Cha-ching!
12
S
ure, I’ve been known to fudge the truth a little once in a while. Usually in the name of solving a case. Or when doing so is vital to something important like my weight or my dress size. That doesn’t change the fact that I am now and always have been a basically honest person.
I didn’t say a word to Tammi the tour guide, but the idea that Marjorie had a purloined piece of property—stolen from a president’s home no less—just didn’t sit right with me. Even before I left Lawnfield, I knew what I was going to do. I didn’t stop home, but I did make a quick detour to the library, long enough to use the Internet to find Nick Klinker’s home address.
Nick, it seemed, had better taste than his aunt. At least when it came to neighborhoods and houses. Within an hour, I found myself clear on the other side of town in the chichi suburb of Bay Village. Big houses. Towering oaks. Views of the lake for the lucky few who were smart enough to scoop up waterfront property.
Nick Klinker was one of them.
I parked the Mustang on the circular drive that led up to a house with more windows than walls, and a sweeping backyard where I could see a garden with a fountain and one of those gazebos. Vine covered, of course. The house was situated high on a bluff overlooking Lake Erie, and though real estate is not my thing, I had been trained right early on; I knew—and appreciated—pricey when I saw it.
Recession? What recession? Obviously, things were just peachy in the software engineering world.
By the time I rang the bell, I had already practiced what I was going to say when Nick answered the door. There was no use beating around the bush, and no way to sugarcoat the truth: his late aunt wasn’t just the most annoying individual I’d ever met; she was a crook, too.
Only I was going to put it in words nicer than that.
I would have, too, if Nick answered the door. Instead, when it swung open, Bernadine, Nick’s fiancée, was looking back at me. At least I thought it was Bernadine. She couldn’t have looked more different than the stylishly turned-out woman I’d seen at the funeral. The impeccable outfit was gone, replaced with a pair of ratty denim capris and a T-shirt that immortalized some 5K run everybody had already forgotten. The sleek hairstyle? There was no sign of that, either. Bernadine’s blond tresses stuck up in weird spikes all over her head.
“Who are you? What do you want?” Bernadine’s eyes were blazing. She looked me over, twisted a lock of hair around one finger, and pulled hard. “Do I know you?”
I did my best to smile. It would have been easier if she’d been wearing those sweet Dolce & Gabbana pointed-toe slingbacks. But she wasn’t wearing any shoes at all, and half her toenails were polished garish pink. The others were done in a chocolately shade of maroon.
I looked back up to her face. “We didn’t have a chance to talk on Monday, but I chatted with Nick. At Marjorie Klinker’s—”
“Don’t even mention that woman to me!” Bernadine threw her head back and groaned. When she turned around and padded down the hallway, she didn’t close the door and she didn’t tell me to get lost, so I followed her, closing the door behind me. By the time I found her in the cavernous house, she was in a kitchen with a floor-to-ceiling view of the lake. She had a bottle of Black Velvet in one hand.
She poured a healthy couple inches into a glass and downed them in one gulp. “Do you know something about what Nick’s up to?” she asked me.
I was a tad confused so I didn’t say anything. She was a tad busy pouring herself another drink so she didn’t notice. As jittery as a double jolt of caffeine, she went over to the stainless steel, industrial-sized refrigerator and got a handful of ice cubes. She dumped them in with the whiskey and swirled the drink, studying me over the rim of the glass.
“Well, do you?” she asked. “Because I’ll tell you something, I don’t know what the hell’s going on, and it’s making me crazy, and I don’t have time to mess with this kind of nonsense. My wedding is in exactly . . .” She glanced at a calendar almost as big as the refrigerator it was stuck to with magnets. The days of the month that had already passed were marked off with thick red X’s, and the Saturday just one week away was circled. There was a big yellow star on the date.
“I’m getting married a week from this Saturday,” Bernadine said. She took a couple quick sips of her drink. “And do you see my groom here helping me get ready?” She spread her arms and looked around the kitchen, demonstrating.
Point made. We were the only two people there.
