“So what about Mr. Poupée and Mrs. Scott? Did you get up the nerve to ask if they had been rolling around together behind the copy machine?”
“Samantha.” I rolled my eyes, hypocrite that I was because the thought had crossed my mind once or twice. “I did talk to him about it, though in a much more tactful way. All very innocent. He said that after her husband died, he sometimes went over to help out with stuff.”
Sam took a sip of tea and then looked up. “You believe him?”
I shrugged. “Hard to tell. I usually believe everyone, but I’ve been telling myself all day no one is going to jump up and admit to killing her. They’ll all have their stories ready. I’m going to have to sort through all the rubbish. Which brings me to this.” I turned to better face my sister. “I know we need to be out there at work, trying to bring in more business but I’ve got to figure this thing out and not just because of the shovel. I’m sure the police will realize before long I didn’t kill her, but…”
“But what?”
“I’m ashamed to admit this and I’ll deny it if you ever tell anyone, but I’m nosy. I never realized it before, but I am. I want to find out who killed her for the sheer pleasure of finding out. I’m a horrible person.”
Sam put her cup down. “No, you’re not. You’re human. And you do have a vested interest. You found Mrs. Scott and the police do consider you a suspect.” My sister leaned back and smiled.
“Why are you smiling?”
“Because you may have not realized how nosy you are but the rest of us figured it out a long time ago.”
I put a pout on my face. “Well, it’s not all about being nosy. I don’t think prison orange is my color, and I’m pretty certain the warden doesn’t hand out paper toilet seat covers. And that toilet is just
there
! Right out in front of everyone. Another thing,” I said indignantly, “I don’t like sharing a room.”
Sam gave me a small smile. “I don’t think you have to worry about prison. The only thing I ask is you go with me to the meeting with Mr. Brandon. If we can get his business, it’ll be a big help. I’m working on a few other leads I think might pan out, so don’t worry. Things are going to pick up. Oh, and there is one other thing,” she said as she took another cookie. “Grandpa. We need to go see him before Christmas.”
“Isn’t he going to spend Christmas day with us?”
“Nope. He loves his new home at Mills Pond and that’s where he wants to stay. Now,” Sam took my hand, “what happened with Peter?”
I turned my Honda right at the corner and expertly wound my way through quiet streets where families still slept. The mannequin from hell had visited again and I needed to get out of my house. Only one person I knew would be up at this early hour. And I do mean early. A light snow once again sprinkled my windshield. I turned on the wipers and watched them scatter small balls of compacted flakes into the dark. All those snowflakes and not one alike. How could they possibly know?
In front of the high school I turned right and continued past the town green and the Episcopal Church, driving slowly as my tires hugged the slick road. Even the hazards of driving in the snow and the cold, gray winters didn’t make me want to live somewhere else. I wore my roots like a geographic medal of honor. I had always been proud of being from a state with deep roots in the country’s beginnings and eternally grateful I’d been raised in a small town where not much ever changed. Except for now. My peace of mind had been shattered and with the murder of Mrs. Scott, my safe harbor had been placed jeopardy and I had to fix it.
My parents named me Allessandra after my mother’s grandmother, a strong woman who came to this country with her husband and six children to find a better life. That very Italian name didn’t seem to go well with my father’s bland English-Welsh last name of Harris and pretty soon everyone started calling me Alex. But deep down I was an Allessandra. I spent most of my growing up with the Italian side of my family, which included my grandmother, aunts, uncles, and cousins. We celebrated the holidays with Italian traditions, and while the other kids at school ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, I had a hard roll layered with salami and provolone cheese. So even though my bloodline only registered a quarter Italian, I leaned to that side of the family. If I had a crisis in my life, I went running to an Italian.
I pulled my car in front of a tidy house nestled among other tidy houses. A smile spread across my face as I saw lights coming from several living rooms up and down the street. I locked the car and headed for the front door—and safety.
“Sit down, honey.” Meme patted my hand and led me to the floral patterned sofa. “I got some pepper biscuits and I’ll make you some tea. I knew you’d show up.”
