Poison and Party Hats, page 20
She certainly seemed like a woman who took her work seriously. I respected that. But another set of eyes couldn’t hurt, and I was still hoping it would give me some peace of mind so I could stop this wild goose chase before it started.
“Thank you. I appreciate your help,” I said, but Serena had already turned away from the front desk, retreating into the back of the morgue.
It was getting late enough that I needed to be back at Eliza’s to meet with the realtor soon. I tucked the coroner’s report away to look at later and made the winding, bumpy drive back. The back roads around Shongoloo weren’t well-maintained, full of dips where the soft ground below had settled or cracks from the harsh Southern sun. I’d hardly driven since moving to New York, and I couldn’t say I’d missed it at all. The subway was much more convenient.
As soon as I stepped through the front door, Ollie’s yapping barks rang in my ears. He’d found his way home again. I winced, shushing him, but he didn’t listen. He never listened. At this point, I wasn’t even convinced he could listen. Instead, he kept barking and barking, each one deepening that well of disappointment that had opened up as soon as I realized he was here.
“I hear you, okay? I get it. You’re here. What do you want?”
He yapped again, then jumped back a couple of times before running around me in a circle, yipping at my ankles.
“I swear, if you try to eat my shoes while I’m wearing them...” I grumbled. Ollie dropped down to his belly, looking up at me with his chin on the floor.
“I don’t know what you want, okay?” I sighed. “I don’t ... get dogs. I don’t know how I’m expected to read your mind. How much is even going on up there?”
For once, Ollie didn’t respond. Somehow, that made me feel worse. It wasn’t his fault that we were stuck together any more than it was mine.
“Look, I know I’m no good at this, and I’m not going to pretend that that’s going to change, but I am going to find a good home for you. I’ll find someone who actually wants you and can take care of you properly; I promise. We don’t have to like each other, but I’d appreciate if we could just peacefully coexist until I go back to New York. Do you think you could do that for me?”
I met his gaze, and there was nothing there. I might as well have been talking to a brick. He sensed that I was finished, though, and jumped up to his feet, spinning in place before dashing off toward the kitchen. He barked once, then sat down next to his empty food bowl.
Huh... Maybe there was something going on upstairs after all. I measured out a scoop of his kibble, mildly impressed that he could actually tell me what he wanted in his own way.
As soon as I put the food in his bowl, Ollie attacked it, slobbering and pushing food out onto the floor, trying to inhale as much as possible as quickly as possible.
“Okay, not a lot going on up there,” I muttered, shaking my head. All he ever seemed to do was make noise, make messes, and make trouble.
The doorbell’s chime set him off barking again, his food completely forgotten in his mad dash to the door.
“Ollie, get back,” I said, shoving past him.
Alicia Elliot was right on time for our meeting, flashing a big, too-white smile, sporting a matching skirt suit that wasn’t quite in style, but was at least from this century. Ollie jumped up to greet her, sniffing at her handbag.
“Careful with him,” I warned. “He can’t be trusted.”
“Oh, he’s all right.” Alicia laughed. “He just wants to say hello to Jeanette.”
“Jeanette?” I asked, but Alicia wasn’t the one who answered. A tiny squeak of a bark came from inside her purse, and then a small, cinnamon-colored head popped out from between the purse straps.
“They’ll keep each other entertained while we get down to business,” Alicia said, fishing her miniature dog out of her purse. I did my best to keep my opinions to myself, but I couldn’t be sure that my face cooperated. Luckily, Alicia was too preoccupied with setting Jeanette on the shaggy pink carpet to see any kind of horrified reaction that might’ve slipped through.
“I’m soooo glad you reached out to me,” she said once she straightened back up. “This place is a gem, and I’m so grateful I get to be the one to sell it.”
“Let’s hope so,” I said, keeping one eye on the dogs as they yapped and wrestled with each other. It looked violent to me, but Alicia wasn’t at all concerned.
