Tomb With a View

12

Sure, I’ve been known to fudge the truth a little once in a while. Usually in the name of solving a case. Or when doing so is vital to something important like my weight or my dress size. That doesn’t change the fact that I am now and always have been a basically honest person.

I didn’t say a word to Tammi the tour guide, but the idea that Marjorie had a purloined piece of property—stolen from a president’s home no less—just didn’t sit right with me. Even before I left Lawnfield, I knew what I was going to do. I didn’t stop home, but I did make a quick detour to the library, long enough to use the Internet to find Nick Klinker’s home address.

Nick, it seemed, had better taste than his aunt. At least when it came to neighborhoods and houses. Within an hour, I found myself clear on the other side of town in the chichi suburb of Bay Village. Big houses. Towering oaks. Views of the lake for the lucky few who were smart enough to scoop up waterfront property.

Nick Klinker was one of them.

I parked the Mustang on the circular drive that led up to a house with more windows than walls, and a sweeping backyard where I could see a garden with a fountain and one of those gazebos. Vine covered, of course. The house was situated high on a bluff overlooking Lake Erie, and though real estate is not my thing, I had been trained right early on; I knew—and appreciated—pricey when I saw it.

Recession? What recession? Obviously, things were just peachy in the software engineering world.

By the time I rang the bell, I had already practiced what I was going to say when Nick answered the door. There was no use beating around the bush, and no way to sugarcoat the truth: his late aunt wasn’t just the most annoying individual I’d ever met; she was a crook, too.

Only I was going to put it in words nicer than that.

I would have, too, if Nick answered the door. Instead, when it swung open, Bernadine, Nick’s fiancée, was looking back at me. At least I thought it was Bernadine. She couldn’t have looked more different than the stylishly turned-out woman I’d seen at the funeral. The impeccable outfit was gone, replaced with a pair of ratty denim capris and a T-shirt that immortalized some 5K run everybody had already forgotten. The sleek hairstyle? There was no sign of that, either. Bernadine’s blond tresses stuck up in weird spikes all over her head.

“Who are you? What do you want?” Bernadine’s eyes were blazing. She looked me over, twisted a lock of hair around one finger, and pulled hard. “Do I know you?”

I did my best to smile. It would have been easier if she’d been wearing those sweet Dolce & Gabbana pointed-toe slingbacks. But she wasn’t wearing any shoes at all, and half her toenails were polished garish pink. The others were done in a chocolately shade of maroon.

I looked back up to her face. “We didn’t have a chance to talk on Monday, but I chatted with Nick. At Marjorie Klinker’s—”

“Don’t even mention that woman to me!” Bernadine threw her head back and groaned. When she turned around and padded down the hallway, she didn’t close the door and she didn’t tell me to get lost, so I followed her, closing the door behind me. By the time I found her in the cavernous house, she was in a kitchen with a floor-to-ceiling view of the lake. She had a bottle of Black Velvet in one hand.

She poured a healthy couple inches into a glass and downed them in one gulp. “Do you know something about what Nick’s up to?” she asked me.

I was a tad confused so I didn’t say anything. She was a tad busy pouring herself another drink so she didn’t notice. As jittery as a double jolt of caffeine, she went over to the stainless steel, industrial-sized refrigerator and got a handful of ice cubes. She dumped them in with the whiskey and swirled the drink, studying me over the rim of the glass.

“Well, do you?” she asked. “Because I’ll tell you something, I don’t know what the hell’s going on, and it’s making me crazy, and I don’t have time to mess with this kind of nonsense. My wedding is in exactly . . .” She glanced at a calendar almost as big as the refrigerator it was stuck to with magnets. The days of the month that had already passed were marked off with thick red X’s, and the Saturday just one week away was circled. There was a big yellow star on the date.

“I’m getting married a week from this Saturday,” Bernadine said. She took a couple quick sips of her drink. “And do you see my groom here helping me get ready?” She spread her arms and looked around the kitchen, demonstrating.

Point made. We were the only two people there.

“I’ve got wedding favors to make,” she wailed. “Three hundred and forty-seven little porcelain picture frames, and every single one of them needs a photo of me and Nick put in it. But is Nick here to help?” Another swig, and she was rarin’ to go. The panic in Bernadine’s voice climbed right along with her anger.

