9

Over their muffelatta lunch, Donald went broody. Munching his sandwich, he stared ahead, his lids blinking to a rhythm only he could hear.

In between supplying him with food, Fern did some thinking of her own. It was obvious what Artie had wanted to remove from the Seymours before the cops found it. Now that his secret was out, would he still be able to get to the money hidden inside and pay them their money? Donald was confident it wasn’t over yet, but Donald was an idiot who didn’t want to leave his last job undone. Men and their egos.

Leaving Donald to his thoughts at the paper-littered table, Fern strolled over to the lunch counter for a refill on her coffee. As she waited she looked out the window. St. Charles was a pleasant prospect with its tree-lined vistas sliced by a picturesque streetcar. Only she wasn’t in the mood for picturesque. Not when what she wanted to see was a view of Luci Seymour in the sights of the Uzi.

It took her a moment to realize she did see Luci Seymour—though not in the Uzi sights. She was getting on a streetcar.

“Donald!” Fern hissed. “It’s her!”

He freed himself from the table and trotted over just in time to see Luci Seymour passing in front of them, her distinctive profile framed in the window of the streetcar.

“Pack your camera, Fernie. We’re going to Disneyland.” He stuffed in his last bite of sandwich, wiped his face on his arm and looked at her. “Let’s follow that broad.”

Mickey had pretty much resigned himself to a state of permanent headache before they managed to persuade Miss Weena, aka Holmes, to sit down across the table from them. Her cupid’s bow mouth pursed in a manner that he suspected was supposed to be thoughtful.

“Before we go hunting we need to get some details cleared up, Miss Weena,” Mickey said, smiling in what he hoped was an encouraging manner.

“Of course.” She chewed on the end of the pipe, then removed it to point at them. “I’ve been giving this a lot of thought. With my law enforcement experience, deduction comes naturally to me.”

“Law enforcement experience?” Delaney asked like someone who didn’t really want an answer.

“As a security guard.” She gave him an encouraging smile. “Packing heat satisfied a deep need that I didn’t know I had until I packed it.”

“A...security guard?” Delaney croaked out.

Mickey just croaked.

“I had to cut the gig because I couldn’t keep the gun belt up. Kept falling down around my ankles. And if you loop it around your neck, it’s hard to get the gun out.” She leaned forward to confide, “That’s how he got shot.”

Mickey swallowed. “Shot—who?”

“My boss.” She looked at Delaney, whose mouth was twitching, but not producing words. “It was just a flesh wound.” She looked at Mickey, who knew he was doing the landed fish, gaping thing, but was unable to do anything about it. “He was too old for children anyway.”

It was, Mickey decided, a nightmare. An amusement park nightmare where you wander around getting on safe rides, but they all turn out to be the roller coaster to hell.

Delaney, dazed but trying, got up and pulled out Miss Weena’s chair.

“We’ll call you,” he said. He held the door for her. Mickey saw her give him a flirty smile, then pat his butt before sashaying out the door. Delaney shoved the door closed and looked at Mickey.

Mickey grinned. “Hey, you’re the one who thought they sounded interesting.”

Delaney shuddered. “I must have been out of my mind.”

Miss Hermi was a welcome relief, a brief respite in the Seymour storm. She didn’t try to squeeze anything, kept her distance, and tried to answer their questions. Her problem was a simple lack of interest. She wanted to talk about Eddie and Unabelle’s honeymoon, something Mickey preferred to never think about.

“It’s so important to get a good start to the marriage, don’t you think?” Miss Hermi’s voice flowed out her papery lips, like a gently babbling brook.

Mickey looked at Delaney, who looked as clueless as Mickey felt. They both shrugged, which she seemed to take as encouragement to continue.

“Men think all that’s important is good sex, but what about shopping? Sex is slam, bam, thank you ma’am, but you take mementos home with you.”

It was a wild guess, but Mickey had a feeling that Miss Hermi was probably responsible for the collection of National Park shot glasses scattered around the room. It was easier to focus on this thought than the one where Eddie was slamming, bamming or thank-you-ma’aming Unabelle. Or that sweet little Miss Hermi had just said that.

