A Catered Mother's Day Read online

  Libby nodded in the bottle’s direction. “Why don’t I pour some of that into a glass?” she suggested to Bernie.

  “Good idea,” her sister told Libby as she took Ellen’s hands in her own and began rubbing them.

  Libby looked around for a glass and when she didn’t see one she went into the bathroom to find one. It wasn’t that Ellen couldn’t drink straight from the bottle; it was that Libby thought that amenities should be observed if possible. As she stepped inside, she noted that the bathroom tiles were cracked and there was a yellow stain around the bathtub drain. Two threadbare towels hung over the towel rack next to a large white T-shirt that said Arf. A pair of well-worn pink and white slippers sat below the shirt.

  A pink cosmetic case sat on top of the toilet. Probably not the dead guy’s, Libby reasoned. He didn’t seem like the pink type, she thought as she opened the case up and went through it. It contained a woman’s deodorant, a travel-sized toothbrush, a new-looking tube of toothpaste, and small jars of moisturizer, cleanser, and foundation. Evidently, Ellen had been planning on staying overnight. At least.

  Interesting, Libby thought as she grabbed the glass that was sitting on the sink, gave it a quick rinse because it didn’t look too clean, went outside, and poured Ellen a good-sized shot of Canadian Club, after which she put the bottle back on the dresser. As she did, she could hear her father yelling that this was a crime scene and she was mucking everything up, but at the moment she didn’t really care.

  “Here,” she said, coming around the bed and holding the glass out to Ellen.

  Ellen shook her head.

  Bernie reached out her hand. “Give it to me.” Libby handed her sister the glass. Bernie took it and held it out to Ellen’s lips. “Have a sip,” she ordered. “It’ll make you feel better. Really.”

  A few seconds went by, then Ellen said, “Okay,” in a little girl voice and took a swallow.

  “Better?” Bernie asked as Ellen grimaced and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

  Ellen nodded and took another sip.

  “So when did you get here?” Libby asked.

  Ellen looked up. “I . . . don’t . . .”

  “I saw your things in the bathroom,” Libby explained. “It looks as if you were planning on staying the night.”

  Ellen didn’t say anything.

  “Were you?” Libby persisted.

  A tear dripped down Ellen’s cheek.

  “Talk to us,” Bernie pleaded. “We can’t help you if we don’t know what happened.”

  “I know,” Ellen said. She handed the glass back to Bernie, put out her hand to steady herself, and stood up. Then she turned her face to the wall so she wouldn’t have to look at the man in the bed, and slowly sidestepped her way out, halting when she reached the dresser.

  “Can you tell me what happened here?” Bernie asked.

  Ellen licked her lips. “Here?”

  Libby nodded to the man on the bed. “Who is he?”

  “How many times do I have to say I don’t know?” Ellen replied, her voice shot through with a thread of anger.

  “Was he here when you arrived?”

  “No . . . Yes . . . I mean.” Ellen clenched her fists.

  “Don’t tell me you don’t know again,” Libby told her.

  Ellen bit her lip and stared straight ahead.

  “Why did you call us, if you won’t talk to us?” Bernie asked.

  “I was hoping—” Ellen stopped.

  “Hoping what?” Bernie asked.

  “That you could . . . you know . . . help. Like make him go away.”

  “You mean like get rid of the body?” Bernie cried incredulously. “Are you nuts? Is that what you think we do?”

  Ellen put her hands to her mouth. “I’m so . . . so . . . sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking.” Tears were rolling down her cheeks. “It’s just that I’m so scared. I don’t think I can deal with this.”

  Bernie gave her another pat on the shoulder. “We’ll be here for you every step of the way.”

  “But you have to tell us what happened,” Libby repeated for the third time. “We can’t help you if we don’t know.”

  “Do you want another sip of the Canadian Club?” Bernie asked Ellen.

  Ellen shook her head.

  “Okay then,” Bernie said. “I want you to take a deep breath, start at the beginning, and don’t leave anything out.”

  Another minute passed, then Ellen blurted out, “He was here when I came back.”