“Was he here last night when the florist stopped by for one final chat? Did he show up this afternoon when I talked to the soloist about the songs for church?” She didn’t wait for me to say anything, but then, she didn’t need an answer and I wasn’t about to interrupt. That old saying about hell hath no fury like a woman scorned? A woman scorned doesn’t hold a candle to a bride whose wedding day is breathing down her neck.

“I know he’s been distracted, what with Marjorie’s death and everything,” Bernadine said, doing her best to be understanding. “And I know he’s nervous, too. His tummy’s been acting up and he’s not usually the high-strung type. That tells me he cares and knowing that . . .” She fueled her thoughts with another sip of whiskey and apparently her brief tiptoe into the land of the sensible was over. Her voice rose to a screech. “Has Nick done one damned thing to help me these past few days?” she asked no one in particular. “I’ll tell you what, no, he hasn’t! Does he think a bride can do all these things by herself? I mean, really. Is it fair to expect me to go to the tanning salon, try out nail lacquer colors, do a run-through on hair and makeup, and count out those little bags of pink and red M&Ms with Bernie on some and Nick on some and Love Forever on others? I ask you. Is it?”

I had once been engaged myself; I could empathize, if not with the Black Velvet, at least with the stress levels. Rather than get into it, I tried to keep her on task at the same time I struggled to make sense of everything she said. “Has Nick disappeared?” I asked. “Has something happened to him?”

“Happened?” Her laugh was maniacal. It echoed back at us from the high ceiling and bounced its way over the stainless steel stove, the matching dishwasher, and the glass-fronted wine chiller built in below the countertop. “Nick’s lost his mind. That’s what’s happened to him. And it’s all her fault.”

Oh yeah, just the way she said that her, I knew exactly who she was talking about. “You mean Marjorie.”

“Aunt Marjorie.” Bernadine threw her hands in the air. She was still holding her glass of Black Velvet and it sloshed out and rained down on the white ceramic tile floor. She didn’t bother to clean it up. “For years and years, Marjorie Klinker has ruined my life,” she wailed. “Every holiday. Every birthday. Every vacation. Marjorie was always there with those little . . .” She wiggled her fingers over her head, and I got the message.

“Head scarves,” I said.

“Those head scarves. Yeah. Those hideous head scarves! She was always there wearing those things and acting like God’s gift to the whole wide world. And talking about family history.” Her moan was worthy of a ghost in a horror movie. “Oh, how I hated listening to her talk about family history. I put up with it,” she added, one hand out and her palm flat. “I tolerated her. I welcomed her into my home. I couldn’t stand the woman, but I managed to swallow my pride and tell myself I was doing it for the sake of family.”

“You didn’t kill her, did you?”

Hey, I figured it was worth a try. Bernadine was so worked up, she just might be in the mood to confess.

No such luck. But then, I don’t think she even heard me.

“And now . . .” She hiccuped. “Now, even after she’s dead, Marjorie’s ruining my wedding!”

There was a table nearby and I sat down. Just as I’d hoped, Bernadine did, too. It gave me the opportunity to look her right in the eye. The way I would if she was a dog and I was trying to get her attention.

“You’re going to need to start from the beginning,” I said. “Because I can’t help you if I don’t know exactly what’s going on.”

She tapped one bare foot against the floor. “It all started Monday. After the funeral.”

I nodded, waiting for more.

She leaped out of her chair to refill her glass. “He never cared about any of it before,” she said at the same time she took a long swallow. Her words were liquor-soaked. “Marjorie, she carried on about it all, constantly. Oh lord, how I was tired of hearing about it!”

I might be confused, but I was not insensible. I knew exactly what she was talking about. “James A. Garfield.”

“You got that right.” She returned to the table, slammed down her glass, and plopped back into the chair. “You knew her, right? You must have if you were at the funeral. It was the only thing she ever talked about, the only thing she ever cared about. Garfield this, and Garfield that, and how she was related and wasn’t that just so special.” Bernadine’s top lip curled. “I was sick to death of hearing about it. If I wasn’t so crazy about Nick . . .”

