Maddie Cochere - Two Sisters and a Journalist 01 - Murder Under Construction (15 page)

“Keith!” Pepper barked. “Leave your Aunt Jo alone.”

He pointed across the table. “Grandmama made me do it. It wasn’t my idea.”

I pulled the whoopee cushion out from under my butt. “Ha. Ha. Very funny,” I said.

When Mama was able to talk again, she said, “At least that didn’t smell. Didn’t you want to die when that policeman walked in on you last night?”

I knew there would be no living this down. I was mad at Pepper for telling her in the first place. I knew Mama wouldn’t be satisfied until all of Buxley knew her daughter had been arrested on a commode. Toilet humor was right up her alley and always had been. We grew up with constant jokes and talk of poop, pee, and boogers.

“It wasn’t fun, that’s for sure,” I said.

Hank shook his head. He had only heard bits and pieces of the story. “What were you doing in there anyway?”

“She had to take a dump,” Keith exclaimed.

Pepper shot him a look of chastisement so severe, Keith’s smile faded and he ducked down in his chair.

“That’s not why I was there,” I said. “Jackie and I were looking for clues. We wouldn’t have gone in if the door hadn’t been unlocked.”

Another lie. Why was I lying? I rationalized it by telling myself I didn’t want my family to be complicit in the knowledge of what Jackie and I planned to do if the door had been locked.

“Yeah, but why use the bathroom?” he asked. “Couldn’t you have waited until you got home? Or stopped at a gas station?”

Pepper felt sorry for me. “Hank, haven’t you ever had to go so bad, if you didn’t get to a bathroom within seconds, it would be all over?”

He screwed up his face. “No. I don’t think I have. Well, maybe once when we were deer hunting, but I just went in the woods.”

“Let’s change the subject,” I said. “None of this is appropriate for the dinner table. Mama, did you win any money at bingo yesterday?”

“No, but there was a robbery, and I stopped it all by myself.”

Everyone at the table expressed various degrees of shock.

“What,” I yelped. “A robbery? What happened?

“Some guy came in waving a gun and made everyone put their money and jewelry in a bag. The church had ten thousand dollars in the bingo box, and when the guy grabbed the money, he put the gun down so he could scoop it up with both hands. I grabbed the gun and pointed it at him and said, ‘You’re mine now mother f’er,’ and I went to town on him and took him out.”

All of us sat stunned with our mouths hanging open.

“Grandmama, did that really happen?” Kelly asked.

She took her bottom plate out, rinsed it in her water glass, and shoved it back into her mouth. “It sure did.” She paused for extra effect. “But not to me. I read it in the newspaper. I think it happened in New York. Wouldn’t that be fun though? Some stupid criminal shows up in a church to rob the old ladies playing bingo, and one of the senior citizens grabs his gun and becomes a hero.”

Hank laughed so hard, I thought he would cry, but I wondered what in the world was wrong with Mama today. She was over the top silly and not her usual cranky self.

“But did you win any money?” I asked again.

“Twenty bucks,” she said as she pulled two tens out of her pocket and handed one to Kelly and one to Keith. “Did you bring my comics?” she asked Keith.

“They’re in the car. I’ll go get them,” he said.

Mama continued to confuse me. “What comics?”

“
Hawkeye
,” she said. “Don’t you keep up with the kids and what they like these days? Keith’s got the new issue starring Lucky, the dog who loves pizza. He’s loaning it to me.”

I looked over at Pepper and Hank and shook my head. I was simply out of the loop sometimes when it came to my family.

Kelly piped up, “Aunt Jo, we went with Uncle Hank to a birthday party yesterday, and Keith knocked over the table with the cake before the girl even got to blow out the candles.”

Mama did her loud squinty eye laugh again. After a few hoos and phews, she said, “You kids get yourselves in the worst predicaments.”

If I didn’t know better, I would think she was stoned.

