Elaine Orr - Jolie Gentil 04 - Any Port in a Storm (10 page)

I folded my arms across my chest and walked past Aunt Madge and Scoobie into the kitchen.
Ramona was still sitting at Aunt Madge’s oak table, tea bag in her hand, dripping onto the table. When my gaze fell on it, she said, “Oh,” and dropped it onto the saucer.

The kitchen door swung shut again and Aunt Madge walked to me and took me by the shoulders and looked directly into my eyes.
“It’s bupkes and you know it,” she said, firmly.

“Also known as BS,” I said, trying to sound calmer than I felt.

I glanced at Scoobie, but couldn’t read his expression.
“It’ll be okay,” I said to him.

“You didn’t do it, but that doesn’t make it okay if they think you did.”
He didn’t walk over to me, but instead put a hand on Ramona’s shoulder as she dug for a handkerchief in her purse.

Why does everybody always make sure to comfort Ramona?
Because you’re too prickly when you’re mad.

There was a light rap on the side door and I heard the two officers let themselves back in.
I remembered that Dana had been here before, but still resented the familiarity.

“Jolie?” she called.

“In the kitchen.” I didn’t walk to the doorway, so she and Sgt. Sloan walked in.

In Dana’s hand was a heavy duty, see-through plastic bag that had been sealed shut.
In the bag was a mallet with a heavy rubber head.

I LEARNED NOTHING at the police station.

“See the thing is,” Morehouse said, “the mallet was exactly where the guy said it would be.
In your trunk.”

“The guy we don’t know,” I said.

“Which is why we figure he might not be a model citizen. You gotta ask yourself, why the hell is somebody maybe setting you up for this?”

A coldness entered the pit of my stomach for the first time and I worked hard to keep a shake out of my voice.
“I barely knew Hayden, and it’s not my habit to go whacking anyone, you know that.”

“Personally, I believe you,” Morehouse said.
“He tapped the eraser end of his pencil on the yellow notepad. “Most people do.”

Most?

“But,” he raised his voice slightly, sensing an interruption coming. “Somebody don’t just not like you, they figure they can get us to really think about you for the murder. That’s…odd.”

Dana walked part of the way into the room and handed Morehouse a paper.
“The obit you asked for,” she said, and gave me a nod as she turned to leave.

I was surprised when Morehouse put it on the table between us.
“Who d’ya know in here?” he asked.

The top of the page had the
Ocean Alley Press
fax information, and I read slowly.

Hayden Grosso of Middletown, New Jersey died suddenly on Sunday in Ocean Alley.
He was the son of Alberto and Mary Patricia (Kelly) Grosso, of Matawan. He graduated three years ago from Central High School and attended a local community college where he studied horticulture.

“Horticulture?” I said to Morehouse.

“We think he grew pot in part of his mother’s solari-whatever.”

“Solarium,” I said.
“She knew it?”

“Says no.”
He nodded to the paper and I went back to reading.

Hayden was an avid video gamer and regular high-scorer in the on-line game of Kill the Panther.
He was a member of St. Columbkill’s Catholic Parish in Matawan, where he had served as an altar boy as a young man.

Puleeze.

He is survived by his parents, two sisters, Veronica Bruno (Ricardo) of Middletown, New Jersey, Maria of the home, grandparents…”

I read through to the end and slid it back across the table.
“I don’t recognize any names.”

Morehouse left the room.
I tried to be logical and tell myself that there was no way anyone could prove I committed a murder that seemed to have happened during a huge storm when I was either serving food at First Prez after Talk Like a Pirate Day, or home with Aunt Madge. My mind immediately jumped to all the TV shows where the police prove someone had time to leave a party and commit a murder with no one aware of their absence.

Lt. Tortino came in.
He sat across from me and held my gaze for a moment. “I don’t have to tell you that this is more serious than me calling your aunt when I caught you smoking on the boardwalk in high school.”

I nodded.

“Personally, I don’t think you did this, but the next time you come in here for questioning, you really should bring an attorney.”

