Mummified Meringues (16 page)

“Having a little trouble this morning, dear?” Nans said handing her a steaming cup full of dark brown brew.
 

“Huh?” Lexy’s heart fluttered, her face flushed. Had Nans seen her rifling the drawers?

“In the bathroom … seems you were in there a while.”

“Oh.” Lexy breathed a sigh of relief. Any worries about Nans powers of observation failing in her old age were put to rest—the old lady didn’t miss a thing. “I dropped my ring while I was washing my hands.”
 

Nans raised a brow and gestured toward the dining room table, which sat just outside the kitchen. “Have a seat. Tell me about the mummy case. I’m afraid I’m a little out of touch on that.”

Lexy brought her up to speed, ending with her visit to the Sullivan’s the night before. “Mary and Paddy seem devoted to each other. Did you know Earl was trying to put the moves on her?”

Nans lips pressed together in a thin line. “Yes. Now that you mention it, I remember that. Mary was not in the least bit interested.”

“Even so, men have killed for that.”

“You’re not implying Paddy killed Earl!” Nans voice rose indignantly.

Lexy shrugged. “Have you seen them recently? Talked to them about Earl?”

“No,” Nans answered quickly. “Why, it must have been months since I’ve seen them.”

Nans words squeezed Lexy’s heart.
Was Nans lying? And if so, what could possibly be the reason?

“So, tell me about Earl. What kind of neighbor was he?” Lexy asked over the rim of her coffee mug.

“Oh, he was awful.” Nans face pinched. “He built that fence in Ed’s yard and then he kept his trash all over the back, spilling into our yard. Your grandfather was not happy.”

“Did Grampy fight with him?”

“I should say not,” Nans bristled. “Your grandfather was a lawman. He didn’t agree with having fights in the street.”

“But a lot of the other neighbors did,” Lexy suggested.

Nans straightened the napkin in her lap primly. “I guess so, I don’t really remember exactly.”

“Jack said the police talked to his landlady and she said they found holes all over his yard after he disappeared. Did you notice those?”

Nans looked up startled. “Holes? No I never did. To tell you the truth, I never actually looked in his yard … it was too messy. I always averted my eyes. I didn’t even know he was ‘missing’ really, I just hoped he’d moved out.”

Lexy nodded. She could certainly understand that with the way Earl acted. “Did you see this stranger that everyone keeps talking about?”
 

Nans looked down at the swirly coffee in her cup. “Yes, of course. Well… I saw a shadowy figure in the back yard. Right near the McDonalds’ house. I remember being worried because they were in Europe, you know.”

“Yes, I know. Which makes me wonder, if they were in Europe, how did someone get the body into their basement?”

Nans’ purse chimed, interrupting her from answering. She looked around, spotted the purse in the living room and grabbed it, pulling out her smartphone.

She squinted, then held the phone at arm’s-length, heaving a big sigh.

“It’s a text, but I can’t make out what it says.” She handed the phone to Lexy. “Can you read it?”

“Sure.” Lexy looked at the screen. “It’s Ida. They’re on their way over.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” Lexy handed the phone back. She fidgeted in her chair as she asked the question she didn’t really want to hear the answer to. “Why didn’t you just pull out your reading glasses, though?”

Nans looked around the room distractedly “I would, but I seem to have misplaced them and, try as I might, I just can’t find them in the house anywhere.”

***

Lexy didn’t have time to tell Nans she knew exactly were the glasses were, because just then the door burst open and Ida, Ruth and Helen bustled in.

“Oh, Lexy, good thing you’re here. We wanted to go to Nesbaum’s today.”

“Don’t bother, I already talked to him.” A voice boomed from the doorway and they all swiveled to see Watson Davies leaning against the doorframe.

“Did he confess?” Ida asked hopefully.

“Hardly,” Davies snorted. “He wasn’t very enlightening. I think he was fed up after talking to the Feds. Anyway, naturally he denied being involved and said the McDonalds called and told him to stop working on the basement when he was half finished.”

