Murder on the First Day of Christmas (Chloe Carstairs Mysteries) (23 page)

    
“Honey, I think we can all agree that’s no longer the case,” Mom said. “More tea?”

    
McGowan frowned. “Angela’s still a prime suspect.”

    
Mom arched a brow. “Why would Angela hurt Chloe? We were trying to help her. Only someone who thought we were a threat to them would try to hurt us.”

    
I thought she made a good point.

    
“That only works if Angela’s innocent,” McGowan pointed out. “If she’s guilty, she might be scared that you would prove it.”

    
Mom and I made identical derisive sounds.

    
McGowan ignored us. “You might already know something that’s a threat to her and not realize it.”

    
I rolled my eyes. Mom shook her head.

    
“Look. I know you two think I’m railroading your friend, but that’s not the case. I think there’s a possibility she’s guilty. How is that more unreasonable than your knee-jerk, completely baseless belief that she’s innocent?”

    
“It just is,” I explained.

    
Mom took McGowan’s not-quite-empty tea glass from his hand, put it on the tray and stood. “It just is.”

    
He had no choice but to follow her to the door.

    
“You will both stop poking around?” McGowan did a little jog step to keep up with Amanda as she marched to the entryway.

    
“Neither of us has a death wish, Detective.” Mom threw open the door. “We’ll leave the police work to you.”

    
“Glad to hear it. Call me if you need…”

    
But the door closed, and McGowan was on the other side of it.

    
Mom returned to the living room.

    
“So that’s it?” I was ready to start the argument all over again.

    
“We’ll leave police work to the police,” Mom repeated as she picked up the tray. “But our work is far from done.”

    
I smiled, shoved a whole saltine into my mouth and settled back onto the couch to think.

CHAPTER 27

    
It felt good to be upright again, so Monday afternoon I made Mom go with me to my bridesmaid’s dress fitting. This was to by my first glimpse of the style Dana had chosen, and I figured I could use the moral support.

    
Mom was just as curious as I was, but warned she could only stay for a half hour before she had to pick up Lily from ballet.

    
“What was Dana thinking?” I said to my reflection, which was swathed in ten yards of pale green taffeta. “This looks like a sack.”

    
It was obvious what Dana had been thinking when she chose the empire waist bridesmaid dress. It would be her day, and no one would upstage her.

    
“I think it’s cute,” Mom said helpfully.

    
The seamstress, Marva Lowenstein, pinned the bottom. A buxom woman of about fifty with yellow hair that still bore hot roller tread marks, she wore a yellow caftan and a matching wrist corsage of straight pins, blooming from a yellow cushion. I’m guessing the woman liked yellow.

    
“It’s the Jane Austen look,” Marva offered.

    
I held my curls in a messy updo.

    
“Stop squirming,” Marva ordered.

    
Mom almost hid a smile and didn’t meet my eyes until the dress was all pinned.

    
“You look lovely.” Marva’s tone told me she wouldn’t indulge complaints. “This style flatters all figures.”

    
“What did she mean by that?” I demanded when Mom and I were alone.

    
No exercise and a steady diet of beige-colored comfort food had put back any weight I had lost on the Godiva diet.

    
“Just what she said, I imagine. Be careful, you’ll rip out the hem.”  The dress was filled with pins.

    
“How do I get out of the thing? There’s no zipper.”

    
“Well, see if you can… Good Lord, how are you supposed to get out of it?”

    
“Here, you pull, and I’ll back out of it.” I bent over, and we carefully bunched fabric toward my head.

    
“Ouch! Pins. Very sharp pins,” I complained.

    
Mom fought a major case of the giggles, watching me wiggle around with my arms in the air, my head lost in the folds.

    
“Behold the dance of the honeydews,” she said, unable to stifle her laughter.

    
“That’s not funny. I’m claustrophobic in here.”

    
“My God, Chloe, what happened to your legs?”

    
I paused in backing out of the dress, my pink-pantied butt and legs leading the way. Had cellulite completely taken over my thighs, and my own mother was horrified?

    
It wasn’t until I was free, gulping for air, that I realized what she must have been talking about.  One of my legs was bronze, the other lily white.

    
“I ran out of sunless tanner after doing one leg,” I defended myself as I smoothed down my curls.

    
“And you left them like that?”

    
“Give me a break. I got distracted.”

    
“By what?”

    
“My toast popped up or something.”

    
“For Heaven’s sake! Don’t get into an accident on the way home. What would the paramedics think?”

    
“I’m more embarrassed that they saw my two pasty white legs Friday.” I reached for my jeans, sending up a silent prayer that McGowan hadn’t seen those legs or worse my underwear. These things should be carefully choreographed.

    
“Heard anything from Jacob?”

    
“He left a message saying to call him if I needed anything, and that we’re still on for dinner this Friday, if I feel up to it.”

    
Mom frowned. “If it’s any consolation, he was upset at the hospital.”

    
“He didn’t act like it.”

    
“Well, he was, and it was no act.”

    
I pulled my shirt over my head. “Did you tell him about our investigation?”

