Murder Among Friends Read online

People must have to trust interpreters implicitly. I trusted Maude, but I was still frustrated by not knowing what was being said.

  Call it the accountant in me.

  Maude went to the door, held it open, and said something else to Mrs. Maldonado, who replied and nodded again. She smiled at me before she left, and said something I could understand, since it was in heavily accented English.

  "Thank you."

  "You're welcome. I hope you find him."

  Maude translated one last time before returning to the kitchen. I watched as Mrs. Maldonado went down the steps, clutching the railing. At the bottom, she transferred her hands to the front of her cardigan, fisting the sweater and pulling it close to her.

  In all the time we've lived here, Mrs. Maldonado had never come to our house. Not once had she ever asked me for anything, remaining hidden behind her hedges. Love had pushed her out of her isolation, and it made me want to go and search for Pedro myself.

  Sally bumped the back of my knee with her nose, as if to remind me I had a pet of my own.

  At the same time, I couldn't help but wonder if Mrs. Maldonado had some taxine to spare. I wouldn't have pegged her for a killer, but I could be wrong. I hadn't seen Paul as someone to prey on older women, although Army had seen that from the first.

  Was Talbot looking at her as a suspect? Another question in a sea of them.

  We returned to my office and I grabbed one of Sally's bones from the ceramic jar with her name on it.

  "Only one," I said, and her eyebrows rose. She smirked a little, as if to say she could talk me out of another, but I left the office, intent on yet another chore.

  I put together a suitcase and a hanging bag for Tom, my last wifely duty before hiring my own divorce attorney. I was tempted to buy a box of condoms and throw them in with his shaving stuff, but decided that would be too tacky.

  But I did go into Tom’s dressing room with a pair of manicure scissors, wondering if I had the courage to cut the crotches out of his pants. I didn't, but seams cringed.

  No one could fault the way I packed for him, putting together his favorite shirts and ties, and selecting five of his black suits. As I stood in his closet, I realized that my soon to be ex-husband had the wardrobe of an undertaker.

  Tom, however, looked good in black.

  My phone played Mother & Child Reunion, a ringtone Barbara had programmed. I hadn't the heart to change it, the same way I'd saved all her messages on .wav files.

  I didn't want to answer, but I did.

  29

  "Jennifer, have you given any thought to Barbara's stone yet?"

  “Hello, Mother, how are you?”

  “Well, have you?”

  "She's buried at Memorial Cemetery, Mother. They don't allow stones. Just little brass plaques in the grass."

  Barbara's said: Beloved Daughter.

  I'd only been there twice, and twice I'd wished Tom had agreed on a cremation. If he had, I would have sprinkled her ashes over the Hill Country, a beautiful part of South Texas. Tom, however, had listened to my mother, who'd been horrified at the idea. My father had been cremated and my mother had never forgiven him for leaving instructions to be cast to the winds near the 18th green of the Fair Oaks Ranch golf course.

  She’d moved to Houston in protest.

  For weeks I thanked my father in absentia.

  She would have liked, I think, to be the grieving widow, leaning against a stone angel and bravely dabbing at her tears. Now she could be the grieving grandmother, if she'd ever allowed herself to actually be called a grandmother, of course. The closest she would come to it was Gran and that grudgingly.

  "You'll just have to change their minds."

  I didn't say anything.

  My mother didn't have Alzheimer's or any other type of dementia. She just lived in her own little world, one of her own making. Perfect, inviolate, where no one was rude and everyone followed rules she devised. Whenever anyone didn't act according to her dictates, she simply ignored them, sailing past them with the insouciance of the QE2.

  "You should insist, dear," she said.

  Don't you roll your eyes at me! How many times had I heard that as a child? Enough to get a great deal of juvenile satisfaction over doing it now.

  "Yes, Mother," I said. "Thank you for the reminder."

  "You know I love you, dear." A comment she made every time we talked.

  "I love you, too, Mother." Wash, rinse. Repeat.

  "I just want what's best for you."