I was grateful she’d brought up his name. I needed to get her back on track. “So after the funeral on Monday, what happened to Nick?”

“I’ve known Nick for four years, and all that time, he pooh-poohed Marjorie like everyone else. He was only nice to her because she was his father’s only sister, and the only living relative he had left. All those claims about how she was related to the president? Nick was sure they were nothing but a lot of bull. He never cared a thing about any of it. Not the books or the pictures or all that presidential crap she has all over her house.”

“And then . . . ?”

“Then it was like someone flicked a light switch. You know what I mean? After the funeral, we went back to Marjorie’s, and it was like watching someone take over his body. Like he got possessed with Marjorie’s spirit or something.”

Not a pretty thought. I shivered.

Bernadine tugged on her bangs. “All of a sudden, he’s obsessed with President Garfield, too. He reads about him in books. He checks out websites on the Internet. He goes over to Marjorie’s and he stays there for hours and hours and he doesn’t come home. And he’s not helping me with the wedding.” She slapped one hand against the table. “The wedding is next Saturday. Next Saturday! And instead of worrying about the biggest day of my life, all he does is talk about all that junk of Marjorie’s. He’s going to bring it home. Here!” She tapped her fingernails against the table. She crossed her legs and uncrossed them again. She plucked at her hair.

“I can’t believe it’s happening. Not now. Not when the wedding’s just one week away. But I’ll tell you one thing . . .” Bernadine slugged down the rest of the Black Velvet and slammed the empty glass on the table. “It’s going to stop. Or there’s not going to be a wedding.” Her outrage lasted only so long. The next second, her big blue eyes filled with tears and her bottom lip trembled. “Oh, my wedding! I don’t want to cancel my wedding. It’s the most perfect wedding in the world . . . and . . . and I want to marry Nick. I just don’t understand what’s happened to him.”

That made two of us.

Because if everything Bernadine said was true, Nick was suddenly as obsessed with James A. Garfield as Marjorie ever was. And the one and only time I talked to him . . .

Well, I knew I wasn’t remembering it wrong.

The time I talked to Nick Klinker, he made it abundantly clear that he thought Marjorie’s Garfield collection was nothing but a bunch of junk.

I was back in the car and driving to Marjorie’s neighborhood in no time flat. The reason, of course, was self-evident: I needed to talk to Nick Klinker.

About his sudden and irrational interest in James A. Garfield.

About his aunt.

About his aunt’s murder.

A full plate for a Wednesday afternoon, and there was still the little matter of how I was supposed to be at work that day. Not to worry, I called Ella and talked my way out of it with a story about my poor car and how there was more wrong than just the tires. I was stuck at the mechanic’s, see, and with no way to easily get back to Garden View.

Ella bought it, hook, line, and sinker. Which she might not have if she’d been paying attention and had heard the traffic noise in the background.

That taken care of, I parked in front of Marjorie’s nondescript house, hurried up the steps, and rang the bell.

No answer.

If what Bernadine told me was true, Nick had to be there. He was spending all his time there. He was suddenly a buff, a devotee, a Garfield maniac.

And I wanted to know why.

I tried the bell again, and when there was still no answer, I went over to the picture window that looked out over the front porch and pressed my nose to the glass.

There’s something about obsession that sticks in the mind, and Marjorie’s fixation was pretty far out there. Try as I might to forget it, the weirdness of everything I’d seen on my last visit was imprinted on my brain. I remembered exactly how the living room was arranged. That’s why I knew things had been moved.

Moved being an understatement.

All the pictures had been taken down from the walls. (And just a reminder, all the pictures were of Garfield.) They were stacked on the red, white, and blue plaid couch.

All the books were piled on chairs.

All the knickknacks were heaped near the fireplace, including the oil lamp I’d nearly toppled over while Marjorie and Ray were arguing in the den and the vase filled with those old-fashioned hat pins that I had knocked over.

It was obvious Nick had been through everything with a fine-tooth comb, sorting and inventorying and stashing away. It was not so obvious why.

Thinking about it, I turned—and nearly jumped out of my skin when I realized Marjorie’s neighbor, Gloria Henninger, was right behind me. So was Sunshine.

