by J. C. Eaton
“I’m going to find out sooner or later. If you were talking to Taylor for more than two minutes, she probably told you. That girl can pick up gossip quicker than a black sweater picks up lint.”
“Well, if you must know—”
“Oh good Lord. Here comes Trudy.”
“What must we know? What did I miss? They’ve got to do something about that elevator. The down arrow flashes and all of a sudden the thing’s going back upstairs.”
Trudy immediately took the lounge chair to my right, ensuring I was cornered on both sides by her and her sister. I felt as if I was sitting between two owls that were about to peck out my eyes.
“All right,” I said. “I received a text message from one of the investigators in our office informing me the Lillian was a crime scene.”
Trudy poked me in the elbow. “Well, we all know that. It’s been a crime scene. All those thefts. The tuna cans, the purple yarn—”
“She doesn’t mean the stolen goodies, Trudy,” Gertie said, “She means what we already figured out. There’s been a murder. So, who got the one-way ticket?”
It was no use hemming and hawing. The Madison sisters were going to find out no matter what, and maybe they’d have an idea regarding motive.
“You can’t say a word to anyone. Understand?”
The sisters stared at each other for a second and nodded.
I finally spoke, making sure to keep my voice low. “It was Sharon Smyth.”
“Sharon Smyth?” Gertie shouted.
Trudy leaned over and shushed her sister, blowing hot breath right into my face. “Phee just told us not to say anything and you’re announcing it to the whole world.”
“Look around you. We’re the only ones here.”
Trudy stamped her foot on the ground. “The way you’re yelling, they could hear you in Cleveland.”
Then she turned to me. “Sharon was going on and on about that clay jar of hers. You’d think it was from the Ming Dynasty. Maybe she accused someone of stealing it and they killed her.”
Gertie shot up in her seat and motioned for us to lean forward. Bending her head down, she whispered, “Maybe she found out who the thief was and he or she had to shut her up for good.”
“Over some tuna fish and olives? That’s crazy,” her sister said.
It seemed unlikely to me, too, but maybe someone in the Lillian had a stronger motive for killing Sharon Smyth. I tapped my teeth for a second, hoping to make the most out of my next question. “Okay, what exactly did you know about her?”
“I really don’t feel comfortable saying it,” Gertie said.
My God! The woman is dead. Say it! Say it! For God’s sakes just say it! “Um, look, anything you can tell me would be really helpful.”
Gertie looked at Trudy for what seemed to be the longest time. Meanwhile, I found myself gesturing with both hands to get them to speak.
“All right. All right. I’ll tell you,” Gertie finally said. “The woman moved in here with her husband a few years before we did. He was much older. Died not too long ago. Anyway, she’s one of those women who is always on the prowl. Flirting with men in the dining room, that sort of thing.”
“There’s more,” Trudy said. “Tell her the rest. Tell her the rest.”
“Enough, Trudy. You know I don’t like to gossip.”
Trudy scrunched her face and gave her sister one of those looks from hell. “Since when? Just tell her.”
“Fine. But you didn’t hear it from me. I heard this from a very reliable source. Mario Aquilino from the third floor was seen leaving Sharon’s apartment at a very, very early hour a few weeks ago. That’s some social call, if you ask me.”
Aquilino. Mr. Aquilino. That was Cecilia’s friend from her church. “Is that all?”
“Isn’t that enough?” Trudy asked. “Maybe she jilted him and he killed her.”
I’d heard of things like that, but not with the geriatric crowd. Somehow it didn’t seem likely.
“Is there anything else I should know about Sharon Smyth?”
The sisters shook their heads. At least I had another lead—Mario Aquilino. I had planned on speaking with him regarding those thefts. Now I was even more anxious to have that chat. Nate and Marshall couldn’t really blame me if I inadvertently managed to pick up some information related to this new homicide.
