Dial Om for Murder

by Diana Killian

  “No way did the Bard ever say that,” A.J. muttered to Andy as Elysia bustled away down the hallway lined with watercolors of eighteenth century London.

  “I think she forgot we were coming to dinner,” Andy remarked. He was studying the piano-top collection of gold-framed photographs of A.J. and himself. The gallery started with their college romance and ended with the final summer Elysia had visited them in Manhattan. Theirs had been an extremely photogenic union, which just proved the old adage about appearances being deceptive.

  “She seems . . . rattled,” A.J. agreed, turning away. She still found the photographs painful—although less so these days. “I hope she’s not going to a lot of trouble. We could just order in pizza.”

  “Pizza sounds fine to me,” Andy said indifferently. His appetite had been off since his arrival. A.J. wasn’t sure if that was depression or his illness—or both.

  She started down the hall, but Elysia appeared at the other end with two glasses of ice tea. She hastened toward A.J.

  “What’s this? Sit, sit! You’ve had a long day bending and stretching and whatever-it-is-ing you do at the gym.”

  “Studio.” A.J. retreated back to the living room, falling back before her mother’s onslaught.

  Elysia delivered their drinks. “Relax, darlings. I’m going to whip a little something up—”

  “We can just order in,” Andy started.

  At the same time A.J. began, “Mother, why are we sitting in here when you’re . . . ?”

  But Elysia had vanished down the hallway once more.

  “Okay, this is getting weird,” A.J. told Andy.

  His eyes laughed at her over the rim of his glass.

  “Have you ever known her to serve anything that wasn’t on a tray? Drinks, hors d’oeuvres, popcorn? I mean, even for my mother, she’s behaving oddly.”

  “Actually, I’ve always thought the tray thing was the odd bit. This seems—”

  A.J. was shaking her head. “She’s up to something.”

  That appealed to Andy’s weird sense of humor. He wriggled his eyebrows. “You’re right. She’s as jumpy as someone in a bedroom farce.”

  “Ha. Very funny.” A.J. took a sip, then set her glass down. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Are you sure you should . . . ?”

  A.J. missed the rest of that as she started down the hallway. At the same instant Elysia poked her head out the kitchen doorway and jumped. She had so obviously been checking whether the coast was clear that A.J. stopped dead.

  “What’s going on?”

  Elysia smiled a wide insincere smile. She really was not a very good actress.

  “Sorry?” She was walking toward A.J. and A.J. realized that she was once more being steered away from the kitchen.

  A horrible suspicion entered her mind. Could her mother be drinking again?

  No. Please, God, no. There had been no hint of alcohol on Elysia’s breath, and while she was definitely acting a little peculiar, she seemed steady enough.

  All the same, A.J. couldn’t help advancing suspiciously on her mother. “What are you doing in there?”

  Elysia held her ground. “It’s called cooking, pumpkin. Sometimes it’s a wee bit more involved than pouring a bottle of milk over a bowl of cereal.”

  Refusing to be sidetracked, A.J. said, “I know you. You’re up to something.”

  “Nonsense! And I very much res—” Elysia broke off as A.J. brushed past her. “Anna Jolie! I did not raise my daughter to behave like something calved in a stable. . . .”

  A.J. stopped short. A young woman stood at bay beside the kitchen table. Her face was white beneath freckles, her short red hair stood on end as though she had been running her hands through it. Her blue eyes were wide with fear.

  “Y-you were at the restaurant…”

  “Oh my God,” A.J. breathed. She turned to Elysia. “You’ve got to be kidding me!”

  “Wait! Please!” the woman pleaded.

  A.J. ignored her. “Do you know who this is?” she demanded of Elysia. “ This is Jane Peters. The police are looking everywhere for her.”

  Elysia’s chin tilted. “Clearly not.”

  A.J.’s jaw dropped. “Mother, you’re harboring a fugitive. They can throw you in jail for that. They will throw you in jail for that!”

  Elysia announced defiantly, “Jane is innocent.”

  There went any hope that her mother was unwittingly sheltering a criminal. A.J. snapped, “Says who? Jane?”