Delaney pulled himself together and managed to dig out the meager information that Miss Theo had jurisdiction over the freezer and Miss Hermi ruled the garden.

“We came through the garden,” Mickey said. “It was very—interesting.”

Pink flaked her cheeks. “Well, I do think it’s coming along nicely. In days past, I wouldn’t have chosen cement as a medium for expression, but it’s turned out rather well and far less costly than marble.” She frowned. “Not too sure about that gazebo, though. That was Reggie’s idea. He said it wouldn’t matter if it wasn’t in the middle of the garden, because I couldn’t cut down a tree, even for art’s sake. Normally I wouldn’t listen to a Seymour male, but Reggie’s a little less asinine than one might expect.”

“Reggie?” Mickey pulled the name out of her jumble of words. “I don’t think anyone’s mentioned Reggie?”

“Well, he’s easy to forget when he’s not here. He’s in Cleveland. He has business interests there. When he gets back he’s giving the bride away. In the gazebo. After he finishes it, of course.”

“Of course,” Mickey echoed, looking at Delaney. Cleveland. Luci had said something about Cleveland last night. Something about her neighbor. He realized what he was doing and gave himself a mental shake. Focus, Ross. Focus on Reggie. He might not have the legs Luci had, but he could be a real, viable suspect.

Even after twenty minutes exposure, and twenty years living in New York City, Fern couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing. Perhaps it was the sluggish economy that had driven the mall manager to attempt the Christmas in August theme, complete with several truckloads of imported snow and, inexplicably, ten Elvis impersonators.

The snow was piled next to the escalator and heaped to resemble a mountain slope, with plastic evergreens randomly impaling the white surface for realism. Then the pile was opened up for snow play to hundreds of children. The only person who seemed surprised when the children ran amok was the organizer of the event.

Next to the snow hill was a gaudy stage where the Elvises were assembled, each attired, like the stamps, to represent a different period in Elvis’s life.

Beside her, Donald choked for the third time. Fern looked at him. Judging by the amount of eyeball white showing, he was approaching heart attack level. Not that she blamed him. It had been a long, discouraging day, broken only by that brief moment of hope when they picked up the Seymour woman’s trail at the streetcar stop. Why she had to visit four malls besides this one, not to mention ride the bus across the bridge over the river—

Fern’s blood pressure wasn’t doing so hot either. Oh, how she wanted to do her, Fern thought, staring at the now-hated profile browsing in a store across from them. This hit was taking on the trappings of a Quest. Something to do for the pleasure as much as for the money.

But first she had to get Donald calmed down. Or he would do her right here in the mall in front of everybody, and they’d never get to Disneyland.

“Why don’t you sit on that bench there, Donald, and I’ll get you a Coke or something?”

He nodded, and she paused only to make sure of her bearings before heading for a food counter she could see in the distance, her orthopedic shoes not protecting her aching feet from the stone floor. As she collected their drinks and made her way back to where Donald waited, she could hear the discordant wailing of the Elvises turn into synchronized sound. Easing through the crowd that had gathered, she could see an Elvis in black leather with slicked-back hair crooning a love song into the mike.

But no sign of Luci.

“Here.” Fern shoved the drink at Donald and scanned the crowd. “Where is she? We haven’t lost her, have we?”

Donald ignored Fern’s impatience, taking a long drink before answering morosely, “Nah, she’s still there. In the front, by the stage.”

Fern craned her neck, her height enabling her to see over most of the crowd. “Where—?”

Then she saw her. She was, as Donald said, right at the front and center, in the heart of the action, swaying to the music, a look of appreciation lighting her face.

Fern didn’t blame her for the appreciation. He was a fine Elvis, especially in the hip area. Fern turned to Donald. “You know, he kind of reminds me of you. Give him a switchblade and a gat—”

Her voice failed, so she gave Donald a grim, misty smile. His narrow shoulders squared, and without speaking, Donald stood and pulled her against his beer belly, steering her around their corner of the court with an air of sleazy aplomb.

