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“WHERE DID YOU even find that getup?” I asked.
Martin stood next to me in front of the door to Apartment 3B in a prewar building called The Americana. “I have my sources.” He brushed a speck of lint off the front of his blue uniform and reached up to straighten the brim of his cap, similar to a police cap but with a metal plaque on the front sporting the old-fashioned Western Union logo.
“Well, you look ridiculous,” I said. “I hope you didn’t spend money on it. If you did, it’s coming out of your cut.”
“Clearly you have no appreciation for men in uniform. Is this guy even home?” He stabbed the doorbell again.
“It’s the son,” I said. “Chronically unemployed. Probably still in bed.” This was our first visit of the morning on behalf of a client named Claude Meyer, recently deceased, who’d had zero intention of going gentle into that good night.
Across the hall a door opened. We turned to see a thirtyish Latina wearing one of those front-pack baby carriers, currently occupied by a tiny, dark-haired infant, fast asleep. The woman turned back in to her apartment, clucking and cooing and tugging on a leash. A dog reluctantly emerged, specifically a Chinese crested, its small, spotted body devoid of hair if you didn’t count the explosion of white fluff on its forelegs and the crown of its head. It wore a neon-green sweater.
Suddenly I wished Sexy Beast were there. Here, at long last, was a dog guaranteed to boost my pet’s fragile self-esteem.
The instant the animal spied Martin, it lunged for him, fangs bared, drool spraying as it growled and snapped.
“Seriously?” the padre said.
“Pickles, stop that! Be a good boy.” The woman struggled to control the little demon as it strained at the leash. “It’s the uniform,” she explained. “Pickles doesn’t like uniforms.” The racket woke the baby, who began to wail.
“See?” I told Martin. “I’m not the only one who thinks you look preposterous. Pickles concurs.”
Fury had imbued the little dog with the strength of ten Rottweilers. Unable to drag him away, the woman finally bent down and scooped Pickles into a football hold before hurrying toward the stairs.
Meanwhile a male voice hollered from the other side of the door to 3B. “Are you cops?”
“Nah.” Martin grinned at the peephole and doffed his silly cap, tapping the Western Union shield. “Delivery.”
“I didn’t order anything.”
I said, “We’re here to deliver a message, Mr. Meyer. We’ll only be a minute, I promise.”
We waited while Claude’s son thought this over. Finally the locks turned and the door swung open. Brandon Meyer was in his midtwenties and soft looking under the plaid pj bottoms and dingy white undershirt. It would appear we had indeed roused him out of a deep sleep at close to eleven in the morning.
He stood scratching his armpit and glaring through puffy eyes. “Message from who?”
Martin said, “Your father, Claude Meyer.”
Suspicion tugged Brandon’s eyebrows together. “He’s dead.”
I spoke up. “That’s true, I’m afraid. Please accept our sympathies. We’re here because your father arranged for the delivery of personal messages to his loved ones after his death.”
Martin produced a pitch pipe and played a note. He cleared his throat and proceeded to sing, to the tune of “I Wish I Was in Dixie”: “Someday you’ll be in the land of hell, because of my beloved cat Belle, she ran away, ran away, ran away, ’cause you left the door open.”
Seconds passed. Brandon scratched the other armpit. Finally he said, “Stupid cat. So that’s why Dad left me squat?”
“I’m afraid I’m not privy to his reasons,” I said. Which, of course, was a big fat lie. Hell yeah, it was because of the cat. Claude had been a mean old crank. If the cat hadn’t decamped, he’d have found some other excuse to cut his only child out of his will and give it all to an organization that claims gravity is a hoax and that only the iron in our blood keeps us from floating away, thanks to the tunnel-dwelling mole people and their giant electromagnets. But I had no intention of standing there chewing the fat with my client’s careless son. The sooner we got to our next stop, the sooner I could put this whole stupid assignment behind me.
Claude had insisted that only a male voice would do for his postmortem singing telegrams. No problem—Martin and I collaborated on the occasional assignment. What I hadn’t counted on was the padre showing up in that moronic costume. Why couldn’t he be normal? Predictable?
And if he were? a niggling voice asked. If Martin were normal and predictable and steadfast and responsible, like—
Okay, yes, I’ll say it. Like Dom! Are you happy? If Martin were more like Dom, would I still feel...
