Nutty As a Fruitcake (20 page)

“Appropriate,” Judith retorted. “At least in this neighborhood. G'night.”

Looking back down into the cul-de-sac, Judith saw Morgan and Rael trudging from the Stein house. No doubt they were headed for the Ericsons'. Perhaps they'd called on the Porters first. She wondered if they'd follow her suggestion and talk to O.P. Dooley.

The homicide detectives had disappeared from view. Through the window, Judith could see the Rankers's Nativity scene. Mary and Joseph hovered over Baby Jesus, while the cow and the donkey sat complacently behind them. Carl had suspended an angel from the maple tree, and two shepherds were clustered with their sheep in front of the crib. A gold star shone from the branches of a rhododendron.

Next door, she saw the illuminated Santa with his reindeer prancing across the Porters' roof. Santa's bag was stuffed with toys as he prepared to make his descent down the chimney.

Finally, Judith admired the display of blue-and-white lights strung amid the shrubbery and the bare branches of the ornamental cherry trees, and across the facade of the Stein house.

From this vantage point, she could only imagine Mrs. Swan
son's delicate fairy lights, the Ericsons' merry carolers, and her own New England village. Still, Judith couldn't help but smile. The neighborhood was typical of the human race, with its diversity, its generosity, its willingness to compromise. There was evil, too, represented by the darkened Goodrich house with its unwanted sign in the front yard. Yet the existence of the sign struck Judith as a small triumph. Her gaze returned to the Nativity scene. She kept smiling.

 

Phyliss Rackley was torn. On the one hand, she had vowed never to set foot in the Goodrich house again. On the other, she was morbidly curious about the murder scene.

“What are they going to pay us?” she demanded of Judith on that foggy, cold Friday morning. “Are you sure the police approve?”

“I spoke with Detective Morgan yesterday afternoon,” Judith assured her cleaning woman. “He said that they had gathered all the evidence they needed. We can go ahead and clean the place at thirty dollars an hour. We'll split it right down the middle, Phyliss. It shouldn't take long. The bedroom is the only real mess.” Judith winced in spite of herself.

The fee was considerably higher than what Judith paid Phyliss. The cleaning woman's eyes sparkled. “I suppose it's the Christian thing to do. Nobody ever accused me of shirking a duty.”

“Good,” Judith said from her position at the kitchen sink where she was watering the five poinsettias she'd bought that morning at Nottingham Florists. “We'll go over there after we finish up here. Morgan is dropping off a key later this morning.”

Judith was arranging the potted plants on the staircase landing when the phone rang. Glenda Goodrich sounded very nervous.

“The police just called,” she said in a fretful whisper. “I'm at work, and I'm not supposed to make personal calls. They're very strict here. I have to work until five o'clock Christmas Eve, and we didn't get the day after Thanksgiving off, either.”
Glenda seemed to catch herself and spoke more rapidly: “Is it true that you're going to clean Mama's house?”

Judith said it was. Glenda expelled what might have been a sigh of relief. “I think we should put it up for sale. But Art and JoAnne want to move Pappy back home. That doesn't make sense.”

Getting involved in a family controversy was definitely not on Judith's agenda. “Take your time,” she counseled. “By the way, did Leigh go back to New York?”

“Yes.” The word was sharp and final. “I must go. Thanks, Judith.” Glenda hung up.

Judith frowned into the receiver. She'd wanted to ask Glenda about Ross Cisrak. On a whim, she punched in the number for New York City Directory Assistance. A minute later, she was listening to the phone ring somewhere in Manhattan.

By the seventh ring, Judith was ready to hang up. But a breathless voice answered, and Judith recognized Leigh Cisrak. Surprised, Judith almost forgot her excuse for calling.

“Leigh!” she cried in friendly astonishment. “This is Judith Flynn, the neighbor at the end of the cul-de-sac on Heraldsgate Hill. I was wondering if…”

“Excuse me,” Leigh interrupted in a brisk tone. “I just came in the door. I went to the agency to see if they had any last-minute…” She stopped, apparently fumbling with the phone and whatever other encumbrances were hampering her style. “Judith Flynn? I'm sorry, I don't know…”

“I own the B&B two doors down from your grandparents' house. We talked the other day when you were trying to get your…ah…keepsakes.” Judith grimaced into the receiver.

“Oh.” Leigh sounded both disappointed and disapproving. “Yes, I remember. What do you want?”

“It's about your father,” Judith said, still trying to sound friendly. “Did he ever catch up with you while you were in town?”