  “Back from where?” Bernie wanted to know.

  Ellen answered promptly. “Ted’s.” Ted’s was a local discount liquor store, one of those places where all the stock is in cartons. “I decided I needed something to drink.”

  “So you were sleeping here?” Bernie asked.

  Ellen nodded. Two quick movements of her head. Like a bird pecking at food, Libby thought.

  “That was the plan. I figured no one would look for me here.”

  “Oh God,” Bernie said. Suddenly she remembered the conversation she and Ellen had had in the park. “What did you do?”

  Ellen raised her hands, then let them flutter down to her sides. “I just wanted my family to notice me,” she said in a plaintive tone, skirting Bernie’s question. “Is that such a terrible thing to ask?”

  “Not normally,” Libby replied before Bernie could. “I guess it depends on what you do to achieve those ends. For example, burning the house down would certainly get your family’s attention, but not in the way you would want.” Libby was going to say more, but Bernie shot her a look and she shut up.

  “Please tell me you didn’t kidnap yourself,” Bernie said.

  “You were the one who suggested it,” Ellen told her.

  “I was kidding,” Bernie yelled. “Kidding. I told you to go to a spa.”

  “This seemed better,” Ellen whispered.

  “Oh my God,” Bernie said, not for the first time. “I can’t believe you did this.”

  “Did you leave a ransom note?” Libby asked.

  Ellen nodded. “In an envelope on the dining room table. I cut out the letters for Bruce’s name from a magazine and pasted them on the envelope.”

  “What did the note say?” Bernie asked.

  “I told him to come alone and that I’d kill myself if he didn’t come up with the money and have it here by two in the morning at the latest.”

  “So how much were you asking for yourself?” Libby couldn’t resist inquiring. “A lot?”

  Ellen opened and closed her mouth. Nothing came out.

  Libby nodded to the dead guy on the bed. “Was he in on this?”

  “No,” Ellen cried. “No. I already told you I don’t know who he is. I’m so ashamed.” She put her hand over her mouth. “I’m going to be sick,” she announced, and ran to the bathroom, leaving Bernie and Libby standing there.

  “What a god-awful mess,” Libby said to Bernie as Ellen slammed the bathroom door shut behind her.

  “That,” Bernie replied, “is a massive understatement.”

  “I’m surprised the cops aren’t here already,” Libby observed.

  Bernie bit at a cuticle. “They will be soon. That’s for sure.”

  Chapter 5

  Libby reached in her pants pocket for a square of chocolate, then remembered she’d left the candy back at the shop. Drats. Just when she needed it too. “Bernie, we have to call the police.”

  Bernie grimaced. “Tell me something I don’t know.” She nodded her head toward the bathroom. “She’s going to freak when they show up,” she said, lowering her voice to a whisper. “She’s going to come apart.”

  “She is already.”

  “Yeah, but she’s going to go even further down that path.”

  Libby swatted at a fly buzzing around her head. “I would file this under really, really bad concepts.”

  “I can’t believe she did this.” Bernie pressed the palms of her hands against her eyes. “I can’t believe she took me seriously.”<
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  “I know,” Libby assured her. “Really I do.”

  “I just . . .” Bernie stopped talking and shook her head.

  Libby went over and put her hands on her sister’s shoulders. “Bernie,” she told her, “you have to keep it together.”

  Bernie took a deep breath and let it out. “Better.” Then she pointed to the man on the bed. “We need to find out who this guy is. Hopefully he has some ID on him.”

  “The police aren’t going to like our doing that,” Libby observed.

  “They’re not going to know,” Bernie said.

  “H-E-L-L-O. Fingerprints. DNA,” Libby said.

  “Watch and learn,” Bernie said as she pulled a Ziplock bag full of walnuts and almonds out of her tote, shook the nuts into a side pocket, slipped her hand into the bag, and wiggled her fingers. “Tada! No fingerprints on the body. Am I brilliant or am I brilliant?”

  “You’re brilliant.”

