Paper, Scissors, Death (14 page)

“Okay, someone has my computer. Now he thinks he has
all
the copies of the images. No reason to bother me again.” I rubbed Gracie’s head. Anya and Paris were watching television in the other room, but Gracie had taken a liking to the policeman and was nestled between our chairs. Her big head alternated resting on my thigh and then the detective’s.

Detweiler spoke quietly, raising his fingers to count off his points. “Mr. Lowenstein might have been poisoned. Someone shot Ms. Baker. Your house was broken into. There’s something weird going on with these photos. Maybe I spoke too soon about you being safe.” He gave me a long, thoughtful look. “By the way, I nailed your window shut.” He jerked his head toward my scrapbooking room. “That’ll do for now.”

He flipped open his phone and talked in a low voice. I could make out the gist of the conversation: he wanted the local cops to be especially watchful—and he explained why.

When he finished, I said, “I own a one-hundred-twenty-pound dog. I have a fenced-in back yard. We’ll be fine.” I talked big, but I was quaking in my boots. Our new theory had me worried.

“The local police will watch the house tonight. But at the very least, you need security lights. Anyone can get in through these windows, but with security lights, they’ll think twice.”

“Mert’s son will pick them up and install them tomorrow. After I get permission from my landlord.”

“Get those lights up right away.”

I didn’t argue with him about calling Mr. Wilson first. In my brief career as a renter, I’d learned my landlord wasn’t always reasonable. Once again, being poor put me at risk in ways I’d never stopped to imagine.

We had only fifteen more pictures to copy. Detweiler’s mouth settled into a scowl. “Hand me your cell phone. And does Anya have a cell phone? Get it for me.”

I did as I was told. George had gotten Anya a kid’s cell phone last year. At first I thought it an extravagance. But because the CALA campus sprawled over 100 acres, the phone facilitated tracking her down at after-school activities. In the wake of her father’s death, the phone helped my daughter feel more secure. Sheila loved being able to speed-dial her grandchild. When she offered to take over the payments, I gladly acquiesced. She might have rescinded her offer if she’d realized how much I liked being able to call my daughter at her grandmother’s house without my mother-in-law’s interference.

Detweiler programmed his number into both our phones. Handing one back to Anya, he told her, “Anything happens that bothers you, anything at all, hit number nine and call me. Doesn’t matter what time of day or night, okay?”

She studied him. “Are we in danger? Is something wrong?”

“No, Miss Anya,” he said, “but what use is it knowing a police officer if you can’t call him when you need him? Say a big bully picks on you on the playground, or you see an older kid drive too fast through the school parking lot, or you hear a noise at night and you get scared, I’m your man, all right?” And he concluded with a grin and a goofy thumb-to-the-chest gesture that made her laugh out loud.

“Hear that, Paris? We got police protection.” Paris was wearing pink striped pajamas and fuzzy house slippers. The dog was better dressed for bed than I would be.

“Honey,” I said. “As hot as it is, how about letting Paris sleep nude tonight?”

When girl and fashion-plate left the kitchen, Detweiler sank back in his chair and covered his face with both hands. “I could never be a parent. Here I’m trying to make sure she’s okay, and instead I scared her.”

I didn’t tell him I thought he’d make a wonderful parent. I kept that to myself.

After Detweiler left, the house seemed strangely empty. All my fears came back to haunt me as I wiped black fingerprint powder from my scrapbooking room.

Were we safe? Should I have sent my daughter to Sheila’s? Would the burglar return for the rest of my equipment? Was a killer watching my home and waiting?

Who killed George? Was it Roxanne? And who killed her? She hadn’t been robbed. Detweiler told me her purse and jewelry had been undisturbed.

So Roxanne had been with George
before
he died. The scarf proved that. Or did it? What if someone had planted her scarf on George’s body?

And maybe she’d been with him when he died. Did she kill my husband? If she killed George, why did someone kill her? To revenge his death? Or were there two killers out there? Two killers and a burglar?

My head started to hurt.

After I wiped down the room, I spent a restless hour. Finally, I let the dogs out for their goodnight piddle. A police car paused in front of my home.

Tonight we were safe. But for how long?

___

The next morning I dropped Anya at school and was in the store by quarter past eight. I brought Paris, her crate, and Gracie through the back door. I’m grateful Dodie lets me keep my canine babysitting charges at the store. She told me, “They’re welcome to visit as long as they are well-behaved and crated. Except Gracie. She’s free to have the run of the place.”

But for the emotional security of our customers, Gracie mainly stayed in the back room.

I think Dodie secretly wants a pet but isn’t ready to commit. I frequently find her in the back cuddling a lonely pooch. The woman is a study in contrasts, by turns hard-nosed businesswoman and sensitive employer. Although she expects a lot from me, she has made it perfectly clear she understands that Anya’s needs come first.

