THE SOUND OF MURDER (4 page)

CHAPTER 7

“Ok
ay, let’s take a look at your PI license,” Uncle Bob said. “Oh, that’s right. You don’t have one.” It was Friday around noon, and I had told him the big news about our new case.

I stood in front of his big metal desk, like a child called before the teacher. “But—”

“Olive, you are not a private investigator.”

“I didn’t say I was.”

“No?”

“I’m pretty sure I said I
worked
for a detective.” I was pretty sure.

Uncle Bob shook his head. “Well, since you got us the case,
if
we got the case…”

I held my breath.

“You can work it.”

“Woo hoo!” I did a little happy dance on the dirty brown carpet.

“This is serious, Olive.” My uncle’s voice sounded serious too, but his eyes sparkled at me. I think he was glad he had a protégée.

Marge had written down Charlie’s daughter’s name and phone number with a note saying I should call her at four thirty Eastern Standard Time. Uncle Bob helped me prep, pulling up the police report on the computer and spending the next twenty minutes going over the case with me. My case.

Then he said, “Gotta go. I got a lunch meeting with Pat Franko.” The law firm of Franko, Hricko and Maionchi was my uncle’s biggest client. “You think you got it?”

“Yep,” I replied. “If Amy, Charlie Small’s daughter, wants to hire us, I need to interview her to see why she wants to find out more about her dad’s death, which will almost certainly be ruled suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning. If she’s hiring us because she doesn’t think he would kill himself, I need to find out more about Charlie, why she thinks it isn’t suicide, and why she cares.”

“Be careful with that last part,” said Uncle Bob. “That’s mostly for us and maybe Charlie’s attorneys. Just want to make sure she’s not giving us the runaround to get some extra cash from the estate.”

“Got it.”

My uncle waved goodbye as I moved my stuff over to his desk so I could spread out and prepare for my interview with Amy Small. I liked the idea of having hard copies for posterity, so I had printed out all the info and put it in a manila folder marked “Case #1: Charlie Small.” I took out the police report. I had already read it, but I went over it again carefully.

I knew most of the facts: At 5:31 a.m. on Wednesday, April 5, Bernice Grete called 911 to report a car running in a neighbor’s garage. Hank Snow of the Sunnydale posse responded at 5:35 and the fire department arrived at 5:37, at which time they gained access to the house via a key box. They determined that a Ford Taurus was idling in the closed-up garage and found Charlie, already dead, in the driver’s seat of the still-running car. There were no signs to suggest anything other than suicide, and it was expected that the postmortem would confirm the cause of death as carbon monoxide poisoning.

At 1:25 Arizona time, I got out my notebook where I had questions prepared for Amy, who was vice president of sales for a nanotech company in Boston. I dialed her office at precisely four thirty Eastern Standard Time.

“Hello, Advanced Precision Technologies, can you hold please?” The woman answering the phone spoke rapidly, like she was announcing the legalities at the end of a radio commercial.

“Actually I was asked to call—”

“Thank you,” said the rushed woman. After a click, a Muzak version of the Beatles “Let It Be” filled the phone line. Soon I found myself humming along to the catchy tune. Without really thinking about it, I began singing along. “When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary…”

The receptionist came back on the line and said, “You’re holding for Mary? One moment please.” Another click. “Cracklin’ Rosie” was playing. I knew better than to sing along this time.

“Hi, this is Mary,” said a weary sounding voice.

“Actually, I want to speak with Amy—”

“This is
Mary
.”

“Yes, the receptionist made a mis—”

Another click and a bit more Muzak. I remembered hearing that “Cracklin’ Rosie” was about drinking. I was seriously considering it.

I looked at the clock. It was now 4:40. After five more minutes, another woman picked up. “This is Amy Small,” she said. “What can I do for you?”

“Hi Amy, I’m with Duda Detective Agency, and—”

Another click. No music this time, just a dial tone.

Dang. I told Uncle Bob, Bob Duda, that is, he needed another name for his business.

I dialed again. It was four forty-five.

“Hello, Advanced Precision Technologies,” said the same receptionist. “Can you hold please?”

“No!” I said, too late. Muzak.

I hung up and redialed.

“Hello, this is—” said the rapid-fire receptionist.

“I have an appointment with Amy Small,” I blurted out.

“Your name, please?”

“Olive Ziegwart.” I knew better than to try Duda Detectives again.

“I’m sorry, I don’t see that name.”

