Murder in a Nice Neighborhood (16 page)

Drake cleared his throat. “Probably not. Once she’d ingested the poison, it would damage her system. She was old. Her chances weren’t good at all.”

I wouldn’t cry there in front of them. Instead, rage filled me. “Why don’t you do something, then?” Drake’s blank face and Bruno Morales’s sympathetic one were the targets of my anger. “Why don’t you get out there and find whoever’s doing this? It isn’t fair that bums and old ladies are taken out, and you can’t think of anything better to do than turn your damned bureaucracy loose on me. Why? Why would anyone kill a sweet, quiet lady like Vivien? Why don’t you find out?”

They were silent for a moment. “We’re trying to,” Drake said, pushing his glasses up on his nose. I had a momentary glimpse of those steel-gray eyes. They looked weary and vulnerable. “That’s what we need from you. The reason.”

“I don’t know it!” In despair, I sat down and hid my face in my arm. “I don’t know anything about it.”

“You knew her,” Morales pointed out in his soft voice. “You knew the other victims, too, or at least knew of them. Something links it all.”

I was barely listening. Once I got my face under control, I had a sip of the cold Red Zinger. “My class is going to need new members,” I muttered, thinking of Vivien’s autobiography ending so violently. “First Eunice, and now Vivien.”

“Someone else in your class died recently?” Drake leaned forward, his voice sharpening.

"Eunice? She was pretty feeble, too.” I glanced from him to Morales. “She was in a wheelchair, had a stroke or something. I don’t really know the details. She was doing a great job writing poetry, though.”

Once again the men exchanged glances. It made me nervous. “You don’t think I’m going around knocking off the members of my workshop, do you?” I gripped the arms of my chair. “For one thing, I need the income. If I killed everyone, I wouldn’t get paid for the workshop.”

“It’s a link.” Bruno scribbled down Eunice’s full name and went off to get some information.

“She died a natural death,” I said, scowling at Drake. “I didn’t even hear about it until after the memorial service.”

“Vivien’s death might have been put down to stroke or heart attack if it hadn’t happened around this other stuff,” he said.

“You mean, if I hadn’t been involved.” He didn’t contradict it. “How much longer before you arrest me?”

He scowled, turning away. “We don’t answer questions like that.”

Squabbling sounds came from the hall, and Claudia surged into Drake’s tiny office, closely followed by the clerk. “She insisted on seeing you, Detective Drake,” the clerk squeaked. “I couldn’t stop her.”

“Well, Liz.” Claudia treated the clerk and Drake with magnificent disregard. “Do you need a lawyer, or are they about ready to let you go home?”

“You’re out of line here, Mrs. Kaplan.” Drake spoke mildly, but the pencil he was holding snapped in two. “We’re not hot-boxing Liz. She wants to clear all this up as much as we do.”

“Well, if you have any more questions, you can ask them at my house. Liz is close to exhausted, as you could see if your glasses were any good.” The look she threw him was not friendly. “She’s not going to run away.”

“Vivien’s dead, Claudia.” I stared at my hands again, noticing a little line of dirt under my left index fingernail. “They want to find out if I did it.”

“And how would you do it, when you were assaulted yourself yesterday?” Claudia snorted. “Are you charging Liz? If not, she’s coming with me.”

There was a long silence while Drake and Claudia stared at each other. “She can go,” he said finally. “But,” he added, turning to me, “you’re not to be gallivanting around. Stay at Mrs. Kaplan’s, since she’s making herself responsible for you. Don’t go anywhere. If anything out of the ordinary happens, call immediately.” He picked up the broken pencil, looked at it as if wondering what had happened, and scrawled a phone number on a page torn from his “Far Side” desk calendar. “Don’t eat anything that arrives in the mail or as a delivery. Don’t do anything stupid.”

Claudia waved all this away. “We’ll be in touch,” she said carelessly, taking my arm. I was glad of her presence, glad she was battling on my behalf. A grayish fatigue had settled down on me, making it hard to stand and walk.

Drake came behind us down the hall. “I should lock you up for your own safety,” he muttered into my ear.

It was tempting for a moment to relinquish to him, to the system, to sit in a cell and let the process swirl around me. Then I saw myself in that little cell, and realized that I couldn’t give up, not yet, not ever. “I don’t want to be locked up,” I said, staring him in the glasses. “I would die.”

