After our guests left, I washed up the coffee cups while Auntie caught the tail end of her favorite soap opera. I dried my hands on the dish towel and joined her just in time to catch a Macy’s commercial.
“I wonder how I’d look in pink,” Auntie said.
“You mean pink as in cute-as-a-button Sharlene Walker pink?” I put my arm around her shoulder and squeezed. “You’re fine just the way you are.”
“Maybe we should go to the mall, so I can pick out some Arizona wear.”
“Why? You’re going home in a few days.”
“Detective Bowers might not like that. He is investigating a murder, and I was a witness.”
I steadied myself. “He didn’t actually say you had to stay here, did he?”
“I believe it’s protocol, and better safe than sorry.”
We wound up at Macy’s in the Fashion Mall in Scottsdale. Auntie was camped out in the women’s department dressing room while I slumped in a chair next to somebody’s husband who had the good sense to bring along a tablet.
“What do you think?”
The summons was for me. The guy didn’t even glance up from his game of solitaire.
Auntie sashayed out in a cotton tunic of cerulean blue with the outline of a howling coyote stitched on in white thread. The pants were white clam diggers, and on her wide feet she wore her new leather sandals. I noticed she still wore her nylons.
“You look very southwestern,” I said, and she giggled with delight. “But not very pink.”
She gave a vague wave. “Pink isn’t everyone’s color. I decided it’s best to stick with what looks best on me.”
“A wise choice.”
After we paid for her purchases, which included three additional tops and pairs of pants in the same style but different colors, we went in search of jewelry.
“You can’t have too many pairs of silver earrings, I always say.”
I kept myself from remarking that I owned zero pairs of silver earrings, because the man behind the jewelry counter caught my eye.
“Jeremy?”
Heather Ozu’s former assistant-slash-slave turned wide eyes on us and almost ducked under the counter in embarrassment.
“What a nice surprise!” Auntie exclaimed. “We heard you left Saguaro Studios. Show business is no place for a nice young man.”
Jeremy snorted. “It wasn’t really show business. At least, I hope to heck that’s not what it’s like in Hollywood.”
“They are professionals in California.” Auntie nodded. “Speaking of professionals, now that you’re in the jewelry business, what do you think about these on me?” She held up a pair of small silver earrings, and Jeremy plucked them out of her hand and rummaged through his stock.
“Not the right shape for your face.” I think that was a nice way of saying big faces need big earrings, because he selected a pair of large loops and slid them across the counter.
“Heather Ozu said something interesting about you.” I’d thought it over and decided that, if I was going to choose between them, Jeremy seemed more likely to tell the truth than Heather, now that he was through kissing her fanny and didn’t have anything to lose. “She said she fired you because you stole from petty cash, but of course we didn’t believe it for a minute.”
“She said what?”
A woman in her fifties at the other end of the counter looked up. She wore a nametag, so she was either another employee or the manager. Probably the manager from the way Jeremy lowered his voice.
“She has a lot of nerve! First of all, I quit! And I busted my butt for her. Assistant!” He snorted. “Babysitter is more like it. I picked up her specialty coffee every morning because Heather Ozu couldn’t possibly drink regular out of the pot like the rest of us. I picked up her dry cleaning and cleaned her cat’s litter box, because Heather Ozu couldn’t possibly do her own errands or get her manicured nails anywhere near a box of poop. Like she’s so busy! And the worst part was having to listen to her whine about her terrible, overpaid life.”
He launched into a high-pitched imitation. “My boyfriend didn’t get me a Valentine. My mother spanked me when I was two. You don’t know what it’s like being a woman in this big, bad, world.”
He picked through a tray of silver earrings and slapped a few pairs on the counter. “As if she had it so tough. I work two jobs to pay my way through college. I didn’t get a scholarship because my great-grandfather came from Japan, and her parents are millionaires. Mine run a tire store.” He threw up his hands. “She doesn’t even like sushi, for cryin’ out loud!”
“You poor thing,” Auntie soothed. “People are so hoity-toity sometimes.”
He stared at her as if he’d been alone on an island and rescue had finally come.
“Thank you! Yes. You’ve hit it on the head. Hoity-toity. That describes it perfectly. They think they’re better than thou!”
He picked out a matching bracelet and slid it on Auntie’s wrist. “Stole from her. That’s such crap. I forgot to enter a receipt for something she bought, so it didn’t balance. I dare her to fire me for that!”
“I hope you haven’t killed your connections in the industry,” Auntie said. “I could read your cards for you and put your mind at ease.” She rummaged through her purse.
“Don’t bother. I’m not even a film major. I’m working on my master’s in business, and I thought working for a studio might be fun.”
“What finally pushed you over the edge?”
“I hadn’t been paid in three weeks! I may still live with my mother while I finish school, but I’ve got bills to pay. Mother charges rent, and her late charge is ten percent.”
Now I knew where he got his business acumen.
“So, Heather employed you directly?”
“No. I’m technically an employee of Blue-Ribbon Babes. I only started work for her a few months ago, when the Baking Channel got serious about putting the show on the air.”
“So why blame Heather for your paycheck problems?”
“Because Heather Ozu is one of the show’s producers. She has control over the money.”
No wonder she was interested in the success of the show. As the talent, she could walk away and get another job somewhere else, but as a producer, she stood to lose big time.
“They can’t be doing that bad, honey,” Auntie piped up. “They were handing out a $2,000 check.”
Jeremy threw her a sly grin. “They said they were going to hand out a prize, but all the winner actually got was a big, cardboard check. There wasn’t money in the account to cover the real check. In fact, Heather explained that to the guests before the show. The other two thought the publicity would be a good enough prize, but Elvira Jenkins wasn’t having any of that. She threatened to go public unless they made good on it if she won.”
