Definitely Dead (An Empty Nest Mystery) (10 page)

“You surprised me,” said Blake a moment later as we pulled away from Charlene Koltchefsky’s home, her granddaughter standing in the street, staring after us. “Encouraging her like that.”

“She might’ve been able to help us.”

“But you don’t trust her.”

“With good reason. Been there. Done that.” My husband spent too much of his career fending off the advances of aggressive coeds.

Blake chuckled as he stroked my thigh. “You do realize you have nothing to worry about, don’t you?”

I leaned over and kissed his cheek. “Hmm.” Unknown to Tiffany, she already had two strikes against her if she had designs on my husband. Along with hating cheats of any kind—academic or marital—Blake never could shake his childhood fear of needles. I needn’t worry that he and Tiffany would walk off into the sunset with matching pierced tongues. And Tiffany didn’t strike me as a woman who’d give up her human pincushion obsession for the love of a good man.

“Not that I want to tempt fate,” I said, “but if Tiffany has computer talents that could help solve the mystery of Not-Sid’s death, shouldn’t we see what she can dig up?”

“No, we should not,” said Blake. “We’re not dragging some innocent kid into this mess. It’s bad enough I have to worry about you receiving visits from thugs posing as Feds.”

“Talk about jumping to conclusions,” I said. “You don’t know they’re thugs.”

Blake gave me
The Look
. “What else would they be? Encyclopedia salesmen? Besides, if Tiffany were that good a hacker, how come I caught her?”

“She didn’t hack your computer. She copped a few papers off the Internet and cobbled them together. You caught her because you have a photographic memory and have read every word ever written on the subject.”

Blake frowned. “Doesn’t matter. She was just trying to wheedle her way out of that F. Anyway, whose computer would she hack to find info on Sid? We already know he’s not who he said he was. Without knowing his real name, how could she find out anything that you or I couldn’t find? It doesn’t take a hacker to do a Google search.”

Blake had a point, and Tiffany had an ulterior motive that I suspected had more to do with having the hots for her hard-ass hunk of a professor than erasing an F. However, she struck me as the devious type, totally untrustworthy but capable of ferreting out all sorts of secrets. “If she can help solve the mystery of Not-Sid, I think we should take advantage of that help,” I said.

Blake shook his head. “I don’t believe you’re sticking up for a coed with the hots for me.”

“I’m willing to put up with her if she can help us.” For a limited amount of time. And never, under any circumstances, would I leave Lolita alone with my husband—no matter how much I trusted Blake.

Not that it mattered since Blake had made up his mind. If I wanted Tiffany’s help, I’d have to do it behind his back.

SEVEN

“Where to now?” asked Blake, diverting the conversation away from Tiffany. “It’s getting late.”

I took the hint and consulted my list of Not-Sid’s dates. “Kitty Pichinko lives in Plainfield. We can squeeze a visit in with her before we have to pick up Mr. Klingerhoff.”

Blake muttered something under his breath at the mention of Mr. Klingerhoff, probably due to our destination later in the afternoon, but it was Kitty Pichinko’s hometown that raised an eyebrow and put a scowl on his face. “Plainfield?”

“Not all of Plainfield has turned into gang-infested slums,” I said. “There are still some nice neighborhoods.” I rattled off the address as Blake punched it into the GPS. A minute later we headed west on Route 22.

Kitty Pichinko was one of several women I had introduced Not-Sid to a couple of weeks ago at a VFW seniors mixer in Cranford. Not-Sid always zeroed in immediately on the women with large casabas. Kitty Pichinko, although not much to look at, given her frizzy dishwater hair, crooked nose, and stocky stature, had the requisite casaba cup size. Not-Sid rarely looked past the melons.

Kitty lived in a neighborhood where fifty and sixty-year-old ranchers, split levels, and cape cods shared acreage with a sprawling two-story brick garden apartment complex of the same era. Although in need of some TLC, the neighborhood didn’t qualify for slum status by a long shot. “She’s in Building Three, apartment B,” I said.