Our relationship turned upside down when I moved from customer to employee. And yet Dodie has let me know that in many ways she values me more than ever. Back then, I was a minor source of revenue; now I am a revenue stream.

All in all, my decision to work for Dodie has been a good one, and I appreciate this job. Today I had lots to do. Every other Friday, we offer a Beginning Scrappers Crop, fondly called the Newbie-Do-Be-Do. I like to start early getting ready for them. For each beginners’ crop, I create a new simple layout. Since working at Time in a Bottle, I’ve taught two beginning classes, this being the third. That means I have two other beginning layout kits I can sell to our newbies. Each kit includes all the paper they need, instructions, and a small color photo of the finished project. At the price, it’s a bargain, but it makes money for Dodie. My starter kits help business in yet another way—beginning layouts encourage newbies to feel successful quickly, keeping them involved in the hobby.

I was paying close attention to the die-cut machine when the buzzer heralded a customer. The store doesn’t really open until nine, but I flip over the sign as soon as I get settled. After all, you never know when a big sale will walk in.

I looked up to say hi to Merrilee Witherow.

Only, it wasn’t Merrilee. It was Linda Kovaleski. She looked terrible. Her red-rimmed eyes were underlined by dark, puffy bags.

“Boy, for a moment I thought you were Merrilee.”

“We have the same hairdresser,” she said, flipping her tresses to show them off. They were a sunstreaked blonde that was probably as expensive as it looked. After the flip, she grabbed a piece of hair and twisted it cruelly.

“Can you believe it about Roxanne? Isn’t it awful?” she talked like a woman on speed. “It’s scary. There’s a killer out there. None of us are safe.” Her eyes kept roaming the ceiling, unable to focus, like a cell phone searching for service. I heard a tapping and glanced down to catch her foot in frenetic motion.

“Yes, it’s horrible.” This wasn’t the place to get into theories of divine retribution. Truth be told, I wasn’t as worried about the dead Roxanne as I was about the live whacko standing two feet from me. Linda’s eyes ricocheted like pinballs, and her fingers moved at warp speed, turning and fiddling with her hair.

I asked, “Are you all right?”

“I’ve had a lot of caffeine. I didn’t get much sleep last night. I can’t stop thinking about Roxanne at the shower, you know? I wonder what happened? I mean she was alive and now—how could she be gone? Why would anyone hurt her?”

I bit back an answer.

“She was at the mall. Why there? She only shopped designer stores.”

“I don’t know what she was planning. Maybe we’ll never know.”

“She was this total scrapbook fanatic. I mean, it’s odd that you and she … uh, George and you and …” The woman tailed off, momentarily stunned by her own bad taste, or so I hoped.

Her finger twirled like a helicopter propeller, ravaging her hair. “I mean, her scrapbooks were really important to her. Like, they were her life! She was always taking pictures. I’m worried about our photos from the shower. I heard about your computer being stolen.”

“How’d you hear that?”

“Uh, I called Dodie at home first thing this morning. She gave us her business card with her phone number, remember? I was upset about Roxanne.” Linda twisted a lock of hair, her finger chasing it round and round. “And I was worried about Roxie’s camera. Was it on her … her body? I mean, what about the shower photos?”

So that’s what this was about. “It’s okay. We’re covered. She didn’t take any photos at the shower.”

“But your computer’s gone. Our photos were in it.”

“Right, but I also copied them onto CDs.”

“And on this computer?”

“No. Customers use this computer. I can’t store the photos here. I can’t chance someone erasing them by mistake. And remember Snapfish?”

Linda’s eyes measured the ceiling. Thinking, thinking, thinking. The answers are not up there, I was tempted to say.

She bit a corner of her mouth and got lipstick on her front teeth. “What do fish have to do with our pictures?”

I tried not to sigh. I didn’t want to sigh. But I probably did.

I needed to recoup fast. I had no right to act unkindly toward her. There are plenty of things I don’t understand: calculus, rocket science, and intelligent design. “Snapfish is a photo finishing and storage site. I probably didn’t do a good job of explaining how it works. Why don’t I walk you through the process?”

We sat side by side at the computer. I noticed her gorgeous French manicure and expensive perfume. Actually, what I noticed was money. Lots and lots of money.

Shades of my former life.

I opened the website, typed in my password and room code, and clicked on the album. Linda’s eyes nearly bugged out of her head. She really was a computer novice.

“Those pictures are small. You can barely see anything.” Her twisting ramped up. That poor strand of hair was turning and twirling for all it was worth. At this rate, she’d be bald before sundown.

“Right. We’re viewing thumbnails. They’re called that because of the size. Watch. I click and the image gets bigger.”

