Chapter 17
Forty minutes later, a second cup of coffee and no blue Mazda. I did, however, see Jeanette’s garage door open and her car backing out onto the street. It was a white KIA Sportage and looked as if it had just come out of the showroom. I had test-driven that same model earlier this year when I considered trading in my car but then decided against purchasing a new car. Didn’t need any more payments. I had enough bills on my desk to start a mini Leaning Tower of Pisa. Maybe Jeanette’s finances were better than mine. Maybe West Valley Home Mortgage Solutions was personal, not professional.
I looked at my mother’s kitchen clock. It was already past ten. I couldn’t afford to let the rest of the morning waste away. I was hell-bent on finding out if any toxicology tests were done on Minnie Bendelson since my “finned fish” theory was still in play, and I had to do a little more digging into Thelmalee’s unfortunate demise. I wanted to rule out any involvement with members of Thelmalee’s family. My mother had been quite emphatic about the fact Thelmalee’s relatives were “scavenging the house like seagulls tearing off barnacles from a ship.”
Since I wasn’t sure how to begin with acquiring a toxicology report, I figured I’d call Nate later in the day to ask him. That left me with Thelmalee. I had already checked the phonebook and had written down where she lived. Less than a mile from my mother’s place. I thought I’d drive over there, introduce myself as a friend, and offer my condolences to the family.
Grabbing my bag, I headed for the door, making sure there were no snakes in the vicinity before closing and locking it. My mother would never forgive me if Streetman had an encounter with a snake. As I started toward Thelmalee’s, something dawned on me. It would be very rude to arrive without bringing something. Flowers wouldn’t make sense at this point, but food was always appropriate. A quick stop at the supermarket and I had a large bakery box of assorted cookies in tow.
The immediate area surrounding Thelmalee’s beige and blue ranch home looked like Costco’s parking lot. Cars everywhere. California plates. Arizona plates. Colorado plates. One vehicle, a black Dodge Ram pickup, was sitting in her driveway, its bed filled with furniture and boxes. Apparently my mother was right. The family was doing some picking.
I parked across the street to avoid getting blocked in on the off chance more relatives would be on their way. With my bag flung over my shoulder and the box of cookies under one arm, I made my way to the front door and rang the bell. My first impression of the family was ingrained in my head before I even laid eyes on anyone.
“Will someone get the damn door?” a voice screamed.
“What?” It was another screamer.
“Someone’s at the door! Can’t one of you idiots open the door?” Still another screaming voice.
“I’m in the middle of something! Maisy-Jayne, open the door for your mother!”
With an armful of cookies getting heavier each minute, I was beginning to have second thoughts.
“Maisy-Jayne! Did you hear me? Get the door!”
I pictured a sweet little girl with blond curls approaching the door and letting me inside. Instead, I found myself face-to-face with a girl about thirteen or fourteen who could have easily passed for a member of The Munsters or The Addams Family. Except, those kids didn’t have pierced eyebrows or a silver pin sticking through their lip. I don’t know what I would have done if my daughter had gone through the Goth stage. The sheer cost of makeup would have put me in the poorhouse.
The girl looked at me, turned away, and yelled, “I opened the stupid door. Now what?” I started to say something when she shrugged her shoulders, glared at me again, and walked out of the room.
Unsure of what to do, I closed the door behind me and took a step inside. It was a madhouse. An absolute madhouse. The TV was on, but no one was watching it. Two smaller children, a boy and a girl, were jumping on the couch and poking each other. A middle-aged woman was sitting on a cushion in front of a large cabinet, going through all of the contents.
“What about the mattresses, Carleen? Take ’em or leave ’em?” someone shouted from one of the bedrooms.
“If they’re gross, leave them alone. Otherwise, we’ll take them back with us,” came another voice from a different room.
The woman who was sifting through the cabinet started to walk toward the bedrooms when she saw me standing in the middle of the room.
“Are you the lady from the estate sale?” she asked.
I shifted my weight from one foot to the next as I looked around the room. The kids on the couch were using a large table lamp as a shield while they continued to poke at each other. At the rate these people were going, I doubted there’d be anything left intact for a sale.
“No, no, sorry, I’m not. I’m a . . . I mean, I came here to give my condolences to the family. Thelmalee was in the Booked 4 Murder book club.”
“That figures,” the mother said. “Look, we’re kind of busy right now. Got to get this place cleaned out and on the market. So—”
“UNBELIEVABLE! FREAKING UN-BELIEVABLE!”
