Murder With All The Trimmings Part 21

Now she knew what that scene meant. Nate was selling drugs, probably out of his car trunk. Weed or c.o.ke? Josie had no idea. She never caught the pungent odor of pot on his clothes. He never used drugs around Josie or offered her any.

But he spent thousands on their romantic trips, dinners, and extravagant presents, all in cash. Where did the money come from? Josie never asked.

I a.s.sumed his family was rich, she thought. a.s.sumed. She remembered her fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Taylor, repeating, "When you a.s.sume, Josie, you make an a.s.s out of U and me."

I am an a.s.s, Josie thought. Maybe I should quit dating. I'm no judge of men. I'd probably think a serial killer was a nice, quiet guy and wonder what he used to grow such beautiful roses in his yard.

She took another sip of wine and was surprised to find the second gla.s.s was empty already. She was getting drunk, but it wasn't pleasant.

Enough, she decided. The last thing Amelia needed was a drunken mother. This pity party is over. Josie put down the empty winegla.s.s, corked the bottle, and stood up. Her phone rang.

It was Harry the Horrible. Josie imagined him at his desk, tufts of hair growing everywhere, including his nose, neck, and knuckles. Everywhere except on his scalp. He looked like a troll that lived under a bridge.

"Hey, Josie," he said. "I've got some work for you tomorrow afternoon. You want to mystery-shop the Vandeventer Department Stores?"

"Sure," Josie said.

"You have to buy a sweater."

"I need one," Josie said.

"Too bad. You have to buy it in West County and return it at the South County store. And you'd better hurry, Josie. I'm guessing the Vandeventer stores will close any day now."

"Then why are they hiring a mystery shopper?" Josie asked.

"How the h.e.l.l do I know?" Harry said. "I just take their money. This time I made sure I got it up front. I'll fax you the paperwork."

"Thanks, Harry," she said.

Josie saw the lights pop on at Mrs. Mueller's house. Oh, no, she thought. I forgot about the police. I'd better warn Mike about the detectives.

He answered his cell phone on the first ring. "Josie," he said, his voice cozy-warm. "How are you? How did the memorial service go?"

"It's over," she said. "It was short and sad."

"How are you?" he asked.

"I'm okay," she said.

"You don't sound okay," Mike said. "Do you want me to come over?"

So you can see me drunk and weeping for another man? No thanks. "I'd love to see you, but I'm tired, Mike. Can I have a rain check?"

"If that's how you feel." Mike sounded hurt.

"I'm sorry," Josie said. "It was an exhausting day. That's why I called you. The police were asking about you."

"I know, Josie. They've already been here. They seem to think I murdered Nate."

"Oh, no. I'm too late. I meant to call you, but things got busy and I forgot."

"You forgot? These guys want to throw my a.s.s in jail and you forgot?"

"Calm down, Mike. What did they ask you?"

"Two detectives, a young one and an old one, interviewed me about Nate's death. They asked if I was dating you. They said I had an 'altercation' with Nate shortly before he died. All I did was drive him to his hotel. You went with me."

"I told them that, Mike. They think I'm a suspect, too. I'm sure they got a colorful account from my neighbor, Mrs. Mueller."

"What was I supposed to do? Let Nate drive drunk and kill himself or, worse, some innocent person?"

"Of course not. I'm sorry. Mrs. Mueller is such a pain in the keister."

"Why do the cops take that old biddy seriously?"

"Because she's a church lady and a neighborhood fixture."

"I know exactly what kind of fixture she is," Mike said. "White porcelain."

"Mike, I'm sorry. If I had any say-so, we'd have moved away from her years ago. Mom adores her, but I can't stand the old bat."

"It's not your fault, Josie. She's an evil gossip."

"Mike, I'm really sorry," Josie said. "But things got out of hand today." She started to tell him about Amelia and Mitch, but he cut her off.

"Hey, I'm not looking for an apology."

"How's Heather?" Josie asked, hoping to change the subject.

