Armed (7 page)

The roads had been cleared, making driving easy, but I took my time, which irritated an impatient driver behind me. A mile past the mannequin factory, the road opened up to two lanes. The driver sped up and passed me, but not before making his disapproval of my driving skills known.

I grew up in Indian Cove. I loved the surrounding towns that all seemed to melt into one. Sometimes I thought about moving, but deep down I knew I would stay the rest of my life. Connecticut’s size made it easy to reach any destination in no time at all. And if I felt like going somewhere more than a few hours away, I could just pack a bag and head for the airport. But right now it was Christmas and I liked nothing better than looking at all the decorations in our little town center.

After several more miles and a couple of turns, I found myself in the center of Indian Cove. The surrounding area had been built up with a shopping mall, supermarkets, and business centers, but the downtown section had remained much the same. The shopkeepers took pride in their little bit of heaven and during the holidays all the windows got decorated to the fullest.

The festivities started at Halloween when the local schools held contests to see who would paint the various shop windows. I had won one such contest in eighth grade. My design of a witch flying across the moon on her broom high above a graveyard, complete with ghosts poking out from behind the headstones, had been painted on the window at the drug store. But more importantly, it had beaten out Carla Bruggestrat’s entry. Carla always won everything but not that year.

‘Twas The Night Before Christmas, a particular favorite, had won out this year. The city center consisted of only two blocks with shops on either side. A pharmacy, expanded into a vacant shop, came first followed by several boutiques, a men’s shop, a bakery, and a small newsstand selling papers from all over the country and a few journals from Europe. A few other businesses filled the main street with the library at the corner and from there you could either turn right and go out toward some new apartment buildings and a small medical center or turn left and head for the Sound.

A pond at the top of the main street across from the high school served as the city’s skating rink. Several children whirled around on skates. It stayed cold I would have to dig out my own on Sunday.

I found a parking space and took a leisurely walk, passing the travel agent. I stopped to admire brochures advertising far away tropical islands, mentally berating myself for not traveling more. The only islands I had been to bore the names of Ellis, Staten, Liberty, and Manhattan. Not very exotic. I continued down the sidewalk to Kruger’s Grocery.

I bought a few necessities and went next door to the bakery for fresh croissants. On my way back to my car, I spied a red sweater that would look lovely on my gray-haired mother, and entered the boutique.

Two women stood by the counter and talked about the murder. A murder in Indian Cove caused a lot of concern. I edged a bit closer hoping to hear some gossip.

“Never in all my years, and heavens knows that’s a lot of years, has something like this happened,” an elderly customer said to the clerk. “I locked my back door last night. First time. Forgot all about my husband coming home. He always comes in through the back after putting the car in the garage. About scared me half to death when he tried to get in.” The woman clutched her ample chest and gave a hearty laugh.

The clerk nodded in agreement. “I’m a little nervous about letting my girls play outside. They wanted to go skating tonight, but the pond is too far for me to keep a good eye on them. I’ll have to bring them over myself this weekend.”

I wandered slowly to the display of sweaters and had picked one up when a voice startled me.

“Alex? What are you doing here?”

I turned to see Sandy Knap, the order desk manager at Poupée Mannequins.

“Sandy, hi. Merry Christmas. I just saw this lovely red sweater in the window. If I can find it in the right size I think I’ll get it for my mother. She looks so nice in red.”

“I’m so sorry, Alex, you had to be the one to find Elvira. What a horrid ordeal. It seems no place is safe anymore. I can’t believe there’s been a murder in our little town. Who could be next?” Sandy gave a small shudder. “I heard you were in the office today.”

The two women at the counter now had their attention directed toward us. I turned away slightly and lowered my voice, sorry to deprive the women of gossip, but I didn’t want to betray Mr. Poupée or the factory in any way.

“Mr. Poupée thought I might be of some help,” I shrugged, “but I don’t know.”

Sandy put her hand on my arm. “You have a great way with people. Maybe you can find out something.”

“What’s to find out?” I hinted, hoping Sandy might expound on what I began to fear—that Mrs. Scott had her enemies.

