Irregardless of Murder (Miss Prentice Cozy Mysteries) Page 10

  She frowned in my direction, then smiled weakly.

  “Don’t remember where you’ve seen me before, do you?” I muttered. I turned back to Vern. “As I said, everybody comes to this sale.”

  Vern worked his way through the turnstile ahead of me. “It’s a mob scene, all right. What does this Marie look like again?” He stopped and scanned the crowd from a superior height, then stooped to hear my answer.

  “You’d probably recognize her if you saw her. About my age, a little over five feet, curly black hair, round face. Rather pretty, but looks a little apologetic around the eyes.”

  “And a green and yellow jacket, I know. Hey, doesn’t she work at the university cafeteria?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, I know her, then. Listen, you go get—” he waggled his fingers vaguely, ”whatever—for Mrs. Burns and I’ll scope out the place. See ya!”

  He plunged into the milling crowd. I could see his head bobbing above the rest.

  I sighed, hitched my purse a few inches up my shoulder, and made my own dive into the mass of bargain-hungry humanity. The aisles between the racks of clothing were filled, but not yet jammed, and the usual sense of polite New England reticence among strangers still reigned, at least for the time being.

  “Excuse me,” said one woman whose arm jostled mine.

  “I’m so sorry,” said a man who had backed into me.

  Later, things would be different. I knew this from hard experience. The last few hours before closing on sale day the law of the jungle went into effect, and if one was determined to remain until that hour, I strongly recommended helmets and knee protectors.

  In all the years JJ Peasemarsh had existed, its basic floor plan never changed. Ladies’ clothes to the left, men’s to the right, shoes in the center. Sizes were numerically arranged by racks, curtained fitting stalls stood along the right and left walls, and checkout counters were at the front and rear exits. A highly effective, time-tested system. Neat but not gaudy.

  I made my way to the left on tiptoe, so absorbed in trying to spot Marie, I completely bypassed the rack of nightgowns in Lily’s size. I had to turn around and retrace my steps.

  “Excuse me. I’m so sorry.” It was me offering apologies this time as I made my way upstream back to the size eights.

  “Hello, again!” called Judith Dee fleetingly as we passed each other in parallel rows of lingerie.

  I smiled and made a great show of examining a piece of nearby merchandise, which turned out to be an extremely provocative brassiere.

  “Hmmm. Purple with black tassels—it’s so YOU,” said Vern in my ear. “Sorry. No luck so far.”

  “I’ll be finished here in a minute,” I said. “Why don’t you look over there at that row of stalls and see if she comes out of any of them.”

  “Will do.” Vern saluted and was gone.

  The selection of size eight nightgowns in any shade of pink had already dwindled. I was forced to choose between a garish floral print that resembled something in a Tennessee Williams play and an old-fashioned, high-necked flannel number. I had just decided that Lily would rather be Blanche DuBois than Laura Ingalls when Vern interrupted me once more.

  “Come on! I found her. She’s over here. Hurry!”

  He plunged ahead, moving so rapidly that I was hard-pressed to keep up. In desperation, I parted hangers, plunged directly through a rack of designer jeans and popped up in the middle of a French-speaking family group.

  “Excusez-moi,” I said, backing into a bin of garter belts and nearly falling in.

  Vern reached out a hand and steadied me. “Look!” he said, pointing to a curtained stall. “Isn’t that her jacket—on the floor?”

  I could see what he meant. The sleeve of a familiar green and yellow parka poked out from just beneath the hem of the stall’s curtain.

  “Well, what do we do now?” Vern whispered.

  I stepped forward. “Marie?” I called softly. “Marie LeBow?”

  A dozen faces turned my way, and several heads popped curiously from behind other curtains, but there was no answer from inside the stall.

  I leaned closer to the curtain and called again, “Marie? It’s Amelia. Are you in there?”

  Still no answer, though the curtains twitched slightly and the telltale sleeve disappeared from the floor.

  Vern and I looked at one another. He shrugged.

  “Marie, yesterday you wanted to talk to me,” I whispered into the curtain. “Won’t you come out?”