She (that’s Gloria, not Sunshine) didn’t bother to apologize for nearly giving me a heart attack. “Oh, it’s you,” she said, the words leaving her mouth along with a stream of smoke from her cigarette. She had the dog in her arms and she gave it a little squeeze. “Sunshine told me somebody was sneaking around over here. Figured I’d better come have a look. It’s what neighbors do for each other, you know.” She dropped the stub of her cigarette on the porch and ground it with her sneakers. They were yellow and they matched the T-shirt she was wearing, the one that said, I KISS MY DOG ON THE LIPS. Her shirt, in turn, matched Sunshine’s, except that the dog’s said, I KISS MY OWNER ON THE MOUTH.

Since I didn’t want to think about either of these possibilities, I was glad when she said, “At least that’s how neighbors should treat each other. Not that the Klinker woman ever did. Didn’t care about anybody. Anybody but herself.”

I could have said something about how it wasn’t exactly appropriate to criticize seeing as how Marjorie had just recently been murdered, but let’s face it, I couldn’t think of anything nice to say about her, either. And anyway, Gloria beat me to it. “Don’t even give me that hogwash about speaking kindly of the dead,” she growled. So did Sunshine. “I had nothing good to say about her when she was alive, and I’m not going to be a hypocrite now that she’s gone. The woman was the curse of the neighborhood.”

I remembered the glimpse I’d had of Marjorie’s backyard. “Maybe now her nephew will get rid of the statue of President Garfield.”

My suggestion wasn’t met with as much enthusiasm as I’d expected. Gloria scraped a finger back and forth across the top of Sunshine’s head. “Well, that’s what I was thinking, too. And I got all excited about it. You know, when Nick started to move it. But it didn’t last.”

There didn’t seem to be much point in asking her to explain, so I walked to the railing on the far side of the porch and leaned over. The statue of President Garfield was still there, but just like Gloria said, and like everything else I’d seen in the house, it, too, had been moved.

Instead of standing directly in the path of the beam of that spotlight, the president was now six feet over to the left. The pots of flowers from around the statue had been shifted in front of the garage, and the bushes that ringed the statue? They’d been dug up. They sat on the driveway, their roots withering in the sun.

“See what I mean?” Gloria poked me with one bony elbow. “Saw that Nick Klinker messing with the statue, and I thought, Glory be! He’s going to get rid of it. No such luck. Now that he’s messed with it, it just looks worse than ever. I’ve called the city. Told them I pay my taxes and I have the right to a neighborhood free of eyesores. Nobody’s listening. Nobody cares.”

I did. But not for the reasons she thought.

I decided it was best not to mention this so instead I asked, “What’s Nick up to?”

“Hell if I know.” Gloria made a face. “All I can tell you is that he’s been here all hours, and had people in and out, in and out. It’s upsetting to Sunshine. She keeps a regular schedule. She doesn’t appreciate the interruptions.”

“People in and out. Like who? What people?”

“Well, I don’t know all of them.” Obviously, I should have realized this. At least that’s what the look Gloria gave me said. “But I did recognize that one fellow. You know . . .” Trying to think, she snapped her fingers. “You know, the big guy. Bushy head of silver hair. He’s on that show on PBS where they look at the antiques people bring in. Not the famous show that goes all over the country. The other one. The one they film right here in Cleveland.”

“Antique Appraisals?” Don’t get the wrong idea. I am not and never have been a faithful viewer. The show was on right before Cemetery Survivor so I’d seen a couple minutes at the end of a couple episodes right after I turned the TV on and right before I turned it right off because I couldn’t stand to watch myself in the corny cemetery restoration show. “I know who you’re talking about. Ted Something.”

“Ted Studebaker. That’s him.” Gloria’s face lit like a Christmas tree. “I know I’m right. It was him. I know it for a fact. And it’s not just because I’m a sort of magnet for superstars. Met Jimmy Durante once. Live and in person. And Telly Savalas.” She looked at me expectantly.

I stared at her blankly.

Maybe she was more perceptive than I’d given her credit for. Rather than belabor the point, she started down the steps. “Come on, honey,” she said. “And I’ll prove it to you.”

I followed her next door to a house much like Marjorie’s except for the lack of Garfield memorabilia and the addition of a gag-in-the-mouth doggy smell that mingled with the unrelenting stench of cigarettes.

