A Stitch to Die For (An Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery Book 5) (5 page)

“I see. Are you still on the premises?”

“I’m standing on the sidewalk in front of her house.”

“Stay there. A squad car is on the way.”

Over the years Westfield, like many suburban towns, experienced the occasional homicide. However, with few exceptions, most recently being the murders that occurred a few months ago at the Westfield Assisted Living and Rehabilitation Center, the majority of these murders were crimes of passion committed by husbands or boyfriends. A gruesome murder occurring less than a week before Halloween belonged in a horror movie, not in Westfield, New Jersey.

I had no love for Halloween. Real life was scary enough. The makeshift sheet-ghosts tied to my neighbors’ tree limbs and whipping around in the wind added to my unease, as did the skeletons and gravestones dotting many of the front yards and the creepy-faced jack-o-lanterns shining from porches and windows. I knew it was all fake, but as I stood on the sidewalk, dried leaves swirling around my feet, I also knew a killer had been here recently. Images of Michael Myers and Freddy Krueger flashed before me.

Thankfully, less than two minutes after placing my call to 911, a Westfield squad car, lights flashing but sirens silent, pulled up to the curb. I shook off my Halloween phobia as officers Harley and Fogarty stepped from the vehicle. The two cops and I had come to know each other quite well over the last year, thanks to the upheaval in my life. When they stepped from the squad car, their expressions telegraphed their lack of surprise at finding I was the neighbor who had called in the report.
 

Both officers towered over me, but that’s where their physical similarities ended. Fogarty sported a body-builder’s physique. Although currently hidden by a leather jacket, on previous occasions I’d seen his muscles strain the seams of his uniform. Harley’s body also strained his seams but more from pudginess than muscle.

“Someone shot Batty Bentworth?” asked Harley, the older of the two by about ten years.

I nodded.

“Mrs. Pollack, you really need to stop stumbling across dead bodies,” said Fogarty.

“I’d like nothing better. I never set out to become the Jessica Fletcher of Westfield.”

“Could’ve fooled me,” said Harley. “You’re racking up some decent crime-solving stats. We may have to deputize you.”

“No, thanks.”

Fogarty scoped out the front of Betty’s house. “So the old bat’s really dead?”

I nodded. “Bullet to her head.”

“Wait here while we check things out,” said Harley.

The two officers headed inside the house. A moment later an unmarked car and a Crime Scene Investigation van, both with flashing lights, pulled up behind the squad car.

While the officers from the van grabbed their gear and hurried down the walkway to Betty’s front door, a rotund man pried himself from behind the wheel of the unmarked car and stepped into the street. He took one look at me and said, “You again?”

“Nice to see you, too, Detective.”

Detective Samuel Spader—no joke—and I had met over the summer when my mother-in-law was the prime suspect in the strangulation death of her roommate at the Westfield Assisted Living and Rehabilitation Center. Spader was not the first ironic name I’d come across in law enforcement. Over the past few months I’d interacted with Detectives Batswin and Robbins in Morris County and Detectives Phillips and Marlowe in Manhattan. I chalked up the coincidence of their names and chosen careers to the universe needing to provide me with an occasional laugh, given all the crap it had dumped on me recently.

Sam Spader was a heart attack waiting to happen. When doctors told him the stress of working homicide in Newark would kill him sooner than a bullet, he’d transferred to Union County to finish out his years before retirement. However, judging from what I’d observed of him, he had more to fear from liquor, cigarettes, and donuts than bullets. His nose sported the burst capillaries of a man who drank too much, nicotine stained his fingers and teeth, and he wore an enormous spare tire around his middle. If he didn’t clean up his act, he’d never make it to retirement, no matter in which jurisdiction he worked.

“You find the vic?” he asked.

“I did.”

“I’m going to need a statement from you. Wait here.” He then lumbered toward the entrance to the house.

The flashing lights eventually drew the attention of various neighbors. One by one they exited their decorated homes and converged on me. With the wind picking up and the mercury plummeting, they created a much-appreciated windbreak around me.

