by Karen Harper
“Yeah. Glad to know it’s a tiger. Want to go out to my car and neck, like they used to call it in the old days? I’m really missing you, babe, but Mitch and I figure it won’t be long before we can come out of hiding, so to speak. We really think that article in the newspaper about our new public government job seeking out hurricanes is insurance, instead of the undercover government job looking for drug runners and drug lords.”
“Make out in a car in the store parking lot?” she said, much too loudly, so that two elderly shoppers looked their way.
“Well, I never,” the man said to the woman as they turned away.
“Well, I never either,” Jace said, so only she could hear, “but it seems like we’re hitting parking lots for a lot of our special events lately.”
“This isn’t all an elaborate ruse to buy me a huge wedding ring in a chichi jewelry store in this so-fancy strip mall, is it?” she asked, elbowing him with a little laugh.
“Naw, I already bought the wedding ring and in a real nice store.”
“Just promise me our ceremony and reception won’t be in a parking lot,” she teased.
“I thought maybe in a helo over the Glades.”
“Over my—your—dead body.”
“Don’t kid about that, honey.”
“We’re a wacky pair, you know.”
“Just as long as we’re a pair. I repeat, I love you, Brit. What would I ever do without you?”
27
Nick still wasn’t in sight when Claire walked up to Betty. She held her little dog in her arms. The dog looked scared, but the old lady only looked interested. Why hadn’t she scurried inside when all this started?
“Betty, remember me? Nick Markwood’s wife, Claire.”
“Oh, yes, I recognized you. All that made me wish I had a German shepherd or a pit bull the way those two were acting.”
“You seemed brave to stand there and listen. Let me walk you home. I know how hard all of this must be for you. Bronco, I’m going next door with Betty! Tell the police and Nick I’ll be back soon,” she called and steered the woman away.
She could see Nick’s car turning onto the street and she didn’t want him to stop her. No, this time, she was going to use her forensic psych skills to latch on to what Betty really knew.
“I’m sure it upset you to see the freezer in the yard. Those men were rude and crude, weren’t they?” Claire asked, holding Betty’s screen door open while she unlocked the inner one.
“Indeed they were, but you handled them. Dreadful to see that freezer out in the open like that and to realize what it held, and to think that poor girl was buried in frozen vegetables. Dreadful!”
Claire tried to recall if that detail had been released, but then Betty had viewed the picture of Cyndi in the freezer to ID her. Yet hadn’t that photo just been of her face and not the surrounding bags of frozen veggies?
“So, did you ever see how packed that freezer was?” Claire asked as she followed her into a Colonial kitchen, which reminded her of her grandmother’s whom she’d known so briefly. “I know Lucy was a hoarder, but even in her freezer?”
“Oh, I’ve seen it a time or two. Sit here at the kitchen table, and I’ll get us lemonade. I’m not sure anyone’s sat right there since Lucy died.”
“I’m sorry your neighborhood keeps getting hit with tragedies. But you seem very brave and informed about them all.”
“Including that dreadful fire on Saturday. I read all about it in the paper, but they didn’t mention the smoke and drifting ashes, and they should have. Obviously that journalist wasn’t up close and personal like some of us who live here. One had to be here to realize that old ruin was back there, you know.”
Some of that seemed a mixed message. Was the subtext that Betty had been near the scene of the fire the night of the fire? But she didn’t want to spook her or silence her, so she tried another tactic.
“Because knowing Lucy so well over the years, I’ll bet you knew more than anyone else about that old ruined mansion, except for Dale.”
Betty set the tall glasses of lemonade on the table. “Well, you know the name of that old TV show, I Love Lucy. I cared for my friend Lucy and she did me—before she lost her senses, we were best friends. That’s why I could forgive her for treating Dale’s so-called fiancée the way she did. I was her partner and backup in that,” she said with a shake of her head and a strong sniff.
