Spawn With the Wind, page 5
part #5 of Matchmaker Marriage Mysteries Series
My heart rate sped up at the thought. I slipped my hand into my purse and touched my taser, just to make sure it was still there. It made me feel better to know I had quick access to it, but I noticed that my heart was still racing.
Calm down, darlin’, I told myself. The killer probably wasn’t any of these folks. Annie was murdered during a burglary. I needed to find the burglars, and then I would find the killer. Simple as sipping a mint julip on a summer day with a sweet, lazy breeze blowin’ on the front porch.
I focused on the room again. Were any of these folks burglars? I knew about half of the people in the room. They were all older residents who I had met either at Tea Time, Saladz, Bird’s Hair Salon, or at Bridget’s church. But maybe their social security checks weren’t covering their nuts anymore. Maybe they had to succumb to stealing from their neighbors in order to make ends meet.
I slapped my thigh. Holy crap, I was a natural at this! Move over Miss Marple. There’s a new genius detective in town. I was on fire with my detectiving talent. I had found my calling. I was going to solve this mystery for Gladie and get her back on her feet. I might even get a medal. Scratch that. I wouldn’t want a medal. It would ruin my outfits.
It was time for action. All of this ruminating was just making me anxious and getting me nowhere. Now that I understood that I was standing in a room, surrounded by probable burglars/murderers, I needed to make my move.
I decided to start with the funeral director. After welcoming everyone, he took his place in the corner with his hands clasped loosely in front of him. He presided over the wake, like a security camera, moving his head from side to side slowly, as if he was scanning every inch in a calm, meticulous manner. Still, it didn’t seem like he was focused too intently on the people. He was more of an only-for-show kind of security camera than a real one.
Everything about him seemed like it was for show. He was dressed like a funeral director, groomed like a funeral director. He even had a funeral director’s posture.
He looked like he was taken from Central Casting. He wasn’t on my suspect list, but I knew he could give me vital information about who should be on my suspect list.
“Hello, Mr…” I said, sauntering over to him.
“Moses Batalla. I am the funeral director. I’m so sorry for your loss.”
I waved off his well-wishes. “Oh, that. Whatever. You get lots of these? Wakes of someone killed during a robbery?”
He blinked rapidly, like something suddenly flew into his eye, and his hands dropped to his sides. “Uh, no. This is our first such loved one who has moved on to a better place.”
I touched his upper arm. “Oh, darlin’, if that better place doesn’t have a Neiman Marcus and a day spa, I don’t think it’s any better. What do you know about Annie? Any inside information on her murder?”
He stepped away from my touch, backing up two steps until his back was against the wall. “We at Cannes Funerals do not talk about the private lives of our passed on loved ones. That would be inappropriate. I’m sure there will be information in her obituary. In the meantime, I urge you to enjoy the buffet and commiserate with the other mourners.”
“How lovely, darlin’,” I said. I had been trained at a very young age on how to mow someone down with a compliment. It was my southern charm, which doubled as southern aggression. I was deadly with a smile and a kind word.
“I must congratulate you on this wonderful, delightful wake that you’ve organized, Mr. Batalla. How you managed this so last minute is beyond my abilities at comprehension. You are quite simply a wizard at your profession. A credit to funeral directors everywhere.”
His cheeks turned a light shade of pink.
“Oh, we’re always prepared. It’s what we do. I’ve been in this business for twenty years. I could set up a wake with my eyes closed, if you want to know the truth.”
His face dropped with worry, and he looked around, probably to see if anyone had heard him. He had let go of his professional demeanor for just a second, and it bothered him.
I touched his arm again. “Oh, darlin’, the first time I laid eyes on you, I knew you were a top funeral director. I’ll definitely have my funeral here.”
His face lifted, and he stepped closer to me. “Over there are the deceased’s son and husband. Her bridge club showed up, too. I think one of them is her cousin. I don’t know about the rest. As you mentioned, it’s been a pretty fast turnaround.”