The sudden silence indicated shock or surprise or reticence. Judith wondered which. Then Leigh spoke, and her attitude
was clear: “
My father
? You talked to my father? When? Where? Ohmigod!”

“I saw him at Falstaff's Market,” Judith said, feeling as if the truth were a lie. “And outside the church after your grandmother's funeral.” She deliberately omitted the sightings across from the cul-de-sac.

The response was slow to come but ultimately explosive. “I hate my mother! She's a total bitch! It's all her fault! Where's my father now?”

“I don't know,” Judith answered honestly. “I last saw him two days ago. That was Wednesday, at Falstaff's.”

“Find him,” Leigh ordered. “Have him call me.
He'll
understand.”

Puzzled, Judith frowned. “Understand what?”

Leigh's manner went through one of its chameleonlike changes. She actually simpered. “It's only stupid, selfish women like my mother and grandmother who don't get it. That type is all wound up in outdated morality. You follow your feelings. So what if they change from day to day, hour to hour? That's part of being alive. Why shouldn't I sleep with Gary Meyers? It made both of us feel good. Why is that so wrong?” Leigh scarcely missed a beat. “When you find my dad, make sure he calls me.”

The phone went dead.

J
UDITH WAS TRYING
to reach Patches Morgan when he showed up on her front porch. Naturally, the detective was surprised by Judith's effusive greeting.

“Thank goodness! You're just the person I need!” She ushered him into the living room and offered coffee.

Morgan declined. “Bless me, I came to give you the key to the Goodrich house,” he said, regarding Judith with frank curiosity. “What's wrong? You seem all at sea.”

Judith unloaded about Ross Cisrak. “I'm not suggesting that he's a serious suspect,” she concluded as Morgan gazed out of his good right eye, “but he was in the vicinity before the murder. He's stayed on since. His daughter desperately wants to talk to him. If I were you, I'd start with Glenda Goodrich.”

“You're not me,” Morgan said flatly. His usual bonhomie had disappeared. “We'll put out an APB. As for Ms. Glenda Goodrich, if she knows where he is, then she'll put him in touch with their daughter.”

“It's not that simple,” Judith asserted. “Glenda and Leigh have had a serious falling out. Leigh slept with her mother's boyfriend, Gary Meyers, which reminds me—did Mrs. Swanson tell you about the Cascade Beer truck?”

Now Morgan was looking downright mystified. “Beer truck?” His forehead creased under the swatch of silvered
black hair. “Oh, yes, Mrs. Swanson left a message about a beer truck. But I don't see what that has to—”

“Gary Meyers was driving it,” Judith interrupted. “He went to the Goodrich house the morning of the murder, around seven-fifteen, seven-thirty. I don't know whether or not he got in, but he was there. Did you question O.P. Dooley?”

“O.P.?” Morgan seemed a bit unsettled. “I thought you said P. C. The tyke can scarcely talk yet.”

Peter Claver Dooley was a grandson, not quite two. “No, no,” Judith corrected. “O.P., for Oliver Plunkett. He's twelve, and very bright. The Dooleys named all their children after saints, and the tradition has been handed down to the grandchildren, but some of them use only the initials.”

Patches Morgan wasn't interested in what or how the Dooleys called their offspring. “If what you're saying is true, this could make a serious case against Gary Meyers.” The good right eye was fixed on Judith's face.

In the wake of the phone call to Leigh Cisrak, Judith was forced to reconsider Gary as a suspect. But again, Enid as victim didn't make sense. In a classic triangle, it was one of the trio who was doomed to die. Judith offered no comment.

Rising from the sofa, Morgan brushed at his flowing black raincoat, which had acquired several cat hairs, courtesy of Sweetums. “If I were you, Ms. Flynn,” Morgan said in a strained voice, “I'd stop trying to figure this out on your own. Hasn't your good husband told you that his shipmates are pretty fair sailors?”

“Oh, definitely!” Judith enthused. “It's just that…well, living in the same neighborhood with the victim, it's natural to hear gossip and pick up stray facts that might otherwise…go unnoticed.” Judith flinched at her own words.

“Everything comes to us, all in good time.” Morgan was striding to the entry hall, the black raincoat sailing around his legs. “Good luck with the housecleaning. We'll pick up your vouchers when we collect the key.”

Judith's farewell was barely audible. At least she hadn't given Morgan her theory about the grandsons' possible meat scam. No doubt he would have laughed outright. Positioning
herself against the door, she watched the detective's progress to his car. Sancha Rael was in the passenger seat. The two drove out of the cul-de-sac, swallowed up by the fog before they reached the corner. Perhaps they were heading for the Dooley house. Judith frowned. O.P. was in school. Still, Dooley himself could relay his brother's information.

