A Midsummer Night's Scream (14 page)

Jane told her about her brief, annoying conversation with Tazz.

"I almost warned you not to tell her. Now I wish I had. She's a strong-minded, bossy young woman. She told me — quite gratuitously — that I needed to gain some weight or pad my bosom."

"No, you don't," Jane said, shocked at this example of rudeness.

"I told her it was none of her business," Ms. Bunting said.

"I more or less told her I couldn't be bothered to write her book for her."

"Good for you! Forget her. There will be others who want the same thing. A free ride and a full share of the profits. I can't tell you how many aspiring actors of both sexes have demanded that I make sure they get the part they want. I tell them

I'm an actress, not an agent. Go find an agent and pay them for their help if you're any good at this. They never ask me again."

Shelley came out of the small kitchen and announced that snacks were ready, and when she saw Jane, she asked, "What's wrong?"

Jane quickly summarized her conversation with Tazz.

"No! What a hell of a nerve, if you'll forgive my language, Ms. Bunting."

"I said almost the same thing. In the arts, especially, everyone thinks you're a public charity and owe it to them to help them. Mediocre singers want good singers to teach them for the sheer joy of it. I know graphic artists whose local grade schools expect them to decorate their blackboards just because they should contribute to the public welfare. And some of them actually do it. Poor dolts."

Tazz didn't speak to or look at anyone while she picked up her snacks and took them back to her seat in the theater to eat alone. Jane took a teaspoon of everything and pronounced it slightly better than okay. Shelley nodded her agreement. "Out of all I've tried, only one was superior. I'll probably hire them for Paul's next employee dinner. Now, Jane, run on home and dress up. Forget Tazz. She's not the nice person we thought she was. We were simply misled."

*Mel picked up Jane, saying how glamorous she looked in emerald green as he opened the door of his red MG for her. "You sounded so excited this afternoon. Why aren't you now?" he asked as they started out.

"I'll tell you when we get to the restaurant. Somebody hurt my feelings. I'm almost over it. I'll talk about it once more, then cast it out of my mind."

When they reached the most elegant restaurant in town, the owner himself showed them to a lovely private booth. Mel ordered wine, the maître d' showed up next to welcome them, and a waiter snapped open huge napkins and flipped them on their laps.

Mel leaned forward, gestured for her to hold his hand, and said, "Tell me."

Jane recounted her conversation with Tazz. Mel frowned and said, "Forget she exists. I was frankly surprised that you claimed to like her. I didn't."

"You have better judgment than I do, I guess," she said curtly, then put her other hand over her mouth for a moment before apologizing. "I'm sorry. That was snarky."

"Oh, I don't blame you for feeling snarky, Janey. But I
do
have better judgment about nasty people, because in my job I meet so many of them. It sounds to me like you won the battle, not her. I'm glad you put her in her place."

Jane smiled. "You're right. She's not worth fretting about. She was trying to take outrageous advantage of me, and I did put her down firmly. I did win. Thank you for your opinion. Shelley and Ms. Bunting said sort of the same thing, but it means more coming from you."

Their wine arrived. The waiter had been watching closely for them to disengage their hands and finish whatever they were talking about that seemed so intense. The first second he could, he brought their wine and returned immediately with menus the size of Rhode Island. A moment later he delivered crusty rye rolls with a frigid plate of fancy curls of butter. Jane and Mel were invisible to each other as they studied the menus.

"Let's decide now so we can get rid of these monster menus," Mel said. "Let's go all out. Appetizers, salads, entrées, and desserts."

"I don't think I could eat that much. Could we drop either the appetizers or the salads? I'd prefer salad."

Mel signaled the waiter and placed their order, then took a roll and slathered it with butter. "I don't have to eat this immediately. I'm just buttering it while it's hot."

"Good idea," Jane said, doing the same. "Can you explain yet what you said you'd discovered and didn't know what it meant?"

