In my head, I heard that dun-dun-dun-dnnnnnnn refrain. You know, the big, dramatic pounding of the piano keys at the climax of all those old-time radio dramas or British mysteries? Right after the world’s sharpest investigator announces she knows who done it? Er, did it. In the PI business—well, in my PI business—that’s the sweet sound of victory.
That and ka-ching.
I closed my eyes to savour it. Just for a quiet second to mentally relish in those deep, victorious notes. Oh there it was again: dun-dun-dun-dnnnnnnn.
“Tammy, why is she doing that?” Caryn nodded toward me and looked to Tammy for some sort of explanation.
“Is she on something?” Roma whispered.
“D,” Dylan said. “You were doing it out loud again. The whole dun-dun thing.”
Crap.
“Word salad,” Hugh said with authority. “We need to be patient.”
“What’s this all about?” Tammy looked to Mrs. P. “Nanny?”
Before Mrs. P could say a word, I drew a breath and began. “Most of you here know me as D Bee. Elizabeth’s long-suffering, hard-working, ever-giving—”
“Oh, get on with it,” Elizabeth groaned.
“—mother.” I nodded. “But in reality, I’m—”
“You’re a private investigator.” Roma stood and walked over to the buffet, grabbed a plate and began to load it on. “Hired by my new grandmother to see who was trying to hurt Gramps.”
What the…? Roma stealing my spotlight?
Roma turned back toward the table. “Isn’t that right, Grammy?”
Well, that set Mrs. P chuckling.
Grammy?
By the look on her face, I could tell Elizabeth did not like being called Grammy. It probably matched the look on my face—I did not like being upstaged.
“Roma’s right,” I said. “I am a private investigator. Hired by Gramm—I mean, Elizabeth.”
Dylan shot me a you-did-that-on-purpose look. Well, that was a pretty safe bet.
Morris shook his head. “You too, Magnus? Are you a private dick?”
Dylan nodded. “Sorry, dude. And the name’s Dylan, not Magnus.”
“I showed you my tools. Let you line up my drill bits. You said they were special.”
“They are special. Really special. We’ll always have that—”
What the hell? The whole scene had all the makings of a really bad musical!
“What are you investigating, Dix Dodd?” Caryn had been holding her water glass tightly but set it down on the table carefully. “Trying to dig up the old bones for some stupid high school reunion?”
“You remember me?”
Her laugh was unsettling. “I remember everyone from high school. You were the one who hated role call so much. Despised when Mr. Mulligan called out your full name. What was it? Dix—”
“Never mind that name!” I said, cutting her off. Not even Dylan knew my full name. And I wanted to keep it that way.
“What’s this all about?” Tammy demanded.
“Double or nothing, Dodd!” Hugh said. His eyes shifted around the table. “And I’ll add Roma’s refunded tuition to sweeten the pie.”
“Her what?” Tammy’s eyes widened. “How come we’re just finding out about this now?”
“I thought I heard someone in the spare bedroom when I was upstairs vacuuming last week. Was that—?” Lois covered her mouth.
Glori bit her lip.
“Caryn, you must have known about this,” Allen said.
“Oh, don’t you dare blame her again, Allen!” Tammy snapped.
Elizabeth groaned. “Can we stick to the—”
Morris just had to jump in. “So when you said that mine was the biggest belt sander you ever saw—”
“Man, let it go,” Dylan said.
And so it went.
I stared at Hugh; Hugh stared at me, victoriously, dammit.
Well played, old man...well played.
Mrs. P was sitting back with an amused look on her face. Allen was hounding his wife about fidelity and marriage, while she was trying to find out from sausage-scarfing Roma what the hell had happened at school. Morris was still listing the shop parts he’d let Dylan touch. Caryn was shaking her head, at me mostly. Lois and Glori were watching the whole scene with wide-eyes. Elizabeth was trying to explain it all to Hugh.
I wasn’t even trying to shout above the din. I did not like this development. I mean, wasn’t the attention supposed to be on me? Why’s it never about me?
I caught Mrs. P staring my way. In a calm voice, she asked one simple question: “What would a man do in a situation like this, Dix?”
It dawned on me slowly.
I opened my purse and pulled out the FUD. Using it like a gavel, I pounded on the table. The hollow instrument didn’t make a loud thump of solid wood but rather a nice snapping/whack whack sound. Maybe that’s why they call it whacking…
Never mind.
But the FUD made enough of a noise—not to mention spectacle—to get everyone’s attention. Why, they were positively riveted to the sight of me standing there, penis in hand.
“What the hell,” Roma said.
Well at least it shut them all up. And everyone had their attention on me once again. Yep, all was right in the world. Dylan stood. I stood. It was show time, baby. For added emphasis, I pounded the FUD in my hand like a mean teacher with a ruler. Hmm, maybe that’s why they called it pounding...
Um, never mind again.
I shoved the FUD back in my purse.
“Now that we have your attention again, as I was saying, I’m not Elizabeth’s mother. I’m a PI.” I looked at Dylan. “We’re both private investigators.”