“Robert Duda?”

“You’ll have to call back on Monday and make an appoint—”

“Ivy Meadows?”

A pause. “Yes, Amy had you down for four thirty.” Of course. Marge only knew me as Ivy. “Unfortunately, Ms. Small had another phone appointment at four forty-five. She’s on the line with them now.”

“I’ll wait.” My first stab at detecting was not going well.

After another five minutes, the Muzak was interrupted with, “Hi, this is Amy.”

“Hi, Amy, this is Olive. I mean, I—”

“Hold on. From Doodoo Detectives?”

“Yes.”

I heard a sigh and could just tell she was getting ready to hang up. “Dud-
a
!” I practically shouted into the phone. “Dud
a
Detective Agency. It’s a Polish name that means one who plays the bagpipes badly.”

“Is that supposed to make me think you’re not a crank?”

“I’m not a crank, I’m a private investigator.” Yeah, I was exaggerating again, but this was an extenuating circumstance. “I’m Ivy, the one Marge recommended?”

Silence.

“Hello?”

There was a noise I couldn’t identify muffled by a hand or something over the mouthpiece of the phone.

“Ms. Small?”

I heard the sound clearly then. It was weeping. Oh.

Until that moment I hadn’t really thought of Charlie Small as a real person, just my breakout detective job. I felt my face flush with shame.

“Ms. Small? I’m so sorry about your father.”

“Thank you,” she said, snuffling. “I’m sorry. It just hit me again. I can’t believe he’s gone.”

“Why don’t you tell me about him?” I asked as gently as I could.

From Amy, who wept off and on throughout the interview, I learned that Charlie Small was seventy-eight years old. He’d been married to his wife, Helen (“his bride,” he always called her) for nearly fifty years until she died of lung cancer last fall. He’d been a loving father who sacrificed his dream of owning his own business in order to send Amy to MIT. He’d worked as an accountant with a midsized firm in Omaha until he retired at sixty-five and moved with Helen to Sunnydale.

“I only saw him once since Mom’s funeral,” said Amy quietly, all done with crying for now. “Just once. I was so busy with work and…” She trailed off.

“I’m sure he understood. I’m sure he was proud of the job you’re doing.” I don’t know why I said those things, but I did feel sure, somehow.

“I hope so.”

“And why…” I took a deep breath. “Why do you want us to look into his death?”

“My father would never kill himself.”

I waited. I’d learned from Uncle Bob not to fill the silences. He taught me that the best information came from letting other people talk. This aspect of detecting did not come naturally to me.

“My father was a strong Christian. He believed that only God had the right to end a life. And now his pastor is threatening to not perform the memorial service because he doubts my dad’s faith.” Amy’s voice grew hard as she imitated the pompous-sounding pastor. “He said that he ‘rejected the lordship of Jesus Christ by taking his life into his own hands rather than submitting to God’s will.’ But my dad didn’t. He wouldn’t. He believed in releasing all his troubles to God.” Amy began crying again. “My father’s faith was the most important thing in his life, even more than my mom and me. Did you know his Bible was found on the seat next to him?”

“No, I didn’t.” That seemed like the type of thing you might want to read right before dy
ing, but I didn’t say anything. Instead I flipped through the police report to see if they mentioned the Bible.

“I should have been there for him,” Amy said. “I should have watched over him. None of this would have happened if I’d taken care of him.”

I stopped flipping. Those words, Amy’s words, struck my chest and lay heavy in my heart.

That night after rehearsal, I stood outside Bernice’s house and stared at the pool, its black water sliced by a jagged silver shard of moonlight.

“I should have been there for him, I should have watched over him. None of this would have happened if I’d taken care of him.” Amy’s words beat at my ribcage, matching the hammering of my heart. It wasn’t just sympathy. I knew exactly how she felt.

CHAPTER 8

An unusual silence filled the theater. No music played. All action onstage had stopped. Marge, in full nun regalia, stood in the middle of the stage looking worried, her mouth a tight line, eyebrows drawn nearly together. Mary, the Captain, and all of us Vaughn Katt Club dancers were gathered around her in a half circle. We all looked worried too.

Truth be told, we were supposed to look that way. After all, we’d just found out that the Nazis had realized we dancers were Jewish. But the real reason behind all of the creased brows was Marge’s lines, or rather, the lack of them.

