Tomb With a View

5

Stalker!

Like anyone could blame me for thinking it?

My brain and muscles froze. My heart raced. My pulse pounded. But never let it be said that Pepper Martin is a wimp.

My instincts for self-preservation kicked in, but since I was carrying that box filled with Marjorie’s junk, I couldn’t start throwing punches. With no options and no other way to defend myself, I twirled around and shoved the box of Marjorie’s memorabilia right into the face of the person standing behind me.

I almost knocked down a little old lady wearing a pink chenille bathrobe and blue fuzzy slippers.

She scrambled to stay on her feet, too startled to say anything. The ugly little pug-faced dog she was carrying wasn’t as shy. It snarled. I backed away.

“Oh my gosh! I’m so sorry.” I set the box on the trunk of my Mustang, and since the dog was showing its crooked teeth, I made sure to keep my distance. It was then that I saw that the dog was wearing a pink chenille robe, too. “I thought you were someone else, and you snuck up behind me, and there’s been this stalker after me all summer, see, and I didn’t know you were there, and you scared me. I hope I didn’t hurt you.”

The woman had stick arms and loose skin under her chin that shimmied when she shot a look toward Marjorie’s house. She hoisted the dog up under one arm, pulled a pack of Camels out of the pocket of her robe, and lit up. While she took a drag, then let a long stream of smoke escape from between her lips, she looked me up and down.

“You from the city?” she asked.

“The city?” Yes, I know it’s annoying to answer a question with the same question, but I was trying to get things organized in my head. It wasn’t easy. The dog’s top lip was curled, and it was giving me a beady-eyed once-over. “Do you need to talk to somebody who works for the city?”

I guess it was a sore subject because both the woman and the dog growled. “Need to get that damned crazy woman out of the neighborhood. Thought maybe the city finally sent somebody to take care of it. I’ve been calling, you know. I have every right. I’m a citizen same as she is. Just in case they need to be reminded, I’ve told them over and over: Gloria Henninger is a taxpayer. She deserves to have her say. Been calling them every single day for the last six months. You know, ever since . . .” Gloria tipped her head in the direction of Marjorie’s driveway and the backyard beyond. The dog harrumphed.

When I arrived, I’d parked out on the street and headed straight up the front steps, so I hadn’t paid any attention to Marjorie’s backyard. Now, I leaned to my left for a look. What I saw took my breath away. “Is that—”

“A statue of President James A. Garfield. You got that right, sister. I’ve never been to that memorial for him. Never even been to that cemetery where Marjorie spends all her time, but I hear it’s a replica of the statue there.”

I checked again. It was. Down to every last detail.

The statue stood on a cement pad off to the side of Marjorie’s garage. It was surrounded by two-foot-tall bushes and pots of flowers. From the front yard, there was no way to tell it was there, but I imagined that whenever Marjorie’s neighbors—on this street or the one that backed up to it—walked out their back doors, it was the first thing they saw. Yeah, it was that hard to miss. Especially this time of the night when there was a spotlight shining right on it.

“It’s—”

“Ugly.” The woman spit out the word, dropped her cigarette, and ground it beneath the sole of one slipper. She switched the dog from one arm to the other. “That’s exactly what I told that crazy Klinker woman last spring when she had it trucked in here. Told her that statue was an eyesore. Told her it needed to be moved. Told her the neighbors weren’t going to stand for it.”

Like I needed to ask? I did anyway. “And Marjorie said . . . ?”

It was Gloria’s turn to harrumph. “Gave me a lecture about her rights as a property owner, that’s what she did. Told me to mind my own business. Just kept right on doing what she was doing. Put that statue right there and that was bad enough, but then last week she put up that spotlight. It’s too much. That’s what I told the city. I told them neighbors have to put up with some things. I understand that. But this? This is too much. Even little Sunshine . . .” She gave the dog a squeeze that made its already bulging eyes pop a little more.

