Murder as a Second Language (11 page)

That was the last time I saw Officer Speevy.

 

6

A taciturn officer gave me a ride back to my car. Leslie's nosy neighbor had retreated under his rock. I drove slowly by his house in hopes of spotting something remotely felonious. Alas, there was nary a scrap of litter in the stubby brown grass. I reminded myself that I was not a vengeful person, tossed my chin, and headed to the Book Depot.

Jacob had arranged the front window with a beach umbrella, a plastic bucket and shovel, a poster that offered half price on “summer blockbusters,” and said books propped on brightly colored beach towels. He was dusting a rack of paperbacks as I sailed by and into my office. I thumbed through a couple of publishers' catalogs but found nothing that intrigued me. Eventually, Jacob would study them intently, fill out an order form, and, after a shrug from me, order the books online. I was peripheral.

To my annoyance, I was also on the periphery of the murder investigation. Under duress, Peter had said that I'd never interfered, but we both knew his statement might as well have been written on an ice cube. I couldn't return to the Literacy Council under any circumstances. Had it been on fire, I would not be admitted if I were carrying a fire extinguisher. If it flooded, there was no point in showing up with a mop and a bucket.

I did know who had a mop and bucket, though. Toby Whitbream, the indentured janitor, might have been the last person to leave the Literacy Council—with the conspicuous exception of Ludmila Grabowski. Peter would already have that information and would have sent someone to collect Toby, so there was no reason for me to drive by the high school football field on the obscure chance the illustrious quarterback was throwing passes to phantom teammates.

Everyone who might be involved in Ludmila's death was unavailable. My attempt to run background checks had resulted in superficial information. To get specifics, I needed to ask questions. At which point I asked myself the obvious one: Why was I so determined to solve the murder? I hadn't liked the victim, and I didn't especially care about any of the suspects. The crime itself had probably been an accident. Ludmila encountered someone in the copy room. An argument escalated into a shoving match. Ludmila bounced off the copy machine, smashing her skull. The second party panicked and tried to hide the body. It was a credible scenario, as long as I could concoct a reason for either of them to be in the dusty little room.

I forced myself to return to the question I'd posed. I tried the high road: Murder was a despicable crime and justice must prevail. I moved along to the middle road: The Literacy Council provided invaluable help to nonnative speakers and promoted community harmony. Caron and Inez were volunteers, and so was I (although I'd been railroaded). The low road was rocky: The glamour of French cuisine was fading fast, and I could read only so much poetry in the meadow before I started stalking field mice.

Jacob came to the office doorway. “Is there anything I can do for you, Ms. Malloy? Would you like me to fetch you a salad or sandwich from the café up the block?”

“No, thank you.” I stood up and picked up my purse. “Good job on the window, Jacob. I'll stop by later in the week.” I went out to my car. Food had more uses than appeasing a rumbling stomach, I thought as I started the car. It could provide an excellent excuse for intrusion.

I stopped at the grocery store, drove home, and settled down to create a masterful rendition of
coq au vin.
Once I'd stuck it in the oven, I indulged in a long bath. Afterward, I applied makeup and dressed in an appropriately subdued blouse and skirt. I took the dish out of the oven and let it cool, then transferred it to a ceramic serving bowl with a lid, sprinkled some parsley, and stepped back to admire my work. By now, it was late afternoon, the decorous time to make a condolence call.

I knew from reading Ludmila's folder that Bartek Grabowski lived near the college football stadium, a popular area for faculty and retirees. The house was located on a wooded side street but within earshot of Saturday afternoon stadium pandemonium. Clutching the dish, I went to the front porch and rang the bell. Moments later, Professor Grabowski opened the door. He was dressed in a T-shirt and shorts, his feet bare, and was holding a highball glass.

“I've seen you somewhere,” he said, confused. “Are you in one of my classes? No, that's not right. Were you at Pashaw's party last month?”

Had my ego been vulnerable, I would have been deflated. “We spoke this morning at the Literacy Council. I'm the one who called your cell phone and left the message about your grandmother.”