  Still no response. I frowned at Vern. If it wasn’t Marie in there, surely the occupant would have poked her head out to correct my mistake. We were stymied. People were staring at us suspiciously.

  Vern pulled my arm.

  I retreated, but only for the moment.

  “It’s not her,” Vern whispered to me behind a tall rack of feather-trimmed peignoirs, his eyes still glued to the curtain in question.

  “She.”

  “Huh?” he asked, his eyes still on the stall.

  “It’s not she. Your grammar—oh, forget it. That’s Marie in there, Vern! I can feel it.”

  “Well, whoever it is hasn’t come out yet.” He stifled a sneeze. “Drat these feathers! I haven’t taken my eyes off that curtain for a second.”

  “What can we do?” I whispered desperately. “We can’t just barge in there!”

  “I know! We’ll do a stakeout.”

  “You mean, like the police?”

  “Sure. We’ll wait her out. You stand over there, and—omigosh! She just flew the coop!”

  Vern sprang forward in hot pursuit. As best I could, I followed his blond head through the crowd until it abruptly disappeared.

  Where was he? Had he caught up with Marie? I wondered as I shouldered my way through the crowd. How could we detain her once we found her? After all, she wasn’t a fugitive, and stakeout or not, we definitely weren’t the police.

  Several rows ahead, there was a strangled cry and a muffled crash.

  Just beyond a rack of terrycloth bathrobes, Vern’s long form was stretched out on the floor.

  “Should I call 911?” offered a man in the crowd.

  “No, thanks,” said Vern, slowly rising to all fours. “I’m okay. Just tripped, is all. Ouch!” He rolled over and winced at his bloody left knee.

  He looked up at me balefully. “I’m sorry, Amelia. She’s gone. I lost her.”

  Some minutes later, as I pulled Lily’s car out of the parking lot, heading to the hospital, Vern speculated on what caused his downfall. “It was probably one of those hanger things. My feet seemed to get all tangled up, and boom!” He groaned with pain as he shifted in the bucket seat. “Look at that. What a mess!” The torn, bloodstained denim material had been cut away from his wound, leaving a large hole in one leg of his pants.

  I reached for my purse. “Don’t you want a pain pill? That’s what Judith suggested.” Fortunately for us, Nurse Dee had materialized from behind a bin of men’s sweater vests and applied her medical knowledge and a stout bandage to Vern’s knee.

  “Nope. Even aspirin makes me sleepy. I hate that. I’ll just tough it out.” He lifted his knee to a more comfortable position with both hands. “What really gets me is we lost Marie. It really was her—I saw her!” He punched the dashboard in disgust.

  “It’s all right, Vern. Obviously, she didn’t want to see me, after all. I can respect that. Marie’s just lost her daughter. She’s entitled to act a little strange. Now that I know that she’s all right, I can let it go.”

  Vern smiled. “Well, anyway, they gave you that nightgown thing and I got a free pair of jeans.”

  “It was nice of the Peasemarsh people, wasn’t it? I suppose they’re just hoping you don’t sue them. You’re not badly hurt, are you?”

  “Naw,” he said jauntily. “It’s just a little scratch. My knee’s a lot tougher than your head. Look, I wish you’d let me take over. You drive like Mr. Magoo.”

  “And just what is that supposed to
mean?”

  He hunched his back. “Well, you kind of lean over the wheel like this, see? And squint at the traffic. And you’re only going about—” He tilted his head to regard the speedometer. “Twenty-eight? C’mon, Amelia, pull over. At this rate, it’ll be midnight before we get there. My driving leg’s okay, see?”

  He lifted a huge sneakered foot and waved it over the dashboard for my inspection. He was limber, that was for sure.

  “But I know the way,” I began to protest. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, all right!” I pulled into the parking lot of a fast food restaurant. “All this griping has given me a dreadful headache.”

  My feelings were hurt. “I’ve never even had a ticket,” I muttered under my breath and opened the car door. “Wonder if you can say the same.”

  “Welcome aboard,” Vern chirped as I marched around the car and he slid gingerly behind the wheel. “Make sure your seat belt is fastened and your tray table is in an upright position. Thank you for choosing Vern Airlines.”

