A Stitch to Die For (An Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery Book 5) (16 page)

“I didn’t.” He paused for a moment, then added, “It’s business related.”

“From the sale of his laundry?”

“Yeah. That. In regards to tying up some loose ends for him.”

“Wait here. I’ll see if there’s anything sitting on his desk.”

Zack stayed with Steven while I checked Lawrence’s desk in the apartment’s small den that also served as an office. I found only a laptop computer on the desk. No envelopes. No loose papers. The top of the file cabinet next to the desk held a tray marked
Bills to Pay
but no papers of any kind, bills or otherwise, filled the tray.

The remainder of the room held a low console with a flat-screen television opposite a small black leather sofa. There were no papers or envelopes sitting on either the console or the sofa.

I stared at the sofa, so not Mama’s taste, and was reminded of her brief romance with Lou Beaumont. I wondered if she’d battled Lawrence over this sofa the way she’d fought against leather upholstery for the set of
Morning Makeovers
. If so, it appeared she’d lost this latest decorating brouhaha as well.

A moment later I returned empty-handed to the foyer.

“Nothing?” asked Steven.

“No, sorry. You’ll have to come back tomorrow when Lawrence is home. He must have the papers filed away somewhere.”

Steven shrugged. “Guess so. Thanks for looking.” He tipped the brim of his Yankees cap toward me. “Nice meeting you, ma’am.” Then he turned and headed toward a black SUV parked in front of the condo. I closed the front door. The tobacco smell remained.

“You look pissed,” said Zack.

“I’m developing an extremely strong dislike toward my newest stepfather, Lawrence the Moocher.”

“Don’t be too quick to rush to judgment.”

“What do you mean? The man recently sold a successful commercial laundry. Where’s all that money? Why did Ira pay for this condo and the wedding and honeymoon?” My voice climbed several octaves as I gave way to the anger that had been growing inside me for some time. “Why am I stuck with two extra mouths to feed most nights?”

Zack placed his hands on my shoulders. “Hold on. First of all, we both know Ira has an incredible need to have people like him. He buys friendship the way most people buy weekly groceries.”

I couldn’t disagree with that.

Zack continued, “Besides, you only have Flora’s word that Lawrence’s business was successful, right?”

“True. Lawrence has never spoken about his business. I didn’t even know what he did before he retired until Mama mentioned the commercial laundry facility.”

“What if it wasn’t successful? What if he sold the business at a loss? Or had outstanding loans that ate away at all the profit?”

“Lawrence may have lied to impress Mama.” It certainly wouldn’t be the first time Mama fell under the spell of a prevaricator. Lou Beaumont had her convinced he was worth millions. What he failed to mention was that he’d lost all those millions to Bernie Madoff and his Ponzi scheme.

“Or perhaps Flora heard what she wanted to hear,” said Zack.

That certainly described Mama to a T. “Still, they’re off gambling in Atlantic City while I’m reduced to robbing Peter to pay Paul at the end of every month.” No one promised me life would always be fair, but damn, does it have to be this unfair?

Then I realized what I was doing and had been doing for days now. I hate whiners. With everything that had happened over the last few months, I’d continually fought to keep a positive attitude and not succumb to constant complaining. Karl may have kicked me down the rabbit hole into my current financial quagmire, but I refused to allow him to control me from the grave. I took a deep breath and heaved a huge sigh. “Okay, I’m going to stop whining now.”

Zack quirked a smile. “Oh, were you whining? I hadn’t noticed.”

Before leaving the condo, I scrawled a quick note to Lawrence:
Steven Jay showed up to collect some papers from you. I suggested he come back tomorrow. A.

~*~

The weather gods smiled down on me Sunday morning. Although the temperature hovered in the chilly mid-forties, the wind had died down, and the sun shone against a cloudless bright blue sky. “A perfect day for leaf raking,” I announced as my sons entered the kitchen for breakfast.

