by Mary Marks
Crusher’s Harley was still parked in the driveway when I drove back home at ten. I pushed open the front door to find him sitting in the living room in one of the easy chairs and talking on the phone.
“Right. Keep digging. Okay, dude. I owe you one.” He chuckled. “You’re right. I owe you more like a hundred favors.”
He ended the call and gestured for me to sit on the cream-colored sofa. “What happened this morning?”
I told him about my meeting with the Tollivers. “They kept the commune going, in spite of Royal’s total mismanagement of the trust money.”
“Did they have any idea about who might’ve killed him?”
“No. But June believes Royal not only killed Natasha, she also believes he killed his sister, Eugenie, and buried her body somewhere in the Ojai mountains.”
“June could be right about Natasha, but she’s way off base about Eugenie.”
“Wait. What?”
He pulled up the image of a document on the screen of his smart phone. “My guy just sent me this.” He handed me the phone so I could read more clearly.
My mouth fell open as I stared at the name Polinskaya. “Shut up! Are you sure it’s the same one?” The 1976 marriage license was taken out in Princeton, New Jersey, by a man named Dr. Andre Polinskaya and his bride, Jean Saint. “That’s her?”
“There’s more. Scroll down.” Three more documents appeared: birth certificates for Andre Jr., born in 1978, Paulina, born in 1981; and Michael (a.k.a. Mansoor the Magnificent), born in 1985.
“Holy crap, Yossi. This changes everything. Eugenie St. Germain changed her name to Jean Saint and married a year after her mother’s death. Looks like she disappeared on purpose. Why? Did she suspect her brother Royal killed their mother? Was she afraid that if she challenged him for half the estate, he would kill her, too? If so, Paulina and Mansoor would have plenty of motive for killing their uncle.” I looked at the screen again. “What do we know about the older brother, Andre Jr.?”
“Nothing yet. He seems to have disappeared, too. All records of him stop six months ago.”
“Have you found any photos of him?”
“There’s one.” He swiped something on his screen to pull up a three-year-old New Jersey driver’s license photo of Andre Polinskaya. The unsmiling man had dark hair like his siblings, and his eyes smoldered like two lumps of coal.
“I can’t swear to it, but I think I’ve seen this guy somewhere,” I said.
“Well, he does look a lot like his siblings. Maybe that’s what you see....”
I shook my head. “No, that’s not it.” I poked my finger at the screen. “It’s this man. I’ve seen this man before. Give me some time. I’ll eventually figure out where.”
* * *
After a lunch of grilled cheese on challah, Crusher went across the street to watch a football game with his friend Malo. Once he was gone, I called Lucy. “Are you alone? Can you talk?” I wasn’t willing to cross her husband, Ray, until I knew he no longer blamed me for involving Lucy in another murder.
“Yeah, I’m alone. Our grandson Trey’s in a soccer tournament this afternoon. I told Ray I didn’t feel like going, which I don’t. Those bleachers are bow-coo hard and cold on my rear. I’ve been waiting for your call. What happened at Birdie’s this morning? Why are all those people from the commune in their house?”
I repeated everything I’d learned from the Tollivers and from Crusher.
“Dang! You’re telling me Natasha St. Germain was Paulina and Mansoor’s grandmother?”
“I know, right? When Mansoor said they come from a long line of psychics, he wasn’t just blowing smoke.”
Lucy said, “And that puts them right in the frame for murdering their uncle Royal. Are you going to tell the sheriff?”
“I probably won’t have to. If they’re doing background checks on everyone, they’ll get to the same place soon enough.”
“So, what are you going to do, girlfriend?”
“Not sure.” I sighed. “Paulina and Mansoor have emerged as the prime suspects. But I still I find it hard to believe she could be a killer. I even find it hard to believe Mansoor could be a killer. He’s too...”
Lucy chuckled. “I think fastidious is the word you’re looking for.”
“Right. Uh, I’m almost too afraid to ask. But until I know for sure, I’m going to be careful. Is Ray really mad at me for lugging you to another murder scene?”