Half an hour passed before Judith's curiosity got the best of her. Phyliss was ironing in the basement, while running a load of laundry. Clasping the key to the Goodrich house, Judith sneaked out through the front door. She had reached the driveway between the Ericson and Goodrich properties when Renie emerged out of the fog in her blue Chev.

“Where are you going?” Renie asked after she'd rolled down the window.

Judith put a finger to her lips. “I'm skulking. Want to join me?”

Renie swung the car around so that she could park in front of the Ericsons'. “Let me think—you'd be avoiding…? Arlene? Your mother? Phyliss? The cops?”

“All of the above,” Judith replied as they trooped along the driveway. “How come you're here?”

Renie gave her cousin a feeble smile. “Aunt Ellen's Christmas box arrived this morning from Beatrice. This year, she sent it to our house. I'm distributing the presents.”

“But it's only the tenth of December,” Judith pointed out as she inserted the key into the lock on the Goodrich back door.

“Right, but you know how thrifty Aunt Ellen is. She wrapped her gifts in plain tissue for ten years after nobody else did. Then she used grocery sacks, newspaper, and old campaign banners for the losing gubernatorial candidate in Nebraska. This year, it's plastic produce bags, held together with those twisty-ties from garbage sacks. Aunt Ellen made some of the twisties into rosettes, which are kind of nice, but the bags are falling apart. I wanted to get everything delivered before the whole batch came undone and we couldn't figure out who was getting what. Plus, the tags are kind of hard to read. She used the little plastic things from loaves of bread.”

Judith, who had been standing transfixed with her hand on the doorknob, blinked three times in a row. “Dare we guess what the presents are this year?”

“You don't have to guess,” Renie responded. “You can see through the produce bags. Heaven forbid Aunt Ellen would waste money on
boxes
. Your present is a wreath made out of thirty-five-millimeter film, no doubt left over from when she worked for that portrait photographer. Mine's a wall plaque covered in bottle caps.” Renie maintained a straight face.

So did Judith, nodding as she opened the Goodrich back door. “Otherwise, Aunt Ellen's a darling. Please don't tell me what she sent our mothers.”

Renie suppressed a snicker. Then all merriment fled as the cousins approached the bedroom.

“
I'm
not going in there,” Renie declared, clinging to the hall doorway. “After you and Phyliss clean it, maybe, but not now.”

“You don't have to,” Judith said. “I want to see the spare room and the basement. They don't need to be cleaned, and I don't want Phyliss snooping any more than she has to. That's why I'm here without her.”

But the spare room held no secrets. As catchalls went, Glenda Goodrich's former bedroom was quite orderly. The bureau, which smelled of mothballs, contained a few items of clothing dating from a quarter of a century earlier. The closet held rainboots, a straw hat, a couple of tie-dyed dresses, extra bedding, and more mothballs. The single bed was made up, though it didn't look comfortable. It did, however, look rumpled, which struck Judith as odd, given the general orderliness of the Goodrich house.

“I wonder,” Judith murmured, casting an inquiring glance in Renie's direction.

“What?” Renie followed her cousin's gaze to the bed. “Come on, coz, you aren't thinking about George and Mrs….”

“No!” Judith exclaimed, then realized she hadn't yet told Renie about the telephone conversation with Leigh. When she was done, Renie made a face.

“Leigh and Gary, making mad, passionate love with Enid across the hall? Dubious, coz. How about poor George coming in here to lie down and escape from his nagging wife?”

The idea made sense. “Maybe,” Judith agreed. “Let's visit the basement.”

The basement revealed no more than the spare room. In one corner, an area was covered with a worn rug. Another single bed, probably the mate to Glenda's, was stripped down to its mattress pad. There was a desk, a chair, and a table lamp. The only personal note was a poster of an early Boring jet passenger plane.

“Art's room,” Judith said. “It reminds me of a monk's cell. Except I've never seen one.”

The storage items in the rest of the basement seemed ordinary—the washer and dryer, a clothes tree, a couple of coiled garden hoses, empty boxes that had once held appliances, a snow shovel, two aging pairs of roller skates, and a small box marked “Xmas Dec.”

“I guess the Goodriches never were much for holiday festivities,” Judith remarked, heading back to the wooden stairs.

“They weren't much for anything,” Renie said as they returned to the kitchen. “What now? Haven't you looked everywhere else?”

In fact, Judith had. She made a frustrated sound. “I keep thinking I must have missed something. What could it be?”

