No Way to Kill a Lady (11 page)

A bumper sticker had been stuck to the dashboard. It read:
MODEL TRAINS ARE AMERICA'S HOBBY!

“Just what is happening?” I asked. “I have a right to know what I'm being charged with.”

“Button your lip, missy.”

“I will not,” I snapped. “Stop the car this instant.”

“Pipe down,” he ordered. “Or I'll charge you with resisting arrest.”

“I haven't resisted in the slightest! It's you who's resisting telling me what this is all about.”

“I'm an officer of the law. I don't have to tell you a thing.”

If the whole situation hadn't been so annoying, I might have been amused. I felt as if I'd been kidnapped by one of Santa's elves. “See here. I know a thing or two. You have to read me my rights.”

“What rights?”

He paused at a stop sign, which gave me a second to look around. I happened to see a real police cruiser across the intersection.

I screamed. “Help! I'm being kidnapped!”

Behind the wheel of the cruiser, I recognized Deputy Foley, the handsome officer who'd driven my sisters and me to Quintain. His crew cut and adorable pink ears made him unmistakable. When my abductor drove through the intersection, the deputy pulled out behind us. He hit the siren, which
whoop-­whooped
twice.

“Goshdarnit,” my kidnapper muttered. He pulled over to the curb and parked.

Deputy Foley appeared at the window a moment later. He leaned down. “Aw, Pee Wee, what the hell are you doing?”

The old man slumped down in the driver's seat. “I haven't done her any harm.”

Foley peered into the backseat and blinked. “I know you. You're one of those crazy Blackbird sisters.”

“I'm not crazy,” I said. “I'm being kidnapped.”

“Your sister is crazy,” he replied. “She telephoned me last night. I could hardly get rid of her. Pee Wee, you can't go around grabbing women off the street. You know that.”

“I didn't grab her.”

“You did, too!” I cried. “He handcuffed me.” I tried to twist around to show the deputy my situation.

Foley groaned. “Aw, for crying out loud.”

He opened the door and helped me out. “Hand over the key, Pee Wee.”

Reluctantly, the old man produced a small key, and Foley unlocked my handcuffs. “There,” he said. “No harm done.”

“No harm done?” I spun around, almost sputtering with rage. “You're going to let him go?”

“He's harmless,” Foley assured me. “He retired from the force a long time ago. Look, miss, driving around his old patrol route is good for him. And he keeps an eye on things for us. With all our budget cuts lately, we can use his kind of help.”

“He wasn't helping anybody today.” I rubbed my wrists. “He grabbed me out of the Super Fresh parking lot!”

The radio on the deputy's shoulder crackled. He reached to touch a button on the device and listened to a squawky voice for a second. When the squawking ceased, he said to me, “Look, Miss Blackbird, I've got things to do. Pee Wee probably thought you were up to something, so he put you in his car to calm you down—­”

“I was completely calm! Until he arrested me!”

“He'll take you right back to the Super Fresh, I promise. Won't you, Pee Wee?” Foley leaned down to glare into the car again. Pee Wee looked down at his lap, lower lip protruding in a pout.

Firmly, I said, “I'm not getting back into that man's car.”

“He'll let you ride in the front seat,” Foley promised. “C'mon, I've got another call. You'll be fine, Miss Blackbird. If you can handle being around that sister of yours, this guy is a piece of cake. I gotta go. Pee Wee, you apologize to this nice lady, okay?”

Foley jogged back to his cruiser and waved good-­bye.

If it hadn't started to rain, I'd have walked back to the grocery store. But a few cold drops hit the pavement around me, blown on a gust of wind. In a minute my hair was going to get wet. So I stormed around the front of the old man's car and got into the passenger seat. I slammed the door.

“Are you going to apologize?” I demanded.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, head down.

“What do you want with me in the first place? Or do you just go around grabbing whoever strikes your perverted fancy?”

“I'm no pervert!” He flushed. “I had personal business with you.”

“What kind of personal business? Just who are you, anyway? Surely your name isn't really Pee Wee.”

“Peter McBean,” he said. “Retired New Hope PD.”

I had a soft spot for retirees, and I felt my anger start to deflate. “How long have you been retired?”

“Twenty-­two years,” he reluctantly replied.

I gave Pee Wee McBean a more careful perusal. If he was telling the truth, he'd been a police officer back in the day when departments didn't have height requirements.

“What's your personal business with me?”

