I spent the rest of the afternoon moping around Charli’s house, thumbing through her home and garden magazines, watching cartoons, and feeling sorry for myself. That night, Charli, Mom, Dad, and I got together at Charli’s for a drink before heading to Dicey’s house to help out with the wake she was having for Robby.
Robby’s folks, who were from Alabama or Arkansas or one of those states with an ‘A’ name took one look at Dicey and, scandalized at who their precious baby had been sleeping with, told Dicey that she was absolutely, positively NOT welcome to be part of the funeral services and that they’d appreciate it if she just left them to mourn in peace. They quickly arranged to have Robby’s body transported back home as soon as the police released it.
Mom, who was with Dicey when the Plucks arrived, told us that Dicey was distraught, but that she didn’t fight them on it. It was Mom’s idea to go ahead and have a wake at Dicey’s on the theory that it would be good for Dicey and besides, somebody had to eat all that food.
Charli mixed Dad a bourbon and water, poured Mom and herself a glass of white wine and opened one of John’s rapidly dwindling supply of Heineken’s for me. We sat in the family room, sipping our drinks and discussing the latest developments. Charli and I told our parents about our trip to the police station and Dad advised me not to change attorneys, but left the final decision in my hands.
“Well,” Mom said, as the clock chimed six. “We’d best be getting on over to Dicey’s. She told everyone to come at seven. There’s a lot of food to be heated up before then.”
Dicey was pale and wan, wearing a somber black suit, black hose, and black pumps. I hadn’t seen her dressed in anything so dark and gloomy since her first husband died. I didn’t have much time to talk to her since we were all really busy heating up the casseroles and setting the food up in the dining room, buffet style.
At seven folks began streaming in and I spent much of the first couple of hours ferrying empty dishes to the kitchen, replacing them with filled ones, and loading and unloading the dishwasher. It was good to keep busy, mostly because it didn’t give me time to dwell on the fact that almost everyone asked me what it felt like to be a murder suspect. The great majority of my friends and neighbors appeared to believe that I was guilty, which gave me pause. I couldn’t help but wonder what it was about my personality that allowed people to so readily believe I was capable of murder.
About eight-thirty just as I was loading brownies, cookies, and muffins onto another silver tray, Kyle Zagle cornered me in the kitchen. Given his avoidance of me the other times I’d run into him during the week, I was somewhat surprised.
“Need any help?” He had on a dark blue sports coat, khaki slacks, and a white button-down shirt, no tie, and he looked so good it was all I could do to keep from grabbing him and planting a big wet one on his lips.
“No, thanks anyway.” I tried to play it cool, Miss Who-are-you-again? but my face betrayed me, breaking out into a big, goofy grin.
“Uh, Marty, I’m sorry if I’ve seemed a bit distracted the times I’ve seen you this week. I can’t really explain right now, but please don’t think that I’ve been avoiding you.”
I felt giddy and light-headed. He liked me, he really liked me! “Oh, no, it’s okay. Really, I totally understand.” I didn’t, but hey, I was willing to give the guy the benefit of the doubt. CIA work must be a real drag sometimes.
“So, about that dinner I promised you, Would you mind making it lunch? Tomorrow at noon, at Albertino’s?” He munched on a cookie, dropping a few crumbs onto his shirt.
I absentmindedly brushed the crumbs off of him. My fingertips felt like they were undergoing electro-shock. “Lunch. Lunch would be good.” I sounded like a thirteen year old accepting her first date.
“I hate to ask, but do you think you can meet me there? I have a meeting in Christiansburg in the morning and I’m afraid I might be running a bit behind schedule. I’ll make us a reservation so that if I am late, you can go ahead and order yourself a drink and an appetizer.”
I tried not to giggle, remembering that we were supposed to be mourning Robby, but I couldn’t keep from feeling a little bit slaphappy. Kyle leaned over and pecked me on the cheek. It was — brotherly. Not what I’d hoped for, but definitely a step in the right direction.
Everyone cleared out by ten, leaving the Sheffield family to help Dicey and her sister clean up the mess. I was exhausted when we finally dumped the last trash bag in the outside garbage can and headed back to Charli’s.
Totally wiped out, but too wired to sleep, Charli heated up a couple of brownies in the microwave, piled a big scoop of vanilla ice cream onto each one and doused them both with warmed up chocolate syrup.
We went back to the family room and gobbled them down while we listened to J.J. Cale’s Naturally, my favorite CD of all time. It was almost relaxing and, considering what we’d been through the past few days, sort of fun. It reminded me of the way things had been when we were younger and our folks had gone out, leaving Charli to babysit me. We’d always bake brownies and gossip. Sometimes I’d even let Charli paint my fingernails and style my hair.
I’m not sure exactly what triggered it, something one or the other of us said, I suppose, but just as “Call me the Breeze” ended, Charli jumped to her feet, almost dumping her brownie sundae on the off-white Berber carpet.
“Oh!” she said, “In all the chaos, I almost forgot. I have something to show you.”
She sped off down the hallway. I followed her into the spare bedroom that serves as the home office. Charli rifled through a stack of computer printouts that were neatly stacked on the handsome oak desk and handed me one. It was one of the articles Ginger Murphy had e-mailed to her. The subject was fake antiques and it said a lot of the same things Ginger had already told us.
