Mom Zone Mysteries 02 Staying Home Is a Killer (3 page)

I stood there staring at the cocoa box, shaking my head. Rex scratched on the door. Automatically, I opened the door, unhooked his tether, and he bounded into the kitchen, leaving wet puddles. “What?”

“Will came home for lunch and found her. She’d committed suicide.”

“No. She couldn’t—I mean, I saw her this morning. She looked…radiant.” There was no other word for it. “She couldn’t have done that.”

Rex stopped bouncing and watched me with his ears perked up and his head cocked to one side.

“Ellie, I know it’s hard to believe. I’m having trouble believing it, too. She was quiet and kind of mousy, but she didn’t seem depressed. Anyway, Jill called me looking for you, since you knew her so well. Will’s in shock.” Abby swallowed. “He found her in the bathtub with her wrists slit. So he’s not functioning real well right now. Jill wanted to know if you knew anything about her family.”

“No. Not really. I think she mentioned Michigan once. I’ll call Jill.” Rex came over to rub against my side, apparently deciding I needed some affection.

“I’m sure the police will sort it out, but Jill wanted to try to contact the family, too.”

“Okay. Let me call her.”

While I patted Rex’s head I called Jill, confirmed that I didn’t know enough to help her, and she hung up.

I twisted the cocoa box back and forth on the counter. I couldn’t believe it. I walked back and forth across the kitchen as I reviewed my conversation with Penny this morning. She’d been happy. I was sure. I barely noticed when an icy puddle of water soaked into my sock. She’d been concerned about something, too, but only momentarily. She certainly hadn’t been depressed.

I leaned against the counter and pushed
PLAY
on the answering machine, expecting Jill’s sharp tones again.

“Ellie! I can tell you now.” Penny’s soft but unmistakably sunny voice came out of the little speaker. I felt that touch of cold again and shivered. “I’m so excited. I’d promised Will I wouldn’t tell anyone until the test was confirmed, but now it’s official. I’m pregnant! Can you believe it? I can’t. It must have happened right before Will went TDY in January. I didn’t even realize until last week. I thought I was late. I’m babbling, aren’t I? I can’t help it.” She laughed, a bubbly sound. “I’ve waited so long. I’m going to find my baby name book. Call me when you get in. We can go shopping for baby clothes.”

I put my head down on the counter and cried. The automated voice stated “Monday. Twelve thirty-four.” After I wiped my eyes, I went to the little secretary desk that my dad made for me. I pulled a stack of business cards out of one of the cubbyholes and flipped through them until I found the plain white one with small black type:
OLIVER THISLEWAIT
,
SPECIAL AGENT
,
OFFICE OF SPECIAL INVESTIGATIONS
.

Chapter Three

T
histlewait listened to the tape with his head bent, intently studying the countertop. I paced back and forth in the kitchen, tensing as Penny’s voice, light and joyful, floated through the air again, “Ellie!”

It was too hard to listen. I hurried into the living room where I’d left Livvy with a mound of pastel blocks, her favorite doll, and
Sesame Street
on DVD. She sat in the middle of the rug with her back straight, swaying slightly from side to side as she sang along with Elmo.

I returned to the kitchen, sidestepped a stack of Livvy’s miniature pots and pans, and belatedly noticed the pile of white clothes on the kitchen table waiting to be folded, the dirty dishes in the sink, and the layer of dust over everything. I got that self-conscious my-house-is-a-mess feeling and wished I’d at least picked up before I’d called Thistlewait. His tall form crouched over the answering machine, turning it in his hands.

Had I done the right thing? I could have called the police, but after last year and my contact with them during a spate of burglaries, I thought it would be too hard to convince anyone to take me seriously in the few minutes I’d have on the phone or in person.

“This thing have a tape?” Thistlewait asked.

“No. It’s electronic.” He hadn’t changed much. Same curly brown hair, same tan overcoat, but today he’d arrived wearing a wool scarf and gloves.

“I need to take it with me.”

“I thought so. Last time they took my vacuum cleaner and I still haven’t gotten it back.”

He shrugged. “Sorry about that. Evidence.” He put the answering machine down and glanced pointedly at my mug and cocoa on the counter. “Don’t let me get in your way.”

