Scam Chowder (8 page)

Val pointed to the white car backing out of a parking space. “See the sedan with the yellow ball on the antenna? Can we follow that car?”

Bethany's face lit up. “I've always wanted to do that. Let's go.”

Chapter 9

Val peered out the windshield of Bethany's silver Hyundai. Up ahead, Lillian's car rolled past the guard gate and turned onto the two-lane road that skirted the Village. Bethany caught up with the white sedan at an intersection with a stop sign.

Val put on sunglasses. “Don't get too close. I don't want Lillian to see me in her rearview mirror.”

Bethany slowed down, glanced at Val, and laughed. “You'd better cover your curly mop too. Check the pocket behind my seat for a baseball cap.”

Val reached into the pocket and pulled out the cap. Muffin chomped on the brim and wrestled her for it.

“Down, Muffin!” Bethany said. The dog relinquished the prize and lay on the car floor in the back. “Why are we following Lillian?”

Good question. Val tucked her hair under the cap and pulled the brim down low. “I'd like to know where she's going because I don't trust her. She invited a man to Granddad's dinner at the last minute and won't even tell me the guy's last name. Did anyone at the pet-a-pet session know her or Thomasina?”

“A few people knew them, not many. They both moved in within the last few months. The ones who knew Thomasina talked mainly about her son's sudden death.” Bethany turned onto the two-lane road that led from the Village to the main artery. “One person said Lillian must have money to burn. She rents her place month to month. You have to pay a lot more that way.”

“What do the other people in the Village do?”

“The ones who don't own their units lease them on a yearly basis. Either way, they pay lower fees than the month-to-month renters.”

Maybe Lillian planned to stay only long enough to find a widower like Granddad to take her in. “What about Thomasina?”

“She lives in a cottage. They don't allow short-term leases for those. She moved into the place in the spring, April or May, about a month before Lillian arrived.”

The two women had moved into the Village around the same time, one committing to stay, the other arranging for a quick exit.

Val focused on the white car twenty yards ahead and the intersection between it and Bethany's Hyundai. A farm truck approached the intersection from the right, made a rolling stop, and kept going into a right turn.

“Watch out for the truck!”

“I see it.” Bethany leaned on her horn and sped up.

Val cringed. “Stop!”

Bethany swerved left around the truck.

Val's heart thudded against her ribs. Somehow the car hung on to the road. She gaped in amazement at Bethany. “You just missed that truck.”

“We'd have lost Lillian if that pokey truck came between us.” Bethany gave Val an apologetic smile. “I don't usually take risks on the road.”

“I know why you took them now.” Val punctuated her syllables with a raised index finger. “Because of the caveman diet. It's making you aggressive. You are what you eat.”

Bethany laughed. “That's silly.”

“More intersections are coming up. I'll keep Lillian's car in sight. You focus on the road, and please don't try to outrun any more mastodons.”

For the next ten minutes, every time Val spotted a strip mall or a big intersection, she expected Lillian to turn off the road. The white car kept going straight.

“Look, Val. She's turning onto Route 50.”

“We should probably give up. We're going to hit heavy traffic.”

“That'll make it easier to tail her without her noticing us.”

“And easier for her to lose us.” Val wouldn't mind if Lillian eluded them. She'd never intended to spend this long following the woman. “People always tell me I'm dogged, but you're even more persistent, Bethany.” Like Muffin refusing to let go of the cap.

“If you teach first graders, you learn persistence.” Bethany turned onto the highway and zoomed into the left lane. “I'll have to go fast to catch up with Lillian. You keep an eye out for her car.”

They passed two white sedans, neither with the distinctive yellow ball atop the antenna. A moving van moved into the left lane in front of them and blocked their view of the vehicles ahead in all the lanes. When the truck moved back into the right lane and Bethany passed it, Val spotted Lillian's sedan. “She's in the right lane up ahead. If you get in front of the SUV, that'll put us two cars behind her.”

