's Rockman was going to be a wee bit difficult on my own, but I felt up to the challenge.
I returned to the office in mid-afternoon to check Stoney's schedule for the week. The N&O printed a weekly political calendar each day and I had been following it carefully. Wednesday nights seemed to be strategy nights. Traditionally, all the candidates returned to their headquarters to recoup in midweek and plan out the next week's events. This week had been no different, putting both Mary Lee and Stoney in Raleigh when Thornton Mitchell was killed. But the days still ahead showed them scattered throughout the state. My best shot for catching Stoney in action was that night, before he left for an appearance in Asheville. He was scheduled to speak at a fundraising dance sponsored by the political clubs of several local colleges. Maybe I could spot his lady love lurking nearby in the crowd.
There was a photo of Stoney on page one that showed him issuing his statement in defense of Mary Lee. I studied it carefully. No wonder his eavesdropping neighbor Elaine was voting for him. He was one of those lucky guys who get better looking as they age. Who was the woman he met on Wednesday nights, I wondered. And what was the big secret? Was she a campaign aide? Someone's wife? Who knew. Maybe I could find out tonight. Maybe I never would. In the meantime, I had work to do.
"Bobby!" I shouted, kicking my door open so he could hear me over his own gastronomic ruminations.
