Stayin' Alive

by Julie Mulhern

  “She was miffed.” Jinx took another bite of cookie. “But she seemed to get over it. It wasn’t until Phyllis hit it big that Diane got mad. Diane claimed the original idea was hers, entitling her to a percentage of the profits. Phyllis and Joan did not agree.”

  “That explains why Diane hated Phyllis, but Stan said the animosity went both ways.”

  A devious, Grinch-planning-to-steal-Christmas smile curled Jinx’s lips. “Stan said that?”

  “He did.”

  “He would know,” she purred.

  She didn’t mean— “He didn’t.”

  “He did. Stan had an affair with Diane. I heard she seduced him to get even with Phyllis.”

  “Stan?” Stan was middle-aged with thinning hair, a slight paunch, and hair growing out of his ears.

  “It had nothing to do with lust, everything to do with getting even.”

  Oh, dear Lord. Diane Morris’s anger had to burn white-hot for her to hop into bed with Stan. “Still.”

  “Not everyone has an Anarchy Jones on the line. Maybe she was lonely.”

  I stared at my friend.

  “Okay, fine. She slept with Stan to hurt Phyllis.”

  “You’d think Stan would realize that.”

  “Men are deluded. Maybe he believed Diane was truly interested. Even if he suspected Diane’s motives, his wife wasn’t home cooking his dinner or ironing his boxers or warming his bed. She was designing textiles. And she was good at it. Better than he is at insurance.”

  “How long did the affair last?”

  “A few months.”

  “When did it end?”

  “When Diane figured out Phyllis didn’t much care. Honestly, word is, the slight bothered Phyllis more than the infidelity.”

  “But when did Diane break it off? Last week? Last month?”

  “Recently. The past few weeks.”

  I reached for a cookie. “How did Stan take the breakup?”

  “You’d have to ask him.” She didn’t add, tell me when you find out, but the request danced in her eyes.

  “Stan felt emasculated, slept with his wife’s ex-partner, and now his wife is dead. But Stan has an alibi, and he seems genuinely destroyed.” I bit into the cookie and let the chocolate melt on my tongue. “Who killed her?”

  Silence settled around us as we considered the suspects.

  “If I were Joan, I’d be furious with Phyllis,” said Jinx.

  “Why?” Joan was Phyllis’s partner—a sale meant money in her pocketbook.

  “The sale wasn’t good for her.”

  “How so?”

  “The buyer wanted Phyllis and her designs, not a retail store on the Plaza. They structured the deal so the sale price for the business was modest, but Phyllis was guaranteed a more-than-generous salary for the next three years.”

  “Only the sale price was split with Joan?”

  “Bingo.”

  Two women with reason to be furious with Phyllis. Furious enough to kill her?

  “Have you heard any whispers about Stan? Aside from the affair? Did someone kill Phyllis as a warning for him?”

  “He’s an insurance executive, Ellison.”

  “And?”

  “They don’t make them more boring than Stan Goddard. The man works, plays golf, and drinks Tom Collins at the club. That’s all he does.”

  “I don’t think Stan killed her.” I took another bite, but as I remembered the bruises around Phyllis’s neck, the cookie turned to ash in my mouth. “If a woman is the killer, she’s very strong.” And had enormous hands.

  “Maybe Diane or Joan hired a hitman.”

  “We’d have noticed a hitman at the gala.”

  “Maybe one of the Chinese guests was a secret ninja.” Black-clad assassins with swords at their hips wandering the Nelson’s halls? Not likely.

  I hid a smile behind the coffee mug. “Doubtful. Besides, ninjas are Japanese.”

  “You get my point.”

  “A ninja didn’t kill Phyllis.”

  “How did she die? I heard she was laid out like a sacrifice in front of that giant Buddha.”

  “No.” The reality was equally awful.

  “Then what happened? Where was the body?”

  “As soon as I’m allowed to say, I’ll tell you.”

  “Promise?” Jinx wasn’t ghoulish, not at all.

  “Promise.”

  “What did Frances say about Phyllis’s murder?”

  “Need you ask?” I glanced at my watch. “I should go. Aunt Sis and Karma are here through tomorrow, and I haven’t seen Grace today.”