According to the article, unscrupulous dealers sometimes passed off new, imported goods as the real McCoy. The low-life quoted in the article said that he could spot a ‘mark’ almost immediately, knowing instinctively which of his customers weren’t knowledgeable enough to pick up on the fact that the goods were fake. He bought vases and other such items by the caseload, pawning them off on innocent people who thought they were getting a real bargain. Just as Ginger said, the countries of origin for his fakes were mostly the Asian countries. And the Boca Raton wholesaler whose invoice I’d seen on Sam’s desk was referenced in the article. “I sell a lot of the stuff over the internet,” the scumbag dealer was quoted as saying. “More and more of it, as a matter of fact.”
“Geez! I’m such a yutz! The whole reason I came over yesterday was to use your computer,” I said after I finished reading the article. “Robby’s murder threw me for such a loop that I haven’t even thought about it since. Log on. I found something online myself the other day but I didn’t get to read it. My gut feeling is that it’s important.”
I told her about the incident at the library. “It felt like Sam was trying to sneak up on me. I don’t think he saw that I was searching for info about Redmond, though. At least I hope not.”
Charli moved out of the way and I typed in Joe Redmond in the search engine. I quickly located the article I was looking for and printed it out without bothering to read it online. While it was printing I scanned several of the other articles about Redmond, selecting a couple more to print. Charli picked them off the printer and read to me. The first couple pretty much said the same thing, that Joe Redmond received a five-year prison sentence for bilking his elderly neighbor. The third article mentioned that Redmond had also previously served time for drug possession.
When the printer spit out the last article, Charli picked it up, but didn’t begin to read it. She let out a low, long whistle. I looked up from the computer and met her eyes.
“You aren’t going to believe this,” she said. She held up the article about Joe Redmond, which, like the others, didn’t mention what had happened to him after he was released from prison. Charli and I weren’t particularly bothered by that lack of information since, based on the picture that was located at the bottom of the article, we had a pretty good idea. Joe Redmond, the thief and former prison inmate, was a dead-ringer for Sam English.
“If we tell the police, will it make any difference?” Charli asked. We were back in the family room, trying to figure out what to do with the information that Sam English was not who he said he was.
“We don’t have any proof that he’s done anything wrong. It isn’t illegal for a convicted felon to change his name is it?”
Charli mused over that one. “I don’t know. I guess we could ask Tim.”
“No! I don’t want him involved. You know how he is.” Tim was on my case enough already. If he knew about my snooping in Sam’s file cabinet, he’d probably arrest me, or, even worse, tell Mom.
Charli gathered up our dirty dishes to take into the kitchen. “Okay, so no Tim. What do you propose?”
“I’d say go to the police with this, but I don’t want them to brush it off. They might look into it, but then again, they might not. Especially if I went to them. That detective hates me. He’s just begging for an excuse to throw the book at me. But I don’t know what else to do.”
“What if we were to do a little more sleuthing, you know, try and figure this thing out for ourselves?” Charli asked. “After all, we’re mature, intelligent women. We’ve been around the block once or twice.”
I liked that idea. “You’re right. I think that we, I mean I, I’ve done enough sitting around feeling sorry for myself. It’s about time I got off my duff and took some action. Lately all I’ve done is mope around and let things happen to me. That’s just plain ridiculous. Dicey reminded me the other day, but I forgot it again. I’m a Sheffield. We don’t take things lying down. Great Great Grandma didn’t cross the ocean all by herself in a rickety old boat at the ripe old age of fifteen for nothing.”
Charli’s eyes lit with excitement. “Yes! That’s the spirit,” she said. “If a couple of cats can solve a mystery, so can the fabulous Sheffield sisters.”
I didn’t follow on the cat thing, but it didn’t matter. I was pumped up and ready for some action. “What do we do first?”
“First,” Charli said, “we get a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow morning I’ve got to go to that meeting for the Breast Cancer Awareness thing. I’ll be back around noon, but you have that date with Kyle. You’ll probably be done by two, don’t you think? Let’s go back to Sam’s shop then. And, this time we’ll have a better plan.”
We spent the next hour trying to come up with a fool-proof strategy for snooping around Sam’s back room and office. The good thing was that this time we sort of knew what we were searching for.
“The main problem is that stupid bell,” I said as we washed up our bowls.
“I have an idea about that,” Charli said. “I’ll go in alone, like we said. But instead of distracting him by negotiating to buy the parlor set, I’ll pretend that there’s something upstairs I wanted to take another look at. I’ll stand in front of the window and signal to you, then I’ll make a lot of noise so that he can’t hear the bell ring.”
It sounded like a winner to me. “Okay, but whatever you do, make sure he doesn’t come in the back for any reason. Once I’m inside, give me about twenty minutes. Maybe you can get him to sit outside on the porch and talk about stuff. I’ll sneak out the back door and meet you down at Danny’s Mini-mart.”
Charli handed me the last fork to dry. “At two o’clock tomorrow the Charli and Marty Detective Agency will be officially back in business,” she said. “I can’t wait.”
“Marty and Charli. After all, it’s my freedom that’s at stake. Not to mention, you always get to go first,” I said with a wink.
“Charli and Marty,” my sister smiled and winked back, clearly enjoying our private joke. “Charli and Marty Detective Agency. I’m the oldest.”