“Thank you so much for speaking with me. I came here this morning because I heard something had happened at the Lillian and I wanted to make sure both of you were all right. I’m sure the management is still looking into those thefts but—”
Trudy grasped my wrist. “What if the management is behind those thefts? You know, to throw everyone off course so they could get to the real business at hand, murdering the residents.”
I look a breath and placed my other hand on top of Trudy’s. “I think that’s really—”
“Absurd,” Gertie said. “Absolutely absurd. Not to mention idiotic. Why on earth would the management want to murder its own residents? They need our money, for crying out loud. And believe me, the residents at the Lillian pay a very commanding fee for the lifestyle here.”
The three of us walked out of the atrium into the large reception area. The elevator chime rang and Trudy said, “Good. Let’s grab it before it closes. The darn thing has been acting so strange.”
As the elevator door opened, Marshall stepped out and I froze.
“Phee! How’d you get here so fast? I swear I just sent you that second text.”
“Um, fast? Text? I, uh . . .”
Gertie and Trudy weren’t about to miss out on my conversation with Marshall, so they let the elevator door close without getting on.
I cleared my throat and smiled at the sisters. “Gertie, Trudy, this is my, um, I mean, our, I mean, the—”
Marshall chuckled and held out his hand. “I’m one of the private investigators at Williams Investigations, where Phee works.”
“So how did that Smyth woman die?” Gertie asked. “Bludgeoned to death? Shot? Stabbed? What?”
My mouth opened slightly and I closed it, swallowing a few times.
“The sheriff’s department hasn’t made a positive identification yet. How did you—?”
Please don’t tell him you heard it from me. Whatever you do.
“It’s buzzing all around the building,” Trudy said. “Those sheriff’s deputies might not have made a positive ID, but the people here can recognize a dead resident. We may be old but we’re not senile.”
I touched Marshall’s arm and whispered, “Word gets around fast in this place.”
Then I turned to the sisters. “The cause of death won’t be made public for a while. It’s protocol in an investigation.”
Just then, the elevator returned to the ground floor and a heavyset woman stepped out, her shoulder brushing against Trudy. I rushed over and pushed the button to hold the door open for the sisters.
“Tell me,” Gertie said to Marshall as she got in the elevator, “is the sheriff’s department going to provide protection for us?”
“Yes. That much I can tell you. They’ll post a deputy or two at the Lillian until this is resolved.”
“Have a nice day,” I shouted as the elevator door closed. Then I told Marshall I hadn’t had a chance to check my text messages since reading the first one.
“When I got your original text, I made a quick escape from Bagels ’N More and drove here. I was concerned about Gertie and Trudy, hoping one of them wasn’t the victim.”
A second elevator opened and this time a sheriff’s deputy stepped out. Middle aged, heavyset, and balding. He acknowledged Marshall and me with a partial nod. “We were finally able to reach the director. She’s on her way in. My partner told her she needed to inform the residents of the situation before all hell breaks loose. What am I saying? All hell is breaking loose. In the past five minutes, even more residents are lining up outside the corridor demanding to know what’s going on. If I hear one more senior citizen shout, ‘We’ve g
ot rights!’ I think I’ll jump from the nearest ledge.”
Marshall and I both laughed as the deputy walked to the reception desk.
“This isn’t exactly the e-mail crowd,” I said. “And forget about smartphone messenger alerts.”
“No kidding. What the sheriff’s department had in mind was a simple statement that could be photocopied and delivered to each of the apartments. I imagine that lucky deputy will be dictating it to Kimberlynn Warren as soon as she gets here. Listen, I need to talk to you about that second text I sent. Come on. No sense standing here when there are chairs all over the place.”
We opted for two large floral accent chairs that faced the fountain. Marshall pulled his closer to mine and clasped his hands. “When the coroner’s staff went to move the victim, something fell out of the pocket of the housedress she was wearing.”
I didn’t say a word and waited for him to finish.
