4 Four Play (3 page)

Detain them?

I frowned at the six-foot-two Frankie Smythe, who kept apologizing for ruining my car, and at his much shorter girlfriend Lizzie, who continued to explain that, like, this whole thing was, like, nothing she ever expected to happen, like, in a million years!

Somehow I knew it was going to be a very long night.

***

“Tea,” I said for the fifth or sixth time as Frankie repeated for the fifth or sixth time how he hoped I didn’t mind they had let themselves in.

For the fifth or sixth time I assured him I did not mind and physically steered him and his girlfriend back to my couch. I pointed emphatically, and they finally sat back down.

That herculean task accomplished, I moved on to the tea preparations.

Frankie, meanwhile, moved on to the tangent of how he and Lizzie had expected me to be home when they arrived. And how they had waited for me to come back home so they could explain. And how he had expected me to be home. And how, since I wasn’t, he wasn’t sure what to do, and so that’s why he let himself in, and he hoped I didn’t mind, but they didn’t know what else to do, and the taxi had already left, and so they decided to stay until I got home, and he really hoped I didn’t mind.

Testimony to my infinite patience, I listened. And listened. At some point, I even managed to serve tea. I calmly sipped my beverage, hoping that my own serene aspect might rub off. Lo and behold, eventually Frankie did have to breathe.

He shut up, but that only gave Lizzie a chance to get rolling. “It’s, like, all my fault, Ms. Hewitt. It was me who wanted to go out to the car in, like, the middle of the dance. We were in line to get our picture taken and I was, like, ‘I lost my lipstick,’ and, like, I thought maybe I dropped it in the car, and so Frankie was, like, ‘Let’s go look for it,’ and so we went back to the car, and that’s when we saw Ms. Jilton, and she was, like, dead.”

I was relieved she put a period there, but before I could get a word in edgewise, Lizzie was, like, talking again.

“And then Frankie, like, panicked and started running away, and I was, like, trying to keep up but I couldn’t go fast in these shoes.” Lizzie picked up the corner of her red satin dress to display her ruby red stilettos. “But then Frankie noticed I wasn’t keeping up, and he, like, stopped and by then we were three blocks from the school, and we tried to figure out what to do next. I was, like, ‘Maybe we should go back to the school,’ but Frankie was, like, panicking about your car. So, like, he called you, but you didn’t answer!”

Lizzie stopped long enough to frown, and it occurred to me Frankie only had my land line number.

I got up to check my messages as she continued, “Frankie was, like, all afraid you’d be mad at him for wrecking your car, and I was, like, ‘Why don’t we go tell her what happened in person?’ But then we remembered we didn’t have a way to get here, since, like, we didn’t think it would be a good idea to take Ms. Jilton off your car and drive it.”

She looked at me for verification, and I agreed that yes, it probably was best they had not moved the body.

Lizzie continued, “So then Frankie was, like, ‘I have my father’s credit card tonight,’ so we called the cab company and, like, neither of us had ever called a taxi before, but, like, we figured it out, and then the cab came, and we got here, but you weren’t home!”

She stopped. But it took me a moment to realize she had finished and was expecting a response.

“Umm,” I said.

***

“Elizabeth!” Lizzie’s mother shouted from my doorway. She was the last of those troops Wilson had promised me to arrive. The last, but certainly not the least.

She propelled herself into my living room as Frankie’s parents, Greg and Laura Smythe, caught my eye. “Rita Sistina,” they told me as the newcomer bounded over my coffee table and landed in front of her daughter.

Lizzie was again having trouble standing up, but her mother paid no attention to the cut of that dress. She yanked her daughter to her feet as Lizzie desperately tried to keep her strapless gown in position. But the person who would have been interested in the peep show missed it. Indeed, Frankie had moved rather quickly out of Rita’s way and was headed for the door when Wilson blocked his path.

“Sit,” he ordered. “Everyone sit,” he said, and everyone scrambled to obey.

Everyone except the cat and I. We chose to stay out of the fray. Snowflake found a spot on top of the fridge to watch the musical chairs, and I escaped behind the kitchen counter.

Greg and Laura, both as thin as their son, settled themselves into one of my overlarge easy chairs. The social worker, whose name I never did catch, ended up in the other easy chair, and Wilson and his right-hand man Lieutenant Russell Densmore grabbed the two bar stools.

