Blackbird 10 - A Little Night Murder (18 page)

I slid into the bed, feeling almost myself. Michael had a tray on my lap in no time. A quick stir-fry of shrimp with sugar snap peas, plus a slice of whole wheat toast with butter. A glass of milk, too.

While I dug in, he went into the bathroom and I heard him brushing his teeth. When he came back, his shirt was unbuttoned and my meal was nearly demolished. He went around the room and turned off all the lights except the lamp on the bedside table.

Earlier in the day, I had sorted through some of the toys Libby had sent over, and the bed was still covered with little stuffed animals. Michael gathered them all up and dumped them back into their cardboard box. He missed one little duck, and when he picked it up, it gave a surprised quack. With the toy in hand, he climbed onto the bed with me.

“Did you make some dinner for yourself?” I asked when I belatedly realized he didn’t have a plate.

Michael kept his voice down so as not to disturb our houseguests. “Rawlins and I had hoagies before Bridget showed up.” He made a hammer of his fist and tapped his chest. “I’ve got heartburn.”

“Maybe not from just the food.” I asked, “Is your mother moving in with us?”

“No way. Look, I figured it was easier to let her stay here for a night than convince her to give herself up and talk to the cops. I’ll try talking to her again in the morning.”

“Are they still looking for her?”

“Yep. From what I hear, she’s number one on their hit parade.”

We should have been talking about the incident at the ice cream shop, but neither one of us wanted to do that now—not in our bed, where we had some time ago established a no-stress zone. In the half-light, Michael appeared worn out. The swelling around his eye looked sore. He had been taking good care of me lately, and I wasn’t keeping up my end.

He said, “Bridget says the cops are putting a real kink in her show-business plans.”

I said gently, “Michael, I don’t think she’s going to get into a Broadway show.”

“Why not? She doesn’t have what it takes?”

“I don’t know about her singing and dancing, but Ox Oxenfeld
says they need somebody with star power—the kind that sells tickets, that is.”

He cocked an eyebrow at me. “Are you going to be the one to tell her that?”

“I see your point.” I set aside the crust of my toast. I had learned so much during the day, and all the facts were starting to get jumbled. I sighed. “I should call Gus before I fall asleep. He’ll be furious if he learns I was at another crime scene and didn’t tell him all about it.”

Michael dug into his pocket and handed over one of his disposable cell phones. Then he relaxed back into the pillows, tossing the duck into the air and catching it.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Hey, it’s your job.”

I dialed the
Intelligencer
’s switchboard. It would be easier to be cross-examined by whoever was on the night desk.

I was relieved when Marty Maron picked up. He was easygoing most of the time, and he took my information calmly, saying, “Yeah, we heard some of this on the scanner. Thanks for the rest, Nora.”

I hung up. Although I had a nagging feeling I had forgotten something, I decided I had done my duty. I gave Michael his phone back and picked up the glass of milk.

Michael watched me sip it, turning the duck over in one hand. For once he didn’t make cracks about Gus. Instead, he said, “Maybe we ought to talk about your job.”

“What about it?”

“You know. About after you have the baby and the other one gets here. Maybe you should take a break.”

“I’ve got several weeks of maternity leave.”

Choosing his words carefully, Michael said, “Nora, I don’t like
seeing you so upset like tonight. Maybe staying home for a while would be good for you. For everybody.”

I swallowed the last of the milk and looked at him more carefully. He was making an effort to be steady, but his hands looked as if they were strangling the little duck’s neck.

He said, “I’m just floating the idea out there.”

“You want me to quit my job to stay home and raise our family?”

“It’s not about what I want. But it’s not a totally crazy suggestion, is it? I’ve got Gas N Grub up and running again. If we keep watching our expenses around here a little longer, we’ll be okay with one income.”

“So I should give up my career? Which I know isn’t much of a career exactly, but it—well, it has become surprisingly important to me. I didn’t expect that, but I—I feel good about what I’m doing. I can contribute to the city, in my own way.”

“Which is great. I want you to be happy. But . . .”

I put my napkin back on the tray. “But?”

Michael lobbed the duck across the room and it landed accurately in the old armchair by the window. He avoided my gaze. It took him a long time to work up the right words, but finally he said, “I’m on a learning curve here. This is all new to me. Hell, I can break up a prison-yard brawl, if I have to, but living in a real home with you—with a washing machine and a refrigerator with actual food in it and flowers on the table—I’m trying to get my head around how to do it all right.”

“You’re the one who puts food in the fridge,” I said.

