Coming Unclued (7 page)

“Well clearly it wasn’t them,” said Julie in her no nonsense way. “But maybe someone got hold of your key. Someone with motive.”

Someone with motive. Well at least Julie was allowing herself to consider the idea that someone other than me, the deranged drunken lunatic, had stabbed Mr. Potter. Who did have the master key? It must be Rose.

“Do you think the police bothered to check if Rose still has the key?” I stared into the fire for a moment. “I’m going over there.” Rose and I were very friendly. She clumped up the stairs every now and then, to prove she still had it in her, and she often stopped in for a visit.

“Oh Val. Wait until tomorrow. It’s been such a long day. You just need to relax and start fresh after you’ve had some time to process all this. I’m going to go rustle something up for dinner.”

Dinner at Julie’s. Now there was motivation to get out of the house. Julie is an old style British cook. Old style in that she cooks exactly like her mother did. She is aware that Britain now has great chefs and innovative restaurants, and that most families no longer eat boiled chicken and mash. She just doesn’t care. She sees no correlation between being a good wife and mother and being a good cook. So Andrew and Alice sit down to beans on toast or mince and chips with nary a complaint.

“I’ll be back for dinner,” I told her. “I’m just going to run over and talk to Rose. Maybe knock on a few doors to see if anyone saw anything.”

“Are you taking my car?”

“I’ll walk. It’ll help me to clear my head. And I want to pick up my own car.”

“Okay. Be careful.”

“Hey, I’m the one people need to be afraid of.”

“That is not as amusing as you might think.”

A walk in the crisp weather of a late December afternoon felt surprisingly invigorating. When I arrived at my building the police and press and nosy neighbors had all departed. I glanced up at my balcony just as the timer turned my Christmas lights on. They looked so pretty and twinkly and cheerful that I choked up a little. I wanted to be there, curled up on the couch reading a book in front of my gas fireplace. Except my condo was now a crime scene and my beautiful bed was covered in blood. Or so I assumed. Did the police take care of cleaning that up or would I have to do it myself? It seemed like the type of thing my tax dollar should cover.

The front door still opened without the security code. I guess the prospect of a murderer on the loose hadn’t worried my fellow residents so much they were rushing to call a locksmith. Or perhaps the police had assured them that I would soon be behind bars so they had nothing to worry about.

I expected to see Rose in the lobby. Most days she was there, reading a magazine or doing Sudoku which she insisted kept her mind sharp, refusing to let anyone scurry by without a little conversation. She didn’t like to be cooped up. Some days her friends dropped by and there would be three or four elderly women, lounging around, chatting it up. It annoyed the hell out of Heather. “It looks like we live in a nursing home,” she always grumbled. It did rather look like the lobby of a nursing home some days, but these women were pretty vigorous and always seemed to be having a good time. I’d joined them a couple of times for a quick game of euchre and they’d wiped the table with me. Heather, however, could barely look at them without shuddering.

I knocked on Rose’s door and in a moment I could hear the thump of her cane coming down the hall. Rose could walk quite well without a cane, but she liked having something to wave around. She thought it made her look jaunty.

“Who is it?”

“It’s me Rose. Val.”

Rose quickly opened the door. She was a tiny little woman, but as she liked to say, “Full of piss and vinegar.”

“Val. I’ve been so worried about you. Can you believe all this? Come in. I’ll put on the tea.” Tea was Rose’s answer to everything.

“I can’t stay Rose. Julie is expecting me for dinner. I just wanted to ask you a few questions. I guess you’ve heard what’s going on.”

“Honey. Heard? I saw them take out the body. It was pretty stiff. Rigamortis I guess. Who was he?”

“My boss. Mr. Potter.”

“The nasty little man with the breath?”

“Well — yes. He wasn’t nasty exactly. I don’t want to speak ill of the dead.”

She lowered her voice. “Did he get touchy with you? A little too friendly?”

“I didn’t kill him!”

“Well who did? He was in your bed! Everyone’s saying you killed him — self defense of course. No one thinks you meant anything by it.” She lowered her voice. “Not with intent.”

You’d think people had never heard of the concept of innocent until proven guilty. “I didn’t kill him. With intent or otherwise.”

“Oh dear. Well of course you didn’t. Come on in and tell me everything.”

