A Streetcar Named Expire Read online

  MARY DAHEIM

  A STREETCAR NAMED EXPIRE

  A BED-AND-BREAKFAST MYSTERY

  SECOND FLOOR

  Tenants from 1930 on in boldface

  THIRD FLOOR

  More recent tenants in italics

  CONTENTS

  ONE

  JUDITH MCMONIGLE FLYNN juggled the box of old linens, tripped…

  TWO

  LEAPING OUT OF her seat, Judith felt sharp, wrenching pains…

  THREE

  ONLY THEN DID it dawn on Judith that she might…

  FOUR

  RENIE SERVED THE GUESTS their beverages and appetizers while Judith…

  FIVE

  ALL WASN’T COMPLETELY forgiven, but at least Judith had gotten…

  SIX

  “YOU DIDN’T HAVE to get so snippy with me,” Judith…

  SEVEN

  DURING THE NOON hour on Monday, Judith and Renie returned…

  EIGHT

  SCOTCH IN HAND, Joe had come into the entry hall…

  NINE

  JUDITH WAS AS good as her word. After Joe left…

  TEN

  JUDITH HAD FORGOTTEN all about Alfred Ashe. He hadn’t appeared…

  ELEVEN

  “I WISH,” JUDITH said to Renie over rare beef dip…

  TWELVE

  JUDITH WAS ON the phone taking a reservation when Alfred…

  THIRTEEN

  JOE HAD ALREADY started out the back door. Judith got…

  FOURTEEN

  GREG, THE WAITER, finally showed up to ask the cousins…

  FIFTEEN

  “IT KEEPS COMING back to Alfred Ashe,” Judith asserted over…

  SIXTEEN

  JUDITH DIDN’T CARE how immersed Renie was in her work.

  SEVENTEEN

  THAT NIGHT, JUDITH lay awake long past midnight. Partly, it…

  EIGHTEEN

  “YOU HOLD THE gun,” Renie said. “I’ll get the sign.”

  About the Author

  Other Books by Mary Daheim

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  ONE

  JUDITH MCMONIGLE FLYNN juggled the box of old linens, tripped over the cat, and flew headlong down the stairs. The box bounced, sending napkins, doilies, and tablecloths flying everywhere. The cat raced past Judith and disappeared into the entry hall. Linens floated like small ghosts over the hand-carved banister, the carpeted stairs, the guest registration desk by the front door. Yelling, crying, and swearing at the same time, Judith found herself in a heap on the first landing with one foot stuck behind the dieffenbachia planter.

  “Sweetums!” she screamed, moving only enough to see if any bones were broken. “You filthy little beast! Where are you?”

  There was no response. The linens were scattered all over the floor, the box was upside down next to the elephant-foot umbrella stand. Determining that she’d suffered no serious damage, Judith managed to extricate her leg from behind the potted plant. Then she sat up. Sweetums appeared from somewhere near the door to the downstairs bathroom. He had one of Grandma Grover’s embroidered table napkins draped like a shawl over his tubby little orange-and-white body.

  “You horrible cat,” Judith said, sitting down on the second step and yanking the napkin off Sweetums. The cat kept going, his plumelike tail swishing in disdain.

  “Where are you?” called a voice from the kitchen. “It’s me.”

  “Me” was Judith’s cousin Renie, more formally known as Serena Grover Jones.

  “I’m in the entryway,” Judith called, rubbing her knee. For once, she wasn’t happy to see Renie. The visit boded ill, as Judith knew from her cousin’s phone call an hour earlier. Some wag had said that there was no such thing as an accident; maybe Judith had tripped on purpose, hoping to break a leg and put herself out of Renie’s reach.

  “Hi,” Renie said with forced cheer and a look of surprise. “What are you doing with a doily on your head?”

  “Shut up,” Judith snapped. “Here, give me a hand.”

  Renie lifted Judith to her feet; Judith removed the doily and tossed it aside in disgust. “Sweetums tripped me,” she said, rubbing at her back.

  “Rotten cat,” Renie murmured, looking around the entry hall and into the living room. “Where’d he go?”