  “Yes. And I believe her. Why, I’ve known Janie for years,” Elysia asserted. “Ever since we worked together on The Spy Who Came to Babysit. She was the most adorable tyke. Why, I’ve practically watched her grow up.”

  Both of her—because that would have been during the years Elysia spent drinking herself cross-eyed. A.J. was ashamed of that mean-spirited thought, but it was difficult when she remembered how oblivious to her own daughter Elysia had been during A.J.’s formative years.

  “I didn’t kill anyone,” Jane burst out desperately. “I know you saw me leaving Nicole Manning’s house, but she was dead when I got there.”

  “What were you doing there at all?”

  Jane looked at Elysia, who nodded encouragingly. “I went to see J.W. I didn’t realize he was out of town.”

  “You didn’t call first to see whether he would be home? Isn’t New Jersey a little out of your way?”

  It was pretty much out of everyone’s way, so that was a safe bet.

  Jane bit her lip. “I just . . . took a chance.”

  “So did whoever killed Nicole.”

  Jane glared at her. “I didn’t kill her! I had no reason to kill her.”

  “According to the tabloids, she stole your husband,” A.J. said. Reading her mother’s gaze, she added, “You can’t avoid reading those covers in the checkout lines.”

  “What’s going on in here?” Andy asked, appearing in the kitchen doorway.

  Jane took the opportunity of that distraction to run for the door.

  “Don’t let her go!” A.J. cried, and Andy stepped in front of Jane. She crashed into him, and Andy grunted and went down, flimsy as kindling. Jane tripped over him and landed on her knees on the polished wood floor. She began to crawl up the hallway.

  “Stop it this instant!” Elysia shrieked. “Stop it, all of you!”

  “Are you all right?” A.J. demanded, pausing long enough to see that Andy hadn’t been seriously hurt by his fall. Gri macing, he was using the door frame to pull himself up.

  “Get her,” he said, sounding—for Andy—quite vicious.

  A.J. sprang after Jane, who had scrambled to her feet and was making for the front door.

  Catching her up before she could get the front door open, A.J. fastened a hand on Jane’s arm. Although Jane had changed her outfit, she was still wearing those ridiculous red platform shoes, and she nearly toppled over again.

  “Leave me alone!”

  “You’re not going anywhere.”

  “You have no right!”

  “Enough!” Nefertiti herself couldn’t have sounded more commanding as Elysia wriggled between them, wrapping a surprisingly steely hand around each young woman’s arm.

  The fight went abruptly out of Jane, and she began to cry.

  Elysia patted her soothingly. Meeting her accusatory gaze, A.J. said, “Don’t give me that look.”

  “What look shall I give you then? Brawling like a common street urchin!” Elysia delivered the lines like the grand dame in a drawing room drama. All she was missing was a lorgnette and the sal volatile.

  “Mother—”

  But she was talking to herself. Elysia was already urging Jane Peters back to the kitchen. “Now let’s sit down and talk this out like civilized people.”

  “ There’s nothing to talk out,” A.J. said.

  Neither Elysia nor Jane Peters responded, and A.J. looked heavenward. She followed her mother and her unorthodox house guest. Jane Peters’s heavy shoes clomp, clomp, clomped down the
hardwood floor.

  In the kitchen Andy was applying a towel filled with ice to his elbow. He grimaced, meeting A.J.’s eyes. “Sorry,” he said.

  “I’m sorry,” she returned, going to join him at the sink.

  And she was sorry. Jane Peters could have been armed for all she knew; she hadn’t thought twice about it. And Andy . . . she had always looked at Andy as her protector; it was shocking to realize he might now be in the position of needing protection himself.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “Oh hell yeah,” he said. There was a long scrape down his forearm, but it didn’t look serious.

  “You should both be sorry!” Elysia scolded.

  “Don’t even start, Mother,” A.J. said sternly, and at her tone, Elysia fell silent. A.J. looked from her mother to Jane Peters. “Look, I have no idea what you two think you’re doing—what your harebrained plan might be—but we have to call the police. If we don’t, we all become accessories after the fact.”

  Elysia said with great certainty, “Not if Janie is proven innocent.”