I thanked him and sauntered to the family members. I knew a lot of wallflowers at parties. Bridget, for example, had no idea how to do small talk, unless it had something to do with toxic capitalism or toxic masculinity infringing on women’s rights, but I was the queen of small talk. I could small talk the hell out of anyone.
I made a beeline for John Benoit Junior. He was a tall man. His face pudgy, swollen, and pale, like John had eaten way too much dairy in his life. I liked dairy, too, but the second my slingbacks pinched my toes, dairy was the first thing to go from my diet. No cheese for a week and I take five years off my biological clock. It was like a miracle.
I grabbed his hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. “I’m terribly sorry for your loss, John. What a needless tragedy. I’m here for you, whatever you want.”
I hated when folks said that. I’m here for you. It didn’t mean a thing. Nobody in a time of dire straits and shock reached out to others. They needed support shoved in their face. They needed friends and family to show up, not to be there for you. So, that’s the thing I said because I wasn’t really there for John Benoit Junior. I was there for Gladie. Showing up for Gladie.
His head cocked to the side, as if he was trying to figure out who I was. Good luck, Junior. You’ve never met me before. “Thank you for your kind words. It’s a tragedy.”
He didn’t ask who I was. He just pretended we knew each other. That was good. Jessica Fletcher would have run with that.
“What’s the world coming to?” I asked, and didn’t wait for him to answer. “One minute we live in an idyllic town, and the next minute, crazed burglars intent on murder are ransacking the neighborhood. Soon, we’ll need to walk around with machine guns just to get to the dry cleaners. Am I right?”
He nodded slightly, and I gave his hand another squeeze. “Darlin’, I bet you didn’t see this comin’ at all. No one ever thinks they’re going to be the next one hit. Any idea who did this?”
He pulled his hand back and wiped it on the side of his leg. “The police are searching for the culprits.”
“So, there was more than one?” I asked, and mentally jotted down that note for Gladie. My first clue!
“They’re assuming.”
That made sense. How else could they pull off so many robberies? They would need help.
“The crazy part is that we were both here when it happened,” a man standing next to Junior told me.
He was tall, just like Junior. There was a resemblance, minus the dairy. I gave him my hand. “Charmed,” I said. “Mr…”
“Benoit. John Benoit. I’m John Junior’s father and Annie’s ex-husband.”
Ex-husband. “You say you two were here at the funeral parlor when she was attacked this morning?”
“Yes. We were here for a funeral. Annie was on her way. She was running a little late. After a while, we assumed she had decided to stay at home.”
I put my hand on my chest. “Oh, my,” I breathed. “Fate is a cruel master. Just think, if she had gone with you or you had stayed back to go together, she would still be with us.”
Junior flinched, and Senior visibly clenched his jaw. I had said too much, too soon, hoping to elicit more of a reaction, maybe to get them to talk about who the burglars were, but instead, they clammed up and moved on to talk to other mourners.
I was no closer to solving the mystery than when I started. What had I learned so far? There were at least two burglars, instead of one. Junior and Senior were at a funeral when it happened.
Why did that sound so familiar? I snapped my fingers when I remembered. The other burglaries happened during funerals, too. I eyed the funeral director. He had returned to his corner and was eyeing the proceedings in a distracted manner. He was a definite suspect. I was going to have to call Gladie and let her know.
I made another tour of the room. When I got to the buffet table, a woman in a business suit was filling her plate with cheese balls. Ugh. More dairy. But her face didn’t look like she ate too much dairy. Her face looked like she did Power Yoga and thirty minutes on a stair machine every day.
“Sorry,” she told me, gesturing at her plate of cheese. “Starving. I thought I was going out to lunch today when I heard what happened.”
“I totally understand. I had to change my plans, too. What a shock.”
“Oh, definitely. The actuary tables gave Ms. Benoit at least another fifteen years. She never touched alcohol or cigarettes her entire life. And she never went out into the sun. All of her activities were indoors.”
“Oh, really?” I asked like I wasn’t very interested, but I leaned in close to her. “I’m Lucy. Acquaintance of the family.”