All right, for the record, I’m not saying I feel anything special for Martin. Lord knows he’s never said he feels anything special for me, though he did come close once. I’m kinda almost a hundred percent certain about that. But to get back to my point...
Wait, I forgot my point. You know what? Forget it. I had no business playing what-if when I should be concentrating on getting through Claude’s vindictive little song list so I could cash his final check.
Brandon was still scratching himself when we took our leave, and no, he does not possess a third armpit, so use your imagination. We drove to the swanky house in Crystal Harbor that Claude had shared with his third wife, Margaret Mary. The fortyish widow opened the door promptly, looking both hotsy and totsy in a revealing wrap top, sprayed-on white pants, and blingy mules. Big hair and an e-cigarette completed the look.
Martin grinned appreciatively. Margaret Mary grinned back, taking note of the Western Union cap, which she flicked with a lacquered nail. “Well, don’t you look cute. I thought telegrams went the way of the dodos.”
I jumped right in with, “Mrs. Meyer, we’re here to deliver a personal message from your late husband, Claude.”
She rolled her eyes and took a drag of her e-cigarette, whose telltale skunky aroma hinted it was not in fact an e-cigarette but one of those vape pens whose use had nothing at all to do with nicotine.
In a bored tone Margaret Mary said, “I should’ve known I hadn’t heard the last from that old bastard. All right, lemme have it.”
The padre went through the same silly pitch-pipe-and throat-clearing routine before singing, to the tune of “Oh my darling, Clementine”: “Oh my darling, oh my darling, oh my darling Margaret Mary, you are gone and lost forever, ’cause you cheated on me with Fred McCuddy.”
Margaret Mary pulled a face. “That doesn’t even rhyme.”
“I’m not responsible for the lyrics,” Martin said.
“No, I know that. Sheesh.” She sucked her vape pen, thinking. “I should’ve done it with someone named Harry. Or Larry. Or, oh, I know! Stanley Perry. Oh wait, I did.”
“I’m sure you were provoked,” Martin said, then grunted as my elbow connected with his ribs. Stick to the script, Padre.
“Was I ever,” Margaret Mary said. “You ever meet the dearly departed?”
“No.” Martin pointed to me. “But she did.”
Before the widow could get up a good head of steam on the subject of her infidelities and their perfectly justifiable provocations, I said, “Our sincere condolences on your loss, Mrs. Meyer.”
She gestured with the vape pen as if to say, Yeah, whatever. Her gaze was unfocused as she said, “Listen, am I supposed to tip you?”
“It’s not required,” Martin said, “but I wouldn’t turn it d—oof!”
There was my pesky elbow again, with a mind of its own.
“There’s no need for that,” I said. “Mr. Meyer took care of our fee. We’ll just be on our—”
“You know,” she purred, gesturing inside the house, “I just opened a bottle of good pinot noir. I hate drinking alone, don’t you?” Her smile encompassed both me and Martin in a way that told me she was on the prowl for more than a couple of drinking buddies.
Martin was all over that. “I think we could be persuad— Ow! Jane, knock it off!”
“Unfortunately, we have another stop to make,” I said, dragging Martin back down the porch steps.
“Rain check!” he hollered over his shoulder.
Our last stop was a three-story office building in western Nassau County that housed Aiello Packaging Solutions, where Claude had toiled for twenty-one years in the sales department. The administrative floor was an expanse of generic cubicles ringed by private offices and conference rooms. The receptionist eyed Martin’s outfit warily as she buzzed her boss to let him know he had visitors.
By the time Gunther Aiello joined us several minutes later, whispers had spread about the Western Union messenger, and all the employees had either drifted out of their cubicles or were peeking over the partitions to see what was going on. Gunther, the third generation of Aiellos to head the company, was tall, fiftyish, well dressed but flabby around the middle. Genially he introduced himself and asked our business.
I said, “Mr. Aiello, we’re here to deliver a personal message from Claude Meyer.”
It took a second for that to sink in. “Claude!” He pressed his hands together. Shook his head. “Poor Claude. We were all so shocked. A message, you say?”