Claire saw her grip her lemonade so hard that her fingers went white against the icy glass. The way she’d said that—it was almost as if she meant she was Lucy’s partner in crime. Backup in what?
“I suppose you also had words with Cyndi,” she threw out another leading line.
“More than that.”
Claire tried to keep her relaxed posture, elbows on the table, leaning slightly forward, but she was tempted to bolt out of her chair. “More than that?” Claire repeated when Betty said no more, but her lower lips trembled.
“I told her never to darken Lucy’s door again or she’d regret it dearly. When I said that, the smart aleck bent over in the plants outside Lucy’s door, grabbed a handful of dark mud and smeared it on the door to darken it, just to be cute—which she wasn’t. Smarter than she looked, though, the snippy little tart.”
“Did you see her again after that, and what did she say then?”
Betty shrugged, then looked down at her sweating glass. “I only saw her at a distance after that. When Dale was at work one day—unless he’d come home for lunch which he did sometimes, he drove right into his garage, so it was hard to tell—she and a woman drove back in toward the mansion.”
“Do you know who the other woman was?”
“Didn’t until I saw her picture in the paper today, the one died in the fire there, the historic committee woman.”
Claire tried not to gasp. She had to go next door to tell Nick that he really should hire her as a junior partner. Since she’d seen him last, she’d collected eyewitness accounts and comments that indicated Cyndi’s murderer could have been Tanner and her first fiancé. A longer shot, but even perhaps the Lucy-and-Betty duo had somehow done away with Cyndi. They both had access to the freezer. Maybe when Lucy died, Betty just figured there was no way to hide Cyndi’s corpse elsewhere so she let it be found.
And then the ultimate gamble: If Marian and Cyndi had actually met, could something have gone wrong and Marian accidentally or intentionally harmed Cyndi? Dale had told Nick earlier that on her body Cyndi could well have had keys not only to Dale’s place but his mother’s—even on her very dead, soon to be frozen, body.
* * *
“I thought you’d be furious with me,” Claire said as they finally drove away from Bronco and Nita’s house after three more hours of hard work clearing out the clutter of over fifty years. She’d told him about what she’d learned from the Georgia duo and Betty. “Or were you just waiting until we were alone?”
“Oh, yes, Mrs. Markwood, I was scared and upset at first when Bronco said you’d talked to the Georgia boys. But he said you calmed them down, and he was right there with you. I wasn’t crazy about the appearance of the knife, though.”
“Which reminds me, I have to insist Brad Vance shows me the actual dagger buried with Hunter. It had some sort of crude carving on it, and that could be a clue to a lot of things. The Senator’s close-up photos did not include pictures of the carvings for me to study.”
“Nice try at diversion, but back to your taking over for Detective Jensen by questioning suspects,” he told her as they turned out onto the busy Tamiami Trail and headed toward home.
“I was thinking I was taking over for you—to get more suspects than Dale, at least for Cyndi’s murder, if not for Marian’s,” she explained, turning toward him. “I know it sounds crazy, but did you ever see the old Cary Grant movie Arsenic and Old Lace?”
“Claire, I don’t have the b
enefit of your amateur English major degree from your mother.”
“It wasn’t based on a book, but a play. Anyway, two dotty old ladies have a body hidden in their house. And they are the murderers.”
“You don’t really think Dale’s demented mother and that character next door to her—”
“I don’t know what I think. Then too, about the Georgia crackers, Tanner said that Cyndi not only deserted both of them but stole cash from him and what’s-his-name—”
“Will MacBride.”
“That’s it. Anyway, Tanner seemed righteously pleased to say that Cyndi paid the price for deserting them. So maybe they were the enforcers of revenge for her betrayal. Besides, you told me after you first met Tanner, he said he was at home and the coroner called him to say Cyndi was dead. But earlier today he told me he was on the road with Will driving a truck and relatives called them with the news. Nick, he’s making things up as he goes.”
“Or, like you said, he’s blown what brains he had drinking in Key West for a week, and is just confused.”