My grandmother, Giannina Nutile on her birth certificate but Meme Redmond to everyone, was already wide awake and fully dressed, and it wasn’t even five o’clock. She gently kissed the top of my head and then shuffled into the kitchen in a pair of black low heels that barely encased her fat feet, and filled a saucepan with water. A tiny veil hat sat on top of her head held by several bobby pins. “You never know when you might want to stop in at church and light a candle for someone,” she always told me about the ever-present hat. I couldn’t remember a time when my grandmother didn’t have one resting on her rose-tinted white hair and the black heels on her feet.
“Your mother told me what happened,” Meme said, as she came back from the kitchen. “I wanted to call, but I knew you’d come when you were ready. Geesh, I’m sorry you had to find a body like that. It must have been awful, and that poor woman.” Meme made the sign of the cross with her right hand and put a small cracked plate piled high with pepper biscuits and several chunks of salami on the coffee table with her left.
“Worse than I told Mom, but you know how she worries.” I shrugged and broke off a piece of the hard bread.
“Yeah, Mabel’s a real worrywart. Even as a kid. Drove me nuts.”
I leaned back into the comfortable sofa and hugged a small pillow close to my chest. “I really didn’t want to get into it with her anyway. I’m trying to forget it, but I can’t. I can’t sleep. I hear noises all night and this crazy mannequin keeps chasing me every time I manage to fall asleep even a few minutes. And the agency is slow so I’m worrying about that.” I pushed my fingers through my hair feeling resistance from all the hair mud and spray I use to keep it puffed up. “I knew you’d be up, cooking or playing solitaire.”
Meme placed a large mug of hot water and a teabag next to my plate and patted my hand. “It’ll take time. You’ll probably never forget it, but in a while, it won’t hurt so much. Just gotta give it time, honey.” Meme settled herself into an old armchair beside the sofa. “And don’t you worry about the business. That’s just the regular cycle of things. Up and down, up and down.” She gave me a reassuring nod. “So you’re gonna help the police find the killer.”
I stopped with a piece of salami almost to my mouth and gave my psychic grandmother an open-mouth stare. “How did you know—Samantha!” I put the salami on the plate and wiped my hands on a paper napkin. “Meme, you can’t let Mom and Dad know what I’m doing.”
“I won’t say a word, but you gotta help me with something. I need a ride to the bingo hall tonight.”
“Sure. But you always walk. Are you okay?” I asked, as alarm inched its way up my spine. I couldn’t fathom not having my grandmother in my life.
“Fine, fine.” Meme brushed off my worry with a wave of her hand. “But I gotta go to the bingo in Bridgeport. They won’t let me play at Saint Michael’s for a while.”
“Aha.” I rolled my eyes and smiled.
“Okay, so I cheated a little. It’s been two months since I won so I may have glued a winning number or two on my card. But they’ll let me back in a few weeks. I put a lot of money in their basket every Sunday.” Meme shook a gnarled index finger at me and went back into the kitchen for more salami. “Maybe you can take me to do my collections. Theresa sprained her ankle and can’t drive this week. It’s always something.”
I wrapped my hands around the tea mug letting the scent of orange and cinnamon fill my senses. “Ain’t that the truth.”
“Good morning,” I called into the dark hall clutching my tea. It unnerved me to be at Poupée Mannequins this early but after I dropped Meme off at Theresa’s house where they would happily play pinochle for hours—maybe all day—I went straight to the factory. Down the hall the caroling mannequin display still stood in the lobby. What a creepy business to be in. I waited for a reply as fear began to seep into every pore. Once again the silence frightened me more than of any noise I might hear.
“Hello?” I picked up a paper punch from the desk and walked back to the doorway.
A young man with sandy-colored hair and wire-rimmed glasses came down the darkened hall. “Well, good morning to you. You must be Alex.”
“Yes, I am. How did you know?” I relaxed a bit and lowered the paper punch.
“It’s a small company and there’s just been a murder. A sixth sense starts to kick in. Besides, I played racquetball with Andy Tuesday night. He told me who you are,” the young man said with an impish grin.