Rita Sistina took another yank at Lizzie’s dress, and mother and daughter plopped onto my sofa, where Rita continued pulling and tugging at Lizzie. The girl tolerated what might have passed for a hug and stared forlornly at my front door.

Frankie was the last to sit. He shrugged at Wilson, perhaps implying there were no spots for him. Wilson pointed toward the couch, and Frankie frowned at the space remaining next to the older Ms. Sistina. The kid braced himself visibly and took a seat.

This distracted Rita from her interminable hug. She let go of her daughter to face Frankie. “What have you done to my daughter?” she demanded.

Wilson cleared his throat and insisted he would be the one asking questions. An argument ensued as Ms. Sistina pointed to Frankie and insisted she had a right to know what “this stupid goofball” thought he was doing.

“Goofball?” Greg Smythe said.

“Stupid?” Laura Smythe asked.

But Rita was only interested in the youngest Smythe. “Ms. Jilton is dead!” she said, and Frankie flinched. “Murdered!” More flinching. “On your car!”

“Actually, it was Miss Jessie’s car,” Frankie said quietly, and Rita re-directed her wrath.

“Your car!?” She glared in my direction. “What were you thinking!?”

Bless his heart, Wilson rescued me, and reminded everyone he was the one asking questions. No doubt Rita would have argued some more, but the social worker sided with Wilson. He explained the process—why the parents were there, and why he was there. “The police need to ask you some questions,” he told the teenagers. “But no one is in trouble, okay?”

“Okay!?” Rita shrieked. “Then why is my daughter under arrest!?”

“Arrest!?” the teenagers shrieked.

“No one is under arrest.” Wilson did not shriek, but his voice was loud and firm. He looked directly at Rita. “No one,” he repeated, and the woman positively glowered.

“My daughter intended to go to law school,” she hissed. “But this!” She waved a hand in Frankie’s face and raised her voice considerably. “This boy and his shenanigans have ruined Elizabeth’s chances for a career in the law. What’s she going to do now, Captain Rye? Answer me that!”

I do believe my beau the cop—make that my fiancé the cop—was at a loss for words. But Lieutenant Densmore helped him out. “Your daughter can still go to law school,” he said, all calm and rational. “She’s not under arrest, Ms. Sistina. At this point she’s not even under suspicion.”

“Suspicion!” Rita grabbed her daughter’s hand. “Your father will hear about this. Sistinas do not tolerate police brutality.”

Wilson rolled his eyes and turned to me.

“May I get you an Advil?” I asked him, and several hands shot up.

***

I chalked it up to decades of dealing with hardened criminals, but by the time I found the Advil, Wilson had actually managed to move the interview along. He and Lieutenant Densmore, with the occasional clarification from the social worker, asked questions, Frankie and Lizzie answered, Laura and Greg Smythe popped pain relievers, and Rita Sistina interrupted. A lot.

Even so, Wilson got the basic story out of the kids. And they had made it all the way to the critical juncture when Frankie had started running away from my car before Rita was back at it.

“You ran away?” she screamed. “How stupid can you be!?”

Laura Smythe shot forward in her seat. “If you call my son stupid one more time.”

“He is stupid!”

“No one is stupid,” Wilson said. “The kids were in shock, Ms. Sistina. Running away might not have been the best idea—” Laura made as if to argue, but he held a hand up to stop her, “—but many adults would have done the same.”

“At least they didn’t tamper with the crime scene,” Lieutenant Densmore said. “They could have done a lot worse. Isn’t that right, Captain?”

Wilson agreed, but the wrath of Rita sent Frankie back into apologizing mode.

He looked at me and recommenced a litany of regrets—apologizing for borrowing the Porsche, for driving the Porsche, for parking the Porsche, for ruining the Porsche, et cetera, et cetera.

I whimpered only slightly, and in my most soothing voice, asked him to please stop apologizing.

“Why are you apologizing to her?” Rita’s voice was anything but soothing. “It’s my daughter’s life you’ve ruined. Elizabeth planned on going to law school!”

“I think you mentioned that,” Greg Smythe mumbled.

“There’s no reason Lizzie can’t go to law school,” Wilson said.

“Elizabeth,” Rita corrected.

“Lizzie,” Lizzie corrected.

“Elizabeth!” Rita repeated.

“Lizzie,” Lizzie said.

“Eliza—”

“Stop!” Wilson ordered, and everyone froze. Everyone but Rita, that is. She sputtered out something about police brutality.