“Oh, he’ll get over it. He always does. And anyway, this time he’s angrier at me than you because I fibbed about where we were going yesterday.”
After I ended the call, I headed for my sewing room, where I did my best thinking. How should I confront Paulina and Mansoor? Do they know what happened to their brother Andre Jr.?
I had already cut each fabric shape for the Sunbonnet Sue blocks, along with its corresponding paper template. Now I prepared each shape for appliqué by ironing the paper template to the wrong side of the fabric. Freezer paper worked best, because the shiny side stuck to the fabric when heat was applied. The template shape was smaller than the fabric shape by a quarter inch, allowing me to fold the fabric edges toward the back and baste them in place, stitching right through the paper beneath.
This preparation was a tedious and slow process, but worth all the effort. When the time came to appliqué the shapes to the background square, the stitches would be hidden behind the beautiful folded edges. Once secured to the background, the basting stitches would be removed from each piece, and the paper template extracted through a small gap on the edge. Then the gap would be sewn shut. Et voilà!
Around four that afternoon, my phone rang. “Okay, Martha. I’ve been hearing you in my head all afternoon, and I know you want to talk to me.”
There was no mistaking Paulina’s voice. Lucy would’ve said Paulina was an amazing telepath, able to read my mind. I merely credited her call to a guilty conscience.
“And you’d be right. I have a lot of questions for you and your brother.”
“Any chance we can take care of this over the phone?”
“Any chance the Kardashians secretly hate publicity?”
Paulina snorted in response. “How about tomorrow? My place at eleven. Mikey and I have some COW business to take care of tonight.”
“I assume you’re talking about Contacting Other Worlds and not about shoveling patties in the barn.”
This time her laughter boomed over the phone. “Sometimes there’s not much difference.”
She should know.
* * *
Monday morning at eleven I pulled into Paulina’s driveway on Venice Boulevard in West LA. The cold air was filled with the delicious smell of beef and chilis cooking in a Mexican restaurant next door. At this point, I had no way of knowing whether Paulina and her brother killed their uncle. I could be walking into real danger. Just in case, I’d armed myself with a can of pepper spray and placed it within easy reach in my sweater pocket.
I lifted my hand but before I could knock, the door opened and Michael Polinskaya, aka Mikey, aka Mansoor the Magnificent, stood with a sheepish grin. He wore jeans and a long-sleeved black T-shirt. His long black hair was pulled back in a man bun. “Paulie tells me you want to talk?”
I edged past him and stood just inside the door, ready to escape if I had to. He plopped in a chair at the round table in the dining room Paulina always kept covered with a purple cloth.
Paulina appeared from the kitchen holding a tray with a pot of hot tea, three cups, and a half-empty plastic tray from a bag of Oreo cookies. She sat next to Mansoor and smiled at me. “I made a fresh pot just for you. I even added sugar, ’cause I know you like it that way.”
Did she think I was crazy? Drinking something she could’ve poisoned? I sat at the table facing them. She poured three cups and placed the one with red roses in front of me. I ignored it. Mansoor drank from his cup almost immediately. Okay, the tea in the pot wasn’t poisoned, but what if she’d placed poison in my cup before she poure
d the tea?
I crossed my arms and narrowed my eyes. “Not only was I shocked to learn the two of you are brother and sister, I also discovered Natasha St. Germain was your grandmother, her daughter, Eugenie, was your mother, and the dead man was your uncle. You didn’t think those facts were important enough to share with me?”
“C’mon, Martha.” Paulina held up her hand. “Don’t get your panties in a twist. We didn’t wanna tell you ’cause we couldn’t be sure you and your friends would keep our secret.”
I put my left hand in my sweater pocket and closed my fingers around the can of pepper spray. “Did you go to Mystical Feather to kill your uncle?”
Paulina gasped. “Of course not! Oh my God, I thought we were friends. How can you think such a thing?”
“Then tell me why you went.”
The brother and sister glanced at each other.
Mansoor said, “About six months ago, Natasha’s spirit came to me in a vision.”
“You, too? She seems to be very fond of doing that.”
