Category: Creativity

Chapter 35. Ricey

A green Corvette parked a few slots down pulled out behind her but Jacquetta couldn’t see who was driving. Roxelle Shields – or her manager – drove a green Corvette. Coincidence? There were a lot of green Corvettes in the world. Speaking of coincidence, Rose-Alice Ramey could not POSSIBLY have the same name as the St. Barnabas churchyard baby. When a monster was close and about to surface, otherwise innocent ripples had one meaning and one meaning only.

The apartment smelled horrible. Some kind of chemical smell suppressed the stench of spoiled food and an even nastier odor that could only be Death. Maybe I don’t want the clothes, thought Jacquetta. I’ve cleared out most of my stuff anyway. Make my phone call and get out.

But as she entered the living room she was brought up short by the sight of Rose-Alice Ramey, aka Ricey Kleinemann, sitting in the rocking chair waiting for her.

Caught by surprise Jacquetta knew she showed fear. She could tell that by the flicker of satisfaction on the other’s face. Damn! Now Ricey had the upper hand. How to win it back?

‘Who let you in?” She forced herself to advance far enough into the room so that she could sit on the sofa. Above all, she didn’t want Ricey standing up.

“Your roommate gave me her key.” Ricey played with a lock of her own hair.

“As well as her life,” said Jacquetta.

“I needed to know what you knew,” said Ricey. “She was the weak link. If I wrapped a dishtowel around her neck and twisted it with a stick –“ She made a snapping motion with her hands. “But she wouldn’t tell me. She died too soon.” The murderer sound almost regretful. “I couldn’t bring her back.”

Jacquetta was grateful for the apartment’s semi-gloom. Easier to conceal the blood boiling up her throat and into her face.

“Why send those letters? You were safe until then.”

“No one’s safe,” spat Ricey. “That’s why I sent them! People thinking they’re so safe!”

“Who shared the Brooklyn apartment?” asked Jacquetta.

“Oh, everyone.” Ricey shrugged. “No one. A girl’s got to live. You know what they pay nanny-girls? Next to nothing!”

“So you preferred blackmail,” suggested Jacquetta. “But that didn’t work out either, did it?”

“I preferred murder,” said Ricey, leaning forward. “I like finding the edge. I would have snapped that old woman’s neck if I could have gotten away with it. Pills in the milk. It’s so unsatisfying.” She laughed in a low, reminiscent chuckle, “Turns out I like shooting people and setting them on fire.”

“You were smart to use so many different murder methods,” said Jacquetta, frantically thinking out her next move. The other girl’s cynical smile told her flattery wouldn’t work, so she desperately threw out her next idea. “What a pity you sabotaged your own work by wanting to be caught!”

Wow! That got her! A little too much so – Ricey jumped to her feet while the rocking chair trembled.

“I’m not going to be caught!” she snapped. “I’m never going back to prison. I can be anyone! I can go anywhere!”

“Why tell me about the “commune” in upstate New York?” challenged Jacquetta. “You meant prison, didn’t you? You should have been worried, giving me so many clues!”

The apartment door opened behind them and Ricey’s face changed. She seemed to back up, scared. Jacquetta twisted her head but was astonished by her rescuer – Roxelle. Carrying a gun.
“I should have killed you when I had the chance,” said Roxelle. “For what you did to Granny. I brought you into this world and I can take you out.”

The first shot went wild. Ricey ducked but her mother advanced on her, shooting, emptying the gun. The noise was deafening and the smell pungent. Jacquetta backed toward the kitchen and called 911.

She dropped the phone when Roxelle appeared in the kitchen doorway.
“She’s dead now,” she said. “Thank you.” And she was gone.

Ricey was not dead. Jacquetta tried futilely to block the gushing blood with the spilled contents of Honey’s ironing basket, but there was too much. To the music of sirens the monster’s eyes refocused, unfocused, falling back in time to childhood, infancy, and ultimately to non-existence, to the time before all will and all suffering and the senseless destruction they perpetuate.

Chapter 34. A Stone Angel

The door of Jacquetta’s own church, St Barnabas, was locked. This had never happened before. The sign said “mold treatment.” Jacquetta walked around the path to the churchyard and sat on a stone bench in the sunshine, watching the sexton clear graves. Some of the grass had been getting pretty tall!