He blinked, and again I saw that uncertainty. “Oh, pour on the melodrama,” he scoffed, but he squeezed my hand briefly before holding open the door. “Remember what I said, or you just might be the next to go. And that would make me seriously annoyed.”

Chapter 25

Claudia
detoured downtown and swooped into a fortuitous parking place in front of the Golden Crescent. “I need doughnuts,” she muttered, hauling her handbag off the seat between us.

“I’ll get them.” Despite Claudia’s increased mobility, it was my job to gofer.

“I can manage to hobble ten feet to the bakery.” Claudia sounded huffy. She pushed the button on her collapsible cane and planted it firmly on the pavement.

“You shouldn’t be walking around so much. I thought the doctor said to stay off that foot.”

“I’m using the cane.” Claudia flourished it triumphantly. “Actually, I’ve grown to like the cane. Very convenient for enforcing my point of view.”

“Okay, okay.” I didn’t want to get out of the car, really. What I wanted was to crawl into my bus and hibernate for a while, away from all contact with civilization. If I couldn’t have that, the front seat of a banged-up Honda would have to suffice.

Claudia stuck her head back into the car. “Now don’t go anywhere, Liz. If you’re gone when I come back I’ll assume you’ve been abducted by the murderer, and call Detective Drake.”

“I’m not stupid,” I grumbled, making myself comfortable. “I won’t blow it. And—um, I like the buttermilk bars.”

I watched Claudia through the bakery window while she pointed to things, and tried not to think about Vivien. Next door to the bakery, the card shop had witches and goblins and pumpkins plastered all over its windows. Walgreen’s on the corner had draped its display area with cheap costumes and pyramids made from bags of candy. Halloween makes me nervous—it’s a difficult holiday for someone who doesn’t live in a house. The only good thing about it, from my point of view, is that after it’s over, the candy goes on sale. The little Milky Ways are my weakness. Vivien liked the Three Musketeers—"They don’t bother my dentures,” she’d told me once.

Try as I might to think of something else, Vivien’s gentle face and voice filled my head. I put a hand over my eyes and wished I’d stayed at the police station. Though there wasn’t much I could contribute to the investigation, something might have come up that would help. Instead I’d allowed Claudia to
drag me off and stuff me with undeserved treats. My eyes felt gritty; I thought of that bottle of painkillers the hospital had given me. Two of those and I could check out of my troubles until tomorrow. There were only ten in all—not enough for permanent sleep.

Claudia was still haranguing the woman behind the counter m the Golden Crescent. The sidewalks were full of people, a motley group of business suits both male and female, moms pushing strollers, older kids rollerblading and carrying skateboards, and a generous sprinkling of what the press likes to call the disadvantaged, some wearing clothes so ancient and dirty I could smell them from inside the car, pushing shopping carts filled with their possessions, checking out the trash receptacles along the sidewalk. I saw Old Mackie shambling along, his bottle snuggled into a paper bag in the front of his shopping cart. Weird Sam was beside him. It struck me that I was out of the loop in my community—not that I’d ever been deeply into it,
but if these murders hadn’t involved me, I’d know all the gossip about Alonso and Pigpen, what was being said on the street, how much fear of the killer was affecting my vagrant kin. I would even be a little afraid myself, if it wasn’t for being so closely involved that I was a lot afraid.

Delores Mitchell came out of Walgreen's, her nostrils looking distressed as Old Mackie wheeled past her. I sank deeper in my seat, hoping to evade her notice. It didn’t work. She stood right in front of Claudia’s car, waiting for the light to change so she could cross the street to the Federated Savings office. Glancing around impatiently while she waited, she saw me.

She smiled and came to tap gaily at the window until I rolled it down. “Hi, Liz. You’re in the passenger seat! Are you being chauffeured around? I never get to the bottom of you!”

“I wouldn’t even bother.” I tried not to
sound as hostile as I felt. Delores was chic as ever in a bright fuchsia jacket with black trim and a short black skirt that showed off her well-exercised legs. Her Walgreen’s bag banged against the side of the car and she tucked it under her arm. Through the thin plastic of the bag I could see what it contained. “Delores—Reese’s peanut butter cups? Don’t they promote cellulite?”

She laughed a little self-consciously. “For the trick-or-treaters.” Her laugh died, and she looked earnestly at me. “I heard about Vivien. You must be feeling so bad, Liz. I know how fond of her you were.”