“Thing is,” he said just as carefully as before, “why are we having kids if we have to hire people to look after them? Is it supposed to be that way?”

There it was, out between us. His dream for a real family meant all the traditional things—including a stay-at-home wife. Maybe it
was what I had imagined all along, too, after my upbringing in the rarified world of inherited money. But now . . . now my ideas were different. And not.

I set the tray on the nightstand. “We haven’t talked about child care. Not really. We’ve joked around it a little. But nannies and babysitters and day care—if we don’t go that route, one of us has to make some big sacrifices.”

“I don’t want you sacrificing anything,” he said at once. “If one of us has to give up something, it should be me.”

“Why?”

“Because,” he said stubbornly.

My heart warmed again. He wanted to hang on to what we’d already created together, no matter what the cost. “If we’re going to fight about this,” I said, “you’re going to need a better argument.”

“I don’t want to fight. But can you manage three kids on your own? I know you’re good with Libby’s kids, but . . . I don’t think I can. Three little ones is a lot to handle.”

“We won’t have three children,” I said gently. “Noah isn’t ours, Michael. He’s going back to his parents soon. And this time maybe he’ll stay there.”

Michael stretched out on his back on the bed. He put his hands behind his head and looked at the ceiling, saying nothing.

“We can’t take Noah from Hart,” I said with more emphasis.

He didn’t respond.

I sighed and touched my forehead, wishing I could massage some easy solution into my brain. “I suppose I should quit my job. It would only be for a few years. After that, I can start over again. Maybe. If the newspaper still exists.” I could hear the doubt in my own voice. Was I ready to make the sacrifice of my own budding career? Another issue was that I still had my parents’ enormous tax debt to pay off. Could I let Michael shoulder that financial
responsibility for me? Was it fair for my problem to become a burden for him, too?

“It could be a lot of years,” Michael said before I could formulate that discussion. “I’m thinking we’re going to have plenty more kids.”

I smiled and laid my hand on his chest to feel his heartbeat. “Me, too. And we’ll make it all work. Somehow.”

He sent me a grin. “I’m not kidding. Four, six, eight. More? I’m thinking we could have a football team if we put our minds to it.”

I figured I might as well say good-bye to my slim self forever, but I indulged him and asked, “What if they’re all girls?”

“A softball team, then.”

We smiled at each other, and then Michael rolled over and gathered me into his arms. One hand slid down to my belly, and he fondled Baby Girl. She was sleeping, though, and didn’t kick. As for me, it felt good to be in his arms again.

His touch changed, and he tugged at the frilly hem of my borrowed nightie. In my ear, he said, “This thing is pretty sexy.”

“I don’t feel very sexy these days,” I replied, snuggling back into the curve of his lean body. “Mostly, I feel like the winning pumpkin in one of those state fair competitions—you know, the big, lumpy gourd that can only be moved by a forklift. Emma called me Humpty Dumpty tonight. And it’s been weeks since we . . . well.”

“Emma has a lot of guts to make wisecracks. At the end, she was the size of a hippo, but she looked fine a couple of months later. You’re not a pumpkin. And . . . I didn’t think you were interested.” He kissed my neck with slow attention. “I don’t want to hurt you. Either one of you.”

I smiled. “I don’t think that’s possible. Wait—what are you doing?”

With his other hand, he untied the ribbon at my shoulder, and
Libby’s nightie began to fall apart around me like a magic trick. He murmured, “You’re really not in the mood?”

I tried to catch the last remnants of frilly lace before I was completely exposed. “Your mother is right down the hall.”

“We’ll be quiet.”

“Michael—”

“We haven’t been communicating lately. You’ve been worrying about Lexie.” He eased me over onto my back, his touch trailing appreciatively down to my breasts. “And I’ve been thinking too much about— Wow, these are different. I’ve been missing out.”

When his warm mouth found my breast, I gave in and wound one arm around his shoulders. I slid my other hand to cup the back of his head. If he didn’t mind my size, I didn’t either anymore. We hadn’t reached any conclusions about our coming family, but I didn’t feel like hashing out the conundrum now. Sometimes it felt better to communicate without words. I closed my eyes and sighed.

An hour later when we were both dozing off, Michael’s cell phone chirped on his side of the bed. He rolled over and grabbed it before the sound woke anyone else. He swung out of bed and took the phone into the bathroom. I heard him muttering to someone as he opened a bottle of Tums and shook out some tablets.

He came back to bed a minute later, shutting off the phone.

“Who was calling?” I asked. “The police?”

“No.” He opened his palm and offered me an antacid as he slid back into bed. “Little Frankie.”

