Motherhood is Murder Read online

  “It’s okay. You did great. Good stuff to go on.” I raised my eyebrow at her. “I never knew you had a thing for married men. I promise I won’t tell your husband. Unless . . . I wonder how much my silence is worth to you . . .”

  Paula jogged my elbow. “Don’t be a twit. That lie was only to elicit her feelings of camaraderie. If this tape surfaces on the Internet, I know where to find you.”

  I laughed, then hugged her. “You’re the best. Thank you for suffering for me.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Okay, okay, you don’t have to slobber all over me. Just keep in mind that you owe me one.”

  That evening I tried my hand at chicken cacciatore, pulling the recipe straight from the library cookbook with the only modification being that I liberally splashed wine into the pot.

  While tasting the sauce, Mom called me and reported that her doctor had given her a referral to Dr. Lipe and she had scored an appointment for the morning. We agreed she would come straight to my house after the visit.

  I dialed Margaret and left another message.

  While waiting for the chicken to finish cooking, I typed up the tape from Paula and e-mailed it to Gary’s office then called it a day.

  Dejected, I sat down to dinner.

  “Honey! This is outstanding,” Jim raved.

  “Glad you like it.” I was holding Laurie and staring into her beautiful little face.

  How could she be so complete and so tiny at the same time?

  “What’s wrong, honey?” Jim asked.

  I picked at the chicken and sighed. “I’m bummed that I’m not making more progress on the case. I wanted to solve it before Thanksgiving and just have a peaceful holiday with you guys.”

  Jim squeezed me hand. “Don’t worry, honey, if you fail at the PI biz, you can still make me chicken cacciatore anytime.”

  I cleared the plates and kicked Jim on my way to the kitchen.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Talking

  To Do:

  1. Why would anyone poison Celia?

  2. Where is Margaret?

  3. Must get house in order for Thanksgiving! (in progress).

  4. Shop, cook, clean (in progress).

  5. ?

  6.

  7. Pick up exercise regimen after the holiday.

  The following afternoon, I was busy trimming a keepsake lock from Laurie when Mom showed up on my doorstep with a little swagger in her step.

  I ushered her into the house and showed her the lock of hair I’d placed in the delicate pink ballerina box Paula had brought Laurie from Paris.

  “Oh! It’s darling!” She rubbed Laurie’s cheeks and cooed at her. Laurie watched Mom’s face and stuck her little puppy tongue out.

  I’d read that this is an infant’s way of communicating. They’re trying to imitate the way a mouth moves during speech. They even take turns, watching you first, as though they are having a conversation with you.

  Mom laughed and proceeded to stick her tongue out at Laurie. Laurie rolled her tongue and gurgled. Mom did the same. Pretty soon I had a couple of drooling fools on my hands.

  “Did you find anything out from Alan?” I asked.

  “Maybe,” Mom said with a smug look on her face. “Listen to the tape. It’s in my purse. Oh, and bring me my Cheaters. I want to cut some of Laurie’s hair for me, too.”

  I grabbed the recorder and handed Mom her glasses. She immediately went into action and clipped the only remaining long hair Laurie had.

  Laurie was beginning to lose the hair on the back of her head and I feared she’d go completely bald before I could save some baby hair. But now after the radical hair-cut Mom had given her, I wondered if it had been a wise decision.

  I pressed the Play button on the device.

  Mom: Good morning. I have an appointment with Dr. Lipe. Is that you, Joan?

  Joan: Vera! How are you? I didn’t make the connection that it was you!

  I pressed Stop on the recorder and raised my hands to Mom. “You know her?”

  Mom laughed. “Isn’t that a coincidence? I met her a few weeks ago at a dinner party. I told you about her. She’s the lady who wanted to take home some leftover crackers, remember?”

  “I can’t believe you know her.” I pressed Play again on the recorder.

  Joan: Let me take you right in.

  Sounds of a door opening and shuffling.

  “This next part is my visit with the doctor. He gave me a good solution for my bunions.”

