Mummers' Curse (18 page)

“I’d say let’s set up such a viewing, except what you and he don’t know,” Mackenzie said, “is that the gun in your bag wasn’t the murder weapon after all. It did not kill Jimmy Pat. Ballistics tests show completely different markings.”

I swiveled around to see his face, check whether he was joking. He certainly didn’t look it.

I stood up. The massage had been heavenly, and my neck and back did feel looser, but now I needed to move, to pace, to hope my brain kicked into gear. Luckily, the loft was a great pacing arena, with lots of sights around the course. I did the kitchen area, the living-room sofa area, the table area, the office—in each case, a piece of furniture or two equaled a room’s worth of definition—the bedroom divider, the sound system, the TV, the bookshelves, which I suppose I should have called the library.

No metaphorical light bulbs blazed above my head. I tried saying it out loud. “Somebody planted a gun that isn’t the murder weapon on me. Do I have that right? What sense does that make?”

“Frankly, I was hopin’ you could tell me,” he said with a sigh. “Of course, that was before this Arthur business. Now it is painfully obvious that you haven’t got any more of a clue as to how that gun got in there than I do.”

“You thought I did? You thought I lied to you?”

“Could we defer that fight?’ he asked gently. “We’re gettin’ off track. Not lying. I thought you might have forgotten something, semi-consciously ignored somethin’ injurious to a friend, say.” He shrugged, giving up on that idea, deflecting the squabble I was itching to have.

“This Arthur’s card,” Mackenzie said. “Doesn’t inspire faith, does it, with no last name, no business, no title, no location. That crown. Like
The Prince
, you think? Hard to believe he’s for real.”

“He looked like money. Cashmere and good teeth. The whole package.”

“Probably has different cards—maybe different phones—for different needs.” He pocketed the card. “Ted Serfi was said to be connected, you know. This Arthur might be part of that.”

“He didn’t look the type.”

“What look is that?” The cat had sidled up to the love of his autumnal years and was rubbing against Mackenzie’s slacks. I could hear the purr as I held the refrigerator open and stared at its pitiable contents.

“You were maybe expecting a Damon Runyon character? Somebody in a striped suit with wide shoulders and, of course, a fedora? A funny-talking guy with his moll dressed in tight satin and a little hat with a veil? Something subtle like that?”

There is not much that’s sillier than a mushy Southerner imitating a New York accent. Except maybe a Yankee woman who believes you can recognize the mob by their outfits. I hid my embarrassment by looking at the very back of the refrigerator shelves, not that there were any good surprises in the small containers there.

By the time I turned around, the two Macs, as I now thought of them, were on the leather sofa. Mackenzie was fiddling with the TV remote, and Macavity, who was obviously secure in his neuterhood, was obstructing his love’s vision by lying vertically on the man’s shirt, stretched up toward his face, which he assiduously licked. My roomie had become my cat’s kitten. I didn’t want to think about it.

“Truce?” Mackenzie asked.

“Sure.” Dinner was going to be eggs by default, even though they reminded me of the sausage. What was I going to do about that, about anything?

“Then I’ll entertain you. Ready for the stupid call of the day?”

I nodded and cracked eggs. There was nothing in the pantry worth putting into an omelette. Who was running this place? As egalitarian as Mackenzie was, he didn’t qualify as a wife, and that’s what we both needed.

“Woman calls nine-one-one, barely coherent. Turns out a man phoned and told her to cut up all the shoes in her closet as an act of faith because he was the owner of a new shoe store and, as a special promotion, she’d been picked to get fifty free pairs of shoes.” He paused in his narration. “What does any woman need with fifty pairs of shoes?”

“Shoes are a psychological issue unto themselves. Too much to deal with now,” I said. “Go on.” Not that I had fifty pairs—but it wasn’t the worst idea I’d ever heard.

“The guy says he’s coming over in ten minutes to check whether she’d had enough faith and if she had, she gets this certificate for the fifty pairs of shoes.”

I carried my plate to the table. “Tell me she didn’t.”

“I cannot tell a lie. She did.”

The cat decided that both he and the man were now clean enough and was snuggling in to sleep at his side.

“It must be hard to slice shoes.”