The next time?

I LEFT THE POLICE station a few minutes later, hopeful I wouldn’t be charged with anything, but not certain, and with a broken record in my head telling me not to go “poking into anything.”
Those words were in the voices of Lt. Tortino and Sgt. Morehouse.

I was just unlocking my car door when my phone chirped and I recognized Lance’s phone number.
Him I was happy to talk to. “I bet you have good news,” I said.

“I figure you need some.
How are you holding up?”

“I’ll be better when this all gets sorted out, but I’ll be okay.
So, Mr. Treasurer, what did we make?”

“So far $1,242.78.
But it’ll be a little more,” Lance said. “I don’t have all the money from the silent auction yet.”

My first thought was that it was a lot of work for twelve hundred dollars, but it was our first year.
First year!? I should take a mallet to my own head.

Lance said he and Dr. Welby had been discussing when the Harvest for All committee should meet again, and I asked him to hold off for a week or two.
“I figure you can pass the word about what we made, and I’m just not in the mood for a meeting.”

“I’m not sure what kind of mood you have to be in for a meeting,” he said, “but I take your point.”

If it had been anyone but Lance I would have suggested they sit on a point. Aunt Madge had said she would drop Scoobie at school, so I called and told her I wasn’t in the slammer yet and that I really had to get to the courthouse to look up comps on the last two houses I appraised last week.

Not a good idea.
By the time I got out of there I had been questioned by the Register of Deeds and all her staff and one of the clerks of court whose name I couldn’t tell anyone even if they held a gun (or mallet) to my head.

George fell in step with me as I left the courthouse. “You don’t want to have coffee with me at Burger King, you don’t have to plant murder weapons in your trunk.”

“If only it were that easy,” I said, trying hard not to smile.
Can’t encourage George.

“So who do you think put it there?” George asked.

“I guess you know asking me with different words than the police used doesn’t make me answer any differently,” I said, no longer trying to hide my irritation.

George jabbed his stubby pencil back into the spiral of his thin notebook.
“Nobody will say anything!”

“I told you what I know.”
He eyed me. “For once.”

“We gotta get to the bottom of this before it gets worse,” he said.

Tell me about it.

We were almost to my car.
“You want a ride to a meeting tonight?” George asked.

I hesitated.
George and Scoobie are big on their Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous meetings. I can’t say that I dislike the All-Anon family meetings they introduced me to, but I don’t get any warm fuzzies from them.

“You gotta work at it, you know,” he said.

“First, I don’t know what it is and second I don’t know if I want to.” George and Scoobie think I’m bunged up because of my husband’s gambling. Or something. They won’t really say what they think, which is really irritating.

“You’re a piece of work, Gentil.
I’ll pick you up at six forty-five.”

I didn’t say anything, just turned to walk across the courthouse parking lot to my car.
I was just about to call George and tell him not to bother when a thought came to me.
How else will you know what everybody else is saying about you if you don’t see a bunch of people?

GOD GRANT me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. The courage to change the things I can. And the wisdom to know the difference.

Yeah, yeah.

I was in the basement of St. Anthony’s, where all the twelve-step groups have meetings at various times during the week, and I was suddenly aware that I was drumming my fingers on the table. I stopped and smiled at the woman sitting across me.
Sourpuss.

My attention wandered as I listened to a woman describing how she was using the saying ‘progress not perfection’ to help her deal with her feelings about her husband throwing up in the car on his way home from The Sandpiper Bar.

Somebody put that mallet in the car. A deliberate act. But why me? They had to know Hayden didn’t know me very well, and the likelihood of me being alone with him in the middle of a hurricane — ok, downgraded to a tropical storm — was remote.

And who the heck was Hayden Gross, or Grosso?
He didn’t grow up here. How did he meet Alicia? And where was Alicia?
You should have paid more attention to her and Megan today.

A voice broke into my consciousness.
“…so I just told myself serenity is a matter of choice.”

