Coming Unclued (17 page)

“I was hoping you wouldn’t be able to recognize me,” I replied.

“You said, ‘It’s Val’ so that helped,” said Rose. “The cut isn’t too bad. Shame about the color. Makes you look a little peaked.”

I eased past Rose and shut the door. “Why do you have a dresser in your hall?”

“Protection. I’m blocking the door. There’s a killer on the loose.” She lifted her cane and started thumping back down the hall. “And if he’s targeting old folks in this building I want to be prepared.”

“Have the police been by here?” I asked her.

“Not since that first time,” said Rose. She turned and squinted at me. “Why? What have you done now? Oh Lord — you didn’t find another one did you?”

“Another what? Dead body? No, only the one so far.” Honestly, what did she think? Finding a corpse in your bed is hardly the kind of thing that becomes a pattern. “I’m on the lam,” I said. “They came to arrest me but I did a runner.” All of a sudden I’m talking like Al Capone.

“Oh for Heaven’s sakes,” said Rose. “Whose bright idea was that? Bambi’s?”

“Bam — Heather doesn’t even know. It was an impulse. I’m not sure if I made the right decision but I know if I get arrested they’re not going to be looking for the real killer. Someone has to.”

“So the police are hunting for you and you’re hunting for the killer? Tea?”

“Yes and yes. I’ll make it.”

“Oh sit down. I’m not infirm yet.”

I pushed aside some books on the couch and plunked myself down. I heard Rose shuffling around and then the clang of a pot hitting the floor. “A date with Johnny Depp?” she called.

“I wish,” I said.

Rose poked her head out of the kitchen. “You wish what?”

“I had a date with Johnny Depp.”

Rose was silent for a moment as she digested my comment. “What I said was, ‘do you have a first step?’ How exactly are you going to go about finding this killer? Why on earth would you think I asked if you had a date with Johnny Depp?”

“Okay. Sorry, it was noisy. I misheard you. I don’t know the first step. That’s why I’m here. You read all those mysteries so I thought you could tell me what to do. I realize now that you could be an asset to the investigation.”

Rose shook her head and muttered under her breath as she headed back into the kitchen. I dug around in my purse for the plan of attack Julie and I had written up. My hands started shaking as I looked at it. Still only a few words and not the first idea of how to go about finding a killer. Was I kidding myself?

“Val, come help me carry out the tray,” called Rose. “I found some Oreos.”

Rose settled into her favorite chair with a sigh and picked up an Oreo. She carefully separated the two sides, discarded the plain side of the cookie onto the tray and daintily nibbled on the icing side like it was a delectable open face sandwich. “Is that your plan?” she asked. “Good. Writing things down is good. It helps you organize your thoughts. Let me see what you’ve got.”

I reluctantly handed Rose the piece of construction paper. She took a little bite of her cookie and carefully wiped off her fingers before taking it from me. “Pass me my reading glasses would you honey?” she asked. “I’m getting to the point I can’t read a street sign without them.”

“You’ll probably be able to read that,” I said as I passed her the glasses. “It’s just a kind of cursory outline. I haven’t cemented all the details yet.”

Rose put on her glasses and pulled them down on her nose so she could peer at me over the top. “Well you’d better get cementing. There’s no time to dilly dally. The police could come barging through that door any minute. If they do I want you to go jump in my laundry basket. They won’t want to go digging around in an old lady’s unmentionables.” Rose gave a little cackle and took another bite of her cookie as she adjusted her glasses and looked at the paper. She stared at it for a long moment as she chewed, and then took her glasses off, folded them carefully and put them on the table beside her.

“Your freedom is on the line and this is all you could come up with?” she asked, waving the construction paper at me. “Well this is just brilliant. A child, a two year old, could have written this. I’m surprised you didn’t use a crayon.”

“As I said, it’s only a preliminary stab at getting things going.”

“So while you’re sitting on your thumb, without a thought in your head, the entire Toronto police force is going to be out looking for you?”

Sitting on my thumb? “I’ve hardly been sitting on my thumb. I’ve been strategizing this whole thing and I haven’t had a chance to get it down on paper. Right now, as we speak, Julie is talking to the cab companies to find out if someone else was with me. That is real progress.”

Rose pursed her lips and glared at me. “Well that’s good, but what else are you doing? You can’t waste a minute. Tick tick tick, that is the sound of your freedom ticking away. Got it? Pass me a pen.”