“I’ve got wedding favors to make,” she wailed. “Three hundred and forty-seven little porcelain picture frames, and every single one of them needs a photo of me and Nick put in it. But is Nick here to help?” Another swig, and she was rarin’ to go. The panic in Bernadine’s voice climbed right along with her anger.
“Was he here last night when the florist stopped by for one final chat? Did he show up this afternoon when I talked to the soloist about the songs for church?” She didn’t wait for me to say anything, but then, she didn’t need an answer and I wasn’t about to interrupt. That old saying about hell hath no fury like a woman scorned? A woman scorned doesn’t hold a candle to a bride whose wedding day is breathing down her neck.
“I know he’s been distracted, what with Marjorie’s death and everything,” Bernadine said, doing her best to be understanding. “And I know he’s nervous, too. His tummy’s been acting up and he’s not usually the high-strung type. That tells me he cares and knowing that . . .” She fueled her thoughts with another sip of whiskey and apparently her brief tiptoe into the land of the sensible was over. Her voice rose to a screech. “Has Nick done one damned thing to help me these past few days?” she asked no one in particular. “I’ll tell you what, no, he hasn’t! Does he think a bride can do all these things by herself? I mean, really. Is it fair to expect me to go to the tanning salon, try out nail lacquer colors, do a run-through on hair and makeup, and count out those little bags of pink and red M&Ms with
Bernie
on some and
Nick
on some and
Love Forever
on others? I ask you. Is it?”
I had once been engaged myself; I could empathize, if not with the Black Velvet, at least with the stress levels. Rather than get into it, I tried to keep her on task at the same time I struggled to make sense of everything she said. “Has Nick disappeared?” I asked. “Has something happened to him?”
“Happened?” Her laugh was maniacal. It echoed back at us from the high ceiling and bounced its way over the stainless steel stove, the matching dishwasher, and the glass-fronted wine chiller built in below the countertop. “Nick’s lost his mind. That’s what’s happened to him. And it’s all
her
fault.”
Oh yeah, just the way she said that
her
, I knew exactly who she was talking about. “You mean Marjorie.”
“Aunt Marjorie.” Bernadine threw her hands in the air. She was still holding her glass of Black Velvet and it sloshed out and rained down on the white ceramic tile floor. She didn’t bother to clean it up. “For years and years, Marjorie Klinker has ruined my life,” she wailed. “Every holiday. Every birthday. Every vacation. Marjorie was always there with those little . . .” She wiggled her fingers over her head, and I got the message.
“Head scarves,” I said.
“Those head scarves. Yeah. Those hideous head scarves! She was always there wearing those things and acting like God’s gift to the whole wide world. And talking about family history.” Her moan was worthy of a ghost in a horror movie. “Oh, how I hated listening to her talk about family history. I put up with it,” she added, one hand out and her palm flat. “I tolerated her. I welcomed her into my home. I couldn’t stand the woman, but I managed to swallow my pride and tell myself I was doing it for the sake of family.”
“You didn’t kill her, did you?”
Hey, I figured it was worth a try. Bernadine was so worked up, she just might be in the mood to confess.
No such luck. But then, I don’t think she even heard me.
“And now . . .” She hiccuped. “Now, even after she’s dead, Marjorie’s ruining my wedding!”
There was a table nearby and I sat down. Just as I’d hoped, Bernadine did, too. It gave me the opportunity to look her right in the eye. The way I would if she was a dog and I was trying to get her attention.
“You’re going to need to start from the beginning,” I said. “Because I can’t help you if I don’t know exactly what’s going on.”
She tapped one bare foot against the floor. “It all started Monday. After the funeral.”
I nodded, waiting for more.
She leaped out of her chair to refill her glass. “He never cared about any of it before,” she said at the same time she took a long swallow. Her words were liquor-soaked. “Marjorie, she carried on about it all, constantly. Oh lord, how I was tired of hearing about it!”
I might be confused, but I was not insensible. I knew exactly what she was talking about. “James A. Garfield.”
