Organize Your Corpses (16 page)

“Thank you. I appreciate this.”

“Charlotte Adams, you said. I know your name from somewhere. Where would I have seen you?”

“I have no idea.” It seemed very unlikely that anyone at Stone Wall Farm would have told her about me. They didn’t even know I’d noticed Gabriel.

She pointed her finger at me. “Of course. I saw you on the news. You’re the woman who found the body in that awful old house. Hellfire Henley.”

I don’t know what shocked me more: that people in Woodbridge would be thinking of me as the woman who found a body or the loathing in Mrs. Young’s voice when she said “Hellfire Henley.”

“Yes,” I said. “It was a tragedy.”

Mrs. Young’s face contorted. “I don’t think it was any kind of tragedy. That ghastly woman. She tormented Gabe in school. When she started to come to Stone Wall Farm to see her cousin, he got practically hysterical. His emotions are so unstable. In a way, he’s stuck at the adolescent boy stage and she really set him back. Lilith helped a lot, but it was very difficult for him and for me.”

“Miss Henley tormented Gabe? But the poor guy’s in a wheelchair.”

“I mean she tormented him at St. Jude’s. He wanted a scholarship so badly, because his father had one, you know. My husband was able to go to Cornell, even though his family could never afford it. Gabriel wanted to show his father he could do it too. That awful woman would taunt him. Fail him by one mark. Give him detentions so that he’d miss a practice. Make some horrible remark just before he’d take a test. Even in his damaged state, he hasn’t forgotten that. And the wicked creature always made a point of seeking him out to speak to him every week when she visited Stone Wall Farm. She’d put her hand on his shoulder. Whisper something to him. The vile old hyena.” She bent to pick up the rake. She held it like a weapon. “I had to make a point of getting him out of there every Wednesday afternoon. Now we don’t have to worry about that. Maybe I shouldn’t say it, but I’m happy she’s dead and I hope she suffered. Whoever did it would have had a good reason.”

I stood there with my mouth hanging open, trying not to imagine Gabe’s mother taking aim at Miss Henley’s head with that rake. As she stared at me, I finally got a grip. “It must have been a terrible situation for you. Did you ever tell Inez Vanclief?”

“Of course I did. Couldn’t get anywhere. Olivia Simonett is leaving tons of money to the foundation. I’m sure you’ve heard that already. Olivia just loved having her cousin’s attention. I also heard that Hellfire was opposed to the bequest. So let’s put it this way: the administrator wouldn’t rock the boat with either one of those women.”

“What about your husband?”

“He died last year. Heart attack. But he wouldn’t have been any help. He liked old Hellfire. She never tormented
him
. He was a fighter. She preferred to find the ones with a weakness, probe it, make them squirm. I tried to explain to him, but he always just thought that Gabe just needed to show some spine.”

“Oh boy, that’s bad.

She nodded.“I don’t know why I’m confiding in you. My husband would have had a fit if I’d blabbed about our personal business.” She gave a small laugh. “But now I can be as indiscreet as I want.”

“There’s more to it. I’ve been told not to visit Olivia. In fact, I’m not allowed on the Stone Wall Farm premises. And my friend Jack Reilly, who used to play basketball with Gabriel, has been refused permission to visit him. I wondered if the decision to tell Jack to stay away came from you.”

“A friend visiting? That would have been very nice for Gabe.”

“I believe it was nice for both of them.”

“But, perhaps this Jack got Gabriel upset? I told you his emotions could be triggered so easily.”

“I doubt it. But let’s say, for argument, that’s what happened. Would you expect the Stone Wall Farm staff to let you make the decision about who could visit?”

Her gaze had strayed to the driveway and the old basketball hoop over the garage door. I wondered if she was seeing her son as he had been fifteen years earlier, shooting hoops. Happy and with his life ahead of him. A scholarship, a career, someday a wife and children.

She said in a distant voice, “Of course. Gabe was in a coma for so long. Friends . . . fall away, you know? People don’t know how to deal with what remains. No one comes anymore. He’s lonely. That’s why I got the parrots for him.”

“He seemed to love those birds.”

She nodded absently. “He did, but the last few days, he won’t go near them. Perhaps he’s depressed. He really needs a friend.”

He had one, I thought. Lilith. No wonder he’s depressed.

