Tomb With a View (20 page)

It was obvious Nick had been through everything with a fine-tooth comb, sorting and inventorying and stashing away. It was not so obvious why.

Thinking about it, I turned—and nearly jumped out of my skin when I realized Marjorie’s neighbor, Gloria Henninger, was right behind me. So was Sunshine.

She (that’s Gloria, not Sunshine) didn’t bother to apologize for nearly giving me a heart attack. “Oh, it’s you,” she said, the words leaving her mouth along with a stream of smoke from her cigarette. She had the dog in her arms and she gave it a little squeeze. “Sunshine told me somebody was sneaking around over here. Figured I’d better come have a look. It’s what neighbors do for each other, you know.” She dropped the stub of her cigarette on the porch and ground it with her sneakers. They were yellow and they matched the T-shirt she was wearing, the one that said, I KISS MY DOG ON THE LIPS. Her shirt, in turn, matched Sunshine’s, except that the dog’s said, I KISS MY OWNER ON THE MOUTH.

Since I didn’t want to think about either of these possibilities, I was glad when she said, “At least that’s how neighbors should treat each other. Not that the Klinker woman ever did. Didn’t care about anybody. Anybody but herself.”

I could have said something about how it wasn’t exactly appropriate to criticize seeing as how Marjorie had just recently been murdered, but let’s face it, I couldn’t think of anything nice to say about her, either. And anyway, Gloria beat me to it. “Don’t even give me that hogwash about speaking kindly of the dead,” she growled. So did Sunshine. “I had nothing good to say about her when she was alive, and I’m not going to be a hypocrite now that she’s gone. The woman was the curse of the neighborhood.”

I remembered the glimpse I’d had of Marjorie’s backyard. “Maybe now her nephew will get rid of the statue of President Garfield.”

My suggestion wasn’t met with as much enthusiasm as I’d expected. Gloria scraped a finger back and forth across the top of Sunshine’s head. “Well, that’s what I was thinking, too. And I got all excited about it. You know, when Nick started to move it. But it didn’t last.”

There didn’t seem to be much point in asking her to explain, so I walked to the railing on the far side of the porch and leaned over. The statue of President Garfield was still there, but just like Gloria said, and like everything else I’d seen in the house, it, too, had been moved.

Instead of standing directly in the path of the beam of that spotlight, the president was now six feet over to the left. The pots of flowers from around the statue had been shifted in front of the garage, and the bushes that ringed the statue? They’d been dug up. They sat on the driveway, their roots withering in the sun.

“See what I mean?” Gloria poked me with one bony elbow. “Saw that Nick Klinker messing with the statue, and I thought, Glory be! He’s going to get rid of it. No such luck. Now that he’s messed with it, it just looks worse than ever. I’ve called the city. Told them I pay my taxes and I have the right to a neighborhood free of eyesores. Nobody’s listening. Nobody cares.”

I did. But not for the reasons she thought.

I decided it was best not to mention this so instead I asked, “What’s Nick up to?”

“Hell if I know.” Gloria made a face. “All I can tell you is that he’s been here all hours, and had people in and out, in and out. It’s upsetting to Sunshine. She keeps a regular schedule. She doesn’t appreciate the interruptions.”

“People in and out. Like who? What people?”

“Well, I don’t know all of them.” Obviously, I should have realized this. At least that’s what the look Gloria gave me said. “But I did recognize that one fellow. You know . . .” Trying to think, she snapped her fingers. “You know, the big guy. Bushy head of silver hair. He’s on that show on PBS where they look at the antiques people bring in. Not the famous show that goes all over the country. The other one. The one they film right here in Cleveland.”

“
Antique Appraisals
?” Don’t get the wrong idea. I am not and never have been a faithful viewer. The show was on right before
Cemetery Survivor
so I’d seen a couple minutes at the end of a couple episodes right after I turned the TV on and right before I turned it right off because I couldn’t stand to watch myself in the corny cemetery restoration show. “I know who you’re talking about. Ted Something.”

