Deadly Blessings (21 page)

“
Yeah,” I said, thinking
fast. There was one excuse that would make sense. “But I got my
period today. Totally unexpected.”

“
Oh,” she said, stringing
the word out into two syllables. “Don’t you hate when it does
that?” A page flipped and she hummed. “Okay, what about a week from
today, same time?”

“
That’ll work,” I
lied.

“
Okay thanks for calling
Miss Szatjemski. We’ll see you then.”

* * * * *

The rest of the morning I spent at the
library, looking up local news stories for any mention of Lisa
Knowles. Fruitless venture.

Back home, I left the car in the garage and
walked across my own small yard to the house. Leaving the gray sky
and the sharp wind outside, I pushed open the back door, lifting it
slightly so it didn’t scrape the landing, and felt the home’s
welcoming warmth. The heat must have just kicked on, with that
recognizable, comforting smell of the summer’s dust burning off in
the vents.

I flicked the overhead light on in the
kitchen and thought about making some hot tea as I leaned over to
check the answering machine on the counter. No messages. With a
grin I remembered Lucy’s exclamation whenever there were no
messages on the machine when we got home. “I guess nobody loves
us,” she used to say. Yep. With my parents gone, Lucy safely
ensconced in her new home, and Dan out of my life, that about
summed it up. Even the telemarketers had thumbed their noses at
me.

Gearing up for more research, I settled
myself in Lucy’s old room, where I’d hooked up my computer and
peripherals. I surfed the net, using every search pattern I could
think of to find something, anything, about Lisa Knowles. My
intense concentration and unswerving stare at the monitor for over
two hours netted me little more than a pounding headache. The kind
that made a starburst of light appear with each throb. I massage my
temples and sat back, waiting for the hammering to subside.

It didn’t make
sense.
Everybody
could be found on the net. I got a slew of hits on the name
Lisa Knowles, over five hundred. And I tenaciously clicked and
followed every promising lead. Unless Lisa was a flyfishing
aficionado in Oregon, a McDonald’s manager in Colorado Springs, or
a librarian in Utah, I was outta luck.

Another thing nagged at me. I’d left three
messages at Sophie’s and hadn’t gotten a reply. I started out with
a brief inquiry, expressing my concern and hopes that she was doing
well after yesterday’s ordeal. The second and third messages I left
were more imperative, requesting, then insisting, she return the
call. I was sure there’d be a quick “Hello, everything’s fine,”
when I got home.

Starving, I meandered back and forth from
the bare pantry to the nearly bare refrigerator, half my mind
deciding what to eat from my meager supply, the other half of my
mind worried about the lack of word from Sophie.

I was coming up empty on both.

On the countertop, next to the answering
machine, were three taffy apples, tempting me from their clear
plastic “keep-em-fresh” display packaging. Not exactly a healthy
meal, but I was getting desperate. Telling myself I’d make up for
my poor eating habits later, I tore open the crackling package and
downed two of them, licking the caramel off the stick of the second
one as I eyed the third.

My appetite not quite satiated, I checked
the answering machine again. As if it might have lied to me
earlier, hiding a message. Still nothing.

While Sophie had been forthcoming on much of
the story, I sensed that there were things she held back, things
she was reluctant to admit to. And since she seemed equally
reluctant to return phone calls, I decided I’d take a quick ride
and visit her. Granted, I told myself, as I pulled my university
sweatshirt over my head again, enjoying the fragrant outside smell
as the cushy inner lining conformed to my shape, she could be
recuperating from yesterday’s long day. Maybe she was sedated. It
wasn’t unheard of.

Still, I hadn’t gotten this far in life by
not listening to my gut. Trotting back out to the garage, I started
to feel the sugar high from the taffy apples kick in. Just what I
needed right now.

* * * * *

I knocked on Sophie’s door four times. When
I’d been here before I spent little time at her doorstep. Now I had
a moment to look around while I contemplated my next move. This
first level landing of the three-flat had been painted a semi-gloss
gray. As though a cleaning crew had been in moments before my
arrival, the place was pristine. And if that shade of gun-metal
gray had been even a little bit lighter, I would have said the
place sparkled.