“Tough as shoe leather, I’ll bet,” he said. “Took sweat and effort, but she had the muscles and the faith. Yet amazingly enough, the so-called shoe-store owner never showed up.”

The range of human behavior was stupefying. Not only was this woman a complete idiot, but one had to wonder about the caller, who obviously took perverse pleasure from the thought of sliced shoes.

Maybe his pleasure was based on power and nothing more. With willing a woman to julienne her footwear. Like scaring a woman with an innocuous, if homely, sausage.

“When the nine-one-one call was answered, she was barefoot. She’d been afraid that if she left her last pair of shoes—the sneakers on her feet—intact, she’d show too little faith. One of those women with a perfectly organized house, nothing out of place. She had the shredded shoes in a trash bag so they wouldn’t make a mess.”

I finished my eggs and toast, rinsed my dish, and leaving the rest of the clearing up till later, I joined the Macs on the sofa. And I waited.

Mackenzie seemed blissfully contented with our silence, interrupted only by the buzz saw of the cat’s purr.

“You know,” I finally said, “that lady cut up her own shoes and called nine-one-one. I was accosted—politely, civilly, within the law, I realize. But all the same, it scared me and I’m not a ninny. I wouldn’t have qualified for stupid call of the day even if I had called the police. Somebody put a gun in my pocketbook. Somebody followed me. I am not comfortable with this.

“Supposing I don’t get killed and I remain a pre-homicide case. I know that’s not your area of expertise, and I know you’re going to check this Arthur out, but do you have advice as to what I should do meantime?”

“Let me think on that.” He put his arm around me and the three of us snuggled and purred, until he said, “Okay. I think you should grade those papers you brought home so you’ll have time to start writin’ your article.”

I sat bolt upright with enough force to make Macavity decide to leave the couch. He understood that there was going to be a homicide after all. I had been worried that I was being set up for the role of victim, but—surprise, surprise—I was going to be the perp.

Before I could strangle him, Mackenzie added a few thoughts. “Want to know what not to do? Anythin’ that could get you hurt. Which is to say, don’t go to lousy movies all by your lonesome, be aware of your surroundin’s, and come home.”

“That’s…rather a primitive plan,” I said. His protectiveness struck me as equal parts of loving concern, arrogance, and a desire to keep his life simple. “Sometimes your people skills make it obvious that you’re used to dealing with dead folk.”

“We don’t know who or what Arthur is yet. Finding out is not your field of work. The thing is, my C doesn’t stand for Carson, either.”

“Huh? Like Kit Carson? Or, in your case, Carson Kit?”

“Wrong. Like Carson Drew, Nancy’s father.”

“I’ve never confused you with my father,” I snapped.

“But maybe you’ve confused yourself with Mr. Drew’s spunky daughter. Don’t. Nancy Drew is fictional. That’s why she always winds up okay. I’ll find out about Arthur, but it’s my strong suspicion I’m not going to find a whole lot because I suspect that he, too, is a fiction.”

“You’re doubting me again? I saw—”

“You saw somebody who said that was his name. Somebody who has a phone number which, when answered, will undoubtedly reinforce that impression. None of that necessarily makes it so.”

“Why not?”

“Gut feelin’. Plus the lack of any information on the card. Plus his shabby way of approachin’ you, which suggests a man steppin’ out of the shadows, carefully stayin’ within the law and yet deliberately managing to intimidate you. Plus his wanting to see the gun.” He looked at me, his eyes as blue and deep as a loch in the land of his forefathers.

“I think,” I began, “I think what he wants is…” I could barely bring myself to say it to this man, but there did seem to be a theme that repeated itself, lightly, inconsequentially, but regularly. “…that article,” I finally said.

“What article?” he asked and to my horror, I realized that he was honestly baffled.

“The one I’m…not writing,” I whispered. “But they think I am.” It was painful to say that, since I also thought I was writing it. I was simply…blocked. I was so glad that articulate writers had made up a technical term for not doing their work.

“Like that joke about the charms used to keep elephants out of Philly, and when the response is that I’ve never seen an elephant here, the answer is, ‘See? They work.’”

“I’ve heard that joke.”

“But you’re seriously saying that man will go to great lengths to get hold of an article that doesn’t exist? What could worry somebody about that? What do they think you know?”