"Delighted that her mother's store is closing soon. Doreen has been whining and complaining constantly. They're both driving me crazy."

"Sounds like you need a break. How about dinner at my place tomorrow?"

"I'll call you," Mike said, and hung up without giving her a definite answer.

Terrific, Josie thought. Nosy Mrs. Mueller is going to cost me the only decent man I've dated in ages. Unless there's something wrong with Mike, too. He does have that weird daughter and witchy ex.

Is our romance over? Josie wondered, and felt the tears well up again. He used to tell me he loved me every time he called. Sometimes he'd call just to say that.

The h.e.l.l with it. I've lived without a man before. Maybe I can invent a better one. She pushed away her sad, angry thoughts and went out to the kitchen. Amelia was sleeping with her head on the kitchen table, one hand cradling the crystal heart. Josie carefully pried it out of her daughter's hand so she wouldn't drop it, and then gently woke up Amelia.

It was ten o'clock by the time Josie got Amelia in bed, with the precious Waterford heart in an honored place on the dresser. Then Josie heated some chicken noodle soup. She took the soup and b.u.t.tered toast into her bedroom and turned on the television.

A red BREAKING NEWS banner trailed along the bottom of the screen. A chirpy blond reporter, posed in front of what looked like a garage, said, "The dead man was identified as Preston 'Mitch' Paylor, of South St. Louis. He was shot three times when he fired on police and federal agents at a UR-Storage facility near Lambert-St. Louis Airport. Another man was shot once in the leg and taken to the hospital. Police and DEA recovered more than four hundred thousand dollars in cash and drugs with a street value of nearly a million dollars from the storage unit."

Right, Josie thought. Moldy pot and cocaine nearly a decade old were worth a million bucks? I don't think so. Didn't illegal drugs have a shelf life?

Mitch's mug shot flashed on the screen. His mouth was closed to hide those ugly yellow teeth. He must have been crazy to try to fight the cops, Josie thought. He'd paid too high a price for that money.

Josie expected to feel bad at the news of Mitch's death, but she was relieved. She wouldn't have to worry anymore about that man threatening her daughter.

Amelia was safe.

There's one less lowlife in the world tonight, Josie thought. I'm not a powerless little single mom. I can call down death on my enemies.

She smiled for the first time since Nate died.

Chapter 24.

Josie felt like a postmodern woman. Yesterday she set up a man to die. Today she helped Alyce bake cookies. I am a woman of many talents, she thought. I can take the heat and stay in the kitchen.

"What do you want me to do now?" Josie asked her friend.

Alyce's kitchen was about the size of Josie's flat, but paneled in linenfold oak, like a rich person's library. Even the fridge had a paneled-oak door. The effect was handsome, but Josie wasn't sure about walls that had to be waxed and dusted.

"You can warm the apple cider in that saucepan on the stove," Alyce said. "When it simmers-that means just before it breaks into a boil-pour the cider over the currants to plump them up. They're in that blue bowl."

"Those stingy-looking raisins?" Josie asked.

"Most currants are raisins," Alyce said. "I like the ones made from the Zante grapes. They're small and tart. It will take about ten minutes to plump them up."

Josie put the pan of cider on medium heat. Alyce had pulled out the heavy artillery for her cookie-baking session, including her Martha Stewart and Williams-Sonoma cookbooks. For Josie, they might as well have been quantum physics textbooks, but Alyce reveled in complicated feats of cookery.

So far this morning, they'd baked six different kinds of cookies, including colorful candy-stripe cookie sticks, cherry tuiles, Earl Grey cookies made with real ground-up tea leaves, and black-and-white cookies. Now they were working on yet another Martha Stewart recipe for apple currant cookies. Josie thought it was unG.o.dly difficult.

"What's wrong with bringing chocolate chip cookies to the cookie exchange party?" Josie asked. "I like them."

"Everyone likes them," Alyce said.

"And they're easy to make," Josie said. "Even I can bake a good chocolate chip cookie."

"That's why I can't bring them. They're too easy. We have to bring cookies that show some culinary skill. They have to look like little works of art on the serving plates."

