Getting Old Is Criminal (5 page)

FIVE

BACK IN BUSINESS

As they sip the tea I offered them, I examine my visitors. Mr. Alvin Ferguson, mid-sixties, I think, wears a dark wool suit and tie. Prissy.

Nervous. Keeps patting what few strands of gray-ish brown hair he has across his rather bald pate.

His wife, Shirley, who looks about the same age, wears a bright, large-patterned heavy rayon dress with matching closed-toe shoes. Her hair is a mul-ticolored mishmash of gray, brown, and a bit of dirty blond. Either it’s time to get to the beauty parlor or she likes the way that looks. If Sophie were here, she’d have plenty to say about Shirley Ferguson’s style, or lack of it. And yet, their clothes appear expensive. The heavy fabrics must be stifling in our Florida heat.

“This is your office?” Alvin asks. He looks around 3 8 • R i t a L a k i n

my living room with concern. Family photos everywhere. No business equipment in sight. I could point out our answering machine in the kitchen, plugged into the same wall socket as my toaster, or our new cell phones, but I doubt if he’d be impressed. His expression reads,
This is how
you run a business?
He should see our business files, stored in a seltzer carton behind my shoes at the bottom of my bedroom closet.

“For now,” I tell him. “We’re thinking of rent-ing a regular office, but we’ve been so busy, we haven’t had time to look.”

Evvie grins at me as if to say,
Nice move!

“I like it,” says Shirley. “Very
haimish.
Instead of boring stuffy office stuff, a person can feel cozy here.” She stretches her arms out to illustrate her comfort.

I’m making a guess here—after all, I’ve only just met this couple—but I’ll bet that whatever Alvin says, Shirley will reply in the negative.

He looks at the wall sampler Bella stitched for us last Hanukkah. “ ‘Don’t trust anyone under seventy-five’?” he reads disdainfully. “This is your motto?”

“It’s just our company joke,” Evvie explains.

“Cute,” Shirley says. See what I mean?

“How may we help you?” I say, to move things along.

Alvin clears his throat. “My mother, Esther Ferguson, died on July 27th—nearly one month ago.”

Evvie says, “Sorry to hear it.”

G e t t i n g O l d I s C r i m i n a l • 3 9

“Well, she was ninety-five.”

“That’s a good, ripe old age,” says Evvie encouragingly.

Shirley jumps in. “She died in her bathtub in her apartment in the Grecian Villas retirement complex.”

That’s informative. Grecian Villas is probably one of the most expensive and elegant retirement hotels in all of Fort Lauderdale. Evvie’s glance tells me she made the same connection. She is smiling, which means she is sure that this couple can afford to pay. That’s one of the advantages about sisters knowing each other so well. We can often read each other’s minds.

Alvin pushes his teacup away. “I need to tell you up front that I’m interviewing a number of private detectives.”

There goes Evvie’s smile. We don’t have the job yet.

“Alvin,” his wife warns, “enough already.”

“Well, I need to make sure, don’t I? I can’t turn this sensitive matter over to just about anybody.

This is a serious situation.” He turns back to me and Evvie. “I think my dear mother was murdered.”

Shirley butts in quickly. “Just so you know which side I’m on, I don’t. The woman was nearly one hundred, for God’s sakes.” She glares at her husband.

“I know it was that man.”

“She was living with her lover,” Shirley reports.

4 0 • R i t a L a k i n

“Don’t call him that. It’s disgusting.”

“Well, he was! They weren’t just playing Parcheesi.” Shirley grins at me. “She called him Romeo and he called her Juliet. Isn’t that sweet? I should be so lucky to have such a romance at that age.” She gives Alvin a look that threatens it might not be him.

“Philip Smythe was taking advantage of her,”

Alvin insists. “He knew she was loaded.”

“We met him once,” Shirley says to me and Evvie. “Don’t you just love British accents? I could tell he made her happy. He really loved her. He was a saint.”

“He was stealing her blind.” Alvin’s face is getting purple with anger.

“Alvin. We went through her bank accounts. All her money was there. She didn’t marry him or leave him anything in her will. You’re crazy, carrying on like this. We were her sole heirs.”

“I know he did it! I can’t let it alone. I want justice!” Now he is standing; his collar seems to be choking him.

Shirley stands up, too. “So what’s his motive?”

She turns away from her husband and addresses us. “I’m really sorry we’ve wasted your time. We don’t need a detective. What we need to do is go back home to Seattle.”

That explains the wardrobe. Only out-of-towners wear rayon and wool.

Evvie frowns. There goes our job.

G e t t i n g O l d I s C r i m i n a l • 4 1

Alvin clenches his fists, defying her. “I say we do need a detective.”

Shirley says, “So all right, waste our money and hire these girls already. They seem nice enough. All I can say is I’m not schlepping to one more PI. I’ll wait for you outside.”

Alvin turns to us and announces, “So be it. I am formally hiring you to prove that my mother, Esther Ferguson, was murdered by Philip Smythe!”

“No fool like an old fool,” Shirley mutters as she heads for the door.

Evvie says mildly, “You’ll die of the heat out there.”

Shirley walks out, then walks back in. “You’re right.” She stands under the air-conditioning vents, arms folded. “I’ll wait right here.”