  How was insisting on a stone the best for me? Oh, no, that wasn't a question I was going to ask.

  "Tom is worried about you, dear."

  My temper rose, but I cautioned myself not to overreact. Sometimes, my mother said that when she hadn't talked to Tom at all. I suspected this was one of those times.

  "He said you've been going through a difficult time after your friend's death."

  Well, that comment proved me wrong, didn't it?

  "Mother, if you have any questions, I'd prefer you ask me, rather than listen to Tom."

  The comment surprised both of us. I wasn't used to standing up to my mother. Normally, our conversation went like this: she said something implausible or ridiculous and I agreed with her. It was easier that way, especially in the last nine months.

  "He thinks your fixation on murder is unhealthy."

  "Does he?" I said, gripping the phone too tightly.

  "It's because of Barbara, isn't it?"

  My mother was the Giver of All Advice, but compassion was not listed among her social skills. Maybe it was because she truly liked to be the center of attention, and compassion deflected that attention onto someone else.

  "No, Mother. Evelyn's death had nothing to do with Barbara."

  "You're deliberately twisting my words, dear. I meant your inability to accept Evelyn's death is closely tied to your inability to accept Barbara's death."

  What part of her death had I not accepted? The fact she would never be here again? I'd never hear her singing, the sound of her voice echoing in this lovely old house? Or maybe the fact that I'd find her in the Winter Parlor on the floor, a euphoric smile on her face, and knew that somehow, somewhere, she'd found a way to get more heroin? Or the fact that she'd never get beyond that hell, never grow, never mature? Never become the woman I knew she could have been?

  How damn miserable could a sixteen year old be to want to float along in a drug-induced haze all day? She'd attended a private school where her grades had been good until that last year. She had anything she wanted, including a car, money, and the slavish adoration of a father who thought she could do nothing wrong. What was so damn miserable about her life?

  What part of that hadn't I accepted?

  Rage coiled in my stomach, pushed upward to hover at the base of my throat. I couldn't give voice to all those barbed-wire words. Words could make you bleed, could rip at your heart. I knew they lingered long after apologies were made and contrition surfaced. For that reason, I bit them back.

  "I have to go, Mother," I said.

  "But, really, Jennifer, to involve yourself in murder? Is that really the proper thing to do?"

  "It's Evelyn, Mother."

  She hadn't liked Evelyn because Evelyn was different. A little odd, definitely her own woman. But, then, Evelyn had understood my mother from the beginning and hadn't bought into her little attention dramas.

  Something in my voice must have alerted her, because she didn't continue her theme. Instead, she switched to talking about Tom.

  Her voice lowered, quavered for effect. I rolled my eyes again. "He loves you, Jennifer. He's been a rock since Barbara died." Here, my mother segued into tears about Barbara. It used to nearly destroy me to hear her weep for my daughter. Now, it felt like a commercial I had to endure before the program started again.

  That thought was so startling I didn't pay any attention at all to what she was saying, and only came back in mid-rant.

  "Did Tom tell you he was having an affair?" />
  I was tempted to use the F word with my mother, but I'd never hear the end of it. My mother was seventy-three, but she had the heart of an ox. Her mother was ninety-five, and my great-grandmother had lived to be a hundred. I could just envision twenty plus years of lectures about saying "fuck" in one conversation.

  My mother made a sound like a gasp. I wondered if she were dressed to the nines as she normally was, setting the dress code for the assisted living community in Houston. If she were true to form, she was wearing gold earrings, her makeup carefully applied, down to the red, red lipstick. I could almost see her lips in an O of surprise, her false eyelashes beating a drum solo against her cheeks.

  She'd always been more partial to men than to women, even among her children. My brother, Jim, had died at a young age from surgery complications, so she was stuck with me. But I had Tom, and by extension, so did she.

  I hoped they'd be very happy without me in the picture.

  "I don't believe it," she was saying, a comment I heard almost as if there was a time delay in our conversation.

  "He is, Mother. Didn't he tell you about the divorce?"

  Another O of surprise, followed by shocked silence.

  I waited.