He sulked for a while longer. Then, still glaring out the rain-­spattered windshield, he finally sighed. “It's about Madeleine Blackbird.”

That caught me off guard, and I couldn't hide my surprise. “Aunt Madeleine? What about her?”

“She died, didn't she?” he asked gruffly.

“Yes, in Indonesia.”

“The newspaper said she died in a volcano.”

“That's what we understand, yes.”

“Is that for real?”

“I have no reason to doubt it. The volcano erupted last week, but we only learned about Madeleine recently. May I ask how you knew her?”

“My wife,” Pee Wee said suddenly. “My wife worked for Madeleine Blackbird. She traveled with her.”

Suddenly I realized Pee Wee McBean was struggling with his composure. His belligerent tone had turned hoarse, and his face was dark. His bushy eyebrows were drawn into a glower, but there was a distinct quiver in his chin.

I almost reached out to touch him. “I'm so sorry,” I said. “You haven't heard from your wife since the catastrophe?”

“My wife was Madeleine's maid, her driver, her companion—­her everything! I have a right to know if—­”

“Hold on a minute. Your wife is Pippi?” I was astounded. “She was married to . . . you?”

“Dang right. Why should that be such a big surprise?”

“I can't . . . I never realized—­good heavens.” I was flabbergasted by this development. “I had no idea Pippi was married.”

“We got married when she first came to town,” he said gruffly. “We met right there at the supermarket. She told me there was some mix-­up, and she needed a green card, and I—­well, I thought she was real nice. We didn't get to spend much time together, though. She mostly lived up at that castle with the Blackbird lady. I don't care what anybody has to say, she was a respectable woman. We planned on spending our retirement years riding around in my RV. But then she ran off, and I never heard from her again.”

I was amazed to learn Pippi had been married.

“What do you mean, respectable?” I asked.

“Just what I said. There was never any funny business with her.”

I tried to process that information. I didn't want to be the one to tell the poor man it was likely his wife hadn't run off to Fiji, but had died in Madeleine's elevator.

My concerns about being kind didn't matter much, though.

The next words out of his mouth were: “What I want to know is, did the Blackbird lady leave anything to my wife?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“In her will. Am I going to inherit something from the Blackbird lady now that she's gone? I mean, my wife put in a lot of years for that family. They owed her something, right?”

At last, I realized his morning mission to grab me hadn't been generated out of grief for a beloved wife, but rather greed.

“I don't know. We haven't seen the entire will yet. It only just . . . Look,” I said as gently as I could manage, “how about if I contact you as soon as we learn the specifics?”

He squinted at me. “How can I trust you?”

“You have my word.” I cleared my throat. “See here, you can't go around impersonating a police officer whenever you feel like it. You could have telephoned me like a civilized person, and I'd have told you anything you want to know.”

“I doubt it,” he snarled. “What's in it for you?”

Making such a repulsive person understand that I wasn't in the habit of cheating people was starting to feel like an impossible mission. So I ended up saying very firmly, “You'll just have to trust me, Mr. McBean. In the meantime, I think it's best if you take me back to my sister. Immediately, if you please.”

For a moment, I thought Pee Wee had more to say. He worked his jaw, then suddenly started the car, flipped on the windshield wipers and drove back to the grocery store. With the panache of a former officer of the law, he whipped into the parking space beside Emma's truck.

She was outside, oblivious to the rain, pacing the asphalt and yelling into her cell phone. When she saw me in the passenger seat of the old car, she terminated the call and shoved her phone into her jeans. Then she yanked open the driver's-­side door and grabbed Pee Wee by his lapels.

“Get out of the car, you little weasel. I've already called the cops. They're going to arrest your ass any minute.”

“Calm down, Em.” I bailed out of the cruiser. “We've already spoken with Deputy Foley.”

Her fists remained knotted in McBean's jacket. She seemed happy to have a target for her pent-­up anger. “Oh, yeah? What did he have to say?”

“Well, I don't think he's going to be phoning Libby for a date anytime soon. And he asked me to take pity on Mr. McBean.”

Pee Wee snarled, “I don't need your pity!”

“McBean?” Emma repeated with a taunt in her voice.

“Pee Wee McBean.”

“Hell.” She released his lapels. “I can't be mad at a guy with a name like that. He's suffered enough already.”

I got out of the car. “Let's just go,” I said to my sister.