Both Alex and Nick pulled faces as they poured themselves glasses of orange juice, but they knew better than to object. However, the same couldn’t be said for my mother-in-law who had already parked herself in her chair, waiting to be served a plate of pancakes, eggs, and bacon. “I’m not raking leaves!”

“Don’t worry,” said Nick, taking his seat. “We wouldn’t want you to break your track record by pitching in to help with something.”

Lucille bristled but directed her anger toward me, not Nick. “That’s what comes from your lax parenting, Anastasia. My son never would have allowed such impudence.”

I had been about to reprimand Nick and insist he apologize to his grandmother, but I quickly changed my mind. Impudence aside, my son had spoken the truth. Lucille never lifted a finger around the house. Not that her physical condition would have allowed for leaf raking, but there were many other ways she could contribute if she had a mind to do so.

Communism might be her creed, but in practice she acted more like a Russian empress than a member of the proletariat. She sat on her rump, expecting everyone to wait on her.

I halted my egg scrambling, spun around from the stove, and opened my mouth, a sarcastic barb about Karl on the tip of my tongue. Zack stopped flipping pancakes and reached for my hand. Ever the voice of reason, he leaned toward me and whispered in my ear. “It’s not worth it.”

“I know,” I muttered, returning to my egg scrambling. I closed my mouth, shut my eyes, and inhaled a deep calming breath, letting it out slowly as I fluffed the eggs.

Like Mama, Lucille would never change. Maybe I needed to take up yoga and meditation to learn how to keep both of them from burrowing under my skin.

As soon as she wolfed down her breakfast, Lucille pushed herself away from the table, grabbed her cane, and hobbled out of the kitchen, leaving her dirty dishes for someone else to rinse and place in the dishwasher.

“See what I mean,” said Nick, making a face at his grandmother’s departing back. “She doesn’t even clear her own plate. Why do we put up with this, Mom?”

“She won’t live forever,” said Alex.

“Heck, she’ll probably outlive us all,” said Nick.

Ralph squawked and flapped his wings from atop the refrigerator where he sat observing us. “
Let not this wasp outlive, us both to sting. Titus Andronicus
, Act Two, Scene Three.”

“That’s enough.” I waved my fork at Ralph. “From you, too.”

“
Braaawk!
”

“And no heckling from the cheap seats.”
Good grief!
Was I actually conversing with a parrot?

I shook my head and turned to my sons. “Lucille is a miserable old woman. We should pity her.”

“Why can’t she go live with one of those communist ‘sisters’ of hers?” asked Nick. “She cares more about them than she does us, anyway, and I’d get my room back.”

“Because even they don’t want her,” I said.

“Huh? Aren’t they her only friends?”

“It’s a friendship based on a shared political philosophy. They respect her, but personally, I don’t think any of them like her all that much, at least not enough to want to live with her.”

“But they have a choice,” said Alex. “We don’t, thanks to Dad.”

At one time Karl had been a good father, or at least he acted like one while he carried on his affair with Lady Luck. He spent time with his kids, reading them stories, teaching them how to ride their bikes. He became a scoutmaster when they joined Cub Scouts and coached their Little League and soccer teams. He helped them with their homework and always attended parent/teacher conferences.

Sadness settled over me at the realization that their father’s deceit had shoved all those wonderful memories aside. My sons would never again think kindly of Karl. He had not only betrayed me, he’d betrayed Alex and Nick in a far worse way.

The sputtering sound of Harriet Kleinhample’s antiquated orange Volkswagen minibus jumping the curb in front of the house pulled me out of my maudlin reverie. A moment later the front door slammed. “There she goes, off to foment a revolution,” I said. “Did anyone walk Mephisto this morning?”

“He’s her dog,” said Nick.

“See if she took him with her.”

Nick left the kitchen, returning a moment later with Devil Dog in tow. “Not only doesn’t she help out around the house,” he grumbled, “Now we’re stuck taking care of her dog.”

