The Best of Sisters in Crime (50 page)

Before I could
say anything she hung up.

My neighbor and
I walked slowly back to my house. The police arrived first: two men in
uniforms. They took my name and Edith Blanton’s. They asked how and when I’d
found the body. When they tried to call for an investigative team, they
discovered that the reason I hadn’t been able to get a dial tone was that my
phone was dead. The wires outside had been cut. This would explain why my
brand-new, horrendously expensive security system had not worked when Edith and
. . . whoever . . . had broken in. The police used their radio. While I was
bemoaning my fate, Maria arrived. She was dressed in a sweatsuit sewn with gold
spangles: I think they were supposed to represent aspen leaves.

The team arrived
and took pictures. The coroner, gray-haired and grim-faced, signaled the
removal company to cart out the body bag holding Edith. Maria murmured, “The
Butterball bagged.”

I said, “Stop.”

Maria closed her
eyes and fluttered her plump hands. “I know. I’m sorry. But she
was
a bitch. Everybody in the church disliked
her.”

I harrumphed.
The two uniformed policemen told us to quit talking. They told me to go into
the living room so the team leader, a female homicide investigator I did not
know, could ask some questions. Maria flounced out. She said she was going home
to make up the guest bed for me; no way was she allowing me to stay in that
house.

The team leader
and I settled ourselves on the two chairs in my living room. Out in the kitchen
the lab technicians and other investigators were having a field day spreading
black graphite fingerprint powder over the food for the church-women’s
luncheon.

The investigator
was a burly woman with curly blond hair held back with black barrettes. Her
eyes were light brown and impassive, her voice even. She wanted to know my
name, if I knew the victim and for how long, was I having problems with her and
where I’d been all day. I told her about my activities, about the following day’s
luncheon and Edith’s questions. At their leader’s direction, the team took
samples of all the food. They also took what they’d found on the refrigerator
floor: an anti-guitar-music petition. Through the blobs of congealed strawberry
salad and raw egg yolk, you could see there were no names on it. Edith was
still clutching the paper after she’d been hit on the head and dragged into the
refrigerator.

I said, “Dragged
. . . ?”

The investigator
bit the inside of her cheek. Then she said, “Please tell me every single thing
about your conversation with Edith Blanton.”

So we went
through it all again, including the bit about the petition. I added that I had
not been due to see Edith, er, the deceased until the next day. Moreover, I was
not having more problems with her than anybody else in town, especially Father
Olson, who, unlike Edith, thought every liturgy should sound like a hootenanny.

The investigator’s
next question confused me. Did I have a pet? Yes, I had a cat that I had
inherited from former employers. However, I added, strangers spooked him. Poor
Scout would be cowering under a bed for at least the next three days.

She said, “And
the color of the cat is . . . ?”

“Light brown,
dark brown and white,” I said. “Sort of a Burmese-Siamese mix. I think.”

The investigator
held out a few strands of hair.

“Does this look
familiar? Look like your cat’s hair?” It was dark brown and did not look like
anything that grew on Scout. In fact, it looked fake.

“’Fraid not,” I
said.

“Synthetic,
anyway, we think. You got any of this kind of material around?”

I shook my head
no. “Oh gosh,” I said, “the bear.” I started to tell her about what I’d seen
around the back of the house, but she was looking at her clipboard. She shifted
in her chair.

She said, “Wait.
Is this a
relative
of yours? Er,
Ms. Bear?”

“No, no, no.
Have you heard of Three Bears Catering?”

The investigator
looked more confused. “Is that you, too? I wouldn’t know. They did the
policemen’s banquet down in Denver last year, and they all wore bear . . .
suits. . . .”

She eyed me, the
corners of her mouth turned down. She said, “Any chance this bear-person might
have been waiting to attack you in your refrigerator? Over the name change
problem? And attacked Edith instead? Do they know what you look like?”

“I told you. I
spent the afternoon with the Pettigrews,” I said through clenched teeth. “They’re
suing me; why would they want to kill me?”