“It could have been random violence. It seems to be happening everywhere. I’m not going out at night alone until this is over,” Sandy commented in a voice perfectly audible to prying ears at the counter. “As a matter of fact, my husband’s outside in the car waiting for me.”

The two women at the counter nodded their agreement to everything Sandy said.

I turned away from the counter, pulled three sweaters off the shelf, and checked the sizes. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe it had nothing to do with Mrs. Scott. It does seem like everyone liked her a lot,” I openly prodded.

“Yes, but not by everyone.” Sandy noticed the women for the first time and took my arm and moved a bit further away from the counter. “Oh, some of the clerical staff liked her but she stepped on a lot of toes and could be a bit of a backstabber. Never to me,” Sandy added quickly, “but there are people who did not like her and truth be told they probably had good reason. Some, you might say, detested her.”

I gave Sandy my best shocked look while the elderly woman, annoyed at not getting any more gossip, paid for her purchase and left.

“There are some, like Emmanuelle, who really didn’t like her. I overheard them yelling the other day. Well, Emmanuelle did all the yelling,” Sandy said.

“Really?”

Sandy shook her full head of thick, red hair, a strand of it falling in her face. “Sorry, I didn’t hear much. Just Emmanuelle saying, ‘you better not.’ One of the designers didn’t care for her much—Mrs. Scott, not Emmanuelle. And Jerry Gagliano, the factory foreman, never said a kind word about her.”

“Jerry Gagliano. I met him today.”

“She could be a little high and mighty. After all, she did have the ear of Mr. Poupée. There are a lot of people who think they should share that privilege. You know how people can be.” Sandy folded a pair of wool slacks and put them back on the shelf. “This is a mannequin factory, for Christ sake, not NASA, but power is power no matter what shape or size it comes in.”

Just then a car horn sounded.

“My husband’s the impatient type. Gotta go. Have a Merry Christmas, Alex, if I don’t see you.”

“Oh, you will,” I raised my voice as Sandy ran out the door. “I’ll be there tomorrow and I’d like to continue our discussion.”

But Sandy had left. Another person I would have to seek out. My list of people to interrogate grew with every conversation. Was it also a list of suspects? Surprisingly, I wanted to find out—and not just to clear myself of an impending murder charge. Maybe I needed this to pull me out of my stupor: a nice little murder. I instantly felt guilty, years of being raised a Catholic ingrained in my being.

I paid for the sweater after adding a lovely scarf to the purchase, and headed for my car. Floodlights illuminated the pond for night skating. All the skaters had left except for one hearty soul twirling and jumping in the cold night air.

“So how have you been?” I asked brightly, thinking calling Peter on impulse and asking him out to dinner had been a big mistake. Despite having dated for almost two years I felt very uncomfortable in his presence but wanted to ask him about a job he had done for Poupée Mannequins.

We sat at a table at Los Tres Amigos, a Mexican restaurant that had opened about a year earlier. I took a sip of my margarita and eyed him over the rim of the glass. He was nice looking, intelligent, and a good person just not the person for me.

After we placed our orders, I jumped right in lest Peter get any romantic ideas. “I told you over the phone I found Mrs. Scott’s body. Now Mr. Poupée wants me to poke around and see if something at the factory led to her murder.”

Peter put a finger in his ear and twisted it around—an annoying habit that drove me crazy on more than one occasion. What was he looking for in there? I probably didn’t want to know. After he had sufficiently explored the orifice, he said, “I can’t imagine what you think I would know. I think he’s got a lot of nerve asking you to put yourself in the middle of it.”

“Well, I am, so that’s that,” I said, wishing I had just asked the questions over the phone. “So tell me everything you can remember about the job, the people you worked with.”

The waitress arrived with steaming plates—chicken enchiladas for Peter and cheese and onion ones for me.

“I set up their program for tracking clients and the various orders each one made. They wanted to go back and enter as much data as they could for the last twenty years but when I told them how long it would take to get all the data entered they settled for going back five. They had a lot of paper, let me tell you.” Peter blew on a forkful of rice.