He ignored my snarkasm. “Why wouldn’t she? She said I was her favorite.”
June Tolliver might disagree. “Go ahead, I’m listening.”
“Natasha told me to ask Mama about the Mystical Feather Society. At first, I wondered how Mama would know about anything paranormal. She’d seemed barely interested in our careers. But since Natasha insisted, I went to Mama and asked her about the society.”
“I was there,” Paulina said. “Mama freaked when she heard Mikey say Natasha had talked to him. But when she calmed down, Mama told us who she really was. Up until that conversation, we had no idea she was Eugenie and that the famous Natasha St. Germain was our grandmother.”
“Did she say why she kept that information from you, especially since you both turned out to be . . . what’s it called?”
“Adept,” Mansoor said. “People truly gifted with paranormal abilities are called Adepts. All three of us—me, Paulie, and Andre—turned out to be Adept. Natasha once confided in Mama that when she died, she planned to leave the society and the trust in Mama’s hands, since the only gift Royal possessed was his personal charm. It wasn’t until after Natasha died that Mama discovered her mother had left everything to her brother. Mama said she was hurt and confused.”
“Why did Eugenie disappear? Why didn’t she stay to contest the new will?”
Brother and sister looked at each other, sending some kind of silent signal.
Finally, Paulina addressed her brother. “Mikey, she knows almost everything. We might as well tell her.”
He nodded once and sighed. “Fine.” He reached for an Oreo and nibbled around the edge in a circle.
Paulina clasped her hands in front of her on the table. “Mama told us that right after Natasha’s death, her mother’s spirit appeared in a vision.”
Of course she did.
“Natasha told Mama there’s a tree in southern India called Cerbera odollam.”
“We looked it up,” Mansoor said. “It’s known as the suicide tree.”
“Natasha said she died because her tea had been spiked with the ground-up seed from that tree. After drinking the poison, Natasha slipped into a coma and died three hours later. It was the perfect murder because it looked like her heart just gave out.” He made a poof sound. “Then she was cremated.”
“Where would someone find Cerbera odollam leaves?”
“The thing is,” Paulina leaned toward me and spoke in a confidential voice, “our uncle Royal had just come back from an ashram in southern India, where he had taken a group on a retreat. He must’ve brought the seeds back with him.”
“Did Royal suspect your mother knew what he’d done?”
Mansoor shook his head. “Mama told her brother she was glad Natasha left him in charge. She said she’d always wanted to leave Mystical Feather and lead a normal life. And that’s what she did. To stay safe and, after we were born, to keep us safe. That’s why she changed her name and kept her past a secret.”
Paulina noticed I hadn’t touched the cup with roses on it. “Why aren’t you drinking your tea?”
I fingered the can of pepper spray in my left pocket one last time. Then, using both hands, I reached across the table and switched our cups. “You first.”
She rolled her eyes. “Really? You think I wanna poison you? Watch.” She removed the cup with red roses from the matching saucer and swigged a large mouthful, put down the cup, and smiled. “See? No poison.”
I looked at the cup I’d taken from in front of her. The loose leaves had settled to the bottom. I ventured a small sip of the sweetened black tea. Nothing happened. “So, back to Saturday. What was your plan once you got to Ojai? Were you going to ask Royal politely if he poisoned his own mother?”
“Oh no.” Paulina flipped her wrist. “We already knew that much. We didn’t have to ask. We were going to, ah, offer him sort of a deal. We wouldn’t go to the authorities with what we knew if he’d make one small accommodation.”
“And that was?”
“To take a golden parachute and hand over the Mystical Feather Society and Trust to us.”
“A golden parachute? And what would that be, exactly?”
Mansoor eyed me across the table. “Our silence.”
“So this visit was a shakedown. You two were essentially going to blackmail your uncle into giving you Mystical Feather.”
Paulina examined her fingernails. “More like a hostile takeover. It’s done all the time in business.”
“Except the part about obstructing justice by concealing a murder. What did your mother, Eugenie, have to say about this plan of yours?”