"I still don't know what it means, but I can tellyou the details. Maybe something will ring a bell and you'll solve the mystery of the janitor and his sister, the janitor 's shoes, and jigsaw puzzles."

Jane laughed. "I'll give it a try."

Mel thought for a moment. "The janitor, Sven Turner, called in to his supervisor the night he was supposed to clean the theater late at night. He said he'd heard two men talking, so he decided to go back early in the morning."

"What difference did it make if two people were there?"

"First, one of them was Denny, and it was the night he died. I have no idea who the other was. But most important to Sven was that he didn't like being around people. That's why he took the night shift almost all of the time."

"A misanthrope?" Jane asked.

"Not really. I don't think he hated anyone. He was simply too shy and timid to want to talk to strangers."

"How do you know this?"

"Both his boss and his sister, who were virtually the only people he felt comfortable speakingto, said so and clearly meant it. So far nobody but the local cop on the beat even knew who he was. And he'd seldom even seen Sven. Officer Jones would drop in to check on Sven's sister, who lost both her lower legs to diabetes."

"Oh, how awful for her. How will she manage without her brother?"

"It's a problem they're going to have to deal with, especially if he doesn't survive. But you'll understand better when I get to the end of this story.

"So what happened to Sven?"

"He came back the next morning, and as he was unloading his cleaning supplies from the back of his truck, he was struck hard on the side of his head."

"Did he see who did it?"

"No, probably not. By the time he was found, he was in a coma. He still is. That's why I called on his sister, to learn more about him. I asked if I could see his bedroom, thinking that bedrooms often tell you about a person's interests. Some, like you, have more books than anyone I know. I am, as you've seen, a slob who has never made his own bed."

"What was Sven's room like?"

The salads arrived, and after eating a few bites and pronouncing it a great dressing, but on too much lettuce, Mel went on, "Sven's room was neat and tidy. The house must have been where

both Sven and his sister, Hilda, grew up. Nothing had changed since the 1970s, when Sven's parents put cowboy wallpaper up. You could have bounced a dime off the bed, it was so well made. A really huge, dreary, mostly brown jigsaw puzzle was set up near the window."

He took a few more bites of the salad as Jane was eating hers.

"I looked in his closet. Closets tell you things, too. Terribly neat. The whole bottom was filled with puzzle boxes, and on the back of the door was one of those pocket things for shoes. He had at least a dozen. One pair of loafers looked as if it had never been worn. So I pulled a shoe out and a neat roll of one-hundred-dollar bills with a rubber band around it fell out."

Jane gasped. "Blackmail! Remember I mentioned that as possible motive for trying to kill a janitor?"

"I'd given it some thought as well," Mel admitted. "But I don't believe he had the courage to blackmail strangers. You have to be very brazen and talk scary. 'I'll come after your family if you don't come up with the money' and so forth. It's also dangerous being a blackmailer. You don't know when your victim will meet you with a mob of cops hidden behind cars and vans. From hearing what his boss and his sister said, he simply couldn't have faced any stranger and been forceful and tough."

"You're really convinced about this," Jane said. She wasn't questioning his judgment. She knew it was a result of his experience and skills.

"Yes. But, Jane, when I came back with a warrant to search legally, the total hidden in his room was more than a hundred thousand dollars."

Jane lost her grip on her salad fork, which flipped over and fell on the floor. A waiter instantly replaced it.

Jane, embarrassed, thanked the waiter and, when he was gone, asked, "Did his sister know about the money?"

Mel nodded. "Apparently some, perhaps a lot, of the money is hers. While I was snooping before I got the warrant to search, she was chatting with Officer Jones, the cop who checks on her from time to time. She's considerably older than her brother and for a long time had a very well-paying job. When she had to leave because of the problems with her legs, she had a lot of pension money built up that's still being paid. She had also received disability payments from social security."