“Your brother?” I couldn’t keep the startled tone out of my voice and came fully awake. “That’s all we need now.”

“Go back to sleep.” Michael tucked me against him again. “Maybe everything else is falling apart, but I’ve got Little Frankie under control.”

I crunched the tablet and went back to sleep eventually, but I was aware that Michael lay awake for a long time. He was restless, and I knew he was thinking. About his bad brother? About our family? The crime wave in Bucks County?

Or about his mother?

N
oah woke me in the morning with a boisterous yell. Michael was already doing his best Elvis impression in the shower, so I hurriedly slipped into my vintage Parisian bathrobe and went across the hall to attend to the baby. He was standing up in the crib, gripping the rail. When he saw me, his face split into a wide grin and he reached both hands for me.

I scooped him up and changed his sopping diaper while talking a lot of nonsense. He was happy to listen and kicked his chubby feet to make me laugh. I carried him downstairs and held him on my hip while warming a sippy cup of milk. When I put him in the borrowed high chair to drink it, I noticed a note had been slipped under the back door. It was written in Emma’s scrawling hand.

“She must have come to feed her ponies before dawn,” I said to Noah.

Spent half the night talking with the cops. None of them were cute. You okay? Call me.

I called Emma’s cell phone while mixing Noah’s cereal. I got her voice mail.

“I’m fine,” I told her. “Thanks for looking after me last night. Next time you come over, you should stick around for breakfast.”

When Michael came downstairs, dressed in his go-to-Mass shirt, he gave Baby Girl a good-morning caress, then pulled me into his arms, dipped me low and kissed me while I laughed. Noah watched us as if mesmerized.

“Any sign of my mother?” Michael asked, setting me on my feet.

“Would things be this quiet if she was awake?”

“Good point.”

The three of us ate breakfast together in the cool kitchen. Then we took the baby outside to pick strawberries in the early-morning sunshine—me in my bathrobe, probably looking like a pregnant royal consort. From the crook of Michael’s arm, Noah pointed out the rabbits that were busily decimating the sugar snap peas. I picked a bowl full of berries while the hem of my robe sucked up the dew from the grass.

Michael gave Noah a green pepper, and the baby threw it. Michael picked it up, and Noah threw it again.

“We’ve got a left-handed pitcher here,” Michael called to me.

I watched them play their game. To my eye, Noah had a pretty good arm.

From his new enclosure on the other side of the peony border, Ralphie made longing noises. Our pet pig had grown to at least five hundred pounds, and he had broken out of every pen we’d built to keep him from rampaging all over the farm. His rooting had made a terrible mess of the lawn, so we had called a professional to build a sturdy corral out of steel and heavy-gauge wire mesh. We kept him penned up except when Michael took him for daily strolls in the pony pasture.

“I think this pen might hold him,” Michael said, keeping an eye
on Ralphie while the pig inquisitively nosed every bolt and bar for signs of weakness. He wanted his chance to chase the green pepper Noah was throwing.

“If it doesn’t, we’ll have to seriously consider sending him somewhere else.”

Michael gave me a shocked stare. “Get rid of Ralphie?”

“He’s not exactly a safe pet for children. And he’s really starting to smell. Maybe he’d be happier at a zoo.”

Michael frowned. “Maybe some barbecue restaurant needs a mascot. He’d make a good mascot, don’t you think?”

Ralphie gave a long, loud pig snort as if to veto the idea. He was happy here with us.

I heard the phone ring inside the house and carried the bowl of strawberries into the kitchen to answer it. Out the window, I could see Michael and Noah throwing the green pepper over and over.

In my ear, Gus Hardwicke began to curse a blue streak.

I gathered he was furious that I hadn’t phoned him personally with my information about discovering the nurse’s body. In no mood to be verbally abused, I hung up. Upstairs, I heard the shower running. Bridget was awake.

Half a minute later, the phone rang again. But when I answered, it was not Gus, but Lexie’s voice on the line.

“Sweetie,” she said, sounding tense, “something’s brewing at the Tuttle house. The police have been crawling all over the place like ants at a picnic! And there’s yellow crime scene tape everywhere.”

I told her about my misadventure with Emma and our discovery of Boom Boom’s dead nurse.

“Dear, sweet heaven!” Lexie cried when I had described the events of my brief detecting excursion. “The nurse is dead? How did she die?”

“It looked like a heart attack,” I said. “But of course the police think she was murdered.”

Lexie gasped. “Do you think she suffered?”

“I’m pretty sure it was quick,” I said.