“Okeydoke.” Bethany turned on her signal light and maneuvered into the right lane. “One of the residents at the pet-a-pet session who knows Lillian says she's always complaining about the food at the Village.”

“She told Granddad her late husband was a gourmet cook.” And from that tiny seed, the Codger Cook sprouted.

“The way to a man's heart is through his stomach. I guess that applies to women too.”

“Anyone who thinks the way to a man's heart is through his stomach flunked biology.” Case in point—Val's ex-fiancé who passed up her amazing dinners to “work” with a paralegal who had an amazing body. But an older woman would have different priorities. A man who could cook and owned a big house might sustain her interest, but for how long? Possibly only until a better catch showed up. “I wonder if Lillian hangs out with any men in the Village.”

Bethany shrugged. “Ned says a lot of men in the Village would like to get to know her better, but she prefers your grandfather to them. She spends time with the older folks who can't get around well, the ones who don't have many visitors. That's a point in her favor.”

“Maybe she hopes they'll make out a will in her favor.”

Bethany's jaw dropped. “Wow. You
really
don't like her.”

“I shouldn't have said that.” Val had forgotten the lesson she'd learned from her foray into sleuthing last month—to set aside her prejudices and not attribute the worst motives to people she didn't like. From now on, she'd try to give Lillian the benefit of the doubt. Doubt was better than cynicism. “Did anyone say if Thomasina and Lillian are pals?”

“I don't know about pals. I heard they're rivals at the Brain Game. Some of the residents call them the Brain Queens and even bet on which one will come out on top each week.”

Val had an unexpected brainstorm. “I read a notice that this week's session is canceled. Can you convince whoever's in charge to let me substitute as the Brain Game moderator? I used to run a bar trivia game in New York.”

“I'll talk to the activities director. Why do you want to do that?”

“Sometimes the facts people know tell you what's important to them. You find out things they don't think to mention.” Or prefer not to reveal. Val suddenly realized how long they'd been on the highway. “We're almost at the Bay Bridge. Why don't you look for a place to turn around? We don't have to keep following Lillian.”

“I hate to give up after we've gone this far. Let's at least go over the bridge and see which way she goes. On a clear day like this, you'll have a great view of the Chesapeake.”

Val couldn't remember the last time she'd enjoyed that view as a passenger. She'd driven over the bridge regularly in the last fifteen years, but as the driver, she couldn't stare at the water.

Today the vast expanse of sparkling bay mesmerized her all along the four-mile length of the bridge. Everything from freighters and naval vessels to yachts and sailboats glided in the water. From high above, it looked like a world in slow motion. For the first time in two days, Val felt calm.

With the bay behind them, the pace quickened. The traffic grew heavier around Annapolis. Bethany's hands tensed on the wheel. Val's mental wheels rotated back to her preoccupations of the last two days—Granddad's finances, Scott's death, and Gunnar's ex-fiancée.

Gunnar!
She was supposed to play tennis with him this afternoon. She looked at the dashboard clock. “Oh no. I was supposed to meet Gunnar ten minutes ago at the club.” She pulled out her phone, paged through her contacts for his number, and called him.

“Hi, Val. Did you forget our tennis game?”

“No, but I had to do something, and now I'm stuck on the road.”

“We can start a little late.”

“We'd have to start a lot late. I'm an hour away.” Or even more, judging by the eastbound traffic toward the tollbooths.

“Okay. I'll see if anyone's hanging around looking for a tennis game. If not, I'll go use the workout room. Thanks for letting me know.”

Did she hear a hint of sarcasm in his thanks? “Sorry. Can we reschedule for later this week? . . . Gunnar, are you still there?” No answer. He'd hung up. She clicked her phone off and wished she'd never spotted Lillian leaving the Village.

Bethany looked sideways, frowning. “You stood him up with his fiancée trying to get together with him again?”

Val pressed her lips together to keep from saying what she was thinking. She would have met him for tennis if Bethany had listened to her about turning back earlier.