The woman stopped and turned her attention to a middle-aged man whose stomach had seen one beer too many and whose razor was probably still in mint condition. The man went on ranting as if I wasn’t in the room.
“UNBELIEVABLE! Those worthless morons at the hospital sent us the wrong report. Good thing we got the right death certificate, or we’d never straighten this mess out. But look at this! Would you look at this?”
He shoved a legal-size paper at the woman who was about to throw me out of the place and stood back while she took a good look.
“Who the hell is Minnie Bendelson?” she screamed.
My jaw dropped open as if I were a pelican about to store a week’s worth of fish. It was all I could do to keep from saying anything.
“How am I supposed to know?” the man yelled back. “But they sent us her damn toxicology report. I don’t give a ripe tomato how she died, but the lawyers are itching to find out if it really was a swarm of bees that killed your mother.”
“Of course it was a swarm of bees, Lenny,” the woman said. “Everyone at the pool saw what happened.”
At that point, the two kids who were quickly wreaking havoc with the furniture noticed the big box of cookies I was holding. “Cookies! I want to eat them now!”
“Yeah, me too!”
The woman turned to me, pointed to the kitchen, and said, “You can just put them on the table. The kids will help themselves.”
As I walked to the table, she handed me the report and said, “Do you mind? Just throw it in the garbage since you’re going in there.”
“Hey, Lenny and Almalynn!” someone bellowed from the other side of the house. “Carleen and I need some help with these mattresses!”
“Can’t you get Maisy-Jayne or Frankie to do it?”
“Frankie’s sitting on the pot, and I don’t know where my niece has gone off to!”
“All right! All right! We’re coming!”
“I’m calling the damn hospital first,” the man whom I assumed was Lenny shouted out. “Then I’ll be back to deal with mattresses.”
In the midst of what I could best describe as a Jerry Springer episode waiting to happen, I quickly folded the report and shoved it into my bag. By now, the two kids had dumped most of the bakery cookies on the table and floor, and I was itching to get out of there.
“Um, well, sorry for your loss,” I mumbled. “Good luck with the, uh, mattresses and your report. Nice meeting you.”
I was out the door and crossing the street toward my car when a slender woman who looked to be about my age walked over to me. She was wearing a long, loose-flowing peach tunic and all I could picture was one of those kids tugging at it asking her if she brought them any candy.
“Hi! Are you with the Kirkson family? I’m Sherry Fairchild from Sherry and Jenny’s Fare Estate Sales.”
She waved her hand in the direction of a light blue minivan that had an estate sale sign on its door, and I acknowledged it.
“Sorry. No, I, um, er . . . I was just dropping off some cookies for the family. They’re all inside.”
“Oh, you must have been a friend of the deceased. My partner, Jenny, was the one who set this up. I’ve never met the family, but Jenny said she didn’t want to deal with them.”
Gee. Big surprise there. I took a quick breath and didn’t say anything.
“That’s so unlike my partner. Frankly, I’m a bit skeptical of what I’m about to encounter. Any ideas?”
“I never met Thelmalee Kirkson’s family until today, but I think they’re going to be a handful.”
“I just hope they don’t have an overinflated idea of what items are worth. Sometimes people put outrageous price tags on all sorts of things for sentimental reasons,” Sherry said.
“The family didn’t strike me as having a whole lot of sentimentality, but then again, I was only with them for a few minutes.”
“From what my partner described, I feel as if I’m walking into a den of pickpockets and scavengers.”
I wanted to add the word “rude” to the description, but simply muttered, “Uh-huh.”
“Jenny even told me one of the sons-in-law was furious his mother-in-law died because she had been giving them a portion of her social security each month and, according to him, ‘some stupid bee ended the gravy train,’ whatever that was supposed to mean.”
“Um, Thelmalee Kirkson died of an allergic reaction to a bee sting.”
“Oh dear. So her death was really unexpected. How sad. And you know what else? The other son-in-law complained that now no one was going to be making the payments on his new truck. Good grief. I dread going in there. Anyway, here’s my card in case you ever want to hold an estate sale.”
I took the card, put it in my bag, and thanked her. She hadn’t realized it, but Sherry Fairchild had just eliminated the extended Kirkson family as suspects. The “pickpockets and scavengers” didn’t want Mama’s “gravy train” to make its last stop.
