Skeletons in the Closet (13 page)

* * * *

I was on my fourth loop around the block directly behind my house when my mother-in-law’s car finally left my driveway. Call me craven, but a girl can only handle so much in one day, and holidays were for resting, right?

The sun had turned the western horizon a brilliant shade of purple by the time I let myself into the house. Neil lay sprawled on the floor, legs crossed at the ankle, and head pillowed on his forearms. The football game was on, but his eyes were closed.
   “Did I miss everybody?” I asked.

“Mom saw you skulking in the Wilson’s gardenia bush, and I told her she should go before you tallied up another stalking charge. Everyone else was gone by the time I got home.”

“Neil about before—”

“Let’s stick a pin in that bug until later. I may have left you to walk home, but at least I waited to eat with you.”

“You didn’t really leave me, I saw you driving on the thru streets. One of the parade floats started cursing at you to get out of the way. I thought we were going to see a reenactment of the final scene in
Animal House
there.”

“Yeah well…I was worried about you. No matter how aggravated I am, I don’t want to find your body in the wheelbarrow.”

“Ah, Mademoiselle Jailbird has returned to the nest.” Leo sashayed out of the kitchen wiping his hands on a dishtowel and struck a pose that Madonna would have envied. “You missed my finest work yet.”

I was too wrung out to banter. “Feed me.”

Leo tsk-ed in my general direction. “Manners, darling.”

“Feed me. Now.”

“That’s better.”

Leo set out plates at the island. I saw the beautiful array of fats and carbs which would soon be sticking to my thighs and kissed his clean-shaven cheek.

I loaded my plate with wild abandon, drumstick, mashed potatoes, stuffing, cornbread, cranberry, and an entire pumpkin pie on the side. Neil was busy scavenging what I had bypassed and while I had no plate showing, he beat me in stacking fortitude and claimed the apple pie.

Leo shook his head in disgust. “Some people have no couth.”

“The couth has left the building,” Neil told him around a mouth full of turkey.

“What about your diet? You’ll never get published if you can’t stick to your own diet.”

“My diet has gone the way of the couth.” In perfect form, cranberry sauce dripped on the opposite boob as the bleach stain, which had over-powered the Crayola marker.

“Hey, Neil, look, light meat and dark meat.”

His laugh was accompanied by beer out the nose. “Oh, dear sweet Jesus, that stings like a bitch!”

Leo gave up trying to civilize our eating and joined the fun.

“Mom!” Kenny ran in from the backyard where he’d been playing football.

I ceased my marathon mastication long enough to slide off the stool and give him a long hug. “Hey, Kenny, where’s your brother?”

“Trying to get Uncle Marty to come inside. He’s been talking to Mrs. Davidson for over an hour.”

“It wasn’t that long, kiddo,” Marty objected from the back door. Josh skirted around him and kicked his shoes off, but my brother tracked leaves over the kitchen floor. “She was only being neighborly.”

“Yeah, until Mr. Davidson came out and started shooting you dirty looks,” Josh reprimanded his uncle.

I gave my oldest son an equally fierce hug. “I’m so sorry, guys. Was dinner awful?”

“Nah, it was great! Especially when Grandpa called Grandma an overbearing harpy. Then she got all red and dumped cranberry sauce in his lap.”

I looked to Leo for verification and got a short nod in response. What a day.

“I’m sorry,” I said again. “I tell you what, let’s move the food into the dining room, and we can have our real Thanksgiving right now.”

“I’d love to stay, sweets, but I promised the Dragon Lady I’d be back by seven.” Leo kissed the top of my head, shook Neil’s hand, and gave the boys a salute. He turned to Marty and offered him a wink. “See ya around, sweet-cheeks.”

Marty blanched, and Kenny hollered with laughter. “Dad, you just shot beer out your nose and into the apple pie!”

* * * *

Feeling very fat and very happy, I collapsed onto the living room floor with my boys, and we all stared at the white couch. Marty, Neil, and I each had a beer, and the boys sipped sodas directly from the can.

“It really is white, isn’t it?” Marty sounded baffled.

I turned my head and looked at him. “You’re just picking up on this?”

“No, I noticed it before, but from down here it looks like a great big snow drift.”

“Nobody had better try to write his name in this snow drift,” Neil warned.