Unfair,
Val's inner voice protested. She was behaving like Granddad, blaming someone else when the fault was her own. She shouldn't have forgotten her date with Gunnar. Usually, she controlled her impetuous streak. Today she'd given in to a whim and followed Lillian for no good reason. “I think it's time to turn around, Bethany. Get off at the next exit.”

“That's exactly what Lillian's doing. We can't give up now. We're close to the finish line.”

Val sighed. She'd created a monster by suggesting they follow Lillian. She only hoped Lillian wouldn't make a cross-country trip.

They lost sight of the white sedan in the narrow streets of Annapolis, but the yellow ball on Lillian's antenna served as a beacon that helped Val spot the car as it turned onto a side street.

Bethany made the same turn and followed Lillian's sedan, leaving a gap of half a block between them. They drove along a residential street with older houses and brick sidewalks, the historic district near the Naval Academy. As Bethany approached a stop sign, Lillian pulled into a narrow driveway in the block ahead.

“Stop here.” Val pointed to an empty space at the curb, just shy of the intersection. From that vantage point, she watched Lillian walk to the front door of a brick Colonial house and let herself in with a key. “Hmm. I expected her to ring the bell. I want the address of that house, but we should wait a bit before we drive by it. She may be on the lookout for your car if she noticed it behind her during this odyssey.”

“I'll take Muffin for a walk.” At Bethany's words, the dog roused from her nap.

“But don't go too close to the brick house. Even if Lillian never went to a pet-a-pet session, she might have seen you in the Village with Muffin. I'll watch the house from here.”

Bethany clipped a leash on the dog. “Come on, Muffin, we're walking in the ritziest neighborhood you've ever been in.”

Val pondered possible explanations for Lillian letting herself into a house in an expensive neighborhood. If the house belonged to her, why was she staying in a tiny apartment at Ambleside Village? Maybe the property belonged to a relative or a friend who trusted her with the key.

When Bethany returned, she drove slowly past the brick house, and Val jotted down the address. With that information, she could look up the property records online and find out who owned the house.

 

 

It was almost seven when Val climbed out of Bethany's car at the club. She searched for Gunnar's Miata. No red sports cars in the club lot. She approached her Saturn and smelled something foul. The putrid odor turned her stomach. She sniffed around for the source of the stench. It was strongest near her car.

She peered in the side window. On the passenger seat lay a fish with a dull, milky eye. Yuck.

Val had left the windows cracked open three inches to keep the heat from building up. Someone had shoved the fish through the gap. Luckily, it was half-covered with brown paper, the kind used at the supermarket's fish counter. Val pinched her nose and opened the car door. Touching only the butcher wrap, she put the fish on the ground.

A man with salt-and-pepper hair emerged from the pickup truck parked three spaces away from her Saturn. He carried a tennis racket. “What's that stink?”

“Rotting fish.” Val held her breath, darted past the pickup truck, and gulped air. Not sweet-smelling, but better than the air near her car. “Someone tossed a croaker into my car.”

“Nasty.” The man walked with her toward the club entrance. “I teach biology. I can tell you where the smell comes from. Fish amino acids break down into the compounds cadaverine and putrescine.”

Val could do without that bit of trivia. Even the words made her feel queasy. “I wonder how long it will take to get rid of the smell.”

“Once you clean the spot where the fish was, you'll probably have to keep the windows down for a few days.”

“One dead fish came through a window cracked open. Wide open windows might net me a school of them.”

The man laughed and opened the glass door to the club for her.

Val went into the café and gathered what she'd need to get rid of the fish and its smell. Latex gloves, plastic bags, and rags. Water, white vinegar, and baking soda.

Back outside, she made a bandit bandanna from a rag, using a double thickness of cloth over her nose. She shoved the fish into a plastic bag, put the bag inside two other bags, and tossed the package in the Dumpster. While scrubbing the upholstery, she needed frequent breaks for fresh air. The stench lingered after the cleaning, but it wasn't as strong as before, or maybe she was just getting used to it.