That left me with my original suspects and some tangible evidence. All I needed to do was find a motive that would link them to Thelmalee’s murder. I also needed to rule out the possible murder of Minnie Bendelson. Thanks to the Kirksons, and a blunder at the hospital, the answer to that question was safely stowed in my bag. I couldn’t wait to read what it said, and the perfect place was just a few minutes away at Bagels ‘N More.
I arrived as the lunch crew was starting to trickle in. There was a great corner table by the window, so I made a beeline for it and plunked myself down. As the aroma of hot garlic and cheese filled the air, I realized how absolutely famished I was. Much too ravenous to read a report without food in my stomach. Thankfully the service was fast. Wiping the last crumb from my onion and cream cheese bagel, I reached for the document. Within seconds, I was lost. Why couldn’t I be tracking down someone’s accounting nightmare and not a medical one?
Obtaining a toxicology report and being able to understand it, as I quickly learned, were two different things. I read it over and over again between sips of coffee, each time understanding less and less. The same could be said for my smartphone. If I had any idea how to snap a picture of the report and send it to Nate, I would have done so immediately. Learning how to use that phone was “on my list,” but, like so many other technological things, it stayed there indefinitely until the device was rendered “outdated.”
Therefore, I was forced to drive to the nearest UPS store to fax the thing. Luckily the place was close by in a small shopping center right in the middle of Sun City West. I left Nate a brief voicemail explaining I was sending him a toxicology report and that he needed to call me in the evening.
It took me all of five minutes to have the sheet of paper faxed to Nate, care of the Mankato Police Department. I folded the original back into my bag and started toward the door when a man who’d been using the copy machine spoke.
“So, are you enjoying your stay at Sun City West? The heat’s starting to dissipate finally. We’re back to the high nineties and low hundreds.”
I gave him a funny look, as if to say, “How did you know I was visiting?”
“You don’t recognize me, do you? I’m one of the monitors from the rec center pool. I was there the day you asked about the bees.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I’m terrible with names and not so great with faces either, apparently.”
“Well, you’re seeing me out of context. If I were back at the pool, you’d remember.”
“The only thing I remember was worrying about getting stung.”
“That incident was such a fluke. Poor woman. There’s been nothing like that ever since. No bee activity at all. In fact, the spot she used to occupy has now been commandeered by the group of women who used to sit closer to the entrance.”
“The, uh . . . sunbathers?”
“Yeah, that cluster of five or six of them, depending on the day. Well, now they can just spread out at the other end and watch the comings and goings at the pool. They’ve got the perfect ringside seats,” the monitor added.
I thought back to the bush and the small hole. There was no sugar in there, just the piece of cardboard. It was highly doubtful that whoever poured the stuff came back to scoop it up or they would have taken the evidence with them. No, more than likely, every bee in the vicinity helped himself to that poolside treat. And that was how Thelmalee got stung.
“Do you know the women from that group? They seemed friendly when I was there.”
“No, not really. I did recognize the one as Josie Nolan from the realty company since her picture is plastered all over the community, but as far as the others go, no. We get so many people through the gates and, even though I check their rec cards, I don’t memorize their names. I’d be on information overload. Well, anyway, I hope you have a great visit. Maybe I’ll catch you at the pool one of these days.”
“Maybe. It was nice talking to you.”
The man went back to his project at the copy machine and I had one more stop to make before heading back—Edna Mae Langford’s street. She lived in the “combo zone,” as my mother liked to call it. Since the developers couldn’t make up their minds about the landscaping, the houses on her block wound up with gravel lawns, Palo Verde and mesquite trees, chunky bismuth palms, and more boulders than the backdrop for a John Wayne movie. I should know. My cousin Kirk and I watched a zillion of those westerns as kids.
I really didn’t expect anyone to be on the street at this part of the day. It was too hot to be walking a dog, too miserable for yard work, and too “iffy” for catching anyone at their mailbox. Still, I wanted to revisit the so-called scene of the crime again.
Just as I expected. No one in sight. Only the UPS truck stopping to make a delivery across the street from Edna Mae’s. The driver was already pulling away from the curb by the time I got there. I was about to keep on going when the door to the house opened and an elderly woman stepped outside to check the delivery. It was a large box.
I immediately sprang into action. You’ve got nothing on me, Miss Marple.
I rolled my window down and shouted, “Do you need some help with that?” Before she could answer, I was out of the car and across the street, taking the woman completely by surprise.