“Sunshine won’t even walk out into our backyard to do her business. That’s how afraid of that statue she is. That’s what I told the city. Told them little Sunshine is terrified and that it’s just not right. You’d think they’d care. I’m a taxpayer, after all. You wouldn’t hear it from either of my ex-husbands, but I’ll tell you something else, honey: I’m a reasonable woman. And I’ve been reasonable. I’ve asked that crazy woman nicely. I’ve begged her. I’ve pleaded. When that didn’t work, I wrote letters to the newspapers and to the TV stations, and I’ve called my councilman. Nobody cares. That Marjorie Klinker acts like she’s better than everybody else.” Both Gloria and Sunshine aimed venomous looks at the house, and Gloria’s eyebrows slid up her forehead.

“You know what we do?” She lowered her voice and looked back at me, sharing the secret. “Every single night before we go to bed, Sunshine and me, we say our prayers. And you know what we ask for? We pray for Marjorie Klinker to die. Hasn’t happened.” She was disappointed; her shoulders drooped. “Nothing’s happened. The city doesn’t care. The TV stations don’t care. The newspapers don’t care. There are times I think I’m going to live until my dying day looking at that eyesore of a statue.” Disgusted, she shook her head. “I guess if anything’s going to change, it’s up to me. I’ll just have to kill her myself.”

It was hard to argue with logic like that, and I never had a chance, anyway, because Gloria turned and shuffled into the house next door.

Watching her, a shiver snaked over my shoulder. I didn’t pay any attention to it. What I did instead was load that box of junk into my trunk and get in my car. Right before I drove away, I took one last look at the house.

I was just in time to see Marjorie race across the living room, tossing books and magazines every which way.

I didn’t pay any attention to that, either, except to think that Gloria and Sunshine were pretty good judges of character: Marjorie Klinker was one strange cookie.

I wasn’t surprised to find Doris Oswald in the cemetery administration building the next morning. It’s not always easy to keep people happy, especially when they’re volunteering their time, but Ella has a magical gift for smoothing ruffled feathers. Of course she talked Doris out of quitting! What she’d talked Doris into, I didn’t know, but I saw that whatever project Doris was working on, it must have been overwhelming for the elderly woman. She was flustered and short of breath when I bumped into her in the hallway.

“Oh, Pepper!” Doris’s cheeks were rosy pink. “I was just . . . That is, I just . . .” Doris waved toward the copy room.

I suspected there was a problem with our cranky copier, and I so didn’t want to get dragged into it. I pointed Doris toward Jennine, who was way better at taking care of all things technical than I would ever be, and zoomed into my office before I could get waylaid by anyone else.

Once I had the door shut firmly behind me, I turned on my computer and checked my e-mail. I had a message from a suburban teacher who wanted to schedule her class for a tour, and since I had nothing better to do and knew that it was better to get these sorts of things over with than obsess about them, I picked up my phone to call her. It beeped, the way it does when I have a voice mail message.

My voice mail only kicks in when Jennine isn’t there to take my calls, and trooper that she is, Jennine is always there during business hours so this struck me as a little weird.

Unless Quinn had gotten a serious case of “I’m sorry” in the middle of the night.

My spirits rose. Yeah, I was still plenty mad at him, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t willing to cut him some slack. If he was appropriately penitent.

Anticipation buzzed through my bloodstream. Well, for a second, anyway. Until I reminded myself that if Quinn wanted to talk in the middle of the night, he wouldn’t call the office. He had my cell number.

Grumbling at the thought that whoever wanted me must have wanted something to do with a cemetery tour, I punched in my code, and waited. According to the computer voice that kicked in right before the message started, the call had come in the night before, right about the time I’d left Marjorie’s.

“Ms. Martin? Marjorie Klinker here.”

I cringed.

