Definitely Dead (An Empty Nest Mystery) (13 page)

“Maureen Boland threatened me tonight. Maybe she’s our hacker.”

“Even if she had the skill, she wouldn’t have had the time needed to create the documents, hack into your computer, and plant them.”

“True. But someone else did have time. Someone who took an instant dislike to me today. And she professed to being good with computers. I think this is the work of your Lisbeth Salander wannabe.”

TEN

“I want you to promise me you won’t confront any of those other women without me,” said Blake. “I’ll be home by two. We’ll go together.”

“What about Little Miss Girl With the Dragon Tattoo?”

“I’ll handle her.”

“How?”

“I don’t know, Gracie, but you can’t just get up in her face and accuse her of hacking into your computer and setting you up. That’s not going to accomplish anything. Besides, you have no proof, only a hunch.”

Always the logical one, my husband. I tossed him a pout. “I suppose she wouldn’t answer my questions, anyway.”

“Of course, she wouldn’t. Would you if the situation were reversed?”

Again with the logic. I didn’t bother answering, assuming the question rhetorical. “Call me if you learn anything.”

“I will.”
 

Blake kissed me good-bye, grabbed his java-to-go, and headed off to campus. I decided to make an early morning run to Trader Joe’s to restock our rapidly depleting larder in case our kids popped in over the weekend.

However, as I sat at a red light on Broad Street, a black Mercedes SUV with tinted windows turned in front of me onto Mountain Ave. Forget Trader Joe’s. My gut told me this was the car that had parked in front of my house yesterday morning. Trust the gut, I told myself and hung a right to follow the driver. What did I have to lose?

Real cops might have noticed a tail, but the driver of the SUV continued on totally oblivious of me. He didn’t speed up, didn’t switch lanes. However, leaving nothing to chance, I slipped on a pair of sunglasses and an old Westfield Blue Devils baseball cap I kept in the driver’s side door pocket.

My hunch paid off when the Mercedes SUV turned into the driveway of Larchmont Gardens.

The driver pulled into a handicap spot in the residents’ parking lot, even though the SUV bore neither handicap plates nor a resident parking sticker. I continued four rows farther down, parked in the visitors’ section, and watched as Remick and Craft stepped from the SUV.

Always trust the gut.

As the phony duo made their way toward the entrance of the Commons building, I tucked my hair up into the baseball cap to better conceal my identity, then followed them into the building. Once inside the lobby, I glanced around, spotting them just as they rounded the corner at the end of the corridor to my left. After sprinting down the hall, I ducked my head around the corner and spied the two men entering the solarium.

Cautiously, I made my way to the solarium entrance and stood off to the side, hoping to see them without them seeing me. I caught a glimpse of a broad back and buzz cut through a tall grouping of ferns and other assorted flora that screened off a back corner of the room. A seating area was positioned on my side of the greenery at a diagonal to the buzz cut. I made my way across the room and slipped into one of the chairs, grabbing a magazine to hide my face.

“I’m telling you, Ma, they’re on to us,” said Remick or Craft.

“Someone tipped everyone off,” said the other. “Those old ladies aren’t even opening their doors to us.”

“Then you’re going to have to find some other way to get in,” said a female voice. “I want my money.”

“You want us to break in?” asked the first guy.

“Do what you have to,” she said.

“How do we know this guy really was Dad?” asked the second man. “You said he didn’t look anything like him.”

“That’s because he obviously had extensive plastic surgery to disguise himself.”

“Or he could be someone else,” said the first guy.

“Are you insinuating that I wouldn’t recognize my own husband?”

“It’s been ten years since he skipped out, Ma.”

“You didn’t see the look on his face when that dingbat Sylvia Schuster introduced me to him. A moment later he disappears, and she never hears from him again. Don’t tell me that doesn’t sound suspicious.”

“Maybe he got sick,” said the second man.

“I’m telling you it was your father,” she said. “I saw the birthmark.”

“What birthmark?” both men asked in unison.

“You never noticed? Your father had a port wine birthmark about the size of a dime behind his left ear.”

“Lots of people have birthmarks,” said the first guy.

“Not in the shape of the state of Texas.”

“Shit,” said the second guy. “This would’ve been a hell of a lot easier if someone hadn’t offed the weasel before we got to him.”

“He had to have told one of those women something. Find out where he was living. Once you get his address, I’m sure you’ll find something that will lead us to where he stashed all my money.”

“But he gave that dating site broad a phony address. What makes you think he’d give his address to one of those women?” asked the first man.

“Think, idiot! He may have taken one of them back to his apartment. Your father always was a randy old bastard.”

“Jeez, Ma, I really didn’t need to know that.”

“Then know this: We’re talking your inheritance. I’m not going to live forever. That should be all the incentive you need to do whatever you have to do to find that money.”

“All right, Ma,” said one.

“We’ll find the money,” said the other. “We won’t let you down.

“You’d better not. Now get going. I have a canasta game scheduled in a few minutes.”

Over the top of the magazine I held so close to my face that the words all blurred together, I watched as both men hastened from the solarium. They never glanced in my direction.

A moment later Blanche Becker zipped her scooter around the ferns, clipping several, on her way to one of the card tables. While her back was turned to me, I dashed out of the solarium. I needed to find Sylvia Schuster.

“What can you tell me about Blanche Becker?” I asked after tracking Sylvia down at her apartment.

“You mean aside from her being a bitter old skinflint of a tightwad?”

“I mean everything. Yesterday you mentioned something about her being a slumlord?”

She studied me for a minute. “You’re too young to be losing brain cells. You must remember. The story made headlines in all the papers and was on the news for weeks.”

“When?”

She thought for a moment. “Probably about ten years ago. Give or take.”