    
“A bit. He seemed to think that you’ve lost your mind.”

    
“What’d he say?”

    
“He said, ‘that girl has lost her mind.’”

    
For some reason, this cheered me up. “So why isn’t he rushing to protect me?”

    
Mom cleaned my glasses and handed them back to me. “He and your father might be under the impression that we’re no longer looking into this.”

    
“Where would they get that idea?” We hadn’t discussed the case while I was still at my parents. I had thought she and my father were trying not to stress me out. Apparently not.

    
“Not from me. They seemed to have taken it for granted.”

    
I had to laugh. “Never a good idea.”

    
“Any word from McGowan?”

    
“Another message asking if I was feeling better.” My cell phone was getting more action than I was these days.

    
“Angela is still MIA, I’m afraid.”

    
When we reached Mom’s MG, I tried looking on the bright side. “We’re getting closer, don’t you think? We’ve asked the hard questions. We’ve rattled some cages. We’re a threat to someone. Surely something’s about to pop loose.”

    
Mom shrugged. “We haven’t proven anything, and it’s time to get serious.”

    
“Serious how?”

    
“I wonder what Tony Trianos could tell us.”

    
“Are you kidding? He’ll tell us to sleep with the fishes.”

    
“Think about it, Chloe. He’s connected.”

    
“Yeah. To the mob.”

    
“I meant to this case.” She started the car.  “He was at Saul’s party. He had a grudge against Oscar.”

    
“He’s a criminal, and he’s out of our league.” The thought of questioning Trianos made my heart race. That and Mom’s driving. Always just a tiny bit too fast.

    
“You said it yourself. No stone unturned.”

    
“I was kidding. You know me. Always with the jokes.” I slid onto the tiny seat, prepared to take my chances with the driving.

    
“We need to know why Saul was so interested in him and if Trianos saw anything. He’s a suspect, and we have to question them all.”

    
“We haven’t questioned Gavin Beaumont,” I pointed out.

    
“I forgot about him. Ok, first Gavin. If our clever interrogation techniques don’t coax a confession out of him, we question Trianos.”

    
“And this is something we have to do in person? We couldn’t just make an anonymous call?”

    
Mom smiled over at me. “Every suspect, no stone unturned. He could be our guy.”

    
“Oh, great. So we accuse a mobster of murder. Brilliant, Mom.”

CHAPTER 28

    
That evening, Mom seemed to understand my leeriness about eating in. I didn’t say anything, and she didn’t ask. We just pulled things out of her refrigerator and started dinner.

    
Still nervous about questioning Tony Trianos, I tried another tack. “Are you going to tell Dad about your little plan for tomorrow?”

    
Her little plan for tomorrow was to join Trianos for lunch at his downtown restaurant.

    
“I don’t see why not,” she said, surprising me, “if it comes up.”

    
Ah. She was taking the ignorance-is-bliss approach. One of my favorites. “So you admit, it’s not something he would approve.”

    
“I’m a grown woman who doesn’t need his approval.”

    
Which was true, but we both jumped when we heard Dad ask, “What’s for dinner.”

    
He kissed Mom on the side of the neck. “Did I startle you?”

    
“No, I thought you were watching the news.” She ignored my smirk.

    
“It’s all bad. You staying for dinner again?” He gave me a rough one-armed hug.

    
“Veggie pizza. Like I’m going to pass that up.” I grabbed a fat, red pepper, sliced it into slivers, and added them to a skillet in which onion, garlic and mushrooms were already sautéing.

    
For a few minutes, the three of us worked together not saying much. I kept shooting Mom looks, daring her to say something about Trianos, still trying to make her realize what a harebrained scheme it was.

    
“Have you heard anything downtown about Angela’s disappearance?” she asked Dad, ignoring me.

    
“Ran into Detective McGowan just this morning, as a matter of fact.” He stretched dough for the crust, his flour-coated hands deftly smoothing it onto a pizza stone sprinkled with cornmeal. “He said he’s not treating Angela’s disappearance as a missing person case yet, but he’s as interested in talking to her as we are.”

    
“Did he give you any insight as to where the rest of the investigation stands?” I slid the crust into the oven to blind bake for a few minutes.

    
“Still no connection between the guy who got his hand chopped off and Saul or Oscar. They’re treating the deaths as related homicides, no surprise there. No sign of the missing discs, and no real idea of how or when they were stolen. And last, but not least, no clues on who tried to poison Chloe. Other than that, he was very cagey, our friend McGowan.”

    
“No, wonder. He doesn’t know half the things we know.” I filled Dad in on all we had learned. Nancy’s affairs, Robin’s quasi-confession, Jack Lassiter’s possible connection to Robin if their whispering at Saul’s party was any indication.

    
“And Robin inherits half of Saul’s estate,” Mom dropped the bombshell before I got the chance. 

    
“You’re kidding?”

    
“Nope. Meagan told us last week,” I offered what little I still had. 

    
My mother signaled me to turn off the heat under the veggies, now just shy of crisp tender. Homemade sauce thawing since that morning simmered in a pan.