  I pressed Stop on the recording. “Let me guess. You need an orthotic.”

  “Yes!” Mom said excitedly.

  “Okay, you can spare me the details of the visit,” I said, fast-forwarding the device a bit. “Did you get any more information?”

  “Oh yes. Let me see.” Mom took the recorder and pressed a few buttons back and forth. “Here we go.”

  Mom: Okay, Joan. Looks like I need to come back. Do you have anything for next week?

  Joan: Let me check.

  Sounds of pages turning.

  Joan: Next week the doctor is out due to the holiday. How about the first week in December?

  Mom: Yes, that will work. The doctor is so handsome, isn’t he?

  Joan (giggling): Oh! You think so?

  Mom: I’m sure a lot of woman do. Is he married?

  Joan: Well, yes. Currently, but you know there’s such a high rate of divorce these days.

  Mom: Oh. That’s too bad. You think he’s heading for a divorce?

  Silence.

  Joan (whispering): He was seeing the wife’s best friend.

  Mom: Tsk, tsk, tsk.

  Joan (whispering): But she (long pause) died!

  Mom (sharp intake of breathe): Oh!

  Joan: It was in the papers. So tragic. A bay dinner cruise.

  Mom: Oh dear!

  Joan: He hasn’t been the same since.

  Mom stopped the tape and thumped me on the back. “What do you think about your ol’ mom now?” She laughed and whooped. “You don’t mind the gossip so much when it yields you a juicy bit, do you?”

  I held my head, feeling like if I didn’t, my brain would explode and then there would be one more thing to clean up around here.

  The phone rang.

  “Want me to get that?” Mom asked. “You look a little pale.”

  It was Helene? Alan had been sleeping with Helene?

  No wonder. Margaret said he’d been getting home on time after the night on the boat. Of course, because his mistress was dead.

  My answering machine kicked on. Galigani’s voice filled the air.

  “Kid! I got something for you. The doc was sleeping with the vic. Call me.”

  Mom grabbed the phone before Galigani could hang up. “Hello, Albert. Just one second, Kate’s right here . . . Oh tonight? . . . Sure, I’d love to have dinner with you.”

  My chest felt tight and my head throbbed. Lives were going on all around, Mom had a date, Celia had her business, Paula would have her baby soon, but Helene was dead and gone.

  Why? Why would Alan have killed his mistress? Had she threatened to tell Margaret? Could he have done it? Maybe he’d killed her by accident as Margaret had feared.

  Mom passed me the phone. I semigrunted.

  Galigani laughed. “What’s the matter, kid? We’re making progress.”

  “How did you find out it was Helene?” I asked.

  “This is confidential. Okay? You cannot disclose to Barramendi, understand?”

  There was a lump forming in my throat the size of a walnut.

  I was so in over my head.

  I swallowed past the lump. “Yeah,” my voice cracked.

  “I’m holding the police report from the night on the cruise. Officer Lee questioned you. Do you remember?”

  “Yes. I remember.”

  “Well, there were a few officers there and Officer Rebecca Burke took a statement from one witness who’d overheard a discussion between Helene and Alan.”

  I recalled the woman officer on board. I had seen her talking to a silver-haired woman who had been gesticulating madly.

  �
�According to the statement,” Galigani said, “the witness overheard a discussion between the deceased and Alan. He was planning to leave his wife. There was some talk of moving to North Carolina together. Then they were interrupted by another woman. The doc left the scene and the two women had an argument. The deceased was canceling a home extension or construction project. The other woman got very agitated. That’s when our witness decided to clear out of there and in the process ended up spilling her drink on the woman.”

  Sara.

  So if Alan and Helene were planning on running away together, it made sense that Helene would cancel the home remodeling plans. And it would also make sense that Bruce didn’t know she’d done it. But what about the adoption? Hadn’t Helene wanted kids? Had she really been planning to leave Bruce and stop the adoption proceedings?