“Ms. Martin . . .” Marjorie huffed and puffed, trying to catch her breath. “There are so many Martins in the phonebook, I don’t know which number might be yours. Otherwise I would have called you at home. Or on your cell phone. That, of course, is a very good idea. Remind me to bring it up with Ms. Silverman tomorrow. Volunteers should have employees’ cell phone numbers, so that they could call them day or night in case of an emergency.”

I rolled my eyes.

“That is what this is, of course. An emergency. I certainly wouldn’t have called you . . .” She put just enough emphasis on that last word to make me feel as insignificant as she intended. “. . . if it wasn’t. Ms. Martin, I must see you in the morning. The instant you get to Garden View. First thing. It is extremely important. Please!”

Hearing Marjorie say please was a little like finding out a goldfish can talk. I gave the receiver a questioning look at the same time I deleted the message.

“The instant you get to Garden View!” I repeated the words in the same overly dramatic tone of voice Marjorie had used and made a decision right then and there: Marjorie Klinker wasn’t the boss of me. Just so she wouldn’t forget it, I took my good ol’ time. I called that teacher and scheduled a tour for the next week, and since just thinking about spending a couple hours with fourth graders made me weak in the knees, I knew I had to fortify myself with a cup of coffee. Since it was Friday and Ella usually brings donuts in on Fridays, I was hoping for a bit of a sugar high, too.

Donuts weren’t the only things I found in the break room. Ray was there, too, and I tried to make small talk mostly because I wanted to find out what he and Marjorie were going at it about the night before, but he would have none of it. He looked up long enough to say hello when I walked in, but that was it. He was preoccupied with the newspaper open on the table in front of him, though since he kept turning the pages and never once stopping to read any of the articles, I don’t know why.

I grabbed my coffee and a glazed donut and took it back to my office. When I was done with both, I was also out of things to do so I gave up and headed for the memorial. Marjorie’s black Saturn was parked on the road that circled the monument, but there was no one else around. Too bad. At least if there were tourists to keep Marjorie busy, she’d have less time to annoy me.

Determined to show her who was in charge and that it wasn’t her, I left the box of Garfield memorabilia in the trunk, fully intending to tell her that if she wanted it, she could make the long trek down the memorial steps and out to the car for it. All about attitude, I went into the memorial.

The lights were still off.

“Hello!” I stepped into the entryway and looked around.

Even in the semidarkness I could see that Marjorie wasn’t in the office, and I remembered that the last time I stopped in, she’d been upstairs. No way I was walking the narrow, winding steps. It would be far easier to head into the rotunda and call to her from there, so I did. I flipped on the lights—and stopped cold.

Marjorie lay at the foot of the statue of the president. There was a pool of blood behind her head, and her arms were thrown to her sides. Her legs were twisted in ways legs are never meant to move. She was wearing one tall, tacky black-and-white patent leather sandal. The other one was on the other side of the marble dais, its two-inch alligator green platform split in two.

I looked up at the railing surrounding the balcony above the rotunda.

I looked down at Marjorie’s crumbled body.

It didn’t take a genius to see that she had fallen, and that she was dead.

And honestly, I couldn’t help myself. All I could think was that it was no big surprise.

Marjorie never should have worn those weird, high shoes to work.

By the time she got over to the monument, Ella was in such a tizzy, I made her sit at the desk in the office, put her head down as far between her knees as she was able, and take a few deep breaths. She tried her best to regain the self-control she hadn’t had since I called and told her what I’d found. I stood at her side and watched a couple uniformed police officers bustle into the rotunda while the paramedics who’d arrived just before the cops stowed the equipment they realized there was no reason to use. There was no use even trying to revive a victim who was as dead as a doornail.

I’d made the 911 emergency call right after I told Ella the news, and just like I hoped they would, the cops were taking care of the details. They’d already gone up to the balcony to check things out up there, and they’d talked to me about what I did and what I saw when I got to the memorial. I’d heard one of them make a call and assumed they were having someone come over from the nearby coroner’s office to cart away Marjorie’s body.