When the music faded into applause, he stopped and looked up into her eyes with a look that peeled away the years, leaving a young thug and a rebellious girl facing each other once more.

“Oh, Donald!” Fern’s scant chest swelled with her sigh. She started to lean her head on his scraggy shoulder, but he stiffened and pushed her away. “Donald?”

“Damn! She’s gone!” He frantically scanned the crowd. “Damn the woman! We lost her, Fern!”

A snowball hit him square in the face.

Miss Theo didn’t enter, she made an entrance. There was much of the grande dame about her, from her elegantly styled white hair to her old-fashioned buttoned down shoes. Of the three, she reminded him the most of Luci, particularly around the eyes, which were intelligent and somewhat amused.

He held her chair, then resumed his. Seated, the differences between the sisters seemed to fade away, leaving only the similarities, especially in the way she looked at him, her gaze calm, yet distant.

“You’re all very much alike, aren’t you?” Delaney said, echoing Mickey’s thought.

Her fine brows arched, enhancing the sense of familiarity.

“Yes, though dear little Luci doesn’t quite fit. Sometimes she doesn’t seem like a Seymour at all, she’s got so much of her father in her. Very forceful gene pool, he had. It’s interesting to see how she turned out, because we all wondered, her being the first in so many years.”

“The first?” Delaney asked with a hint of cautiou.

“Offspring of a female Seymour. The men have produced a hutch-full, of course, and a pretty dismal bunch it was, too. And then Lila’s beaux, not that I didn’t like him, but so forceful and determined he could change us. You can imagine how worried we were when we found out she was increasing. Thank goodness our worries were ill founded. She turned out to be quite sweet and almost normal. Of course, we love her so dearly that we don’t mind her little eccentricities.” Her smile was refined but filled with a child-like wonder from another distant time.

Mickey had no idea how to respond to this, so he looked at Delaney.

Delaney cleared his throat. “We were wondering about the freezer, Miss Theo?”

“Well, isn’t that interesting. So was I. It will have to be cleaned and aired, but do you think that’s enough? I wouldn’t want to upset our guests.”

“Your...guests?” Delaney’s face showed his difficulty in following this.

“The party. For dear Eddie and Unabelle. It’s this weekend, so it’s important to get this resolved as soon as possible.” A wisp of handkerchief fluttered when she used her hands to punctuate the urgency of the situation.

“Uh huh.” Dumbfounded staring was getting them nowhere. Time for a change of tactics. “I can see this is of grave concern to you, and we’ll get back to you on it as soon as we can,” Mickey said. “In the meantime, we need to figure out how the body got there in the first place.”

Delaney gave Mickey a look of respect as Miss Theo stared at them, her brows once more arching toward her white bun. He could see her processing this, see it all playing out in her faded blue eyes.

“Well,” she finally said. “Isn’t that interesting? I never even thought about how he got there. So, do you think someone put him there?”

“Well.” Delaney still sounded like someone was strangling him. “I don’t think he got there on his own.”

“Is it possible,” she asked as she leaned toward them, her voice dropping to a more confidential level, “that the person who shot him put him there?”

“We think so, yes,” Mickey said, a shade too heartily. “Can you think of anyone who could—or would—do something like that?” Her wide gaze stared at him without blinking for a long beat. Mickey found he couldn’t fight the imperative to fill the silence. “It would have to be someone who knew about the freezer, was familiar with the garage area and the comings and goings around the house.”

“But it would also have to be someone who would do that, who would shoot someone and put them in a freezer, wouldn’t it?” Miss Theo’s face showed only gentle inquiry. There was no awareness that this criteria could include her or her sisters.

“That’s a good point,” Delaney said, with obvious flattery. “Anyone who springs to mind?”

“Well, I hate to be ugly, but—Reggie springs to my mind.”

Mickey and Delaney straightened and exchanged hopeful glances.