“That's it!” He smiled at me. “Please come in. I'm afraid I don't remember your name,”

“I'm Claire Malloy, a member of the board of directors.” It was true, although hardly as impressive as it sounded. “I came by to express our condolences on the death of your grandmother. This is
coq au vin.
”

“How kind of you, Claire.” He took the dish and led me through the living room and kitchen to a screened-in porch. “Please make yourself comfortable on the wicker sofa. May I offer you a glass of wine or something hardier? What would you prefer?”

“Iced tea, if you have it,” I said. During my illustrious endeavors to solve crimes, I had been met on doorsteps with animosity. Gaining entrance to his house seemed almost too easy. If he was mourning the loss of his grandmother, he was disguising his grief very well. I suspected that the cocktail in his hand had not been his first, nor would it be his last. Maybe it was a Polish tradition to drown one's sorrow.

“Here we go,” Bartek said as he put down a glass and sat down across from me. “I often see deer at this time of day. It's so peaceful here.”

“But perhaps not as peaceful after your grandmother arrived from Poland.”

He grimaced. “That is an understatement worthy of a gold medal. She yapped and griped and lectured me morning and night. Luckily, it was all in Polish so I never understood a word of it.” He took a sip of his drink and leaned back. “I pretended I had office hours and faculty meetings every night just so I wouldn't have to put up with Babcia. I suppose I should shed a tear.”

“Why did you bring her over from Poland?” I asked.

“The last of her old friends died. They were sharing an apartment, and Babcia could no longer pay the rent. I was her only living relative, she informed me in a convoluted letter, and therefore had an obligation to take care of her. I fell for it. Of course, I hadn't seen her for thirty-odd years. I was ten or eleven when my parents took me to Bialystok to meet the family. I remembered that Babcia was brusque, but I didn't remember being frightened of her. I must have been one dumb kid. Anyway, after I made her flight reservations, I flew to New York to meet her. I could hear her squawking as she went through customs.” He looked down and shook his head. “What an idiot I was. I should have sent her money every month so she could keep the apartment. No, I decided to do the noble thing and take care of her in her old age. My life has been hell for the last year.”

“Well, it was the noble thing,” I said, “if not the brightest. Why do you think she was so angry at everybody? Could it have been an early sign of dementia?” I figured I might as well be blunt.

“I thought of that. You wouldn't believe how hard it is to find a gerontologist who speaks Polish. I finally found a woman in Tulsa and dragged Babcia to see her. I sat in the waiting room. Later the doctor told me that Babcia was angry because she felt isolated, and prescribed an antidepressant.” He laughed. “She might as well have suggested Babcia take up tennis or ballet. Even when Babcia complained about her arthritis, she refused to take an aspirin. She accused me of trying to poison her when I gave her the antidepressants. I did what I could to find ways for her to occupy her time, with mixed results. Did you hear about the senior citizens center?” Without waiting for a response, he took our glasses into the house for refills.

I watched a mockingbird attack a squirrel. As loath as I was to anthropomorphize nature's nasty little creatures, I couldn't help remembering Ludmila's reputed hostility toward Gregory. When Bartek returned, I said, “Why did your grandmother have it in for the Literacy Council director? From what I heard, she verbally assaulted him whenever she saw him.”

He frowned. “Whistler, right? I have no clue. Keep in mind that Babcia almost always spoke to me in Polish. My father was a biochemist and moved here for a postgrad degree. My mother was American. I was born in Philadelphia and studied French in high school. Since I know about ten words in Polish, Babcia and I did not communicate well. Yeah, I saw her shouting at him when I picked her up in the late afternoon. She sputtered and cursed all the way home.”

“Did she have any friends?”

Bartek thought for a minute. “There was one old guy at the senior citizens center who spoke some Polish. I don't know his name. Sometimes they would be playing dominoes when I arrived. White hair, cane, thick glasses with black rims. I had visions of them shacked up in a nursing home, terrorizing the staff, hording denture cream, and copulating like crazy.”