Jane put down her fork. "But even if that's true, I don't think that between her pension, social security, and whatever her brother makes as a janitor, they could save that much money. Could they? They must have had expenses like everyone else. Property tax, food, utilities like water, gas, and electricity. And old houses often need

new gutters, roofs, and furnaces. Why are you grinning like that? Aren't I making sense?"

"Are you finished with your salads?" The waiter was back.

"I think we are," Mel said. Jane nodded.

Then she said, "I hate getting this story in installments. Talk faster before the steaks get here or save it for later."

"I can sum it up in one word. Gambling." "Gambling? Who?"

"Sven, of course. Every weekend."

"But you can't be solitary when you're in a casino. I've been in several and they were mobbed."

"Mobbed maybe. Especially on weekends, I'd imagine. But you don't have to talk to anyone if you don't want to."

The vigilant waiter saw the opportunity to bring their steaks and baked potatoes while Jane was sitting back considering this scenario.

They both applied themselves to the main course without talking much. Jane had ordered the largest filet mignon, done medium rare, and was planning to take home half of it to slice really thin and use on a sandwich the next day. Mel went through his entire T-bone. After the waiter had boxed up half of Jane's steak, Mel said, "Order yourself a dessert; I think I'll just have strong coffee. I want to finish this story and see what you think of it."

"I see already why you didn't explain what would happen to Sven's sister if he died," Jane said. "She'd own a house, inherit the whole amount of money, and be able to take a room or two, even her own wing, maybe, at a good nursing home."

When the waiter returned, Jane ordered a fudgy dark chocolate dessert, with coffee. She intended to take most of the dessert home as well. This restaurant wrapped up the leftovers in such pretty little boxes, tied up in ribbons, and she wanted to keep two of them.

While she nibbled at the dessert, Mel went on, "Sven liked to finish his cleaning jobs at the crack of dawn on Fridays so he could go to casinos in Iowa, St. Louis, or even Minneapolis. Then catch up with janitoring late on Sunday nights. A lot of driving time getting to and from the farthest ones. But apparently profitable enough."

"And you believe this?"

"We circulated his picture from his driver's license to several of the casinos, and it seems to be true. Several of the cashiers recognized him. The employees and those monitoring the tables and slot machines on hidden cameras are really vigilant."

"He's either very lucky or cheating, to accumulate that much money," Jane said.

"Some people are always lucky. And he might have been lucky for a great many years, Janey. He might have been doing this most of his adult life."

"Where is the money now?"

"I stood over three cops, acting as vigilant as the casino employees, counting it out in thousands. And then I had an armored truck take it to a safety-deposit box. My name and Hilda's are on the box. I left her a thousand dollars to get along on until, and if, her brother recovers.

"I wanted the whole neighborhood to know that the cash, which they didn't even know about, is gone," he went on. "And I have my men watching the house day and night, just in case somebody who was counting the bills told some friend about all that money over a boozy evening with his fellow officers. These were young cops counting the money. I hardly knew any of them very well. And I know the young ones sometimes can't resist gossiping with friends about interesting things they've done when they're sitting around in a bar."

Mel gave both the waiter and the maître d' generous tips.

As they were walking back to the car, Mel feeling really silly carrying two little packages tied up with pink ribbons, Jane asked, "Do either Sven or Hilda have children to pass this money to when they're both gone?"

"Neither ever married. At least Hilda Turner says so. It would be easy to check, and I think she's smart enough to know that and not lieabout it," Mel said, opening the passenger door of his red MG and handing the cutesy boxes of leftovers to Jane.

"Then who gets all that money when both of them are gone?"

"I'm wondering about that, too. I'm assuming that Sven wanted to accumulate lots of money for his sister's care if her health deteriorated to the point that he couldn't keep her at home. It's just a theory, though."

"It's a nice theory," she said, leaning over to give him a kiss on the cheek. "You have to be a cynic to do your job so well. But you can't hide your kindly personality from me."