Once inside, I stayed as close to the front door as politely possible, in hopes of catching the occasional whiff of fresh air. Sunshine still in her arms, Gloria rattled around in the kitchen.

“I know I’ve got it here somewhere.” Her voice floated to me from the back of the house. “I’ll find it. You’ll see. You’ll see that I met him.”

Since I wasn’t sure if she was talking about Ted the antiques appraiser or about those guys I didn’t know, the ones named Jimmy and Telly (wasn’t he a character from Sesame Street?), I waited. Left to my own devices, I had a chance to take a quick look around.

Gloria’s furniture was cheap and not worth mentioning. The wall-to-wall carpet had seen better days. She had a big-screen TV next to an aquarium where a dead fish floated on top of the water. There were a couple magazines on her coffee table, and a couple pieces of mail. Curious, I took a deep breath, held it, and hurried over there. I shuffled through the mail, checking it out.

An electric bill. An ad from a local dentist. What looked like a birthday card.

Nothing interesting, and certainly nothing that would help with my case.

“Ah, here it is!” I heard Gloria say, and I dropped the mail back on the table before she got back to the room. It slid under a three-month-old Ladies Home Journal, and I quickly moved to put it back in place. When I did, something else slid out from under the magazine, too.

For a second, I simply stared. But I knew another second would be too long. I scooped up the paper, folded it, and stuffed it into the pocket of my khakis.

Just in time, too.

“Here it is.” Gloria shuffled back into the room holding a business card. She handed it over. Sunshine grumbled when I got too close.

Gloria pointed at the name printed on the card in raised lettering. “See? See, right there. It was Ted Studebaker himself, all right. Just like I said. I saw a car pull up. Something slick and shiny. I knew it wasn’t anybody who’d been here before so I went over to see what was going on. You know, the way a good neighbor would. Nick was just coming out of the house and he introduced me. That’s when Ted Studebaker gave me that card.”

I gave the card a careful look. It was printed on quality paper and embossed with an eagle in the background. Ted Studebaker Antiques, it said, was located in Chagrin Falls, a charming and highfalutin suburb to the east, and it said that Ted was a specialist in presidential “autographs, memorabilia, and ephemera.”

“So Nick was talking to a presidential collector.” I said this to no one in particular, but of course, Gloria assumed I was talking to her.

“That’s right.” She grabbed a plastic cigarette lighter from a nearby table and fired up another smoke. “I heard them. You know, when I was on my way over there. Nick was telling Ted Studebaker to come on inside, telling him he had lots to show him. Ted, he wasn’t even through the front door and Nick was asking about what stuff was worth and if anybody would want it.”

“Did Studebaker say anybody would?”

“Well, it never got that far. Not as far as I heard, anyway. Because that’s when me and Sunshine, we showed up to see who the stranger was and we introduced ourselves. Didn’t we, Sunshine?” She kissed the dog on the top of the head.

At least it wasn’t on the lips. I took comfort in the thought.

“I can tell you that Studebaker, just looking inside the Klinker place from the front porch, he was practically foaming at the mouth. That’s how excited he was to get in there and start rooting through things. When we were leaving, they went into the house, and I heard Nick say something about how he wanted to sell it. All of it.”

I thought about the neat piles of Garfield kitsch in Marjorie’s house. It made sense that Nick would have been through it. Especially if he wanted to sell it all.

Well, maybe all wasn’t exactly the right word. There was still the matter of the floor tile Marjorie had stolen off the wall at Lawnfield. And the box full of Marjorie’s stuff in the trunk of my car.

Those were problems for another day. So was Ted Studebaker. For now, I had more important things to think about, so I thanked Gloria for her help, got in my car, and did that thinking.

Remember, at our first meeting, Gloria was the one who told me she wanted Marjorie Klinker dead.

She was also the one who swore up and down that she didn’t really know what the statue of President Garfield at the cemetery looked like, because she’d never been to Garden View.

At the next red light, I reached in my pocket and pulled out what I’d swiped from Gloria’s coffee table.

It was a brochure from the Garfield Memorial. Yep, the same brochure we hand out to visitors.