“Why, thank you,” the lady said. “It’s wonderful to have such good neighbors. Especially when you’re getting on in years. Things aren’t as easy anymore. You know, I thought about moving to one of those senior living complexes where they serve you all the meals and do your housework, but I’m not ready for that yet. Maybe in a year or two, when I turn ninety. Then it will be a choice between The Lillian and The Monte Carlo. Or maybe I’ll take one of those cruises around the world. Those ships have excellent health care, you know.”
“Uh-huh,” I mumbled as I started to hoist the box. It was large and cumbersome, but not too heavy. My bag kept interfering with my maneuverability, but I still managed to get inside and put the box on her kitchen counter.
“Thank you so much. It’s a new queen-size waterproof mattress cover. They got the order wrong the last time and had to resend it. Of course, the last time the delivery came, there was no one to help me. I had to kick and drag the box inside. And when I was finally done and about to shut the door, do you know what I saw?”
I shook my head.
“I looked up and saw poor Edna Mae Langford lying facedown in her driveway. Thought she’d had a heart attack. I called nine-one-one right away.”
“Ohhh . . . so you were the first person to see what happened?”
“Not what happened. Just Edna Mae facedown. I was so preoccupied getting that box inside that I didn’t see what was going on across the street.”
The woman paused to take a good look at me. “How do you know Edna Mae?”
The words stumbled out of my mouth. “I, er, um . . . Edna Mae Langford was in the Booked 4 Murder book club.”
“Oh yes. Yes, indeed. She loved those meetings. Loved talking about mysteries. Poor woman. Imagine falling in her driveway and then dying from pneumonia in the hospital. She once told me her family wanted her to wear one of those medical alert necklaces, but she said they were for old people. Didn’t want any help around the house either, and didn’t want to move into assisted living. Let me tell you, that place was a hairsbreadth away from disaster. I went in there about a month ago because her mail was delivered to me accidently, and do you know what I saw? It made my hair stand on end. Edna Mae had all of her newspapers and letters piled up on the burners. Good thing there wasn’t a frying pan in sight. Surprising that something in her house didn’t kill her. I mean, the way she lived and all. Poor Edna Mae. I feel so badly that such a nice woman died from falling in her driveway. How does such a thing happen?”
“I really don’t know,” I said. “It was fortunate that you were able to call nine-one-one so she didn’t have to lie there too long in pain.”
“You know, if it wasn’t for that UPS delivery, she might have been there for hours. People stay inside during this heat. That’s why I was so surprised to see a woman pacing in front of Edna’s driveway a few days after that accident. It just so happened I was dusting my blinds and looked out the window. Saw that shiny white car and thought it must be a realtor. They snap up these houses like crocodiles and they’re the only ones who can afford new cars.”
Unless it was the person responsible for the accident. They always return to the scene of the crime. And my hunch all along might be right if that shiny new car turns out to be a KIA.
“Uh, yeah. I imagine you’re right. Well, I’d better get on my way.” I turned to face the door. Then I had what best could be described as an epiphany. A real epiphany!
“Can you tell me, I mean . . . do you know . . . does the UPS truck arrive in this neighborhood around the same time every day?”
“You must not get many deliveries. It comes like clockwork. Usually to the Dennersons or the McCaf-fertys. They get their prescriptions from Canada. Too much paperwork if you ask me. And they get their dental work done in Mexico. Right over the border by Yuma. Too much driving for me. Those are two things I can do without. Paperwork and driving. Oh, and waiting for deliveries. That would make three. Three things I can do without. Don’t you think so?”
In that split second, she had unwittingly provided me with a key piece of information that would help me put this book curse to rest.
“Yes, I suppose. Anyway, I should be going. Hope your new mattress cover works out for you.”
“Oh, it will. It will. By the way, I’m Beverly Mortenson. You can call me Bev.”
“Nice to meet you, Bev. I’m Phee, and it was nice chatting with you. Have a great afternoon.”
“Oh, I will. You know, you can stop by anytime to visit. Anytime at all.”
I wanted to tell her not to wait until she was ninety to move into The Lillian or to board a cruise ship, but I didn’t want to be intrusive. Instead, I reiterated what a pleasure it was to meet her and headed out the door.
As I walked to my car I thought about Sherry Fairchild and the encounter she was having with the Kirksons. I pictured her running for her life, the lovely peach tunic torn to shreds and Maisy-Jayne screaming in the background. Maybe even some broken lamps or pottery to complete the scene. If ever a company had a reason to tear up a contract, Sherry and Jenny’s Fare Estate Sales didn’t have to look any further than Thelmalee’s front living room.