“He is a Seymour male,” she added, as if this were a crime, too. “And he’s been in prison.”

This turned a weird lead into a hot prospect. Mickey asked, “Really? Prison?”

“I’m afraid so.” She looked pensive. “Perhaps he missed it when his mother died. She was the matron in a women’s prison. His father married an IRS agent a few years later.”

Delaney blinked, probably because he’d run out of the more extreme repertoire of responses. “That would...affect a kid.”

“Particularly one who is already marked by the Seymour curse.”

Mickey looked up from his notes. “Seymour curse?” Even as the words left his mouth, he knew he’d made a mistake. This was one of those roads that shouldn’t be traveled. He knew it in his gut.

“Ineptitude.” Miss Theo looked wise. “There’s not a Seymour male, dead or alive, who isn’t a waste of space.” She gave them a bright smile that seemed to say, “Aren’t we glad we’ve got that behind us?”

Mickey decided the better part of valor would be to leave it behind them and try another tack. “Do you know if the garage is kept locked? Or the gate to the street?”

“Oh, you’d have to ask Boudreaux that, but I would imagine so. I mean, we haven’t been out in the Nash since his eyes went. He’s nearly blind, poor man, but still very eager.”

“We noticed,” Mickey said, dryly. “I understand Reggie is in Cleveland?”

Miss Theo nodded. “On business.”

“And when is he due back?” Delaney asked.

“Well, for the wedding, naturally. He’s giving the bride away. But also for the party.” This appeared to worry her, too, if the crease in her brow was indicative of worry. It was hard to know with a Seymour, Mickey was learning. “He promised to help Boudreaux pour the cement for the gazebo. Case of the inept leading the blind, I’m afraid. Hermi’s much too easy to get round, I’m afraid.”

“Cement?” Mickey spared a quick, thoughtful look at Delaney. He made a note while Delaney tried again with the freezer.

“Back to the freezer, Miss Theo. When was the last time you looked in it?”

“Last week. I wanted to get it started. I mean, you don’t just turn it on and get cold air, you know. It has to warm up, or would that be cool up?” A slight dark look lowered her gentle brow, then she brightened. “Luckily it was already on.”

For the first time since the mention of Reggie, Mickey felt a surge of hope. “So that means the body was stashed there sometime between when you looked in it and today—”

Miss Theo shook her head. “Oh no, it had to be before that.”

Mickey didn’t want to ask, because he was afraid he already knew the answer, but he had to. It was his job. “Why?”

“The body was already there. I’m guessing that’s why the freezer was on. Quite the heat wave we had this month, don’t you think?”

Her pale, helpful gaze beamed on Mickey, then shifted to Delaney. Mickey tried to ask, but the words couldn’t get out his constricted throat. Delaney tottered in to fill the gap. “And the time before that—that you looked in the freezer?”

“Oh, my,” she leaned back, her mind obviously going back in time. “It would have to be at least twenty.”

“Days?” Delaney asked with faint hope.

“Years, dear.”

“But—” Finally Mickey managed to speak. “But—why didn’t you call us when you first found it?”

“How could I call you, dear boy, when I didn’t know you?”

Fern leaned against the railing that overlooked the mall’s center court, lifting first one foot, then the other in an attempt to relieve the pain from her corns. Below her, the shrieks of the snow-crusted children rose in painful spirals of sound as the snow hill melted beneath the combined assault of bodies and heat.

Mercifully the Elvises were on break, reducing the crowd enough for Fern to pick out Donald’s forlorn figure propped against the central pillar. Soon she would descend the escalator and admit defeat in her attempts to find Luci Seymour, but there was no hurry . . .

Almost as if he read her thoughts, Donald looked up and saw her. She straightened, giving a disheartened shrug to the question she knew he was asking. Time to join him. She turned, almost missing his sudden outbreak of frenzy.

“What?” she mouthed, shaking her head.

