A Stitch to Die For (An Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery Book 5) (6 page)

“If she didn’t let him in, and she kept her doors locked—”

“Paranoid people definitely keep their doors locked, and Betty wasn’t someone who would open her door to a stranger.”

“She may have forgotten to lock the door.”

“Doubtful. She wasn’t the forgetful type. The woman held onto grudges for decades.”

“Did she show any signs of dementia?”

“None. If the killer didn’t force his way in, he must have picked a lock and sneaked up on her.”

“But why?”

“I don’t know. Maybe she inadvertently witnessed something.”

“And someone wanted to make sure she didn’t talk? Not a bad theory, Mrs. Pollack. But where was she, and what did she see?”

“That’s your job to figure out, isn’t it, Detective?”

Spader flipped his notebook closed and shoved it in his breast pocket. Then he reached into his pants pocket, pulled out a card, and handed it to me. “If you think of anything else, call me.”

As I accepted the card, he added, “One other thing. Do you have any security cameras on your property?”

“One at each door.” After several break-ins last winter, Zack had insisted on installing an alarm system and cameras under the guise of protecting the expensive photographic equipment he kept in his apartment above my detached garage. He claimed the added cost to include the house was negligible. Although I didn’t believe him, I hardly put up an argument. As much as I never again wanted to rely on a man, finding my family trussed up with duct-taped and tossed into the bathtub was incentive enough to accept all the help I could get to ward off attacks from any future bad guys.

“Mind if I look at the tape in a little while?” asked Spader.

“Not at all. Stop by when you’re ready.”

By this time I had lost the battle to keep my eyes from tearing, my nose from running, and my teeth from chattering. As Spader headed back into Betty’s house, I raced across the street. Through my closed front door, I heard Lucille and Mama squaring off in the living room.

FOUR

“You’re nothing but a vapid, worthless excuse for a human being!”

“You should talk, you traitorous pinko pig!”

So intent on hurling venomous insults at each other, neither Mama nor Lucille noticed me when I stepped into the foyer. Ralph, my Shakespeare-quoting African Grey parrot, sat atop the bookcase, his head swiveling back and forth as he followed the verbal fisticuffs. “
Braaawwk!
” he squawked. “
Mortal revenge upon these traitorous Goths. And see their blood, or die with this reproach. Titus Andronicus.
Act Four, Scene One.”

“Déjà vu all over again,” I muttered under my breath, choosing a more modern-day quote from New Jersey’s favorite son Yogi Berra. I walked past Mama and Lucille and headed into the kitchen where I grabbed the leftover Chinese food from the refrigerator, emptied the containers into casserole dishes, and popped them into the oven.

My sons waylaid me as I passed the den on my way to my bedroom. “Mom,” said Alex. “Lawrence said someone shot Batty Bentworth.”

“Right here on our street,” added Nick.

I stepped into the den. Lawrence sat on the couch watching the news, apparently totally oblivious to his wife and my mother-in-law setting off World War III in my living room. Or maybe he was deliberately tuning out the battle.

“As scary as it is to know someone on our street was murdered,” I reassured my sons, “I don’t think we need to worry. It appears Mrs. Bentworth was deliberately targeted.”

“I guess she pissed off the wrong person this time,” said Nick. He turned to his brother. “Maybe Mom’s right.”

“About what?” I asked.

“You’re always saying if you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything. That woman was despicable.”

“And now she’s dead,” said Alex.

“That’s a pretty drastic example.” Inwardly, though, I patted myself on the back, glad my sons listened to me and appreciated my parenting skills.

“Maybe someone should tell Grandmother Lucille there’s a serial killer on the loose, and he’s stalking disagreeable old crones,” suggested Nick.

“You think it would help?” asked Alex.

Nick shrugged. “Couldn’t hurt.”

I glanced down the hall. “One of these days those two might just harangue each other to death.”

“If they don’t come to physical blows first,” said Lawrence, pulling himself away from a newscast about an earthquake in Argentina. Maybe he wasn’t so oblivious after all.

“Would you try talking some sense into Mama?” I asked. “She won’t listen to me.”

“I think she derives a certain amount of pleasure in baiting Lucille,” he said, stating what the rest of us in the family had known for years.

“Perverse pleasure. But it only makes my life more difficult. She no longer has to live with Lucille; I do.”

“I’ll talk to her,” he said, “but I doubt she’ll stop until Lucille is dead and buried.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.” Then, even though I already knew the answer, I asked, “Are you and Mama planning to stay for dinner?”

“Since we’re already here, we’ll help you polish off all those leftovers from last night.”

Leftovers I had hoped would stretch for more than one dinner this week. Even without a murder on the street, Mama and Lawrence had probably planned to show up in time for dinner tonight. No matter how often I tried to impress my near-destitute situation on Mama, she seemed incapable of comprehending the financial realities of my post-Karl life.

As for Lawrence, the man had turned out to be a consummate moocher, no better than his gold-digger daughter. What’s that saying about the apple not falling far from the tree? I could see why Cynthia had set her sights on Ira, even with the baggage of three kids, but if Lawrence thought Mama had money stashed away from her previous husbands, he was in for a huge shock.

At least I didn’t have to deal with Ira and his bratty brood this evening, just Mama, Lawrence, Lucille, and a murdered neighbor—another typical evening at Casa Pollack.

I excused myself and headed to my bedroom to rendezvous with a couple of Motrin. After gulping down the pills, I stripped off my office attire and slipped into a pair of jeans and a threadbare blue and orange Mets National League championship sweatshirt that I’d owned since the dawn of the new millennium. Glancing in the mirror at the fading logo, I wondered which would occur first—a debt-free Anastasia or a Mets World Series win. The odds for either looked equally dismal.

