A Candidate For Murder (Old Maids of Mercer Island Mysteries Book 2) (12 page)

“Okay, but I hope there won’t
be
a next time,” I said.

Shortly after the detectives left, Roger reappeared.

“The keypad is up and running,” he said. “But you really should equip your upstairs windows with alarms, Julia. After what happened, I’ll give you the labor for free. What d’you say? I could schedule it early next week.”

I nodded. “Let me talk to my bookkeeper. I probably should have done it all right from the beginning. I’ll give you a call.”

“Well, again, I’m so sorry about Ahab. Everything is still under warranty, so there’s no charge, but…well, it doesn’t make up for your loss.”

I caught a tear forming and reached up to swipe it away. “Thanks.”

He reached out a long, gangly arm and placed a hand on my shoulder. “If you only knew how badly I feel, Julia. Please, let me know if there’s anything I can do.”

“I will. Thank you.”

Roger gave me a weak smile and left. I turned to the girls who were waiting impatiently in the breakfast room.

“C’mon, Julia,” Rudy said. “Let’s get going. I’m booked this afternoon.”

We each grabbed our beverage of choice and headed for the garage, which sat between the Inn and the guest house. As we came around the corner, we encountered Jose´. He had the garage door open and was staring through the van’s open back doors.

“Um, I can explain,” I said, coming up behind him.

He turned dark eyes my way, his handsome features twisted into amused curiosity. “You told me to pick up a bachelor’s chest from the early 1900s today, but it looks like you cleaned up trash along the highway instead,” he said with a smile.

We had formed a half circle around him, all staring at the mess of bulging garbage bags and dirty plastic bags in the back of the van.

“Very funny,” I replied. “But there’s a reason all of that mess is in there.”

“And I’m sure we’re waiting to hear it,” a voice cut in from the back.

We all turned to find April standing behind us, wrapped up in a faux fur-lined coat. Her arms were crossed over her chest, and she had a muffler around her neck. Instead of a pleasant smile though, she had a look of restrained patience on her face.

“When you said last night that you hoped I wouldn’t need the van today, I assumed you meant that you had a pickup or a delivery. But apparently, you’ve joined Doe in the business of picking up other people’s garbage.”

“No, just Dana Finkle’s,” Blair blurted.

Rudy shot Blair a look of reproach as April’s eyes expanded with recognition.

“Ah, I see,” she said, stepping forward to stare at the jumble of cardboard boxes, empty paper bags and trash that littered the back of the van. “Let me guess. You think you’re going to find something in there that will help you solve Trudy’s murder.”

“We need to know more about Dana,” I said. “And why someone might want to kill her.”

“And you think you’re going to learn that from her trash.” April’s dark eyes glinted with skepticism.

Blair was standing closest to the back of the van, and she reached out a manicured fingernail to poke the label on a flattened shipping box. “Well, who knows, maybe we’ll find the receipt for a bunch of sex toys in there.”

“And that would be important because…” April let her sentence draw out.

“More likely we’ll find an empty tube of Preparation H,” Doe said cynically.

I let out an exasperated sigh. “Look, we’ll be done here in about an hour. Then you can go pick up that chest,” I said to Jose´.

He shrugged his shoulders. “Doesn’t matter to me. I have plenty to do.” He ambled away, and I turned to April. “By the way, we went out and searched the beach area like you suggested, and we found a couple of empty bottles from a rare kind of beer in the trees. The detectives were here and said they found one just like it at the library.”

Her eyes fluttered momentarily. “So whoever took Ahab really might be the guy who killed Trudy.”

I nodded. “It looks that way. We still need to figure out who it was that said they’d like to kill Dana in front of Ahab, though. Can you think back on that night? Try to remember if you saw anyone hanging around his cage?”

“Sure. By the way, I just heard on the news that Dana has formally dropped out of the mayoral race. She had a short press conference downtown. Meanwhile, I’ll leave you to it,” she said, nodding to the back of the van. “Don’t catch any diseases.” She left us with a wave of her hand as she disappeared around the corner of the garage.