  “I’ll see you Tuesday at bridge. And I’ll call you if I hear any juicy tidbits before then.”

  “Thanks, Jinx.” I stood.

  “Say, Ellison?”

  “What?”

  “I have a friend in San Francisco.”

  “Oh?” Karma lived in San Francisco. Did she have a new boyfriend? Trust Jinx to get coastal gossip.

  “She knows Anarchy’s family.”

  That stopped me. Anarchy’s father was a professor at Berkley and his mother was a fiber artist. He seldom mentioned them.

  “How much do you know about your detective?”

  “He grew up in the Bay Area, attended Stanford, and, as a boy, he dreamed of being a cop.” He made my heart skip beats. He made me feel things I’d never felt for Henry. He—

  “Did you know that—”

  I held up a hand. “Stop. If Anarchy has a secret, there’s a reason he hasn’t told me.”

  Jinx jiggled on her seat, as if whatever she knew made it impossible to sit still. “Ask him.”

  “Ask him what?”

  “What he’s not telling you.”

  The chill was back, and colder than ever—icicles formed between my shoulder blades. “What do you mean?”

  “You told me not to tell you.”

  I reached for the comfort of the still-warm coffee mug. “Tell me he’s not married.”

  “He’s not married.”

  Breath returned to my lungs.

  “It’s not a bad thing. But it’s something you should know.”

  The temptation was awful, and Jinx wanted to tell me. She bounced with wanted-to-tell-me.

  “Don’t tell me.”

  “Oh, please. It’s not as if you keep secrets from him.”

  I did. I kept a safe full of secrets from Anarchy, a veritable Pandora’s box of secrets. That I kept the box was my secret, but the box itself—it held other people’s secrets.

  Maybe everyone kept secrets. Little ones—how much the new spring dress actually cost, how many scotch and sodas disappeared at the nineteenth hole. Big ones—affairs, addictions, and hearts that no longer loved.

  “Don’t tell me, Jinx. Whatever it is, Anarchy and I need to figure it out on our own.”

  Chapter Five

  “Did Mr. Goddard kill his wife?” Grace shot straight from the hip.

  Aunt Sis, Karma, and I stared at her in varying degrees of stunned silence. Aunt Sis went with mild surprise—not much shocked her, not even a sixteen-year-old discussing murder. Karma, who despite her hippie name had a conservative streak, looked aghast. And me? Dismayed acceptance. Grace had seen too much in the past year not to ask questions.

  We were seated around the dining room table, eating the roast Aggie had left in the oven.

  Grace, who held a forkful of roast beef inches from her mouth, stared back at us and waited.

  “I don’t know,” I told her. “I don’t think so.”

  “Then who killed her?” she asked.

  If Mother had joined us for dinner, she’d be having a coronary right now. And she’d blame me for my daughter’s interest in murder. She might even recount the gut-wrenching jolt of terror she experienced every time I found a body. Somehow, I’d refrain from rolling my eyes (gut-wrenching terror, my foot—Mother considered bodies an inconvenience, not a source of fright).

  “Catching killers is Anarchy’s problem.”

  Grac
e’s face clouded. “Have you noticed killers never stay Anarchy’s problem?” She was right. They had a terrible habit of showing up at our house with guns.

  Had Grace asked about Stan because she was worried about me? I reached across the table and squeezed her hand.

  I’d seen the wrong end of a gun more times than I cared to count. I lifted my wine glass, drank—a good (so good we were on our second bottle) cabernet to go with the roast—and said, “Don’t worry about me, honey.”

  “There are two kinds of people in this world, Grace.” Aunt Sis laid her fork on the edge of her plate, patted her lips with her napkin, and clutched her near-empty wine glass. “Most people see a problem and expect someone else to solve it. Not your mother.”

  Karma’s eyes twinkled. “What do you mean, Sis?”

  “Ellison takes after Frances that way.” Aunt Sis skewered me with a look she’d borrowed from Mother. “The two of you are more alike than you’ll admit.”

  Aunt Sis was wrong. So wrong. Mother was a force of nature. I was a gentle breeze. Mother pushed and prodded and got her way. I made polite suggestions. The wine (Aunt Sis accounted for most of the first bottle) was talking.