“What’s going on?” asked Angie Perotta, the mother of the hopscotch aficionado.

Even though I was totally freaked at the thought of a murderer in the neighborhood, I knew the police wouldn’t appreciate me divulging the details of Betty’s death. “Mrs. Bentworth died,” I said.

“Good riddance.”

Others nodded or murmured in agreement. Perhaps they’d feel more sympathetic—not to mention scared as hell—once they learned the cause of Betty’s death. For now, they’d have to wait to read the salacious details in tomorrow’s newspaper unless Spader saw fit to tell them. Once they knew, we’d all take part in a town-wide freak-out.

Until then, since no one had any love for the deceased, and most had left their homes without first grabbing jackets, the crowd quickly dispersed. I was left alone to shiver in the cold as I waited to give my statement.

A minute later Lawrence’s gold Honda Accord pulled up in front of my house. Mama jumped out of the car and raced across the street before Lawrence cut the engine. “Anastasia, thank God you’re safe! I was so worried.”

“I’m fine, Mama. Why are you here?”

“What do you mean, why am I here? You’ve got a killer loose on your street. I was worried.”

“How in the world did you find out?” Even the press hadn’t arrived yet, but somehow my mother had gotten wind of Betty Bentworth’s murder.

“Lawrence heard the call go out on his police scanner.”

By this time Lawrence had joined us. Dressed for the arctic, he wore a bulky pea coat, a muffler wrapped around the lower part of his face, and a fur-lined leather bombardier hat covering his head. With the brim pulled down over his forehead, only his eyes showed. At least one of us was protected against frostbite. “You listen to a police scanner?” I asked.

“It’s a hobby of mine,” he said, his voice muffled by the muffler.

Stamp collecting is a hobby. Cooking is a hobby. Beekeeping is a hobby. Monitoring police radio bandwidths struck me as more voyeurism than a hobby. I still knew little more than zilch about my new stepfather but could think of only one reason he might listen in on police dispatches. “Were you in law enforcement before you retired?” I asked.

Mama latched onto her husband’s arm, craned her neck toward him, and beamed. “Lawrence owned a very successful commercial laundry service.”

Very successful?
The only difference between Lawrence and Mama’s other husbands—besides the fact that he was still breathing—was that he had his very own sugar daddy in the guise of Ira “Moneybags” Pollack. What had happened to the fruits of Lawrence’s successful enterprise? Maybe Ira knew.

Anyway, I saw no connection between soapsuds and the police. Perhaps Lawrence had wanted to be a cop when he was a kid and now derived some vicarious thrill out of eavesdropping on police communications.

At that moment Detective Spader emerged from Betty’s house and headed down the flagstone walkway toward me. “Mama, I need to give the detective my statement. Why don’t you and Lawrence wait in the house for me.”

“But—”

I cast pleading eyes toward Lawrence. My fingers and toes had turned numb from the cold, and my teeth were beginning to chatter. I’d get through my statement in far less time without Mama standing next to me, interrupting every other sentence to offer her two cents worth of nonsense.

“Come, Flora.” He grasped her upper arm and practically dragged her back across the street.

“Really, Lawrence,” she protested, “someone should stay with Anastasia.”

“She’s a big girl. She can take care of herself.”

Spader lit a cigarette and took several deep drags as he watched Lawrence and Mama head toward my house. I sidestepped his smoke, although part of me wanted to cup my hands around the glowing cigarette tip to steal some of its warmth.

When Mama and Lawrence were out of earshot, Spader shoved the cigarette to the side of his mouth and whipped out a small spiral notebook and pencil stub. “Harley and Fogarty tell me the vic had lots of enemies. I take it you weren’t one of them?”

“I wouldn’t say we were enemies. I’ve had a few minor skirmishes with her from time to time—as have all the neighbors on the block—but nothing the last several years. Like everyone else, I tried to keep my distance.”