“I’d already talked to your aunt about some of this, but I think to maximize our chances of selling for top dollar, there are a few minor changes you could do. Just some updating to make things more palatable to a modern buyer. New appliances, rip out the carpet, tear down that wallpaper... You want to create a space that buyers can picture themselves in, and Eliza had some real specific tastes,” she said with a chuckle.
It was nothing I hadn’t thought myself, and I knew Alicia was just doing her job, but hearing her trash Eliza’s style made me oddly defensive. And those changes didn’t exactly sound minor.
“I’m not sure how much renovating I’ll really do,” I told her. “I’d like to get this done as quickly as possible so I can get back to my life in New York. Would you be able to help me sell the shop as well?”
Alicia’s eyebrows shot up, eyes sharp like a robin spotting a big, fat, juicy worm. “Of course! I do commercial stuff all the time. I have the paperwork here for the house, but I can get started on the shop too. That business has always done well, so I’m sure we won’t have any problems selling it fast.”
“Really? I didn’t think there’d be many buyers out here.”
She gave me a knowing smile and flipped her hair off her shoulder. “It’s all about having the right contacts. And lucky for you, I do.” She chuckled, all too impressed with herself.
I hadn’t seen enough to be impressed yet, but if she could sell these places like she said, she’d be worth every bit of her commission. “I’m glad to have you on the job,” I said, signing and handing the papers back. She left me hanging while she tried to convince her little purse dog to hop back in. I didn’t even want to think about the dirt and fur that must have collected in the bottom of Alicia’s bag. “Did Eliza ever say why she was planning to sell?”
Alicia finally stuffed Jeanette back in her two-tone purse, shrugging as she pushed the handles up her shoulder. “She never said exactly. Most of my clients Eliza’s age are looking to downgrade so they have a little less house to take care of.”
“Makes sense,” I said, following her to the door. I didn’t buy it, though. Aunt Eliza had always lived in this house alone—she wasn’t an empty nester or a widow. The house hadn’t outgrown her, and from what everyone else had told me about her energy levels, it sure didn’t seem like she’d run out of steam with the maintenance side of things.
So why did she want to sell?
That was something I’d have to figure out another time, if I ever did.
At least Ollie had been more or less well-behaved while Alicia was visiting. Maybe our little heart-to-heart talk had gotten through to him. Or maybe he just wanted me to let my guard down so he could chew through some more of my favorite belongings. I wasn’t going to take any chances.
“Come on, mutt,” I called, grabbing one of his leashes from the hook by the door. Ollie barked once, then ran over, jumping up on my leg, wiggling too much for me to hook it to his collar. “You have to let me... Dang it, Ollie.” Finally, I got the leash hooked onto his collar, and then as soon as I opened the door, he was off in a flash, trying to rip my arm out of its socket.
Thankfully, he didn’t weigh enough to really pull me, but I did hurry after him before he could try too hard. At the shop, I barely opened the door before he sprinted over to Darla who was closing up for the day. She glanced down at him, then back over her shoulder at me, but said nothing.
“I thought you were going to keep an eye on him for me today,” I said, trying to keep the irritation out of my voice as I walked around the back of the counter. “I left him in your care, and he nearly got run over!”
Darla huffed, spinning around to level a hard look at me. “You left the shop in my care too. And a dozen dogs for me to handle. I had plenty going on without being your babysitter,” she said, voice tight with anger. “You need to face the facts: Ollie is yours now, and he’s not going to change who he is just because some city girl comes and stamps her foot and demands it. He’s always going to escape when he wants to, and he’s always going to come home. So why don’t you just skip the trouble and take him home now?” The cold contempt in her tone was unexpected, and for a moment, I was convinced that she wanted to smack me.
If she did, she managed to restrain herself. I wanted to defend myself, but I could tell this wasn’t the time to risk pressing her buttons. “Come on, Ollie,” I muttered, tugging on the leash, heading back to Eliza’s office without another word to Darla.