  “Has Frances ever backed down?” Aunt Sis demanded. “From anything?”

  “No,” I admitted.

  “Neither have you. You and Anarchy will catch whoever killed that poor woman, and Frances will gnash her teeth and fuss and be quietly proud.”

  Aunt Sis was right about the gnashing. And the fussing. She missed the mark when it came to pride.

  I glanced at Grace who was drinking in her great aunt’s words like her great aunt drank wine. With gusto. “If Mr. Goddard didn’t kill her, who did?”

  I tightened my grip on the wine glass. “Can’t we talk about something other than murder?”

  “No,” three voices answered me as one.

  Karma, Aunt Sis, and Grace wore matching we-can-solve-this-murder-over-dinner expressions.

  “Phyllis told me she was selling her company,” said Aunt Sis. “Was her partner happy with the deal?” She looked at me and raised a single brow, as if answering her was my only option.

  “No,” I ceded. “She was not.”

  “All right then, the partner is a suspect. What makes you so sure Stan didn’t kill her?”

  “He has an alibi.”

  “Pish. I knew his father—a weasel of a man who somehow married a woman ten times too good for him. He spent his life making himself feel strong by making her feel weak. Phyllis introduced me to Stan and I saw it immediately—he’s cut from the same cloth as his father. But Stan’s wife wouldn’t stay down.”

  I knew that story. I’d lived it. Rather than celebrating my success as a painter, Henry found it threatening. When he died, I mourned his loss for Grace (despite his faults, Henry was a good father), not for myself.

  “Aunt Sis—” her dislike for men who squelched their wives’ ambitions didn’t make Stan a killer “—Stan has an alibi. The only way he’s responsible is if he hired a hitman, and there were no hitmen at the gala.”

  Aunt Sis waved away my excellent point. “It’s nearly impossible for a woman to find a real partner, a man who wants her to be everything she can be.”

  My deepest fear laid out on the table. I felt my face go slack.

  “Women are accused of wanting to change men when all we ask of them is to pick up their socks and put down the toilet seat.” Aunt Sis looked at Karma then Grace then me. Her gaze lingered on me. “Most men spend their lives making the women they’re with less than they are.”

  I placed my wine glass on the table lest I snap the stem. Sure, Anarchy was perfect now, but Henry seemed near perfect when we married. And look how that had ended.

  Karma offered me a sympathetic smile. “Aggie seems happy.”

  “For now,” Aunt Sis bit out the words.

  “Bad breakup?” Karma asked her.

  Aunt Sis’s cheeks flushed a delicate pink. “More than one.”

  Grace studied her aunts with enormous eyes.

  “There are good men out there.” It had to be said.

  “Your mom is right.” Karma smiled at Grace. “Just look at Aggie and Mac.”

  Aunt Sis snorted softly. “Aggie got lucky.”

  This conversation was more terrifying than murder. I didn’t want Grace to think she’d never find a healthy relationship. “Then Aggie got lucky twice. Because she and Al had a wonderful marriage.”

  “Aggie’s better at picking men than ninety percent of the women I know.”

  Was I in that ninety percent? When it came to Henry—definitely. But what about Anarchy?

  “So we keep Mr. Goddard as a suspect,” mused Grace.

  “We?” I asked. “He has an alibi.”

  Grace grinned at me. “For tonight let’s pretend he doesn’t. At the dinner table. For discussion.”

  “Stan has an alibi,” I insisted.

  “Does the business partner?” asked Karma.

  I glanced at my hands in my lap, hands too small to make bruises like those circling Phyllis’s neck. It couldn’t be a woman. “I don’t know.”

  “Who else had a motive?” Aunt Sis demanded.

  “How would I know?”

  All three stared at me as if they knew I was holding out on them.

  “Fine,” I ceded. “Stan had an affair with a woman named Diane Morris.”

  “He did it,” said Aunt Sis.

  “Alibi,” I reminded her. “Diane took up with Stan because she was angry with Phyllis. She broke things off with him when she realized Phyllis didn’t care what—or who—her husband did.” I’d forgotten about Grace—I wished that or who back. If she saw any similarity between cheating Stan and her cheating father, she didn’t show it. Her face was alight with interest, as if she expected us to solve Phyllis’s murder before dessert.