I smiled and went to make hot chocolate. He’d hardly changed at all. Last time he arrived to ask me questions about the break-ins he’d mooched our leftover dinner rolls. As I punched buttons on the microwave to heat water, I considered my approach.

“There’s no way Penny would commit suicide if she knew she was pregnant,” I said and set a steaming mug topped with marshmallows in front of him. I leaned against the counter and sipped my own.

Thislewait sighed. “Mrs. Avery.” His voice was a warning, tinged with weariness. “It is always hard to accept the death of a friend, even in the most uneventful circumstances.”

I slammed my mug down on the counter. A milky brown puddle sloshed over the edge. I usually didn’t know what to say when someone made me mad until about three hours later, but I had to let him know about Penny. I had to speak up. I gathered my swirling thoughts. “Penny adored kids and wanted her own. She’d had two miscarriages in two years, but she wanted a baby. Her doctor told her it was possible, but not probable.” He raised his eyebrow, skeptical. “They were beginning to talk about adoption,” I continued. “She would not kill herself if she knew she was pregnant.”

“Calm down.” Thistlewait finished his hot chocolate, rinsed out the mug, and balanced it gently in the sink brimming with dirty breakfast dishes. “I’ll pass the info along to the Vernon police.”

I’d learned more about law enforcement jurisdictions than I’d ever wanted to know last year. If Penny had died on base, his office, the OSI, would lead the investigation, but since she died off base the Vernon Police Department had her case.

Thistlewait continued, “There’ll be an autopsy. It’s just too early to make any leaps in judgment about her death. Maybe she had a spontaneous miscarriage or maybe she got some bad news about the pregnancy between her call to you and her death.”

I gritted my teeth at his placating tone. “Was there a note?”

“Computers and e-mail complicate things. It’ll take the Vernon PD a few days to check all the possibilities.” He held up a hand to cut off my next protest. “You were right before, I’ll give you that. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”

I heard frustration in his tone. He was referring to the death of a neighbor last year that had turned out not to be a natural death at all.

“Just don’t jump to any conclusions before the evidence is in.”

He unplugged the phone cords and twisted them around the machine. Then he wrote me a receipt. “So you’ll get it back,” he said with a straight face.

At the door he turned back to me, his voice laced with caution. “I’ll let you know what happens. The Vernon police will probably keep me in the loop as a courtesy. In the meantime, don’t get wrapped up in this.”

That made me clamp my teeth together again. I didn’t ask Penny to call me right before she died, did I? He thought I was a snoop and a busybody. But then he wiped the anger right out of me when he said sincerely, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

With the anger gone, that empty, dark feeling flooded through me again as I closed the door. Penny was gone. I clicked the dead-bolt into place and surveyed the scattered toys and the film of dust on every surface. Trivial details. Forget dusting. I’d play all afternoon with Livvy.

I’d told Mitch about Penny and he’d come home from the base as soon as he could. We’d spent the afternoon playing with Livvy and then I’d thrown together some sandwiches for dinner, but I couldn’t eat mine.

I put my sandwich back down on the plate and said, “I can’t believe Penny’s gone. Just a few hours ago I was talking to her. And she was so happy.” I felt my throat go scratchy and my eyes watered.

Mitch squeezed my hand. “I know.” He didn’t say much. All that military training helped him hide his emotions better than I could hide mine, but I could see the sympathy in his look.

“Where Pen go?” Livvy asked.

Mitch and I exchanged a look. We had to tell Livvy her favorite sitter was gone. I hadn’t even thought about how I’d do that. Parenting is like that—a three-word question from Livvy and I’m ripped out of my grief, casting about for uncomplicated answers to one of life’s most unfathomable issues.

As always, I had to parent on the fly. “Penny’s gone to heaven. We won’t see her anymore.”

“Why she go?”

The question and her puzzled blue gaze undid me. My throat prickled again and I felt the tears I’d fought off earlier seep out of the corners of my eyes. How did I answer?

Mitch said, “We don’t always know why things happen.”

“Pen no go.” She’d picked up on the sadness radiating from me and her eyes turned glassy.

I swallowed hard and wiped my checks. “I know. I didn’t want her to go either. But heaven is a nice place.” I pulled my paper napkin out of my lap and blew my nose. “There’s no crying there. No sadness. No one hurts.”