“Told you,” Roma said.
“Elizabeth hired us,” Dylan said. “And before you get upset, Hugh, she wanted to find out who was trying to hurt you. She did it because she loves you. Really loves you. She wants you safe.”
Okay, we’ll go with that.
“I’m confused,” Tammy said. “Who could possibly want to hurt Daddy?” She stared down the table at her father. “And why were you trying to stop her from telling us.”
“I was doing these things myself, that’s why.” His eyes shifted to me. “I set that fire myself!”
“Hugh?” Elizabeth looked incredulous. “No, I don’t believe it. You’re lying!”
“He’s not really,” I said. “Technically, he started the fire. He just didn’t mean to. Someone else meant for him to.”
Hugh’s face hardened.
“If you ask me,” Allen said. “If anyone’s out to get the old man, it’s her.” Allen was pointing at Elizabeth. “Hugh always had a soft spot for that type.”
“That type?” Elizabeth said. “You mean sweet and sophisticated? Is that what you mean, fuckwad?”
Yeah, that was it—sweet and sophisticated.
“Actually, Elizabeth, my money was on you for a while,” I said. “Even if you didn’t get a cent of the Drammen fortune, if anything should happen to your dear husband, you’d get every gift he ever gave you.”
“Are you insane?” she said. “Let me remind you, Dix Dodd, I hired you guys.”
“It wouldn’t have been the first time someone hired us to cover their tracks.”
“Or their assets, I’m guessing,” Tammy said.
“And that got me thinking, Tammy.” I slid a glance her way. “Why so angry at Elizabeth? There’s a shitload of money. More than enough to go around for everyone. And you don’t seem the greedy sort. At all.”
“Money’s never been that important to me.” Tammy lifted her head with dignity. “I’ve always had more than enough. Always will.”
“But it was really a love/hate between you and Elizabeth, centered around the Queen Anne desk. Hugh promised it to Elizabeth, but you wanted it more than anything. Why?”
Tammy didn’t answer. She sat with her lips firmly pressed together, the color rising in her cheeks.
“Morris showed me the desk,” Dylan said. “He’s brilliant with this stuff.”
Morris shifted with Dylan’s compliment. “He showed me all the work he’d done on it. And every single hidden drawer, false bottom—we practically took it apart.” Dylan looked at Tammy. “There are no pictures in there.”
Tammy swallowed hard. “You...you know about the picture?”
“What picture?” Hugh asked.
“The one Allen told your daughter that he had,” I told Hugh. “The one he was blackmailing her with.”
“Tammy, you wanted that Queen Anne desk because you thought there was a picture hidden in it,” I said. “I heard Allen talking on the phone to Bean Jones, a PI. Not as good a PI as me and Dylan, but to be fair, we were already taken. Anyway, I heard him demanding that Bean get that picture. At first I thought it was a compromising picture of Allen himself that he was trying to get back. That he was having an affair.”
Dylan and I exchanged a glance, and he gave me an almost imperceptible nod.
We hated to do this—reveal Tammy’s secret—but sometimes bridges have to be crossed and sometimes they must be burned down.
“But then it hit me,” I continued. “Why the hell do you put up with Allen’s assholishness, Tammy? He had to have something over you or on you.”
I looked at a sneering Allen and then to teary-eyed Tammy.
Mrs. P nodded to Tammy and smiled encouragingly.
Tammy took a deep, deep breath. “Roma, darling, there’s something I have to tell you. I...I’m having an affair.”
“Yeah, I know.” Roma shoved a buttered toast wedge in her mouth.
“You know?” Tammy eyes widened. “How could you possibly know?”
I took advantage of Roma’s full-mouth pause.
“I’ll take that question.” I paced three steps and then turned sharply back around to the audience, er, I mean, group. “Roma knows things the same way I know things. She’s like me in a lot of ways. Yes, young, vibrant, full of life...lover of high fashion socks.”
Mrs. P snorted a laugh into her orange juice.
“But our connection goes farther,” I said. “Roma is very intuitive, like me. She knows things, with a niggle and a nudge and—"
“And I heard you on the phone with Dr. Crotty, Mom,” Roma said. “It didn’t sound very professional. Although it was an anatomical discussion of sorts. But when I looked up ‘yummy bits’ in Grey’s, it wasn’t there.”
Dr. Crotty? Dr. Lincoln Crotty, the cardiologist? Oh boy, now that was a familiar name!
Allen looked like he was going to explode, though I didn’t believe for a second that any of it was news to him.
“Your father told me he had a picture,” Tammy told Roma. “He…he told me he’d show it to you if I ever made him leave. And I was going to do just that—right before he…he found out about Lincoln and me. Now that you’re in school, older, it was time. But he said he had a very graphic picture of Lincoln and me, that he’d hidden it in my mother’s old desk. I…I guessed it was from one of the times Lincoln and I were together at the hospital. Maybe that time in the empty OR…”
Roma stopped chewing. She looked at her mother with renewed admiration.