“You know what, guys? I don’t care.” I sat up, knocked back my beer, strode to the puffy white couch, and flopped on it. There was a moment of silence, and I looked at three adorable awe-struck faces.

“Mom, you didn’t!” Josh was the spitting image of his father, mouth agog, eyes the size of dinner plates.

“What about Grandma?” Kenny asked me.

I could tell by his hesitant tone he was waiting for me to turn into a pillar of salt.

“What Grandma doesn’t know won’t hurt her,” I said. Neil shook his head slightly, and I realized I wasn’t setting the best example for adolescent boys. Or Marty. “Leo promised he would have a friend of his make up some slipcovers ASAP, so we probably won’t see the actual couch for a while. Life is short, guys, take advantage of it.”

I removed one of the puffy cloud-like pillows and flung it at my brother. It hit right on his beer bottle, and he went down sputtering. Kenny and Josh jumped on him and pinned him down, and I went after my second target. Neil laughed at the fray, so I whacked him on the sly. Hey, when you’re going up against a guy with BUD/s training, you either fight dirty or you lose.

My victory didn’t last long. Neil tickled me relentlessly, with the boys pinning me down.

“I’m just a poor, helpless female!” I gasped in my breathiest Southern accent. “You big rough tough men are ganging up on little ol’ me.”

“You bet your sweet derrière, Miz Scarlet.” Neil may have been a native of Massachusetts, but his fake Southern accent was more credible than my real one. “You’re no helpless female, that’s for damn sure.”

A small smile curved up at the corners of my mouth. In that moment, as I looked into my Neil's eyes and heard the laughter of our boys, I could almost forget the worries that had consumed me for the past few weeks and be thankful for my life.
I may never become a career woman
,
but I never really wanted that anyway.

I’m alive, and my family is healthy and happy. Who could want more?

“Earth to Maggie!” Marty snapped me out of my reverie and handed me the phone.

“Who is it?” I mouthed at him.

“Some guy, I dunno.”

I rolled my eyes at my brother’s helpfulness and held the receiver to my ear. “Hello?”

“Maggie, this is Detective Patterson. I want you to do something for me.”

“
I
don’t like it,” Neil said.
“I don’t understand why Patterson wants you to visit that psychotic bastard.”

I didn’t stop to correct the notion that Patterson was behind this visit to the penitentiary outside of Worcester. That scheme was all me, but Patterson was taking the fall because I’d announced my intent to go visit Mr. Kline right after getting off the phone with him.

“He might be able to point me in the right direction.” I slipped my sunglasses on. The pinks and oranges of Black Friday’s dawn gave way to hardcore sunlight.

Neil had to be at work in an hour, and the return trip was about half that time, but he’d refused to let me come here alone. So instead of the marathon Christmas shopping I had planned for today, I was skulking to the county lock-up.

“All Patterson really asked of me was to keep an eye out for gun collectors while I’m cleaning. I told you, we got to talking about Mr. Kline, and the idea came up that he might be more prone to open up to me than the cops.”

“The guy has a lawyer to talk to. You’re no shrink,” Neil grumbled, like a big bear denied his winter nap. I couldn’t blame him. My own night was full of tossing and turning and a slew of dreams Freud would have a field day with. The news that Greg the Gym Rat had been shot by a marksman with a World War II rifle, the exact type I wasn’t told, had the police filtering down to suspects who had served or were avid collectors. I was under the impression that the gun was rare and perhaps the key to cracking the case. I was instructed to keep my eyes open for unusual firearms aficionados. That news didn’t disturb me nearly so much as it would have before I’d viewed Mr. Kline’s private collection.

“What time did the leech say he was going to be here?” Neil looked at his watch as we stood outside the front entrance to the formidable building. After making the decision, I had called Jason Macgregor, who’d been willing to get up and come to the prison first thing, which would get us around both visiting hours and sitting in the common area.

“Really, Neil, just because your parents are lawyers, doesn’t mean the rest of them are all bad.”

Neil gave me a lopsided grin. “What do you call a thousand dead lawyers?”

“Not again.”

“A good start.
What's the difference between a lawyer and a boxing referee?”

“Neil, I’ve heard all these.”

