“On the way out.”
“On the way out. We're calm, cool, and collected while we're there,” Jane said. She could see it. “We talk. If it doesn't work, we make nice, and we get her to take us to the door.”
“I walk behind her, get the glove on.”
“Yes. If the finial comes loose, you either have to hit her on the back of her skull, low, or right on her forehead. Maybe… I'm thinking of how people fall. Maybe we'll have to break a finger or something. A couple of fingers. Like she caught them on the railing on the way down.”
Leslie nodded, touched the brakes for a cyclist in the street. “I could pick her up, and we could scratch her fingernails on the railing, maybe put some carpet fiber in the other hand. She's small, I could probably lift her close enough, all we need to do is get some varnish under a fingernail…”
“It's a plan,” Jane said. “If the finial comes loose.”
“Still, the knife has a certain appeal,” Leslie said, after a moment of silence.
“Two older women, their skulls crushed, three days apart. Somebody is going to think it's a pretty heavy coincidence. The knife is a different MO and it looks stupid. Another little junkie thing. And if nothing is taken…”
“Probably be better to take something, if we do it with the knife,” Jane said. “I mean, then there'll be no doubt that it's murder. Why kill her? To rob her. We don't want a mystery. We want a clear story. Kill her, take her purse. Get out. With the finial, if they figure out it was murder, there'll be a huge mystery.”
“And they'll see it as smart. They'll know it wasn't some little junkie.”
Jane balanced the two. “I think, the finial,” Jane said. “If the finial works, we walk away clear. Nobody even suspects. With the knife, they'll be looking for something, chasing down connections.”
Then, for about the fifteenth time since they left home, Leslie said, “If the finial comes out…”
“Probably won't do it anyway,” Jane said. “We'll scare the bejesus out of the old bat.”
Marilyn Coombs lived in a nice postwar home, the kind with a big picture window and two-car garage in back, once unattached, now attached with a breezeway that was probably built in the '60s. The siding was newer plastic, with heated plastic gutters at the eaves. The front yard was narrow, decorative, and steep. Five concrete steps got you up on the platform, and another five to the outer porch door. The backyard, meant for boomers when they were babies, was larger and fenced.
They climbed the steps in the yard, up to the porch door, through the porch door; in these houses, the doorbell was inside the porch. On the way up, Leslie pulled a cotton gardening glove over his right hand, and pushed the doorbell with a glove finger, then slipped the hand into his jacket pocket.
Coombs was eighty, Jane thought, or even eighty-five. Her hair had a pearly white quality, nearly liquid, fine as cashmere, as she walked under the living room lights.
She was thin, and had to tug the door open with both hands, and smiled at them: “How are you? Jane, Leslie. Long time no see.”
“Marilyn…”
“I have cookies in the kitchen. Oatmeal. I made them this afternoon.” Coombs squinted past Leslie at the sidewalk. “You didn't see any gooks out there, did you?”
“No.” Leslie looked at Jane and shrugged, and they both looked out at the empty sidewalk.
“Gooks are moving in. They get their money from heroin,” Coombs said, pushing the door shut. “I'm thinking about getting an alarm. All the neighbors have them now.”
She turned toward the kitchen. As they passed the bottom of the stairs, Leslie reached out with the gloved hand, slipped it around the bottom of the finial, and lifted.
It came free. It was the size of a slo-pitch softball, but much heavier. Jane, who'd turned her head, nodded, and Leslie let it drop back into place.
A platter of oatmeal cookies waited on a table in the breakfast nook. They sat down, Coombs passed the dish, and Jane and Leslie both took one, and Leslie bolted his and mumbled, “Good.”
“So, Marilyn,” Jane said. “This newspaper clipping.”
“Yes, yes, it's right here.” Coombs was wearing a housecoat. She fumbled in the pocket, extracted a wad of Kleenex, a bottle of Aleve, and finally, a clipping. She passed it to Jane, her hand shaking a bit. Leslie took another cookie.
A noted Chippewa Falls art collector and heir to the Thune brewing fortune was found shot to death in her home Wednesday morning by relatives…
“They never caught anybody. They didn't have any leads,” Coombs said. She ticked off the points on her fingers: “She came from a rich family, just like Connie. She was involved in quilting, just like Connie.
She collected antiques, just like Connie. She lived with a maid, like Connie, but Claire's maid wasn't there that night, thank goodness for her.”
“She was shot,” Jane said. “Connie was killed with a pipe or a baseball bat or something.”
“I know, I know, but maybe they had to be quieter,” Coombs said. “Or maybe they wanted to change it, so nobody would suspect.”
“We really worry about getting involved with the police,” Jane said. “If they talk to you, and then to us, because of the quilt connection, and they say, 'Look, here's some people who know all of the murdered people… then they'll begin to suspect.
Even though we're innocent. And then they might take a closer look at the Armstrong quilts. We really don't want that.” Coombs's eyes flicked away. “I'd feel so guilty if somebody else got hurt. Or if these people got away scot-free because of me,” she said.
“So would I,” Jane said. “But…”
And Coombs said, “But…”
They talked about it for a while, trying to work the old woman around, and while she was deferential, she was also stubborn. Finally, Jane looked at Leslie and touched her nose. Leslie nodded, rubbed the side of his nose, and said to Coombs, “I have to say, you've talked me around. We've got to be really, really careful, though.
They've got some smart police officers working on this.”
He stopped and stuffed another oatmeal cookie in his mouth, mumbling around the crumbs.
“We need to keep the quilts out of it. Maybe I could send an anonymous note mentioning the antique connection, and leave the quilts out of it.”
Coombs brightened. She liked that idea. Jane smiled and shook her head and said, “Leslie's always liked you too much. I think we should stay away from the police, but if you're both for it…”
Coombs shuffled OUT to the front door as they left, leading the way. In the rear, Leslie pulled on the cotton gloves, and at the door, Jane stepped past Coombs as Leslie pulled the finial out of the banister post. He said, “Hey, Marilyn?”
When she turned, he hit her on the forehead with the finial ball. Hit her hard. She bounced off Jane and landed at the foot of the stairs. They both looked at her for a moment. Her feet made a quivering run, almost as though dog-paddling, then stopped.
“She dead?” Jane asked.
Leslie said, “Gotta be. I swatted her like a fuckin' fly with a fuckin' bowling ball.”
“Elegance!” Jane snapped.
“Fuck that…” Leslie was breathing hard. He squatted, watching the old lady, watching her, seeing never a breath. After a long two minutes, he looked up and said, “She's gone.”
“Pretty good. Never made a sound,” Jane said. She noticed that Leslie's bald spot was spreading.
“Yeah.” Leslie could see hair, a bit of skin and possibly a speck of blood on the wood of the finial ball. He stood up, turned it just so, and slipped it back on the mounting down in the banister post, and tapped it down tight. The hair and skin were on the inside of the ball, where Coombs might have struck her head if she'd fallen.
“Fingers?” he asked. “Break the fingers?”