I followed Rose into the living room. Her condo was about the same size as mine, but it looked smaller. Rose hadn’t done much purging when she downsized from a large house to 900 square feet and seeing as she chose to entertain in the lobby, she didn’t really need a lot of open floor space. Rose was a voracious reader and she had clearly never parted with a book or used a library. There were hundreds of books in her living room. I moved a stack and sat on the couch. “You sure you don’t want tea honey?” asked Rose.

“No, I’m fine. Just had some. I just want to ask you a few questions.”

“You and everyone else. Here. Have a chocolate. My nephew brought them over.”

She passed me an open box of chocolates. At least half of them had bites out of them. Rose saw me hesitate. “I’m picky about my chocolates,” she said. “But try one — some of them are quite tasty.”

I picked out one that looked promising and took a bite. Turkish Delight. Disgusting. Why would they even put those in the box? “Just toss it back in if you don’t want it,” Rose told me. Ah — what the hell? I put it back, and took another. Caramel. My favorite.

“Life’s a box of chocolates but you have to weed out the crap,” said Rose.

She was quite profound, in a fashion.

“So talk. Tell me how you got yourself into this pickle.”

“I can’t remember. Too much wine last night. But I’m certain I didn’t kill anyone.”

“Well you might be certain. Don’t know about the police. An officer came by and put the gears to me. He was asking all about you and I’ve gotta say, I got a bad feeling about it. He asked about the master key to all the condos but I showed him the safe and the key’s still there, snug as a bug.”

“Well shit,” I said. “I was hoping someone had taken it.”

“Sorry Val. If I’d known I could have got rid of the key.”

“Rose, you can’t do anything like that. That’s tampering with evidence. Misleading. That’s very illegal.”

“Oh Phuhh!” she sneered. “I stand by my friends. You just tell me what you need me to do.”

Good to know. “Which cop was it?”

“Well I don’t know. Husky fella. Nice looking.”

I tried to picture the nice looking husky one she was referring to.

“The guy with the big shiny face and the skinny little legs?” I asked.

“That’s the one,” said Rose. “Not bad. I do like a man in uniform.”

“He wasn’t in a uniform.”

“No? I never noticed.”

“In any case,” I continued, “Anyone could have killed him. We were at a party last night. Anybody could have followed us home. The front door wasn’t locked. And why isn’t it fixed? What am I paying condo fees for?” My voice started pitching higher with each sentence.

Rose leaned over, picked out a chocolate, took a bite and after a moment’s contemplation decided it passed muster and settled back in her chair. “Look, I’m on your side here, but you need to face facts.” She picked up her cane and tapped one of the piles by my feet. “Hand me that notebook will you?” I passed her a spiral bound notebook. “And a pen — do you see a pen anywhere? Wait. I’ve got one.” She opened the notebook to a blank page. “Did your door show any signs of forced entry?”

I’d forgotten. About eighty percent of Rose’s many books were mysteries. Mysteries set in villages in England where elderly ladies solved crimes while the local constabulary floundered about. She probably saw this as the opportunity of a lifetime.

“Unfortunately, there was no forced entry. Look Rose, I need to ask you some questions.”

“Ask away honey. I just want to get my notes down on paper. My memory’s not what it was. He was stabbed. Where was the murder weapon? Was it still in the body?”

“They haven’t found the weapon.”

“Really? That’s very helpful.”

“Why is it helpful?” And why was I answering these questions again? And what was pressing into my back? I reached around and pulled an umbrella out of the crack in the back of the couch.

“Oh good. I was looking for that,” said Rose. “It’s helpful because the police have a weaker case if they don’t have a murder weapon with your fingerprints on it.”

“Oh I think they’re pretty confident that Mr. Potter being in my bed makes for a pretty good case.”

“We’ll see about that.” She pointed her pen at me and gave me a piercing glare. “You’re sure you didn’t kill him?”

“Positive. Would I kill a man? I don’t even like the look of a rare steak. I’ve been thinking of becoming a vegetarian. Would a vegetarian kill someone?”

“Well there is that. Mind you, Hitler was a vegetarian.” She pointed her pen at me again. “Let me tell you this young lady. If you didn’t kill him you better find out who did. The police aren’t going to be looking too far afield. They think they already have their man.” She paused a moment for effect. “That’d be you.”