I nodded. “To be delivered to you personally after his passing. Perhaps, um... well, I’m sure you’d prefer the privacy of your office.” That big, bright corner office from which Gunther had emerged. The one with a door that closed.
“Not at all.” Gunther gestured expansively, indicating the dreary sea of cubicles under buzzing fluorescent ceiling lights. “Everyone here knew Claude. I think we all want to hear what he had to say.”
Before I could pursue the point, Martin said, “Sure thing!” and produced his pitch pipe. He played his note. He cleared his throat. The lyrics that followed were sung to the tune of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”: “You’re low, Gunther Aiello, lower than I can say, you passed me up for promotion, so I spat in your soup every day.”
Gunther jerked. A livid flush crawled upward from his starched collar as his employees gasped and snickered. One of them murmured a smug, “Claude, too?” making me wonder how much disgruntled employee spit his boss had consumed over the years.
Gunther yelled himself hoarse kicking us out of the office and ordering his staff back to work. Martin slipped the receptionist a stack of my business cards on the way out.
As we crossed the small parking lot, headed for my red Mazda, I said, “What are you doing tomorrow around four?”
“In the a.m.?” There was that silky smile. “Depends how much you’ve worn me out by then.”
Yeah, he had the sexy innuendo down. The guy was a born flirt. I’d long ago stopped thinking it meant anything. Well, mostly stopped.
“Do you remember Tucker Nearing?” I asked. “Karina Faso’s boyfriend. He was the kid that got into it with Tooley—”
“Yeah, sure, what about him?”
I beeped the door locks and we let ourselves in to the car. “There’s something I need done,” I said. “Something that requires your particular skill set. I don’t know who else to ask.”
I must have looked pretty grim since he chose not to have fun with my reference to his skill set. He said, “I’m listening.”
*
THE ROSE BOOKSHOP was that rare breed, an independent bookstore that was solidly in the black and in no danger of going the sad way of so many of its brethren. The Rose had occupied the same location on Main Street since 1946. It had grown over the years, spreading into a neighboring space and morphing from your basic bookstore into a sort of community center.
A full third of the store was a children’s area, selling kids’ books, toys, games, and arts and crafts supplies. In a well-to-do town like Crystal Harbor, folks didn’t hesitate to open their wallets if it meant nurturing Junior’s budding genius. The store housed a funky café where those who worked locally could grab coffee and a breakfast burrito, or a prosciutto and mozzarella panino at lunchtime. The dining area doubled as a venue for musical performances on Friday evenings and occasional book-signings during evening hours and weekends. With The Rose, as with so much else in life, adaptation had proved to be the key to survival.
It was a book-signing that had brought me there that Thursday evening. I’d seen the notice in the same issue of the Harbor Herald where I’d spied Tucker’s big feet. In light of Detective Cullen’s visit two days earlier, I couldn’t pass up this opportunity.
Leonora Romano sat on a hard wooden chair behind a table piled high with copies of her newly released cookbook, Leonora’s Kitchen. It was a slick hardback with a hefty price tag and a close-up of Lee’s grinning face on the book jacket.
How had Chloe put it? She feels the world owes her. Well, first it would be nice if the world realized she existed, and I saw no evidence of that at this pitiful excuse for a book-signing.
Few others occupied the café area at the moment. A guy around eighty sat nursing a cup of herbal tea while perusing the New York Times. A harried-looking young mother chatted with a friend while shoving cookies at a fussy toddler in a stroller. They all ignored Lee, who had yet to notice me. This was because her attention was on the twenty-something customer asking her for directions to the ladies’ room. Lee answered, wearing a smile that could only be described as strained.
I almost felt sorry for her. Until I recalled that this woman was trying to convince the detective in charge of Swing’s murder investigation that his brother had done him in. She was spreading the news of Victor’s supposed guilt far and wide. It was all over the Web. The town was buzzing with it. My empathy had its limits.
After the bathroom seeker wandered off in search of relief, I approached Lee, who didn’t recognize me at first. We’d met just the once, after all, at Swing’s funeral reception. She probably assumed I, too, was a random customer looking for the loo. Or the latest Stephen King novel. Maybe an inquiry about store hours.
I stuck out my hand and reintroduced myself, getting another lungful of that pricey French perfume. The woman must stand under a waterfall of it every morning.