  “Oh, shut up.” He wasn’t going to jolly me into a good mood this time.

  Once in the passenger seat, I grabbed the door handle to give it a vigorous slam, but someone stepped in the way. Someone in a green-and-yellow parka.

  A pale, round face with an apologetic expression appeared at my right shoulder and Marie LeBow asked in a hesitant voice, “Miss Prentice, can I talk to you?”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Marie was apologetic about the scene at JJ Peasemarsh. “But you scared me to death, y’know?”

  She was sitting with us in a booth at the fast food restaurant, holding with both hands the hot chocolate Vern had bought her. She sipped it hesitantly, as though we would ask for it back at any moment. She had declined the offer of a sandwich, but Vern and I, realizing we had missed lunch, were sampling the place’s highly touted hamburgers.

  “I mean, when I left yesterday, they told me not to talk to anybody, especially not you, Miss Prentice.” She nodded in my direction. “They—well, it was Dennis O’Brien, really—he seemed a little mad when I told him I’d called you. Told me to spend some time over here at my sister’s. Wouldn’t even let me take my car. Maybe he thinks somebody wants to get me, I don’t know. We did have a couple of hang-ups on the telephone since I been here. Was that you?”

  “No, of course not, Marie. I didn’t know where you were until just now.”

  “That’s what I thought, but Dennis was real strong on me not talking to anybody. So when you started saying my name in the store like that, well, I just didn’t know what to do!” She bowed her head over the chocolate and allowed herself another small sip.

  Thus fortified, she continued, “So after I left the store, I started feeling bad about running away.”

  She looked directly into my eyes. “This not talking to you stuff, that’s crazy. You were always so nice to my girl, so I just made up my mind. I know there’s no harm in you, Miss Prentice—”

  “Please call me Amelia.”

  “I mean, Amelia—and if the police don’t like it, well, too bad!” She set down her cup firmly, splashing a few drops on the table. A dark curl fell down over one eye, and she pushed it back angrily. “It’s still a free country!”

  She pulled a paper napkin from a dispenser and mopped up the spill. “I was supposed to stay out at the farm with my sister Valerie, but then I remembered the Peasemarsh sale was today. I never miss that sale, y’know,” she told Vern. “I go every year. So Val drove me into town this morning. After she gets through paying bills and doing some grocery shopping, she’s supposed to meet me here.”

  “Mrs. LeBow, what did you want to see Amelia about?” Vern asked abruptly. “Does it have to do with Marguerite?”

  Marie took in a sharp breath and looked at him. Her dark eyes filled with tears.

  “Maybe it hasn’t sank in yet. I for—forget, sometimes, you know?” she said in a wobbly voice. “Then, all of a sudden, something reminds me. It hurts a lot. A whole lot.”

  She filled her lungs deeply several times, then wiped her eyes with a napkin. “Okay. I’m okay now,” she said firmly.

  She turned her attention to me. “Marguerite had this book for you. It was like a diary or something, tied shut with a ribbon and everything. She said you got her started writing in it.”

  “A journal,” I said unsteadily. “I have all the seniors keep one for a month. You mean she still wrote in it?”

  “That’s right. Of course, I never bothered it ’cause it was private.” Marie pulled out another paper napkin and began pleating it as she spoke. “But yesterday morning, I was going through her stuff for—for—” She broke down, sobbing into the napkin.

  I slid into the seat on her side of the booth and wrapped my arms around her. For several minutes, none of us said a word. Then, all at once, Marie’s courage returned to her. With touching resolution, she pulled herself gently from my embrace with a faint smile, cleaned up her face, and continued the story.

  “I was hunting for a little daisy ring of hers. For her to, um, wear, y’know? Etienne bought it the day she was born. It was the only thing she had from her father. Just a little tiny opal thing shaped like a daisy,” she said, framing an imaginary ring on her finger. “That’s what he called her. Marguerite’s French for daisy, you know. It wasn’t expensive or anything, but, oh, it might’a been one of those movie star rings, she thought so much of it.”

  She blew her nose and added, “To tell the truth, her father—Etienne, his name was—wasn’t all that much to write home about, y’know?”