“Marge?” called Levin, our director, from the house. “Can we try this again?” His voice sounded tight. Mine would too, if my star performer couldn’t remember her lines less than a week before opening.

To make it worse, a new show like
The Sound of Cabaret
was a big gamble for the theater, which typically produced crowd-pleasers aimed at Sunnydale’s retirees. “Arizona’s Ethel Merman” was the main reason the show was selling.

She nodded at Levin.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s start with the Captain’s line.”

Roger/Captain Vaughn Katt, a broad-shouldered guy with a full head of steel gray hair, nodded at Levin, then turned to Marge/Mother Superior. “We’ve got to get them out of here!”

“Could we hide them at the convent?” said Hailey, the petite blonde playing Mary.

The Captain shook his head. “First place they’d look.”

“Besides,” I said, “we don’t look like we belong anywhere near a church.”

Silence.

I silently willed Marge to remember her line.

Still silence.

I tried ESP.

No dice.

Finally from the wings, we heard a loud whisper. “That’s it! We’ll disguise you as nuns!”

“That’s it!” Marge said to us dancers. “We’ll disguise you as nuns!” A pause.

“But you have to promise me one thing,” Bitsy whispered from where she watched in the wings. As Marge’s understudy, she knew all her lines.

Marge shook her head slightly and glanced toward the sound of Bitsy’s voice.

“But you have to promise me one thing,” Bitsy said louder.

“But you have to promise me one thing,” Marge said. On cue, the rehearsal pianist started playing behind her. All Marge’s worry wrinkles fell away and she continued, “You’ll change your ways. Once you put on the habit, you’ll have to respect the idea behind it.”

“But we’re Jewish!” said another Vaughn Katt dancer. “If we were willing to convert, don’t you think we’d have done it by now?”

“That’s not what I mean,” said Marge, the piano building behind her. That was one long intro. “I mean no more dancing in cabarets. I mean clean up your life. I mean…” The familiar tune from
The Sound of Music
swelled as Marge opened her mouth and sang the new words in her gigantic Ethel Merman voice, “CLIMB…OUT OF THE GUTTER…”

She had it now. The rest of the song poured out of her. One by one, we sank to our knees beside her, as choreographed. She launched into the final refrain: “CLIMB out of the gutter, wipe off your blush, Nazis are behind you. You’ll make it…IF YOU…RUSH!”

She delivered the last line with enormous gusto. If the theater had timbers, they would have shook. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Bitsy offstage, shaking her head. I wondered if she didn’t like the lyric change or Marge’s rendition, which was more madam than Mother. Or maybe just the fact that our headliner couldn’t get through a scene without help.

We broke for lunch right afterward. As I opened the door to the greenroom, something whizzed past my head.

“Flying monkey alert!” yelled Zeb. A dishwasher who was always hanging out at the theater, Zeb was barely sixteen years old and the biggest science geek I’d ever met. He retrieved the small plastic monkey that had just missed my head and jotted something down in a small black notebook. “I’m finding out how far each monkey can go depending on how far I stretch the rubber band that launches them.”

He had a green tinge below one eye.

“Where’d you get the shiner?” I asked.

“On the ropes in gym class. Some guy kicked me.”

“Probably because Zeb shot him with a monkey,” Candy whispered.

“I’ve never worked in a theater where the kitchen help fraternized with the talent,” Bitsy said loudly, looking directly at Zeb.

“I’ve never worked in a theater where old ladies carried around spare underwear,” said Candy.

Bitsy pursed her lip in a pout. Not sure if she was miffed because Candy mentioned her unmentionables or because she called her “old.”

“Give the kid a break,” Marge said to Bitsy. “Everybody needs a place to go.”

I wondered what she meant, but was distracted by the wonderful aroma emanating from the small cardboard containers that lined a long table.

“It’s Yummy Lunch,” crowed Arnie, waving an unlit cigar at the boxes adorned with the logo of the nearby “Yummy Food” Chinese restaurant. His bald head and big glasses gleamed under the greenroom lights, which also spotlighted his enormous ears.

“Don’t get it on your clothes,” said Terri, the costume designer. “I’m not doing wash before opening night.”

Though it wasn’t the official dress rehearsal, a lot of the cast members (and all of the nuns) wore their costumes to get used to the way they moved in them. Bitsy, who daintily filled up her plate with mostly vegetables, looked like the poster nun for a convent, her round, strangely unlined face peeking out of her wimple and veil. Marge, who was headed back to her dressing room, looked like a drag queen’s idea of a nun.