It was soothing having nothing to do, refusing to think. She tried praying but her mind kept drifting away. Shaming to have to tell Mother Xavier she was right; “I don’t want to be a nun. Turns out what I wanted all along was to be a snoop.”

Being a snoop was endlessly absorbing, like trying to make sense of a forgotten language. Working as an actual detective would not be so much fun, she could tell. For one thing, you could end up shot or burnt. She didn’t envy Benson his gun, his license, or his death.

There ought to be some kind of in-between career, Jacquetta thought. Maybe I can invent something. A helper constrained not by a client’s demands but by some higher purpose. “Will Snoop For Bread.” She recalled how delighted Honey had been raking through Miss Rainbeaux’s possessions. The “cleaned up” version offered to the public at the Open House, Jacquetta hadn’t found nearly so satisfying. “Sister Jacquetta Sorts Your Departed’s Junk.” There it was: a possible business. “A Sister In Need. I do what Relatives Don’t Have Time or Are Too Emotional or Disgusted to Do.”

She smiled as she thought of the business card. It would actually be fun. She could make antique store versus dumpster recommendations without a hidden agenda. “A Sister You Can Trust.” Maybe that was a bit snide!

The sexton finished. He climbed into his cart and tootled away, so Jacquetta stood up to admire his handiwork. There was one place he had missed.

An obelisk dedicated to a 1930’s patriarch and his two – no three wives. A gaggle of children surrounding a stone angel. The smallest stones looked like footstones but, moving the grass with her foot, Jacquetta saw they bore engraving. Babies. “Bequeathed Only for A Moment.” “An Angel Passed Among Us.”

And then she saw it. “Rose-Alice Ramey. August 31, 1962.”

There it was. This is what Beatrix Rainbeaux had seen, this is what started the whole disaster. Hadn’t she told Jacquetta in their only conversation, “I was just at your church recently?”

And she must have wondered about Avalon’s au pair; how she could be from “out of town” and yet have the same name as an infant buried in the St. Barnabas churchyard? And now Beatrix Rainbeaux was dead. Rose-Alice Ramey was the exact right age to be Ricey Kleinemann.
Why had Jacquetta been so stupidly slow about recognizing this fact? Because she was rubbish as a detective, that’s why. Was it also because she liked Rose-Alice? Rose-Alice and she were outsiders together, two of a kind. But the “con” in “con-artist” comes from a criminal gaining trust – gaining undeserved confidence.

Sociopaths were said to be charming. Jacquetta had identified with this hard-working young woman obliged to keep her opinions of her ridiculous employers to herself. Like everyone else, she was yearning for beauty, longing to travel. Jacquetta wanted the murderer to be one of the morally compromised Rainbeaux clan or someone from their cadre of sycophants. But Rose-Alice – she would have to think of her as Ricey now – had snuffed out the life of Honey, a fresh young girl – a striver, a dreamer just like herself – without a second thought.

This monster wore a pretty face. Jacquetta decided the letters were older, probably unconnected with the murders. Ricey flexing her claws. Unable to contain her rage, her hostility, her secret violence, and she tried to siphon it off as harmlessly as she could. But when she gave in to love with her employer’s husband, her secret had been exposed. And who was Jacquetta to judge her for that? She saw George Cleese every day, he had plenty of time to work on her, as Nelson had “worked” Jacquetta.

It was humiliating and enraging and it all made perfect sense. It explained why Miss Rainbeaux hesitated, why the real estate agent was charmed, why the detective relaxed, why Honey let her in.
Jacquetta rushed back to her car. She needed a phone. She need to tell Lt. Marie the whole thing, because Ricey was clearly spinning out of control. She had nothing left to lose.

Jacquetta regretted letting Nelson go: he had a car phone! She couldn’t think of a payphone closer than her apartment – she’d been planning to return anyway. She could think of no reason why the phone wouldn’t work. She didn’t dare wait even returning to the motel before she shared the secret. Ricey was too dangerous. She steeled herself. Grab some clothes and make that call.

Chapter 33. Wildwood

“How about a foot-long chili dog?” Nelson facetiously suggested.

“Absolutely not,” Jacquetta returned, “I need a drink.”

“I know just the place.”