“I can't. My damn truck won't start. Wait—­Pee Wee, do you have something to do with my truck not starting?”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a distributor cap. Silently, he handed it over to Emma.

“I should have known,” she muttered. She opened the hood and replaced the vital part.

I leaned down to look at Pee Wee. “Look, I think the police are going to come to talk to you soon. To—­well, as they investigate Madeleine's death, they're going to learn more about Pippi. If you'd like to talk with me after you've seen them, you should come to my house. Ring the doorbell like a civilized person. I live at Blackbird Farm. Do you know where that is?”

“Wasn't that place condemned a few years back?”

With that nasty parting shot, he put his car in gear and pulled out of the parking lot, leaving me fuming in the drizzle.

Emma said, “What the hell was that all about?”

“Let's just say that more than ever, I need the chocolate we just bought. You okay?”

“Of course I'm okay.” She had her gruff face back in place. “Let's go back to the farm before somebody else proposes to me. Mick's probably awake by now. Maybe he'll make breakfast.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

O
n the way home, I read the newspaper aloud to Emma, and we learned another bombshell. Libby must have read the same story, because her minivan was turning into Blackbird Farm just ahead of us. She blew past Michael's security checkpoint, and we did, too.

Michael was out in the backyard, dressed and drinking coffee while his posse of criminal misfits stood around him in a semicircle—­perhaps receiving their orders for the day. I recognized most of them—­a couple of hulking biker types with tattoos and shaved heads, a squirrelly little guy in grease-­stained overalls, and another burly man in a tracksuit and parka big enough to conceal any number of weapons, perhaps even a bazooka. Bruno stood aside, arms folded over his chest. Today, he wore a pin-­striped suit with a pink tie. Very natty. He ignored my sisters and me.

Ralphie the pig, I noticed, had escaped the pasture fence and stood at Michael's heel, keenly observing the action. He blended right in with the rest of the motley crew.

In the middle of the semicircle hunched a skinny man I didn't recognize. He was shivering, with his hands shoved into the pockets of his khaki pants. In a button-­down shirt and Hush Puppies, he appeared to be wearing the uniform of salesmen and casual-­Friday office workers—­hardly the sort of person Michael usually hung out with. Except that his shirt had come untucked and was ripped down the front, and he appeared to have fallen face-­first in mud. Plus his face was streaked with tears. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand.

Michael seemed unperturbed by this newcomer's emotional state. He lifted his coffee cup to me in a cheerful greeting. He didn't look as if he'd just shoved a man's face into a puddle to extract mob secrets, so I calmed down.

Libby bailed out of her minivan. “Oh, my God,” she said. “Nora, why is That Man of Yours here? Did he escape from prison? Should you call the police?”

“The jail was overcrowded,” I said, “so they sent him home with an ankle monitor. He's under house arrest.”

“You mean he can't leave the house? Then why is he outside?”

“He can't leave the property,” I explained. “Where's Maximus?” Although Libby was a good mother and her children adored her with admirable devotion and loyalty in spite of her weaknesses as a sensible adult, I sometimes feared she might get carried away and leave her son in her wake. Today she looked flushed—­in high gear.

“Max is with my sitter. She's doing calisthenics with him.” Libby gave Michael a long examination. “That Man of Yours looks very . . . physically fit.”

Emma said, “Is that drool on your chin?”

“What are they doing?” Libby frowned at the meeting of the minds being conducted in my driveway.

“My bet is,” Emma said, “they're discussing possible penalties for embezzlement.”

I made a good effort to seem spritely. “Let's go inside, shall we?”

This morning Libby was wearing a seasonal orange velour tracksuit with the jacket unzipped just enough to reveal a low-­cut T-­shirt underneath. In sequins, the shirt read
CARPE DAME
. She carried a newspaper in her hand, but she continued to gawk at Michael and his crew of thugs.

“Come on.” I took Libby by the arm. “We'll watch Emma eat.”

Casting curious glances over her shoulder, Libby hustled down the flagstones to the back porch. “I have an appointment later, and I want to get there early for the free erotic aromatherapy session. But I wanted to show you the newspaper. Have you seen this appalling story?”

“I was just reading it aloud to Emma in the truck.”

On the drive home from the grocery store, I had started the newspaper article about the discovery of the body at Quintain. The lurid prose made the whole family sound like escapees from a P. G. Wodehouse novel, but the insinuations about Madeleine made me see red.