He calmed down, managing a gesture to her right. Bewildered, Fern looked left, doing a full one-eighty turn before her gaze collided with the profile of their quarry: Luci Seymour leaning against the rail barely twelve inches from Fern. Fern gripped the rail as her heart rate surged. Through the mist that formed over her eyes, she saw Donald jumping up and down. She turned. Luci was heading for the escalator. In a daze, Fern turned to follow her. A crowd formed behind Fern, frustrating her desire to maintain a distance, and Fern was forced onto the escalator right behind Luci. What Fern could see of her, she looked happy, serene, cheerful. It was so unfair. Anger started deep but moved upwards, focusing on her, Luci, the cause of all Fern’s problems.

Just as the escalator began its drop, Luci leaned over the side to stare at the children playing in the snow below.

“Poor little mutts,” she said. “Someone ought to show them how to play in the snow.”

Luci arched up on her toes, craning for a better view. The action made it all blindingly clear for Fern. Someone should show the little mutts how to play in the snow.

She was jostled from behind. Instinctively Fern softened her knees, allowing herself to be thrust forward against the off-balance Luci. A judicious upward thrust and Fern had the satisfaction of seeing Luci sail over the side of the escalator and disappear from view.

Too bad she couldn’t enjoy the sensation. Or keep herself from tumbling down the moving stairs.

They tried to ask Miss Theo more questions, but the momentum was gone. She told them more about Reggie than they really wanted to know, something about the family crest that they didn’t understand, about his stepmother getting strangled by an irate tax evader and his father getting struck by lightning while using the toilet—thereby ending all hope of Reggie having brothers and sisters. Miss Theo seemed to think this was a good thing, Reggie’s side of the family being even more useless than was “normal.” Though she did concede that Reggie was less useless than she’d expected, given his maternity, paternity and jail time. When she left, Mickey and Delaney were both exhausted.

Delaney stared at the ceiling, his hands behind his head. “She did warn us, you know. She said we didn’t speak Seymour.”

Mickey stared at the floor. “The Captain will have to take me off the case when he finds out Eddie’s a suspect.”

“Eddie’s not a suspect.”

“He will be. I’m going to make him a damn suspect.”

“If Eddie’s a suspect, so’s the Pope. Give it up.” He sat up and rubbed his face for a moment, then a look of determination replaced woe. “Instead of making up evidence, let’s figure out what we’ve got.”

“You know what we’ve got. We got nothing.”

“I’m not saying we got a lot, but there’s got to be something here.”

Mickey looked at him, his expression incredulous. “Like what?”

Delaney looked at his notes, then at the flat pencil, discarded them and picked up Mickey’s notebook. “Let’s look.” He looked down. Under Louise’s name Mickey had written: uncommunicative. His lips twitched. “So Louise didn’t say much. We’re supposed to look for non-verbal clues, too. What was your impression of her?”

“That she’s good at not giving non-verbal clues. Or any other kind of clues.”

Delaney grinned. “True. You think she might be protecting the old ladies?”

“I don’t know,” Mickey said, then added, “I did wonder if Boudreaux was. He seemed, I don’t know, more incoherent than he was with Luci. He wouldn’t meet our eyes.”

“Okay! Now we’re cooking!” He made a mark beside Boudreaux’s name, then looked up. Question marks don’t take long to make. “Anything else?”

“I say we pin it on Reggie and be done with it. He sounds like someone it’d be easy to pin something on.”

“Hey, works for me. How we go about it?”

Mickey paced across the room, then jerked the curtains back and stared out at the street.

Police activity was starting to wind down, thereby reducing press activity also, leaving only the terminally curious to hassle the uniform left to guard their crime scene. The harsh midday sun was beginning to soften to afternoon gold. A few streets away he could hear rush hour beginning to gear up. Somewhere, people were thinking of supper, evening TV, or hot dates. Somewhere there were people who could go to bed right now if they wanted.

None of those people were in this room.

“Any bright ideas?” Delaney asked.

“The last bright idea I had was—” He stopped, swiveling to face Delaney, an arrested expression on his face. “Of course. Why didn’t I think of her before?”

“Her? Who?”