At this hour, Me Ole Matey was empty, but it was so dark you couldn’t tell what time it was. “Seat Yourself” said the sign, so they fought their way through fishing impedimenta to a corner booth.
“Is white wine and kir still your favorite drink?” Nelson asked, signaling for the lone waitress.
Jacquetta had no desire to recall any of those nights.

“No,” she said. ”Just a glass of house red.”

Nelson surprised her by ordering the whole bottle and a slew of appetizers. “The potato skins here are famous,” he said.

Suddenly it was a date.

“So,” Jacquetta hazarded, “Roxelle Shields’ baby girl? Any ideas? We have to have found the right family or she wouldn’t be acting this way.”

“Definitely. Ricey Kleinemann’s Roxelle Shield’s daughter,” he concurred. Jacquetta shuddered. “Means that horrible old woman was Roxelle’s mama. Something went pretty wrong somewhere. Twelve years old is scary young to have a baby. We didn’t even get to mention D.L. LeRoi.”

“I believe her that she doesn’t know where her daughter is,” Nelson said. “Don’t you?”

“I guess so. Seems like we caught her completely by surprise. What do you think is the next move?”

“I have to pray about it.”

That silenced him. When they returned to the car in an hour, feeling much better, there was a message on the car phone from Lt Marie.

“He says you can go back to your apartment. Also, your car is being released. Which do you want first?”

“Thank God,” said Jacquetta, thinking, I need to pick up some clothes. She also wanted to find out if the killer got the datebook. “Car first.”

“Going back to the motel?” he gave her a sidelong look.

“Probably.”

“Need me?”

She faced him. “Not till you’re a free man. Consider your bereavement period over.”

He sighed gustily. “And Sister Jacquetta is back.”

She returned, “You’re welcome.”

Chapter 32. A Brass Ass

As scrub pine gave way to hot dog stands Jacquetta wondered if she should try to talk about last night. It didn’t change anything, and in the morning she had been grateful he didn’t mention it. But now she worried: wouldn’t he think it DID change things? Should she say something and if so, what?

But everything was so up in the air. Part of me was killed with Honey, Jacquetta realized. Funny that she’d never realized they were Siamese twins; mentally and physically connected. Was that true of every relationship? The force of what Nelson had said about bereavement hit her with double power. He said he’d “lost everything.” If so: what was left for her? And how to find out? She wished she’d had the emotional strength to reject his proffered body, but she never had, and she knew perfectly well that was why she had left her job.

Could Nelson be right that she’d contemplated the monastic life just to hide from men and their dangerous allure? She knew what Mother Xavier would say about it; only one way to find out. Ask God.

“Desperado,” Nelson was counting the bars. “Cotton Candy. Brass Ass. There it is.”

At this hour the neon sign depicting the backside of a naked woman aboard a kicking mule wasn’t lit, but the marquee said “Miss Roxelle Shields Appearing Nitely.” From the plethora of parking spaces Nelson chose the one nearest the door. The green vinyl padded door wasn’t locked but the bar was dark.

A bartender was setting up beneath a single spot. He barely looked at them.
“We’re closed.”

“We’re here to interview Miss Shields?” Nelson sounded tentative even to Jacquetta’s ears.

Barman couldn’t have cared less. “Around back.”

Nelson unlocked the car and opened the door.

“You’re using the car to go around back?” Jacquetta questioned.

“Who knows how safe it is back there?” Nelson shrugged.

Wow thought Jacquetta. I never would have thought of that. I need this guy.

“Around back” was a dumpster and a green Corvette. It didn’t appear unsafe.

There was a locked door labeled “Authorized Personnel Only” and “It is a State Crime to block or prop this exit.” Nelson hammered on the battered metal with his fist.

A man wearing a three piece suit a size too small stuck out his balding head. Nelson, who’d had an opportunity to get his story together, flashed his press card.

“We’re here to interview Miss Shields.”

The man took the card and held the door open. The woman behind him was short but her high-heeled boots made up for it. Her white-lace minidress was red-lit by the lights.

“TriCity News Service,” read the man.

Nelson took back his card.

Roxelle put her hands on her hips. “Woman’s Day looking for my recipe for sausage paprikash?” she asked. “Or are your readers wondering what a nice girl like me is doing in a place like this?”