“She has no idea we’re doing this.” Paulina said. “Her sixty-fifth birthday is coming up next month. We planned to give her the keys to Mystical Feather as a surprise present.”
And a dead Royal today would ensure having those “keys” by next month.
CHAPTER 15
The pull of the chocolate cookies in the plastic tray distracted me. To be safe, I took a cookie from the middle of the stack. I pulled the two halves apart and raked the white filling with my lower teeth. It was the kind of Oreo with double the stuffing. “Is Natasha’s spirit speaking to either of you right now?”
Paulina gave me the stink eye. “I know you’re a skeptic, Martha, but we take these things very seriously.”
“I know your mother changed her name from Eugenie St. Germain to Jean Saint and married a doctor. What kind of doctor is he?”
“Was,” said Mansoor. “Our father died six years ago. He was a professor of political science at Princeton University.”
“Did your father know your mother’s real identity?”
Paulina shrugged. “Mama said he didn’t. Our parents lived a very conventional life in the academic community.”
“So, what did your conventional father think of your gifts?”
Paulina looked down with reddened cheeks. “We were an embarrassment to him, especially in his intellectual circle. That’s why Mikey and I both moved to the West Coast. We figured it was easier that way.”
“You said your father died six years ago. What did your mother do then?”
“She bought a fancy computer,” Mansoor said. “She makes a nice living typing and editing academic papers.”
After I had mined all the creamy white filling, I dunked the denuded chocolate cookie in my tea and changed course. “Tell me about your older brother, Andre Junior. Does he also have the gift?”
This time they glanced at each other without smiling. I’d hit a nerve.
Paulina said, “Why do you want to know about Andre?”
“Don’t jerk me around, Paulina. Was he in on this plan of yours?”
She pressed her lips together and looked away.
“Where is he?”
Paulina shrugged, still avoiding my gaze. “Don’t know.”
“Look, you two. I know he dropped out of sight six months ago. What happened to him?”
“I told
you, we honestly don’t know.” This time her eyes filled.
“When was the last time you saw him?”
“Six months ago. Just before he left for Ojai. He planned to infiltrate Mystical Feather. Andre said Royal wouldn’t recognize him since our uncle never even knew we existed. Andre sent us an occasional text from inside the commune for about five months and then... nothing.”
“So, you were hoping to find him on Saturday?”
“Yeah. Only we never saw him. I’m afraid Royal might’ve...” Her lips trembled.
She didn’t have to finish the sentence. Paulina was afraid Andre could be dead and buried in the mountains, another victim of Royal St. Germain. Yet I had a gut feeling I’d seen Andre recently. His driver’s license photo looked familiar.
Despite his germ phobia, Mansoor reached over and lightly touched the top of Paulina’s hand with the tip of his fingers. Then he turned to me. “Are you going to grass on us?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think I’ll have to. If I can uncover your true identities, I’m sure the sheriff will eventually get there, too.”
“Please, Martha.” Paulina looked at me with pleading eyes. “I know it looks very bad for us, but we didn’t kill Royal. We only wanted to get back Mystical Feather for our mother. Please. We need you to believe us. We need you to be on our side.”
Mansoor swallowed hard and muttered, “And help us find our brother, Andre.”
My gut told me Paulina and Mansoor were telling the truth. “Listen, I got involved in the first place because I was concerned for my friends Birdie and Denver. Right now, I feel kind of responsible for dragging you along.” I frowned at them. “Even though you weren’t truthful with me, I feel partly to blame for your predicament with the law.” I stood to leave. “I’ll do what I can.”
“Thanks. I knew we could count on you.” Paulina reached for my cup. “Sit back down and I’ll read your tea leaves. A freebie for helping us.”
Despite the fact I didn’t believe in that stuff, I was curious about what she would say. I sat and waited while she turned the delicate china cup upside down and emptied the last of the liquid into the saucer. Then she peered inside at the leftover brown bits clinging to the side and bottom. “Hmm . . . I see a new person coming into your life.” She looked up. “Big changes are ahead for you, Martha. Maybe not all of them will be pleasant. Do you want me to get out the tarot cards and do a reading? Again, no charge today.”