  “Who knows?” Judith retorted, limping in the direction of the kitchen. “Who cares? Outside to eat some birds, I suppose. I wish we had buzzards in this neighborhood. Maybe they’d eat him.”

  “Your mother saw an ostrich this morning,” Renie said, following Judith through the dining room.

  “Right,” Judith said. “Yesterday it was a saber-toothed tiger.”

  “They’ve been extinct for quite a while,” Renie noted.

  “Sometimes I think Mother’s brain has been extinct for quite a while,” Judith replied, cautiously lowering herself into a chair at the kitchen table. “She’s becoming delusional.”

  “Do you really think so, coz?” Renie asked as she helped herself to a mug of coffee, then gestured at Judith with the pot. “Want a refill?”

  “Why not?” Judith sighed. “And while you’re at it, grab me a couple of aspirin from the windowsill and a glass of water.”

  “Still hurting, huh?” Renie said with sympathy. “Are you sure you didn’t break or sprain anything?”

  “I don’t think so,” Judith said, then swallowed the aspirin in one gulp. “It’s these damned hips. Maybe Dr. Alfonso is right.”

  “It was that stupid pogo stick when we were kids,” Renie said, sitting across the table from Judith. “I was never foolish enough to try it.”

  “You were too chicken,” Judith responded.

  “Maybe,” Renie allowed. “In some ways, you’ve always been more daring than I am.”

  “But less outspoken,” Judith said with a smirk.

  Renie shrugged. “We each have our strengths and our weaknesses. Maybe that’s why we get along most of the time.”

  “Maybe so.” Judith stretched her legs out under the table. The cousins had both been only children two years apart, but they’d grown up as close as sisters, maybe closer. At the end of a play day, their mothers could send one of them home. Neither Gertrude Grover nor Aunt Deb hesitated to lay down the law when the cousins started bickering. Unfortunately, the two sisters-in-law didn’t apply the same rules to themselves, but had continued arguing into their dotage.

  “I have to admit,” Judith said, “that Mother likes to tease. She’s definitely more forgetful, but the delusions are new.”

  “My mother isn’t as dotty as yours,” Renie said, “but her martyr’s crown gets heavier each day. She acts so pitiful that I should wear one of those signs that says, ‘I’m Okay—You’re Really Okay.’ Reassuring her is an unending chore.”

  “Old age is very sad,” Judith lamented. “And we’re working our way there, coz. That’s why I hate to go back to Dr. Alfonso. I’m afraid he’s going to tell me I need a hip replacement.”

  “So what?” Renie countered. “Lots of people get them. Look at my mother.”

  Judith grimaced. “I have looked. She’s practically confined to that wheelchair.”

  “Well…” Renie looked askance. “That’s because she doesn’t try hard enough. Mom babies herself. And she wouldn’t keep up with the therapy. It’s much better if I wait on her instead.”

  “I suppose we’ll be just as bad when we get to be their age,” Judith said. “If we ever get to be their age.”

  “They may outlive us,” Renie said with a little shake of her head. “To tell the truth, they’re remarkable old girls.”

  “Mmm,” Judith murmured.

  “Bill’s actually looking forward to being put in a nursing home,” Renie sa
id. “He swears he has one picked out where the nurses wear long black stockings with seams and garter belts, just like in the porno flicks.”

  “Bill is crazier than his neurotic patients,” Judith declared. “Maybe he should give up his part-time shrink practice. What’s he doing, limiting it to nymphomaniacs?”

  “Gosh, no,” Renie replied. “He’s got several perverts, too. But that’s not why I’m here,” she went on, suddenly offering Judith her most engaging smile. “Tomorrow’s the tour. What time shall I pick you up?”

  Judith’s black eyes narrowed at Renie. “How about never? Did I say I’d go with you?”

  “You didn’t say you wouldn’t,” Renie replied, looking affronted.

  “That’s because I try to be nice,” Judith said, “which gets me in trouble, even with you. Look, Hillside Manor is full through the end of August and the first ten days of September. I can’t take time off. Didn’t you say it was a two-hour tour? That means three, between getting there and back. Ask one of your old pals like Madge Navarre or Melissa Bargroom.”

