Chapter 14
“Please, don’t make a fuss over me, Mrs. Levigne. I just wanted to drop these off to you and hopefully offer my help with anything you need,” I protested as she offered to make me some tea with honey.
I’d managed to make it to her house safely, a one-level ranch in a mixture of brick and eighties blue siding. Well cared for, no doubt, with its trimmed hedges covered in thick snow and arborvitaes lining the drive, but definitely in need of some updating.
For such a large, imposing woman, Francie wasn’t nearly as scary in person as her angry scowl on Facebook (I’d looked her up before coming to pay my respects) or her ax-throwing championships suggested. And indeed, she was an ax-throwing champion. She had an entire glass and gold curio cabinet devoted to her medals and trophies. She even had a bronzed ax to commemorate her triumphs.
People milled about her living room, still decorated with a flair for the seventies. Gold shag carpet adorned her floors and an avocado-green refrigerator sat proudly in her kitchen, outdone only by the brown wall oven. She had a collection of wooden cows displayed all over her countertops; so many, she could rival a good dairy farmer. It was safe to say, not much had changed in the Levigne household since 1972.
Hushed whispers swirled around the room as people came and went to offer their condolences—even as poor as the weather was, the people of Eb Falls had found a way to bring comfort in the way of casseroles and condolences.
“Miss Cartwright?” Francie peered at me with hawkish eyes and raven-black hair.
“Oh, no thank you, Mrs. Levigne.”
“If you’re sure,” she said with a fleeting, close-mouthed smile. “But I’d be glad to get you something else, if you’d prefer.”
“Oh, no, no. I’m really fine. I just came by to give you my condolences and bring you some pastries. Nothing more.”
“Did you know Hank?” she asked, eyeing me with startlingly coal-black eyes.
I kept my answers vague enough to keep suspicion at bay. “I met him a time or two. We didn’t travel in the same social circles, of course. But we chatted here and there. Either way, he was an Eb Fall-er, and you know what we do best in Eb Falls when there’s a tragedy.”
But Francie didn’t appear too broken up about Hank’s death. In fact, I hadn’t seen her shed a single tear, and that was after several mourners had come and gone.
Maybe she wasn’t the wear-her-heart-on-her sleeve type? I tried to remember if she’d cried at Abe’s funeral, but I couldn’t. Yet, this was her son, for goodness sake. If she was an emotional woman, she sure was doing a great job of keeping it under wraps.
Francie’s bright red lips puckered, making her face look even wider as she smoothed a hand over her black shirtwaist dress. “Did he own your building, too?” she asked, as though anticipating I’d come to complain, but I wanted to reassure her that wasn’t the case.
I placed a hand on her forearm. “No. I own Madam Zoltar’s.”
Francie’s lips flatlined then and she backed away ever so slightly, wiping her hands on her white apron with the ruffled trim. “You’re that lady who says she can talk to ghosts, eh?” Her penciled-in eyebrows rose with the furrow in her brow.
I decided to look her directly in the eye. It isn’t like I don’t get flack for my conversations with the dead, but for some reason, her question annoyed me because it smacked of visible disapproval.
Still, I admitted, “I am.” And I said it with pride, lifting my chin. I didn’t care who believed or didn’t believe. I knew the truth.
Francie crossed her large, unusually toned arms over her ample chest. “You do know that stuff’s all a bunch of hooey, don’t you? Like that woman with all the big, ratty blonde hair and fake nails in Long Island who’s on TV? She needs to see a shrink before she sees any more dead people.”
Okey-doke. A nonbeliever. I could live with that. I gave her my canned reply—one I’d practiced almost since birth. “I believe we’re all different, and we all have different beliefs. I respect yours, as I’m sure you respect mine. That’s what I believe. Now, I won’t keep you any longer, Mrs. Levigne. I realize you have guests to tend to. I just wanted to lend my support. My best to you and yours.” I patted her hand and slipped into a small gathering of people who were chatting.
As I made my way to the front door, past the old buffet table crowded with pictures in frames of all shapes and sizes, I stopped to glance at the ones of Abe with Francie’s children. Looking at them, you’d never know Abe and Hank didn’t get along. They certainly looked happy enough at a Fourth of July party, arm in arm, smiling for the camera, their faces tanned, their eyes bright.