  "Oh, dear God, Jennifer, couldn't you talk to someone?"

  "As in a therapist?"

  "Sometimes, I've heard they can help."

  My best friend had been murdered, my husband was having an affair, and we were getting a divorce. Add the fact that the bodies were piling up on Nevil Avenue. How could a therapist help with that?

  "Tom's right," she said, an unsurprising comment. "You're not acting yourself." She'd always taken Tom's side. Whenever we had an argument, and it looked as if I wasn't going to budge, he'd end up calling my mother.

  I'd never realized, until just this minute, how much that had always annoyed me.

  "I love you, Mother," I said, before doing something I'd never done. I cut her off mid-breath.

  When the phone warbled Paul Simon again, I ignored it.

  "Life is a sandwich," Evelyn had said one day. "You can see both sides of it, but it's the middle that's a mystery. You never know if someone added mustard or mayonnaise, or - God forbid - a pickle."

  "I take it you don't like pickles," I said, leaning back in the rattan period chairs I'd bought for the gazebo. The seats were well padded with all-weather pillows in a banana leaf print. In front of the chairs were rattan ottomans. A small table between us was crowded with a tray boasting a pitcher of margaritas, and two bowls, one filled with limes and the other one.

  "I know people who are pickles," she said, pouring us each other margarita. "Don't you?"

  "I must," I said, saluting her with my green tinted glass.

  As I pocketed my phone, I realized my mother was one of my pickles.

  I was feeling remarkably well, all things considered.

  When Maude peered into the room, I smiled at her.

  She nodded, her face curiously sober. "Dorothy Chanson is downstairs. She wants to see you."

  I turned back to my packing. "I don't want to see her."

  "She says she won't leave without speaking to you."

  The last thing I wanted was Dorothy the Undead camping on my doorstep. The old Jennifer would have simply given in, anything but be impolite. God forbid I be rude.

  "Make her comfortable, then, Maude. Give her a pillow and a blanket, ask her what she wants for breakfast, because I'm not talking to her."

  Another pickle in the garbage.

  Maude looked surprised, but she nodded, turning and leaving without another word.

  I finished gathering up Tom's things, closed the suitcase and stepped away from the bed.

  An hour later, when I entered the kitchen, I stopped abruptly at the door.

  Claire was sitting at my kitchen table, eating a piece of Maude's chocolate cake. I didn't know what irritated me more: the fact that she looked at home or the cake.

  "Tom sent you to get his things," I said, understanding immediately.

  She put her fork down, blotted her mouth, gestures done with such refinement, grace, and lack of haste that my temper ratcheted up a few notches.

  "He's in court."

  "Of course he is."

  I sent an irritated glance in Maude's direction, but she turned and began chopping onions. I hate onions, but I guess that doesn't count.

  I walked slowly to the cupboard, wishing I wasn't limping a little. I'd like to bop her with my Tweety Bird cane. Instead, I pulled out a glass, filled it from the pitcher of water on the counter, and took my time drinking it.

  Only then did I turn and face Claire again, my equilibrium slightly restored, my temper still simmering.

  Claire only sat with hands on her lap, half her cake untouched. Women like Claire didn't lust for chocolate. They ate like anorexic birds.

  I would have devoured the whole damn thing.

  "I'm trying to help, Jennifer. This is hard on Tom."

  Poor Tom. Poor Tom, who had Claire as a sounding board. Had he told her he blamed me? Had he cried on her shoulder?

  I knew, suddenly, that it wasn't Mary Lynn after all, but Claire who had consoled my husband.

  "Just what kind of idiot does Tom take me for?" I asked.

  Maude glanced at me.

  "Get out, Claire."

  She stood. "I'm just trying to help," she said.

  "You're not helping. You're making everything worse. Or do you think I don't know?"

  "Don't make this any harder on Tom than you already have, Jennifer."

  I held the empty glass in my right hand. I could almost imagine my fingers sinking into the glass rather than throwing it at her. Or turn, smash it in half, and go after her with the shards.

