“Henrietta didn’t love him, but she wouldn’t let him go. It wasn’t fair. No one loved Clay like I did, and now he’s gone.” She erupted in a gusher of tears.
“I’m sorry,” Josie said. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
That was exactly what Josie had wanted. She still couldn’t tell if Gemma Lynn was a good actress or a grieving lover.
“I can’t go to the funeral,” Gemma Lynn wailed. She grabbed a fistful of tissues and dabbed at her tear-reddened eyes. “His wife had the nerve to call me.”
And you had the nerve to sleep with her husband, Josie thought.
“Henrietta said she’ll have me escorted out if I show up at Dell-Merriam tonight.”
“That’s the funeral home on Manchester?” Josie asked.
“Yes.” More crying; then her voice was drowned in tears. “The funeral mass is at St. Christopher’s tomorrow. I can’t even tell my Clay good-bye.”
“Oh, Gemma, that’s so sad,” Josie said. “Do you think his wife killed him?”
Gemma’s eyes were hard, flat granite gravestones. “I hate that bitch, but she didn’t kill Clay. Tillie did. I heard her say so. The whole restaurant heard her. She wanted him gone for good and now he is. I’m going to say that at her trial, too.”
“You’re testifying against Tillie?” Josie asked.
“The prosecuting attorney said the jury will love me,” Gemma said. “Henrietta can’t stop me, either.” Gemma spoke like a woman with a mission. “I’m going to tell everyone that Clay loved me. It will be part of the court record. Then I’m going to get Tillie. I owe my Clay Baby.”
Clay Baby? The dead tomcat didn’t deserve that indignity, Josie thought.
“When I finish testifying, they’re going to lock up that old lady and throw away the key. She doesn’t have many years left. She’ll die in jail. She deserves it. She killed the only man I ever loved.”
Gemma put her head on the counter, as if her grief were too heavy to bear. Great gasping sobs were torn from her chest. Josie looked around helplessly for Alyce. She wanted to escape Gemma’s raw grief—or histrionics. Fortunately, Alyce glided toward them holding a white teapot.
“Pretty teapot,” Josie said.
“It’s a coffeepot,” Alyce said. “Rose Point pattern by Pope Gosser. See the raised white roses around the rim?”
Gemma sat up and mopped her eyes, her sorrow soothed by the prospect of a sale. “If you like flowered coffeepots, I have a Royal Worcester on the same shelf. It’s the white pot with the blue roses.”
“I saw that,” Alyce said. “It’s nice, but this one matches my china pattern.”
Alyce had so many sets of china, Josie couldn’t keep track of them. Alyce’s table settings were thoughtful compositions, from the flowers to the forks. Josie turned away from the two women to poke through a bin of framed prints near the counter so she could watch them in a splotched mirror.
“Guess you want the less expensive coffeepot,” Gemma said.
Nice move, Gemma, Josie thought. You’ve insulted a paying customer. People aren’t trampling one another to buy your junktique.
“I’m looking for the gravy boat in the same pattern,” Alyce said. “Do you have it, by any chance?”
“I might,” Gemma said. “I still have to unpack another crate of china. That coffeepot will be ten dollars.”
“I have a twenty,” Alyce said.
Gemma opened her cash register. “I don’t have change,” she said. “And I don’t take credit cards.”
“Wait a minute.” Alyce began counting out ones. “That’s four dollars. And here’s a five.”
Josie threw a dollar on top of the pile. “That should do it.”
“Thanks,” Alyce said.
Gemma wrapped up the coffeepot, while Josie thumbed through the framed art. One painting looked like it had been rescued from the rubbish. Another was covered with diseased globs of orange and yellow oil. Josie thought it might be a paint-by-numbers autumn woods. Most of the artwork were faded prints of masterpieces.
One gold frame looked less shabby than the others. Josie pulled a cross-stitch sampler out of the bin. The white linen had aged to a gentle brown. The thread colors had faded to warm gold, soft blues, and pale pinks. The impossibly tiny stitches spelled out the motto FRIENDSHIP, LOVE & TRUTH surrounded by roses. Thornless roses.
“This is lovely,” Josie said.
Gemma was wrapping Alyce’s coffeepot in white paper. “That’s fifty bucks,” she said.
Josie put it back in the bin. She appreciated all three of those values, but she didn’t have the money.