  “Was this Diane Morris at the gala?” asked Karma.

  “Yes,” I replied.

  Karma swirled the wine in her glass. “Does she have an alibi?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “She’s on the suspect list,” said Aunt Sis.

  Again, I glanced at my hands. Explaining the hand size and strength needed to strangle someone wasn’t exactly polite dinner conversation.

  “Who else?” demanded Aunt Sis.

  Ding dong.

  I pushed away from the table. “Excuse me.” Aggie was having dinner with Mac, and there was no one to answer the bell.

  Max trotted into the foyer with me and sat as I opened the door.

  Margaret Hamilton, my next-door neighbor, stood on the stoop. Margaret donned a pointy hat and rode a broomstick when the moon was full. She had a spell book filled with hexes. And it had only been in the past year that we’d reached civility. “Ellison.” She didn’t sound civil—she sounded turn-Ellison-into-a-toad angry.

  “Margaret, what’s wrong?”

  “Your dog.”

  “What’s he done?” I scowled at Max.

  He stared at me with wide innocent amber eyes.

  “He dug up my annuals.”

  Oh, dear. “When?”

  “This afternoon.”

  I turned and called, “Grace!”

  When she appeared in the hall, I asked. “Did Max get out this afternoon?”

  “I took him for a run in the park.” She walked toward us. “Hi, Mrs. Hamilton.”

  “Did he sneak out of the house? Was he unsupervised?”

  “No.” She shook her head.

  “You’re sure?”

  Now she nodded.

  Margaret, who’d been following our exchange, sniffed. “You’re positive? A dog dug up my spring annuals.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry about your flowers, but Max didn’t do it.”

  Margaret pinched her features together and wavered. She might insult my dog, call me a liar, and curse the day Henry and I moved into the house next to hers, but she had a soft spot for Grace. “You’re certain?”

  “Positive
, Mrs. Hamilton. If you want, I can come over after school tomorrow and help you replant.”

  “That’s very thoughtful of you, Grace.”

  “I’ll be there at three thirty.”

  Margaret nodded curtly, climbed aboard her broom, and flew home. Not really.

  I closed the front door and leaned my forehead against its cool expanse. “You want to solve a mystery? Find the dog that’s attacking our neighbors’ yards before they form a posse and send an angry mob for Max.”

  We returned to the dining room where the level in the wine decanter had dropped. Considerably.

  “We have good news, Ellison.” Aunt Sis smiled at me.

  “You figured out who killed Phyllis?”

  “No, but Karma and I decided we’ll stay in Kansas City and help you solve the crime.”

  “How wonderful.” What else could I say? “Who would like dessert? Aggie left us a cheesecake, and I’ll make coffee.” I needed coffee.

  Bolts of colorful fabric covered the walls of Phyllis and Joan’s Plaza store—just Joan’s now. Bright fabrics also covered chairs, hung in neatly pleated drapes, and even dressed mannequins in stylish clothes.

  Joan Mardike looked up from an open ledger on the counter and welcomed me with a wary smile. Joan and I weren’t friends. There was no reason to be. Our children were different ages, she didn’t play bridge, and I rarely shopped in her store. That said, we had mutual friends and occasionally saw each other at cocktail parties where we’d smile and nod and exchange pleasantries.

  “Good morning,” I said.

  “Good morning.” The wariness extended to her voice. “May I help you with something?”

  “Just looking.” I fingered a bolt of fabric that went with nothing in my house. “How are you?”

  Joan’s lips pinched together. “Fine, thank you.”

  “I’m so sorry about Phyllis.”

  She snorted softly. “I’m expecting a busy day today.”

  Not the response I expected. “Oh?”

  “Women coming in to offer sympathy and ask questions. I didn’t pick you as the first to arrive.”

  “I didn’t—” I stopped my denial. Joan was right. I had come to offer sympathy and ask questions.

  “I heard you’re the one who found her at the gala.” Joan scowled at the ledger. “You probably know more about her death than I do.” Now she scowled at me. “I don’t know anything. I spent most of my Sunday telling the police how little I know.” She rearranged her face into a polite shopkeeper’s expression. “May I help you with a fabric?”