She squinted. “You can’t really tell a lot about what’s going on, I mean, not really.”

“That’s part of my job. I can enlarge the photos. I can also adjust the brightness and contrast, fix red eye, and crop out distractions.” As I spoke I brightened a picture of Merrilee and her mother opening a gift. I fixed the red eye and removed an annoying ficus at their side.

“Notice how taking away the house plant redirected our attention? We can focus on the bride and her mother.”

“You sure can!” Linda leaped out of the chair, her purse held tightly to her body as if warding off a blow. “I’ve got to go.” She walked straight out the door.

I sat at the computer and stared after her. Life had gotten so weird. Linda’s bizarre visit proved that bedlam was the new norm. Was there a full moon out there or what? Certainly my life was in total disarray.

Then again, who was I to label her behavior strange? I fingered Detweiler’s card tucked in my pants pocket. My husband had been dead less than a year and I had the hots for a man who’d accused me of murder. How sick was that?

Dodie walked in fifteen minutes after Linda’s precipitous departure. Paris set up a barrage of warning barks, announcing she was on watchdog duty. After dressing herself for school, my daughter had outfitted Paris in a pair of denim capri pants and floral crop top. Dodie lifted the canine fashion model out of her crate. “Hey, gorgeous, how’s tricks? Walked any runways lately?”

I told Dodie about Linda’s visit.

“She called me at home. How would I know if the police found Roxanne’s camera? How many times do we need to tell her the photos were loaded into your computer and Snapfish? Geez, talk about your ditzy blonde.” Dodie paused. “No offense.”

“None taken.” Yes, I’m blonde, but that’s because I believe in better living through chemistry. If my income didn’t improve soon, my hair would return to its natural mainly-muddy brown.

I flipped open my cell and called Detweiler. That brought up a good question. Where was Roxanne’s camera? We knew she hadn’t taken photos at the shower. At least not before we loaded her memory card. Had she taken any pictures after? Did she have the camera with her when she died?

I left a message on Detweiler’s voice mail.

Dodie worked the counter while I sorted photos. Most of them didn’t relate to the shower. Culling through the rest, I looked for candid photos that reflected the celebratory spirit of the bridal shower. I immediately discarded any that were unflattering to the guests, although I hesitated before purging the picture of Roxanne with an ugly sneer on her face. With judicious cropping, I created portraits of Merrilee and each of her guests. One particularly striking photo taken by Linda showed Merrilee and her mother beaming at each other. No wonder the woman stressed out so much about the safety of her photos. Linda was a darn good photographer. She’d captured Mrs. Witherow lovingly cradling her daughter’s chin in her hand. It was a portrait that would have made any professional proud.

Around lunchtime, I grabbed a strawberry low-fat yogurt from the mini-fridge in Dodie’s office and chugged a Diet Dr Pepper. The dogs needed a potty-break and a walk. After fifteen minutes in the heat, we oozed our way gratefully into the air-conditioned cool of the back room. My short-sleeved cotton blouse would have wilted had I not soaked it with an entire potato field of starch before ironing. My short khaki skirt kept me cool everywhere but around the waistband. I splashed cool water on the inside of my wrists, returned to the sales floor, and shifted gears to work on the new layout for the newbie crop.

Try as I might, I couldn’t decide what I wanted for that particular project. I kept shuffling papers and rejecting embellishments. I’d gotten nothing done but wasting time when my watch told me I’d better hustle to meet Anya after school.

I told the dogs. “Time to get our girl!”

Gracie hopped up and down, doing her heavy-duty imitation of a pogo stick. Her big tail thumped the nearby boxes. Paris yapped. She wasn’t smart enough to know I’d suggested an R-I-D-E, but she figured if Gracie was excited, she might as well join in. Inside the car, Gracie perched her rump on the passenger seat and her front legs on the floor, so she looked exactly like a human with a blocky head. Paris raced back and forth in the tiny back seat.

My landlord, Mr. Wilson, rang my cell phone as I was driving to CALA.

“Heard the police were at your house.”

“Yes, sir. I had a break in.”

“That’s never happened before at one of my properties.”

I found that hard to believe. The term “slumlord” would have been a generous moniker for the man. But I didn’t want to be disagreeable. “Yes, sir. I called because I have a friend who’s installing security lights as we speak—”

“Your lease specifically forbids you from making any alterations to the property unless I approve.”

So far his approval had extended to me turning a gross dump into a clean and attractive home. Wilson sure hadn’t minded saying yes when it meant letting me put hours of my time into upgrading his property.

But my Nana always said you can catch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar.

“Yes, sir, I understand. I really do. And I’m so sorry this happened. I would have waited on the lights but it’s really dark along the sides of the house and—”