“It was a piece of paper with a handwritten note. The top part had been torn off. We looked around the laundry closet, but it wasn’t there. Anyway, the note said, ‘Would appreciate your help with this.’”
“With what?”
“We don’t know, but underneath that sentence were two names—your mother’s and Lucinda’s.”
I became light-headed. “My God. Just like that other piece of paper Quentin Dussler was holding. Same handwriting?”
“No. It was in cursive. I wanted you to know because we need to find out if your mother or Lucinda knew the victim.”
“And you’re afraid they’ll go off the deep end?”
“I’m afraid they’ll get into a full-blown panic. That’s why we can’t be the ones to talk with her. But you can. Look, the second note may indicate the murders were linked somehow. Like it or not, you’ve got to find a way to get some info from your mother.”
“Aargh. There’s no easy way. You know that. My mother will be convinced it’s a hit list and the book club ladies will only make matters worse. You can’t tell her what you found. Not yet. But we can tell her about Sharon Smyth’s untimely demise and see if she knew her. I guarantee she’ll start calling all her friends to find out if any of them were acquaintances of Sharon. If I know my mother, we’ll have our answer before Arizona News at Five.”
“That’s what I adore about you—you’ve got the right amount of deviousness to balance that sweet disposition of yours.”
He reached over and gave my hand a squeeze. “I came down here to get a list of Sharon’s neighbors’ names from the receptionist, so I’d better do that. Nate and two more deputies are upstairs waiting for me. So, are you up for having that conversation with your mother?”
“Right now?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You realize once I give her the victim’s name, I might as well post it on social media.”
“Believe me, I know. And even though Kimberlynn Warren isn’t going to divulge the name, you can bet your bottom dollar every resident in this place will know it was Sharon Smyth. The sheriff’s department is aware of that, too, and they’ve got someone tracking down the next of kin.”
“Okay. I’ll get to it.”
“I’ll call you later. At least we can do dinner.”
I glanced at the large ornate clock that hung over the reception desk. One fifteen. My mother had to have left Bagels ’N More by now. She wouldn’t go off someplace else without first heading home to check on Streetman. Or the multitude of infractions he might have committed while she was out of the house.
Chapter 14
There were no other cars parked in front of my mother’s house, so that meant she had to be the only one in the house with the dog. I walked directly up the driveway and rang the bell. No barking. No nothing.
My mother opened the interior door and peered through the heavy metal security one.
“It’s okay, Streetman,” she called out. “It’s only Phee. You can come out from under there.”
I stepped inside as the dog scurried across the room and positioned himself under the coffee table.
“What’s wrong?” my mother said. “I thought you were going back to work.”
“Um, actually, that’s why I’m here. I needed to ask you something.”
“Sit in the wing chair. Streetman doesn’t use that one.”
I closed my eyes for a nanosecond, afraid I might begin to roll them.
“Before you ask me anything, I simply have to tell you how annoying your aunt Ina was at brunch today. Insistent we read another of her deadly books.”
“Yeah, I ran into her in the parking lot.”
“Did she tell you about the big commotion on the other side of Sun City West? You know, we still haven’t been able to figure out what was going on.”
“It’s another murder investigation. Marshall sent me a text.”
“Another murder? The Quentin Dussler one wasn’t enough?”
“It happened at the Lillian. And since you know so many people around here, I wondered if perhaps you might have known the victim. That’s why I stopped by.”
My mother gave me that “I think you’re not telling me everything” look of hers. “You know who the victim is? They told you? Usually you have to wait for hours, sometimes days. So, who was it?”
“A Mrs. Sharon Smyth. Does that name ring a bell?”
My mother plopped herself on the couch and sat there for a minute. “How does she spell her last name? The normal way or the snobby way?”
“Snobby?”
“With the Y instead of the I, as if they needed to impress someone.”
“Y.”
“Figures.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Maybe she was as stuck-up as her name.”
“That’s a terrible assumption to make. So, I take it you don’t know who she is.”