God, she was a bit of a cow. A bitter old cow. Heather was right about her. “Did you put up that tree in the lobby?” I asked as I passed her a pen.

“Yes I did. Here it is five days before Christmas and except for my Poinsettia there wasn’t a thing in that lobby to signify it,” said Rose. “I bought it on Craigslist for twenty-five dollars and the nicest fella delivered it and set it up for me. All for twenty-five dollars. I offered him a tip but he wouldn’t take it. Just the friendliest man. A wee bit simple if you know what I mean but nice as can be. Single.” She gave me a look. A significant look.

“I’m not looking for a wee simple man. Not just now.”

“I don’t know that you’re in the position to be so fussy,” said Rose. “Cheers up the lobby don’t you think?”

“Very festive. Are you allowed to do that? Just put up a tree?”

“I am the chairman of the condo board. I can do as I please. Oh I’m sure it’s got Bambi’s knickers in a twist. Too low class for Miss High Falutin. Little Miss thinks she’s the abattoir of good taste.” Rose pointed the pen at me. “You tell her if she knows what’s good for her she’ll keep her scrawny claws away from my tree.” She picked up her glasses and started writing on the piece of paper.

“What are you writing there?” I asked.

“I am writing a plan of action for you,” said Rose. “What evidence do the police have? Why are they arresting you?”

“You mean apart from the body?”

“There’s nothing definitive about a dead body,” said Rose. “Doesn’t mean a thing. It could happen to anybody. Have you talked to your lawyer? If they’re arresting you they must have some hard evidence. Forensics, that kind of thing.”

“Well my fingerprints were on the murder weapon, the kitchen knife, from when I had a slice of that banana bread I made because you like it so much and I was going to bring you some” — not that I was blaming Rose for my troubles — “And there was no sign of forced entry. They seem to think that means something.”

Rose chewed on the end of the pen for a moment, deep in thought and then grimaced and pulled her upper plate out, dipped it in a glass of water on the end table and stuck it back in. “Take it from me Val. Don’t take your teeth for granted. I just got a new plate and I might as well have a hockey puck in my mouth, that’s how comfortable it is. Now I get why folks walk around without any teeth.”

“I floss pretty regularly.”

“Good girl. You won’t regret it. Who else had keys to your place?”

“Just Evan, but he lost them a while ago. So nobody, really.”

Rose started fiddling with her plate, using her tongue to move it around. I hoped she wasn’t going to do that every time she needed to think. It was making me queasy watching her teeth pop in and out of her mouth.

“I’m just going to take this out for a while,” said Rose, popping her plate into the water glass. “You don’t mind do you?”

“No, that’s fine.” It wasn’t fine. Gerontology obviously wasn’t the field for me. I could cross that off my list of potential professions. “I really can’t stay Rose. I just wanted to drop by and see if you had any suggestions to get me started.”

Rose wiggled her jaw around and opened her mouth in a huge yawn. Her tonsils looked healthy. “That feels better. Bit of oxygen to the brain. Look honey, I don’t want to be cruel, but you investigating a murder is like that little simple Christmas tree fella going to Harvard. You’re in over your head.”

I was hardly in over my head. “Nobody says simple anymore. Not in reference to someone’s intelligence.”

“What do they say?”

“Mentally challenged. Developmentally delayed.”

“Well I don’t know that that’s any better, but if it makes you happy. You investigating this murder is like a mentally challenged developmentally delayed woman who if brains were lard wouldn’t have enough to grease a pan, doing brain surgery. That better? You have no clue. Do you even have any idea how much danger you’re in? If the police think you’re a cold-blooded murderer they’re not going to be asking you a whole lot of polite questions if they see you on the street. They’re going to be drawing their guns and you’d better hope no one gets trigger happy.”

The getting killed by the cops thing again. I could be shot in the back while I was peaceably going about my business.

“It’s so unfair,” I whimpered.

“Oh grow up. Life isn’t fair. Deal with it. I’ve buried six dogs and two husbands. Cremated the last one actually. His ashes are around here somewhere and for the life of me I can’t find ‘em. I should have sprung for that overpriced urn. Is your fella being buried or cremated?”

“How would I know?” Really. “What do you think? You think his wife is keeping me apprised of the funeral plans?”

“No need to get snippy with me Missy,” Rose said. She gummed the pen for a little longer, wrote something else down on the paper and then settled back on the couch with another half Oreo. She was going to eat it without her teeth in. How much more was I expected to take?

