Mad Money Murder Page 7

  "Now let me see." He studied the girls. "You must be Rattler…" He proceeded to correctly assign each girl with her camp name. For a moment I considered killing him with three paperclips and a piece of Scotch tape.

  "How did you know that?" I blurted out. You couldn't even see the names on them because most of the lanyards were twisted or hanging down the girls' backs.

  He shrugged. "Hal told me. There are no secrets in Behold, honey."

  The girls glared at me. I decided from here on out to make them leave the lanyards behind, using the flimsy reason that camp names needed to stay at camp.

  "And who is this ravishing creature?" Basil took Kelly's hand in his right while touching her red hair with his left. "Oh, darling, don't ever do anything to your hair. It's perfect!

  Kelly smiled and introduced herself.

  "Basil," I began. "Like you said, Aunt June and I had never met. I must admit to being at a disadvantage here since I know little to nothing about her."

  He winked. "I'll tell you what. You come to my shop tomorrow morning at ten and let me fix your hair. And I'll tell you anything you want to know."

  Basil turned and walked toward the door, turning to wave before shutting it behind him.

  "He's right, Mrs. Wrath," Kaitlyn said. "You do need help."

  The other girls were staring at my hair and nodding.

  "Yes, well, we'll see about that tomorrow. For now, let's check out the rest of the house. And if you find a secret room, come to me before using it, please."

  "Maybe we should all work on the same floor together," Kelly suggested, even though it sounded more like a command.

  Kelly went to the other side of the first floor with Kaitlyn, Inez, and Ava, while I continued on the right side of the first floor with Betty and Lauren.

  The kitchen was next after the study. Bright yellow and cheery, it had the usual appliances. Nothing fancy like our lodge at Camp des Morts, but good enough to cook in. A small breakfast nook in the corner had a large window that looked out over the backyard. It was too bad this place was so far away. Maybe it could be a vacation house. It would be nice to get away to the river with Rex every now and then. We could bring the animals.

  I relaxed a little as I thought about Leonard frolicking in the yard as Rex and I sipped wine on the back patio. It was a cheery, imaginary scene until my troop kayaked by, all of them glaring at me. Betty was a pirate, standing up in her boat, with an eye patch and a scorpion perched on her shoulder. She'd named it Ted.

  Betty slammed a cupboard door, snapping me back to the present. "Nothing in any of these."

  Lauren scratched her elbow. "What are we looking for again?"

  "I'm not sure. Anything that implies she was murdered?"

  Betty rubbed her hands together. "Weapons, killer, motive. Got it."

  "Too bad she didn't take pictures of her killer as she died," Lauren grumbled.

  That was too bad. But I didn't know of any incidences where, as someone was being murdered, they held out a camera and gasped, Cheese!

  "Maybe she did." Betty shrugged. "We should look for her phone."

  "The lawyer didn't give me a cell." I scanned the wall until my eyes landed on a landline. "It's possible she didn't have one."

  After looking appropriately astonished, the girls stepped up to the wall-mounted phone, studying it.

  "What is that?" Lauren asked.

  "It could be a hotline to the Kremlin," Betty suggested.

  I joined them. "It's a phone. What we had before we had cell phones."

  "Why is it attached to the wall?"

  "Because it's attached to a phone line." I pointed out the window to a telephone pole.

  "That's barbaric!" Betty shouted.

  "What's barbaric?" Kelly asked as she walked into the room.

  "A landline." I pointed at it.

  "Ah. Hey, I think we found something." And she turned and walked out of the room.

  We followed, bypassing the dining room and entering into a parlor filled with musical instruments, including a piano, trombone, clarinet, harp, and tuba. Each instrument, with the exception of the piano, sat in a chair in front of a music stand, waiting to be picked up and played. I was surprised the girls weren't trying to play them.

  The walls were lined with bookcases filled with sheet music and more photos. Aunt June had posed with opera singers I didn't recognize, Miles Davis, Liberace, and the Rolling Stones.