As it was, the cleanliness was almost
depressing.

I could have sworn I heard movement in the
apartment after my first knock. I put my face close to the heavy
paneled door and called to Sophie, hoping that she’d answer if she
knew it was me. I remembered her description of the police officer
who came to tell her about Matthew and I stepped out of the little
vestibule onto the porch to peer into her kitchen.

Not much there.

I tapped at the glass, and took a slow
inventory of the room as I waited, the condensation of my breath on
the glass fogging it up so I had to shift positions every few
seconds. Everything in place. If cleanliness is indeed next to
godliness, this woman was destined for sainthood.

A delayed realization
caused my eyes to swing back to the kitchen table. One mug. One
chair slightly askew. In my house, disorder of this magnitude would
be cause for celebration. There was usually half a week’s worth of
dishware on the table or near, though never
in
the sink.

Sophie, however, would not have left the
table looking like that.

I knocked again at the glass, hoping to
catch her moving about in the apartment. Nothing.

With resolve I headed up the creaking gray
stairs to the second floor. It didn’t matter that I had no idea who
lived above her, I was beginning to get a bad feeling and I had to
do something. Or at least feel like I was doing something.

No answer at that door.

One more flight up. If I had no luck, I
could try the front door. At least there were doorbells there. As I
climbed the steps, my feet making quiet smacks against the black
lining, I noticed how much warmer it was getting up here. They say
warm air rises, and this was no exception. At the top of the
stairs, I was surprised to find yet another short flight that
obviously led to the attic.

The gray and white paint combination ended
abruptly and the look of bare wood, dark and kind of creepy began
as that last flight led upward. I didn’t see any need to explore
the attic, not now. And the hot, musty air that poured out from
above didn’t give me added incentive.

I peered up around the steps and realized
there was almost no natural light up there. Probably a slew of
spiders, though.

Before I could knock at the apartment on
this floor, the flat, solid door opened with an abbreviated squeak
and I found myself face to face with an equally solid woman. Over
sixty years old, she was about five and a half feet tall, and
nearly as wide. Her dark brown hair had been pulled around gray
metal rollers and secured by big pink plastic pins, so tight that
if I reached over to flick at the hair stretched out, I was sure
I’d hear a “ping.” Her face was pudgy and squished up, like a
bulldog’s and she peered at me through rhinestone-studded
glasses.

“
Hi,” I said.

She spoke to me in rapid-fire Polish, so
fast that I couldn’t keep up at first. What I gathered was that she
didn’t want to buy whatever I was selling and she was taking the
opportunity to let me know how very put out she was by all the
comings and goings in the apartments lately and didn’t people even
try to keep quiet anymore? I got the impression that she thought I
had a direct line to all door-to-door salespeople and Jehovah
Witnesses nationwide and that I’d pass the word along to quit
showing up at her door.

I waited till she quieted her tirade. When
her head tilted back and she looked at me more closely, she asked
if I spoke Polish. I was getting asked that question more in the
past few days than I had in my entire life.

I shrugged. Punted. “Sophie?” I asked,
pointing downstairs.

Behind the woman, a man shuffled toward the
stove where a percolator sat, making its musical coffee
announcement and sending the delightful aroma out the door toward
me. The woman gave me a look that could have been suspicion, could
have been lack of comprehension, and turned to the man, who poured
himself a cup and was making his soft-footed way to the table. This
apartment was full-size. These were probably the landlords.

She spoke to the guy in Polish, which caused
him to look my direction. I felt his assessment, though he kept
himself bland-faced. Placing his cup on the table with unhurried
care, he shuffled to the door. “Yes? You ask about Sophie?”

I explained that I’d been concerned about
her. That I hadn’t seen her since the funeral yesterday. “She isn’t
answering her door, or her phone,” I said, looking from his face to
hers, and back again.