“Can I get you a cup of tea or coffee?” I offered, hoping he didn’t want the coffee. I had never had a cup of the stuff in my life and the few times I tried to make it didn’t turn out so well.
“Tea, no. Coffee, yes. Come to my office. We keep our own pot and special roast down there. Can’t stand the weak stuff most of the people around here drink.”
I stepped back into the office and dropped the paper punch on the desk. After all, if he planned to kill me, would he take me to
his
office? I followed him to an office that turned out to be a large room with several drawing tables in the center. Around the perimeter stood large file cabinets with wide flat drawers for keeping drawings, a large shelf with all kinds of drawing supplies, and a table with a coffee maker—state of the art, of course—and a small refrigerator from which the man took a small bag. He pulled out a coffee grinder from a shelf under the table.
“Boy, you really are serious about what you drink. I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage. I don’t know your name.”
He smiled and extended his hand. “Sorry. Mitch Monahan, at your service.”
“Nice to meet you, Mitch Monahan.”
He shoveled eight large spoonfuls of freshly ground coffee into the basket of the coffeemaker and adeptly set the thing in motion. I admit I didn’t know coffee, but it seemed that eight spoonfuls might be a bit of overkill.
“I spent a summer in Europe right after university. Now, they really know how to drink coffee. Nice and strong. Have a seat.” He indicated a stool next to one of the drawing tables.
“What exactly do you do in here?”
“We—there’s another guy—design mannequins. Not exactly what I had in mind in school but I enjoy it. It’s a good company to work for. And a little more than people think. Here, have a look.”
He pushed a sheet of paper toward me. “Most people think of mannequins as the old fashioned kind you see in all the stores. But the newer ones are more sculptured.” I looked at the drawing. “They don’t have actual hair or eyes. Everything is more like you would think of a statue. Of course we have to take into account the mannequins need to be dressed so we have to make sure the design incorporates ease of motion, flexibility, etc.” Mitch said. “Take a look at this one, really futuristic.”
In addition to being more sculptured, this one didn’t have arms.
“Then we have custom made ones with inflatable bellies for maternity shops or child-sized ones. Right now Poupée is looking to expand the business to include test dummies.”
“Test dummies?”
“Ones that can be used to test how well another product works like, say, a seatbelt. It’s just in the development stages, but we’re looking into the feasibility of producing something like that here. It might be too much of an investment,” he shrugged, “but it’s interesting. Ron, he’s the head designer—actually he’s a mechanical engineer—is working on a special design for the museum exhibit we’re hoping to get.”
“What about eyes? I remember a flyer for eyes,” I asked.
“That’s part of our unique line with interchangeable eyes and hair. The eyes are the contribution of Richard Sheridan. His claim to fame. It appeals to a certain market that can’t afford to change their mannequins frequently but like to have a different look.”
“How do you change the eyes?”
“They’re elongated. You pinch the ends and place them in the socket. Then when you want to change them, you just pinch at the raised eyeball part and they come right out. The actual color part is a soft resin-like substance that we can add color to.”
It sounded creepy like everything else around here and I wanted to get off the subject of interchangeable eyeballs. “I suppose the police have spoken to you?”
“Yes, they have. Mr. Poupée said you might be asking some questions. He wants us to cooperate. Seems to think maybe you can find out something the police can’t. Is this true? Are you some kind of super sleuth?”
I felt my face redden and waved my hand. “Oh no, nothing like that. He just thought it might be easier to talk with someone less intimidating than the police and maybe people would open up to me.”
He still smiled. I knew it sounded just as ridiculous to him as it did to me. What the hell was I thinking? I had no idea how to interrogate someone. Somehow, “your shorthand is excellent. Kill anybody lately?” didn’t get asked during my interviews with prospective clients for the agency.
“Actually, I think he’s just upset and needs someone here to hold his hand and assume responsibility like Mrs. Scott did. I happened to be in the right place at the right… My word, what am I saying! That sounded so insensitive. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. This has gotten to everyone. So?”
“So?”
“Well, yeah, do you have any questions? That’s why you’re here.”
I shrugged and started with the most obvious question and hoped a few others would pop into my head as I went along. “Okay. What time did you leave Tuesday night?”