At once, Lexie turned sympathetic. “What a shock for you. Sweetie, I’m so sorry you had to see that.”

“To tell the truth, seeing the dead body wasn’t the worst. You wouldn’t believe the wall of pictures Jenny had put up in her music room.” I told Lexie about the collage of defaced photographs of Boom Boom.

“What do you think it means?” Lexie asked.

“I think Boom Boom is lucky Jenny died first.”

Shocked all over again, Lexie said, “You think Jenny wanted to kill her mother? Calling Dr. Freud!”

“It was very clear she hated Boom Boom.”

“I’ve been known to make a wisecrack or two about my mother, but I never really— Oh Lord, there’s someone ringing my doorbell. And yes, it’s probably a police officer. I can see him through the window. No doubt he wants to know if I saw a villain fleeing across my lawn last night. I’ve got to go. Listen, have your groom call me later, will you, please? I need more information from him.”

“Lexie, wait!” I had a sudden vision of Hostetler, Gus’s snoopy reporter, finding his way to Lexie’s front porch.

But she had hung up already. I redialed the number, but she didn’t answer. While her phone rang, the bell on our security gate went off. I went to the window and peeked out. I didn’t recognize the car idling at our gate, so I went to the console and pressed the intercom button. “Yes?”

“Miss Blackbird? It’s me. Poppy.”

Poppy Fontanna? Here?

When I didn’t respond, she said, “Poppy Fontanna. From
Bluebird of Happiness
? Boom Boom sent me.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well, uh, come in.”

I pushed the gate button, and it opened to allow a nondescript
compact car to pass through. Behind it pulled a state police cruiser. The first car wavered to a stop on the lane, and a spritely figure popped out. She practically danced like a woodland nymph across the lawn to the front porch, swinging a tote bag as if it were a leprechaun’s pot of gold. Warily, I opened the door to her. The police cruiser proceeded to the back of the house. I figured I’d let Michael cope with that problem.

Bouncing up the steps, Poppy smiled brightly and waved at me with all the enthusiasm of a newfound best friend.

“Nora! That’s your name, right? I thought I’d stop by this morning and give you this banana bread! Fred baked it. He bakes all the time. It’s a stress reliever. I got this one out of the freezer.” She pushed past me into the house, handing over what felt like a brick wrapped in aluminum foil. “I heard you had a terrible shock last night while we were at rehearsal.”

“Uh—”

“We wanted to make sure you’re okay. You’re okay, right? You look okay. Wow, what a lovely robe. You look like Christine in
Phantom
. That is, if she had a bun in the oven. Or a dozen buns. You’re
really
pregnant, aren’t you? Do I smell coffee?”

“Yes, but—”

“This is some house.” She spun around, looking up. “It’s like the set of
Jekyll and Hyde
. Very atmospheric. Unless that chandelier is going to fall down on us; then it’s totally
Phantom
. Ha-ha! Kidding. How about some coffee? We could be just a couple of normal girlfriends having a chat.”

Poppy seemed to have forgotten that the last time I’d seen her, she’d threatened to call the police to get rid of Lexie and me. This morning she was as cheery as . . . as an actress hoping to win some free publicity.

“Poppy, if you’ve come looking to score a mention in my newspaper column—”

“You have a column?” Her eyebrows disappeared up into her wig, and she popped her eyes wide enough to be seen from the cheap seats. “How fascinating! Oh, look, a piano! Do you play? I brought some music, if you’d like to hear me sing. I could use a good accompanist. Would you like to see me dance, too? I brought my shoes. I bet you could take some great pictures for your newspaper!”

The next thing I knew, I was pouring coffee and Poppy Fontanna was pulling on her tap shoes and thundering around my kitchen table like a madcap chorus girl. I peeked out the window in time to see Ricci climb out of his police cruiser and walk over to Michael in the garden, where Noah was still throwing things.

With a shine of perspiration starting on her face, Poppy stopped dancing long enough to open her large tote bag and pull out sheets of paper. “I can give you my whole résumé—here. See? All the Tuttle shows I’ve ever done, plus some regional theater and a couple of off-off-Broadway things, but you can skip those. They were stinkers. Not my fault, though. And here’s my head shot. What do you think?”

“Very nice.” I looked at her photo. She looked like a Muppet.

While she continued to sell herself to me, I opened Poppy’s offering of banana bread and discovered a frozen lump that didn’t look very appetizing. If Fred was baking to relieve tension, he was still very tense.

“I started out in a road show of
Annie
.” Poppy continued reciting her accomplishments. “I played one of the orphan girls, and it was a magical beginning to my show-business career. Next I was in
Peter Pan
and then— Should you be taking notes?” she asked with a frown.