This past summer Mephisto and I had reached a détente of sorts while Lucille was confined to a rehab facility after suffering a stroke. She considered the dog’s newfound affection for me a traitorous act and accused me of corrupting her pet. To punish the dog—not to mention me—she began ignoring him. Personally, I think Mephisto reveled in the lack of s’mothering attention. However, more often than not, the boys and I were now stuck walking him several times a day.

“Go grab some rakes and take your frustrations out on the leaves,” I said. “Zack and I will join you as soon as we’ve cleaned up the kitchen and walked the dog.”

We live in a neighborhood of older homes, built back during the Eisenhower era when New Jersey farmland was gobbled up by developers who replaced cornfields with countless subdivisions of mid-century modern split-levels and ranchers. Over the years the oak and maple saplings planted in yards more than half a century ago had grown to heights between seventy and a hundred feet tall. Every autumn those trees, along with the smaller flowering dogwoods, weeping cherries, and ornamental pears that dotted the neighborhood, shed a massive amount of leaves.

Both the front and back yards were ankle deep in brown, gold, burgundy, and rust colored leaves, all of which had to be deposited in a pile at the curb. After nearly three hours of raking leaves onto a tarp, then hauling the tarp to the front of the house and dumping the leaves curbside, we’d managed to make decent progress in the backyard. However, we still had several hours of work ahead of us.

I was about to suggest a coffee/hot chocolate break when Alex shouted, “Mom! Zack! Come quick!”

Zack and I rushed across the yard to where Alex and Nick had been raking leaves out of the shrubs alongside the fence that separated our yard from our next-door neighbor’s yard. Alex held the handle of his rake in one hand. With his other hand he pointed to the ground where the rake’s metal tines rested. Trapped within the tines, along with decaying leaves and assorted yard muck, was either an extremely lethal hunting knife or an excellent facsimile of one.

“Tell me that’s a Halloween prop,” I said, staring at the weapon.

Zack bent down to inspect the knife, taking care not to touch it. A dark, dry substance coated the exposed parts of the blade and much of the handle. “It’s real.”

“Is that blood?” asked Nick.

“Could be.” He turned to me. “Did Detective Spader mention whether or not he’d recovered the weapon from Carmen’s murder?”

“He didn’t say. Do you think this is the knife the killer used?”

“It’s certainly possible.”

“What’s it doing in our yard?” asked Nick.

“Good question.” Zack stood up, removed the handle from Alex’s grip, and gently lowered the rake to the ground. “You need to call Detective Spader,” he said to me.

I motioned for the boys to step away from the rake, as if the mere presence of the knife posed a threat to us. In some ways it did, at least a threat to my carefully choreographed day of chores.

Zack confirmed this by saying, “No more raking for now. We need to leave everything as we found it until the police arrive.”

Crap!

Fifteen minutes later Zack and I led Detective Spader to the spot in the backyard where the knife sat tangled in the rake. He crouched down to take a closer look. “Did anyone touch the knife?”

“No,” I said. “As soon as Alex realized he’d trapped it in the rake, he called us over. Do you think it’s the knife that killed Carmen?”

Spader grunted as he hefted himself upright, nearly toppling over onto his rump in the process. The man really did need to lose a significant amount of weight if he planned to reach retirement. Part of me wanted to warn him of the terminal effects of obesity, but I didn’t think he’d take too kindly to my concerns over his health. I opted for discretion, keeping my tongue planted firmly in my mouth. Spader was a grown man. He had to know he was killing himself.

“We’ll have to test the blood,” he said after pausing for a moment to catch his breath, “but I wouldn’t be surprised. What I’d like to know, though, is who have you pissed off lately, Mrs. Pollack?”

Zack stepped closer and wrapped his arm around my shoulders. “Exactly what are you inferring, Detective?”

Too shocked to speak, I stared wide-eyed at the detective.

“I’m beginning to see a pattern emerging here,” he said, and I’m wondering if you might not be the central figure that connects all the dots.”