  "A music room!" Lauren clapped her hands. "It's like the band room at school!"

  "What did you find?" I asked Kelly.

  I didn't have a musical bone in my body. This room was a puzzle to me.

  "Here." She handed me an envelope. "We found it in the tuba's funnel." She paused. "Is that what you call it? A funnel?"

  "Sounds like it should be called that if it isn't." I took the envelope.

  It was sealed and, in shaky handwriting, addressed to me. I opened it carefully, just in case. Letters are extremely easy to booby trap with everything from anthrax to an explosive device.

  Pulling out the letter, I read:

  Merry! You are a clever one in finding this. Welcome to Clue #1!

  "Read it aloud, please," Betty groused.

  I repeated the first line before continuing.

  If you have found this first, then bravo! I wasn't sure if you'd find it first but hoped if you found #2 or #3 first, you'd wait to read them all in order.

  There were more?

  After writing the note that would be sent with my remains, I decided that you might not believe that I was murdered. So I'll tell you why I think so.

  I can feel it in my bones.

  Good luck finding the rest of the letters!

  "That's it? She could feel it in her bones? And she thought that was a clue?" I shook my head at the letter.

  Kaitlyn craned her neck to see it. "Maybe you have to read between the lines."

  Kelly said, "Maybe she really was crazy."

  "Now we really do have to scour the place just to find the other notes," I said. "But I have to wonder if this is all just the rantings of a crazy woman."

  Once again, it all came back to the fact that I knew nothing about her. Aunt June could've been a crank who was having fun with me or simply imagining things. How would I know? Maybe tomorrow's hair appointment with Basil would give me more intel.

  We continued searching, with my group backtracking to the dining room as Kelly's group searched the sitting room on the other side of the music room.

  The dining room had a large, heavy table surrounded by eight chairs. They looked like antiques. Against one wall was a large china cabinet filled with dishes. On the other wall was a framed photograph of Mt. Everest.

  Had she been there? It was possible, considering all the photos of celebrities I'd seen her in. I wish I really had known the woman. Crazy or not, she had led a very exciting life. And that's coming from a spy. I'd thought my life was an adventure, but this woman from tiny Behold, Iowa had me beat.

  "I wonder if she'd ever been married," I thought out loud. "She didn't have any children, I don't think."

  "What makes you say that?" Lauren asked as Betty crawled around the floor underneath the table and chairs.

  "She left everything to me. If she'd had kids, she'd have left it to them."

  "Maybe she didn't like her kids," Betty called from the flat of her back beneath the table. "My parents say stuff like that all the time."

  I had to ask. "About you?"

  "No. About my brother."

  I had the sneaking suspicion that her parents had included her in that conversation, and it made me a little sad. Betty wasn't a bad kid. She was adventurous, precocious, and quite possibly brilliant. Who wouldn't want that in a kid?

  "Maybe," I said. "I'll have to ask Nigel." I pulled out my cell and called the lawyer.

  Emmy answered and transferred me to her boss.

  "Hickenlooper, of Hickenlooper, Hickenlooper & Hickenlooper," he said.

  Well, obviou
sly he was Hickenlooper. There wasn't anyone else there besides Emmy. And I still thought it was weird that he named his company that.

  "It's Merry, Nigel." I grinned, imagining him wincing at my informal use of his name. "I'm still at the house. I have a couple of quick questions. Was Aunt June ever married? And did she have any children?"

  There was a long, martyred sigh on the other end of the line. "No, Miss June was never married and never had children."

  I had a thought. "What about family?"

  "She was orphaned in her late teens and had no other family." His voice was laced with irritation. This was one Hickenlooper I wasn't fond of. Too bad I couldn't deal with Hal or Basil instead.

  "Okay, thanks." I hung up before he could respond.

  "No family of any kind," I told the girls.

  Betty crawled out from under the table and started going through the china hutch until I stopped her. The girl was like a bull in a china shop, and it felt disrespectful to have her smashing through the china like a fourth-grade Godzilla.