“Ted Studebaker. That’s him.” Gloria’s face lit like a Christmas tree. “I know I’m right. It was him. I know it for a fact. And it’s not just because I’m a sort of magnet for superstars. Met Jimmy Durante once. Live and in person. And Telly Savalas.” She looked at me expectantly.

I stared at her blankly.

Maybe she was more perceptive than I’d given her credit for. Rather than belabor the point, she started down the steps. “Come on, honey,” she said. “And I’ll prove it to you.”

I followed her next door to a house much like Marjorie’s except for the lack of Garfield memorabilia and the addition of a gag-in-the-mouth doggy smell that mingled with the unrelenting stench of cigarettes.

Once inside, I stayed as close to the front door as politely possible, in hopes of catching the occasional whiff of fresh air. Sunshine still in her arms, Gloria rattled around in the kitchen.

“I know I’ve got it here somewhere.” Her voice floated to me from the back of the house. “I’ll find it. You’ll see. You’ll see that I met him.”

Since I wasn’t sure if she was talking about Ted the antiques appraiser or about those guys I didn’t know, the ones named Jimmy and Telly (wasn’t he a character from
Sesame Street
?), I waited. Left to my own devices, I had a chance to take a quick look around.

Gloria’s furniture was cheap and not worth mentioning. The wall-to-wall carpet had seen better days. She had a big-screen TV next to an aquarium where a dead fish floated on top of the water. There were a couple magazines on her coffee table, and a couple pieces of mail. Curious, I took a deep breath, held it, and hurried over there. I shuffled through the mail, checking it out.

An electric bill. An ad from a local dentist. What looked like a birthday card.

Nothing interesting, and certainly nothing that would help with my case.

“Ah, here it is!” I heard Gloria say, and I dropped the mail back on the table before she got back to the room. It slid under a three-month-old
Ladies Home Journal
, and I quickly moved to put it back in place. When I did, something else slid out from under the magazine, too.

For a second, I simply stared. But I knew another second would be too long. I scooped up the paper, folded it, and stuffed it into the pocket of my khakis.

Just in time, too.

“Here it is.” Gloria shuffled back into the room holding a business card. She handed it over. Sunshine grumbled when I got too close.

Gloria pointed at the name printed on the card in raised lettering. “See? See, right there. It was Ted Studebaker himself, all right. Just like I said. I saw a car pull up. Something slick and shiny. I knew it wasn’t anybody who’d been here before so I went over to see what was going on. You know, the way a good neighbor would. Nick was just coming out of the house and he introduced me. That’s when Ted Studebaker gave me that card.”

I gave the card a careful look. It was printed on quality paper and embossed with an eagle in the background. Ted Studebaker Antiques, it said, was located in Chagrin Falls, a charming and highfalutin suburb to the east, and it said that Ted was a specialist in presidential “autographs, memorabilia, and ephemera.”

“So Nick was talking to a presidential collector.” I said this to no one in particular, but of course, Gloria assumed I was talking to her.

“That’s right.” She grabbed a plastic cigarette lighter from a nearby table and fired up another smoke. “I heard them. You know, when I was on my way over there. Nick was telling Ted Studebaker to come on inside, telling him he had lots to show him. Ted, he wasn’t even through the front door and Nick was asking about what stuff was worth and if anybody would want it.”

“Did Studebaker say anybody would?”

“Well, it never got that far. Not as far as I heard, anyway. Because that’s when me and Sunshine, we showed up to see who the stranger was and we introduced ourselves. Didn’t we, Sunshine?” She kissed the dog on the top of the head.

At least it wasn’t on the lips. I took comfort in the thought.

“I can tell you that Studebaker, just looking inside the Klinker place from the front porch, he was practically foaming at the mouth. That’s how excited he was to get in there and start rooting through things. When we were leaving, they went into the house, and I heard Nick say something about how he wanted to sell it. All of it.”

I thought about the neat piles of Garfield kitsch in Marjorie’s house. It made sense that Nick would have been through it. Especially if he wanted to sell it all.

Well, maybe
all
wasn’t exactly the right word. There was still the matter of the floor tile Marjorie had stolen off the wall at Lawnfield. And the box full of Marjorie’s stuff in the trunk of my car.