  Vern squirmed in his seat. I recognized the symptoms: male discomfort at female confidences. “Excuse me, I’m going to get a refill on my drink. Anybody want anything?”

  Marie gave him her empty cup to refill. He slid out and took his place in line at the counter, limping slightly.

  “Oh, Etienne was handsome, y’know, and real romantic. All ‘Marie cherie’ this and ‘darling’ that, let me tell you! I loved him a lot, and he loved me back, he really did, but after a year of bills, and then the dirty diapers, I guess he couldn’t take it any more.” She shrugged apologetically.

  “I wake up one morning and he’s gone. Never seen him again, and good riddance. But I always made sure my girl knew her daddy had loved her. He didn’t leave me much, but at least I got Marguerite out of it . . . ”

  Marie stopped speaking abruptly and looked at me, the painful realization returning. With what must have been an incredible feat of will, she squeezed her eyes closed for a moment and went on with her explanation, nodding with determination.

  “Anyway, what I’m trying to say is, I found the ring in her dresser drawer and with it was this diary-thing. I knew right away what to do with it, because Marguerite told me, ‘If anything happens to me, I want Miss Prentice to have it.’ I says, ‘What d’you mean? Nothing’s gonna happen to you.’ But she says, ‘You never know, Mom,’ and I guess she was right. Anyway, you were real important to her, Miss Prentice.”

  She smiled, a wide, sparkling smile, her eyes bright with tears. Marie had been beautiful once, and there were times when she was still.

  My barely-eaten hamburger had long since become stone cold. I wrapped it up with shaking fingers. “Marie, I am honored to receive it.”

  “But you can’t have it!” Marie said.

  “Can’t have what?” asked Vern, returning with the drinks.

  “The book,” said Marie, looking back and forth between us. “Not yet, anyways. I mailed it to you this morning. It should get there in a day or two.”

  It was silly of me, but I was deeply disappointed. “That will be fine,” I said, then remembered something. “Marie, what did you mean by those letters you mentioned? UDJ?”

  “Oh, them. That’s nothing. Just something Marguerite wrote on the little memo pad in her purse. Your name was there, too. That’s why I asked.” She waved away the question. “She was always digging in that purse and talking on the cell phone. Anyway,” she added, taking a big swig of her
cocoa, “I decided. I’m going back tomorrow, police or no police. Miss, um, Amelia, what’s going on with that Dennis O’Brien? He seems awful mad at you. Did you have fight or something?”

  I shook my head. “Honestly, I have no idea.”

  Marie said, “Well, I’m going home whether he likes it or not. I got lots of things to see to, and it’s not making me feel any better by sitting over here, stewing and hiding out. Val’ll drive me home. The funeral’s on Tuesday. Can you come?”

  I took Marie’s hand. “Of course I can.”

  When she arrived, Marie’s older sister Valerie turned out to be a stout, no-nonsense woman who regarded Vern and me with undisguised suspicion. She took in Marie’s puffy eyes and glared at us accusingly.

  “You’re not supposed to see anybody from home,” she scolded in French as Marie gathered up her purse and her parcels.

  “Mais c’est important,” Marie began to protest, but Val was brooking no argument.

  “On y va! Let’s go!” she said sharply, and suited her action to her words, hurrying her sister to the battered van that waited in the parking lot.

  Marie waved to me from the window.

  “Is she going to be all right?” Vern asked as they pulled away.

  I sighed. “She’s had it hard her whole life. She’s a survivor. At least, I hope so.”

  “Well!” Vern took a last, loud pull on the straw in his soft drink. “Now that we’ve consumed this sumptuous repast, shall we hie ourselves to yon hospital?”

  “Vern,” I said.

  He drooped slightly. “Too much?”

  I patted him on the back. “Just a little, but I love you for it. Come on, let’s go.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  “Aren’t you hungry?” Vern asked as we headed down a hall to Lily’s hospital room. “You hardly ate a bite of your burger.”

  “Not really.” Just the thought of that greasy thing made me feel sick, especially now, surrounded by medicinal smells.

  “You sure? I could use a little something, myself.”