“And a good thing, too, considering she was just murdered. I don’t need to be next in line if some lunatic decides to go after her friends. So, how was she killed? Did someone poison her?”
“What makes you think that?”
“Because it took place in the Lillian. Those people are too old to wield a knife or shoot a gun without injuring themselves. Unless it was the management. Or the staff. Maybe it was her aide. Did she have a personal aide? Some of those aides kill their clients in order to get the insurance money. Nancy Grace did a story on that not too long ago.”
I hated to say it, but my mother had offered up a theory I was sure the deputies as well as Nate and Marshall hadn’t considered. But it still wouldn’t explain why my mother’s name and Lucinda’s were on that torn piece of paper.
“I don’t know the cause of death.” And don’t give me that look.
Then I paused and said the one thing I knew would have the opposite effect. The last thing I needed was for my mother to get suspicious. “Listen, you can’t breathe a word of this to anyone. Especially Lucinda. Shirley too. You know how they talk.”
“I’m meeting them tonight for dinner at the Homey Hut. What if it slips out?”
“Make sure it doesn’t.”
“By tonight it will be all over the news. And maybe one of the ladies will have heard about it already. I can’t help that, can I?”
“Fine. Fine.”
Streetman had moved from cowering beneath the coffee table to snuggling under my mother’s feet. She bent down to pet him. “Do you think those two murders are related? Maybe this Sharon woman was having an affair with Quentin Dussler and the jealous wife killed them both.”
“It’s always an affair with you, isn’t it? Quentin was a widower. I thought I’d mentioned that.”
“What about Sharon? Maybe it was her husband.”
“I happened to find out she was widowed, too. So there goes your affair theory.”
“How about blackmail? Maybe she was blackmailing him.”
“He couldn’t have killed her. He was already dead!”
“Not him, maybe someone close to him.”
As if to validate
what my mother just said, the dog sat straight up and looked directly at me.
“Affair. Blackmail. I’ll take that as a hint I should be going. If you think of anything, other than going down the alphabet for murder motives, call me.” Or Google the late Sue Grafton . . .
My mother walked me to the door. “I used to feel so safe around here. Now it’s becoming a regular combat zone.”
Combat. That makes three. “It’ll be fine, Mom. Those murders don’t appear to be random.”
“Since when did you become the expert?”
“You told me yourself that ‘working all those years at the Mankato Police Department must have rubbed off on me.’ Now you have to eat your own words.”
“Very funny.”
“Try to have a nice time at the Homey Hut. Talk to you later.”
The security door closed behind me, and I walked directly to my car. I knew it couldn’t possibly have been an affair gone wrong, but my mother’s comment had gotten me thinking. Two dead bodies. Both holding a piece of paper with her name on it. If that wasn’t a reason for me to start piecing things together, I didn’t know what was.
It was a little past three when I got home. The answering machine light was blinking and I realized I’d left my cell phone on mute. Marshall and Nate had already figured out it was best to leave me landline messages coupled with voice mail.
Sure enough, it was Marshall. I chuckled when I heard his message.
“Do you have any idea how many residents live in this place? I’ll be ready to move in myself by the time we get done interviewing them. The sheriff’s department is adding some extra deputies, but it will still take us the rest of the weekend. Talk about spoiling our weekend plans. Again, no less.”
I immediately called back and left my own message.
“Hey, don’t worry about the weekend plans. The rocks aren’t going anywhere. We can always sneak off for a romantic weekend once the murders are solved. You do think you and Nate will be able to figure it out, don’t you?” Then I realized how demanding that sounded and quickly added, “I have confidence in you. This won’t turn out to be one of those thirty-year-old cold cases. Catch you later.”
I felt badly for my boyfriend and my boss. Not only were they stuck questioning the Lillian’s residents, now they had a new murder to contend with. And all of us were thinking the same thing, only none of us would say it out loud: What if the killer is just getting started?
