Scam Chowder (9 page)

She called her grandfather and blamed her lateness on the rotting fish. “It smells so bad! I may have to drive home with my nose out the window like a dog.”

“Activated charcoal might help, the stuff you use to filter water in fish tanks. Harvey's got an aquarium next door. I'll see if he can spare some charcoal for your car. What about dinner?” Rough translation: what would she make him for dinner and when would she do it?

“We can have pasta with pesto if you harvest the basil leaves from the garden. I need two cups.”

“Good. I'm in the mood for noodles.” He called any form of pasta “noodles.”

“Me too.” Comfort food. “I'm on my way.”

 

 

Half an hour later, she filled the food processor with basil leaves and chopped garlic, welcome aromas after the stench of decay. She'd already made the salad and boiled the water for the pasta.

Granddad came into the kitchen. “I put the charcoal Harvey gave me in your car. It should help absorb the odor. Teenage high jinks, throwing a fish in a car.”

“I'd agree, except that the fish was bought, not caught. It was wrapped like fish from the supermarket. I don't think kids would buy a fish for a prank.”

“You're right. They can catch fish easy enough around here.” He rubbed his chin. “Whoever stank up your car has money to throw away and no fishing gear. A lot of folks at your racket and fitness club fit that bill.”

She turned on the food processor and dripped oil into the chute as the basil, garlic, and pine nuts whirled around. “I can't imagine anyone walking through the club parking lot with a package of fish, hoping to find a car with open windows. I think someone targeted my car specifically.”

Granddad set the table in the kitchen. “Someone you know?”

“Not necessarily. The cameraman from the Salisbury station filmed me in my car this morning. Junie May showed that clip on the noon news and identified me as working at the club. Anyone who saw the news report could have guessed my car would be in the club lot. It's bright blue and easy to spot.” Her decade-old Saturn stood out amid newer models, most of them neutral in color.

“Nah. You're paranoid after last month's murder and Scott's death.” Her grandfather poured himself a beer and her a glass of wine. “Vandalism's usually random. Just be thankful you got a fish in your car instead of a cinder block dropped from an overpass.”

She nodded. “Cadaverines and putrescines are better than smithereens.”

Her grandfather frowned. “What?”

“I can explain over dinner, but trust me, you don't want to know.” She drained the linguini, mixed it with the pesto, and dished it up.

He tucked into the pasta. “Nothing like fresh basil straight from the garden. Too bad I had to wait this long to eat.”

That gripe led to others about the miserable day he'd had. It took him hours to type his newspaper column with two fingers. Then he'd printed it, found mistakes, and had to correct them. Each time he printed, he found new mistakes. He barely got his column turned in by the deadline.

Val had finished most of her meal before his litany of complaints ended. “Did you talk to Chief Yardley today?”

“No time for that. I'll call him tomorrow.” He put his fork down and watched her eat. “I have something important to tell you.”

She dreaded what he would say. That he was going to ask Lillian to marry him? That he'd lost his life savings to a swindler?

Chapter 10

Val usually sipped wine, but anticipating bad news from her grandfather, she downed the wine that remained in her glass and reached for the Chianti bottle. “What's going on, Granddad?”

“After pecking away at a keyboard all day, I needed fresh air. I took a long walk and ended up on Main Street around six-thirty. I saw Gunnar there with a woman.”

Val refilled her glass. “I'm guessing she's his real estate agent. He's been looking for places to rent or buy here.”

Granddad picked up his fork and speared a lettuce leaf. “Agents these days work in hot pants?”

Probably not. “What did this woman look like, apart from the hot pants?”

“Tall, blond, curvy.”

Gunnar's former fiancée. So much for the hope that she'd come to Bayport only for the weekend. “What were they doing when you saw them?” Val asked.

“He was parked in his car with the top down. She was on the street with her arms resting on the driver's-side door. She was wearing one of them noodle strap tops, leaning way down, and giving him a good view. He's two-timing you, Val.”

Val twirled linguini around her fork. “Gunnar and I are just friends.”

“I'll bet he isn't just friends with that blonde.” Granddad took a swig of beer. “I understand why he wants to be friends with you. You're like the girl next door. What I don't understand is why
you
want to be friends with
him.
”

“You haven't liked him since the day you met him.” Last night when Gunnar came to dinner, her grandfather had hidden his dislike well. She even thought he'd gotten over it. Apparently, he hadn't.

“I just don't want you hurt again. You trusted your fiancé in New York for years, and he was cheating.”

“As you often remind me. That doesn't mean every man I talk to after Tony is no good.”

“It means you gotta be careful because your taste in men stinks.
Smart women, foolish choices.
Isn't there a saying like that?”

“It's a book title.” But she knew a saying that applied to his relationship with Lillian—
no fool like an old fool.
She swallowed the words and washed them down with her wine.

