Getting old, captain, Brenda would say. Memory is the first thing to go.
A furtive glance around. This stretch of path was empty, as it almost always was since the town opened the new park. Joggers flocked there for the trails, and parents and children for the playground equipment, leaving this dark, overwooded bit of green space for those who preferred privacy to scenery.
Russ looked down at the brown pile, steaming in the crisp morning air, then sighed and picked up a big oak leaf. Leave a mess on the deck and someone’s bound to slip in it. As he bent over to pick up the dog shit with the leaf, Champ barked.
“You want to do it, sailor? Be my guest.”
Something hit the base of his skull. One split second of blinding pain, not even enough time to form a thought. Then darkness.
The man slid the gun back into its holster and pulled his shirt down over it. As he did, he glanced around, reassuring himself that the path was still empty. The small dog yipped hysterically, darting between him and the body on the ground.
The body lay where it had fallen, a few scant feet from the path. He tugged the folded page from its plastic covering. One more look around before he leaned over and tucked the paper into the dead man’s rear pants pocket. Then he proceeded north, walking alongside the path on the grassy edge where his running shoes left no mark.
FOURTEEN
Evelyn and I walked up the cobblestone path. A cartoon Halloween black cat hung from the wreath hook on the door, with a Pull Me sign dangling from its tail. I obliged. The cat screeched and quaked, eyes rolling in terror. I smiled. Evelyn shook her head and rang the bell.
A moment later, a handsome woman in a wheelchair pulled open the door. As Evelyn leaned down to kiss her cheek, another woman scurried from a back room. She was smaller, rounder and plainer, with a mop of white curls and faded blue eyes.
“ Frances!” she said. “I told you I’d get the door. The locks are too high.”
The first woman shook my hand. “You must be Dee. I’m Frances. This hovering mother hen is Maggie.”
“I’m not hovering. The doctor said you aren’t supposed to lift yourself. You’d have to lift yourself to reach that lock.”
“I’m almost six feet tall. I can reach the lock on my frigging knees.” Frances looked back at me. “Forgive us. The wheelchair is, I’m afraid, a recent development and Maggie isn’t adjusting well.”
“Me?” Maggie sputtered. She swept past Frances, beamed a wide smile at us, embraced Evelyn and clasped my hand between hers. “So you’re the new hitwoman. Lovely. We’re so pleased to meet you.”
Frances rolled her eyes and looked at me. “Bet you’ve never had that greeting before.”
Maggie shooed us into the living room. As with the exterior of the house, one could see that great effort had been made to transform substandard housing into a warm and inviting home. An Oriental carpet, perhaps once worth thousands, now faded and threadbare in places. Jewel-toned pillows adorned an antique sofa and chair set, their upholstery patterns rubbed clean at the edges, their wood trim smooth with wear and shiny with polish.
Unlike at Evelyn’s house, these walls bore no artwork. Instead, they were decorated with photographs. Picture frames were everywhere, covering the walls, the end tables, the fireplace mantel, frames of every description, from dime-store plastic to contemporary wood to silver antiques. A lifetime of memories.
“Coffee for Evie,” Maggie said. “And you, dear? Coffee? Tea? Cold drink?”
“Coffee’s fine, thank you,” I said. “Cream or milk, please, whichever you have on hand.”
“How polite. Evie, are you taking notes?”
Evelyn opened her mouth, but Maggie vanished before she could respond. I continued to look at the pictures, then zeroed in on an old one propped next to the telephone. In it, two young women grinned before Mount Rushmore. Maggie and Frances. I could tell by the smiles, which hadn’t changed in the forty-plus years since the photo had been snapped. Age had favored Frances best. In the old picture, she was severe looking, her features too strong for her youthful face. And Maggie? She’d been jaw-droppingly gorgeous, with blond curls, dimples, flawless skin and a figure that could have body-doubled for Marilyn Monroe.
“A knockout, wasn’t she?” Frances said. “Of course, she still is.”
“Nice save, darling,” Maggie said as she pushed through the kitchen door. “Time has not been kind to this old broad, but it got me what I wanted.”
“An early and comfortable retirement,” Frances said. “We didn’t make a fortune, but we did well enough.”
Maggie grinned wickedly and slid her fingers down Frances ’s arm. “That’s not what I meant.”
Frances blushed and dropped her eyes like a sixteen-year-old, then quickly grabbed two coffee cups from the tray Maggie had laid on the side table. She leaned forward to hand me one.
“Has Evie told you what we did in the old days?” Frances asked.
I shook my head.
Maggie held up a hand, motioning for Frances to let her explain. “A variation on the oldest and best female confidence scheme in the books. First, you find a lonely rich man…and believe me, all rich men are lonely. Then you send in someone who looks like that.” She pointed to her image in the old photo. “She wrangles a private invitation back to his house, and makes sure the doors are left unlocked behind her. While she’s busy cooing over cocktails, in comes her partner and cleans the place out. Frances could pick a mansion clean in thirty minutes.”
Frances grinned. “And Maggie could tease for thirty-five, so it worked out fine.”
“Thirty-five? Darling, I could tease for sixty and do no more than peck his cheek.”
Frances rolled her eyes. “Sixty? Remember that Swede? In Atlanta? If I hadn’t-”
“I’m sure Dee and Evie didn’t come to hear us reminisce,” Maggie said. “How may we help you ladies?”
“We need to talk to someone who would have been with the Nikolaev family in the seventies. You still keep up with Peter, don’t you?”
“We’re going down to Florida next month to see him and Chance.” She frowned at Frances. “Is it Chance? Or Enrico?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Frances said. “Since Ivan died, it’s a new Chance or Enrico every time we meet him. Eighteen-year-old pool boys. Some men hit a certain age-straight or gay, it doesn’t matter-they’ll empty their wallets on the first flat stomach that comes along.”
“But we don’t need to call Peter to find you a Nikolaev contact,” Maggie said. “Little Joe is in an old-age home outside Detroit.”
“A retirement home?” Evelyn said. “Little Joe is Boris Nikolaev’s brother, isn’t he?”
“Hell of a thing to do to your own brother,” Frances said. “But Boris never had much use for Joe. Not that I blame him. There was some scandal a couple of years back, Joe flapping his gums when he shouldn’t have. Boris shipped him off to a fancy rest home. Joe was never the sharpest tool in the family shed, but if you’re looking for someone to talk, he’ll talk all right. Problem always was getting him to shut up.”
“Will there be a problem getting in to see him?” I asked. “They’ll have him under security still, won’t they?”
Frances shook her head. “When the family puts someone out to pasture, he’s persona non grata. They’ll visit him, keep up appearances but, as far as they’re concerned, he’s out of the business. They won’t tell him anything, so there’s nothing he can tell anyone else. On current events, that is. The past? Well, no one cares much about the past these days.”
Frances searched the Internet for private rest homes in the Detroit suburbs until she found the one that tweaked her memory. Then we took our leave and prepared for a trip to Michigan.