Livvy blinked hard and wrinkled her brow. “No boo-boos?” she asked, her tone laced with doubt.

“No. No boo-boos.”

She nodded slowly. “Okay.”

Mitch wiped his hand down over his face and I knew he was wiping away a tear, although he’d never admit it. “Okay. Dad’s taking everyone to Cobblestone.”

I shrugged into my coat, bundled up Livvy, and we headed out for a short drive to the trendy little café a few blocks over. It was the kind of place with a patio and umbrella-topped tables outside. Tonight the umbrellas were gone and the wrought-iron furniture looked stark and cold. I felt better as I stepped in the door where mingled smells of coffee and chocolate greeted me. “What do you want to eat?” Mitch asked.

I didn’t care. “You pick something,” I said. I found a table close to the fireplace and hooked the diaper bag over the chair. After I strapped Livvy in the high chair, I studied the watercolors and oils by local artists on the brick walls.

“Fire,” Livvy informed me, then shook her head. “No, no.” She understood playing by the fireplace was off-limits. Mitch returned, balancing thick white plates with a blueberry muffin, apple pie, and triple chocolate cake.

The bells over the door jingled and Oscar Marsali walked in with a newspaper tucked under his arm. Mitch raised an eyebrow at me and I said, “Yeah, invite him over. You can talk turkey.”

Marsali lived down the street. A widower and a retired linguistics professor, he spent most of his time powering his riding lawn mower around his lawn in the summer, whether the grass needed to be cut or not. Mitch had stopped to chat with him one day when he took Rex out for a walk. When Marsali had found out Mitch was back from a TDY to Turkey, a place that fascinated Marsali, they had a long conversation. Now Mitch stopped to talk to Marsali every few days.

Mitch waved and Marsali collected a cup of coffee, then stepped delicately, despite his squat build, through the maze of tables to ours. He dropped his newspaper, folded open to the crossword, on the table and sat down with us. “Hello. How are you on this cold night?” He removed his cap with ear flaps and ran his hands over thinning, wiry gray hair, which grew over his collar. His glasses with large lenses were popular around 1980 and magnified the bags under his eyes. Even without the cap flapping around his face, his expression reminded me of a sad-eyed basset hound.

“Fine. How’s the mall walking?” I asked, determined not to focus on my grief. Marsali was going through hobbies as fast as he could think of them. He liked crosswords, but he’d said, “I can’t do them all day. I have to find something else.” So he’d run through chess and bridge, then moved on to mall-walking.

“Boring. Container gardening is next at the senior center.”

I broke the muffin into pieces for Livvy, but she pointed to my plate. “Cake!” she demanded.

Marsali smiled at Livvy. “Ah, it’s good to be around kids. They make you smile.” He sipped his coffee. “To tell you the truth, I’m a little restless tonight. That news about Penny. It’s horrible. It’s got me shaken up.”

I blinked. Normally silent and reclusive as he was, this was major soul-baring for Marsali. He always seemed to have an underlying sadness, kind of a lost look. He once told me he missed his wife, and I gathered that he still struggled with her death, even after two years. Although he always looked melancholy, he usually didn’t mention his grief. He plowed on through his days, determined to avoid pity. “I didn’t know you knew Penny,” I said.

“Well, we do live on the same street. I used to say hello to her and William when we happened to see each other, but once I talked to them at the bookstore. They were looking at crossword puzzle books. So we talked after that. They had me over for dinner. I gave them tomatoes from my garden last summer.” His garden had been another of his attempts to find an outlet during retirement.

“That she died is terrible, but to think she committed suicide…” He buried his nose in his mug.

Mitch gave me a warning look, which I interpreted to mean, “Don’t say anything about the answering machine.”

Ah, the joys of nonverbal marital communication. I looked back at him and conveyed silently, “Of course, I won’t say anything.” Instead, I said, “I knew her, too. She used to babysit for Livvy. I can’t believe it either.”

Marsali set down his mug. “She just didn’t seem depressed at all when she called this morning.”

An Everything In Its Place Tip for Organized Closets

Before you dive into organizing your closet, take a few minutes to gather some items you’ll need:

• Large boxes or plastic bags (leaf bags work great) for throwaway and give-away items.
  
• Pad and pencil to jot notes.
  
• Measuring tape in case you decide you need additional shelving.