  The problem was I didn't want to fight for Tom. For my dignity, yes. For my pride, yes, again. But for Tom? Not so much.

  What a deal. Claire got the boss and the great salary. I got the recriminations and the guilt.

  I turned to Maude. "Will you show Claire where the suitcases are?" I wanted to warn Maude not to help her, but I knew she was as fond of Tom as she was me. Fine. Let the two of them schlep the bags out themselves.

  Once I heard them leave the kitchen, I sagged against the edge of the sink.

  30

  Two days later, I sat at the kitchen table, for once not filled with Maude's culinary masterpieces. Sally moved to put her chin on my left sneaker, anchoring me in place. The heater clicked on, a surprisingly homey sound.

  "You'll be having something hot," Maude said, stirring her homemade soup. Chicken with rice, from the smell of it.

  Something turned in my chest. A worm, maybe. I was damned tired of being timid.

  What the hell.

  "I'm not eating anything with onions," I said.

  She turned and gave me a smile. "No onions."

  What was I going to do when she left? I really didn't need anyone here all day anymore, although it was lovely not to have to clean and cook. Could I even afford her wages after the divorce? I made a mental note to ask Army if he knew a good divorce attorney, someone who didn't like Tom, preferably.

  The last eight months had been made more bearable by Maude's presence.

  The last eight months.

  My finger stilled in the act of tracing a line on the white table. It was over fifty years old, and cracks were a sign of how many meals it had seen over the years.

  Evelyn had met Paul in February. Maude had come to us in March. Was I seeing things that weren't there?

  My stomach iced over.

  Maude had admitting to living in Arizona.

  I took a deep breath and steadied my voice. "How did you come to San Antonio, Maude?"

  I couldn't look at her when I asked. Instead, I made a point of bending below the table to pet Sally. Her tongue lolled out of her mouth and she licked my fingers half-heartedly. I scratched her between the ears, then straightened.

  Maude had turned and was looking at me, one hand holding a big
wooden spoon, the other tucked into the pocket of her apron.

  "My husband had family here," she said, her eyes never leaving mine.

  "You never talk about your husband."

  If nothing else, I should have read her application. I didn't even know the agency that sent her. Tom had made all the arrangements.

  "Married happily for four years," she said. "And mother to three children from Pat's first marriage."

  Now, I felt guilty about those times when Maude stayed late. "Is that how you came to be such a good cook?"

  She shook her head. "I've always liked to cook," she said. "Pat's kids are in high school. They'd be just as happy with french fries and burgers as anything else."

  She smiled, and I smiled back, ashamed at thinking the worst of her, even for a few moments.

  I was seeing murderers everywhere I turned: Dorothy, who'd never completely left my personal list. Now, Maude, who'd done nothing wrong other than living in Arizona. I'd even fleetingly been suspicious of Frank, whose only sin had been to know a great deal about acetylene tanks. The only person I hadn't suspected was Tom, and I really didn't think he'd killed anyone. Murder might ruin his chances for a judgeship.

  I still didn't know where the money was. I put in a call to Talbot, got his voice mail again, and wondered if he ever answered his phone. We'd been playing telephone tag for days. I left another message for him to call me.

  The soup was as good as it smelled, and I ate two bowls of it. Maude declined to eat with me, saying she'd already sampled enough as she'd cooked.

  After she left the kitchen, intent on her dusting chores, I stood, taking my bowl to the sink. I looked out the window, peering above Maude's herbal pots. Maybe they were the secret to her great cooking. All I knew was she grew her own herbs, refusing to use dried spices, and they were arrayed on the windowsill like so many clay soldiers.

  The view from the window was of the side yard and beyond to Linda's house.

  It was easy to judge a neighbor based on outward appearances. The way he kept his lawn, the type of dog he had, and how the dog was trained, whether or not the yard was neat.

  We all revealed our secret selves in our backyards. Me, with my gazebo. Evelyn with the guest cottage transformed into Paul's studio. Army, with his pool, and Linda with her gardener's shed and its platform for her garbage cans.