Lye in Wait (9 page)

She folded her thin arms over her chest. "Okay, I'm Debby. And
this is-"

"Jacob," Meghan and I said together.

"What, are you two a coupla psychics or somethin'?" Jacob
asked, but the joke fell flat. His questioning eyes knew something
was wrong.

"Don't be stupid. Walter told them about us, is all."

Jacob shook his head. "Nuh uh. I don't think so, Debs. Somethin' happened to Walter, or he'd be here. Is he in the hospital or
somethin'?" He directed this last to me.

I looked at Meghan and took a deep breath. "I'm sorry to have
to tell you this. Walter died the day before yesterday."

Debby put her hand to her mouth. Her eyes filled with tears,
and she made a gurgling sound. The blood drained from Jacob's
face.

"Would you like some water?" Meghan asked.

Jacob, who had seemed paralyzed by the news, now frowned at
her words. "Water? What good would that do?"

He helped Debby to the dark-red sofa, where she folded into a
shuddering heap, wrapping those skinny arms around herself.

"I told you something was wrong when he didn't show," she
said to Jacob.

He perched on the arm next to her. "How'd he die?"

Before I could say anything, Meghan spoke. "There was an
accident."

Debby raised her head. "What kind of accident?" she managed
to get out.

"Well, uh, it was poison," I said.

"Poison? By accident?" She looked back and forth between us.

I was silent. Meghan pressed her lips together.

"You two know more than you're telling me," Debby braced her
hands on the sofa seat as if readying to launch herself at us. "What
happened to my Walter?"

My Walter? The phrase-and the way she'd said it-evoked an
image that made my mind reel.

"He drank it," Meghan said.

Jacob's brow wrinkled. "What was it?"

"Lye," was my short reply.

"He drank Drano? Ohmygod." Debby wrapped her pale arms
around herself again and rocked back and forth. The sofa bumped
gently against the wall. "I can't believe it. He'd say that, sometimes,
but I never thought he'd do it."

"Do it?" I looked at Jacob. His eyes were red and his hands
trembled. "Do what?"

He looked down at the woman. Took a wobbly breath. "Kill
himself. With Drano."

"He told you he was planning to drink drain cleaner?" Meghan
asked.

Jacob patted Debby's shoulder. "Nah. Not like you mean. He
used to joke about it. You know, like when someone says `If suchand-such happens I'm just gonna shoot myself,' only he said he'd
drink Drano. We never thought he was serious."

"Especially now," Debby said, almost too low for us to hear. She
fumbled in her purse, extracted an orange prescription bottle. Suddenly Jacob changed his mind about the water. He hurried into the
kitchen, came back with a glassful, and helped her to hold it steady
as she gulped down the little white pill. Liquid sloshed down her
chin, but she didn't seem to notice.

"Why especially now?" I asked.

Debby sniffed, a horrible gurgling sound, and stuck out her
hand like a paw to be shaken. On her third finger, a sizeable diamond glittered amid a circle of smaller ones.

"We were gonna get married."

HOLY cow. As I tried to wrap my head around that one, Meghan
walked over to admire the ring. Debby thanked her and snorted
wetly.

"It must have been expensive," Meghan said.

I joined them. Up close, I saw Debby was older than I had first
thought, probably in her late fifties. Hard to tell with the mascara
streaking down her face. She'd kept most of her figure, but her
blue-black hair came from a bottle, and the years had engraved
a healthy set of lines. The extreme pallor seemed to be her natural coloring, and I wondered for a moment whether her real hair
color had been red or even a whiter blonde than my own.

"Yeah," I said. "That's a nice ring. Must have set Walter back a
bit."

Debby nodded. "He said he wanted to get me a big diamond,
and then he went and actually did it." She said it like she wasn't
used to people following through on what they said.

"Well, at least you got that, Debs. You got that t' remember him
by." Jacob's words had a bitter edge to them. His face held sorrow,
but as he gazed at the woman beside him on the sofa there was
something else as well. He reached out and brushed a strand of
hair out of her face. She pushed his hand away.

"We're so sorry," Meghan said.

He nodded and fished a crumpled bandana out of his pocket,
handed it to Debby. She honked into it.

"I don't know how to ask this," I said, "so I'll just come right
out with it. Do you know anything about the investment Walter
made that turned out so well?"

"Investment? Oh!" Jacob's smile looked tired. "The money.
He'd call it that sometimes, if he talked about it at all."

Meghan and I waited.

"OF Walter won the lottery a few years back. So's I guess the
investment he told you 'bout would be the ticket."

"Well, it's nice he spent some of it on that beautiful ring," I said,
trying to bring Debby back into the conversation. All it earned me
were fresh sobs, which Meghan's glare told me I deserved for trying to extract information from a grieving fiancee.

"He spent precious little, I dare say. Gave it all away to strangers, when he coulda done some good with it amongst people right
here." Jacob looked at Debby as he spoke.

She dug the heels of her hands into her eyes and hiccupped.
"He didn't like anyone to tell him what to do with his money."

"How much did he win?" Meghan asked. Okay for her to do it,
I guess.

"Don't know for sure. A whole shitload. And then he went and
started giving it all away," Jacob said.

"All of it? Wow," Meghan said.