“How about I ask you about the new show?”

She perked up again. “Sure! What would you like to know?”

I pushed a cup of coffee into her hands. “Tell me about Boom Boom.”

Her face fell. “Oh, she’s had enough publicity to last a lifetime. Me, though—”

“First, tell me when she turned blue.”

“You noticed that, huh?”

“It’s hard to miss. What happened?”

“A while back, Jenny got excited about food supplements instead of eating actual, you know, food. She gave some to her mother.”

“Why did Boom Boom turn blue, but Jenny didn’t?”

“What do I look like? Dr. Oz?”

I assumed Jenny had deliberately used the supplements to sabotage her mother’s career. “Tell me about Boom Boom’s relationship with Jenny.”

Suddenly cautious, Poppy sank into one of the kitchen chairs. She mustered an angelic smile. “They loved each other, of course.”

I sat opposite her. “We both know that’s not true. Jenny’s gone, and there’s a good chance Boom Boom won’t ever set foot onstage again—making way for you to star in the next Toodles Tuttle musical. You have no reason to hold back information. So how about telling me the truth? What was really going on between those two?”

Poppy’s smile broadened at my mention of her stepping into the lead role, but she tried to gain time to think by sipping coffee. I could see her debating a way to improvise the scene. At last, she gave up and said, “They hated each other. To the rest of us, it was pretty clear it was only a matter of time before one of them murdered the other.”

“You think Boom Boom killed her daughter?”

Poppy shook her curls. “That’s not what I mean. For years,
Jenny and Boom Boom argued about dieting. Boom Boom always yelled at Jenny for being fat. Started her on pills, sent her to the doctors who helped her get skinny. That’s how Boom Boom stayed thin, too—pills. Plus they were both on heart and blood pressure medications—different prescriptions. And the supplements! The two of them popped pills like crazy. Sooner or later one of them was going to screw up and die.” When she saw my puzzlement, she added, “That’s why Higgie came to live at the house. After Boom Boom turned blue, it was obvious she needed help. Higgie’s job was keeping all their pills straight.”

“Boom Boom and Jenny got their pills mixed up?”

“Often,” Poppy said.

“But the nurse ended up being the one who died.”

“I know! Crazy, right?”

“Was Miss Higginbotham taking pills, too?”

“How should I know? Higgie needed to drop some weight. Maybe she figured she could help herself to Jenny’s diet pills now that Jenny was gone. But she died instead.”

“By accident?”

“Sure! Happens all the time. That’s why I don’t take any unnatural substances. My body is a temple.” She regained her butter-won’t-melt smile. “No sugar, no meat, no drugs. I do like a double martini once in a while, though. And if anybody tries to talk me out of it, I can show ’em a thing or two.” She held up a fist.

I decided not to argue with her. “Okay, tell me about the boy in the photograph.”

“The boy in the newspaper?” Her face closed like a trap door. “I’m not—I don’t know anything about that.”

“You’ve known Jenny for a long time, though, right? Your whole career? Did you know her when she was pregnant?”

“Pregnant? Jenny? Are you kidding me?” Poppy laughed unattractively. “That’s not possible.”

“Not possible?”

“Jenny never had a boyfriend. Not ever. With all the rest of us girls around, why would anybody look twice at her?” Unfazed by her own nastiness, Poppy added, “It’s not like she was pretty or even very nice. She was a total grump most of the time—and completely obsessed with the shows. She worked, that’s it. No boyfriends, no kids.”

“I thought—well, it seemed to me that at least Fred was fond of Jenny.”

Poppy’s eyes turned to ice. “If he was, I’d have kicked his ass all the way to Chicago. Fred was
my
partner. He’s still mine, and nobody else’s. Maybe they were friends, just a tiny bit, but nothing else.”

“Okay, my mistake,” I said, backpedaling hastily. “But why do you think Jenny was carrying around a photograph of a little boy?”

“All I know is it wasn’t her kid. We’re a company, a theater company. Do you know how close a company works together? And we’ve been together for years. Oh, we had a revolving door of actors and musicians that rotated in and out, depending on the show, but the core group—that is, Fred and me and Boom Boom and Jenny and Toodles—we were really tight. There was this one time I went on the road to do the revival of
The
Sound of Music
—believe it or not, I was a really good nun—but while I was gone, everybody else was working on a Toodles show, and they would have noticed something as obvious as Jenny being pregnant. Here, I’ve got pictures of me in my nun suit. Want to see?”