“It wasn’t Keith’s fault,” Hank said. “A couple of the kids were roughhousing, and one pushed the other into Keith. Thankfully, the birthday girl’s father saw it happen, so we weren’t blamed. I have a couple of action shots of the cake going over though.” He beamed with pride.

The doorbell rang.

“I’ll get it,” I said. I was glad to step away from the table.

I threw the door open and had a pie thrust under my nose.

“I come bearing gifts,” Jackie said. “Chocolate Bourbon Pecan.”

My car was in the driveway. My purse hung from her arm.

I threw my hands up and gave her my best
I can’t believe you
look. “Where did you go last night? Why did you abandon me?”

“I didn’t abandon you. I just didn’t come forward when the cop showed up.”

“Jackie, he walked in on me when I was on the toilet. It was horrible.”

She couldn’t control herself and convulsed with laughter interspersed with snorts.

“Who is it?” Mama yelled from the dining room.

“It’s Jackie,” I yelled back. “She brought pie.”

Keith came running to take the pie. Jackie and I stayed in the front room to talk.

“I didn’t tell the Patterson police you were with me,” I said. “I kept lying and saying I was alone and only there to use the bathroom. I’ve been worried all day thinking about being arrested again for lying to the police.”

“You’re not in trouble,” she said. “As soon as they took you to the station, I called Sergeant Rorski. I told him we didn’t have anything concrete as to who murdered Ruby Rosewell, but we did know who she was. I made it clear that he needed to get you out of the Patterson police station before you started talking, and the chief over there took credit for helping to solve the case. Trust me, he called right away.”

“Now that he knows we’ve identified the body, why aren’t we talking to him today? Why aren’t we giving our statements?”

“It’s the Buxley police department,” she said with sarcasm. “They still think of her as just a prostitute, and there’s no urgency. He said he’d see us both Monday morning.”

I was happy to hear she would be there, too. She believed me about my dreams, and I knew she would help to buffer the sergeant’s growing irritation with me.

“Ok, good,” I said. “Let’s go eat pie.”

“Wait,” she said as she pulled the folder from Paula’s apartment from the side pocket of my purse. “You need to see this.”

She spread papers out in front of us on the coffee table. I picked up a photograph and said, “This is the man Stewie was with at Mama Rosie’s for lunch on Wednesday.”

“That’s Terry Cord.”

“You’re kidding.” I said it more in surprise than that I didn’t believe her. Obviously, they knew each other, but I was surprised they knew each other well enough to have lunch together.

She handed a few of the papers to me. “Look at these. They’re all appraisals for properties in southeast Ohio. I did some cross-referencing, and every one of them is low. Too low. Telcor purchased the properties based on the low appraisals, but they were reappraised later at a higher value for resale to developers. There are also properties here that were sold as blighted when they weren’t, and low interest loans were made to people who could never pay them back. These properties were deliberately undervalued and, in some cases, effectively stolen from their owners.”

I couldn’t believe Stewie was involved. “Was Stewie doing both appraisals? The low and the high?”

She nodded her head. “I know you guys had a good time last night, Jo, but you need to see these. I found them when I was running searches on Cord this morning.” She pulled out copies of newspaper clippings from several years ago. There were pictures of Stewie and Terry Cord together. Stewie worked on Terry’s campaign for city council. Terry was elected, but he only served one term. There were allegations of kickbacks to the councilman for awarding building contracts to select builders of housing projects. “He was never indicted,” she said, “but he hasn’t run for political office since. Not until declaring his candidacy for mayor in Marietta.”

My heart sank into my stomach. “Stewie is part of the fraud.”

“It sure looks that way.” She handed one last paper to me. “According to this, Telcor is owned by Breiner out of Germany, but the thing is, both Breiner and their company address are fake. Telcor is all Terry Cord. He doesn’t have his name attached to any of the business, but I spent a couple of hours with Big Arnie this morning, and, by the way, he said he would probably mentor you. He wants to meet you.” She flapped her hands at her own interruption. “But anyway, I spent time with him this morning, and he has a source in Pittsburgh who checked into Telcor’s banking. The money routes through several offshore banks before finally going to one in Chicago held in his wife’s maiden name. There are over twelve million dollars in the account.”