“You got that right.” She returned to the table, slammed down her glass, and plopped back into the chair. “You knew her, right? You must have if you were at the funeral. It was the only thing she ever talked about, the only thing she ever cared about. Garfield this, and Garfield that, and how she was related and wasn’t that just so special.” Bernadine’s top lip curled. “I was sick to death of hearing about it. If I wasn’t so crazy about Nick . . .”
I was grateful she’d brought up his name. I needed to get her back on track. “So after the funeral on Monday, what happened to Nick?”
“I’ve known Nick for four years, and all that time, he pooh-poohed Marjorie like everyone else. He was only nice to her because she was his father’s only sister, and the only living relative he had left. All those claims about how she was related to the president? Nick was sure they were nothing but a lot of bull. He never cared a thing about any of it. Not the books or the pictures or all that presidential crap she has all over her house.”
“And then . . . ?”
“Then it was like someone flicked a light switch. You know what I mean? After the funeral, we went back to Marjorie’s, and it was like watching someone take over his body. Like he got possessed with Marjorie’s spirit or something.”
Not a pretty thought. I shivered.
Bernadine tugged on her bangs. “All of a sudden, he’s obsessed with President Garfield, too. He reads about him in books. He checks out websites on the Internet. He goes over to Marjorie’s and he stays there for hours and hours and he doesn’t come home. And he’s not helping me with the wedding.” She slapped one hand against the table. “The wedding is next Saturday.
Next
Saturday! And instead of worrying about the biggest day of my life, all he does is talk about all that junk of Marjorie’s. He’s going to bring it home. Here!” She tapped her fingernails against the table. She crossed her legs and uncrossed them again. She plucked at her hair.
“I can’t believe it’s happening. Not now. Not when the wedding’s just one week away. But I’ll tell you one thing . . .” Bernadine slugged down the rest of the Black Velvet and slammed the empty glass on the table. “It’s going to stop. Or there’s not going to be a wedding.” Her outrage lasted only so long. The next second, her big blue eyes filled with tears and her bottom lip trembled. “Oh, my wedding! I don’t want to cancel my wedding. It’s the most perfect wedding in the world . . . and . . . and I want to marry Nick. I just don’t understand what’s happened to him.”
That made two of us.
Because if everything Bernadine said was true, Nick was suddenly as obsessed with James A. Garfield as Marjorie ever was. And the one and only time I talked to him . . .
Well, I knew I wasn’t remembering it wrong.
The time I talked to Nick Klinker, he made it abundantly clear that he thought Marjorie’s Garfield collection was nothing but a bunch of junk.
I
was back in the car and driving to Marjorie’s neighborhood in no time flat. The reason, of course, was self-evident: I needed to talk to Nick Klinker.
About his sudden and irrational interest in James A. Garfield.
About his aunt.
About his aunt’s murder.
A full plate for a Wednesday afternoon, and there was still the little matter of how I was supposed to be at work that day. Not to worry, I called Ella and talked my way out of it with a story about my poor car and how there was more wrong than just the tires. I was stuck at the mechanic’s, see, and with no way to easily get back to Garden View.
Ella bought it, hook, line, and sinker. Which she might not have if she’d been paying attention and had heard the traffic noise in the background.
That taken care of, I parked in front of Marjorie’s nondescript house, hurried up the steps, and rang the bell.
No answer.
If what Bernadine told me was true, Nick had to be there. He was spending all his time there. He was suddenly a buff, a devotee, a Garfield maniac.
And I wanted to know why.
I tried the bell again, and when there was still no answer, I went over to the picture window that looked out over the front porch and pressed my nose to the glass.
There’s something about obsession that sticks in the mind, and Marjorie’s fixation was pretty far out there. Try as I might to forget it, the weirdness of everything I’d seen on my last visit was imprinted on my brain. I remembered exactly how the living room was arranged. That’s why I knew things had been moved.
Moved
being an understatement.
All the pictures had been taken down from the walls. (And just a reminder, all the pictures were of Garfield.) They were stacked on the red, white, and blue plaid couch.
All the books were piled on chairs.
All the knickknacks were heaped near the fireplace, including the oil lamp I’d nearly toppled over while Marjorie and Ray were arguing in the den and the vase filled with those old-fashioned hat pins that I had knocked over.