“I can buy it for you,” Alyce said, “if Gemma will take a check.”
“Thanks, Alyce, but I’ll come back when I get paid.”
“You sure you want to wait? It won’t be here forever,” Gemma said.
The thick layer of dust on the frame said that wasn’t true.
“Here’s my name and phone number if you decide to lower the price.” Josie scribbled the information on a piece of notepaper.
“I won’t change,” Gemma Lynn said. “My prices are the result of careful research.”
“Josie, I need to get home,” Alyce said. “We’d better go.” She practically dragged Josie out the door to her Escalade.
When they were away from the store Josie asked, “What’s wrong?”
“Carefully researched prices, my eye,” Alyce said. “That Rose Point coffeepot retails for more than a hundred dollars. Gemma gave it away. She marked that Royal Worcester coffeepot fifty bucks. I could buy it online for less than thirty.”
“She was trying to sell a free florist’s vase for ten dollars,” Josie said. “I have a dozen of those stashed under my sink.”
“Everyone does,” Alyce said.
“No wonder Gemma’s shop is failing. She hasn’t a clue what she’s selling,” Josie said.
“It’s one o’clock, Josie. We’ve had a good day’s shopping, but now I need to go home.”
“I’ll swing by my house, then pick up Amelia,” Josie said. “Thanks for coming with me.”
“Sorry the visit was such a waste for you,” Alyce said. She patted her prize coffeepot.
“It wasn’t,” Josie said. “I got something valuable from Gemma.”
“What’s that?”
“Why would Henrietta hang on to a husband she didn’t want or love? If I can find the answer, I can solve Clay’s murder.”
Chapter 19
Something was wrong with Jane. Josie knew it. She remembered how her mother had behaved in the grip of her shopping addiction: angry, evasive, secretive. The signs had been there, but Josie hadn’t recognized them. She hadn’t noticed that Jane was neglecting her home. Her house-proud mother hadn’t replaced a torn lampshade. Her living room was draped in cobwebs and the end tables were dull with dust.
As her addiction consumed her, Jane had quit seeing her friends. She’d holed up in front of her television, mindlessly ordering more things she didn’t need. One day Josie had opened Jane’s linen closet and been buried in an avalanche of boxes. Steak knives, Snuggies, and other “as seen on TV” temptations poured out. Jane had bought them all and needed none of them.
Josie had to know if her mother’s problem had returned. I can’t help Tillie if I’m worried about my mother, she told herself. She was manufacturing an excuse to invade her mother’s privacy—a lame excuse, as Amelia would say.
Jane had an emergency appointment with her hairdresser at one o’clock to repair her fractured hairdo. It was a good sign that Jane still cared about her appearance. Josie had an hour before she had to pick up Amelia. Enough time to search Jane’s flat.
I’m doing this to help my mother, she told herself. She repeated that sentence out loud. She still wasn’t convinced, but she was going to do it anyway.
She parked her car in front of the Phelan Street flat, careful that the Honda’s bumper did not hang over into Mrs. Mueller’s territory. Maplewoodians did not own the parking spaces in front of their houses, but Mrs. Mueller lived by her own rules. She chased off cars that tried to park at her curb. Heaven help anyone whose tires touched her lawn.
Last winter, Jane had had a falling out with their prickly next-door neighbor. The two women had made up. Sort of. Now their friendship limped along. Josie was proud of her mother for standing up to the bossy old snoop. She thought Jane had been under Mrs. M’s thumb for too long.
Josie locked her car and hurried up the front walk. She was relieved to find the porch empty. When her mother’s addiction was at its worst, towers of boxes had turned their porch into a cardboard maze.
She climbed the front stairs to her mother’s flat and knocked loudly. “Mom!” she called. “Are you home?”
“Woof!”
Stuart Little answered through the door. She could hear his nails scrabbling on the kitchen floor as he ran to the front room.
Josie knocked again, just to be sure. Then she unlocked the door. The lively shih tzu was in the living room, wiggling and wagging in a frenzy of delight. She took time to scratch his ears. He leaned against her, asking for more scratches.
“Sorry, little guy,” she said. “I have to work.”
She started in the most obvious spot—the closets. Josie slid open her mother’s bedroom closet and was greeted with a cloud of Estée Lauder and the comforting sight of her mother’s clothes in plastic. Even her shoes were in plastic boxes. The linen closet was piled with neatly stacked towels and freshly laundered sheets. First test passed. Josie felt better.