  Bernie curtsied, choosing to overlook the sarcasm. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.” She moved a strand of hair off her forehead with the back of her hand.

  Libby sighed. “We’re still going to have a lot of explaining to do when the police get here.” She could picture the upcoming scene and it wasn’t a pleasant vision.

  “Not as much as Ellen,” Bernie observed.

  “True.” Then Libby leaned over to her sister and asked her the question that had been bothering her ever since they’d walked into the place. “You don’t think Ellen had anything to do with this, do you?” she asked, keeping her voice low. This referring to the body on the bed.

  “No, I don’t,” Bernie responded, “and I’ll tell you why.” She pointed to the mark on the man’s throat. “Ellen is five foot two and one hundred and forty pounds at the most. I don’t see how she could have strangled him, do you? Especially with what looks like some sort of rope, some sort of thin rope.”

  “Or a garrote,” Libby suggested.

  Bernie thought about the Spanish weapon. “You don’t see a lot of those floating around Westchester.”

  “You also don’t see a lot of corpses in motel rooms,” Libby pointed out. “Especially motel rooms around here.”

  Bernie nodded. “True. But even if it was a garrote, Ellen still wouldn’t have the strength to kill this guy with something like that. Shooting, yes. This, no.”

  “I guess she wouldn’t,” Libby allowed. “But somebody did.”

  Bernie straightened up. “Someone large, someone almost as tall as the guy on the bed, someone with strong hands.”

  Libby sighed. “If Ellen is telling the truth, it also means that that someone had to have known that she had left her room so they could place the body in here.”

  “Which also means whoever it was had to have been following her,” Bernie said. “Ellen told us she went to Ted’s”

  Libby nodded. “That’s right.” She thought for a moment. “Twenty minutes is about the time it would take to get to Ted’s, buy a bottle, and come back.”

  “You can kill a man in a lot less time than that,” Bernie noted.

  “Yeah. Like two seconds.” Libby chewed her cheek as she looked around the room. Everything seemed in order. “There are no signs of a struggle,” she observed. “If the killing had taken place here, there would have been. Of course, Ellen could have cleaned them up.”

  “Which seems unlikely,” Bernie replied. “First she kills this guy, then she cleans up, then she calls us for help?”

  “To get rid of the body.”

  “She said she was sorry about that.”

  “I hope so. Why not just leave? Why call us?”

  “I’m guessing because she was so panicked she couldn’t move.”

  Bernie brushed a speck of lint off her black T-shirt. “So given that we’re agreed with the fact that Ellen didn’t kill this guy—we are, aren’t we?”

  Libby nodded.

  “We’re left with the question of how this guy got here. I think there are three possibilities.” And Bernie ticked them off on her fingers through the plastic bag. “Either this guy was killed in this room, he was killed in the parking lot, or he was dead already, and whoever the killer was saw Ellen leaving and decided to take advantage of the opportunity and put the body on the bed, after which, he drove off.”

  “Highly unlikely,” Libby said. “Most people don’t drive around with dead bodies.”

  “Except for Marvin.”

  “Ha-ha. It’s his job. He owns a funeral home.”

  “I know. I just couldn’t resist the opening. Anyway,” Bernie said, getting back to business, “we’re agreed our dead guy was probably not killed in the motel room, right?”

  “Right,” Libby said. “There’s the parking lot. Maybe the person I saw—”

  Bernie interrupted. “You never said it was a person,” she countered. “You said it was a deer.”

  “No. You said it was a deer. I said I wasn’t sure. Anyway, maybe he had something to do with this.”

  “Well, if he did, he’s long gone by now.” Bernie tapped her fingers on her thigh. “But for the sake of argument, let’s say you’re right. Let’s say this hypothetical person did kill him. It still doesn’t answer the question of why the dead guy is on the bed. Why not leave his body in the woods?”

  “Maybe the dead guy was intended as a message to Ellen,” Libby suggested.

  “Doubtful. To what end?” Bernie extended her hands, palms outward. “She’s a housewife, for heaven’s sake, not a Mafia member. She runs a dog biscuit company; the only places she goes are the grocery store and the soccer field to watch her kids play ball.”