“A boxing referee doesn’t get paid more for a longer fight. Why is money green?”
   Neil didn’t need me to answer; he could go on all day. I looked at my watch and estimated it was about a minute and a half before the dirty lawyer jokes started.
   “Because lawyers pick it before it’s ripe.
How can you tell if a lawyer is well hung?”

“You can’t get a finger between the rope and his neck.” My blatant eye roll was accompanied by the revving of a large and costly engine. A Lamborghini shot into the parking lot and stopped on a dime about ten feet from our Escort. Jason Macgregor looked almost comical behind the wheel of such a flashy car. He was unremarkable in every way, from the top of his medium brown head all the way down his gangly frame. If he had a bigger nose, he’d have been a dead ringer for the cartoon version of Ichabod Crane.

Neil winced as Macgregor first caught the lower half of his Gucci trench coat in the car door, then dropped his briefcase, which opened and scattered several documents to the wind. I felt an odd tugging on my heartstrings and bent to scoop up some of the papers. Neil was the beautiful sports car, and I was the bumbling fool.

 Well, at least we’re entertaining.
I watched Jason take a flying leap at a yellow paper, hug it into his body like a football, and crash into a nearby Chevy. The sound of a car alarm pierced the stillness of the morning, and Macgregor stowed his papers, brushed himself off, and headed our way.

“Sorry about that. I’ve been a little distracted lately.” He extended his hand towards Neil.

A burly man emerged from the building and aimed a keyless entry remote at the shrieking car.

“Let’s head inside. Mrs. Phillips, you may want to leave your purse in the car.”

I nodded in understanding. No need to have some random security guard rifling through my wallet and coupon book for hidden weapons.

The inside of the penitentiary seemed colder than the outside. Gunmetal gray paint covered cinderblock walls. The small lobby area boasted a set of metal detectors blocking the guard station. Several heavy-duty doors closed the room off from the rest of the building. Other than the security guard next to the metal detectors and a husky woman behind the desk, the room was empty.

“Good morning!” Macgregor issued a warm greeting to the man by the metal detectors and handed over his briefcase. The man nodded to him, and Macgregor stepped through the uprights. The guard nodded to Neil and used a wand over Jason’s briefcase before he flipped the lid up and scanned its contents. Neil went through next without a hitch, and the guard waved me through. I, of course, made it beep.

“Please remove all jewelry and walk back through.” The guard with the thick Brooklyn accent extended a small plastic bin. I struggled to take my wedding ring off, but I doubted that was what made the thing beep, since Neil wore his. I had no other jewelry, and my watch was a ten dollar K-Mart timepiece, but I took it off too.

Beep Beep Beep
. The metal detector shrilled again as I crossed its threshold. Guard No Neck beckoned me to come forward and he wanded me. “Are you wearing an under-wire bra by any chance?”

My bra size measures at 40 C, so I always wear an under-wire bra. “Yes.”

“You’ll need to take it off.”

I stared at him for a moment, trying to decide if he was serious. When his taciturn expression didn’t change, I peeked around for a restroom. Naturally, it was at the far end of the reception area, where only the under-wireless could venture.

Heaving a big sigh, I reached under my shirt and unfastened the front clasp, then slid it down my arms and handed it to him.

   “Wow that was hot!” The owner of the Chevy had reappeared in time to witness the floor show.

“Nice color too, I never see purple undearwears anymore,” Brooklyn said as he wanded my lingerie.

I marched through the metal detectors, snatched my bra back, and shoved it in my pocket.

I joined a smirking Neil and Macgregor at the guard station.

“They’re getting him ready for visitors now, and when he’s brought to the room, someone will show us in,” Jason said.

“You always add your own spice to life, don’t you, Uncle Scrooge?”

Before I could retort, the door to our left opened and another security guard waved us in.

The meeting room stood at the end of a long corridor. The guard peered through a small square window then gestured us inside. Lit by repugnant florescent track illumination, Mr. Kline’s face looked sallow, and he appeared much older than the last time I’d seen him. Deep purple bruises smudged like a child’s finger painting around his sad eyes. I stared at him for a moment while he shook hands with his attorney, thinking that two people had been murdered since I’d seen him last. Was his deterioration based on grief for the death of his wife and the stress of a murder charge, or something more?