“Dana doesn’t have any diseases, does she?” Blair asked.

Rudy sighed. “No, Blair. She just has a diseased mind. C’mon, let’s get started. I have a fast-pitch meeting this afternoon.”

“Let me get some big plastic bags,” I said.

I ran over to a workbench and pulled out a box of leaf bags. I handed bags to everyone and immediately shook mine open.

“Here. Why don’t we shove all the torn up boxes into this one?”

As the girls began to pick through the trash and toss cardboard into my bag, my mind wandered back to Dana and the campaign.

“So, she actually did it,” I said.

“What?” Rudy asked.

“Dropped out of the race. I wasn’t sure she would. I think she wanted to be mayor more than anything,” I said.

“Because it would give her what she doesn’t have,” Doe said. “Power.”

“Exactly,” I replied.

We worked silently for a moment, and then Doe addressed Rudy. “You think your new knee will handle fast-pitch this year?”

“I hope so,” Rudy said as she separated out a bunch of paper goods and stuffed them into a second bag. “I miss it. And I can’t keep up my skills if I don’t play.”

“Are you going to try out for pitcher again?” Blair asked.

“Not sure,” Rudy replied. “My shoulder has been acting up. I’ve been getting some PT to loosen it up.”

Doe was folding up a box to fit into the bag. “The whole team is over 50, isn’t it? You guys should be taking it easy.”

“That’s why it’s called
senior
fast pitch,” Rudy said with a sneer. “Instead of an 80 mile an hour pitch, I can only do 60 now. But I can still heat up the catcher’s glove,” she said with a seductive wink.

“Is Colin Peters still your catcher?” Blair asked, referring to the retired athletic coach from one of the high schools. Rudy nodded. “Well, I’d like to warm up more than his catcher’s mitt,” Blair said as she tossed something into the bag.

“Blair,” Doe scolded her.

“Hey,” she replied with a lift to her eyebrows. “Rudy enjoys
her
game with soft balls, and I enjoy mine.”

Rudy let out a belly laugh. “Well no surprise there.”

“Okay, c’mon, let’s take this stuff over here,” I said.

We dragged the bags to the front of the garage, where we had a large table set up to sort through boxes we sometimes picked up at storage facility sales. I pulled out some folding chairs, closed the garage door and turned on a space heater, while we all sat down and began to sort through the bags.

“Okay, why don’t we divide this stuff up?” I suggested. “Let’s collect receipts here,” I said, indicating a spot in the middle of the table. “And letters and invoices over there,” I said, gesturing to my left.

“Here’s a box for things we don’t know what to do with,” Rudy said, lifting up a box and placing it at the end of the table.

“Okay, ready, set, go,” I said.

We spent the next fifteen minutes quickly sorting and organizing what was in the trash bags. Anything that was obviously junk was thrown into a garbage can I dragged over from the back of the garage.

“Hey, this is interesting,” Blair exclaimed. “It’s a letter from an attorney warning Dana to cease and desist.” Blair looked up and handed the letter to Rudy, who skimmed it quickly.

“It’s regarding someone named Eloise Radle,” Rudy said. “That’s not a name I recognize.”

“Me neither,” I said. “What else does it say?”

Rudy studied the letter. “It says that if Dana doesn’t stop harassing his client about her back porch light, the attorney will get a court order to force her to back off.”

“The back porch light?” I said, shaking my head. “What in the world is she complaining about?”

Rudy looked up from the paper in her hands. “Apparently this woman lives next door to Dana and has a spotlight in her backyard that shines into Dana’s kitchen.”

“Her kitchen?” I said. “Where she’s probably never trying to sleep. God, sometimes I think Dana is just a ridiculous woman. Where’s the attorney located?”

Rudy glanced back at the sheet of paper. “Seattle.”

“I think we ought to set that one aside and check into it,” Doe said.

“I don’t know,” I said. “It seems awfully petty to me.”