I was expecting them to close the memorial until all that was done and everything (and by this, yes, I do mean all the blood) was cleaned up, but I wasn’t expecting them to pull out their yellow crime scene tape and cordon off not only the rotunda, but the stairway leading up to the balcony, and a wide swath of the grassy hillside outside the memorial.

Since the cops had already told me not to touch anything, and not to get in the way, and not to bother them with questions, and not to leave the building, I knew I wouldn’t get anywhere asking them why they were being so careful about investigating Marjorie’s death. When I looked toward the winding marble staircase that led down into the president’s crypt and saw the light that poured in from a small stained-glass window shimmer and shift, I knew it didn’t matter. I told Ella to keep breathing, and headed to the staircase to talk to the one person who might have actually seen Marjorie take that tumble over the railing.

“What exactly has transpired here?” President Garfield asked the question before I could, only I never would have used a word as stuffy as transpire. “More commotion! Precisely what I do not need. My cabinet is convening in exactly . . .” He pulled a gold watch from a little pocket in his vest. It wasn’t ticking. “We are scheduled to meet in less than fifteen minutes. I simply will not tolerate so many people coming and going when we have important business of state to discuss. What has happened here?”

“I was hoping you could tell me.” I stepped to the side so that the paramedics and cops couldn’t see me and kept my voice down. “Marjorie Klinker, you know, the volunteer who thinks you’re the greatest president ever? She’s dead.”

“Dead?” The president was honestly surprised. And me? I was honestly disappointed. I was hoping to get the inside track on the accident.

“You didn’t see anything?” I asked him. “You didn’t hear anything? She took a header over the railing. You’d think she would have screamed or something.”

“I neither saw nor heard a thing. But then, I have more important things to do than worry about what goes on here.”

“But you are worried about it. You said you didn’t like the comings and the goings.”

The president threw back his shoulders and I was reminded of the photo I’d seen of him in his Army uniform. He sniffed. “I should not be discommoded in any way. I have a country to run!”

“Only you’re not running it. You’re dead.” I leaned in as close as I dared and looked at him hard. “You know that, right?”

“Of course I do,” he muttered, and he might have said more if the door to the memorial hadn’t swung open. A streak of morning sunshine poured inside. Quinn Harrison wasn’t far behind.

“Shit.” It was my turn to grumble, and it wasn’t just because the one man I didn’t want to deal with happened to be standing not ten feet away. If Quinn had been called in, it could only mean one thing: Marjorie wasn’t just dead. The cops thought she’d been murdered.

If I was going to get any answers that might help with the investigation, I knew I needed to do it quick, before Quinn cornered me and started asking the same boring questions his brothers in blue had already asked.

“All right, so you didn’t see what happened to Marjorie,” I whispered though I guess I didn’t have to. By that time, Quinn was already in the rotunda and talking to the patrol officers. “Did you hear anything? I mean, after the cops arrived?”

“One of the police officers mentioned signs of a scuffle.” The president looked toward the stairway that led to the balcony. “Up there.”

“Which means . . .” I groaned and checked on Ella. She was finally sitting up and looking just a little less pale than the ghost at my side. It was bad enough that she’d have to face the media and explain a death in the cemetery. It would be worse when she found out that the death wasn’t accidental.

I knew I had to be with her when she heard the news. I turned to the president before I went into the office. “Why don’t you just float on up there and check things out,” I suggested. “You know, listen to what they’re saying. I have no doubt Mr. High-and-Mighty Quinn is going to be heading up there to look around. Follow him and let me know what he says.”

President Garfield’s eyes flashed blue lightning and he pulled himself up to his full, imposing height. “Young lady,” he snarled, “I do not do such things. I am, after all, the president.”

I knew it wasn’t polite to say whatever to a president—dead or alive—but it’s not like anyone could blame me. Then again, the way the president looked at me, his nose wrinkled and his eyes narrowed, I had a feeling he wouldn’t know what I was talking about, anyway.