“You tell me.”

At that moment,
Maria poked her head into the living room. “I’m back. Can we leave? Or do you
have to stay until the kitchen demolition team finishes?”

I looked at the
investigator, who shook her head. She said, “We have a lot to do. Should be
finished by midnight. At the latest. Also, we gotta take the cut wires from out
back and, uh, your back door.”

I said, “My back
door? Great.” I gave Maria a pained look. “I have to stay until they go. Just
do me a favor and call somebody to come put in a piece of plywood for the door
hole. Also, see if you can find my cat cage. I’m bringing Scout to your house.”

Maria nodded and
disappeared. The investigator then asked me to go through the whole thing
backward,
beginning with my discovery of Edith.
This I did meticulously, as I know the backward-story bit is one way
investigators check for lies.

Finally she
said, “Haven’t I seen you around? Aren’t you a friend of Tom Schulz’s?”

I smiled. “Homicide
Investigator Schulz is a good friend of mine. Unfortunately, he’s up snagging
inland salmon at Green Lake Reservoir. Now, tell me. Am I a suspect in this or
not?”

The investigator’s
flat brown eyes revealed nothing. After a moment she said, “At this time we don’t
have enough information to tell about any suspects. But this hair we found in
the victim’s hand isn’t yours. You didn’t know your phone lines were cut. And
you probably didn’t break down your own back door.”

Well. I guess
that was police talk for
No, you’re not a suspect.

The investigator
wrote a few last things on her clipboard, then got up to finish with her
cohorts in the kitchen. I didn’t see her for the next three hours. Maria
appeared with the cat cage, and I found Scout crouched under Arch’s bed. I
coaxed him out while Maria welcomed the emergency fix-it people at the stroke
of midnight. The panel on their truck said:
Felony Fix-up—They Trash
It, We Patch It.
How comforting. Especially the
twenty-four-hour service part.

An hour after
the police and Felony Fix-up had left my kitchen looking like a relic of the
scorched-earth policy, I sat in Maria’s kitchen staring down one of Maria’s
favorite treats—imported
baba au rhum.
There’s something about being awake at one A.M. that makes you
think you need something to eat. Still, guilt reared its hideous head.

“What’s the
matter?” Maria asked. “I thought you loved those. Eat up. It’ll help you stop
thinking about Edith Blanton.”

“Not likely, but
I’ll try.” I inhaled the deep buttered-rum scent. “I shouldn’t. I ate Lindt
Lindors all summer and I’m supposed to be on a diet.”

“One dessert won’t
hurt you.”

“I’ve already
had one dessert.”

“So?
Two
won’t hurt you.” She shook her peaches-and-cream
cheeks. “If I’d had to go through what you just did, I’d have six.” So saying,
she delicately loaded two
babas
onto a Wedgwood dessert plate. “Tomorrow’s going to be even worse,”
she warned. “You’ll have to phone the president of the churchwomen first thing
and cancel the luncheon. You’ll have to call Father Olson. No, never mind, I’ll
make both calls.”

“Why?”

“Because, my
dear, I am still hopeful that you’ll be able to do my dinner party tomorrow
night.” Maria pushed away from the table to sashay over to her refrigerator for
an aerosol can of whipped cream. “I know it’s crass,” she said as she shook the
can vigorously, “but I still have three people, one of whom is a male I am very
interested in, expecting dinner. Shrimp cocktail, steaks, potato soufflé, green
beans, Waldorf salad, and chocolate cake. Remember? Beginning at six o’clock. I
can’t exactly call them up and say, Well, my caterer found this body in her
refrigerator—”

“All right! If I
can finish cleaning up the mess tomorrow, we’re on.” I took a bite of the
baba
and said, “The cops ruined the salad and
the cake. You’ll have to give me some more of your Jonathan apples. Gee, I don’t
feel so hot—”

“Don’t worry.
Sleep in. I have lots of apples. And I’ll send a maid over to help you.”

“Just not in a
bear suit.”

