Make, Take, Murder (8 page)

The crafters decided to
create a “get well” card for Dodie. As a result, we closed a half an hour later than predicted. How could I stop them? Especially when the extra time went for such a good cause? I knew the card would perk up her spirits. Horace phoned during the crop and told Bama privately his wife might be back at the store next week. I hoped so, but I also hoped she would take time to recover from her treatments. The aftermath of chemo and radiation could be as brutal as the treatments themselves.

My house was dark and deserted when I arrived home. It wasn’t that I’d forgotten to turn on the porch light. I was hoping to save a little money by leaving it off during the day. Instead, I carried a flashlight in my purse. The sweep of the beam picked up a figure walking toward me, and I nearly wet my pants.

“Kiki?”

I recognized the voice of my landlord, Leighton Haversham.

“Didn’t mean to scare you. Hoped I’d catch you. May I come in? Is your porch light not working?”

“Um, I forgot to turn it on when I left.”

Mr. Haversham smiled and held my door open for me, which was very helpful because I was loaded down. “I’ll have an automatic light sensitive timer put in. That way you won’t have to remember. Where’s Gracie?” He said as he took my bundles from my arms. I brought old magazines from the store with the hopes they’d inspire me for future projects. I also carried a sample project, the leftover Bread Co. food, paper to cut for upcoming projects, and small scraps of paper that needed sorting. This I fished out of the trash with the hopes I could use them on my own holiday cards that I hadn’t yet started.

“Gracie’s staying overnight at the vet’s office. She’s got a bad case of ‘happy tail.’”

“Happy tail?” He pulled out a kitchen chair and settled in. Leighton has that old world gentleman thing going. His salt-and-pepper hair was slicked back in a
très
European manner, and his slacks always draped as though made from very expensive material. I’m not sure if his loafers were Italian, but I imagined they were. There was this overall elegance about him that always caught me slightly off-guard. Especially when he also managed to look entirely comfortable in my kitchen.

“Repetitive injuries after her tail got caught in a car door,” I explained with a wince. My best friend Mert’s son Roger had been fooling around. At twenty, Roger’s a big man-kid. He didn’t mean to slam the door on Gracie’s tail, and fortunately, he caught it mid-slam so the full impact wasn’t realized. But Mert just about killed her son over it. “Fiddle-farting around and he knows better!” she hollered. The wound should have healed quickly. Gracie, like most dogs, is a totally forgiving creature; her response was to give a loud yelp and then to quickly love up Roger. He knelt at her side, tears forming in his big hazel eyes, his whole body trembling, as he repeated, “I’m sorry! Gracie, I’m so sorry!” When he offered to pay for the vet’s visit, I said, “No way!” but Mert insisted. “Serves him right. He gotta learn that actions have consequences.”

When her tail didn’t heal after the first trip, I took her back to see Dr. Tailor. His demeanor told me more than his words. He rubbed his jaw and sighed. “We call it ‘happy tail.’ Happens a lot with your big breeds. Poor girl keeps re-injuring herself as she wags it.”

He suggested that they keep Gracie overnight, which stretched to two nights. At the clinic they put my baby in a special crate lined with pads to minimize the impact of her wagging and gave her a shot of antibiotics.

Leighton drummed his fingers on the table. “That’s too bad. I hope she recovers quickly. I heard about your Dumpster-diving episode. Imagine bringing up part of a corpse. That’s an assumption, of course. The other option is too terrible to consider.”

He was right about that.

He continued, “I stopped by because I need help. I’m leaving town on a mini-book tour. Do you have a few minutes? I could show you how to care for Monroe.”

Petunia was his scaredy-cat pug and Monroe his pet donkey. In return for reduced rent, I bartered my services as pet sitter. “Of course.”

A few snowflakes danced in my porch light as we stepped out my front door. The air actually felt warmer than it had at noon. Leighton called out to Monroe as we approached. A clatter of hooves on cold hard ground greeted us, his breath clouding the frigid air. In the center of Monroe’s pen was a sturdy shed over a concrete floor covered with sawdust and straw for bedding. The fencing attached to each side of the enclosure. A simple gate with a lift and drop latch completed the enclosure.