“We’ve got a press release in the office,” said the man helpfully. “I’m her manager.” When he turned around Jacquetta saw he’d drawn his three strands of hair into an unkempt ponytail. He opened the door to a tiny room that seemed to double as a storage space for industrial-sized jars of marinara sauce and cleaning fluid.

Roxelle sat behind the desk, her manager perched unsafely a single buttock on the desk’s edge and Nelson gestured for Jacquetta to take the only chair. It seemed like a good idea as at least some insurance against being thrown out.

“Get me some more bute, Clint,” Roxelle asked, putting one leg up on the desk and unzipping her boot. “You can tell your readers stripping’s hell on the knees.”

“It’s the high heels,” said the manager, producing a syringe kit. “Miss Shields doesn’t get on her knees for anybody.”

“Not anymore,” said Roxelle, her teeth chattering as the needle went in. Under these lights her skin seemed strangely matte white, but her black eyes were old. Impossible mounds of blue-black hair poured down her back. It made Jacquetta’s head hurt to think of trying to hold up so much hair. The manager rummaged in a briefcase for paper.

“So what do your readers want to know?” she asked, relaxing back in the brass-studded captain’s chair. In a sing-song voice she teased, “I was born a poor little gypsy girl in a tiny town in upstate New York.”

Jacquetta had a brainwave. “Devil’s Elbow?”

The shock was palpable. The manager dropped the briefcase in his haste to open the door and usher them out.

“We’re researching the Kleinemann-Lundt case,” said Nelson. Roxelle’s eyes filled with tears.

“Have you found my baby girl?”

“Baby girl?” asked Jacquetta. “I thought you were sisters.”

The manager dumped Jacquetta out of her chair but she resisted ejection. The two women looked at each other; Jacquetta’s flushed skin facing Roxelle’s hard Chinese mask.

“I was only twelve years old,” said Roxelle. “What’s she done now?”

“She’s been sending anonymous letters to people,” said Jacquetta. Now it all made sense. “She rented a love nest in your name.”

“Out! Out!”

There was an unbecoming moment of full-body wrestling with Clint the Manager before the stage door slammed behind them.

Chapter 31. Devil’s Elbow

At the library he gave her a stack of dimes and said, “Better make copies of those letters. Lady Susan might repossess them out of sheer revenge.”

“I’ve got my own dimes thank you,” she said, pushing his hand away.
The newspapers – now confined to microfilm operated by a sticky hand crank rotary machine – were bleached of both sense and sensibility.

Photos of Kleinemann and Lundt might as well have been Kabuki masks; one Obvious Old Woman and a pair of gangly dark-haired teenagers, visibly he and she. Jacquetta had better luck with the magazines, showing two pictures; one of a terrifying earth floored basement where tree trunks complete with bark held up the ramshackle house and the other of the “back yard”; a chipped cement court whose single central pole dangled a depressing wire.

The tale was soon told; the old woman tortured Ricey Kleinemann as long as she was able, beating her with a wire and confining her to the basement until the abused was old enough and big enough to become the abuser. She, as Clay Lundt asserted – or Clay, as Ricey always insisted – followed Granma’s script closely, throwing her down the basement stairs, tethering her in the yard and ultimately garroting her with a wire. Whether it was the same wire that had been used on Ricey the story did not say.

Even a town named “Devil’s Elbow” could produce enough jury members with a sneaking suspicion Granny had it coming.

The “perps” – no one bothered to ascribe superior or inferior culpability – were confined till their twenty-sixth birthdays – then Sayonara. There were no stories in any press format about their release three years ago.

“Yuck,” said Jacquetta. “What kind of a name is Ricey? I don’t know if we should even bother to have any of this copied.”

“It was Rise,” said Nelson. “German. All we need to now is whether this is any kind of a secret worth killing for.”

“They did their time,” Jacquetta said.

“But could either of them ever get a position of trust again?”

“Nobody’s the right age.” Jacquetta tried to think how old Penny Dettler was. Hard to tell – she looked thirty in some light and forty in another. “The au pair said both Avalon and her husband are having affairs with younger partners. One of them could be one of our ex-killers.”

“If we knew who they were.”

“Benson might have known. And Chester is rumored to have affairs with people he hires. Benson would have investigated all that.”

“And now he’s dead.”

In fact there were nothing but dead ends in this case, thought Jacquetta. That was obviously the way the murderer liked it.