“There’s no picture,” Dylan said. I nodded my approval. Word for word, I’d told him what Allen had said to Bean Jones on that call, and Dylan repeated it now. “‘Tammy’s starting to suspect I’m lying… No more excuses. I know what I’m talking about! Get that picture!’ That’s what Allen said. Not find that picture, but get that picture. A picture that doesn’t exist yet. Allen was hoping Bean would take one.”
“So that’s why you wanted the desk,” Elizabeth said, softly. “Not just because you hated me.”
“Hate you? Elizabeth, I’m thrilled that you make Daddy so happy. But…I couldn’t let that picture fall into anyone’s hands!”
“So now you know,” Allen sneered. “Now you all know. Tammy’s the cheater. The bad guy. The—”
“What I know, Allen,” Hugh said. “Is that you’ve been blackmailing my daughter.”
Elizabeth put a hand on her husband’s arm. It was kind of a stay-calm move. But it was Allen who was looking rather like he might have a stroke on the spot.
“She cheated on me,” Allen said. “With a heart surgeon. She hurt me, and I wanted to hurt her back!”
“She’s my daughter,” Hugh said. “I don’t give a rat’s ass if she cheated with the whole blasted surgical staff!”
Roma drew an excited breath. “Did you?”
“Er, sorry, no,” Tammy said.
“How far did you go, Allen?” Elizabeth asked. “To hurt Tammy?”
“What are you talking about?” he asked.
“Would hurting my husband, Tammy’s father, fall under that hurt-her-back umbrella?” Elizabeth looked ready to kill.
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
I shrugged. “Ridiculous? You’ve already stated a motive—vengeance. You had the means.”
“The means?” Caryn asked.
“He keeps matches on the premises, along with his cigarettes.”
“Matches aren’t exactly a prohibited item, Dix. Anyone can buy them.”
Yes, he had me on that point. So I said, “Oh, and he smokes in the house sometimes too. A big no-no, huh.”
“Dad?” Roma said. “You…you wouldn’t hurt Grampy, would you?”
“Of course I wouldn’t!”
“Oh wouldn’t you, Allen?” Tammy said. “Nothing you do would surprise me anymore.”
Elizabeth sat forward in the seat. “Allen, if you hurt Hugh, I swear—” She left the rest unsaid, but I had a pretty good idea what she was thinking. That same thing I was thinking—how lovely it would be to surgically remove his dick.
“But that match didn’t light itself. It needed an abrasive.” I turned to Roma. “No one even knew you were in the house when the fire started. You’d been hiding here for what, two weeks?”
“Closer to three,” Caryn said. She looked at Tammy and Hugh. “Sorry, Roma made me promise not to tell. I…I didn’t want her to leave and have no place to go, so I…kept her secret. She swore she’d tell you soon.”
“That’s all right, Caryn,” Hugh said. “Roma’s the one who’s not been forthright here.”
“You left university to pursue your real love,” Dylan said. “Aesthetics. I saw all that gear in your bag—the polishes, the tools.”
Actually, both Dylan and I knew why she’d really left university—it probably had something to do with conference room tables, library ladies who knew nothing about love, and campus security.
She shrugged. “So?”
“You had a nail file in among your gear,” he said.
Roma looked at Dylan and then me blankly. “So I had a nail file. Big deal.”
“And someone used a file to start the fire in the study,” Dylan answered.
“Dun-dun-dun-dnnnnnnn!” I said loudly. Okay, a couple times, to get everyone’s attention.
“Dix, you’ve got to stop doing that,” Mrs. P said, shaking her head.
“A file?” Hugh asked, confused. “I don’t understand. I was clearly alone when that fire started.”
“Someone wedged a match inside an old book, about an inch from the spine—a threadbare and well-worn spine.” All eyes were on me now. “They glued a piece of file onto the shelf and frayed or tore away the bottoms of the pages of that frail, old book. Then they left that book protruding from the others on the shelf, knowing that when Hugh lay down after his Guinness, he would look up, see it jutting out of place, and—”
“Grampy’s OCD!” Roma said. “He would have slid the book back into place before he nodded off. He couldn’t have helped himself.”
“Exactly. And when the match head traveled over the file, it ignited. The hollowing out of the bottom of the book would have permitted the necessary oxygen to get in.”
“Makes sense,” Roma said. “But just because there was a file doesn’t mean it was me who put it there.”
“Or me,” Morris spoke up. “I know what you’re all thinking. It was probably me—the newcomer here. I’ve got a dozen files in the workshop.”
“All nice ones,” Dylan said.
“Oh, don’t pretend like you care.”
Wow, this was getting too weird even for me.
“It wasn’t you, Morris,” I said. “Nor you, Roma.”
“I’d never hurt Grampy,” Roma said.
“No, you wouldn’t.” I looked around the room. “But that’s just it. No one was trying to hurt him. I was trying all along to figure out who had something to gain if anything happened to Hugh. But then I realized I shouldn’t be looking for who had the most to gain here, but who had the most to lose.” And then I said the words I absolutely did not want to.
“Caryn, that’s you.”