“Right. I supplied several temps to input all the data but I wanted to know if you had a chance to talk with anyone. Really get to know them.”

Peter picked up another chip and dipped it in some salsa chewing noisily before answering. “One of their new employees, Monica Ballister, was a great help. Seemed like a nice girl. She told me she lived in Redding.” Peter proceeded to cut his enchilada into bite-sized pieces exactly the same size. “Weren’t you thinking of setting up your offices there at the beginning?”

“Redding. Yes, that’s right but we found the place we’re in now, and it’s so convenient we stayed here.” I wondered if anything else had gone on between Monica and Peter besides data entry—and realized with surprise I really didn’t care.

Peter continued. “Getting back to Poupée, Monica entered a lot of the data herself. She worked on the order desk. She’s very bright and a natural with the database.”

“You don’t recall meeting someone named Emmanuelle or Jerry do you?”

“Emmanuelle, no. But Jerry is the factory foreman, I think. Is that who you mean?”

“Yes. Someone mentioned neither of them liked Mrs. Scott. Did you ever notice anything like that?”

“Not that I recall. Another guy there, Richard Sheridan, seemed sneaky. But that had nothing to do with Mrs. Scott. I never noticed any interaction between them at all.” Peter shrugged. “Anyway, we got the job done.”

*****

“Jeez. You take off for the police station I never hear from you again. It’s after nine-thirty. Where’ve you been?” my very agitated sister asked.

I opened the door to my house and pushed the button to close the garage door.

“I tried calling a few times,” Sam continued, “and when I didn’t get an answer I started to worry.”

I looked at her and smiled. “You said that. As you can see, I’m fine.”

“So where were you? At Poupée’s this whole time?”

I took off my coat and walked into the kitchen. I put a doggy bag on the counter and filled the teakettle with water.

“Los Tres Amigos?” Sam said incredulously looking at the bag. “I’m thinking all sorts of terrible things and you’re out eating dinner at Los Tres Amigos.” She shook her head and then peeked into the bag.

“I had dinner with Peter.”

Sam stopped and stared at me. “You did?”

“Don’t give me that look. I needed to pick his brain about that job he did for Poupée a few months back.” I reached up into the cupboard and pulled out two mugs with a Christmas design. “Decaf or regular?”

Sam sighed. “Oh, hell, give me the regular stuff. Can’t sleep over at my house with all the smoke smell anyway.”

I smiled. “Do I want to hear this?”

Sam waved her hand. “The kids and Michael thought they’d like to make a charcoal cake for dessert.”

“A charcoal cake?” I grimaced.

Sam leaned against the counter. “Yeah. It started out as chocolate cake, but things went one-hundred percent awry, to quote my son.” Samantha’s six-year old son, my nephew Henry, liked talking in percentages.

The kettle whistled and I poured water into the two mugs.

Sam took her mug to the living room and put her tea on the coffee table. “This should be a tea table. We never drink coffee.”

I placed a plate of shortbread cookies beside the cups and sat at the other end of the sofa. I didn’t bother having dessert at the restaurant because Peter seemed to be getting the wrong idea about the evening. When the hand that had been scrounging around in his ear reached across the table to take mine, I knew I wanted to leave.

“So?” Sam asked impatiently. “Tell me all.”

I bit into a cookie. “Well, first I went to the police station. I don’t know if I convinced Detective Van der Burg or not. But at least I tried.”

“He’s pretty cute, by the way. I wouldn’t mind having a few interrogation sessions with him myself.” She raised her eyebrows several times.

“
Then
I went over to Poupée,” I said, ignoring my happily married sister who would never dream of straying from her husband. “You know,” I took another bite of my cookie, “I think something funny is going on over there.”

“How so?”

“I’m not sure. You know Mrs. Scott could be difficult at times.”

“Tell me about it. She almost bit my head off over that one invoice a few months ago.”

“Well, I think she rubbed a few people the wrong way at work, too. Now does that mean she made them mad enough to kill her? I haven’t figured that out yet but I think there are people who, once I get them started, might spill out a lot of information.” I reached for a jar of M&M’s on the end table and took a handful.