“And she did win,” I said, considering. “I assumed that Heather hinted Elvira’s buckle wasn’t that good in revenge for the negative comments Elvira made about the sponsors, but maybe Heather couldn’t afford to let her mouthiest contestant win.”
Jeremy laughed. “I had to hand it to the old lady. Of course, she used Scotch Girl flour when she sent in her recipe. It was part of the rules, but she refused to play along, once she found out the winner would get swindled.”
He picked up Auntie’s rejections and put them away and then rang up her selections.
Auntie said, “You wouldn’t happen to know who killed Elvira Jenkins, would you?”
He handed her the bag. “I know it wasn’t me.”
On our way to the car, I said, “The police could learn from you. Did you do it? No. Thank you very much. Do you really think people are going to answer honestly?”
“Of course not. I watch their faces. After thirty years of reading cards, I would hope I could tell when someone is lying to me.”
She had a point. Auntie was good at cold readings. Maybe the best.
“Who do you think is lying? Jeremy or Heather?”
“If I had to lay down money, I’d put it on Heather. She’s a real go-getter, the kind that does whatever it takes to come out ahead.”
“Agreed. So, if Elvira Jenkins was going to raise a stink over her lost winnings, I assume that Heather would want to shut her up. There must be something illegal about offering a prize and then failing to pay up. It might not have meant jail time, but it would have tarnished the reputation of the show. Sounds like it was a bad idea to mess with Elvira Jenkins.”
“She always did have a rigid sense of right and wrong, when it suited her.” Auntie turned to me. “I suppose your mother mentioned that she stole my Lemon Blueberry Buckle recipe. I let her try it before I made it for Bull. I wanted it to be perfect. She suggested I use almond extract instead of vanilla extract. The next thing I knew, she’d made it for him and insisted the recipe was hers because of the almond extract. The nerve. If I’d known she was sweet on Bull, I never would have let her in on my big surprise.”
My jaw dropped. Auntie was finally coming clean about her dust up with Elvira Jenkins. I should have appreciated her honesty, but sarcasm got there first.
“Odd how you can suddenly remember every detail.”
Auntie pulled her cards out of her purse and shuffled them. “Just came back to me. Memories are funny that way.”
“Funny. Hmmm. I prefer the word convenient. Or inconvenient, since your refusal to tell the truth up front has probably put you at the top of Bowers’ suspect list.”
Auntie snorted so hard she coughed. “As if anyone could consider me a suspect. We were rivals for love when we were teenage girls. If I didn’t kill her back then, she’d hardly be worth my while decades later.”
I wondered if there were other facts that had suddenly come back to Auntie. “Do you still insist you didn’t know Elvira and Bull were married?”
She crossed her heart with her thumb. “On my honor.”
“Then why did you accept Elvira’s invitation to the premiere? You couldn’t stand the woman. Or were you hoping to meet up with Bull again?”
“How was I supposed to know it came from her?” She pulled the postcard out of her purse and waved it at me. I snatched it away and studied it.
“You’re right. There’s no mention of Elvira Jenkins on this.” I handed it back. “So, you actually came all the way to Arizona to go to the premiere taping of a show that you’d never heard of before?”
“And to see you. I wanted to find out how you were getting along. I thought you’d be using your talents, and then I get all the way here and you’re an animal behaviorist.” She stressed the title with a waggle of her head and a snooty accent. “Things are kind of tough in Loon Lake. Truth be told, I thought I might pick up some tips from you.”
“You wanted to learn from me?”
“You can teach an old dog new tricks, you know.”
I blinked to keep back the tears. All my life I’d admired my aunt’s ability to make people believe she held the answer to their problems in a deck of cards. If clients took two seconds to think about it logically, Auntie would have been a pauper, but she made the most of her loud personality and her knowledge of human nature and she turned it into a career that put two boys through college. She was a strong person, someone I looked up to, and now she was looking up to me.
“I’m honored that you think I’m that good.” I hugged her tight. “You’re not so bad yourself.”
“I’m glad you think so, because that makes telling you about the séance a lot easier.”
Keeping my grip on her shoulders, I stepped back and said, “Séance?”
“Seven o’clock tomorrow night. Appetizers will be served. It would make a nice follow-up newspaper story if we solved the crime in our own home. I mean your home. I thought we could get all the suspects together in one room and make them sweat. And everybody loves a séance.”
“You haven’t developed a, um, a gift for talking to spirits, have you?” Stranger things happened, as I well knew, but the idea of dead people floating around my living room didn’t make me any happier than had the appearance of Bonzo at my reading.
Auntie threw back her head and enjoyed a belly laugh. “Heavens, no! Who ever heard of such a silly thing! Once you’re dead, you’re dead.”
Unless you’re Bonzo the dog.
“Who’s invited?”
She counted off on her fingers. “There’s Bull, his son, Tim, Catherine, Heather Ozu, and Sonny Street. I had to talk Donna Pederson into coming, but Betty was game. I asked Penny, because she adds credibility.”
“You mean she believes you can do it, she’s enthusiastic, and it might rub off on the others.”
“And, of course, Detective Bowers.”
I gasped. “You asked Bowers? And he said yes?”
“He seemed delighted.”
“Of course he was.” Why wouldn’t a cop be pleased to be invited to a suspect’s home? It would make his job a lot easier if he could catch Auntie in yet another lie.
“Now, I’ve told everyone they’re invited because they cared about Elvira, though that’s not necessarily true. Some of them didn’t really know her. But I bet the murderer shows up just to keep an eye on things.”
“If you expect him or her to confess, won’t having Bowers there put a damper on things?”
“I thought he would make them nervous, and I know I tend to blurt things out when I’m nervous,” she said.
Not so far, you haven’t. I thought it, but I didn’t say it out loud.