Granddad pointed his fork at her. “You should read that book.”

“I could have used it before I got involved with Tony. Now that I'm living here, I don't need it because I have you to tell me about my foolish choices.”

“It doesn't help. You pay no attention to me, but you believe Gunnar's story about some aunt who passed on enough dough for him to quit working. He coulda left his job under a cloud. He coulda been fired for something illegal.”

She laughed. “Do you know how hard it is to fire a government worker? A month ago, you tried to convince me he was a murderer. Now he's a corrupt bureaucrat. I suppose that's progress.”

Granddad waggled a finger at her. “Make fun if you like. Just remember, I've had a lot of experience with people. There's something about him that rubs me the wrong way.”

She knew what that something was. Her grandfather was suspicious of any man who paid attention to her. A voice inside reminded her that her attitude toward Lillian resembled his toward Gunnar. True, but unlike her grandfather, Val didn't have a lifetime of savings and a big house. Low financial assets had a silver lining—protection against gold diggers.

She pushed the linguini around her plate. The pasta she'd eaten with such gusto until now had lost its appeal. As long as Granddad was giving her advice, she had some for him. “I ran into Ned today at the Village. He's—”

“Why did you go to the Village?”

To grill your girlfriend
seemed like the wrong answer. “Bethany takes her dog there and invited me along. I was curious about the Village. You never asked me to go with you.”

“I didn't figure you'd want to. At your age, you don't have to think about living in a place like that. It's the last stop for most of the people there. Me, I'd rather make this house my last stop.”

He'd joked about his age occasionally, but never mentioned the nearness of death until now. She stood up and refilled her water glass, blinking back tears. She would do her best to make sure he stayed at whatever last stop he chose for as long as possible.

She went back to the table. “I talked to Ned for a while, Granddad. He was hurt that you didn't invite him to the dinner party.”

“I had a good reason.”

“
I
know that, but
he
doesn't. He thinks you left him out because you like your new friends better than your old ones.”

Granddad put the plate with his half-eaten salad on top of the larger plate he'd scraped clean of the pasta. “I'll go over there tomorrow morning and talk to him. Thomasina too, if she's up for company.”

“I'd like to go with you, assuming Bethany can work at the café.”

“What are you going to do there?”

“Give Thomasina my condolences.”
And find out more about the woman who raised a swindler.
“I'll make myself scarce while you're talking to Ned. Are you going to see Lillian while you're there?”

Granddad shook his head. “She's away. She'll be back in a couple of days.”

Half an hour later, with the kitchen cleaned up and Granddad watching TV, Val went into the study, sat at her computer, and searched for information about Lillian Hinker and Thomasina Weal. Neither had an online presence.

She navigated to a website for Maryland real estate tax records and entered the address of the house Lillian had driven to. The house belonged to Maxwell and Lillian Hinker and was valued at close to a million and a half. The website listed the last date of sale as twenty years ago. Who was Maxwell Hinker—a husband, a son? Val typed the man's name into a search box. No hits. Why was Lillian living in a small apartment in a retirement community when she shared ownership of a valuable property? Even half that house was worth more than Granddad's Victorian.

But suppose the Annapolis house was heavily mortgaged? An infusion of cash would help pay off the debt. Maybe Lillian hoped Granddad would “lend” the cash to her. Val closed her browser window and reminded herself not to jump to conclusions about Lillian's finances and her intentions without knowing the facts. First find out whether the Annapolis house had liens on it. She could ask Gunnar. With his background in financial investigations, he'd know how to locate the information. She could e-mail, call, or text him, but she wanted to see him, not just pick his brain.

Granddad was sleeping in his recliner. She slipped out the front door and strolled toward Gunnar's B & B. In the last six months, she'd given up her New York habit of looking over her shoulder when walking at night, except during that brief period in June when a murderer had stalked her.

When Val reached the riverfront B & B, she saw lights on in most of the rooms on the first and second floors. She looked up at the dormer windows. Gunnar had said the window in his top-story room overlooked the parking area. No light in that window. His Miata wasn't parked either in the B & B's parking spaces or on the street.
Darn.
He'd probably gone out with his ex-fiancée. If Val hadn't blown off the tennis game with him, he might have spent the evening with her instead of a blonde in short shorts.

On her walk back home, Val remembered someone besides Gunnar who could tell her about property liens—a real estate agent who owed her a favor. She would call the agent first thing in the morning.

She went in the back door of the house, not wanting to wake Granddad if he was still dozing in the sitting room. As she crossed the kitchen to go up the staircase to her room, she heard his voice coming from the sitting room. He must have a visitor. She tiptoed to the butler's pantry, heard another voice, and froze.

“I understand why people take justice in their own hands,” Deputy Holtzman said. “The system fails them when someone commits a crime and gets away with it.”