  Maybe she only seemed to be agreeing with Alan about moving to North Carolina. Maybe she was scared of him.

  “What do you think?” I asked Galigani. “You think the doc did it?”

  “It’s not the doc.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “There is another very important thing in the prelim report,” Galigani said.

  I rubbed my temples. “What’s that?”

  “The doc’s the one who pushed the ME to run a tox screen. There’s no way he’d do that if he killed her. I told you McNearny knew something we didn’t.”

  “How did you get him to share this report with you?”

  “I didn’t. Mac doesn’t share. He’s by the book and he’s tough.”

  “Who then? Did you woo the lady officer?”

  Mom, who was hovering near me rocking Laurie back and forth, scowled at the mention of another lady and I had to laugh at her double standard.

  “Jones,” Galigani said. “He was taking a couple days off, spending a little time with his kid. I dropped in on him and we had a couple beers. Don’t mention any of this to anybody or we’ll have no one left to play in the sand-box with. Capisce?”

  “I capisce all right,” I said.

  Did Bruce know about the affair?

  That would fit. He’d found out about the affair and killed Helene, then he must have feared Celia knew something and took a whack at her.

  “So you think Bruce did it?” I asked Galigani.

  “No. Killing the wife maybe, but the midwife at his place makes no sense. I think it might have been Margaret.”

  “Margaret?” I asked.

  Mom nodded her agreement.

  Margaret? If she was guilty, then I was a ruse designed to throw suspicion off her. Why else would someone guilty hire a PI?

  Had I been used as a pawn?

  No! Couldn’t be.

  “As far as I know, Margaret wasn’t with Celia that day of the poisoning. Only Bruce, Evelyn, and I saw her that day. And why would Margaret poison Celia anyway? She had been her midwife.”

  “What about at Bruce’s house?” Mom asked.

  “What?” Galigani and I asked at the same time. I put Galigani on speaker phone and Mom got close to the microphone.

  “Maybe Margaret was over at Bruce’s before Celia got there. Maybe she mixed a little cocktail intended for Bruce.”

  “Why, though?” I asked.

  Mom shrugged. “I can only do so much work for free.”

  Galigani snorted through the phone line. “I’m working on getting the tox results right now. Maybe they’ll shed a little light on some of this stuff, but let’s not hold our breath.”

  After Mom left, I tried phoning Margaret and ended up leaving another voice mail. She had effectively disappeared. I wondered if “going to her mother’s” was a euphemism for “skipping town.”

  Both Mom and Galigani had suggested Margaret was the murderer, but if my client was guilty—what did it make me?

  Was I just being prideful?

  Had Margaret played me? Perhaps she had found out about Helene’s betrayal. Or had she legitimately believed she was in danger from Alan?

  And what about Evelyn? She’d been on the cruise and had seen Celia the day of the poisoning. But what possible motive could she have for killing Helene, or Celia for that matter?

  Was getting kicked out of a mommy group motive enough to kill someone?

  Hardly.

  No matter how peeved it had made her, I couldn’t see it being cause for murder. Unless there was something else to the story?

  Why had she been on the cruise anyway? She must have known that the night would be fraught with friction. It seemed silly to insist on going when she knew she would be seated with a bunch of women who didn’t like her.

  And then there was the fact that her husband was leaving the country for a work assignment. Wouldn’t she rather have had a private date night?

  Still, as strange as it seemed to me, it didn’t gel as a motive for murder. Perhaps she thought getting kicked out of the group was a slight on her kid? Could she be that overprotective as to kill in retaliation for the snub?

  And then what would be her motive to hurt Celia?

  No. It didn’t make sense.

  No matter how many times I wrapped my head around it, I came up with Bruce. He had motive because of the affair, and opportunity—he was on the boat and at his house.

  I dialed Gary and reported to him about Helene and Alan’s affair.

  “It’s not looking good for Bruce,” I said.

  There was silence on the phone. Finally Gary said, “Well, we just have to look harder. I think there’s something suspicious about Margaret. Check into that.”