Wilson ignored her and returned to the kids. “Tell me about Ms. Jilton.”

Frankie and Lizzie leaned forward to get a glance of each other around Rita, shrugged in unison, and sat back.

Frankie looked at Wilson. “She was a teacher.”

“Like, our English teacher,” Lizzie said.

Wilson took a deep breath. “What else?”

“Huh?” the kids asked.

The social worker helped out. “Elizabeth and Frankie,” he said and waited until they both looked at him. “As Captain Rye has already explained, Ms. Jilton was murdered. Do either of you know anything that could help him?”

“Like, about Ms. Jilton?” Lizzie seemed truly perplexed at the notion.

“She was our English teacher,” Frankie said.

“What about tonight?” Wilson asked. “Was there anything unusual going on?”

“The dance,” Lizzie said helpfully.

Wilson tried again. “Was Ms. Jilton acting strange tonight?”

“She was a teacher,” Frankie said as if that clarified everything.

Poor Wilson gave up and spoke to Russell Densmore. “Verify the time they left the dance. And talk to the cab driver.” The lieutenant nodded, and Wilson returned to the teenagers. “You two understand why?”

They nodded mutely.

“You should have called 911,” he told them.

They hung their heads, and I remembered how hard it was to be sixteen.

***

Wilson endured one more remark about police brutality from you know who before declaring that the interview was over. Everyone seemed more than ready to leave, except for you know who.

Rita sprang up and blocked Frankie’s path. “You are not to see my daughter again,” she spat. “Elizabeth has a future. But you! You stupid idiot!”

“I told you not to call my son stupid.” Mama-Bear Smythe elbowed her son out of the way to block Rita, and I do believe the fists would have flown if Lizzie hadn’t intervened. She finally figured out how to stand up without losing half her dress, and moved quite swiftly to get between her mother and Frankie’s.

“Moooom,” she said. “Like, please stop.”

“Stop!? Your future is at stake Elizabeth Maria Sistina. I will not stop!”

“Well then, we need to leave,” Lizzie said, and the rest of us stared aghast. Had the child had actually uttered an entire sentence without one single like?

While we adults recovered from the shock, Lizzie propelled her mother out the door. Making sure to block Rita’s re-entry, she turned in the doorway. “Sorry,” she said. Her eyes met Frankie’s, and she closed the door.

Laura and Greg waited until the elevator dinged in the hallway before beckoning to their son. Frankie followed them toward the door, but remembered something, and stopped.

“Sorry,” he told me, and I made every effort not to groan.

The social worker exhibited a bit less self restraint. As the door closed behind Frankie he emitted a prolonged sigh, requested an Advil for the road, and rushed off to catch the elevator with the Smythes.

“Jimmy Beak, Superintendent Yates, and Rita Sistina.” Russell looked at his boss. “Why am I thinking the murder is the least of our problems?” He didn’t wait for an answer but headed for the exit. “I’ll meet you at the station?” he asked.

“Soon,” Wilson said, but then he caught a glimpse of me. “Sooner or later,” he corrected himself.

Chapter 4

“I have some questions,” I said the moment the door closed.

“What a surprise.” Wilson pulled the bar stools back to the kitchen counter and took a seat. Snowflake jumped into his lap.

“Let’s start with Lizzie,” I said. “I know that girl from somewhere.”

“Peter Harrison.”

“Ah, yes.” I nodded as I started the tea kettle. Lizzie was one of Peter’s piano students. My elderly neighbor, who lives across the hall from Karen, gives lessons in his condo. “I must have seen her in the lobby.”

“Yep,” Wilson said. “And Rita knew exactly where to come tonight. Lucky me.”

I thought about Rita’s winning personality. “I assume she’s divorced?”

“Oh, yeah.” Wilson informed me the Sistinas had been in court the previous year, about the same time as Ian and I were. “Their divorce was even uglier than yours.”

“Hard to fathom,” I said. “Was there a custody battle?”

“An ugly one.”

I asked how Wilson knew that, and he told me Ray Sistina is a prominent lawyer.

“Lots of cops knew Ray from criminal court,” he said. “So the divorce got discussed.”

“I thought he must be a lawyer,” I said.

“So you caught the threats about police brutality? Rita might want Ray’s help now, but during the divorce she accused him of being crooked.”

I poured the tea. “Is he crooked?”