We sat quiet for a few moments. It was a lot to take in.

“Cord probably had big plans for when he became mayor in Marietta,” I said.

I gathered all the papers and shoved them back into the folder. Without enthusiasm, I asked, “Ready for pie?”

She smiled and said, “If there’s any left.”

~ ~ ~

Spending the afternoon at Mama’s had been fun and proved a welcome distraction. Jackie regaled everyone with her take on last night’s events. I considered protesting her embellishments, but Mama was enjoying the storytelling so much, I didn’t intervene.

Rousing rounds of Pictionary followed, and I found myself feeling content and comfortable. It had been months since we’d all been together at Mama’s, and it felt good to be with family.

Matt dropped by at five o’clock to pick up Jackie, and I left twenty minutes later after promising Pepper I would go with her to Figure Perfect tomorrow evening. It was an easy promise to make after eating a ton of mashed potatoes today.

It seemed silly to go to bed so early, but I was exhausted and planned to climb under the sheets as soon as I got home. I knew I wouldn’t have any trouble sleeping until morning.

I thought about calling Stewie, but what would I say to him?
Hey, I know you’ve been cheating people out of their property and homes. I’ll be telling Sergeant Rorski all about it in the morning. Oh, and by the way, your friend, Terry Cord really did kill Paula Radford, and I’m going to prove it.
Yeah, that would be a good conversation.

I struggled to keep my eyes open as I turned onto Clark Street. I didn’t bother with the garage door opener, and I left the car in the drive.

When I walked through the foyer and into the living room, I saw the light blinking on the answering machine I had hooked up to the red phone. I kicked off my shoes, grabbed a beer out of the overstuffed chair, and dropped sideways into it. I had restocked both the chair and the kitchen refrigerator with beer yesterday before my date with Stewie. I wanted to be prepared in case he wanted to come in afterward, but in hindsight, I was glad now he had declined.

The red light blinked a number three. Three messages? I was with Jackie and Pepper today. Who would leave three messages?

I pushed the button. The first message was from 1:08 this afternoon. “Hey, Two Sisters and a Journalist. This is Bertie at Margaret’s Nail Confections. I talked to my girls, and Wendy was the one who did that dead girl’s nails for the wedding. She said they talked a lot, and the girl was real nice. She gave her a card for a dance studio she was opening soon. The dance studio on the card is Paula Charlotte’s Dance Center. Hope that helps. Bye.”

Goosebumps covered my arms. The dancer at Pink Elephants had heard Ruby say
Charlotte
as her name over the phone. Charlotte must be her middle name. It was one more piece of information to fall into place.

Message number two was from 4:54. “Jo, Stewart here. Just wanted to say hello and tell you I had a good time last night. I thought maybe we could get together later and talk more about your theory about what happened to Paula. Talk to you later.”

That was sad. He liked me, and I could see where I might like him a good deal better if we spent more time together, but there could be no working this out now. At least not until he got out of jail.

Message number three was from 5:40, which was shortly before I came in. There was no message. It was thirty seconds of dead air. If it was the heavy breather, he didn’t breathe a message.

I erased all of the messages and set my beer bottle on the floor. I leaned my head back and closed my eyes. I only wanted to rest them for a minute.

~ ~ ~

I woke up with my head hanging off the chair’s armrest and drool on my cheek. I was cricked all over from sleeping in the chair, and it hurt to stretch my limbs.

The room was dark. I stumbled to a lamp and turned the switch. My eyes felt like they were two sizes too big for their sockets. I checked my watch. It was twelve forty. I had been asleep in the chair for over six hours. No wonder I felt so crooked.