But if one were to believe the buzz in the room and the story from Burt, Abe disapproved of Hank and his shady real estate transactions. I wondered what that meant, and decided it was worth looking into.
I’m not sure why I decided to do it, but in light of the dire circumstances, it couldn’t hurt to eavesdrop on some of the conversations for a little while, on the off chance something valuable would pop up.
One conversation I found particularly interesting was the one two middle-aged men, both in crisp black suits, were having about how Hank should have gone to the doctor.
“He was having trouble breathing, said his heart kept pounding out of control for no reason. Flew out to Florida to play some golf and had to go to the emergency room for it, you know,” the man with the dark blue tie and slick comb-over said.
The second man, lean like a runner and quite handsome with his thick chestnut hair, nodded as he fiddled with his tie. “Yeah. He mentioned that at our last meeting at the agency. Said he was planning to go see the doctor next week about it.”
The agency must be the real estate company Hank worked for, but I didn’t know he’d been having health issues. Definitely something to note. Though, the article I’d read in the paper said plainly it was murder. So if his heart played a role in his death, the police didn’t think it was the reason he’d died.
Both men moved on, as did I, trying to stay inconspicuous. Surely there were people here who’d been shafted by Hank’s rent increase?
But as I circulated, grabbing a deviled egg from a platter being passed around, I didn’t get much gossip at all. Thankfully, it appeared everyone was keeping any resentment they harbored, if any, quiet.
“Another dead end,” I mumbled under my breath, just as the heavy wood front door blew open and a very stylish older woman swept in with a blast of cold air.
Her hair was bleached almost white-blonde and styled in side-swept fashion to cascade along her neck and over the very top of her shoulder, and held in place with a sparkling rhinestone barrette.
Her makeup was a tasteful mix of glamorous and classic with a lighter-colored lipstick on her mouth, and heavily made-up eyes in smoky brown, accenting her round blue eyes. For sure, she was in her early sixties if she was a day, but it was evident, she had preserved herself well via the aid of a plastic’s surgeon’s knife. She had that slick, shiny look to the apples of her cheeks, the skin stretched over them a little too tight, and her lips, while not unattractive, surely has seen some Botox fillers.
I found myself mesmerized by her. The woman didn’t just enter the room, she fell into it with a graceful pause as everyone’s eyes turned to her before she glided her way to the center of the space in black heels and a navy-blue trench coat.
How she’d made it up the steps to Francie’s house in those heels was legend, as far as I was concerned. She didn’t have a single snowflake on her black shoes, and that, in and of itself, was worthy of praise.
The room went very quiet very fast, though to note, it was mostly the older generation whose mouths fell open. The younger groups of folks my age, or even Hank’s, while interested, didn’t appear as shell-shocked as the others.
Well, now. I couldn’t leave just yet. This woman was someone. Someone who’d made an obvious impact, good or bad, and I wanted to know who the heck she was.
So I hovered and moved over to the table where a plate of cold cuts and creamy potato salad sat in a fluted bowl. Making myself look busy by putting together ham, cheese and salami on a hard roll, I positioned myself near a woman around the same age as Francie, and whose mouth was moving a mile a minute as she whispered animatedly to her friend.
“I can’t believe she showed up,” the woman hissed, taking a bite of a croissant with a snap of her teeth.
Her friend wiped the crumbs from the corner of the woman’s mouth. “Shush, Maura! Don’t let Francie hear you. She’ll just get upset all over again. That Luanne doesn’t give a fig about Francie’s loss. She’s just putting on a front so we all won’t talk about her tomorrow when she goes back to that fancy house of hers in Beverly Hills.”
So, the pretty older lady’s name was Luanne and, apparently, she had some kind of beef with Francie Levigne. This was definitely worth sticking around for. I didn’t know if it was going to help my investigation into Hank’s death, but the tension in the room was as tangible as pea soup.
This Luanne meant something. But did she mean something to Hank’s case—now labeled a murder?
I squirted some spicy mustard on my sandwich and heaped a lump of potato salad on my paper plate while I watched Luanne make her way toward Francie. She slipped through the groups of people, never once addressing them or even meeting their eyes.
Instead, she latched onto Francie’s arm and pulled her close, her eyes glistening with tears. “Oh, Francie,” she whispered in the raspy voice of someone who’d had a cigarette or two. “I’m so sorry, Francie. So sorry.”
