4 Decoupage Can Be Deadly (17 page)

In-between husbands, Mama not only came to live with us, so did all her worldly possessions. Because she always lived above her means, whenever a husband died, she could no longer afford to keep her home. Mama habitually married men with champagne tastes, small bank accounts, and little life insurance. Thanks to five previous marriages, she owned an overabundance of worldly possessions, her own and those belonging to her
Dearly Departeds
.

She kept everything, storing some of her belongings in the bedroom she shared with Lucille and some in my basement. The Dearly Departeds, all in bronze urns, lined a shelf in my dining room. The balance, including all her furniture, filled up most of my two-car garage, leaving just enough room for my lawn mower and snow thrower.

Mama lucked out when Ricardo trashed my house this past winter. With Seamus O’Keefe, her latest husband, so recently deceased, she hadn’t yet transferred the contents of her apartment to my home. So when Ricardo mounted his search and destroy mission for the fifty thousand dollars he insisted I’d squirreled away, Mama’s property had been spared the vandalism mine sustained.

Mama and Lawrence moving into their own condo meant I’d finally get my garage back and wouldn’t have to scrape snow and ice off my car this winter. That thought alone nearly made me burst out in a Snoopy dance. Few tasks are worse than chipping away at inch-thick windshield ice in the pre-dawn hours of a snowy winter morning.

“Oh, there you are, dear!” Mama entered the living room and dumped a pile of sweaters into an open suitcase.

“Are you moving this weekend, Mama?”

“As long as everything is ready.”

“What isn’t ready?” And why did a sense of dread start to creep up my spine?

“The usual, of course. Cleaning. Painting. Now that you’re home, you can help me narrow down color selection. I picked up paint chips the other day but haven’t been able to decide. We can buy the paint this evening after dinner. That way we’ll get an early start first thing tomorrow morning.”

“We?”

“You are going to paint for me, aren’t you? After all, you’re the one with the art school degree.”

Funny how I forgot to enroll in the House Painting 101 course while in college. “You expect me to paint your apartment this weekend?”

“Not alone. Lawrence and I will help. And I’m sure the boys will pitch in. Ira has to work Saturday, of course. Saturday is his busiest day of the week.”

Of course. And if Lawrence were anywhere near as handy as Mama, I’d be better off tackling the job on my own. She conveniently forgot that between varsity football and Alex’s part-time job at Starbucks, my sons had little free time most of Saturday and Sunday.

So much for my weekend of relaxation. “How come Ira Moneybags didn’t hire a professional house painter along with the condo he purchased for you?”

“He offered, but I told him not to bother.”

“And why is that?”

“Workmen are so unreliable these days. I’m much more comfortable with you doing the painting. I can trust you to do an impeccable job.”

Should I strangle her now or wait until she finished packing?

I suppose I shouldn’t complain. What was one more weekend of work when I’d finally have my garage back and one less person in the house? I loved Mama, but I loved her more when she and her corpulent kitty weren’t instigating trouble with Lucille and Mephisto. I’d willingly trade one more weekend of my life for a little more peace and a lot less chaos under the
Casa Pollack
roof.

At that moment, the Queen of Chaos stormed into the house. Actually, she hobbled, but even using a cane, Lucille’s entrance conveyed more storm than hobble, especially with the addition of the front door slamming against the foyer wall.

My mother-in-law stopped at the entrance to the living room and surveyed Mama’s mess. “You’d better not be taking anything that belongs to me,” she said.

“Is she kidding?” Mama asked me. Then she turned to Lucille. “What do you own that I would possibly want? Your orange paisley pantsuit? Your copy of
The Communist Manifesto
?” Mama waved her arm as if to swat a pesky gnat buzzing around her face. “Don’t flatter yourself.”

Lucille raised her cane and pointed it at Mama. “Every time you move out, something of mine is missing.”

Good grief! Those two sounded more like squabbling adolescents than grown women. “Enough! Lucille, I’m sure Mephisto needs walking.”

“Manifesto!” she screamed, pounding her cane. “How many times do I have to tell you his name is Manifesto?”

“She’ll never get the joke,” said Mama.

“Because it’s not funny,” said Lucille. “I’m not an idiot.”

“Could’ve fooled me,” said Mama.

“That’s enough, Mama. Stop instigating.”

“You’re blaming me? What did I do? You’re the one who calls the dog Mephisto.”

Guilty as charged. And even though the devil dog and I had recently come to an understanding, he’d always remain Mephisto in my mind. And as a slip of my tongue.

Lucille muttered under her breath as she stomped her cane down the hall to the bedroom she shared with Mama. A few minutes later, she reappeared with Mephisto in tow and headed out the door.

I confronted Mama. “Have you taken anything of hers?”

“Really, Anastasia! Are you siding with that communist heathen over your own flesh and blood?”

“You didn’t answer my question, Mama.”

“And I don’t plan to. It’s downright insulting for you to even suggest such a thing.” She turned her back on me and began to rearrange the flotsam and jetsam piled on my sofa.

I took her evasiveness as a yes. Mama wasn’t above stooping to the level of a spiteful child. Lucille didn’t own much, thanks to all her possessions going up in flames last year, and she didn’t suffer from dementia now that a tumor no longer grew in her brain. She knew what she owned. One of them was either lying or deliberately pilfering in order to foment trouble. The question was, which one? Both were certainly capable of such tactics.

I left Mama in her snit and headed into the kitchen to start dinner. The boys would be home from football practice any minute. That’s when I noticed the note on the kitchen table:

You. Me. Bottle of expensive bubbly. Romantic French restaurant. No kids or grandmothers allowed. I’ll pick you up at 7. Zack.

P.S.: I ordered pizzas delivered for the starving masses.