The back doorknob came off in Emma's hand. She passed it to me and shoved the door open with her shoulder. “Nora saw your Deputy Foley this morning.”

Libby forgot about appalling newspaper stories and brightened. “You did? Did he mention my name?”

Emma said, “He didn't have a chance during the five minutes he spent rescuing Nora from being kidnapped.”

Outraged, Libby cried, “Why can't I ever get kidnapped?”

“Next time it happens to me,” I said, “I'll call you.”

Without missing a beat, I handed the groceries to Libby and grabbed the screwdriver off the windowsill. I reattached the doorknob. I'd gotten pretty good at it lately.

“I didn't mean to sound insensitive.” Libby wilted under my steely glare. “Tell me what happened.”

To the sounds of his posse departing in their vehicles, Michael came inside—­he pushed Ralphie back out the door when the pig tried to follow—­just as I began my story about being snatched off the street by Pee Wee McBean. Libby lost interest as soon as she figured out Deputy Foley hadn't played a vital role in the morning's events, but Michael's face grew increasingly stony as I told the tale.

“Who the hell is this maniac?” he demanded.

I gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Good morning. He's not a maniac. He's a retired police officer. Really retired—­as in he looks ninety years old. His name is Pee Wee McBean.”

Emma added, “He's the size of a hobbit.”

“McBean?” Michael pulled out his phone again. “Let me do some checking.”

He went back outside, and Libby sighed. “Nothing exciting ever happens to me. You get kidnapped. And Aunt Madeleine turns out to have had a secret life nobody knew about. Is there any pastry? I could go for a cheese Danish.”

“Nora's turning into the vitamin Nazi,” Emma said. “She only bought healthy stuff.”

“Have a banana,” I suggested, and began putting away the groceries. “Aunt Madeleine didn't have a secret life. The reporter I talked to yesterday was trying to dig up some dirt on her. When he didn't find any, he obviously fabricated this whole awful story.”

“Awful, indeed!” Libby poured herself a cup of coffee and went searching in my refrigerator for cream. She launched into exclamations about the morning's revelation in the newspaper. “I can't believe it. Who knew all those houseguests of hers were sex workers she smuggled into the country?”

“Oh, for heaven's sake, Libby, you can't believe everything you read in the paper! There was one sex worker!” I cried. “Just one woman came forward with that story. It doesn't mean Aunt Madeleine was some kind of . . . of . . . trafficker.”

I should have guessed something was in the wind when Joe, the
Intelligencer
reporter, questioned me. But I never guessed he was building a story that portrayed Madeleine as a criminal who brought women into the country to hook them up with powerful men.

“All those women upstairs at Quintain,” Emma said.

“They were her
friends
,” I insisted. “Not prostitutes.”

“Just wait,” Libby predicted. “By the evening news, there will be dozens more hookers crawling out of the woodwork with their stories. Our name is mud. We'll never be able to hold our heads up in polite society.”

“We haven't been able to do that since Mama and Daddy stole money from their friends,” Emma said.

“This is different! It's sordid!” Libby sat down at the table with her coffee cup and pointed at the newspaper. “This woman says Madeleine helped her get into the United States from Cuba, and she went to work as a hooker in Baltimore. She even names the streets where she worked!”

“It does sound pretty bad.” Emma put her finger on the list of acquaintances quoted in the story. “Everybody who ever attended a party with her suddenly thinks she was setting up assignations the whole time.”

“Well, she wasn't,” I said.

“Still,” Emma said, edging toward the powder room, “it's a wonder nobody's called us about the story. Why aren't reporters beating at the door?”

“They probably can't get past Michael's checkpoint.”

At that moment my phone rang. I groaned.

Emma crossed her legs and grabbed the receiver off the wall. “Hello? No, she can't come to the phone right now.” After a pause, she said, “No, Miss Blackbird doesn't want to make any statement for your viewers. And if you bring a big-­ass TV truck onto her property, she'll call the police.”

Emma hung up with a grin. “That wasn't too hard.”

Then her cell phone rang as she headed for the powder room.

“You see?” Libby said to me while we heard Emma curtly discouraging another reporter. “This is going to be a terrible ordeal. Sometimes I'm glad my children don't carry the Blackbird name. Can you imagine the school taunting? Nora, did you have any idea about this?”

“I spoke with Jamison Beech last night, and he hinted that Madeleine had a more colorful past than we thought.”