Her smile turned even more brittle. I’m not kidding, I wouldn’t have been surprised to see fault lines appear in her plastic face. “Oh yes, Jane. Of course.” She pulled the top book off the stack and opened the cover. To keep her from scribbling my name on the flyleaf, thus forcing me to plunk down forty clams at the register, I blurted out the first thing that leapt to my tongue.
“Why did you accuse Victor of murder?”
She froze momentarily, then straightened and rearranged her awesomely realistic features into something resembling dismissive hauteur. “I have no intention of discussing this matter with—”
“You know very well he had nothing to do with it.” I braced my arms on the table and leaned over her. I wasn’t shouting, but I was making no effort to whisper either. Lee glanced nervously at the handful of customers in the vicinity, who were pretending not to listen.
“What makes you so certain your precious Victor didn’t do it?” she snarled.
“Oh, please,” I said. “If you really think he’s capable of something like that, you don’t know him.”
“And you do?” she said. “After, what, a week? A week and a half? You don’t want to believe it because this sexy young Frenchman is paying all this attention to you. Think about it, Jane. Ted Bundy was young and good-looking too.”
I managed not to guffaw at her comparing Victor Dewatre to one of the most notorious serial killers in history. “What’s this really about?” I asked. “Why are you going after him like this? Siccing the cops on him, savaging his reputation, after the loss he just suffered. What did he ever do to you?”
Unless I was right and her attempt to frame Victor was a ploy meant to divert attention from her own guilt. In which case I’d just managed to piss off a coldblooded murderer.
“Excuse me?” came a timid female voice from behind me. I glanced over my shoulder at a middle-aged woman toting one of The Rose’s pink-and-white shopping bags. It was crammed with expensive-looking books. “I’d like to meet the author and get her to sign—”
“She’s busy.” I gave the woman my back as Lee leapt to her feet in an attempt to salvage what was probably her first and only sale of the day.
“You have no right,” Lee growled, jerking this way and that, trying to make eye contact with the departing customer as I mirrored her movements, thwarting her. I hadn’t woken up that day planning to hone my hip-hop dance moves, but hey, you never know what life will bring.
“Answer the question,” I said when she finally gave up. “What could Swing’s brother possibly have done to make you retaliate in this hateful fashion? And don’t give me any nonsense about his big fight with Swing over boffing the ex-wife. We both know that’s a smokescreen.”
As Lee pondered how to respond, she chewed those big, fake lips of hers, smearing crimson lipstick on her big, fake teeth. Finally she shrugged and, in a near whisper, said, “What the hell, it’d be your word against mine. I’ll tell you what that son of a bitch did. He sabotaged my chances with the Food Network.”
“What?”
“My show,” she snapped. “It was supposed to be Swing’s and—”
“I know about the show,” I said. “So you didn’t get it, huh? I just can’t believe you think Victor had anything to do with that.”
“Chloe broke the news to me yesterday.” Her carefully applied makeup failed to conceal the patches of hot color that had bloomed in her sculpted cheeks. “They’re giving it to this young—” she threw her arms wide, at a momentary loss for words “—hipster chef. From Brooklyn.”
“Morgan McNair?” I said. “Wasn’t he a contestant on Kale Wars? He has an awesome food blog.”
“How could they give it to someone like that?” she demanded. “I deserve it! That show was supposed to be mine!”
“I know it’s easier to blame someone else,” I said, “but has it occurred to you that—?”
“No!” Her face twisted into something I hardly recognized. “He did this. Victor. You were there at that funeral thing. That reception. You saw how angry he was. He practically accused me of trying to profit from his brother’s death.”
Well, weren’t you? I opened my mouth to ask it, then snapped it shut. I didn’t need her more worked up than she already was. Customers had begun drifting into the café, lured by our juicy contretemps. I had no desire to be banned from The Rose for life. It wasn’t even book browsing or the weekly live music I’d miss the most. Their bacon-cheddar scones were to die for.
“You can’t seriously believe Victor somehow wrecked your standing with the network,” I said.
“Oh, I don’t doubt it,” she said. “Who knows what lies he told them about me?”
This woman had nerve complaining about damaging lies. But she wasn’t done.