“Monroe hates the color white,” Leighton explained while he scratched his pet under the neck. “He’s a rescue donkey. Spent his formative years at a petting zoo. Little kids loved to pull on his ears, and Monny has sensitive ears, don’t you, buddy? But donkeys are smart. Monroe figured out that if he head-butted kids in diapers, they’d stay away from him. As a consequence, my sure-footed friend thinks anything white is worthy of target practice.”

I laughed. Monroe wore a bright blue blanket. Leighton explained that he had been “rugged up” as protection from the cold, and his garment was changed and laundered frequently. To my surprise, Monroe appeared every bit as affectionate and personable as a dog or a cat. He followed his owner around like a lovesick puppy. His big velvety lips tugged at Leighton’s barn jacket, as he leaned his forehead against Leighton’s arm.

With a quick toss, Leighton lobbed an apple at me. “He can only have one of these a day. I saved this treat so you could give it to him.” Suddenly I was the center of Monroe’s world. I flattened my hand and offered up the fruit, which Monroe delicately removed. His soft lips tickled my palm, and I couldn’t help but crow with delight. “He’s so sweet!”

“Unless you are wearing white,” said Leighton. “Then he’s a fur-covered bulldozer calculating how to mow you down. But I can’t blame him, can you? He was only trying to defend himself. A very noble response. Anthropologists say humans have two overwhelming drives: procreation, or adding to our species, and self-preservation, or maintaining our species. Surely Monroe has the right to self-defense. Why should we wish to deny him that?”

I also learned that most donkeys don’t like dogs. “But Monny is very tolerant of them. Lucky for us dog lovers, eh?”

Leighton showed me Monroe’s food and gave me instructions on how much to feed him. “Don’t let those brown eyes sucker you into extra food. It’s not good for him. Oh, and there’s a heater in his water supply, so it won’t freeze up.”

The cares of the day evaporated as I learned how to care for my new friend. Leighton opened the back door to his home and called Petunia, his pug. The shy little boy-dog ran to me with his tail tucked between his legs, wriggling with joy. Tunie and I had been pals for ages, so I scooped up the cute smashed-nose pup and gave him a cuddle.

“By the way, Kiki, you do know you can turn me down for pet sitting, right? I don’t expect you to be available every time I ask.”

He’s such a nice man.

I assured him that caring for Petunia and Monroe wouldn’t be a problem. In fact, with Gracie gone, I was eager to take Petunia home with me that very evening.

I was sincere in my intent, but after I locked my front door and got the dog settled, I wondered how on earth I could manage to care for Leighton’s pets, help Mert with her dogsitting, meet my store obligations, and take care of holiday celebrations with my daughter. I opened the organizer I’d created as an example for our croppers. There just weren’t enough pages or open spaces in it to accommodate my overflowing schedule.

So I closed it and went to bed. This had been one of the longest days of my life. I kicked off my shoes but didn’t bother to undress. I tossed and turned all night, imagining the feel of cold, yucky flesh against my skin.

Tuesday, December 15

I woke up with
a head full of junk. My dressing routine was interrupted by several fits of coughing and sneezing. A couple of squirts of nasal spray helped me start breathing through my nose instead of my mouth.

I hate colds. Hate ’em.

My spirits brightened as I approached the pen. Monroe was thrilled to see me, and I quickly dispatched my responsibilities in the shed. Petunia wiggled around on the passenger’s seat. I cracked the windows for him while I raced into the vet’s office to pick up Gracie. Dr. Tailor instructed me to keep Gracie from any excitement. The less wagging, the better. I wondered how I could do that. By nature, Gracie wasn’t a barker. My big, beautiful Harlequin Great Dane didn’t make a peep for months after I acquired her at a pet adoption fair. But she was always a lover and a happy pup. Almost anything could set Gracie’s backside a moving like a metronome. I studied the bandage on her appendage and crossed my fingers mentally. Maybe if I positioned her in the backroom where she couldn’t see the comings and goings, she’d stay calm.

Fat chance,
said a voice in my head.

