Tomb With a View

She was wearing orange lipstick and her mouth pinched. She looked around like she wanted to make sure one of her supervisors wasn’t within earshot. “We had a problem,” she said, leaning closer to me. “A couple months ago. It’s never happened before, and it hasn’t happened since. I mean, we are the Government, after all.” The way she said it, I was sure that word, Government, was capitalized. “But every once in a while, someone slips up. I didn’t work here then.”

“What you’re telling me is someone stole something. Right off the wall of the home of a president.”

The pinch got tighter. “Fortunately, it was nothing the Garfield family themselves ever owned, certainly nothing that had any direct connection with the president himself.”

“But somebody took it, anyway.”

“It was donated.”

“And then you hung it up, and then somebody swiped it.”

She didn’t say yes or no. But then, she didn’t have to. Because what she said next was, “It was authentic enough, but there were people here who didn’t think it belonged, that since it wasn’t original to the house, it shouldn’t have been here in the first place.”

“So you think someone who works here took it down? Just to get rid of it?”

“I never said that.” The look in her eyes was one of pure horror. “What I said was there are those of us who don’t miss it. Not that we didn’t report it as stolen. We did. Well, they did. Like I said, I didn’t work here then.”

“So it obviously wasn’t your fault.”

She liked my take on things. If we weren’t standing in a site of National Historical Significance, I think she actually might have smiled. Instead, she nodded. “The tour guide got distracted. She left a visitor alone. When she came back, it was gone.”

“And it was . . . ?” It was my turn to lean forward, urging Tammi to spill the beans.

She took another careful look around. “A framed floor tile,” she said. “From—”

“The waiting room of the Baltimore and Potomac Railway Station, where the president was shot.”

Tammi blinked at me in wonder. “How did you know?”

I didn’t explain. I mean, how could I? I knew because I was thinking like Marjorie, and thinking like Marjorie made me think I would do whatever it took to get my hands on every bit of James A. Garfield memorabilia out there, even if it meant resorting to larceny.

Was it worth the five bucks I’d paid to get into the president’s house?

Well, for five bucks, I’d learned something I didn’t know before. Namely, that Marjorie had a dishonest streak. It didn’t help me figure out who’d killed her, but it told me more about the woman than I knew before.

Cha-ching!

12

Sure, I’ve been known to fudge the truth a little once in a while. Usually in the name of solving a case. Or when doing so is vital to something important like my weight or my dress size. That doesn’t change the fact that I am now and always have been a basically honest person.

I didn’t say a word to Tammi the tour guide, but the idea that Marjorie had a purloined piece of property— stolen from a president’s home no less—just didn’t sit right with me. Even before I left Lawnfield, I knew what I was going to do. I didn’t stop home, but I did make a quick detour to the library, long enough to use the Internet to find Nick Klinker’s home address.

Nick, it seemed, had better taste than his aunt. At least when it came to neighborhoods and houses. Within an hour, I found myself clear on the other side of town in the chichi suburb of Bay Village. Big houses. Towering oaks. Views of the lake for the lucky few who were smart enough to scoop up waterfront property.

Nick Klinker was one of them.

I parked the Mustang on the circular drive that led up to a house with more windows than walls, and a sweeping backyard where I could see a garden with a fountain and one of those gazebos. Vine covered, of course. The house was situated high on a bluff overlooking Lake Erie, and though real estate is not my thing, I had been trained right early on; I knew—and appreciated—pricey when I saw it.

Recession? What recession? Obviously, things were just peachy in the software engineering world.

By the time I rang the bell, I had already practiced what I was going to say when Nick answered the door. There was no use beating around the bush, and no way to sugarcoat the truth: his late aunt wasn’t just the most annoying individual I’d ever met; she was a crook, too.

Only I was going to put it in words nicer than that.

I would have, too, if Nick answered the door. Instead, when it swung open, Bernadine, Nick’s fiancee, was looking back at me. At least I thought it was Bernadine. She couldn’t have looked more different than the stylishly turned-out woman I’d seen at the funeral. The impeccable outfit was gone, replaced with a pair of ratty denim capris and a T-shirt that immortalized some 5K run everybody had already forgotten. The sleek hairstyle? There was no sign of that, either. Bernadine’s blond tresses stuck up in weird spikes all over her head.

“Who are you? What do you want?” Bernadine’s eyes were blazing. She looked me over, twisted a lock of hair around one finger, and pulled hard. “Do I know you?”

I did my best to smile. It would have been easier if she’d been wearing those sweet Dolce & Gabbana pointed-toe slingbacks. But she wasn’t wearing any shoes at all, and half her toenails were polished garish pink. The others were done in a chocolately shade of maroon.

I looked back up to her face. “We didn’t have a chance to talk on Monday, but I chatted with Nick. At Marjorie Klinker’s—”

“Don’t even mention that woman to me!” Bernadine threw her head back and groaned. When she turned around and padded down the hallway, she didn’t close the door and she didn’t tell me to get lost, so I followed her, closing the door behind me. By the time I found her in the cavernous house, she was in a kitchen with a floor-to- ceiling view of the lake. She had a bottle of Black Velvet in one hand.

She poured a healthy couple inches into a glass and downed them in one gulp. “Do you know something about what Nick’s up to?” she asked me.

I was a tad confused so I didn’t say anything. She was a tad busy pouring herself another drink so she didn’t notice. As jittery as a double jolt of caffeine, she went over to the stainless steel, industrial-sized refrigerator and got a handful of ice cubes. She dumped them in with the whiskey and swirled the drink, studying me over the rim of the glass.

“Well, do you?” she asked. “Because I’ll tell you something, I don’t know what the hell’s going on, and it’s making me crazy, and I don’t have time to mess with this kind of nonsense. My wedding is in exactly . . .” She glanced at a calendar almost as big as the refrigerator it was stuck to with magnets. The days of the month that had already passed were marked off with thick red X’s, and the Saturday just one week away was circled. There was a big yellow star on the date.

“I’m getting married a week from this Saturday,” Bernadine said. She took a couple quick sips of her drink. “And do you see my groom here helping me get ready?” She spread her arms and looked around the kitchen, demonstrating.

Point made. We were the only two people there.

“I’ve got wedding favors to make,” she wailed. “Three hundred and forty-seven little porcelain picture frames, and every single one of them needs a photo of me and Nick put in it. But is Nick here to help?” Another swig, and she was rarin’ to go. The panic in Bernadine’s voice climbed right along with her anger.

“Was he here last night when the florist stopped by for one final chat? Did he show up this afternoon when I talked to the soloist about the songs for church?” She didn’t wait for me to say anything, but then, she didn’t need an answer and I wasn’t about to interrupt. That old saying about hell hath no fury like a woman scorned? A woman scorned doesn’t hold a candle to a bride whose wedding day is breathing down her neck.

“I know he’s been distracted, what with Marjorie’s death and everything,” Bernadine said, doing her best to be understanding. “And I know he’s nervous, too. His tummy’s been acting up and he’s not usually the high-strung type. That tells me he cares and knowing that . . .” She fueled her thoughts with another sip of whiskey and apparently her brief tiptoe into the land of the sensible was over. Her voice rose to a screech. “Has Nick done one damned thing to help me these past few days?” she asked no one in particular. “I’ll tell you what, no, he hasn’t! Does he think a bride can do all these things by herself? I mean, really. Is it fair to expect me to go to the tanning