Arnie made a beeline after her, and I followed, not because I was nosy (though I was), but because I needed to get my cellphone out of my dressing room.

“Babe,” he said, still waving his cigar. “You feelin’ okay?”

“It’s this damn costume,” said Marge. “I can’t hear a goddamn thing.” She pushed back her veil to show the white wimple that covered her head and, yes, her ears.

“Terri!” shouted Arnie. The costumer was only a few feet away so he didn’t need to shout, but he was a naturally loud guy. He and Marge made the perfect couple. “Can we do something here? So Marge can hear better?”

“Of course,” said Terri. “I’m a genius.”

“That’s why we pay you the big bucks,” Arnie said, slapping her on the back.

The three of them went into Marge’s dressing room. I grabbed my phone and went back to the greenroom, where I filled a paper plate with an assortment of noodle dishes and made my way toward the long folding table where the rest of the cast sat. I plopped down next to Candy, my paper plate dangerously full of greasy Chinese food.

“Keep away from my costume,” she said, scooting away from me. “No noodles for this nun.” Then her eyes lit up. “Hey, was Matt ever Catholic?”

“Not sure. Why?”

“I was thinking of taking the costume home with me, maybe play ‘naughty nun.’”

“Too much information.” I clapped my hands over my ears. “La la la la la…”

Zeb bounded up to us like a horny Labrador. “How do you play naughty nun?” The only thing that interested Zeb more than science was sex. “Can you teach me?” he asked Candy, the hormones practically zinging their way out of the few hairs he proudly displayed on his chin.

“No, but I might hit you with a ruler.” Zeb’s eyes gleamed.

“Don’t even go there,” Candy warned. He grinned and went back to the food table, where he grabbed a handful of fortune cookies.

Bitsy harrumphed and rolled her eyes.

“You know, now that I think of it,” Candy smiled sweetly at her across the table, “my granny did carry a spare pair of undies with her. Not sure if it was an incontinence thing or just because she was a woman of loose morals.”

Bitsy opened her mouth, then shut it again, like a goldfish. Candy gave her a “butter wouldn’t melt in my mouth” smile.

I took a big slurpy bite of noodles and looked at the time on my cellphone—7:12 p.m. here in Arizona meant it was 3:12 p.m. (the next day) in New Zealand. I dialed Bernice’s number.

“Gotta do some work on this case,” I said to Candy.

Roger sat down next to me. “Case?”

I scooted over, ostensibly to give Roger room, but really because he was one of those guys who stood or sat just a little too close to any female under thirty.

“She’s investigating some suicide.” Candy took a bite of Kung Pao chicken.

“I didn’t know Ivy was an investigator,” Bitsy said.

“She’s an investigator trying to make a long-distance call in spite of her noisy castmates,” I said. I tried to say it with authority, but was stymied by a mouthful of noodles.

“Swallow, hon,” Candy said, just as Bernice picked up.

“Hello? Ivy? Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, hi, Bernice. Don’t worry, everything’s fine. I was just wondering: Did you hear or see anything the morning of Charlie’s death?”

“Just you. And the landscaper, of course.”

“The landscaper?” I asked.

“Yeah. Charlie must have had a yard guy. They work real early, you know.”

They did. For half the year (May through October), any outdoor work in the Valley had to be done before the day got beastly hot. I guessed landscapers kept to this schedule the rest of the year for continuity’s sake.

“I mostly heard him. Had one of those annoying leaf blowers.”

“Did you get a good look at him? Or her?”

“Not really. Whoever it was wore one of those jumpsuit things.”

“Jumpsuit?”

“Probably a coverall,” said Candy, who’d been listening along with the rest of the table.

“And a hat. Maybe even glasses. I really can’t remember.”

“No, that’s great information, Bernice. Thanks. Bye now.”

“Ta da.” Arnie re-entered the greenroom with Marge and Terri in tow. “Terri, costumer extraordinaire, has saved the day. Show ’em, babe.”

Marge pulled back her black veil. Her white wimple still surrounded her head and neck, but her ears stuck out of the holes Terri had cut on either side of the wimple. “The better to hear you with, my dear,” Marge said.

“Fantastic, right?” said Arnie. “Now she can hear just fine. Take a bow, Terri.”

Terri bowed, to the accompaniment of applause from Arnie and the cast. I wondered if anyone else noticed that Marge was not clapping.