“And I know why he did it,” she continued, leaning closer and truly whispering now that we had an audience. “It wasn’t just the TV show, the fact that I saw a chance to advance my career and acted on it, like any good businesswoman would. No, it was the endangered species thing, too.”
“Umm...” I said.
“Victor must have found out I’m the one who started the rumor.”
After a second of stunned silence, I sputtered, “You did that?”
Lee had the bad taste to look pleased with herself. “Three years ago, right after Swing abandoned Hummingbird and forced me to close.” Her face fell. “How was I to know the whole thing would backfire and he’d thrive on the notoriety? That bastard could step in a pile of dog crap and it would turn into twenty-four-karat gold.”
I left her muttering about the unfairness of it all, about how some people have all the luck and it’s her turn now, dammit. As I headed for the exit, I recognized a familiar form from the back. Short, stylish dark hair, elegant clothes, gigundo diamond on the left ring finger.
Bonnie stood in front of a bookshelf labeled Wedding Planning, a subsection of the Self-Help and Relationships section.
How did that make me feel? you ask. How do you think it made me feel?
I would have liked nothing more than to slink out of the store and try to forget about Bonnie and Dom and their impending nuptials—no firm date yet, don’t ask me the significance of that—but there was something I’d kept meaning to run past her, alone, and I had no desire to cede home turf advantage by dropping in on her at the PD.
I tapped her shoulder. She turned with a pleasant expression, which morphed into a blend of annoyance and embarrassment when she saw me. The annoyance needed no explanation. As for the other...
I glanced at the book she’d been perusing, which billed itself as the Supreme Wedding Planner & Organizer. It was the most girly thing I’d ever seen her do. She slammed it shut and crammed it back on the shelf between The Bride’s Memory Book and The Creative Wedding Planning Guide.
I’m not going to apologize for the little zing of satisfaction I felt at her obvious discomfiture. And face it, if I did, you wouldn’t buy it for a second.
“Getting ready for the big day?” I asked. Sweetly.
“What do you want, Jane?”
I blinked at her abrupt tone, a little hurt. At least I hoped it looked that way.
Okay, you know what? You do not get a vote in how I conduct myself with the woman who was gearing up to marry the love of my life. Or... whatever he was at the moment.
Her expression said, Give me a break. This seasoned detective wasn’t about to be fooled by my little act.
“Listen, Bonnie, there’s something I think we should be doing.” I glanced around and lowered my voice. “You know, about the investigation?”
“I have nothing to do with the investigation,” she said, “and you certainly don’t—”
“Yeah, yeah, we’ve been through that. Do you want to see your fiancé go to prison for a crime he didn’t commit?”
“I happen to know Detective Cullen is looking at someone else,” she said.
“Right. Victor. And only because Nip and Tuck Barbie over there—” I jerked my thumb toward the café where Lee Romano sat before her sad pile of cookbooks “—is trying to frame him. Even that idiot Cullen will figure that out if he hadn’t already. Meanwhile there’s still only one serious ‘person of interest.’” How I was coming to loathe that term.
“So when you say there’s something ‘we’ should be doing,” Bonnie said, “what you’re really saying is there’s something you want me to do.”
I got in her face. “Same side, remember? We’re supposed to be on the same side here?”
I waited for her to acknowledge that, which she finally did, more or less, by sighing and glancing at her watch. It was all I was going to get.
“Cullen has this little notebook,” I said.
She shrugged. “So? He’s a detective. We all carry them.”
“So,” I said, “Cullen works at the PD. You work at the PD. That thing must come out of his pocket at some point. Like when he’s reading it over, filling out forms, I don’t know...”
Her eyes popped. “You want me to sneak a look at his notebook?”
“Why not? Is there some kind of rule against, you know, two detectives sharing information?”
“It’s not ‘sharing’ if one of the detectives doesn’t know he’s doing it,” she said, “and there’s no way he’d willingly show me his notes. You know very well I removed myself from the case due to—”
“Conflict of interest. So? I’m just asking you to check up on him, find out if there are any details we don’t know about.”
Bonnie pulled herself up. “What you’re asking is not only unethical, it would get me in serious trouble if I got caught. I won’t do it.”