“I guess you’re going to keep me company while I try to make sense of all this,” I told him once we were confined in the cluttered space. Ollie nosed around, sniffing for anything interesting before settling down on an old, worn pillow under Eliza’s desk.
There was plenty in Eliza’s paperwork to keep me occupied for days, weeks even, but I only needed a couple of hours to start piecing together a curious trend. Her checkbook suggested she’d been moving money around, out of business accounts, into personal ones, writing big checks... Then there were the talks with the real estate agent to sell her house... And her will, had she changed that recently too?
It was an awful lot of suspicious behavior for a woman who’d died of ‘natural causes.’ And it gave me plenty to chew on while I considered what to do next.
“You ready to go home, Ollie?” I asked, standing with a big stretch. I had a date with a coroner’s report and a glass of chardonnay.
Ollie stood and stretched too, dragging his leash behind him all the way to the front door. I took the time to lock everything up, then we went back to the house. I still got a punch to the gut when I walked into her space and realized it wasn’t Eliza’s anymore. I wasn’t sure I’d ever get used to that feeling.
While I poured myself a glass of wine, Ollie moseyed over to his empty food bowl, scrounging around for any scraps he’d missed earlier and licking the empty bowl. Anyone could see there was nothing left in the bowl. The dog was weird.
I took my drink and the report Serena had given me over to an armchair that was upholstered with eggplant purple corduroy. Yes, Eliza’s taste had been very specific, as Alicia had put it, but that was part of what made her so great.
It didn’t take me long to find a big problem with the report I’d gotten from Serena: there was no toxicology report. In all my years of reporting true crime, one thing that almost always held true was that the tox screen could be a treasure trove of secrets. How could the coroner come to any kind of accurate conclusion without the entire picture? I knew I couldn’t.
So much for peace of mind, I thought bitterly. I wasn’t going to be able to make any kind of determination about whether Eliza’s death was suspicious or not until I got my hands on that report.
Chapter 6
I spent all night tossing and turning, going over all the information I’d discovered. Despite the lack of sleep, I got up bright and early with a new plan. I didn’t want to be the one dragged into an investigation that would keep me in Shongoloo, but that didn’t mean there shouldn’t be an investigation; it was just better if that was left to the authorities. Getting them to agree with me would be the tricky part, but I could be pretty persuasive when I wanted to be.
Ollie waited outside my bedroom door, his nose pressing through as soon as I cracked it. Had he been staring at the door all night waiting for it to open?
“What do you want, mutt? Hungry?” He ran around me in circles all the way to the kitchen. It was a wonder I didn’t trip on him. I put a scoop of food in his bowl before starting the coffee, just so I could move around freely.
He slobbered and pushed his food all over, pawing at the bowl to get every last morsel out. I watched the whole thing while sipping my drink. At least I didn’t have to pick up all the food he knocked out onto the floor. He was a decent vacuum cleaner when it came to that kind of thing.
“What am I going to do with you?” I asked. After Darla’s outburst last night, I didn’t want to press my luck by asking her to dog sit again. And with everyone’s accounts of what an escape artist he was, I couldn’t leave him unsupervised to cause more trouble or run out into traffic again.
“I guess you’re just going to have to come with me.” I sighed, shaking my head. What was Eliza thinking when she’d left all this to me? When she’d left him to me?
Even though I was driving a rental, I covered the backseat with towels before bringing Ollie out. At least that way if he had an accident, I could deal with it easily. “Go on,” I said, opening the back door of the sedan for him. “Jump in.”
Ollie hopped in and immediately wriggled through the gap between the front seats, taking up the passenger side like he belonged there. “Oh, no, you don’t,” I muttered, putting him back in his place. “Stay,” I said firmly, pointing at the back seat. His whole back end wiggled, tongue hanging out as he panted his hot, stinky breath on me.
“I mean it,” I added, pointing again. “Stay.”