“I agree with you,” Granddad said. “Folks who get away with crimes keep on taking advantage of others unless someone stops them.”

Val had heard enough. She marched into the sitting room. “Deputy Holtzman, what are you doing here?”

From his seat on the old sofa, Holtzman turned his cold, protruding eyes on her. “Good evening, Ms. Deniston.”

“He's working with the chief,” Granddad said. “He stopped by to introduce himself.”

No, he stopped by to look at what he believes is a crime scene and trick her grandfather into incriminating himself. “He and I don't need any introduction. Rather than
good evening,
Deputy, I'll say
good night.
My grandfather and I have had a long day, as I'm sure you've had.”

Holtzman stood up. “Enjoyed talking to you, Mr. Myer. We'll do it again.”

“Don't get up, Granddad. I'll let him out.” She led the deputy to the door without exchanging another word with him, this encounter as frosty as their previous meetings. She returned to the sitting room. “Holtzman is the deputy who bullied me when he investigated the murder last month, and I complained to his boss.”

“He seemed nice enough to me.”

Mr. Nice Guy scared Val more than Mr. Bully. “
Seemed
is the correct word. He fed you a motive for murder. You swallowed it and said it was delicious. Getting Ned's money back isn't a reason to want a swindler dead, as I made clear to the chief this morning, but vigilante justice is. You just told a deputy that
somebody
needs to stop criminals who evade the law. Guess who he thinks that
somebody
is.”

“He didn't warn me my words would be used against me, so he can't use them.” Granddad shook a finger at her. “This is your fault. You went and told the chief why I invited Scott here, and you got on the wrong side of that deputy.”

Val knew better than to argue with him when he played the blame game. “Good night, Granddad.” The game always ended when she left him alone.

As she climbed upstairs to her room, Lillian's warning echoed in her mind. He would become more dependent on his granddaughter as time went by. For now, he depended on her as his scapegoat.

 

 

On Tuesday morning, Val and her grandfather drove to Ambleside Village, parked near Thomasina's cottage, and rang the bell. Granddad carried a plate of chocolate chunk cookies.

Thomasina opened the door, wearing a teal caftan and a heavy floral perfume that made her cottage smell like a funeral home. She thanked them for the cookies and led them to a living room twice the size of the one in Lillian's apartment. Large mirrors in gilt frames hung on three walls and reflected Thomasina's collection of antique glass bottles in myriad colors.

Val sat on a gold damask sofa. The down cushions plumped around her. Granddad had wisely chosen a side chair with arms he could use to hoist himself up when their visit ended. If he'd made the mistake of sitting on the squishy down sofa, he might have needed someone to tug him out. Thomasina, as one of the younger Village residents, was still spry enough to do that for her older visitors.

She leaned back on a velvet fainting couch amid fringed pillows covered in red and yellow silk. She put the cookies they'd brought on the table next to her.

She accepted Granddad's condolences with gratitude and without tears. “I've cried myself dry by now. No one could ask for a better son than Scott. He visited me whenever his schedule allowed.”

Granddad nodded. “He was very attentive to you.”

“Losing him is terrible enough. I can't bear to think they will cut my boy up.” Thomasina grimaced.

Granddad lifted his chin toward Val, as if to say,
Your turn
.

Val could think of nothing comforting to say about an autopsy. “It's very hard on you, but it's the only way to find out what happened to Scott. It may make it easier for you to know that.”

Thomasina shook her head. “It won't bring him back. It just prolongs the torture for me.”

Granddad leaned forward. “Do you have family who can help you get through this, Thomasina?”

“Scott was my only family. Everyone here has been very kind.” She gave him a weak smile. “I want you to know I don't hold you responsible at all, no matter what other people say. I'm afraid I may have brought this on.”

Val exchanged a puzzled look with her grandfather. “Why would you think that?”

Thomasina's gold-sandaled foot traced a pattern in the Persian rug. “A few months ago, someone tried to kill me. I took precautions to keep them from trying again, so they went after my son.”

Val glanced at Granddad.

He looked as startled as she felt. “Why would anyone try to kill you?”

“You think I'm imagining this, don't you? If
you
don't believe me, the police won't either.” Thomasina's fingers fluttered and her feet tapped out a jerky tune. “Scott's father was involved with some shady men, gangsters. I didn't know that when I married him. I divorced him because I thought he was putting our little son in danger. Those thugs may be settling old scores.”

And Granddad thought Val had bad taste in men. Much as Val liked a murder scenario that took the heat off him, she couldn't swallow Thomasina's theory. Sure, revenge was a dish best served cold. In this case, it would have needed cryogenic preservation for decades. Even revenge couldn't have much flavor after that.

Granddad crossed a leg and tied his shoelace.

Up to Val to keep the conversation ball in play, though Thomasina was lobbing it into cloud cuckoo land. “How did those thugs try to kill you?”