“Jamison Beech! Did he take your picture for his collage? It's the first thing I flip to in the Sunday newspaper.” Libby's eyes got round with horror. “What did he say about Madeleine? Was she doing something worse than trafficking? Heavens, she didn't peddle drugs, did she? Oh, my God, what if she was selling weapons to some horrible international cartel?”

Michael came inside again with the doorknob in his hand. He gave it to me. “What international cartel?”

“A figment of Libby's imagination,” I said, reaching for my trusty screwdriver. I made short work of the repair while Michael restrained Ralphie from pushing past me. I said, “What did you learn?”

“Word is, McBean was a dirty cop.”

“How did you find that out so fast?” I sat back on my heels, feeling increasingly as if I was losing control of my household. “Do you have a source in the police department? Or have you planted a listening device in city hall?”

“I Googled him,” he reported, holding up his phone. “Jeez, Nora. Sounds like McBean was the usual kind of corrupt cop—­blow jobs in the cruiser from underage teenage girls who'd do anything to keep their parents from finding out they'd been caught drinking. He busted country club poker games and took bribes to forget about what he saw. And he beat up frat boys on a regular basis—­that kind of thing. We need to make sure he stays away from you.”

Emma returned, adjusting her jeans. “Being harassed by Pee Wee now is sorta like being chased by a Chihuahua. He can make a lot of noise, but he's not gonna do much damage.”

“Still,” Michael said, “I don't like Nora getting grabbed out of a supermarket parking lot.”

“It was a little embarrassing,” I admitted as I closed the door and tested the knob. “I've taken self-­defense classes. I should have had him flat on the pavement in ten seconds. But I was afraid to hurt him.”

“You're too polite to use your skills,” Emma said, pouring cereal into a bowl and reaching for a banana. “That's a handicap.”

Libby sighed. “I took a self-­defense class once. The instructor wore a musky sort of cologne that drove me wild.”

To avoid hearing more about the effects of musky colognes, Michael said to me, “I saw the morning news on TV. Looks like your aunt had an interesting past.”

I filled him in with details from the newspaper story while I replaced the screwdriver. “I hate hearing this kind of thing about her. She wasn't a madam. I'm sure of it. But I suppose we'll have to prove it or everyone will believe the newspapers.”

“What does that mean?” Michael asked. “You want to restore her reputation?”

“Anything wrong with that?”

“There is if you put yourself in danger.”

“Pee Wee McBean is not dangerous. Mercenary, maybe, but not dangerous.”

“Mercenary?”

I said, “Here's the other big thing I learned today. Turns out Pippi the housekeeper was married. To Pee Wee McBean.”

Michael whistled low. “Did you tell him she's probably dead in an elevator?”

“I didn't have the heart. But right away, he asked me if there was something in Madeleine's will that he could claim. Which, I must admit, made me dislike him. But I felt sorry for him, too.”

“You feel sorry for the asshole who kidnapped you?”

“A little, yes.”

“Well, start feeling sorry for yourself. The state police were here earlier. They want to question you about what you saw at the crime scene.”

My heart took a dive. “Should I call them?”

He shook his head. “They're delighted to have an excuse to pay a return visit.”

“I'm sorry, Michael. This just makes your situation more complicated.”

He reached for the coffeepot and said cheerfully, “Complicated is better than incarcerated.”

The house phone rang again, but Emma had just shoveled half a banana into her mouth, so I picked up the telephone, prepared to fend off an attack by another reporter. “Hello, dammit.”

“Nora? It's Sutherland.”

My cousin's voice sounded smooth and seductive in my ear.

With everybody watching me, I decided to carry the phone into the dining room. I didn't speak until I was alone and my rapid heartbeat had steadied.

“Hello,” I said, keeping my tone friendly but cool. “How long were you stuck at Quintain yesterday?”

“Hours and hours. I thought I'd go mad with boredom. It's too bad you left so suddenly. I could have used some good company. The police in other countries work at a much more efficient pace. Honestly, I almost asked if I could take a nap while they went over that damn elevator with their toothbrushes.”

“How much contact do you have with police in other countries?”

He laughed lightly. “That was just a figure of speech. Groatley turned into a bear, growling at everybody, so he was hardly good company. Did you know he parks in a handicapped space every day he goes to the office? One of his assistants told me that. And he keeps two mistresses in separate condos. One of them is practically a teenager. Which is good, because she doesn't demand expensive jewelry—­only fancy cell phones, which are much less expensive.”