 
I had plenty to think about after I left Forest Glen. Gabriel’s mother had hated Miss Henley. She didn’t even bother to keep her raw emotion hidden. Even though Miss Henley was dead, she wasn’t quite dead enough for Mrs. Young. And it was easy to understand how she felt. How many other people nursed the same kind of rage?

I was still pondering that as I whipped back uptown to hit Ciao! Ciao! while they were serving lunch. The tiny café was buzzing as usual with conversation and laughter. I chose a rustic roll with prosciutto, Asiago cheese, arugula, and red peppers, and a bottle of San Pellegrino sparking mineral water. I squeezed through the crowd into the last remaining seat at the little counter in the corner. It was a sandwich worth remembering and a lunch I should have shared with a friendly face, but I wasn’t in the mood for chat and I worked my way through the sandwich without savoring it. I was stuck on that idea that many people had wanted Miss Henley dead. Former students for sure, their parents too, apparently. And what about some of the teachers she’d worked with? The ones at the memorial sure hadn’t been overcome with sorrow at her passing.

Besides feeling guilty, I had another good reason to try and figure out who might have wanted Miss Henley dead. I knew Pepper wouldn’t jeopardize her career just to give me grief and she was a detective on the fast track. But I was equally sure that she wouldn’t mind a bit if I got dragged through the doo-doo in the course of her investigation. I had to stay a step ahead of her and offer up some credible suspects. So far I was batting zero. But I had an idea.

I planned to spend my afternoon checking out laundry-room equipment, shelves, storage, and new gizmos to make my client’s life easier. Plus I wanted to find some special little trinket for Rose since she kept filling me with cookies and information. I headed across the street from Ciao! Ciao! to the gift store, Mystic Mabel’s Magic Tables. I paced up and down the aisles ogling an array of wonderful objects. Thanksgiving decorations, polka-dot martini glasses, even a whimsical erotic cookbook. Neat stuff but none of it quite right for Rose, so I kept hunting. I knew the owner, Mrs. Neufield, as a teacher who spent thirty years at St. Jude’s until her abrupt departure at the end of my senior year. I had seen her at the memorial, but I hadn’t had a chance to talk there. I decided today was a good time to pump her for information about teachers, parents, and students who might have hated Miss Henley. Too bad Mabel Neufield was the kind of person who had never whispered a negative word about anyone, probably in her life. I should have remembered that.

“Oh dear, Helen was a strong character, for sure,” she said, wringing her hands. “But she played by the rules. Who knows? Perhaps her students are all better because of her.”

Your nose is getting longer, I wanted to say.

“That may be true,” I said, with just a tiny bit of emphasis on the “may.” “Did she have any enemies on the staff? Someone who might have reason to . . .”

A bead of sweat sprang up on Mrs. Neufield’s downy upper lip. “Charlotte, dear, I know this is hard on you, especially finding her like, um . . . but really, I think it will turn out to have been a terrible accident.”

“Uh-huh, maybe,” I said. “But then again, probably not.”

Her eyes didn’t meet mine, not even a little bit. In fact, they kept drifting to the far corner of the store. I glanced there and she gave a nervous little jerk.

“The other teachers respected her. I imagine some of them might have liked her. I can’t think of a person who would wish her harm. I mean that kind of harm. Anyway, we’ve all been retired for years.”

Well, that was so much horse dropping. Mrs. Neufield was either unwilling or unable to speak the truth. Whatever. I kept my thoughts to myself and smiled. I picked a small orange plate that said “SIMPLY THE BEST” in white letters. It would go with Rose’s décor and certainly summed up her cookies.

While Mrs. Neufield wrapped the plate for me, I moseyed around the shop a bit more and checked out the corner she’d glanced at. A collection of small framed paintings of vegetables were displayed artfully. The veggies beamed out, bold and adventurous, even mischievous. Why was I not surprised to see them signed with a dashing “SK”? The hand of Mr. Kanalakis at work unless I missed my guess. I lifted one off the shelf and peered behind it. Sure enough, “Spiros Kanalakis, RR 2, Oxbridge, NY,” and a telephone number were written on the back. I copied down the number and returned, smiling, to the cash register.

I left with the gift-wrapped plate and a new plan. Not everyone was as nice as Mrs. Neufield. Not by a long shot.