I couldn’t guess. I had notes about the history of the parade and its significance as an organizing principle for a sort of village within the city. I had notes on whatever Vincent and his friends had been willing to share, plus descriptions of places they’d shown me, and facts taken from a book about the Mummers,
O, Dem Golden Slippers
, by Dr. Charles Welch.

No dark secrets, not an incriminating or intimidating word.

“Of course,” Mackenzie said, “doesn’t matter if you really have somethin’ worth their concern. Only matters if they think you do.”

“Yes,” I said, with an anticipatory sigh. “They seem to think the article is going to show their flaws in a hard light, to fan some unknown fire.”

I took his hand and we sat in silence across from our unfanned but crackling fire.

“So you’ll leave it to me,” Mackenzie said.

I debated whether that was a question, decided it was not, and therefore let it go unanswered. He could think what he needed to, and I could do what I needed to. This way, everybody was contented. Even the feline.

Particularly the feline. I became aware of an extremely loud purr from the floor in front of my feet.

We both looked down as Macavity looked up, his paw in mid–face wash, his eyes dreamy with satiation.

The humans processed the clues at the same time, stood up in unison, turned, and looked at the white box on the table.

Empty, except for grease spots.

Macavity’s purr registered a nine on the Richter scale.

Eleven

“I DON’T THINK I EVER ACTUALLY INTRODUCED MYSELF.”

I extended my hand to Emily Semow. I had already removed my gloves and unbuttoned my coat. The place was still a blast furnace, smelling of heating ducts, dust, and cardboard.

I had called ahead, so I had to assume she expected me. Nonetheless, she raised her eyebrows when I spoke, and looked around me through the plate-glass windows, as if to check whether I had an accomplice lurking outside.

“My name’s Amanda Pepper.”

“Knew it,” she said. “Unless you’re called Associated Press. You wrote it enough on the pen-testing pads. So, um…you’re back again, aren’t you?”

“Emily?” The querulous voice I remembered from my last visit came out of the back room. “Time for my pills.”

“Busy!” she shouted. “A customer. They’re next to you.” There was no further response.

She was dressed in black again, this time suede boots up to her thighs, black tights, and a black silk tunic. “In mourning, I guess,” I said, gesturing toward her ensemble.

She looked down to refresh her memory, grimaced, and then shrugged. Her face was nothing if not expressive. “No. Well, yes. Even if nobody believes we were getting married. Somebody even told me I should see a shrink to get a handle on reality. But of course, the somebody who said that was a Grassi. Won’t leave me alone.”

“I want to talk about something else,” I said.

“I know. The story.”

“Let me be absolutely honest. I’m a school teacher. I have no money.”

“You came here to tell me that? Thanks a lot and join the crowd. You think we make money in this place? Some people, they act like I’m an heiress, I’ll inherit my family business.” She laughed harshly. “My father, he’s not well. We pay the doctor’s bills, and then there’s enough for maybe a pair of stockings. I have to keep the store open whenever I can to catch an extra nickel or dime.” She sighed, then looked beyond me, outside again. “Listen,” she said, “did you pass anybody when you came in? Anybody, like, hanging nearby?”

I shook my head.

“I’m being watched,” she said. “Since Jimmy Pat, maybe even before he died. It’s weird, the person who…ah, maybe the Grassis are right and I’m crazy.” Once again, I heard the mirthless sound that passed for her laughter.

“Now?” I looked outside. Nothing except a short woman pulling a shopping cart and a taller and younger woman pushing a carriage. Maybe Emily had delusions of persecution.

“People these days, they go to the discounters,” she said. “Everything’s falling apart for the little guy like me, and even though I have ideas for how to make this place better, if he’d—” she moved her head in the direction of the dark back room “—let me, with wholesalers gobbling everything up, I don’t see how…”

To my relief, she paused to glance out the window again, and while so doing, and, like me, finding nobody watching her back, she seemed to recognize that she had gotten herself off track. “My big mouth,” she said. “Like you care about the stationery business.”

“It’s interesting,” I politely insisted. Fact was, I wanted to get information and head home before dark, there to transfer whatever I learned to Mackenzie who would have, by then, found out who Arthur was. I wanted to extract myself from all of it. So Emily was right. My prime concern wasn’t the woes of the small retailer.