My hero. A glance at the clock told me I even had time for a relaxing soak in the tub. Mama’s paint chips and a trek to Home Depot would have to wait.

~*~

“You’ve officially fallen out of grace with Mama,” I told Zack as we drove off in his silver Porsche Boxster shortly after seven o’clock.

“Me? What did I do?”

As much as Mama played Yenta the Matchmaker when it came to me and Zack, she wasn’t above putting her need for wall color resolution ahead of my romantic dinner. I left her holding a handful of paint chips and pouting amid a sea of suitcases and packing cartons. “You gave me an excuse not to go to Home Depot this evening.”

“And Flora is mad at me for that?”

“She expected me to help her decide on condo colors, then take her paint shopping. By the way, feel free to kidnap me for the entire weekend. I promise to be an extremely compliant kidnap victim.”

“Your mother needs an entire weekend to buy a few cans of paint?”

“She needs an entire weekend for me to paint her apartment.”

Zack slowed to a stop for a red light and turned toward me. “Your first weekend off in months and you plan to spend it painting walls?”

“Not my plan. Mama’s. She sprang it on me the moment I walked in the house this evening.”

“What about Lawrence? Isn’t he capable of wielding a paint roller?”

“Apparently not.”

“Dare I ask why?”

“He doesn’t have an art degree.”

“That makes no sense.”

“It makes perfect sense in Floraworld.”

“I see. And have you painted other apartments each time she reels in a new husband?”

“I’ll admit I haven’t put up much of a fuss in the past, but all those painting jobs occurred before Karl shafted me. I had plenty of time back then to help Mama.”

“Not to mention an art degree.”

“A housepainter requirement.”

A few minutes later Zack turned into the parking lot of Chez Catherine. “Who did you kill to score a table here?” I asked. One of the state’s finest restaurants, Chez Catherine normally required booking a reservation at least a month in advance. Usually longer.

He grinned. “You don’t want to know.”

“I’ll take that as code for whatever alphabet agency employs you.”

He parked the car, and we headed for the entrance. “Take it any way you want. If you’re going to insist I’m really a spy, I might as well play along.”

I stopped at the entrance and turned to him. “You’re not packing heat, are you?”

Zack laughed. “Packing heat?”

“Isn’t that what you spies call it?”

“Right. And here I thought you were way too busy to watch television. Have I ever mentioned how much I enjoy these inquisitions of yours?” He grabbed the lapels of his sports jacket and spread them wide. “Care to do a pat down? Or maybe you’d prefer a strip search?”

“In the middle of downtown Westfield? I’ll save the strip search for later tonight.”

He smiled. “I can’t wait.”

We entered the restaurant and were shown to our table. As we perused the menu, Zack casually asked, “Speaking of killers, did you unmask any today?”

“Maybe.”

Both his eyebrows shot up over his menu, but before he could say anything, the sommelier appeared at our table. As soon as the sommelier left, the waiter appeared.

“Fun’s over,” said Zack after the waiter took our order and the sommelier had returned to pour glasses of champagne for us. The playful banter had disappeared, and his voice grew serious. “Define maybe.”

I caught him up on everything I’d discovered yesterday and today. “If you hadn’t been off saving the world, I would have told you last night.”

He scowled his I-am-not-a-spy scowl.

“Anyway, all four women in Human Resources have financial problems. Any one of them could have doctored the payroll to
 
embezzle that money. Once Batswin and Robbins track down the guy who picked up the checks, we’ll know which one.”

“I see one slight problem.”

I sighed. “I know. The embezzlement might have no connection to the murder. As a matter of fact, the more I think about it, the more the two seem totally unrelated. In the unlikely chance that Philomena found out about the embezzlement, why would she care? She wasn’t exactly a poster child for living a law-abiding life.”

“Given her past, she’d more likely demand a cut of the action,” said Zack.

“Which a savvy embezzler would have given her to keep her quiet and allow the scam to continue. After all, killing Philomena killed the magazine. No magazine, no payroll. No payroll, no money to embezzle.”

“Perhaps a heated argument over the size of the cut got out of hand,” he said. “We won’t know if the two crimes are connected until the police figure out the embezzler’s identity.”

Come Monday morning would I arrive at work to find a vacancy in the Human Resources Department? At this very moment Batswin and Robbins might be at the Holzer McMansion, slapping handcuffs on Nita.

“You still uncovered a crime no one else other than the perpetrator knew about before yesterday,” said Zack.

That put a smile on my face. “I did, didn’t I? Maybe I’m not so bad at this sleuthing business after all.”

“Don’t get cocky. And don’t quit your day job.”

“Wouldn’t dream of either. Anyway, if the two crimes are unrelated, I’m no closer to uncovering any credible suspects than I was before I discovered the embezzlement.”

“For all you know, the police already have a prime suspect.”

“They do. Gruenwald.”

“Have you considered the possibility that Gruenwald paid you to keep you occupied on a wild goose chase?”

“Because he feared I’d figure out he killed Philomena? Yes. Especially since he’s certain I solved the other Trimedia murders. And I’m still not convinced he didn’t kill her, probably in a fit of uncontrollable rage. The last time I saw them together was during a heated argument. Philomena made some vicious threats. Gruenwald brushed it off as just a manifestation of her passionate personality, but something about his behavior doesn’t add up.”

“Like the killer bringing the body to Trimedia?”

“Exactly. Why not dump it in the Hudson? Or the Meadowlands swamps? I also don’t see Gruenwald rappelling down the side of the building to steal the surveillance cameras.”

“Because of his age?”

“The guy is pushing seventy.” Zack whipped his iPhone out of his pocket. “What are you doing?”

“Googling Gruenwald.” He spent a minute scrolling down his phone. “The man’s built like a brick outhouse.”