I willed myself not to share his vision. “Maybe Ludmila confided in him.”

“Maybe.”

I was about to ask him about the previous evening when the doorbell rang. Bartek nodded at me, then went inside. I heard voices as he admitted visitors—female voices. I was relieved. It might have been uncomfortable if Peter had come by and discovered me drinking Bartek's iced tea on the deck. He would not have been diverted by the
coq au vin
on the kitchen counter. I stood up as Bartek escorted two women out to the deck. He introduced them as a colleague and his secretary. Each was bearing a covered dish, although I assumed the dishes were more likely to be commonplace casseroles than
haute cuisine.
The doorbell rang again. I patted Bartek on the arm before I slipped through the arriving visitors and made it to my car. I noticed that the majority of them were women. With Babcia out of the picture, Bartek might have become the most eligible man in the department.

I dutifully picked up a bucket of fried chicken on my way home. Caron and Inez were in the pool, conversing in low voices. I announced my arrival, changed into a caftan, and took the newspaper out to my chaise longue. I was sighing over the sorry state of the country when the girls joined me.

“Well?” demanded Caron. “What happened?”

I told them the basic story. “You two are in the clear unless you snuck into the Literacy Council to search the files for lesson plans. The board of directors met and adjourned, but I didn't see any of them leave the building. Students and tutors were in cubicles. There was a class in session and activity in the lounge. Fifty people could have been there, for all I know.”

Inez regarded me with the solemnity of an owlet. “So somebody stayed behind after the closing time.”

“Or came in a few minutes later,” I said.

Caron gasped. “You mean Toby Whitbream? Why would he murder some old Polish lady? He wouldn't have paid any attention if she was screaming at him in Polish. I didn't—not that she screamed at me. She tended to get sort of excited when I didn't understand her English. A couple of times her face turned so red that I waited for her head to explode. Like I wanted to be covered in blood and brains.”

“Perhaps Toby isn't as patient as you,” I said evenly.

My daughter deigned to overlook my jibe. “She criticized the way he vacuumed, so he waited until she went into the copy room to steal an umbrella from the lost and found, then tackled her. Gee, I wonder why Peter hasn't figured it out by now. Shall I call him?”

“It wasn't raining,” Inez volunteered.

“No, it wasn't,” I said, “and it was obvious that Toby didn't consider the copy room to be part of his nightly routine. The only thing in there that isn't covered with dust is the copy machine.”

“Everybody uses it,” Inez said. “Not the students, but the tutors, Leslie, and Keiko are in there all the time. I made copies of some recipes because Graciela loves to cook. Aladino is reading a Hardy Boys book. I make an enlarged copy of each page so he can make notes. I'm sure Caron does that sort of thing, too.”

“Yeah, all the time,” Caron said. “But there's no reason to suspect Toby of anything. He's the starting quarterback this fall. He made some All-American high school football players list last year. Ashley heard that college scouts will be at our games. Is that not cool?”

“Very cool.” I picked up the newspaper, and the girls went upstairs to Caron's room. After a while, I began to feel hungry. I set out food and called the girls. Since they had no plans (Joel was visiting his grandmother), we carried our plates into the living room and wept companionably through an old movie.

*   *   *

“At least I don't have to tutor today,” Caron said as she joined me on the terrace the next morning. “Plus I'm down to three students unless Leslie sticks me with somebody else. Nobody can be more of a pain in the butt than Ludmila. I know I shouldn't talk about her like that, but every minute with her was like tiptoeing on lava. Well, not every minute. Once she was nice.”

“She was?”

“I think, and I might have been wrong, that it was somebody's birthday. She had some photos of a kid in a silly hat, blowing out two candles. The photos were really old and faded. The same kid with a stuffed animal, another with him asleep in an old lady's arms. I asked Ludmila if these were of her grandson, but she said no. What she really said was
nie,
but I figured it out. Just think, my first Polish word. I picked up some other ones, but they're apt to be obscenities. I guess I could get away with them as long as I don't run into any Poles. ‘Rhonda, you are a
gwizdek
!'”