“But you found her. Did you have a key?”

I quickly explained what had happened. “No one liked her, but I don’t know that she had enemies, at least not the kind that go around shooting people in the head.”

“Why was she so disliked?”

I shrugged. “Betty Bentworth was a disagreeable, nasty old woman who did nothing but complain, criticize, and threatened lawsuits.”

“Over what?”

“You name it—a dog peeing on her lawn, someone parking in front of her house—”

“Anyone can park on the street,” he said.

“Not according to Betty. She insisted the street in front of her house belonged to her. Anyone who parked in that spot received a threatening note stuck under the car’s windshield wiper. Same with the sidewalk.” I told him about the hopscotch incident.

“Was there anyone who liked her?”

“No one I know. Any attempts at friendship were met with suspicion and quickly rebuffed. She was nasty to everyone and had been that way for as long as I’ve lived here.”

I pondered for a moment, then added, “Maybe something happened to her years ago, or maybe she was born with a mean streak. Who knows? You have to feel sorry for people like that.”

“Someone didn’t.” Spader took another drag, hacking once before he continued. “You have any idea who might have wanted her dead?”

I laughed in spite of the situation. “Probably everyone on the police force. She kept 911 on speed dial.”

Spader stepped closer. Looming over me, he set his mouth in a tight line and narrowed his eyes. “Are you suggesting—?”

I took a step backward. “No, of course not.” The man must have been on a smoke break when God handed out the Sense of Humor genes.

“Hmm. What about the neighbors? Anyone who might have had a beef big enough to turn to murder?”

“Unlikely. This is a block of mostly teachers, lawyers, and accountants.”

“You sure of that?”

I thought about the twelve houses on our one-block-long street and the people who lived in them. No one stood out as the hit man type, but I’d had enough run-ins with hit men lately to know they came in all sizes and shapes. Still, I didn’t see any of my neighbors as possible assassins. “Pretty sure.”

“How well do you know your neighbors, Mrs. Pollack?”

“I suppose about as well as most people know their neighbors. We wave hello to each other, chitchat while raking leaves, often attend the same school functions. That sort of thing.”

“In other words, you really don’t know any of them very well at all, do you?”

In the dim light of the street lamp I studied Spader’s face. He looked dead serious. Earlier in the day Cloris had planted doubts about Ira in my head. Now Spader was suggesting I might have a homicidal maniac or hired gun living on my street. “Is there something I should know about one of my neighbors, Detective?”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“Then why scare the crap out of me?” Not to mention turn me as suspicious as Betty Bentworth. Had her paranoia been justified? Did she know something about one of our neighbors that I didn’t? Something that had gotten her killed?

Spader ignored my question. He took one last drag from his cigarette, tossed the butt onto the sidewalk, and ground it to death with the toe of his shoe. “If Mrs. Bentworth were still alive and had seen you do that, she’d threaten to sue you for sullying her sidewalk.”

“Sounds like she was a real piece of work.”

“If you want confirmation, ask anyone on the police force.”

“So, Nancy Drew, what’s your theory?”

The detective had developed a grudging respect for me when I discovered a clue he and his team had missed while investigating the death of Lyndella Wegner this past summer. The Nancy Drew snark aside, I think he genuinely wanted to know my thoughts on Betty’s murder.

“I don’t think she ever knew what hit her. She certainly didn’t let her assailant into the house.”

“How do you know that?”

“I discovered the body, remember? And you’ve seen it. She was watching TV. Betty was hard of hearing and had the television volume turned up high. I’m guessing she didn’t hear him break in through a window or the back door.”

“There was no evidence of forced entry. She must have let him in.”

I glanced longingly over at my own front door, anxious for the warmth behind it, and shoved my numb bare fingers under my armpits. “And left her front door wide open? Not Betty. Maybe the killer left the front door open when he ran out.” But that seemed odd to me. Why would he risk someone seeing him leave? Sneaking out the back door made more sense.