“Really?” Lexy turned to Nans. “Do you think that’s true?”
 

“I … well … gosh, that was a long time ago.”

Davies came into the room and pushed the door shut. “He showed me the old bill and it reflects him doing only half the job. According to the bill, the last date he was there was August thirteenth—the very day the medical examiner thinks Earl died.”

“What? That’s strange,” Lexy said. “Could he have made that bill up? The mummy case has been in the news and he had to have known you’d be coming to ask sooner or later.

“Possibly,” Davies replied. “But I have to say, it does cast suspicion on the McDonalds.”

“But they were in Europe,” Lexy said. “The Sullivan’s have proof!”

“Proof?”
 

“A postcard from Europe postmarked the day you all say Earl died.”
 

Davies crossed her arms over her chest. “Well, something funny is going on, and I don’t know who is involved.”

“That’s right,” Ruth said. “And we intend to get to the bottom of it.”
 

“I don’t think you’ll get there with Nesbaum.”

“You leave that to us.” Ida leveled her steely blue eyes on Davies. “We old ladies have ways of making people talk that you police folk can’t tap into. He might open up to us more, seeing as we’re not officials.”

“Well, I guess it can’t hurt.” Davies walked into Nans kitchen and poured herself a cup of coffee, then turned to regard them over the rim. “Have you guys found out anything new since we last talked?”

Lexy recounted her conversation with the Sullivan’s, leaving out the part about Nans’ glasses.
 

“Do you think this Paddy Sullivan character could have killed Earl?” Davies asked Nans.

“No, of course not,” Nans answered. “He’s no killer, just a man protecting his wife.”

“There may be more to this than jealousy or even this supposed insurance scam.” Davies turned her baby blues on Nans. “Mona, I haven’t had a chance to talk to you about the insurance scam. Did you know anything about it? Your old neighbor, Mr. Johnston, claims Earl had duped a bunch of the neighbors out of money.”

“I should say not!” Nans said indignantly. “Mr. Johnston says a lot of things that aren’t true. He sits on his porch and makes things up—he’s a busybody. I wouldn’t put a lot of stock in what he says.”

Lexy frowned. “Funny thing, he’s the only one who didn’t see a stranger that summer. You’d think he would have, being on the porch all the time, but maybe he didn’t sit out there back then. Anyway, I suspect Paddy Sullivan knew about the insurance scam … I got a vibe when I talked to him even though he denied it. I think he didn’t want the wife to know he got conned out of the money.”

Davies tapped a sparkly blue fingernail on her pursed lips. “Yeah, this insurance scam could be one angle. I think Earl was into something even worse, though. The Feds aren’t letting a lot of info out, but I heard from a friend of a friend that someone cut off Earl’s big toe.”

Nans gasped, her eyes wide. “What? That can’t be right.”

Ruth said, “Blech, that’s gross!”

Helen countered with a simple “Ewww …”

Ida screwed up her face and looked at Davies. “What? You mean someone cut off his toe and then killed him?”

“Yes, except it was the other way around. Someone killed him and
then
cut off his toe. It was removed post-mortem … with a pair of curly pinking shears.”

Chapter Eighteen

“Who removes a toe with pinking shears?” Ida asked later on when they were in the car on the way to the Nesbaums’ house.

Helen scrunched up her face. “You’d have to squeeze really hard to cut through bone with those. It seems impossible.”

“I think it could be done with the industrial shears,” Ruth said. “It would be similar to using poultry shears to cut chicken bone.”

Lexy’s stomach churned. “Gross.”
 

“Now, that
is
interesting,” Ida pointed out. “Because, the pinking shears point to a woman, just like the sachets.”

“But why cut off his toe?” Ruth asked.

“Who knows? Why did someone kill him in the first place? We’ll have to wait until we get to the bottom of it and then I’m sure we’ll get our answers.” Ida poked her head into the front seat. “Got any ideas, Mona?”