The man turned to his wife
and conversed in low-toned Polish. I caught that their names were
Mabel and Casimir. They’d been concerned about Sophie, too, from
what I could gather. They
were
the landlords and had been debating going into
her apartment to check on her.

“
I looked in the window,” I
said. “She left a cup of coffee on the table.”

He translated and they both raised eyebrows
at that. The man nodded to me and invited me in. “I get keys. You
wait.”

Why on earth the woman decided to talk to me
while we waited for Casimir to meander to the back bedroom for the
keys, I didn’t know. I feigned ignorance, but I picked up as much
as I could.

There’d been a disturbance this morning.
Standing on the landing above Sophie’s apartment, they
eavesdropped, hearing shouts, sounds of furniture moving around.
Not wanting to get involved, they waited upstairs until things
quieted down. It was Sophie’s boyfriend again; they’d seen him
often enough, knew he was trouble. Wished she’d break up with the
guy already, because one of these days he was going to smash
something or cause damage and who would pay for that?

Worried more about the state of the
first-floor apartment, it seemed, than Sophie’s well-being.

Maybe I was too quick to judge, I thought.
Mabel here was yammering on and on in Polish, unaware that I
understood her every word—a woman who didn’t hesitate to vent when
she felt like it. And the way she shook her head when she said
Sophie’s name made me wonder if perhaps she was concerned for her,
but masked those feelings in concern for her material goods.

Maybe I was providing a means to go check on
Sophie and this was Mabel’s way of working out her anxiety. Not
sure. And I wondered if the man they’d seen was that Rodero
guy.

She held up the percolator, raising her
eyebrows in the universal gesture of “Want some coffee?” I shook my
head, tempting though it was. Mabel poured herself a helping so
full that I was sure it would spill over the top before she raised
the delicate china cup to her pursed lips. In a curious
juxtaposition, she slurped the black coffee noisily, while keeping
the cup aloft, and her pinky extended in a show of elegant
manners.

Casimir returned, still wearing his brown
slippers. They whished against the tile floor, signaling his
re-entry to the kitchen. Taller than Mabel, he was slim enough to
make the gray pants and blue shirt he wore look like they’d been
hung on clothes rack, and none too carefully. A set of keys, at
least thirty of them, were attached to a silver ring, with a long
matching chain that dangled down. He searched for the right key
with intent; there was some method to his organization, apparently,
and within seconds he singled out one. Blue eyes met mine from
under bushy gray brows. “You come too?”

“
Sure,” I said. Like there
would be any way I’d stay back.

Casimir knocked at Sophie’s door, almost as
hard as I had. He called out to her in Polish, asking if she was
all right. Waiting a beat, he knocked again, then announced that he
would come in, unless he heard from her.

He handled it all in a polite, no-nonsense
way. Dad-like, almost, and I wondered if he had any idea of
Sophie’s true employment.

Casimir was not the kind of man who changed
facial expression often. After he unlocked the door, he creaked it
open a little, then wider to allow us into the kitchen. We both
stood, looking at one another, and I realized at that point, I
didn’t quite know what to do. I dipped my pinky finger into the
abandoned coffee in the mug, but there was so little in the bottom
that the coldness didn’t surprise me.

Casimir gestured toward the bedrooms. “You
look,” he said.

I headed for Sophie’s room, noticing at once
that the door was shut all the way. Chances were she was
sleeping.

Wrapping my hand around the glass knob that
looked like an oversized diamond, I rapped on the door and
whispered Sophie’s name.

Nothing.

Casimir took a couple of steps backward,
which was curious. I wondered what he was afraid of, then realized
that the altercation he and Mabel overheard earlier might have been
much more violent than I originally assumed.

With a sense of urgency, I twisted the
diamond and pushed my way in.

The room was almost exactly as it had been
when I visited Sophie the day Matthew died. She was in the bed, but
had her back toward me. The shaking of her shoulders gave me
instant relief. Losing a loved one, particularly when one feels
responsible can often push people to the brink, and I’d been
worried. I let out the breath I’d been holding, then reached out to
touch her shoulder.