I go to my mahogany credenza; lying there in the top drawer, amid the dessert and cocktail forks, is a small stack of copies of our boilerplate contract.

Alvin takes one when I hold it out to him. “Just tell me where I put my John Hancock.”

“Are you sure, Mr. Ferguson?” I ask him.

“Don’t rush into signing with us if you need to interview others.”

“No, this is it,” he says. He signs the contract and starts to write us a check. “How much is your retainer and who do I make it out to?”

Evvie jumps right in. “Five hundred will be fine.

To Gladdy Gold and Associates.”

I’m about to comment about that amount and 4 2 • R i t a L a k i n

the fact that he didn’t even read the contract, but Evvie kicks me in my ankle.

Alvin manages a tight little smile. “I’m a man who makes decisions and I’ve decided.”

“Thank you,” I say. “Now how about another cup of tea? Please sit down again and you can fill us in on some details.”

With that, Shirley sits back down as well. She’s not about to miss anything.

As Evvie refills their cups she asks, “Have you been to the police?”

Alvin shoots Shirley a dirty look. “My
wife
wouldn’t let me.”

“And make a fool of yourself? They’d laugh us out of the station.”

I ask, “Was there an autopsy?”

Again Shirley answers for him. “What for? She fell asleep in a tub and died of old age.”

Alvin’s expression is sad, thinking of his dear, departed mother, I suppose. “They didn’t bother.”

“You could have requested it,” I tell him.

Angry looks are exchanged between husband and wife.

Evvie needs to change the subject. “So your name is Ferguson. I assumed you were Jewish.”

Alvin tells her they are. “Our family was one of those at Ellis Island who got their names changed because of poor communication.”

I smile. I’ve heard that story before. When the frightened immigrants faced the authorities asking for their names, they were so flustered, they said in G e t t i n g O l d I s C r i m i n a l • 4 3

Yiddish,
“Ich hab fargesen.”
Meaning, I forgot.

And that’s why there is a huge branch of Jews living in America named Ferguson, who are thought to be Scottish.

Evvie’s curiosity is on a roll. “What about this Philip Smythe? What a la-de-da name.”

“Who knows?” Alvin says. “Maybe Immigration changed his name, too.”

Practical Shirley chimes in, “Now you’re on the payroll, find out for yourselves. Me, I prefer to think of him as Romeo.”

From the open screen door I watch them leave down the walkway, still arguing.

Evvie looks at me expectantly. “So when do we start?”

“When the check clears, that’s when.”

SIX

THE PEEPER

D
ora Dooley, eighty-one, resident of Phase Six,
apartment 114, was doing what she usually
did late at night. She was sitting in her sunroom,
watching today’s tape of her favorite soap opera,
World of Our Dreams.
That VCR was the best
Christmas gift she’d ever received in her whole life,
and it was from her darling neighbor, Jack
Langford, after he’d learned she hardly slept
nights. It had taken Dora a while to catch on to
rewind, fast forward, and play, but she still had all
her marbles and she learned. So every morning she
watched her soap, recording it all the while, and
looked forward to watching it again that night.

And every night before she let her eyes close, she
always rewound the tape, readying it for the following day.

G e t t i n g O l d I s C r i m i n a l • 4 5

Dora was very thin, and so tiny that her birdlike
legs barely reached the edge of her worn recliner.

She wore a heavy flannel gown, wool socks, and
her favorite purple chenille robe she’d had for over
fifty years—it was still as good as new. Her warm
comforter was at the ready for when it grew really
cool.

Tonight, Dora had started playing her tape before eleven o’clock, early for her. But today’s show
was so exciting she couldn’t wait another moment
to watch it again. Evangeline and Errol were meeting for the first time in three years. Dora shivered
with excitement. She’d known Errol would hunt
for Evangeline until he found her again. He was
possessed by her. But Dora also knew from reading her fan magazines that Errol, played by Leroy
Johnson, had left the show three years ago because
the producers wouldn’t pay him the money he
wanted. But Errol was back, so they must have
settled. And that’s what Dora did now. She settled
back and pressed play.

At first she thought she was imagining things.

Dora suddenly felt weird, as if someone was staring at her. Something made her turn to the window
and her skin began to crawl. There was a shadow
out there, peering in. She squinted and realized the
shadow was dressed all in black, and wore a super-man mask! She pulled her blanket over her head,
hoping she’d imagined it and it would go away.

But when she snuck a look out of the corner of her
blanket, the shadow was still there! Oh, no! What
4 6 • R i t a L a k i n

was it doing? She saw a hand moving . . . She
closed her eyes, horrified.

Instinctively Dora reached over and grabbed
the weapon she always kept beside her recliner—

her kitchen broom. She raised it high and banged
on her ceiling as hard as she could.

“Jack!” she screamed. “Jack Langford, get
down here at once! And bring your gun!”

When she looked back at the window, the disgusting figure was gone.

Dora climbed out of her recliner, so she could
meet Jack at the door. She shivered in disgust as
she thought about what that Peeper had been doing outside her window. None of her soap friends
would ever behave in such a disgraceful manner.

As soon as Dora opened her front door, Jack
hurried in. “I just got home. What is it? What’s
happened? Are you all right?”

Dora smiled, imagining that she was one of the
characters on
World of Our Dreams.
It was nice
having a cop living in her building, especially such
a handsome and attentive one.