“But not to this woman,” Rudy said, setting the letter on the table. “After all, she hired an attorney. We shouldn’t judge at this point. Just gather information.”

Several more minutes went by. I finally found something that raised my eyebrows.

“Hey, how about this?” I said, waving a receipt in my hands. “Dana bought a gun.”

“You’re kidding!” Doe said. “When?”

“Um…two months ago,” I replied. I glanced around at everyone. “I don’t think I like the thought of Dana Finkle with a gun.”

“That’s cuz
you’re
always in her cross hairs,” Rudy said.

“Very funny,” I said with a grimace. I glanced at Doe, wondering if she’d told Blair or Rudy about her own recent purchase. But she seemed oblivious to the reference.

Blair snickered and then said. “Up until now, Dana has only taken pot shots at people with her mouth. A loaded gun in the hands of a woman like that puts a
whole
new meaning on the phrase, ‘pistol packing mama.’”

“Maybe Clay bought it,” I said with a smile.

“Well, I just found a receipt for Viagra,” Rudy announced with a grin. “Maybe up until now he’s hasn’t been able to discharge his gun at all.”

Blair snorted with laughter. “Yes, but now that he has both a gun
and
Viagra, Dana would be like, ‘Is that a gun in your pocket, Clay? Or are you just glad to see me?’”

“Oh God,” Doe said, laughing. “Can you imagine the two of them having sex?”

“No,” Rudy said, making a face. “She has the slimiest personality I know, and he’s the most stoic.”

“Uptight is more like it,” Doe said, throwing something into the middle of the table. “He always seems like he’s constipated.”

“Would you smile if you were married to Dana Finkle?” I asked, as I sorted through more old receipts.

“I wonder if Dana even knows how to use it,” Rudy said.

“What? The gun they bought? Or the one Clay was born with?” Blair asked with a mischievous smile.

“She probably couldn’t tell the difference,” Rudy quipped. “She’d be like ‘How does this thing work, Clay?” Rudy sniped, attempting to sound like Dana.

“’But Honey, where’s the trigger
?
’” Doe said, joining in with a hearty laugh.

We all began laughing so hard, we had to stop what we were doing. It was a full ten seconds before Blair added between snatches of breath, “Or…or, in the throes of passion, Clay might say, ‘Pleeeze honey, forget the trigger…and just…just bite the bullet.”

We finally lost it and just doubled over in laughter. My stomach actually hurt, and Blair rolled out of her chair and onto the garage floor.  It took a good sixty seconds until the frivolity finally died down. Finally, Blair dusted herself off and climbed back into her chair wiping moisture from her eyes. The rest of us took deep breaths to quell the mirth and went back to work.

“By the way,” Doe said, finally getting control of her laughter. “Why isn’t Clay a suspect? Don’t they say they always look at the family first?”

“He must have a good alibi,” I said. “But boy, she sure does spend a lot of money,” I added, reading several of the receipts in my hands. “Here’s a receipt for $500 worth of vitamins.”

“Is Dana a health nut?” Doe asked.

“Hard to believe,” I said. “She doesn’t look healthy. But here’s another receipt for a fancy kitchen range.” I looked up at my companions. “The bill was for over $10,000!”

“For a stove?” Rudy exclaimed.

I nodded. “Hey, maybe Clay wanted to kill her just so he wouldn’t go broke.”

Rudy suddenly sat back in her chair. “You know, I’ve always wondered where the Finkles get their money. I mean, I suppose a collection agency could do pretty well. But Dana’s antique store can’t pull in much, and yet they live in a million dollar home, drive expensive cars, and although Dana dresses like a birthday party clown, her clothes are expensive.”

Doe shrugged. “It could be family money.”

“Is there a way to look into their finances?” Blair asked.

“I’m sure the police are doing that,” I said. “But if it
was
Clay, it wouldn’t be the first time someone wanted to kill their spouse for the life insurance money because they were overextended. I think I heard that he’s opening another office somewhere.”