  "I'll take care of the hutch. You guys check out the hall."

  Betty and Lauren stood there, arms folded over their chests.

  "What?"

  Lauren answered, "You will share any clues you find, right?"

  "Of course! How can I solve this without you?"

  That was the right answer, and the girls left. I took each plate and teacup out of the hutch, placing them carefully on the table. It was an amazing collection of rare china from France, England, Ireland, and China. Each piece seemed more delicate than the last. These pieces were expensive. Did she inherit these or bring these back from her travels?

  After emptying out the cabinet, I searched the inside shelving and cupboards for any further envelopes but found nothing.

  "Wow!" Kelly walked up to the table and picked up a pale yellow teacup covered in violets. "This is Limoges! Real Limoges china!"

  I pointed out the rest of the pieces and told her about the call to Nigel.

  "And you're inheriting all of this?" She looked around and noticed the furniture for the first time. "This room alone must be worth a fortune!"

  Without a beat, I offered, "You can have some of the china, if you want."

  "No," she said in a way that implied she didn't mean it. "You and your mother should have this."

  "Mom has plenty of china that she inherited from her ancestors. I'll end up with those someday. You should pick out a few pieces."

  "If you insist." Kelly grinned. "But later. We'd better put these things back before the girls come in."

  I listened for them and heard giggling in the hall. "What are they doing?"

  "Just looking. I told them not to touch anything breakable."

  It took a little while to put things back. You know how you unpack something and then can't figure out how to get it all back in the original box? That's what we had to deal with. Although I suspect that Kelly was saying the set of yellow teacups with violets wouldn't fit because she was planning to set them aside. She didn't need to do that. She was my best friend, and I wanted her to have them.

  We worked our way through the second-floor bedrooms with no success. Compared to the first floor and the third, this level was completely normal. Why was the house two thirds quirky with one normal floor? Kelly thought maybe at the end of the day, Aunt June wanted normalcy. The girls thought she just got tired of decorating. Betty suggested she didn't want pictures of old, dead people looking down on her while she slept.

  "Alright," I said after going through yet another closet. "Lunchtime."

  "But we haven't done the third floor yet," Ava protested.

  We needed a break before tackling the worst floor in the history of houses. "After lunch. I'm starving."

  "Back to camp, then?" Kelly asked.

  "I think we should go to Fancy Nancy's," I said.

  My co-leader halfheartedly protested, "But we bought all that food."

  "Yes, but I still need to visit Dr. Morgan. And his office is across the street from Nancy's."

  "Cool! Do you think he has creepy stuff?" Inez asked.

  "You're not going. I'll give Mrs. Albers my order and meet up with you."

  Kelly agreed. "Well, it's a nice enough day, and it's just down the street. Why don't we walk?"

  The girls grumbled the whole way about being left out. Not that I blamed them. I was hoping for some autopsy info from the doctor, stuff they would love. But there was no way I was swarming him with girls. I needed his full attention.

  "Ah, Mrs. Ferguson." The doctor smiled as I walked through the door.

  I stopped in my tracks. "Does everyone know I'm here?"

  He nodded. "Of course. You're the first outsider we've had in a long time. Most people just drive by and never set foot in the town at all."

  "Maybe if you spruced the place up a bit…" I suggested.

  The doctor seemed amused. "Well, I have to admit, Behold isn't the most welcoming place in Iowa. And most folks here like it like that."

  "Hence the dilapidated buildings."

  "You are a smart one. Hal said so." He motioned for a seat.

  "Oh?" I sat. "And what does Nigel think of me?"

  Dr. Morgan's eyebrows went up. "The jury is still out on that, I think."

  The inside of Morgan Seed and Feed was comfortable and cozy. But instead of the more modern comforts at the other places, the doctor's office was a bit more run-down. Clean but shabby.

  "I hope I'm not intruding." I adjusted myself in the chair.