Blake pulled around to the parking lot at the back of Building Three. After hoofing it to the front of the building, we found Kitty Pickinko lugging a full bag of groceries up her front steps. “Mrs. Pichinko, let me help you with that,” I offered, coming up behind her.

She turned to stare at me. Puzzlement clouded her features. “Do I know you?”

“Gracie Elliott. We met several weeks ago at the VFW mixer. I introduced you to Sidney Mandelbaum.”

Recognition dawned. “Oh, yes.” She handed me her groceries. “Thank you, dear.”

I passed the bag to Blake as I introduced him. “May we speak with you for a few minutes?”

“I have to get my groceries into the fridge, but you’re welcome to come in.” She fitted her key into the outer door. Once the lock disengaged, Blake held the door open for us to enter.

We stepped into a foyer in dire need of new carpeting, a fresh coat of paint, and brighter wattage light bulbs. With only a few minor tweaks, the description might also apply to the drab Kitty Pichinko who wore a threadbare ivory cardigan over a faded coral polyester pantsuit that couldn’t possibly have been fashionable even back in the seventies.

Two doors, one marked A, the other B, stood on either side of a central staircase that I assumed led to apartments C and D. Kitty turned right and slid her key into the first of three locks on door B. After disengaging each of the deadbolts, she pushed open the door.

The eye-watering, nose-dripping odor of mothballs smacked me full force. I tried not to gag as Kitty ushered us through a spotless but spartan living room, so devoid of personal items that it looked more like a circa nineteen-sixties hotel lobby, into an immaculate but starkly impersonal kitchen. The complete opposite of Charlene Koltchefsky’s “more is better” decorating style, Kitty Pichinko apparently subscribed to the Mies van der Rohe philosophy of “less is more.” Or more aptly in Kitty’s world, perhaps the reigning decorating anthem was “least is best.”

I glanced at Blake. Behind Kitty’s back, he rolled his equally watery eyes and mouthed, “Make it quick.”

Meanwhile, Kitty appeared immune to the stench. Maybe the mothballs had burned out her olfactory glands and tear ducts decades ago.

As she unloaded her groceries and began placing them in her refrigerator, I explained the reason for our visit.

“Oh, my!” she said when I mentioned that Not-Sid had died. “And he seemed like such a healthy gentleman. I suppose you never know when your time will come, do you? My dear Charlie went like that. Here one moment, gone the next.”

“In Sid’s case, his time came well before it should have, Mrs. Pichinko. Sid was murdered.”

Kitty dropped the grapefruit she’d been about to place in the fruit bin. Her jaw dropped, and the color fled from her face. Blake took hold of her elbow and guided her into one of the circa nineteen-fifties chrome and yellow vinyl kitchen chairs while I bent to retrieve the errant grapefruit from under the table. After closing the refrigerator door, I grabbed a glass from the drain board, filled it with tap water, and placed it in Kitty’s hands. She stared at it for a moment before taking a tentative sip.

“How did it happen?” she finally asked.

I gave her the Cliff Notes version, sparing her the gruesome details.

“The streets are no longer safe,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t dare go out alone after dark anymore.” She heaved a huge sigh. “I’d move tomorrow, but with the economy the way it’s been...well, who knows how long I’ll even have Social Security and Medicare with the way things are going?”

As delicately as I could, I explained how I didn’t believe Sid was the victim of random violence. “I’m trying to find out if his dates may have some information that might lead to the identity of his killer.”

Kitty’s eyes narrowed. “Why on earth would you think I’d know anything about that man’s killer?”

Blake placed a comforting hand on her age-spotted forearm and offered her an expression filled with the kind of comfort and understanding that makes women of all ages want to swoon at his feet.

Gracie bad cop. Blake good cop. Whatever worked.

“What my wife means, Mrs. Pichinko, is that perhaps Sid might have said something to you at some point that could be a clue. Perhaps he mentioned something about business associates, relatives, neighbors? Someone he’d had problems with recently?”