Renie lifted one shoulder. “What would you expect to find? Typically, I mean. Clothes, furniture, dishes, linens, books, medicine—take mental inventory.”

In a cursory way, Judith already had. “The police would have taken away anything that could be construed as evidence,” she said, more to herself than to Renie. “But evidence is a funny thing.”

“Hilarious.” Renie was looking skeptical. “That hatchet really makes me laugh. So does the Dalmane and maybe some bloodstained clothing and a bunch of gory photographs.”

“That isn't what I mean.” Judith was frowning as she surveyed the living room. “Evidence is often something very
ordinary that gets overlooked. Sometimes, it's what
isn't
there. Such as George's books for Pacific Meats.”

Renie raised her eyebrows. “True. You think Dave swiped them in order to cover up his T-bone theft?”

Judith gave a short nod. “That's possible. We certainly haven't found any ledgers.” She pointed to the walnut desk. “There's an empty space inside. An account book would fit perfectly.”

“There's something else missing,” Renie said after a short silence. Her eyes had been roaming around the room, taking in what was left of the solid, if inexpensive and aging, furniture. “Money. You found that passbook with what—seven, eight grand? That's not much for a couple like the Goodriches. This house must have been paid off forty years ago. They weren't lavish spenders, and Enid certainly wouldn't have been generous with their kids or grandkids. Did they ever travel?”

Judith considered. “Not that I know of. Maybe their money was spent on doctors for Enid.”

“No. They probably had some kind of health care plan through George's job, plus Medicare. And Enid didn't actually go to the hospital much, did she?”

Again, Judith thought back to the Goodriches' known history. “I guess not. Arlene is always full of news about anybody being hospitalized.” Frustrated, Judith rubbed at the back of her neck. “So where's the money? If there's a safety deposit box, there must be a key. If there are stocks and bonds and CDs, there should have been records in the desk. If they'd put their savings in…ah!” Judith snapped her fingers. “The IRS! Where are they when you actually need them?”

“Everywhere,” Renie replied gloomily.

Judith was already opening the breakfront desk. “There were tax statements in here. I ignored them because they make me crazy. And poor.” Eagerly, she sorted through the Goodriches' business records. Sure enough, a xeroxed copy of their most recent IRS filing was at the bottom of the pile, where Judith had left it.

“Well?” Renie inquired, coming to stand next to Judith. “Are they fabulously rich?”

George and Enid had filed a short form. They certainly weren't rich; the Goodriches had been entitled to a six-hundred-dollar refund. The list of assets corresponded with the other financial information Judith had found previously in the desk.

“Shoot,” breathed Judith. “No assets, other than this house and their savings. That doesn't seem right.”

“George isn't the type to hoodwink the IRS,” Renie pointed out.

“So what did they do with their money?” Judith demanded.

“Who knows?” Renie said, leaning against the fireplace mantel. “Maybe George was secretly helping Art and Glenda or the grandsons.”

A knock at the front door startled both cousins. Judith peered through the bottle glass but was once again thwarted. She could distinguish only a form.

Arlene Rankers wore an indignant expression. “It's not fair,” she announced, marching into the living room. “Why do you two get to come in here and browse around while I stand out in the fog trying to move Melchior?”

“How did you know we were here?” Judith asked suspiciously.

Arlene was eyeing the open desk. “I went to your house, but Phyliss didn't know you were gone. Your mother hadn't seen you since breakfast. Your car was still in the garage. The fog's starting to lift, and I saw Serena's Chevrolet parked at the curb.” The thorough reconnaissance was typical of Arlene's intelligence methods.

The logic of it all made Judith smile. “Okay, Arlene, help us figure out what the Goodriches did with their money.” She gestured at the desk. “No clues there. What do you think?”

Briefly, Arlene looked puzzled. Then she brightened and beamed with triumph. “Eggs! They spent it on eggs!”

Renie wrinkled her pug nose. “What kind of eggs? Fabergé?”

Arlene threw up her hands. “Heavens no! Nest eggs!
George referred to sitting on his investments. Hatching them, as it were.”

Judith and Renie exchanged bewildered glances. “The henhouse must be a Swiss bank,” Renie finally said. “There's no sign of nest eggs here.”

Arlene's blue eyes hardened. “Are you doubting my word, Serena?”

Swiftly, Judith intervened. She also changed the subject, since they seemed to be getting nowhere with the Goodriches' financial status. “Arlene, you keep so well-informed about what happens in the neighborhood. Think back to the week before the murder. What, if anything, was going on at the Goodrich house?”