Chapter 28
I swallowed hard and tried not to show my distress. “I’ll keep an eye out for her. Thanks, Sonja. But I didn’t come here for that. I need cookies for children and elegant pastries for adults, please.”
We decided on chocolate chip cookies, sugar cookies, and oatmeal cookies for the kids. Choosing the pastries would have been such a pleasure if I hadn’t felt sick about Veronica. Pointing to the items in the case, I bought far too many mouthwatering treats—apples peeking out of puff pastry, chocolate croissants, lemon tarts, glistening fruit tarts, and creamy cannolis.
Sonja packaged them all and promised to let me know if she saw the woman again. I thanked her and left, moving slower than molasses.
It couldn’t be Veronica. It just couldn’t! There were thousands of beautiful blondes in Washington, DC. Many with square faces and high cheekbones. Surely there were hundreds in Georgetown on any given day. But Veronica had been in Georgetown yesterday. And someone at her old job had sabotaged her. It sounded like the kind of thing Delbert had done to people.
What was I thinking? No, no, no. It was all a coincidence. I knew Veronica better than that. How could I suspect her for even a moment?
When I reached the bookstore, it was teeming with children and their parents. I didn’t know whether it was publicity from the murder or Veronica’s professional social media push that brought people to Color Me Read. But they came in droves. One mom brought the six children who were attending her young daughter’s birthday party, along with their mothers. Seven moms and seven kids, all shopping for themselves. I thought the cash register might overheat.
Zsazsa made her way through the crowd. She poured herself a cup of coffee as she always did, but she stood beside me behind the counter, gazing around in awe. “Are you giving away free puppies?”
“It seems like it.”
I rang up three of my coloring books and a box of colored pencils for a woman. “I hope you enjoy these.”
“I have information,” Zsazsa whispered into my ear.
She had my full attention.
In a soft voice, she said, “I visited the gym yesterday to inquire about a membership for myself. I told them my friend, Emily Branscom, raved about the place. Ugh.” She drew her mouth down and pinched her nose dramatically, holding her pinkie in the air. “It reeked of sour socks. I’ll never understand the attraction. At any rate, I asked if Emily had found her membership card yet.”
“You didn’t.”
“How else can one obtain information? Of course I did. She had it with her on Tuesday. It was only when she arrived yesterday that she couldn’t find it.”
“Are you certain? That would mean she was in the carriage house while I lived there. And after Professor Maxwell was in jail!”
“She must have a key,” reasoned Zsazsa.
“But there was a guard. Of course, he didn’t notice the guy who crossed the wires, either. There are only a few possibilities. Either she let that guy in or she crossed the wires herself.”
Zsazsa placed her hand on my arm. “Or she thought she left her favorite earrings on the nightstand and arrived at an opportune time when she happened to miss both the guard and the wire changing person.” Zsazsa wrapped her arm around me. “There could be a very reasonable explanation.”
Unlikely! “She just happened by when the guard wasn’t watching? She had a key and let herself in to look for something she thought she had left there? She somehow dropped her gym membership card and accidentally knocked it under the refrigerator, which she apparently did not touch because she would have gotten shocked?”
“Well, when you put it that way . . .”
“There’s one thing I can do right now. Bob!” I beckoned to him. “Can you man the cash register? I have a little problem I need to take care of.”
I grabbed my purse and left before anyone could ask questions. Guilt pummeled at me for leaving the store when it was so busy. But my survival was more important.
Hurrying, I returned to the chic hardware store. The cost of new locks for the front door and all the French doors put a nice dent in my budget. But it had to be done. Who knew how many of Maxwell’s women had kept a key to the carriage house?
I carried my purchase home, trying not to think about how busy the store was. I located a screwdriver and swapped out the lock on the front door. If I hadn’t felt guilty for abandoning the store, it wouldn’t have been a big deal. But guilt had a way of making me drop things and jab myself with the screwdriver. An hour and a half later, all the locks had been changed, but my hands looked like I’d been in a fight. I heaved a sigh of satisfaction. I, Florrie Fox, was independent and capable. And I was going to find Delbert’s killer so my life could return to normal. All I had to do was use my little gray cells.
I returned to the store feeling much better about the situation. I had told Zielony off. It appeared that Sergeant Eric Jonquille might be smitten by me, and today anyway, the store was a booming success.
At five o’clock, Emily Branscom arrived. In the animal world, she would have been a chipmunk. Petite, with round cheeks and a perky attitude, she had a ready smile for everyone. She wore a crimson dress that clung to her tiny figure. Around her neck hung a dramatic turquoise pendant set in silver.