He was back in the passenger seat before I could get behind the wheel. It was a losing battle, but I put him in the back once more, then blocked the gap with my elbow stuck out, staying in that position for the entire drive to the sheriff’s office thirty minutes away.
I was used to big precincts full of activity in the city, but the sheriff’s office out here was much calmer. The lobby was quiet enough to hear the clock on the wall ticking by the seconds. It was so far from what I was used to that a prickle of uneasiness traveled up my spine.
I looked down at Ollie—I couldn’t trust him alone in the car—and then made my way to the front desk, my heels on the tile taking over as the loudest noise in the room. There was a row of cheap plastic chairs in front of the desk, but not a single person waited in any of them, so I didn’t think it all that necessary to take a number from the dispenser.
There was no one on the other side of the desk either, so I tapped the little doorbell buzzer under the ‘press for help’ sign while Ollie sniffed around the chairs and fake potted plants. In a couple of minutes, a heavy door behind the desk opened, and a man in a tan sheriff’s uniform stepped out. He was on the shorter side—at least while I was in heels—with a shiny bald head and a mustache that was just starting to show signs of silver. Probably old enough to be my father, with the paunch to match. The gold name tag under his deputy badge said, ‘S. Boudreaux’, leaving no doubt that I wasn’t in Kansas anymore. That was a Louisiana name if I’d ever seen one.
He seemed irritated that he’d been called to do his job, eyeing me suspiciously. “Can I help you, ma’am?”
I bristled, biting down my agitated response. “Is there someone I could speak to about a possible crime?” I asked, voice tight.
“A possible crime?” he retorted, one side of his mouth turning up in a grin. “Well, either there is or there ain’t—” He thought I was yanking his chain. Wonderful.
“A woman is dead; isn’t that enough to look into it?” I challenged, my patience gone.
He straightened up, squinting at me. “Who’s dead?”
I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose. “My aunt. Eliza Dumond—”
Recognition took over his expression, and he smiled. “You’re Eliza’s niece? The one from New York, right? She got us a subscription to your magazine. I’m a big fan of your work; though you’re younger than I expected...”
“You … know my work?” I asked, struggling to catch up. Maybe this would be easier than I thought. Thanks, Eliza.
“It’s good stuff,” he said. “That five-part series you did on the Millenova Murders was incredible. I dunno how you pieced that all together.”
I shrugged, letting the flattery roll off me. “Lots of practice,” I said. “I was hoping I’d be able to talk to someone about my aunt’s death.”
Deputy Boudreaux’s friendly expression fell flat, his posture shifting with one hand on his hip, too close to his holster for comfort. There was no overt threat, but I knew the cop power stance when I saw it. “Oh?”
“I have some concerns... My practice at work again,” I said, trying to lighten the mood with a half-hearted laugh. He didn’t crack, so I cleared my throat and pushed on. “I’ve found a few things that make the circumstances suspicious. Has there been any consideration toward opening an investigation? I’d be happy to share what I’ve uncovered.”
Deputy Boudreaux finally let a hint of a smile through before chuckling at me. “No, ma’am, there hasn’t. I’m sure you’re upset about your aunt, but when someone her age passes, there’s not much of a mystery to uncover. We don’t get ‘em like they do in New York,” he added, eyes glinting with amusement. He gave me the kind of look my mother had when I was seven and outlining my multi-pronged plan to prove, definitively, that the tooth fairy didn’t exist. Patronizing.
“That’s what I thought at first too,” I said. I could sway him to my side. I’d butted heads with people more stubborn than him—Eliza being one of them. “But a number of people have shared their concerns with me, and there’s a whole list of people who’d have motive. Eliza had quite a few lovers, and I think it’s possible one of them decided he didn’t like sharing anymore.”
The deputy’s shoulders relaxed, and he leaned forward, lowering his voice to let me down easy. “I know this is your job, and you’re used to there being some puzzle to figure out, but that’s not what’s happening here. The coroner says the cause of death is natural. Unless she changes her tune, we’ve got no reason to believe otherwise.”