“Love or money,” said Rose as she used her upper gum to break off a piece of the cookie. “That’s pretty much it. You get your occasional random crazy or serial killer but nine times out of ten it’s love or money. You’ve got to go back to the source, the deceased, and figure out who would want to slaughter him in his sleep. You gotta figure it was either someone he was having sex with or someone who would gain financially from his death. Now given that he was a somewhat wizened fella of questionable appeal, I’d be devoting more time to the money angle.” Rose popped the rest of the Oreo in her mouth and looked at me for a response.

“There’s his wife,” I said. “There must be life insurance. And I don’t know, maybe somebody at work might benefit.”

“Good, good,” said Rose. “Can’t imagine that the police have looked at either his wife or his business partners.”

“Are you being sarcastic?” I asked her.

“Yes I’m being sarcastic. You’ve got to dig deeper. Someone knew he was with you; this person managed to get into your condo without any sign of forced entry and they — could be a him, could be a her — hated him enough that they used a knife.” Rose took a dainty sip of her tea and picked up a cookie and mulled it over before putting it back on the plate. “Now the way I see it a knife is personal. It’s someone with a personal relationship. A gun — a stranger would use a gun — but someone who uses a knife that’s different. That’s more a crime of passion. The killer wants to watch that blood gushing and see the agony in the victim’s eyes as he takes his last breath.”

“Mr. Potter was stabbed in his back in the dark.”

“Whatever. Trust me, this was personal.”

“When I was at the office the other day, Angie, the receptionist, said she knew where all the bodies were buried. I thought at the time that was kind of an intriguing statement but I didn’t have time to pursue it. Actually, I’m just remembering it again.”

“That is interesting,” said Rose. “Very interesting. Unless you worked at a cemetery.” She gave a little snort. Nothing amused Rose more than her own witticisms. “Where did the deceased live?”

I wished she would stop referring to Mr. Potter as the deceased. “Forest Hill.”

Rose put her pen down. “Well why didn’t you tell me? Forest Hill? For sure he’s a crook. They’re all crooks up there.”

“I don’t think living in Forest Hill automatically means you’re a crook. That’s a little prejudiced don’t you think?”

“Crooks. Every one of them. And you can get down off your high horse. It’s not prejudiced, it’s the truth. No one spends three mill on a house without being a crook. Now we just have to find out who wanted the old crook dead. Okay. Try this. Who is the second person you think of if you’re trying to figure who knifed him? Not the first. The first is his wife and it isn’t always the first. Quite often it’s the second person, just to kind of throw you off. You think it’s them and then they do something so you think maybe it isn’t them, but guess what? Turns out you were right in the first place. So who’s the second person you’d think of if you’re trying to figure who’d want to off the little guy? … what’s his name … Breath?”

It made me very uncomfortable, her disrespect for the dead. “There’s Douglas. He’s the VP at the office. I’ve never trusted him.”

“Why?”

“There’s just something about him. Well he doesn’t like me for starters. He’s kind of slimy. He always has a tan and in the summer he wears white linen pants and those espadrille shoes. There’s something not right about him.”

“I’ll put him down,” said Rose. “He’s got motive. Where’s he live?”

“Rose the police must be looking for me and for sure they’re going to check out this building. I should get out of here.”

“Don’t worry honey. They won’t get past me. I know how to deal with the likes of them. Anyways, you need to get to work investigating this Douglas fella. I don’t like the sounds of him. He seems just the type. Is he married?”

“Divorced.”

“I figured. Find out if Mr. Fancy Pants is getting biblical with the deceased’s wife. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised. That’d be your motive in a nutshell. Love and money all wrapped up in one slimy, white trousered parcel. What’s the widow like? Attractive?”

“Very. I mean for someone who was with Mr. Potter she was extremely attractive.”

“Well there you have it.” Rose put down her pen, picked up an Oreo and dunked it in her cold tea to soften it up. She then gummed off a chunk and gave me a tight-lipped smile of satisfaction. “There’s your answer Val. I always say, nine times out of ten the obvious killer is the killer. Now, of course, you’re the obvious killer so you have to look somewhere else and you get the wife and then a little further and you’ve got Fancy Pants. You just have to set to it and pin it on him. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if the widow wasn’t involved too. I know her type. Gets her lover to do the dirty work. I’ll bet you she dumps him as soon as all the fuss dies down. She’s not going to settle for a two-bit grifter like him.”