Kitty took another sip of water, clenching the glass so tightly that I feared it might shatter in her hands. “What about the police? Will they question me?”

“Yes,” I said, “they have a list of all Sid’s dates.”

What little color remained in Kitty’s face quickly drained away. She slammed the glass onto the table, sloshing water over the lip and onto the yellow gingham oilcloth table covering. “I don’t want to get involved with the police. You tell them I don’t know anything.”

“I realize the police can be intimidating, Mrs. Pichinko, but they have to do their job. I’m afraid I can’t keep them from questioning you.”

“Then why are you here?”

“I thought if I spoke with you and the other women, you might feel more comfortable discussing Sid with me. I’m hoping you’ll remember something that could prove helpful in the investigation. Do you remember any of your conversations with him?”

She shook her head.

“He didn’t speak about anything personal when you went out with him?”

“He hardly spoke at all. And we never went out. He came over. We had tea. He left. I never heard from him again.”

Odd. Not-Sid pulled a disappearing act on Sylvia Schuster and zipped in and out of Kitty Pichinko’s life in about a nanosecond. Yet he took Charlene Koltchefsky on several dates where he either scammed or tried to scam her out of the cost of dinner. Maybe Not-Sid suffered from multiple personality disorder.

Before taking our leave of Kitty Pichinko I warned her about the phony FBI/detective duo of Remick and Craft.

Her eyes once again grew wide with fear. “Do you think they’re the killers?”

“We don’t know.”

Kitty pulled a pad and pencil from a drawer in her kitchen table. “What were their names again?”

“Craft and Remick.”

She wrote down their names.

“Remember,” I reiterated as we stepped from her apartment. “Only speak with Detective Loretta Menendez. Don’t allow two guys named Remick and Craft into your apartment, no matter what they tell you.”

She waved the paper at me. “I’ll remember. Thank you for coming, and I’m sorry I wasn’t more help.”

Blake and I gulped fresh air the moment we stepped out of Building Three. “No wonder Not-Sid only sipped tea and made for the exit as quickly as possible,” I said.

“Or maybe his quick exit had nothing to do with mothballs,” said Blake.

“What then?”

“Kitty Pichinko wasn’t worth the bother?”

“She had certain physical features Not-Sid deemed important in a woman.”

“Frumpy?”

“Sort of Rubenesque.”

Blake rolled his eyes. “She didn’t have the requisite
Rubenesque
bank account to match, judging from where and how she lives. I’m beginning to think your Client Number Thirteen was more interested in money than female companionship.”

“What about Sylvia Schuster? She’s living in an expensive senior facility. She’s got to have money. Why’d he pull a disappearing act on her? He certainly didn’t have time to learn her money is tied up in a trust or doled out by concerned family members or whatever.”

Blake mulled this over as we hiked around the building to the parking lot. “I don’t know, but something’s definitely not adding up. Your Sid was up to something, something that got him killed.”

As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t argue with Blake’s analysis of the facts we’d uncovered so far. Not to mention the appearance of two phony law enforcement officials. Perhaps once we’d interviewed all of Not-Sid’s dates, we’d have a clearer picture of what he was really after and who dispatched him to Saint Peter’s early bird special at the Pearly Gates Cafe.

~*~

Rudy Klingerhoff’s children worried about him. Ever since his wife died last year, Rudy had settled into hermit mode. His three adult kids, deciding he needed female companionship to draw him out of his self-imposed exile, had purchased a Relatively Speaking gift certificate for him. After much arguing, Rudy reluctantly agreed to partake of my services to get his kids off his back.

However, Rudy refused to let me take him anywhere other than to bowling alleys. Rudy loved bowling, both playing and watching others play, either at local alleys or on TV.

As it turned out, this didn’t prove as much of a problem as I initially anticipated. Thanks to my good friend Google, I discovered that New Jersey is populated with vast numbers of senior bowling groupies. Who knew little old ladies love little old men with big shiny balls?