“Douglass, how are you holding up?” Jason Macgregor’s voice sounded phony in my ears, and I looked at him sharply. His expression of concern felt a little too practiced, and although I couldn’t put my finger on it, he was somehow different than the buffoon in the parking lot.

What if that was an act too? Maybe this guy is a sociopath, sliding into a fresh role for each new audience.

I glanced over to Neil to see if maybe he’d observed the difference too, but he seemed unmindful of anything odd. I chalked the thought up to too much pie for breakfast and my imagination running amok yet again.

“Well, I can complain, Jason, but I won’t. I see you’ve brought me visitors.” Mr. Kline faced me, and I knew I’d been right to come. This man made my skin crawl, but for some reason, he talked to me.

“Maggie, my dear. As always, a pleasure to see you, albeit I wish it was under different circumstances.”

“Mr. Kline, I was very sorry to hear about your wife.”

“It was…shocking. Alessandra had a larger-than-life manner about her, and I’m still coming to terms with her loss.” His gaze focused inwards, searching for some puzzle piece in the dark corners of his brain. I reached over to pat his hand, then thought better of the act, remembering the last time I’d attempted to comfort him.

 “Do you think I could speak with him in private for a moment?” I asked Jason. Neil stood up straighter and eyed me but I directed my gaze at the attorney.

Jason studied my face for a long breath, nodded his head, and retrieved his briefcase. “We’ll be right outside the door. Doug, I’ll be back to you in a few.”

Neil stared me down and he left the room without a word.

“Mr. Kline—”

“Doug, please. I hope we’re still friends, even after all of this.”

I hesitated—unwilling to coldly inform him that we never were friends—before sidestepping the same way I do when Kenny and Josh ask me to take them to play laser tag every Saturday.

“Doug, between you and me, I’m investigating for the police, hoping that my job as a cleaning lady will help them find out who is behind all this. Is there something that you know about your wife, like people who might’ve wished her harm, anything at all you could tell me? Did her habits change; were there new people in her life? Maybe there’s something, which at the time seemed unimportant, but you recalled later?” I was proud of my professional sounding delivery, honed by watching countless episodes of
Law and Order
.

He sat in silence for a moment and then shook his head. “No one wished my wife ill, not even me when I found out about her affair. I loved her too much, and we had a good life together, even if our marriage bed was cold. It was my doing and I couldn’t fault her.”

I almost asked about that one but stifled my curiosity, since that wouldn’t have anything to do with the case. “So she looked elsewhere for…um…comfort in that area?”

Doug nodded. “I hated the thought of her with another man, but I knew she needed something I could no longer give her. So I hired a private investigator to follow her and find out who he was. Not that I would do anything to him, but I wanted to make sure the man was treating her properly.”

I flinched at those words. It was probably the PI who had leaked the affair to the media in the first place. “Would you mind if I contact your investigator? If he followed your wife, he may have additional information about who she was meeting on a regular basis.”

“His name is Len Greer, and his office is off of Main Street in Worcester. He’s in the Yellow Pages if you want to call him.”

I had no intention of calling him, but I was going to see him and hopefully get a little more insight into the Kline’s marriage.

“I have to go, Mr. Kline. Hopefully we’ll figure something out.”

It may have been my imagination, but Doug Kline looked extremely skeptical as I turned and knocked on the door. I couldn’t blame him. If I had been in his shoes, I would have wanted a real champion, not the Laundry Hag, but I guess he had to take what he could get.

* * * *

Neil dropped me off at home on his way to work. Marty and the boys were still asleep, so I made another pot of coffee. While I waited for the coffee to perk, I thought about the inconsistencies I’d witnessed from Jason Macgregor. He’d seemed completely competent the first time I’d seen him and over the phone, but today he vacillated between a Jim Carey skit and almost soap opera type of intensity. Was he simply a wacky person, or was he actually performing some kind of role?

I poured the fresh coffee and took a fortifying sip. The phone shrilled. The portable was nowhere to be found, so I made a mad dash for the wall unit.

“Hello?”

“Hello?” The querying voice of my early morning caller belonged to an elderly man. A
confused
elderly man from the sound of his bewilderment.

“Hello?” I queried again.

“Are you the lady who advertised for cleaning help wanted in today’s paper?”

“Yes, I’m Maggie Phillips and I run a cleaning service called—”