Tomb With a View

If she was going to play hard to get, I had no choice but to get tough. I hoped it would work because it was my one-and-only chance, and if it didn’t, I was up that proverbial creek without a paddle. “You lied to me, Gloria,” I said, poking a finger in her face and sounding like a detective in one of those corny old movies who reveals the murderer in a big aha! moment. “You’ve been here before, haven’t you? That’s why you didn’t have any trouble finding the place!”

When it came to aplomb, Gloria had exactly none. I was oh so glad. When she realized she’d been found out, she started shaking in her pink Keds.

I couldn’t afford to be nice. I pounced. “You told me you’d just heard about the statue here in the memorial. That you’d never seen it. But I found this . . .” I had the brochure I found at Gloria’s house in my pocket, and I whipped it out and waved it under her nose. “This was in your living room, Gloria. It’s from that rack of brochures right over there.” Just in case she’d missed it when she walked in, I pointed. I’m pretty sure all this pointing wasn’t necessary, but it sure was dramatic. “You’ve been here before. I don’t suppose that just happened to be the day Marjorie died, was it?”

“Yes! Yes, it was.” Gloria collapsed like a cheap lawn chair. Figuratively speaking, of course, because had she really collapsed, I would have helped her. Instead, I watched her snivel for a while and congratulated myself. Getting a confession out of her was going to be far easier than I thought. Gloria pulled a rumpled tissue from her pocket and dabbed her nose. “I was here that morning, all right. I came to . . . I came to . . .”

“Kill Marjorie?”

Her eyes flew open, and this time, I really did think she was going to collapse. Since the floors in the memorial are solid marble, and Gloria is an elderly lady whose bones are probably as brittle as an old bar of soap, I didn’t have the heart to let that happen. I took her by the arm, led her into the office, and plunked her down on the desk chair.

“You hated Marjorie. You hated her because she was a pain in the neck who deserved hating. You hated her for the statue in her garden and for the way it upset Sunshine. You came here that morning, and my guess is you had a fight. Maybe you didn’t mean to push her over that railing—”

“No! No!” Gloria was crying for real now and I almost felt guilty about it. Almost. She covered her face with her hands. “I wanted her dead, yes. But . . .” She raised her head and looked me in the eyes the way I figured a real perp never would. “I could never do a thing like that. Oh, in my dreams, maybe. But not for real! In fact, I came here that day to bring her brownies.”

This sort of bombshell deserved a shake of the head so that’s exactly what I did. Maybe when my brain settled again, the news would make sense. It didn’t. I had to resort to the old-fashioned way and talk things out. “You hated Marjorie so you brought her brownies because . . .”

Gloria’s eyes were rimmed with red. That didn’t prevent her from giving me a sly look. All she said was, “Ex-Lax.”

I swear, I would have burst out laughing if we weren’t talking murder. “You brought Marjorie brownies with laxative in them because—”

“Because I hated that Klinker woman!” Gloria emphasized her point by pounding her fist on the desk. “I was sick of trying to talk some sense into her. Nobody could do that. I wanted my revenge and the brownies were the only way I could think to get it. You know what?” She stood and threw back her scrawny shoulders. “The only reason I’m sorry she’s dead is because now I’ll never get even.”

I was too stunned by all this to say anything so all I did is stand there and watch Gloria march out of the room. Good thing the president popped up right before she walked out of the memorial. He was the one who reminded me that I was passing up a golden opportunity.

“She was here,” the president said. “The morning of the murder. Do you suppose she might have—”

“Did you see anything?” I jumped on the opportunity—and on Gloria, figuratively speaking, of course—before she could heft open the heavy front door. “When you came to give the brownies to Marjorie, was she here? Was anyone with her?”

She clicked her tongue. “If I had seen someone here, young lady, don’t you think I would have told the police? There was nobody around. Not a soul. Not that Klinker woman, not anybody. I didn’t hear anything, either, so don’t ask if there was any yelling or screaming or anything like that. The place was as quiet as a tomb.” Gloria thought about it for a moment before she chuckled. “Tomb, get it?”

I did, I just didn’t care. The president and I exchanged looks, and something told me that if he could, he would have asked exactly what I asked. “And the brownies?”

Gloria looked back at the office. “Left them in there. Right on the desk. Figured it was even better that way because then the Klinker woman would never know who brought them. Why? Is it important what happened to the brownies?”