It was impossible that this woman wanted to kill me. Zsazsa’s theory that she had left favorite earrings behind began to seem more likely. I chatted with Emily, and told her how sorry Maxwell would be to miss her talk and signing.
“I can’t believe the poor man is in jail. From what I hear, they have a rather good case against him. They say he told people he was going to rid himself of Delbert. Of course, there’s also the problem of the trapdoor. Not many people know that they exist in these old houses. That certainly narrows the field of suspects.”
“But you know about them,” I said. When I realized it sounded like I was accusing her, I quickly added, “Have you written about them in your books?”
“Naturally. Prohibition was a fascinating time in our history. People did all kinds of clever things to hide their hooch. Too many of those hiding places have been closed up or torn down in remodels. It’s a shame when we let those marvelous historic quirks go. Have you heard the dead man’s ghost yet?”
She caught me off guard. “You mean Delbert? No.”
“Interesting. I had assumed he would be here. Do you mind if I wander about a bit? I’m quite sensitive to their presence, so I might be able to feel his energy.”
“Yes, of course. Please feel free to be sensitive.” Was that what one should say? I had no idea.
She ambled away, gazing about.
Fifteen minutes later, she approached me. “Florrie, you have several spirits here. But I’m only picking up one dark spirit.”
“That would be Delbert,” I said drily.
She tilted her head and studied my face. “Have you been experiencing troubling events in your life?”
And now she was freaking me out. Should I play as though nothing was wrong or should I confront her? I looked her straight in the eyes. “I’d call Delbert’s murder and Maxwell’s incarceration troubling.”
“Oh definitely, but I meant on a more personal basis.”
I played dumb. “I’m not sure what you mean. Looks like it’s time to get started.” I led her through the seats to the front of the room.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” I said, “thank you for coming today. I am so very pleased to introduce Emily Branscom, whose books about Washington, DC, always cause us to look at things a little bit differently. Emily?”
Polite applause welcomed her. It was standing room only.
Emily spoke without a lectern or notes and moved about as she talked.
“Ghosts are nothing new in Washington. I’m sure many of you know that Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Jackson are said to haunt the White House. There are many well-known ghosts in Georgetown, too. What I pursued in my book are the many ghosts that few speak of. The ones that”—she gazed up at the ceiling and around the room—“exist among us in our everyday lives.”
She paused for dramatic effect.
“How many people here live in a building that was built before 1930?”
Many of the people in the room raised their hands.
Without moving her head, Emily shifted her eyes to scan the room in a way that was positively scary. “Then chances are extremely good that a dead body was in your home for several days.”
A number of people gasped. One man laughed and said, “Nonsense.”
She spread her hands wide. “When you leave here today, notice how many old buildings you pass. Washington is loaded with them. And, of course, Georgetown was founded in 1751, so we know there have to be many ghosts here.”
She walked across the room to the show window at the front of the store. “You see, once upon a time, people didn’t just die in hospitals like they typically do today. Most of them died in their own homes. The family would place the body in the parlor, in a room much like this one, and receive their bereaved friends and relatives there. So you may well have had a corpse on display in your living room!”
The crowd murmured. I hoped no children were listening. They would have nightmares.
“Of course, they required someone to transport the bodies to the graveyard. Certain members of the community handled that task. As time went on, they undertook other matters regarding the dead, as well, hence the name undertaker.”
More murmurs from the audience. They were captivated.
Bob leaned over to me. “Did you know that?”
“No. She’s very interesting.”
“Some homes were even built with a coffin corner, a special nook where the coffin would be placed. Take yourselves back in your minds to the days before embalming. The days when doctors cared for patients in their homes. The days when a horse-drawn carriage delivered the body to the graveyard for burial. It begins to make sense, doesn’t it?”
She paused and smiled at them.
“There were no nursing homes or assisted living for the elderly. They stayed at home or lived with relatives until they died.”
She roamed the room. “Another interesting term came from that time, as well. Not everyone had a fine room in which to receive guests when the body was in repose. Consequently, some people began to offer their front rooms for the task, and their houses were called funeral homes.”
At that point, Bob and I hustled to the cash register because people were lining up to buy her book.
Emily wrapped up her talk and spent the next two hours chatting with readers and signing books. When I thanked her for coming, she said, “Florrie, you need to do something about Delbert’s spirit before he ruins your life.”
Zsazsa stood nearby listening. In a hushed tone, she said to Emily, “We know about you and Maxwell.”
“What about us? Is Maxwell a sensitive, too? I would not have guessed that.”
Speaking in a low voice, I got right to the point. “We found your gym membership card.”
“Wonderful! I have looked everywhere for that thing. Where was it?”
“In my house.”