“Oh, hi. I’m Mary Kay Polk. Insurance manager. I insured Annie.”
Ding. Ding. Ding. What had Gladie mentioned this morning? Something about Annie coming to her about strange burial insurance calls? Yes, that’s right. The calls were freaking her out, making her believe that her days were numbered. I wondered if Mary Kay handled burial insurance.
“Life insurance? Home insurance?” I asked her.
“Everything. We cover birth to death.” She looked around to make sure no one could hear. “But Ms. Benoit didn’t have life insurance. A lot of people that age let it drop because their children are grown. You know, that kind of thing. But she had good home insurance. And car.”
“Good home insurance? Is that right?”
She nodded. “Yes, we’ll pay out for her stolen jewelry with no problem.”
“Is that what the burglars got? Her jewelry?”
“Cleaned her out.”
I let her eat a few more cheese balls, and then I asked her what I wanted to ask her. “Do you do burial insurance?”
“Yep. Birth to death.”
“I heard that Annie had been getting calls for burial insurance during her final days. Was that you?”
Mary Kay’s mouth dropped open, giving me a good look at her half-chewed cheese ball. “She already had burial insurance through us. Was someone else trying to move in on our business? Did you hear what company it was?”
I told her I hadn’t. Drat. Another clue dashed.
Stepping outside, I called Gladie. Zelda answered for her. “Hello, Lucy,” she said. “Gladie can’t come to the phone right now. She’s still blind and afraid of electricity.”
“Oh,” I said. Lawd, blind days were traumatic. I hoped Gladie would get over here quickly. It made me want to catch the killer even more. “Did you give her Pop-Tarts? She revives with Pop-Tarts when she’s upset.”
“Spencer tried giving her some, but she said she wasn’t in the mood.”
I gasped and put my hand over my mouth. This was serious. “Is it that bad? She doesn’t even want the S’mores Pop-Tarts?”
“Spencer is bringing back Chik’n Lik’n. Mashed potatoes and extra gravy usually help.”
Chik’n Lik’n. Those were the big guns. I hoped it worked. “Let her know that I’m hot on the trail of Annie’s killer.” I gave Zelda the rundown on the wake, and she passed on the information to Gladie while we were on the phone. “I’m not giving up. I’ve got a few leads.”
“Meryl called, too,” Zelda told me. “She found a couple who got burgled, too. They took their televisions and her mixer. Basically, everything that plugged in.”
She gave me more information about the other victims of crime and I hung up. I hadn’t given Gladie much hope on the solving the mystery front. It was the first time I was going solo on a case, and I wasn’t getting far very fast. What should I do next? I needed to find the burglar or burglars.
How could I do that?
My phone rang. It was Bridget, and I answered.
“Lucy? Lucy? Is that you?” She was whispering, and I could barely make out what she was saying.
“It’s me. Are you all right?”
“I have big news, Lucy. Big news. I’m going to blow the top off this whole thing. But I need your help. Can you meet me? Do you still have your black ski cap and your taser?”
“Oh, boy, do I!”
Chapter 6
Sister Cyril
I tried not to yawn. My lips tried to pull apart to let my mouth open and give way to a long, satisfying yawn, but I clamped them together as tight as I could. It wasn’t easy to hold back a yawn in these circumstances. It was downright torture. But as the Mother Superior, I had a lot of experience with self-discipline. It sort of came with the job.
I was in a meeting. We had a lot of meetings at the convent. We never used to have meetings before, but someone somewhere decided that meetings were very important, and so now we had constant meetings. We had so many meetings these days that we had to build a boardroom in the convent right where we used to do vespers. Darned progress. It was a drain.
There were six of us in this meeting. Four nuns, the local priest, and me. Two of the nuns were quite aged and even more stuck in their ways than I was. They loved vespers and therefore doubly hated meetings. I suspected that the other two Sisters enjoyed meetings because it got them out of kitchen duty. Normally they were in charge of the kitchen, and they were more than competent both in cleaning and cooking, but they had a certain attitude that went with it. An attitude that said they would have preferred to get a subscription to Hello Fresh than make one more pot of soup and fresh sourdough.