  "Oh no. Of course not. I'm semiretired, really. I send most folks to Guttenberg for health care."

  "Not Dubuque?" I couldn't resist. I am a bastard.

  He surprised me by laughing. "I may be the oldest person in town. The only one closest to that controversy. And yet, I can't get mad at a city for something that happened centuries ago."

  "So why send people to Guttenberg?" I thought of the larger small town up north. "Does it even have a hospital?"

  He looked over the top of his glasses. "Well, two of the doctors there are friends of mine. That's why I recommend it. Now, why are you here when your troop is at lunch at Nancy's?"

  He must've seen us coming. Like everyone else in this unusual town.

  I put on my most innocent expression. "As you probably know, I've inherited Aunt June's home and remains."

  He listened but said nothing.

  "She also sent a letter saying she was murdered and asked me to look into it. But since some people here in town believe she was crazy, I thought I'd come to you first to get the story."

  A little flattery goes a long way.

  He chuckled. "Oh yes, Aunt June was unusual. I'd been telling her for years not to have all those spiders in her house. It was only a matter of time before they got out. And black widows and brown recluses are notoriously small."

  "Are you saying she died of spider bites? That those two in particular escaped and bit her?"

  That wasn't good. Had I exposed the girls to two renegade, dangerous bugs who knew how to get in and out of their tanks? I'd have to check the enclosures when I got back. They were probably empty. Who would put them back in there after finding their keeper dead?

  The doctor pushed his glasses higher on his nose and opened a drawer in his desk. After a moment, he brought out a file and opened it.

  "Yes. That's what got her. Spider bite. And at her age, that would've killed her."

  I leaned forward in an attempt to read the file upside down. "Which spider did it?"

  "The brown recluse." He didn't elaborate.

  "So she wasn't murdered in your opinion?"

  He sat back in his chair and gave me the once-over. "In my opinion, no, she wasn't murdered. This may seem like an unfriendly town, Mrs. Ferguson. But we aren't killers."

  I couldn't decide if he was humoring me or not. "Was there an autopsy to make sure?"

  He shook his head. "No. There didn't seem to be any point. The coroner called it."

  I sat
back in the chair when he didn't offer me the file. "Who took care of her remains? I haven't seen a funeral home here in town."

  Dr. Morgan folded his hands. "Oh yes. We have one just outside of town. They handled her cremation."

  "So there was a funeral?" It seemed I should've been invited somehow.

  "No. She didn't want one. She didn't want any fuss."

  I digested this information. Aunt June had died of a spider bite as a result of her dangerous collection. She was unusual. Had no family. She didn't want a fuss…but wanted me to investigate her murder. This was too weird.

  I pressed the idea of a funeral. "Wouldn't the town want one, to pay their respects?"

  "Nigel Hickenlooper produced her will, which insisted she didn't want that."

  I changed tactics. "As the oldest person in town, like you said, how well did you know her?"

  He rubbed his beard and stared into space. "Oh, we went back a way. We were in school together. Then we both went off to college, and neither one of us returned right away."

  Everything the man said seemed awfully vague. "What did she do for a living?"

  The man steepled his fingers. "No one really knows if she did anything. Her parents left her very wealthy when they died."

  I described all the photos in her house in hopes of shaking loose some information.

  He seemed surprised. "Really? She never entertained or had people over. She was something of a mystery, really. There were all kinds of rumors about her. Some even said she had a treasure somewhere in the house."

  That got my attention. It was an interesting idea as a motive for murder. "What kind of treasure?"

  He waved me off. "No one knows. It's just speculation. A lot of hooey. In a small town, people tend to be suspicious of those who don't want interaction. And then they make up stories."

  I stared at him for a moment before asking, "What do you think?"

  "I think there's nothing to it. Aunt June socially interacted with folks in her own way. Some she was chummy with, but most she wasn't."

  He closed the file and put it back in his drawer. This conversation was over.

  "I'm afraid it's an open-and-shut case of accidental death. Does that help?"