Those were problems for another day. So was Ted Studebaker. For now, I had more important things to think about, so I thanked Gloria for her help, got in my car, and did that thinking.

Remember, at our first meeting, Gloria was the one who told me she wanted Marjorie Klinker dead.

She was also the one who swore up and down that she didn’t really know what the statue of President Garfield at the cemetery looked like, because she’d never been to Garden View.

At the next red light, I reached in my pocket and pulled out what I’d swiped from Gloria’s coffee table.

It was a brochure from the Garfield Memorial. Yep, the same brochure we hand out to visitors.

E
very time I picked up the newspaper, I expected to see some screaming headline about how the cops (read that,
Quinn
) had made major strides in solving Marjorie’s murder. Every time I turned on my TV, I held my breath, hoping against hope that I might not see You-Know-Who’s gorgeous face looking back at me. I knew him well, see, and I knew that when the big moment came, when the lights were on and the cameras were rolling, he’d be his usual chilly as a frozen cucumber self in front of the crowd. Oh yeah, he’d be all about business. His jaw would be tight. His shoulders would be rock steady inside a suit no cop should be able to afford. His voice would be impassive as he told the world he had a suspect in custody.

His eyes, though . . . his eyes would spark with a message meant just for me:
Take that, Pepper. I solved it before you did!

The fact that he didn’t even know I was investigating said something about how paranoid I was about the whole thing. And how determined.

Was it any wonder I was itching to get back to my investigation?

Too bad working at Garden View tends to get in the way of my real life. Perfect example: the next day. After missing work on Wednesday in the name of paying a visit to Nick’s home, then darting off to Marjorie’s, I couldn’t very well call off again. So there I was, all day Thursday, stuck in the memorial. And all day, there were people in and out.

None of them was Jack. This was unfortunate, because it meant I didn’t have a chance to satisfy my curiosity about either what he was up to or if he was really as good a kisser as I remembered. And no, the sign outside the stairway that led up to the ballroom wasn’t moved again. I knew that for certain because I dragged myself up and down those darned winding steps five times that day, just to check.

So that part of my investigation was at a dead end.

There was no sign of the president, either, so even though I doubted he’d been paying enough attention to remember one tourist, I couldn’t question him about Gloria Henninger’s visit to the memorial. I wondered if she was part of the comings and goings he complained about. I wondered why Gloria lied about never being in the cemetery. I wondered what business she could have had there, and of course, considering how much she liked “that Klinker woman,” I wondered if she’d murdered Marjorie.

I had no answers and no way to find them considering I was stuck inside catering to tourists like . . . well, like I was the cemetery’s official tour guide.

And again, my investigation was up against a brick wall.

With nothing left to do, I actually worked like a dog that day. I showed visitors around, and talked about presidential history and mosaics and marble and all that other stuff, and even though I mostly didn’t know what I was talking about and made up half of what I told them, they all seemed pretty pleased and left there thinking they knew more than they did when they walked in. Even at four o’clock when it was time to lock up, I still wasn’t done. At Ella’s request, I headed to the administration building to proofread the latest edition of her Garden View newsletter. After bailing out on her the day before, I figured it was the least I could do. It was six o’clock by the time I left the cemetery, and even then, I didn’t head home. I know, I know . . . a private detective’s work is never done. I had no choice. I went right back to Marjorie Klinker’s.

I still had all her junk in the trunk of my car, remember, and a boatload of questions to ask Nick.

I parked in what was becoming my usual spot and hurried up the front porch stairs. At that time of the year, it was still light in the evening, and I guess it was a good thing it was. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have screeched to a stop when I noticed the gouges all along the front door jamb. I bent closer for a better look. Sure enough, the lock had been forced.

My first reaction was surprise. But I am ever practical. Especially when it comes to danger. My second thought was that I needed reinforcements. Obviously, when anything happened in the neighborhood, Gloria and Sunshine were the first to know, and I had already made a move toward their house when I saw that there was no car in Gloria’s driveway, no lights on in the house, and no signs of movement from inside. Didn’t it figure, the one time I needed the neighborhood busybody, she was out for the day.