The kitchen was so clean it gleamed. Then she noticed Jane’s deep blue oven mitts hung on a hook by the stove. They were burnt and losing their protective covering. Troubling. Her mother was careful about her kitchen.
Jane’s fridge usually overflowed with food. Now it was almost bare. Josie saw half a carton of eggs, a small chunk of margarine, two slices of wheat bread, and an open can of dog food. That was it.
Now Josie was worried. Jane’s fridge should be bursting with meat, cheese, and produce.
The Formica kitchen counter shone.
CSI
wouldn’t find a fingerprint on the four cobalt blue canisters. Josie lifted the lid on the sugar canister and saw less than a cup of white sugar. The largest canister held a dusting of flour. The third had a handful of egg noodles. Barely a quarter cup of brown sugar was in the fourth.
Jane wasn’t restocking her staples.
Stuart yapped, dropped a yellow squeaky toy at Josie’s feet, and wagged his tail. She tossed it into the living room. The shih tzu trotted after it. Josie tried to follow and nearly tripped over the throw rug Jane used to protect the carpeting at the kitchen threshold. She lifted the rug. It had lost its rubber backing. More bad news.
Like many older women, Jane feared falls. So why did she have a dangerously worn rug?
Oh, Mom, Josie thought. Is it worth breaking your hip to save a little wear on your wall-to-wall carpet? She knew the answer: Jane’s generation protected their precious carpet at all costs.
Jane’s pale green living-room was model-home neat. The
TV Guide
was set precisely on the polished end table, with the clicker laid on top. She could see the vacuum cleaner tracks on that precious carpet.
Josie checked her watch. Forty minutes before she had to get Amelia. She patted Stuart good-bye, closed and locked Jane’s door, and ran down the front stairs.
Josie picked her mail out of the box by her door; then she saw her mother’s mailbox was stuffed with envelopes. She could see an electric bill, a phone bill, and two letters from charities: Our Lady of the Sheets and the Sisters of Divine Poverty.
Josie had never heard of either, but she wasn’t devout like her mother. She was almost inside her flat when one of the names hit her: Our Lady of the Sheets? What kind of religious group was that? Was it a charity? An order of sisters?
Josie went back out and filched the two religious letters from her mother’s mailbox. She checked their return addresses. Both were post office boxes in Kansas City. She put on the kettle and found her sharpest knife. When the water was boiling, Josie held the letter from Our Lady of the Sheets over the steam, careful not to burn her fingertips. The flap started puckering and she used the knife to slowly ease the envelope open.
Damn! She’d ripped the flap. That didn’t happen in the movies. Now there was no way Josie could hide that she’d steamed open her mother’s mail. She tore open the letter.
Our Lady of the Sheets used thick, expensive stationary. The message was typed over a color picture of the Virgin Mary listening to an angelic choir, her blue eyes aimed toward her son in heaven.
“Thank you for your monthly donation of $250 to Our Lady of the Sheets,” the letter began. “Without your generosity, we could not continue to provide sheet music to poor Catholic churches in Africa.
“Thanks to you, native people are able to lift their voices in praise to Our Savior and His Mother. God will continue to bestow his riches on those who have shown generosity to the least of our brothers and sisters.
“Enclosed please find the envelope for next month’s donation.”
Sheet music for poor Africans? Could they even read music? That didn’t sound right. And which part of Africa?
Josie didn’t bother steaming open the second letter from the Sisters of Divine Poverty. She ripped the envelope. These good sisters did not waste money on four-color stationary. Their simple black letterhead showed a cross lassoed by a rosary. The sisters were equally grateful for Mrs. Jane Marcus’s donation of $250 a month. They also thoughtfully included next month’s donation envelope.
Jane was sending five hundred dollars a month to charities, when she lived on a small bank pension and Social Security? No wonder she was scrounging for spare change in the sofa cushions.
It is Jane’s money, Josie told herself. If Mom wants to spend it on church charities, that’s her business.
But were they bogus charities? Our Lady of the Sheets sounded like a joke. Josie carried the letters into her home. As she fired up her computer, she heard her cell phone ring. Josie ran back to the living room and searched in her purse for her phone. It was Ted.