“Hey! Speaking
of which! Should we give the Pettigrews a call in the morning? Just to hassle
them?” She giggled. “Should we give them a call right now?”

“No, no, no,” I
said loudly over the sound of Maria hosing her
babas
with cream. “The police are bound to talk
to them. If they’re blameless, I can’t afford to have them any angrier at me
than they already are. I’m so tired, I don’t even want to think about it.”

Maria gave me a
sympathetic look, got up and made me a cup of espresso laced with rum.

I said, “So who’s
this guy tomorrow night?”

“Fellow named
Tony Kaplan. Just moved here from L.A., where he sold his house for over a
million dollars. And it was a small house, too. He’s cute. Wants to open a
bookstore.”

“Not another
newcomer who’s fantasized about running a bookstore in a mountain town,” I said
as I took the whipped cream bottle and pressed out a blob on top of my coffee.
Immigrants from either coast always felt they had a mission to bring culture to
us cowpokes. “Gee,” I said. “Almost forgot. Regarding your busy social life,
Father Olson called and asked me how you were.”

“I hope you told
him I was living in sin with a chocolate bar.”

“Well, I didn’t
have time because then David McAllister showed up at my front door. Wanted to
know if there was anything he could do to show you he loved you.”

Maria tsked. “He
asked me the same thing, and I said, Well, you can start with a nice bushel of
apples.”

“You are cruel.”
I sipped the coffee. With the rum and the whipped cream, it was sort of like
hot ice cream. “You shouldn’t play with his feelings.”

“Excuse me, but
jealousy is for seventh-graders.”

“Too cruel,” I
said as we got up and placed the dishes in the sink. She escorted me with Scout
the cat up to her guest room, then gave me towels; I handed over a key to my
front door for her maid. Then I said, “Tell me about Edith Blanton.”

Maria plunked
down a pair of matching washcloths. She said, “Edith knew everything about
everybody. Who in the church had had affairs with whom . . .”

“Oh, that’s
nice.”

Maria pulled up
her shoulders in an exaggerated gesture of nonchalance. The sweat-suit spangles
shook. “Well, it was,” she said. “I mean, everybody was nice to her because
they were afraid of what she had on them. They didn’t want her to talk. And she
got what she wanted, until she took up arms against Father Olson over the
guitar music.”

“Too bad she
couldn’t get anything on him.”

“Oh, honey,”
Maria said with an elaborate swirl of her eyes before she turned away and
swaggered down the hall to her room. “Don’t think she wasn’t trying.”

The next day
Scout and I trekked to the church before going back to my house. Scout meowed
morosely the whole way. I told him I had to leave a big sign on the church
door, saying that the luncheon had been canceled. He only howled louder when I
said it was just in case someone hadn’t gotten the word. If I hadn’t been
concentrating so hard on trying to comfort him, I would have noticed George
Pettigrew’s truck in the church parking lot. Then I would have been prepared
for Pettigrew’s smug grin, his hands clutched under his armpits, his foot
tapping as I vaulted out of my van. As it was, I nearly had a fit.

“Were you around
my house in a bear suit last night?” I demanded. He opened his eyes wide, as if
I were crazy. “And
what
are you doing here? Haven’t you got enough catering jobs down in Denver?”

“We don’t use
the bear suits anymore,” he replied in a superior tone. “We had a hygiene
problem with the hair getting into the food. And as a matter of fact I am doing
lunches for two Skyboxes at Mile High Stadium tomorrow. But I can still offer
to help out the churchwomen, since their local caterer canceled.” His eyes
bugged out as he raised his eyebrows. “Bad news travels fast.”

Well, the
luncheon was not going to happen. To tell him this, I was tempted to use some
very unchurchlike language. But at that moment Father Olson pulled up in his
300E Mercedes 4matic. Father O. had told the vestry that a priest needed a
four-wheel-drive vehicle to visit parishioners in the mountains; he’d also
petitioned for folk-music tapes to give to shut-ins. The vestry had refused to
purchase the tapes, but they’d sprung fifty thou for the car.