  “All I know,” Libby said, pointing to the dead guy, “is that he didn’t get here in some space-time continuum accident.”

  “No kidding.” Bernie flexed her fingers in the bag. “You know how they always say on crime shows how dead bodies speak to them? Well, this one’s not saying anything to me.”

  “And a good thing too,” Libby responded. “Bad enough to deal with a dead body, let alone one who talks.”

  “That would make him a zombie, in which case I’d be out of here.” Bernie slipped the Ziplock bag off her hand and held it out to Libby. “Hold this for a moment, would you?”

  “Why?”

  “I want to document everything.”

  Bernie reached into her tote and took out her phone. When she was done, she put her phone back in her tote, took the Ziplock bag from Libby, put it back over her hand, and started going through the dead man’s pants pockets.

  As Libby watched, she couldn’t help thinking of her mom emptying her dad’s pants pockets before she did the laundry. “Mom would not have approved of what you’re doing,” Libby found herself blurting out.

  Bernie straightened up. “She’d have a fit. But then if Mom was alive we wouldn’t be doing this.”

  “That’s for sure,” Libby said, remembering how their mom had acted when their dad had discussed his cases around the dinner table. She’d always say, “Can’t we talk about something more pleasant? Any luck?”

  “Not even lint.” There were six pockets, three to a side, and all of them were empty. No wallet. No cell phone. No keys. No nothing. Bernie clasped her palms together and brought her fingers up to her lips. “ ‘Curiouser and curiouser, ’ as the White Rabbit would say.”

  “Either this guy left his stuff behind because he didn’t want to be ID’d or someone took it because they didn’t want him to be identified.”

  “Either way the result is the same,” Bernie noted, taking the Ziplock bag off her hand and stuffing it back in her tote.

  She and Libby were about to check out the parking lot when they heard a clunk coming from the bathroom.

  “Ellen,” Bernie called. “You okay?”

  “I’m fine,” Ellen replied. She gave a strangled laugh. “Part of the towel rack fell off the wall. I’m putting it back on.”

  “Do you need any help?” Bernie asked.

  “No. No. It’s all good.”
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  “Call if you need us.”

  “Don’t worry, I will,” Ellen replied.

  Bernie and Libby heard the sound of water running.

  Ellen’s voice floated through the noise. “I’m washing up. I’ll be done in a minute.”

  “Take your time,” Bernie responded. “But when you come out we have to talk, okay?”

  Ellen didn’t answer.

  “Ellen, we really do,” Bernie said. “This is serious. You could go to jail for this.”

  There was still no response.

  “Maybe she can’t hear you over the water,” Libby suggested.

  “It’s not that loud. Anyway, she could hear me fine before.” Bernie started tapping the fingers of her left hand against her thigh. The bad feeling she’d had ever since she’d knocked on the motel room door kicked itself up a notch. “I’m not liking this. I’m not liking this at all.”

  Which was when Libby remembered the bathroom window. She put her hand to her mouth and groaned. “Oh crap.”

  “Oh crap, what?” Bernie asked.

  “The bathroom window. I bet she climbed out it.”

  “Don’t be absurd.” Bernie took a deep breath and let it out. “She wouldn’t. She couldn’t.”

  “She might have.”

  Bernie shook her head. “Those windows are small. I don’t think she could squeeze through one of them. Anyway, they were always painted shut.”

  “Maybe not this time,” Libby said as she headed toward the bathroom with Bernie following.

  Libby banged on the door. “Ellen,” she cried. “Open up. Come out this second.”

  There was no response.

  Libby tried the door handle. It didn’t budge. The door was locked.

  “Let me try,” Bernie said, moving in front of Libby.

  “Be my guest,” Libby told her.

  “Ellen, don’t be stupid.” Bernie jiggled the door handle. “Damn,” she said when it didn’t move. She cursed under her breath and put her ear against the wood. All she could hear was running water. “I think you’re right. I don’t think she’s in there.”

  “We should have called the police,” Libby said.