"So this isn't really a cookie exchange, it's a bake-off," Josie said.

"It's a show-off," Alyce said. "Remember Shirley, who lived in my subdivision for about three months?"

"Shirley with the orange hair and the gold tennis shoes?"

"That's the one. She begged for an invitation to the Wood Winds cookie exchange. Her husband was a big-deal broker and she wanted to be accepted here. She knew the cookie exchange was one of the ways into Wood Winds society. We're one of the last groups of full-time homemakers in the area, and we still follow the old ways.

"Shirley brought slice-and-bake sugar cookies with walnut halves stuck in them. They were broken walnuts, too, probably from the generic bin. She never lived down the scandal. The neighbors cut her dead and canceled her kid's play dates. She and her husband sold the house at a loss and moved a month later."

"So you're making show cookies," Josie said, "even though everyone would rather eat chocolate chips?"

"That's pretty much it," Alyce said. She had lined up unsalted b.u.t.ter, flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and brown sugar on the counter like a culinary army. The nutmeg grater looked like a tiny s.p.a.ceship. Josie watched her friend deftly sift the flour, baking soda, and spices together into a smooth white-brown mound.

"Josie," Alyce said. "That man who was killed in the shoot-out at the storage locker late yesterday. The TV said his name was Mitch. Was he the Mitch who threatened Amelia?"

"Yes," Josie said.

"The guy who got shot in the leg was named Harvey. Was he the drunk who sang 'Frosty the Deadman' at Nate's memorial service?"

"That's him," Josie said.

"Remind me not to tick you off," Alyce said. "You got rid of two guys in less than twelve hours."

"I didn't do anything to them," Josie said.

"You tipped off the police, didn't you?" Alyce said. "That's why you had the sudden urge for pizza. There's a pay phone at the California Pizza Kitchen entrance of the Galleria, one of the few left. Most of the pay phones at the hospitals and the airport are gone."

"You must think I'm awful," Josie said.

"Honey, if some creep threatened my son, I wouldn't wait for the cops. I'd kill him myself."

Alyce used some weird paddle device on her mixer to beat the cookie dough into submission. "You did the right thing-and you left the shooting to the professionals," Alyce said. "Are you worried this Harvey creep will rat you out?"

Josie swallowed her laughter. Alyce's "rat you out" sounded hilarious amid her Williams-Sonoma perfection. "No. Harvey will probably suffer a severe attack of amnesia. I'm betting that he'll claim Mitch invited him to the storage unit to help him move furniture or something. Besides, there's nothing to connect me-no fingerprints, no DNA, fibers, or hair. I've never been to that storage unit, and I wiped the key before I gave it to Mitch. That money is at least ten years old and Nate is dead."

"Do you think Mitch or Harvey killed Nate?" Alyce said.

"With poisoned chocolate? Too chancy. Nate rarely ate sweets. Besides, he bought that chocolate snowman for Amelia."

"OmiG.o.d," Alyce said. "If you'd let Nate give her that cake, she'd be-"

"Dead," Josie finished. "The thought still gives me nightmares. Thank goodness Nate was drunk and I didn't let him in the house. These currants look about as plump as they're going to get."

"Good. Drain the cider down the sink and put the currants in the bowl with the rolled oats. Now you can shred one of those apples with the box grater. It's in the third cabinet on the right, second shelf."

Josie opened the cabinet and pulled out a round yellow plastic device with an odd metal oval in the middle.

"What's this?" she asked. "An ice hockey mask?"

"It's a mango pitter," Alyce said. "Those big seeds are hard to remove."

"They make my life miserable," Josie said.

"Come on," Alyce said. "I bet a mango has never crossed your threshold."

"Maplewood is the mango capital of the Midwest," Josie said. "Ah, this looks like a box grater." She pulled out a squarish metal item covered with sharp steel warts.

Alyce handed her the bowl of dough. "Start shredding the apple into this," she said. "Be careful to avoid the seeds and core."