It took a moment for me to realize that the reason I heard this is that the woman was sitting next to me and we were going around the room with our thoughts.
She was done. Gulp.

“Um, yes.” I glance around, nervous.
“I guess my week hasn’t been serene.” A couple women smiled and one of the older men nodded at me. I remembered people don’t really comment on what you say. “I guess I was feeling like ‘why me,’ and that’s kind of pointless.”

It took me a couple of seconds to realize no one knew the police were questioning me about Hayden, and half the room might not even known a body had been found the morning after Talk Like a Pirate Day.

I opened my mouth and closed it again, and the woman next to me gently said, “Would you like us to move on?”

“Um, no.
After Talk Like a Pirate Day, we were cleaning up and I kind of, well, found a body.”

“Another one?”
The woman was maybe forty and had the careworn look of someone who has too much to do.

The man on the other side of me cleared his throat, which seemed to mean she should lay off.
I smiled at him.

“It is…odd, I know.
He was under the bean bag game.”

“Oh my.”
This escaped from a much older woman at the other end of the table. Several others exchanged glances.

“I feel really bad about it.”

The woman who had been talking about serenity being a matter of choice pushed her chair back from the table a foot or so.

“I mean, I didn’t do it.” I didn’t recognize my own high-pitched giggle. “It’s just really bad luck…” my voices trailed off.

“For you or the body?” someone finally asked.

I flushed. “For him, of course. I just, I’m not sure how to handle all this.” A couple people caught my eye. “He’d been bugging me a lot. How am I supposed to feel?”

The looks that greeted this question told me several people were aghast at my question, so I hurried on.
“Of course, it’s terrible someone’s dead.

“You’re in the right place,” the careworn looking woman said, and several others nodded.

I have got to write down their names.

“I don’t…I think I’ll stop now,” I said.

I tried to pay more attention to the people who spoke after me, but I just couldn’t. As soon as the hour was up I got up without speaking and went out to the hall. George and Scoobie were leaving another room, laughing.
Why is it so many people seem in a good mood here? If I get serene I’m not coming here, that’s for sure.

Seeing them laugh made me doubly realize how miserable all this was making me.
Somebody really was out to get me.

IT SEEMED LIKE a good idea. For about ten minutes. I put it aside, and it came back. That seemed to clinch it. I was meant to go to Hayden Grosso’s funeral. I picked the funeral rather than a visit to the funeral home because you can get through an entire service without actually talking to anyone. I didn’t want to talk, I wanted to listen.

I figured the Grosso family would have heard at least something about me.
The morning paper said that the “possible murder weapon” had been found in the car trunk of “a local business woman,” but that the police were withholding her identity until they could “ascertain how the weapon had ended up there.”
Wink, wink.

One of A
licia’s friends had made a You-Tube video of her saying she knew I killed Hayden. It was down in a few hours, or so I heard. I never saw it. Lester called to tell me he was making sure anyone with ears knew it was impossible for me to kill anyone. Ramona said he was still giving out his whistles. I figured my reputation was shot with anyone who believes in guilt by association.

The question of the day was how to make sure no one at the funeral would recognize me.
I decided to take a page from Aunt Madge’s book and dye my light brown hair as black as I could get it. One time when my father made fun of one of Aunt Madge’s temporary hair colors she had washed her hair about thirty times in one night, so I figured I’d do the same. I couldn’t do it at the Cozy Corner though. Unless Aunt Madge had a date.

The funeral was Wednesday at ten o’clock at a Catholic Church in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, which was just across from Staten Island.
It was close to forty miles. On a good day on New Jersey highways that wouldn’t be too much more than an hour. On a bad day it could take four hours.

I couldn’t understand why it wasn’t in the town where Hayden’s parents lived, but if there were relatives in a cemetery near Perth Amboy it would make sense.
Or not.

“JOLIE?” It was Lt. Tortino’s voice on my mobile phone. It suddenly struck me that Sgt. Morehouse usually talked to me about anything, and maybe it was not a good sign that my conversations had moved up a rank.

“Yep.” I replied.