If anything, things seem even less real and almost…dare I think it with Elise lying dead? Delicious.
“So, here we all are in a kitchen again, Mrs. Gallo,” Detective Nelson announces, bringing me back to reality and making sure I know he was there the last time.
“It’s Bayer now,” I tell him. It’s a little awkward, me with one name, the kids with another, but it’s not as if their teachers don’t know the situation. Heck, anyone who picked up a copy of Newsday or turned on a TV learned the whole story last summer. His jaded look says he thinks I’ve already hooked up with a new jerk to replace the old one. “Teddi Bayer. I’ve gone back to my maiden name.”
Detective Number Two nods, but Nelson says, “A rose by any other name.”
Whatever that’s supposed to mean.
Detective Cliché adds something on the order of, “outta the frying pan, into the fire.” I assume he is referring to the gazillion times the cops have had to come and take my mother, June Bayer, to South Winds Psychiatric Center, her home away from home.
I just shrug, and then there is this awkward silence, which I break by saying aloud what I’m wondering—who would want to kill Elise Meyers?
“I just can’t imagine how anyone could murder someone as nice as Elise Meyers.” Isn’t it amazing how much nicer you think people are after they’re gone? Elise could be a real pain in the butt, but lying there on 12-by-12 tiles that she wasn’t so sure about but decided to trust me on…well, she looks almost angelic. That is, if you don’t count the hot-pink satin and black-lace getup she’s got on.
Nelson asks what makes me think it was murder while he casually places his card on the table by my arm. “Looks to me like the dog knocks the pills and stuff off the counter, she hears him, comes down and slips cleaning up the mess. Bang. Dead.”
I roll my eyes the way my twelve-year-old daughter does when she wants to ask how I can be so old and still so stupid but wouldn’t dare say it in so many words.
Detective Nelson catches the look and says something obnoxious, like Why don’t you give us your version, Sherlock? at which point Detective Number Two pulls out his card and places it on top of Nelson’s, as if he’s trumping it. Detective Andrew Scoones. And his isn’t wrinkled, either. His card, I mean.
“Well,” I say, brushing some wayward bangs out of my eyes so that I can see better. Maybe so I look better, too. “First off, Maggie May is a bichon frise and couldn’t reach the counter with a ladder. So tell me how she could have knocked anything off a work island three feet above her head. Second, the dog was out front when I got here, but only the backyard has an invisible fence, and it doesn’t look like Elise was taking her out for a walk, does it?”
Thinking about the details is easier than thinking about Elise lying dead on the floor.
“Since the tiles aren’t sealed yet, they aren’t slippery. And, on top of all that, the faucet is missing.” I’m on a roll now, imagining myself in a movie or on TV, and I continue. “In addition, since the alarm wasn’t going off when I got here, she must have disarmed it, which means she either knew the killer or didn’t care about his opinion, since her…uh…cellulite was showing.”
Everyone is staring at me. They are either incredibly impressed with my deductions or they figure I’ve gone nuts. Considering I’ve been down the latter road before and I’d recognize the signs (they always want you to sit down and stay calm, no matter what the situation is), I’m betting it’s the former.
“Just call me Mrs. Monk,” I say smugly. Of course, I miss the most important detail—the television character, Mrs. Monk, is dead, as Nelson quickly points out.
“So your theory is that someone broke into her house and killed her for her faucet?” Nelson asks. He pretends to be taking down what I say in a little notebook, but I don’t think he really is. “You get that, Drew?” he asks his partner, who actually is taking what appear to be copious notes.
“I’m saying that I left the faucet on the counter yesterday when I delivered the bar stools and that it’s not there now.”
The detectives exchange a look as though I’ve picked up on something they already know but I’m not supposed to.
I don’t bother mentioning my feeling that something else is not quite right in the kitchen because they are already acting like I’ve got a screw loose and because it seems as though something is more right than wrong.
I mean, if you don’t count Elise.
Detective Scoones puts on a new pair of rubber gloves and picks some of the pills off the floor to look at them. He lifts one off the little teddy Elise has on.
“Looks like she interrupted a robbery,” he says.
“Only, her ring’s still on,” I say, embarrassed that I checked while I waited for the police to show up, and pointedly not looking at Elise now because I don’t want to see them looking at a dead woman’s finger even though I did.
Detective Nelson suggests that maybe they just couldn’t get the ring off Elise’s finger.
I think about how she waved that diamond around like it was a medal, and I swear I can hear her voice in my head echoing Charlton Heston’s sentiments— “From my cold, dead hands.” Only I guess she wouldn’t let go even then.
Things aren’t adding up, but Detective Harold Nelson isn’t interested in my theories. And, truth be told, I’m not interested in Detective Nelson, so I direct my observations to Andrew Scoones, aka The Handsome Detective.
I tell him that, in addition to the ring, she’s got a Bvlgari watch worth about ten thousand dollars. They start to cover Elise’s body with a sheet and stop to look for the watch, which I already know isn’t there.
“You should check upstairs in her nightstand,” I say. Elise had been very specific about needing a small drawer beside her bed for “everyday” jewelry. If I had a ten thousand dollar watch, it a) wouldn’t be “everyday” jewelry, and b) would be kept in a safe. But then, I had a husband who would have stolen it and given it to one of his girlfriends and then accused me of losing it, like he did with the little diamond anniversary necklace he gave me. “She kept her watch in the top drawer on the left side of the bed.”
“You just happen to know which side of the bed she slept on?” Nelson asks, one eyebrow raised like this tidbit of information actually proves his theory that I’m the killer and I’ve just hoisted myself by my own petard. A little slow on the uptake, it finally occurs to me that they know damn well that this is a murder. They are simply toying with me to see what they can get.
“There anything else you want us to check out on this murder theory?” he asks, as though the fact that I’m an interior designer means I couldn’t possibly have anything valuable to offer beyond what color to paint a focal wall.
They suggest I leave the house for a breath of fresh air and Detective Scoones, Drew, instructs an officer to accompany me. When I ask if I can go home, he tells me he’d like me to stick around.
Meanwhile, Detective Nelson tells one of the uniformed cops to check upstairs. When the cop reminds him they already have, Nelson tells him to check again, thoroughly. The thought that the murderer might still be there hadn’t occurred to me, and that—combined with the blood on my shoe—leaves me weak-kneed all