“Yeah. I get it. Did you hear anything at all last night? Any commotion in the lobby?”

“I sleep on my good ear. Don’t hear a thing.” Rose settled back in her chair and closed her eyes. Was she having a nap? In the middle of an interrogation?

“Are you tired Rose? Do you want me to leave?”

She opened her eyes and gave me a pensive look. “I’m thinking. Something you better start doing if you want to get out of this predicament. There’s a book around here somewhere.” She picked up her cane and prodded a pile of books. “
The Body in the Bed.
It’s a Miss Maplehurst mystery. There might be some tips in there. Something applicable to your case. Poke around there honey and see if you can find it.”

Okay. I had to get out of there. “Rose, I’ve got to get going. I want to knock on a few more doors before I go back to Julie’s.”

“Just find the book! I can’t do everything here Val.”

I got down on my hands and knees and started looking for
The Body in the Bed.
That’s my problem. An inability to say no. Another thing I was going to work on once this whole situation was over. I found it under an old copy of
Hello
that featured Prince William on the cover. Rose tapped the magazine with her cane. “Such a beautiful baby. Such a homely man. Just as well his mother passed and didn’t have to see him like that.”

“He’s not that bad. I wouldn’t say he’s homely.”

“He’s homely. Getting worse by the day. Takes after his father’s side of the family. But nice. A very nice man.” Rose was the final authority on all things royal. “Harry though, oh my. I’ve always been partial to redheads.” I passed Rose the book and sat back down, this time on the edge of the couch so that she would know I was on my way out the door.

Rose held up the book, glanced at the back cover for a moment and waved it at me. “Now in this book a young woman, younger than you — probably mid-twenties —”

“That’s a lot younger than me.”

Rose spoke slowly, as if I was a child with a serious attention problem. “The plot is still applicable.” She put the book down. “In the book the woman goes to a bed and breakfast in a seaside village. She’s fleeing a romance gone sour.” Rose paused for a moment, to check that I was following the plot. I nodded my head to confirm that I was still with her. “She arrives at the bed and breakfast. It seems like a nice enough place. Well the first morning that she’s there she comes out of the shower — she has a private bath. They don’t all have private baths. I personally couldn’t stay at a B & B where I had to share a toilet. So she comes out of the shower and there’s a dead man in her bed. Stabbed, just like your fella. He’s got the knife still in him and she makes the mistake of pulling it out.” Rose pointed her cane at me. “Fingerprints. At least you didn’t make that mistake.”

“Small mercies,” I said.

Rose settled back in her chair and shut her eyes again.

“So what happens?” I asked. “How does she solve the murder?”

“I’m thinking,” Rose said. “I can’t remember. I read so many of these things they all kind of blur together.” She opened her eyes. “The point is, she was the prime suspect and she was very proactive. Just like you need to be.”

I decided to get proactive and get out of there. I stood up and went over and gave Rose a hug. “Thanks Rose. I appreciate all your help. I’m just going to drop in on a few people, see if they saw anything and then head back to Julie’s. I’ll keep in touch.”

“Have you talked to Bambi? Better check where she was last night. I wouldn’t put anything past her.”

Bambi was Rose’s name for Heather. The animosity ran both ways with those two. “I’ve seen her. She’s been very helpful.”

“Sure she has. Must be something in it for her.”

Heather had attended the last annual resident’s meeting and given an impassioned speech about the elderly women congregating in the lobby. She had a couple of residents on her side until she got carried away and said the women reeked of death and despair. A little harsh, most people thought. Rose no longer spoke to her. I tried to explain to Rose that Heather had a flair for the dramatic and didn’t mean to be so disparaging but Rose wasn’t having it. “My good opinion once lost is lost forever,” she said. She liked to toss the occasional literary quote into the conversation so people wouldn’t think she only read genre fiction and British tabloids.

“I’ll give you a call when I know what’s going on,” I called to Rose as I shut her door. Now what? Should I knock on every door and see if anyone had seen me come in with Mr. Potter? Why didn’t I live in a building with a doorman? A kindly man who would have sent Mr. Potter on his way and seen me safely up to my apartment with a discreet comment that a nice lady like me needed to be more careful. A doorman who would have glanced up from his book, seen a knife-wielding maniac struggling with the locked door and told him, “No — go take your business somewhere else.”