“She was a great person.” I didn’t want to discuss Vivien with Delores, whose responses always seemed tried on, as if she was shopping for the right thing to
say.

“Well, no one lives forever.” Delores sighed heavily. “She was old. It was only a question of time.” Once more she peered earnestly at
me. “Will your class keep on? I heard they weren’t going to
give space to any group with less than ten students. How many do you have now? Maybe I could send you someone. I have a few elderly clients at the bank who might enjoy writing.”

"Thanks, Delores.” I reminded myself that grinding my teeth was bad for them. “I’ll manage.” Spotting Claudia coming through the door of the Golden Crescent, I sighed with relief. “Here comes my ride. I won’t keep you any more."

Delores looked at the big box Claudia carried. “She must be having a party. So, are you staying with her?” Her eyes rounded, and she blushed. “I didn’t mean—I meant, is she hiring you—well, I worry about you, Liz. It’s just—nice that you’ve found a place. Off the street.” She blinked soulfully at me. “Vivien would have been pleased.” Claudia, coming out of the bakery, got the tail end of a misty smile as Delores passed, her heels clicking on the sidewalk.

“Who was that?” Claudia got into the car, handing me the box.

“Delores Mitchell. She’s some kind of veep at Federated Savings. I know her from the Senior Center; she gives financial planning seminars there.”

“Mitchell.” Claudia stared after Delores’s perky, retreating figure. “Her dad must have been old Stewart Mitchell. We got our first home loan from Federated. He was quite a guy—real macho type. Died from lung cancer a couple of years ago.” She shook her head and pulled away from the curb. “I remember sitting in his office, pregnant with Carlie, and Stewart was blowing smoke rings with the smelliest cigar I ever choked on. He wasn’t thrilled when I asked him to put it out.” Ahead of us, Delores crossed the street and vanished into the Federated office. “He should have left it out.”

Inelegantly, my stomach growled. I fingered the string around the doughnut box. It was almost noon. My body was hungry, but the notion of eating repelled me. I was tired, but unable to rest. So deeply frightened I was numb.

At least that’s what I thought. But a ride with Claudia driving had a way of separating the truly suicidal from those merely flirting with the idea. By the time Claudia parked in her driveway, I was grateful still to be alive. She limped up the steps, grumbling about the moron in the BMW who’d contested the last stop sign with her. She, of course, had won. In any encounter like that, the person who wants to keep his car in one piece is at a disadvantage.

Claudia put the kettle on, and I moved around, spooning coffee into a filter, finding myself a tea bag, trying to make the world normal. When I turned back to the table, cups in hand, she had opened the doughnuts and positioned a fresh pad of paper and a couple of newly sharpened pencils in front of her on the table.

“Thanks,” she said, accepting her coffee and plopping an enormous cinnamon roll on a napkin. “Help yourself.” She took a bite of roll and picked up a pencil. “I figure we have an hour at most. So let’s get started.”

I blew on my tea to cool it. “Started with what? I thought I was supposed to take a nap.”

She shot me an impatient look. “Don’t be dense, Liz. Your policeman will be by soon enough to check up and make sure you’re playing by the rules. In the meantime, we can make some progress without getting tangled up in their ridiculous bureaucracy.” She wrote the date of Pigpen Murphy’s last encounter with the world at the top of her paper in big letters. “Now. Tell me everything. The police believe there’s a clue somewhere in your memory. We’re going to find it.”

Chapter 26

"I've read a lot of mysteries.” Claudia took the cap off her pen. I reached for my knapsack and pulled out my own little notebook. If there was note-taking going on, I wanted to be part of it.

“Mysteries aren’t like life, Claudia.” I found my razor-point and faced her across the table. “In mysteries you have red herrings and plots. Here it’s all a mishmash. If the same person is doing this, which is by no means certain, what could possibly be the link between people like Pigpen and Vivien?”

“That’s what we’re going to find out.” Claudia began making lines on her tablet. “Pigpen’s was the first death. Let’s go back to that. What exactly did he say to you that night? Maybe there’s a clue in there.”

Her obvious relish for the exercise was the only thing that made me cooperate. I was sick of it all. Murder or death—it all began to seem irrelevant. We’re all dying; some of us just go faster than others. Vivien shouldn’t have died, but she was old and had often said she was ready to go when her time came. Alonso was too young to die, but on the other hand he wasn’t making much of his life. Pigpen was simply a blot on the landscape. Was that how the murderer had felt?