The Father loved meetings. It was his favorite thing to do, except for playing poker with Harry at his and Lucy’s home every Tuesday. That was the only day of the week, lately, when we didn’t have meetings. Every other day, Father Ted found some reason to call a meeting. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I had fallen asleep a handful of times during them.
I willed myself to stay awake now because a Mother Superior should never fall asleep during a meeting. I think it’s the eleventh commandment. But how not to fall asleep when the Father was determined to go on and on in a monotone about binding women’s feet. No, that wasn’t right. Not feet binding. Bookbinding. Yes, he was talking about bookbinding. Maybe I really did fall asleep for just a second.
My name’s Sister Cyril, and I’m Mother Superior of the Convent and of Cannes’ women’s shelter. I considered helping women out of their struggles as doing God’s work, and I felt privileged to be able to do it. I had been running the shelter for twenty years, and I had seen a lot of suffering. I thought about those poor, battered, abused women as I sat in the interminable meeting, feeling like a kindred spirit.
“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” Father Ted said happily. Then, his face turned down. “Satan!” he shouted, and my Sisters and I jumped in our seats, out of our collective stupor.
I looked around the room, especially behind me. I didn’t see Satan. “Excuse me, Father?” I asked.
“The devil! Beelzebub! Satan! We’ve got a problem with it, as you all know.”
“That’s our job,” one of the older nuns grumbled. “That’s why we’re wearing these hot habits on a warm spring day. We spread the gospel, and we fight Satan.”
As a reflex, we all crossed ourselves.
Father Ted gave her a big smile. “Yes, so what if I were to tell you that we have a new weapon in our arsenal against the devil? What if I told you that we now have at our fingertips to drive Satan out of the souls of our afflicted parishioners? And not just our parishioners. Parishioners around the world.”
We all leaned forward, waiting for him to tell us what this amazing advancement could be.
“Skype,” he said with a flourish. “Skype is the answer to all of our prayers.”
“Is Skype still around?” one of the younger Sisters asked. “I thought Zoom took over.”
“My grandmother still uses Skype,” the other young Sister said.
The Father looked up at the ceiling and tapped his chin. “I suppose Zoom could work, but we know that Skype works. So, let’s just stick with Skype.”
There was a pause, and I hoped that the meeting was over, but I knew he hadn’t told us how Skype was going to defeat the Devil. So, contrary to my own wishes, I asked him to clarify.
“Oh, yes, Sister Cyril. I’m sorry. I wasn’t quite clear there, was I?”
I pretended to giggle softly, letting him off the hook for going nowhere—once again—with our meeting.
He cleared his throat and sat up in his chair. He waved his arms in a most dramatic fashion. “Exorcisms by Skype,” he announced with a flourish, as if he was writing it out in the air. “It works!”
“Exorcisms by Skype?” one of the older Sisters asked. “Exorcisms by Skype? Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle. Is this being ordered by the Holy See?”
Father Ted cleared his throat. “Not exactly. It’s more of a local endeavor. But it’s working. Working! It’s been a huge payoff for Riverside County. Not only are they doing their own Riverside exorcisms this way, but because of the nature of Skype, they started to branch out halfway to Las Vegas. It’s bringing in so much in funds that they’ve begun work on a new stained-glass window for their chapel. Now, Sisters, I do not have to remind you that our abbey desperately needs a new wing. We can’t possibly do with only one wing.”
I sighed. So, that’s what it was about. A new wing on the abbey. The abbey consisted of Father Ted and a part-time housekeeper. I couldn’t imagine what he wanted with a whole new wing. But it was no sweat off my brow. Nuns didn’t do exorcisms. It had nothing to do with us. Actually, it was a huge relief that his attention was fixed on exorcisms, even if they were remote exorcisms done for a profit. That would give us more time to do what we were supposed to do. It was all I had to keep the convent going and help battered women at our shelter. I didn’t have time for the problems of abbeys and wings.