“I’m trying to help you!”
“And you are. All this is valuable for defending Dale.”
“So maybe Tanner and Will then came here, met with Cyndi. Maybe it started out as an argument, she told them off, one of them in a fit of anger grabbed her around the throat. I don’t know, but remember Dale told us early that Cyndi could well have had a key not only to his place but to his mother’s. What if she had taken one to the Twisted Trees mansion too, and gave or sold it to Marian? Whoever killed Cyndi found the key on her and stashed her in the dead woman’s freezer to make it look like Dale did it, or maybe they were planning to move her body after dark. The only flaw in that theory is that Betty would have seen something of that, though I suppose she has to leave her house sometimes.”
“Then there’s Marian James, since you said Betty claims she was heading with Cyndi toward the Twisted Trees property, so you could be right that Cyndi had a key to that too.”
“That’s what I mean. Maybe Cyndi also had or took a key which gave her access to the locked apartment above the garage. Maybe she even met with Marian and showed her around, or tried to assure her the place could be a historical site and she could act as its Realtor.”
“I swear, sweetheart, I’m going to start taking you into court with me. You impressed the hell out of me when you testified to ruin my case the first time I saw you, and I’m glad you’re on my side now.”
“Wish I could stay around to cash in on that,” she said, smiling and stroking his thigh. “But I’m scheduled to present some ideas to the powers-that-be at Black Bog tomorrow morning and I’ve got to get some notes together. I can’t just read them my little essays as if I were channeling three dead, prehistoric people. Oh, and Brit’s stopping by tonight so I can fill her in on her trip to Fort Lauderdale on Tuesday with Jace.”
“Good thing Jace isn’t coming. I still don’t know if he’s safe—to be at our house in case he’s being followed or targeted, I mean.”
They stopped at a red light. She reached for his hand, and he held hers tight. “You’re going to solve these two murders,” she said. “And I’m going to do everything I can to figure out who killed two of my three Black Bog people, if it’s the last thing I do! Just a figure of speech,” she added, realizing how that might sound, as the light turned green.
That evening, since Bronco and Nita hadn’t come back, Nick put Trey to bed and read a story to Lexi while Claire talked with Brit.
“I’m sorry I can’t fill you in on more than these details I wrote out for you,” Claire told her, looking down again at the sheet of paper. “I’ve signed a confidentiality clause with my current employers, so I’m trying to honor that, even though I’m sending you and Jace on a cloak-and-dagger mission across the state.”
She wished she hadn’t put it that way—so much as mentioned a dagger—but she said no more as Brit looked over her notes.
“Okay, got it,” Brit said, frowning at the paper. “We need to use an alias. We need to appear well-to-do and work in the word cognoscente. Glad you spelled it out for me.”
“If they show you any private stock, act interested, find out as much as you can about the original or the designer. The Naples shop has a jewelry designer, and she said there’s a more veteran one in Lauderdale. I’m thinking there may be jewelry, maybe even an antique dagger so old it’s made of stone, not metal.”
“Really? Kind of prehistoric?”
“Antique. Very antique.”
“So don’t give the salesperson—or designer—info about how to contact us,” Brit kept reading the notes. “We will discuss our finances, etcetera and contact him or her later.”
“Right. And if you get the names of the shop owner, shopkeeper, salesperson, jewelry designer—anything like that—don’t write it down until you get out of there so it doesn’t look too suspicious. And, Brit,” she added, reaching out to grasp her wrist, “if anything looks funny or, God forbid, dangerous, just leave calmly and quickly. I’m really grateful to both of you for doing this.” She loosed Brit’s wrist and sat back in the sofa with a sigh.
“I don’t know what I would have done without your support when everything went so wrong at my beloved Backwoods Animal Adventure,” Brit said, turning toward her. “And for supporting Jace with me—you know what I mean. Oh, I forgot that he asked me to hug Lexi for him, but I’m sure you can do that. I don’t want to get her riled up if Nick’s got her calmed down to go to sleep.”