Lexy glanced over at the passenger seat where Nans had been silent, apparently deep in thought during the whole trip.

“None at all,” Nans said. “It’s quite baffling.”
 

“Oh, this is the road right here,” Ruth shouted from the backseat, her iPad with MapQuest up on the screen clutched in her hand.

Lexy turned down a side street. The road, although paved, was barely better than a dirt road. It looked like the town had neglected to maintain it for some time and it was pitted with divots and bumps. The ladies lurched in their seats as Lexy drove slowly down it.
 

“It should be right … here.” Ruth stabbed her finger out the window at an older brick home. A white-haired man was getting into a zephyr station wagon in the driveway.
 

“That’s him!” Ida yelled, ripping the door open and lurching out before Lexy came to a full stop.

“Yoo-hoo!” she yelled as she sprinted across the yard.
 

The man turned to look at her, his bushy, gray eyebrows drawn over suspicious eyes.
 

“Are you Bobby Nesbaum?” Ida asked breathlessly.

“Yes.” His eyes traveled warily from Ida to the rest of them, who had exited the car and were marching toward him.

“Hi, I’m Ida, and these are my friends.” Ida grabbed Lexy’s arm and pulled her in front of Nesbaum. “And this poor thing is the woman that owns the McDonalds’ old house … the one they found the mummy in.”

Nesbaum’s eyes shifted from Ida to Lexy and Lexy saw them soften. “Well, I’m sorry about that. I don’t see what that has to do with me, though.”

“Oh, I’m sure it doesn’t have anything to do with you. We know you didn’t have anything to do with it,” Ida said slyly. “But you
were
refinishing the basement at the time and I was just wondering if you could help this poor girl. Why, she could lose everything and any little bit of information would be ever so helpful.”

Lexy batted her eyelashes and tried to play the part of the maiden in need. She only succeeded in getting an eyelash in her eye, which caused her to have to blink profusely and then poke at her eye to get the lash out.

Nesbaum looked at Lexy with sympathy, but his voice was brisk. “I told the police everything I know.”

Ida leaned in and lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “We don’t trust them. Do you? We just want to make sure all bases are covered.”

Nesbaum slid his eyes to Lexy again, then sighed and leaned against his car. “I don’t think I have anything that will shed any light on the matter. Like I told the police, I only redid half the basement and I sure as heck didn’t make any secret room or hide a body in there.”

“Which half?” Ruth asked.

“The front and the side walls.” Bobby shrugged. “Okay more like three quarters. Anyway, Mrs. McDonald called before I even finished and had me stop work rather abruptly.”

“And that was in August of nineteen-fifty-five?” Helen asked.
 

“Yes. The thirteenth, to be exact. The police made me dig in my records for that date. Luckily, I keep all my invoices.”

“That must be a lot of paper.” Lexy jammed her finger into her eye to try get it to stop twitching.

Nesbaum straightened with pride. “My basement is pretty full of file cabinets, but I can find what I need quickly. I keep them in chronological order.”
 

“Why, that’s very organized of you,” Ida said. She knew just how to butter someone up and Lexy could see it was working on Nesbaum. She was actually rather impressed with Ida—normally, Nans did most of the talking, but since Nans had been mostly missing … or silent … Ida had taken over the investigation and Lexy noticed she was doing just as well as Nans would have.

“So, I guess you must have known Earl,” Ida continued. “The mummy? He hung around
The Elms Pub
, same as you.”

To Lexy’s disappointment, Nesbaum didn’t even flinch at the question. Surely, if he were the killer he would have reacted.
 

“Yeah, I knew him a little. Didn’t like him much.” Nesbaum crossed his arms over his chest. “I know how it looks, what with him being found in the wall and it covered up with the same type of plastering I do, but I didn’t have any beef with Earl. Even though I thought he was a bum, I didn’t kill him.”

Ida nodded sympathetically. “Of course not. Do you have any idea who did?”