I situated both dogs in the playpen. Heated water in the microwave for a cup of Earl Grey, brewed it, squished out the moisture and kept the bag tucked away in a ramekin for another cup or two. I started the opening procedures and heard the buzzer sound at the back door. With any luck, I’d open it to a delivery of more stock.

I was all out of luck.

Detective Chad Detweiler stood there.

I gulped.

I hadn’t seen him for nearly a month. My mouth went dry. My hot tea sloshed over onto my hand.

“Ow!” I cried and dropped my mug. Behind me, my silent wonder-dog, Gracie, yodeled with joy. Detweiler is her favorite person in her world and mine. Heck, in my own way my tail was wagging, too.

Without speaking, he took me by the arm over to our bathroom sink. There he pressed against me and held my hand in cold water. “It keeps burning after the liquid is gone. You need the cold to stop the progress.”

The heat in my hand was quickly replaced by a warm tingling south of my belt buckle. I considered splashing a little water all down the front of me. I sure needed it.

“That’s better,” Detweiler said as he stepped away. My wobbling legs nearly collapsed.

But sanity and sheer grit rescued me. I straightened, caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, and flinched. My nose rivaled Rudolf’s for redness.

“I assume you’re here for a reason,” I managed, but that’s all I said before the buzzing of the back door minder interrupted us. Detective Hadcho wore a grim expression as he stood on the threshold. “I see Chad’s already here. Your business partner is just pulling in. We need to talk.”

Bama came in and we all took seats in the office. Hadcho and Detweiler explained that the police received a strange message the night before on their Tips Hotline. Detweiler withdrew a small recording device from his pocket and hit the “play” button.

“My name is Cindy Gambrowski,” said a quivering voice. “I’m afraid for my life. If anything happens to me, talk to Kiki Lowenstein over at Time in a Bottle. She’ll have the answers.”

“I have no idea what that person is talking about. When did you say you found this?” I cradled a new mug of tea. The old one with its broken handle had been relegated to the trash.

“One of our technicians brought it to us this morning. They followed up last night with a call to the Gambrowski residence, but no one answered. Without anything to follow up on—” Hadcho opened his palms in a gesture of defeat.

“Is Mrs. Gambrowski one of your customers?” Detweiler tapped his pen against his Steno pad, a habit of his I knew well. The pen moved at the rapid pace of his thoughts.

“She is.”

“What else can you tell us about her?”

I floundered about, not so much because I was being coy as how do you describe someone without being cruel or petty? Cindy had a bit of the floozy about her. Too much makeup. Too-low tops. Too-tight pants. Always wore high heels. No doubt her wardrobe was all very expensive stuff, but it was also too tight and too showy. Her taste veered toward cheap, or at least to the obvious, and there it remained. Her husband Ross was the driving force behind several subdivisions including Rossman Acres, a trendy but tacky subdivision on the south side of St. Louis. I once went to a Tupperware party there with another customer. (I usually avoid home parties because you feel obligated to make a purchase. But in this case, I needed their cupcake server for the store, and Tupperware is the best.) The walls of that little two-storey house shook whenever big cars drove by. The carpet obviously had been glued directly to the floor. When a toilet flushed on the second floor, I thought we’d all been instantly transported to Niagara Falls.

But why tell this to Detweiler and Hadcho? These were only opinions, not facts. It wasn’t like I’d ever had a heart-to-heart with Cindy.

Except … except …

“Did she take that journaling class you offered? The six-week one?” Bama mused out loud. “Journaling Your Life Story, right? Wasn’t that the name of it?”

I nodded.

“You keep any of her writings?” Bama drilled me.

“No. I expressly do not keep them. My goal is to encourage women to be honest on paper. You can’t do that if you worry other people will read what you wrote. They did most of their writing at home. I suggested they decide what was for public consumption and put that small portion of their work in their scrapbook albums.”

Everyone sat there without talking for a few minutes.

“You sure you don’t have anything of hers?” asked Detweiler. “Stan and I are here because we’ve been assigned to the Major Case Squad.”

Suddenly the import of all this hit me hard.

“You think she’s dead?”