  “Well good luck with that. As far as I can see all you have is her word and all she has is an awfully shaky story.” A.J. added to Jane, “No offense.”

  “I know how it looks,” Jane responded, wiping her wet cheeks. “But I didn’t kill Nicole. I do love J.W., and I was devastated when he left me. That’s true. But I didn’t go there to kill Nikki.”

  In Jane’s position A.J. wouldn’t have stressed the loving J.W. and being devastated part, but it did have the ring of truth. “ Then why did you go there? To try and persuade J.W. to come back to you?”

  Once A.J. had known the truth about Andy, she’d have died before she begged him to come back to her. Even so, she could understand—and pity—the feelings of desperation and bewilderment.

  But Jane was shaking her head. “No. I didn’t go there to beg J.W. to come home. I went there to try to get him to sign our divorce papers. I’ve been trying to get him to sign them for the past six months.”

  A.J. met Andy’s gaze.

  “It’s goofy enough to be true,” he commented.

  “And that’s why I didn’t dare call ahead,” Jane continued. “Every other time I’ve tried to arrange with J.W. to sign these damn papers, he dodges me. I thought if I caught him by surprise, he wouldn’t have a choice. He’d have to sign. I had no idea he was out of the country again. I knew Nicole was celebrating her birthday, and I assumed he would be there.”

  “It’s perfectly obvious that that horrid Sargasso woman, the gangster’s moll, twepped poor Nicole,” Elysia said briskly. “It’s up to us—”

  “No, it most certainly is not.” A.J. met the gazes of the other three and hardened her heart.

  “How can you say that? This poor child is obviously innocent.”

  “It’s not that obvious to me,” A.J. said. “Sorry,” she told Jane. “But I’m just not convinced. And even if I was convinced, this would be something for the police to handle.”

  “Oh, the police!” Elysia exclaimed in disgust. “ That inspector of yours couldn’t find his arse with both hands. We—you and I—were the ones who solved the murder of my poor dear sister.”

  “She’s got a point,” Andy said.

  “Don’t you start!”

  Andy shrugged.

  Elysia said slyly, “Besides, as you’ve pointed out, if you hand Jane over to the Gestapo—”

  “ The Gestapo?”

  “I’m quite likely to be nicked as her accomplice.”

  “Jake wouldn’t.” Despite her confident tone, A.J. was sure of no such thing. Jake did take his job very seriously.

  “It’s certainly not a chance I’m willing to take,” Elysia said. “However, if you’re going to grass me out . . .”

  A.J. looked skyward for assistance, but no sign from above was forthcoming.

  “What is your plan?” she asked tersely. “You seem to think you have one.”

  “It’s very simple. We solve Nicole’s murder.”

  Silence.

  At last A.J. inquired, “Just out of curiosity, how do you imagine we would do that?”

  “ The same way we did it before. We ask questions of everyone involved. People will talk to us in a way they never would to the police.”

  “ That I don’t doubt.”

  Elysia smiled reminiscently. “I remember once on 221B Baker Street we had a similar situation with Lew Collins. Adorable man. He played a soldier of fortune who returned from the war and was accused of murdering the husband of his former fiancée.”

  “I loved that episode,” Andy enthused. Meeting A.J.’s stare, he sobered. “Well, I did.”

  “Of course you did,” Elysia said. “Everyone did.” She eyed A.J. “Nearly everyone. It’s a great source of pain to me that A.J. has never shown the least bit of interest in my work.”

  In fact, A.J. had seen every episode of 221B Baker Street several times, but in her opinion it wasn’t a good idea to encourage her mother’s incipient megalomania. She said, “Am I the only one here who sees that this could be dangerous as well as dumb?”

  Elysia shook her head—apparently in sorrow at A.J.’s lack of sleuthing spirit. “We’re not going to place ourselves in harm’s way, pumpkin. We’re simply going to ask a few questions and glean enough information to place Jane’s guilt in doubt in the minds of the filth.”

  “ The minds of the what?”

  “ The filth. The plods. The coppers.”

  “Charming.”