He looked away and shrugged, his eyes darting to the woman
beside him again. "Don't know if he was scrapin' bottom yet, but
he was workin' on it."

"Any idea why?" I asked.

Debby turned her wet face to me. "What do you care?"

"Just surprised, I guess. He still did work for us on a regular
basis and for other people in the neighborhood. From what I can
tell, he didn't really have to, or he wouldn't have had to if he'd kept
his winnings."

Neither of them spoke. The silence lengthened. Meghan broke
it.

"There will be a memorial service at Crane's Funeral Home on
Monday at two o'clock."

A stubborn expression crossed Debby's face. "Moved kinda fast,
didn't you?"

Meghan sat down beside her on the sofa. Our eyes met and an
unspoken understanding passed between us. "Not really. He died
on Thursday. We didn't know you'd want to be involved, and his
mother wanted to go ahead with the service."

Debby snorted. "His mother. Right. Didn't care much when he
was alive, did she?"

"Will you come?"

"'Course we'll come," Jacob responded for them both. "Debby
here's just a little overwhelmed by all this. We wouldn't miss Walter's send-off for nothin'."

Meghan scanned the woman's pale face. "Debby?"

"I'll be there. It would have been nice to have a say in things, is
all, seeing as how I was his fiancee"

"Well, there are a few details to work out yet. For example,
we haven't chosen hymns yet, and no one has selected a cinerary
urn.

"Hymns. Right. Like I know anything about hymns. And what's
a ciner ... cin ... whatever you said?"

"It's where you keep the ashes after someone is cremated."

"Oh. So the old bat wants to burn him up, is that it? Figures.
She always said he was going to hell."

I doubted those were her exact words, but perhaps Tootie had
understated the schism between Walter and herself.

"She said he was claustrophobic as a child and wouldn't want
to be buried," I said.

"Oh. I didn't know that." She looked around. "But you can't
just come in here and take all his stuff."

Meghan said, "Right now we're just boxing up some things
for the Salvation Army, and whatever mementos we thought his
mother might want to keep. Is there anything here you want?"

Debby got up and walked to the set of shelves we hadn't started
on yet. She picked up the signed baseball and turned it in her hand.
Her face crumpled. Jacob scurried to her side.

Meghan said, "This'll wait. We can put it all on hold until after
the funeral."
"

I think that'd be best," Jacob said and led Debby to the door.
She went through, fingering the leather of the ball and sniffing
loudly, but he turned in the doorway. "I want to know how you
knew who we were."

"The barista down at Beans R Us told us you were friends of
Walter's," Meghan said.

"Oh," he said, and looked to his left, into the kitchen. "That
where he did it?"

I tried not to sigh. "No. Not there."

He looked hard at me. "Where then?"

"In my workroom." I swallowed. "Across the alley."

"Jacob?" Debby's tiny voice drifted in from the front sidewalk.

He licked his lips, like he wanted to say more, then suddenly
turned on his heel and walked out. Meghan closed the door, looking grim.

"I know, I know," I said. "But what did you want me to do? I
couldn't lie, and besides, I didn't want to. Walter didn't have very
many friends, and I'm not going to lie to the few he did have just
because the truth is uncomfortable for me."

"Well, it's not like how Walter died is a secret."

"At least now we know where Walter's money came from. And
that he had a fiancee-can you believe it?"

"She's something, isn't she?"

"I noticed you didn't exactly warm up to her," I said.

"I was nice."

"You were very nice. You're always very nice. But something
struck you funny about her, didn't it?"

"Something, yeah. It did you, too. Something about the lottery
money?"

"I'm not sure. I got kind of mixed signals from her."

"Not the best time to try and get a read on someone, right after
they learn their fiance has died," Meghan said.

"And we know of one possible problem Walter could have had
besides the money."

"What're you talking about?"

"Jacob, of course. Walter's rival for Debby's affections."

Meghan looked skeptical

"Didn't you see the way he looked at her?"

"That doesn't mean he was a rival."

"Doesn't mean he wasn't, though, does it?"

"You don't have to look so happy about it."

"Sorry. Have we done enough for now? It's almost time for
Sparrow, isn't it?"

Looking at her watch, Meghan ran her fingers through her
curls. "You're right. I have to get back" She looked around the
room. "We said we'd leave it until Debby could help, anyway."

And the paperwork was already over at our house. I had two
or three days to sort it out for Tootie, though I had to wonder how
helpful it would be if I couldn't find a will. I'd hoped to discover
where Walter's money was coming from, but now we knew. Still,
the boxes might contain an insurance policy or other financial information. And I wanted to take another look at those donation
receipts.

I hesitated, then grabbed the open carton of mementos I'd collected so far. Tootie should look at them first and decide what she
might want to keep, since I was here at her request. Debby could
have second crack at them. Meghan locked Walter's door, and we
walked back across the alley to our house.

THE LIGHT ON THE answering machine blinked; Detective Ambrose had returned my call. As I punched in the number for the
police department, Meghan laughed.

"You look like you're about to take a spoonful of cod liver oil."

I grimaced. No doubt she was right. The thought of speaking
to Ambrose made little fluttery things flap around in my stomach.

This time I didn't get the good detective's voicemail. The man
himself was on the other end of the line in less than ten seconds.