I laughed. “Mrs. Schuster, ten years ago my life revolved around raising two young kids while holding down a full-time job.”

Who had time to read a newspaper or watch the news back then? Between cooking, carpooling, homework, laundry, and all the other trappings of motherhood, most days I barely had time to blow my nose. And that was with Blake shouldering his fair share. Of the household chores and family responsibilities, not the nose blowing.

Sylvia opened her door wider. “Come on in, dear. How do you like your coffee? I’ve got a fresh pot brewing, and I baked a pan of brownies this morning.”

Never let it be said that I’d turn down caffeine and chocolate. Especially when I needed answers.

Sylvia’s front door led directly into an open concept living area decorated with contemporary furnishings in a warm color palette of rusts, golds, and browns. The main portion of the room served as a combination living room/dining area with a granite topped bar separating the dining section from a small galley kitchen. A door off to the left led to the one bedroom. Family photos covered the walls and the shelving unit opposite her sofa.

“Sit,” she said, pointing to one of the two wooden Windsor chairs on either side of a matching bistro table. “Cream? Sugar?”

“Cream, thanks.”

She rounded the bar and poured two cups of coffee, placing them, along with a pitcher of cream, on the granite top. I moved them onto the table. Sylvia returned to join me, setting a platter of brownies, two plates, a knife, and some napkins between us. “So you want the scoop on Blanche.”

“If you don’t mind.”

“This have anything to do with the dead deadbeat who ran out on me?” she asked as she cut two pieces of brownie, plated them, and served me.

“I think so, but I’ll know more after I hear what you have to say.”

“Hmm…you think Blanche had something to do with his murder? He ditched me right after meeting her. I told you that, didn’t I?”

I nodded as I took a sip of my coffee.
 

“Said he was going to the little boys’ room, but that was a lie according to Bert Goldfarb, who spends most of his day in the little boys’ room. I told you that, too, didn’t I?”

I nodded again.

“And he was killed the very next evening. I wouldn’t put anything past Blanche. She’s such a coldhearted bitch, you should pardon my French, that I’m sure she’s capable of murder. That woman would nail her own mother to a cross if she found profit in it. And if her mother were still alive.”

She grew thoughtful for a moment. “She couldn’t have killed Sidney on her own, though. She would have had to hire someone. Blanche doesn’t get around all that well anymore. Maybe if she dropped a few dress sizes. She can barely walk half a dozen steps on her own. Bad knees. From all that excess baggage she carries around. Anyway, given that she’d have to pay someone, maybe she didn’t have anything to do with his death. That woman has trouble parting with a penny.”

“What happened ten years ago?” I asked, hoping to get Sylvia back on track.

She broke off a corner of brownie and popped it in her mouth, then began talking around the mouthful. “First you need a little background since you never saw the story on the news back then. Blanche Becker’s family made their fortune in real estate in the slums of Newark and Irvington.”

“How do you make a fortune in slums?”

“Her father was one of those unscrupulous realtors who created the epidemic of white flight back in the sixties. He’d move a Negro family—they were called Negros back then, not blacks or African Americans—into a neighborhood. The whites panicked. Blanche’s father bought their houses up at rock bottom prices. He converted all those single-family homes into multi-family dwellings and charged exorbitant rents. That man singlehandedly turned nice middleclass neighborhoods into slums almost overnight.”

I’d heard all about the downfall of Newark from my own parents who’d grown up in what used to be a lovely city. According to them. I’d always had my doubts, finding it hard to imagine that such a violence-plagued, rundown place had ever been a vibrant middleclass mecca.

“When her father died back in the early eighties,” continued Sylvia, “Blanche inherited all his properties. Her husband Sheldon ran the business. He was a hundred times worse than Blanche’s father, probably because Blanche wouldn’t let him spend a penny to fix up any of the properties. Many had no heat, no running water. Broken windows. Holes in the roofs. Imagine having to live in such filth and squalor!”

“Why didn’t the cities step in?”

“I’m getting to that. They did. Slapped Sheldon with hundreds of violations, tens of thousands of dollars in fines. Instead of fixing up the buildings, Sheldon disappears, along with a reported twelve million dollars of Blanche’s family fortune.”

“And no one ever found him?”

“Not him. Not the money. Maybe he hooked up with D.B. Cooper or Robert Vesco. But it gets better.”

“Better?”
 

Sylvia grinned. She was definitely enjoying herself too much. Going for the dramatic pause, she popped another piece of brownie into her mouth, then washed it down with several sips of coffee before continuing.

“The feds indicted Sheldon and Blanche for tax fraud. Sheldon in absentia. Blanche hired some fancy pants barracuda of a lawyer. He convinced the feds she was just as much a victim, but it took years and cost her a fortune in legal fees. Meanwhile, she still had to pay all those city fines and fix up the properties. She wound up having to sell her three homes—one here, one in Boca, one out in the Hamptons—and move in here. Not that here is such a bad place to be, mind you. It’s one of the best retirement communities in the state, but it had to be a shock to her privileged fanny to go from multiple estates to a one bedroom apartment.”

“I’d imagine so.” Sylvia Schuster might ramble on and on, but her ramblings were quite informative. “How do you know all this, Mrs. Schuster?”

“Like I told you, it was a big flapping deal at the time. Even as busy as you were with a job and kids, I’m surprised you didn’t hear about it. I’m sure you can find accounts on the Internet.”

I made a mental note to Google Blanche and Sheldon Becker when I got home.

“And you might think all Blanche’s problems had a lot to do with her now being such a prune-faced misanthrope, but from what I hear, she was always that way, even when she had all her homes and all her money. Not that she lost everything. I hear she’s still got a few million stashed away somewhere.”