But Francie Levigne didn’t look like she was terribly interested in how sorry Luanne was. She gripped the woman’s slender wrist and pulled her down the short, carpeted hallway just off the living room without saying a word.
However, Francie didn’t have to say anything. Everyone could see how she felt, and it had nothing to do with goodwill.
Plopping a forkful of potato salad in my mouth, I leaned into a conversation by the refreshment table. A man and his wife, also probably about the same age as Francie, were engaged in a heated debate.
“That woman is disgusting,” spat the white-haired lady with crisp trousers and a black sweater tied around her shoulders. “I hope she leaves as fast as she came.”
But the man, a portly gentleman with pudgy, pockmarked cheeks, ruddy weathered skin and a wisp of white hair atop his bald head, admonished her. “Don’t be so judgmental, Lenore. She left a long time ago. It’s long over.”
Now my ears were on fire. What was over?
“But not before she stole all of Francie and John’s money! She’s Francie’s sister, for pity’s sake! And after that, she went off and married some rich man and took all his money. She’s on her third husband now,” the woman said with a sneer.
Wait. Two things. Luanne was Hank’s aunt? And wasn’t John Francie’s first husband, Hank’s biological father? So this grudge went quite a way back then.
But that only meant Luanne was a gold digger. Not a murderer. This didn’t help me at all. Not that I’d wish Hank’s aunt were his killer, it was unthinkable, but I was giving in to my penchant for gossip, and that made me uneasy. I dropped the rest of my sandwich on the plate, my appetite gone.
“Francie, please listen to me!” Luanne cried from the hallway, startling everyone into complete silence.
“Get out of my house, Luanne!” Francie demanded, her voice tight and angry.
Time to go. I wasn’t going to stick around for the drama while everyone else spoke ill of Luanne as though she weren’t even in the room. Worse, I wasn’t going to watch a mother who’d just lost her son argue with her sister when she should be mourning the death of her child.
As Francie stormed out of the darkened hallway with Luanne hot on her heels, tears streaming down her face, Pricilla, Hank’s sister, came out of nowhere and grabbed Luanne’s arm as the women barreled toward me.
“Please, Aunt Luanne! This isn’t the time or the place!” she cried, her blue eyes, much like Luanne’s, riddled with worry.
But Luanne pulled away from her and headed toward the door, pushing me out of the way. She rushed down the steps, with Pricilla following close behind, kicking up snow the entire way.
I slinked out the door and tried to make myself very small. I wanted no part of whatever was happening, but Pricilla caught up with Luanne and forced her to turn around.
“Why did you come today of all days, Aunt Luanne? You should have just stayed home!” Pricilla cried, her gaunt cheeks turning red from the frigid temperature as her long fingers wrapped around Luanne’s slender wrist again.
But Luanne shook her coiffed-to-the-nines head, snowflakes swirling all about her and mixing with her tears. “He was mine, too, Prissy! Hank was mine, too!”
“What a strange thing to say,” Win commented as I made a wide arc around the two women, hunching down behind some big SUVs to get to the end of Francie’s long driveway.
“Yep. It sure is,” I agreed. “And I don’t know what it means, and I don’t want to know what it means.” I beeped my car open and jumped in with a shiver. “Whatever’s happening there, it’s not good. Did you hear the bit about the money Luanne supposedly stole?”
“I did. Money is the root of all evil.”
“You bet it is. I can attest to that. Either way, it’s none of our business. Though, everyone inside that house appeared to know whatever that Chatty Cathy was talking about.” Then I shook my head. “I’m not here for the gossip. I am, however, ready to get Coop and Trixie moved over to MZ’s. We’re going to have a heck of a time getting home and back into town if we put it off much longer. The temperature’s only going to drop and the roads will be far worse than they already are.” Pulling out my phone, I sent Trixie a text and asked her to pack up, explaining my plan.
“You’re absolutely right, my sweet cornbread stuffing. I do not wish to see you splat all over the road like slushy.”
“I don’t wish to see that either, Arkady,” I said with a smile then I frowned. “I don’t know what to do next, boys. I’m at a loss.”
And that left me feeling incredibly sad. I hated that we were no closer to finding Hank’s killer than we were yesterday. How long could I hide Coop and Trixie before this passed? Would it pass, or would they railroad Coop into a conviction?
She was an easy target. Too easy.
The very notion made me that much more determined to find Hank’s killer.