Even with my bedroom door closed, I continued to hear shouts of “Stupid Bolshevik!” and “Ignorant Fascist!” hurled back and forth from the living room, interspersed with an occasional squawk from Ralph. Since dinner would take at least twenty minutes to heat up, I collapsed onto my bed, drew a quilt over my body, and buried my head under a pillow to tune out the shoutfest.

If only such measures would dispel the vision of Betty Bentworth’s dead body, now forever etched into my brain. As I pondered what she might have done or seen that resulted in a gaping hole where her eye used to be, I realized that after nearly two decades of living across the street from the woman, I knew next to nothing about her. Did she once have a husband? Children? A career? Did she have any living relatives? I’d never noticed anyone coming to visit her.

She rarely left her house except to attend church, run errands, do yard work, or shovel her walk in winter. Even at her advanced age, she refused to hire help of any kind. In a neighborly gesture, I once sent the boys over to dig out her property after a blizzard had dumped over a foot of snow on us. Instead of thanking them, she called the police to report trespassers on her property. So much for neighborly gestures.

~*~

The doorbell rang before my first forkful of food rendezvoused with my taste buds. “I’ll get it,” said Alex, jumping up from the table.

A moment later he returned with Detective Spader in tow. Nodding to me, the detective said, “Sorry to intrude on your dinner.”

I’d expected the interruption. Spader had a murder to solve. For all I cared, he could set up a command center in my living room if it meant a speedier apprehension of the killer. I just wished the timing had allowed me to finish dinner first. I stood and directed Spader to follow me into the kitchen and down to the basement.

Before Karl died, I used the apartment above our garage as a studio. Once I realized that he’d gambled away all our savings, taken out a second mortgage on the house, failed to pay our taxes, and maxed out our credit cards (the trusting wife really is always the last to know,) I was forced to rent out the apartment for added income. Renting out the apartment did bring Zack into my life. However, it also meant moving my studio down to my unfinished, drafty, poorly lit basement.

I ushered Spader over to the desk and fired up my laptop to access the camera footage. Only there was no footage. “I don’t understand,” I said, staring at a blank screen.

Spader grunted. “I’m not surprised. We’re dealing with a pro. Your neighbors’ cameras were also disabled.”

“Are you telling me this guy went up to every house on the block that has security cameras and disabled all of them without anyone noticing him?”

Spader shook his head. “He most likely did it remotely ahead of time.”

“By hacking into the systems?”

“Exactly. It’s not that hard, especially since most people don’t bother to reset the password supplied by the manufacturer. The makers of these devices even post the universal password on their websites.”

“But I did reset my password.” Not only had Zack insisted on it, he’d made me change all my passwords to extremely complex ones that included upper and lower case letters, numbers, and symbols to increase my computer security—a different password for each site that required one.

“There are plenty of hacking programs available on the Internet,” said Spader. “You just have to know where to look.”

So much for security cameras—or any other form of security for that matter.

“Was anyone home here during the day?” asked Spader.

There was only one person who might have seen or heard something relevant to the case earlier that day. “Your favorite person,” I said.

“You don’t mean—”

“My mother-in-law.”

Spader groaned.

We headed back upstairs and into the dining room. Lucille sat hunched over her plate, shoveling Kung Po chicken into her mouth. Spader planted himself alongside her chair. “Mrs. Pollack, I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

Lucille continued shoveling and chewing, giving no indication that she’d heard him, let alone acknowledging his presence. Spader turned to me for assistance.

“Lucille,” I said, “the detective needs to speak with you.”

Around a mouthful of food she finally said, “I have nothing to say to that man.”

Given Lucille’s history with Spader, neither he nor I should have expected her to cooperate. “Mrs. Bentworth was murdered sometime this morning or afternoon,” I said. “I’m sure the detective simply wants to know if you noticed anything out of the ordinary during the day. Isn’t that right, Detective?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“So he can blame me, no doubt. Like last time.”

Spader heaved a sigh. “No, ma’am. It’s like your daughter-in-law said. I just want to know if you heard or saw anything unusual earlier today. An unfamiliar car parked in the neighborhood, a stranger lurking on the sidewalk, maybe.”

“Never heard of anyone named Bentworth.”

“She lives—lived—directly across the street,” I said.

“So? Doesn’t mean I ever met her.” Lucille finally raised her head and glared at the detective. “I was out all day. I heard nothing; I saw nothing.”

“If you do happen to remember anything—”

“I won’t.”

“Even if she did, she wouldn’t tell you,” said Mama who had remained uncommonly silent until this point. “You know how those Bolsheviks are.”

Lawrence placed his hand on Mama’s shoulder. “Flora, perhaps you should stay out of this. You’re not helping.”

She brushed his hand away. “I have a right to my opinion.”

“I doubt the detective is interested in your opinion of Lucille’s character.”

In shock, Mama’s mouth dropped open and tears sprang to her eyes. She pushed her plate aside, rose to her feet, and began to walk away from the table.

“Flora, come back,” said Lawrence.

“Mama, please.”

She stopped and pivoted back toward the dining room. In a quivering voice she asked, “How could you, Lawrence?”

“How could I what? Sit down and finish your dinner.”

“I’ve lost my appetite. For both the food and you. See if you get any tonight.”

“Mama!”

“Slut,” said Lucille.

My sons bit down on their lips to avoid the guffaws threatening to erupt from their throats. They failed miserably. Nick, having just taken a sip of water, wound up spewing it across the table. His brother nearly gagged on a piece of pork. Even Spader found it hard to keep a straight face.