“Gracie. The normal Seymour!”

Though both men had been awaiting her arrival, they didn’t hear Miss Grace Seymour come in, bringing a wave of fresh, cool air with her.

“Did you wish to speak to me?”

Like thirsty men in a desert, they turned towards the oasis of serenity she brought with her. About the same height as Luci, Grace exuded normality like a subdued perfume. Her light brown hair was pulled back from the plain lines of her face and bundled at the nape of her neck. She dressed simply, neatly, in a dress that was somewhere between blue and gray. Her eyes were calm and inquiring.

Delaney pulled out a chair for her, almost tripping over it in his hurry.

He must, Mickey realized, be more tired than he thought, because for a moment her profile wavered into near transparency before getting solid again. Or maybe it was this place getting to him. And them. He rubbed his eyes, trying to force them to wakefulness.

“Thank you,” she said, with merciful brevity. While the two men seated themselves, she watched them in comfortable refreshing silence.

“Miss Seymour—” Mickey began, because Delaney seemed content to just stare at her.

“Oh, please, call me Gracie.”

“Sure.” Anything she wanted. “This is my partner, Kevin Delaney. We were wondering if we could ask you a few questions about the murder?”

She nodded, looked at Delaney and got caught in his rapt stare. Mickey grinned, cleared his throat and launched into their spiel, but it was pretty much a no-go. She didn’t know much more than the others. At least she let them know it with three words or less answers. Mickey could have cried with relief. The only time he felt cut adrift was when they got to Reggie.

“Yes, he lives in Cleveland. Business interests, I understand.”

“So we heard,” Mickey said. “Can you tell us a little more than that?”

“It’s hard to find more to tell about Seymour men, I’m afraid.”

“Could you try?” This from Delaney, whose expression bordered on fatuous. She cast him a shy glance, followed by an even shyer smile.

“All right.” She thought for a moment before speaking. “Well, they’re kind of stupid and inept, really. All of them. Their only real skill is this strange ability to persuade terrifyingly competent women to marry and take care of them.”

“Oh.” Mickey didn’t know what else to say.

“You know, you ought to talk to Velma. She lives next door and is hoping to be Mrs. Reggie. Of course, she thinks she’s psychic, but you mustn’t hold that against her. Otherwise she’s pretty sensible—or Reggie couldn’t, wouldn’t, look at her. It’s sort of a biological imperative.” She directed a grave, flickering smile at them.

“Oh.” Mickey looked at Delaney, but he was looking at Gracie, so he made a note. “Anything else you can tell us?”

“Well, you might want to talk to Unabelle.”

“I’d planned on it,” Mickey said. Shit. Was his uncle’s fiancée mixed up in a murder? “Anything in particular I should ask her?”

“I’m not really sure. I just think she—absorbs more information than she lets on. You’ll have to ask the right questions, of course, because I doubt she knows she knows anything. Be creative.”

“Creative? Great.” There was already too much creativity around here for Mickey’s taste.

Gracie smiled. “The girls are difficult, I know. Navigating the Seymour Zone is difficult for outsiders. We’re like curious children.”

The girls? Mickey had to smile at that. While he was smiling, she rose and glided to the door in a single, liquid movement.

“You’re not like that, Gracie,” Delaney said. “Why is that?”

She stopped, then looked back. “Because I’m no longer curious?”

She left, her passage so smooth and silent they didn’t see or hear the door’s movement, and took all the cool from the room with her.

The silence was long, like that after a stellar performance by a diva, then Delaney said, “I like her.”

Mickey grinned. “I noticed.”

“She’s so—so—”

“Normal.”

“I was going to say nice.” There was a moment of silence, then Delaney said, half to himself, “If I were a marrying man—”

Mickey looked up from his notes. “They don’t marry.”

Silence. “Why don’t they marry?”

“I have no idea.”

Another longer silence.

“Damn shame.”

“Maybe,” Mickey said, his mind’s eye reluctantly fixed on a different, younger Seymour’s face. “Could be a blessing by a merciful God.”