The rest of the afternoon passed in a blur of cutting-edge laundry technology: front-loading washers that saved water, flat drying systems for delicates, flexible wall storage, collapsible drying racks to save power, fashionable detergent containers, lightweight ironing boards, baskets, baskets, and, yippee, more baskets. Plus a surprising encounter with a $350 iron. By the time I exited my last stop, I had come up with some easy options to give my client a premium laundry room at a penny-pinching price. I just loved that. I figured she would too.

I was smiling when I eased into my driveway. A red Jeep pulled in behind me, taking me by surprise. A man stepped out. I stayed in the driver’s seat and clicked down the door lock. I guess I still have some of the old habits of living in the city. I unlocked it as soon as I saw who it was.

Dominic Lo Bello. I rolled down the car window. The wind ruffled his hair. His smile lit up the late afternoon.

“You’re a hard girl to track down,” he said. “I’ve been checking out every ice-cream cooler in town. But no you anywhere.”

Be still my foolish knees. “I’ve been busy.”

“Maybe hiding. But one of your friends ratted you out.”

“Ah.” Sally. Hopeless romantic, unrepentant match-maker. Watcher of biological clocks. And way out of line as usual.

He grinned. “I ran into her downtown and we had a chat. I told her I wanted to ask you for a coffee.”

“And she told you where I live?”

“She made me give references, if that eases your mind. And she checked them out first. You can call her and ask her.”

“I will.”

“So how about it? You want to get together for a cappuccino? There’s a new fair-trade coffee shop with a nice view by the river.”

“Jumpin’ Java. I know it.”

“Does tomorrow work?”

“Tomorrow would be fine.” I barely managed to keep from squirming with joy. References. What a riot.

“Three sound about right?”

“Sure.”

He waved as he headed off in the Jeep.

I was very, very happy that he hadn’t heard my heart beating.

Jack was waiting as I walked through the door. He had his cycling gear on, ready to head out onto the rainy, slick roads, a perfect target for any distracted driver.

“What did that guy want?”

“Um, you’re not going out on a night like this, are you? It’s really dark and slick.”

Jack had his own agenda. “I don’t like the look of him. Kind of unsavory.”

“Hmm. You are wearing black clothes and a cap at night. How unsavory is that?”

“Very funny. I have all these reflective stripes. No one can miss me. I’m heading uptown to check out what I think is going to be the perfect retail location. What do you really know about this total stranger who mysteriously popped into your life?”

“Not a lot. But he appears to have enough sense not to ride around on a bike in the dark. And he comes with references. Can we say that about you?”

From the top of the stairs came a racket. Apparently Truffle and Sweet Marie weren’t impressed.

“That reminds me,” Jack said. “That other dog is still available. Maybe you should rethink your decision. You know, in case you need protection.”

But I was a big girl. Not at all afraid of a cup of coffee with a man with shy-woodland-creature eyes.

 
Wednesday is always catch-up night for me. Truffle and Sweet Marie love catch-up night. Perhaps because I start by cleaning out the fridge. Of course, this week all it contained were three kinds of Dijon mustard and a curling slice of pizza from El Greco, heavy on the anchovies. I put on my new Black Eyed Peas CD and picked up my basket of cleaning supplies. I dusted, vacuumed, and generally slicked up the apartment to the music. I tossed the covers of the doggie beds into my washing machine and hand washed two sweaters and my lingerie. I made another attempt to find out where the dogs might have hidden my lucky pen, and then put an extra coat of waterproofing on my winter boots. I checked my seasonal to-do list and moved my winter coat from the back of the closet, along with my basket of wooly socks, gloves, and scarves. I paid my bills and straightened up my business files. I made my obligatory weekly call to my mother and left my usual meaningless weekly message. I didn’t mention the murder. I’m not completely out of my mind.

Finally, I updated my current list and wrote “Lilith—job help?” on it. I added “Crawford? Olivia? Mrs. Young? St. Jude teachers—Mr. Kanalakis!”

I actually get goose bumps whenever I finish my weekly cleaning ritual. I can’t really share this feeling with any of my friends because they tend to get a bit irritable any time I talk about catch-up night. Especially Sally.

Never mind. I raided the freezer and made a crisp and tangy shrimp stir-fry and settled in for an evening of relaxing with my two favorite cuddlers. They appreciate my systems. The missing pen was just an oversight, I was sure.