  “I’m sure your inspector has been called many worse things than that, petal.”

  A.J. opened her mouth but let it go. The other three gazed expectantly at her.

  “Please,” Jane said, wiping at her tears. “I know you don’t have any reason to trust me. You don’t know me at all. But I didn’t do this thing. I’m innocent. And I need your help.”

  Andy said reasonably, “You could give it a day or two. See what happens.”

  It could happen! The Sacred Balance slogan popped into A.J.’s mind. She wondered suddenly what her unconventional aunt would have done if presented with this kind of situation.

  Slowly, reluctantly, she said, “All right. I guess we can wait a day or two. Maybe the situation will resolve itself.”

  “Bravo!” Elysia exclaimed, beaming. “I’m proud of you, pumpkin.”

  A.J. smiled weakly.

  “It’s kind of like . . . we’re The Three Investigators,” Andy said. “You’re Pete Crenshaw and I’m Bob Andrews and—”

  “Oh my God,” A.J. said looking at Elysia. “Jupiter Jones?”

  “I have no idea who this Jupiter Jones bloke is, pumpkin,” Elysia said. “But it’s a lovely stage name. And, in any case, what could possibly go wrong?”

  Thirteen

  “A . J . can I speak to you?”

  A.J. looked up from her laptop where she had been reading about MS on the National Multiple Sclerosis Society website. Lily stood in the doorway, and although she had framed her command as a request, it was clearly expected that A.J. would drop what she was doing.

  “Of course,” she said politely, clicking out of the computer window.

  Lily thrust a sheet of paper beneath A.J.’s nose. A.J. noted absently that Lily’s hand was shaking. “I understand this was your idea.”

  A.J. reached for the paper, reading over it. It was a copy of the letter she had drafted and distributed the day before to the clients of Sacred Balance officially restricting the use of cell phones within the studio.

  “ That’s right.” She raised her eyes to Lily’s glowering countenance.

  “Are you trying to put us out of business?”

  “I’m going to assume that’s rhetorical.”

  “You can’t treat clients like this!”

  A.J. said carefully, “I don’t feel that requesting clients leave their cell phones in their cubbies during class is particularly harsh treatment.”

  Lily gave her a short, disbelieving laugh. “ The most amazin
g thing to me is that you apparently made some kind of a living working with the public before Di gave you a chance here.” She made it sound like A.J. had been slinging burgers at Carl’s Jr. before her aunt rescued her from a life of food stamps and public transportation.

  “No, the most amazing thing,” A.J. retorted, “is that you’re under the delusion that you have a winning way with people.”

  “I know how to get results,” Lily said. “And I get them without antagonizing the important people.”

  “ The difference between you and me, Lily, is I believe everyone is important—from Suze to Mrs. Siragusa.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I think I do, yes!”

  Lily snatched the Xeroxed letter away from A.J. “It’s only fair to tell you that I’m looking into finding legal representation. The studio is mine by rights, and I don’t intend to let you destroy it with your well-meaning incompetence.”

  “Oh. My. God.” A.J. shoved back her chair and rose. Lily took a step back at whatever she read in A.J.’s face. “Is there an echo in here? You’ve been threatening to sue me for control of the studio since the day I arrived. Well, go right ahead, Lily. It’s not going to be as easy as you think—speaking as someone who has tried to find a way to get rid of you.”

  The color drained from Lily’s face and she stared at A.J. “You’re trying to cut me out of my share of the studio?” She seemed genuinely stricken. So much so that A.J. unexpectedly found herself trying to soften her words.

  “I’m not trying to cheat you. We can’t work together, Lily. That’s obvious by now. I’m looking for a way—”

  “I can’t believe you would try to rob me of my inheritance!”

  “Isn’t that what you’re trying to do to me?” It wasn’t the right answer, of course. A.J. wasn’t trying to rob Lily of anything. She had come to the end of her tether as far as working with the other woman, but she fully intended that their separation be a fair and equitable one.

  Lily drew herself very straight. She said with unexpected dignity, “I’m trying to do what’s best for Sacred Balance. I’m not trying to cheat you or rob you. And I haven’t tried to go behind your back.”