“Actually,” Claire told her, “she has not been a happy camper about Jace not seeing her lately. I know he’ll patch things up when he can. Soon, I hope.”
“You know, we do plan to stay in this area, even if he has to report to or fly out of Washington, DC, for his new job. I’m sure he’ll find something to do here when he’s not on call, maybe teach flying at the little airport on Marco Island, something like that. That’s where we’re flying out of, you know—Mitch at the controls of a helicopter, no less. Then we’ll land over there at a smaller executive airport, not the big busy one.”
“It sounds like a good plan. I said I’d pay for the chopper gasoline and lunch and dinner for all, so here’s an envelope with some cash, and don’t say no. I consider the three of you are on assignment for me and please be careful above all.” She gave Brit the envelope and, thankfully, she took it.
“Claire, whatever the point of this is, you be careful too. Jace said to tell you that you need to get out of your temp job or assignment if there’s anything strange, illegal or dangerous—like maybe someone ripping off antiques or jewels or whatever. He said to tell you it isn’t life and death.”
“No, of course not. I understand that. Thank him for his concern.”
But she couldn’t help but think that her attempts to solve the dilemma of what happened to her beloved Bog People did hinge on their life and death; though, of course, she wasn’t going to risk her own.
28
“I wish we had time to really enjoy the shops and a restaurant here,” Brit told Jace as he parked their rental car down the street from the Art for Art’s Sake shop in Fort Lauderdale about eleven o’clock on Tuesday morning. “It’s a beautiful area.”
“That it is, babe, but we’re on assignment.”
He thought things were going great so far. The heliport at the Executive Airport had been right on top of a parking garage, and they had easily rented a car. The airport was just five miles from downtown, and Brit was right—this neighborhood was great. Lots of restaurants, sidewalk cafés, art stores and shops. Not an area for carryout, but he’d find something to take back to Mitch, who had stayed at the airport.
“No time for a shopping spree, no matter how much cash Claire gave you,” he said, taking her arm as they approached their target shop. “Okay, remember, you’re using your mother’s name, Ann Hoffman.”
“All right, Ben
Hoffman. And in case they ask where we live, we’ll use Marco Island and just say we flew over for the day to give the impression we are rich. Best not to lie about too much, or we’ll make a mistake.”
The display windows were stunning—even Jace admitted that. Old-fashioned yet very elegant. Several antique swords, or maybe they were called sabers, and several knives from the Civil War era were displayed on dark blue velvet. They were shiny steel, heavily etched, hardly the stone primitive-looking daggers Claire had told Brit to be on the lookout for.
A bell jingled over their heads as they entered. A middle-aged woman with pink hair, no less, looked up with a smile. “Lovely day for strolling from shop to shop,” she greeted them.
“Actually,” Brit said, “we are fascinated by your display window. My father has a collection of old swords and daggers. He’s kind of a connoisseur of those.”
Where the hell did that father collection come from? Jace thought. They hadn’t discussed that at all. Brit reminded him of Claire in some ways, which wasn’t all bad. Bright, dedicated, clever on her feet, and sometimes too damn unafraid.
“Oh, is that right?” Pink Hair said with an obvious perusal of both of them. That made Jace nervous.
“We’re looking for something very special for him for a birthday gift,” he put in, trying to stay poker-faced. “He’s been very good to us. We heard about your shop, so we flew over for the day from Marco Island. In her father’s helicopter, no less.”
The woman perked right up. “I always wanted a ride in one of those. Then have you visited our other store in Naples?” she asked.
“We’ve heard of it, but no,” Brit put in. “We’ll have to, though, if we don’t find something here.”
Man, Jace thought, she’s good at this, barely hinting at the idea that something illegal might be for sale.
Pink Hair smiled. “Let me summon my associate in the back room—our master artisan, our jeweler—and I’m sure he’d be happy to show you what collector’s pieces we have. Just a moment then.”