  Another one who wanted to peg it on Margaret!

  “I can, of course,” I said.

  If she’ll call me back!

  “It’s just that the truth may be that Bruce is responsible,” I said.

  “The truth is overrated,” Gary replied as he hung up on me.

  For the umpteenth time I reviewed the transcript Gary had given me. Neither Inspector Jones nor Inspector McNearny had questioned Bruce on Helene’s affair, yet surely they would have known about it from the preliminary interviews. Why hadn’t they asked him?

  I reread the report. It was clear that Gary had silenced them before they’d gotten to any substantive questions. They needed evidence. Pure and simple.

  And so did I.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Risk

  To Do:

  1. Find proof to nail Bruce.

  2. Where is Margaret?

  3. Laundry—didn’t I just do it?

  4. Order turkey.

  5. Read to Laurie.

  6. Sing to Laurie—Am I falling behind on any more milestones?

  Paula and I sat inside my car and waited for Bruce to leave. I’d convinced her to watch his house with me for a while, hoping for an opportunity to search his place.

  After about an hour of waiting and making small chitchat, Paula said, “Maybe we should call him and tell him the condo is on fire and that he needs to leave right away.”

  I laughed. “It’s not a bad idea. What kind of believable reason to get him out immediately could we use?”

  “A fire’s not believable?” she asked.

  “No. I think he’d notice pretty fast that the place wasn’t on fire. No firefighters, fire trucks, et cetera.”

  “I could set the place on fire,” Paula offered.

  “No.”

  “Okay, how about I set you on fire for dragging me along, then when the firefighters come and Bruce peeks out of his condo to see what the commotion is about, I sneak into his place and search it,” Paula said.

  “I hate to break it to you, but a pregnant woman can’t really ‘sneak’ around.”

  “Well, I hate to break it to you, but pregnant women have a lot of pressure on their bladders and sitting inside a car on a stakeout doesn’t exactly elicit brilliance.” She laughed. “Seriously, can’t you call Margaret and ask her to invite him over or something? She is your client.”

  “I’m not sure where she is or where she stands in all this. What if we just go upstairs and talk to him? You can distract him while I search the place.”

  “What am I supposed to tal
k to him about? And what are you hoping to find anyway? You think a murderer just keeps stuff lying around?”

  I opened the door to the car and jumped out. I walked around to Paula’s and pulled open her door. “Come on, you can use his bathroom. I know you’re dying to go.”

  Paula indicated my new Converse. “You’re actually willing to be seen in public in those?” Paula asked.

  “They’re my getaway shoes. Just in case.”

  We climbed up the stairs to the third-floor condo and rang the bell. After a moment, Bruce came to the door.

  “Kate!” He scratched his head and smiled. “Was I expecting you?”

  “I was in the neighborhood and I had a few questions for you. Can we come in for a minute?”

  He stepped aside. “Sure. Of course. Nice shoes.”

  Paula snorted.

  I smiled. “This is my friend Paula.”

  She stuck out her hand. “Nice to meet you and all that, can I use your potty?”

  Bruce laughed and pointed down the hall. “Help yourself.”

  Paula disappeared down the hallway, while Bruce and I seated ourselves in his living room. Concern showed on his face. “What’s up, Kate? Did Gary send you?”

  “No. I was just going through my notes last night and realized there was some stuff I hadn’t asked you about.”

  “Okay, shoot.”

  I was desperate to find out what Bruce knew of Helene’s affair, but didn’t want to alienate him before I had a chance to snoop.

  “Can you tell me a little more about the adoption?” I asked.

  “Well, I don’t think it’s going through now. Celia won’t return my calls, which is understandable. I don’t know how to reach Father Pedro’s. I feel so badly about everything that I think I should still give the girl the money, you know? Help her out. I mean, what’s two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to me?”

  “What? Wait a minute. What do you mean, two hundred and fifty thousand dollars?”

  “That was the agreement. Helene and I were going to donate money to Father Pedro’s orphanage.”