  “They’re working,” Renie said.

  “So am I,” Judith answered, scowling. She waved a hand around the old-fashioned, high-ceilinged kitchen. “Do you think this place runs by itself?”

  “Jeez, coz,” Renie said, making a face, “I work at home, too. Surely you’re not like my mother and think that I have small mice doing the artwork for my graphic design business?”

  “Sometimes it looks that way,” Judith snapped, then saw a fire light in Renie’s eyes. “Okay, okay, I don’t always understand your design concepts. It’s not my forte. But Joe and Bill won’t get back from their Alaska fishing trip until the day after tomorrow. I hate to ask Arlene Rankers to fill in, because I don’t want to do anything that’ll further encourage her and Carl to move. They’ve been threatening, you know.”

  “I do,” Renie said, her temper fading. “I talked to Arlene after Mass Sunday. She’s sick of keeping up that big yard.”

  Judith half-stood up to look out the window toward the Rankerses’ property. “It’s that blasted hedge. It’s had bees in it all summer.”

  “We’re not talking about an overnight,” Renie argued. “Two or three hours, that’s all. Won’t your idiot cleaning woman be here tomorrow?”

  “Well, yes,” Judith admitted. Phyliss Rackley had taken the day off so that she could undergo a brain scan, which, in Judith’s opinion, was to determine if Phyliss actually had a brain. Between the cleaning woman’s hypochondria and her religious mania, Judith was never sure if Phyliss’s head was merely muddled or actually empty.

  “Well then?” Renie prodded.

  “Frankly,” Judith said, “I have absolutely no interest in anything as gruesome as a murder tour. I don’t understand how the parish school could have allowed it to be an auction item.”

  “Because we take what we can get,” Renie responded. “Our Lady, Star of the Sea Parochial School does not operate on air pudding. This year, we stand to clear over eighty grand from the live and silent auctions. Would you rather have to pony up a big wad for the Sunday collection or peddle a couple of questionable items for the auction?”

  “Like birth control pills?” Judith shot back.

  “We didn’t do that,” Renie replied, indignant. “That item was a free ob-gyn consultation with Dr. Bile, who happens to be a SOTs.”

  “I know he’s one of our SOTs,” Judith said, also using the nickname for Star of the Sea parishioners. “But Norma Paine and some of the other women felt it was iffy.”

  “Don’t be a drip,” Renie said. “Norma’s always carping. I had to put up with a bunch of crap from her on the auction committee. Come on, say you’ll go.”

  Judith shook her head. “I’ll be too banged up by tomorrow. Stiff. Miserable.”

  “Coz…”

  “You know damned well you don’t want to go on this tour, either.”

  Renie winced. “Okay, so I didn’t mean to bid. I was trying to get the waiter to bring me some more chicken. The piece I got looked like it came off a pigeon. But I raised my card to get his attention and the next thing I knew, I’d blown three hundred bucks on this stupid thing. Bill wanted to kill me. Having done it and being on the auction committee, I feel I have to take the blasted tour. Jeremy Lamar is the nephew or godson or something-or-other of the Butlers, who, as you know, have been SOTs for four generations and practically paid for the last big church renovation by themselves. Father Hoyle would beat me to a pulp if I offended them by not helping Jeremy out on his maiden voyage.”

  Judith frowned. “Maiden voyage?”

  “Yes,” Renie said with a nod. “Jeremy’s just starting this Toujours La Tour business. He’s had organizational problems, which is why the first tour isn’t starting until tomorrow.”

  As a B&B hostess, Judith was well-attuned to the tourist season. “That’s too bad. It’s the end of August. How’s he going to survive through the winter?”

  “Jeremy has several different tours scheduled,” Renie replied, opening the sheep-shaped cookie jar and taking out three thumbprint cookies. “He’s got an Indian summer tour which will become ‘Autumn in the Northwest’ later on, a Halloween tour which will include the murder mystery tour, and then all sorts of holiday and ski tours starting in November.”

  Judith vaguely knew the Butlers, pillars of the parish who lived in one of Heraldsgate Hill’s most prestigious areas not far from Hillside Manor. If she had to be honest, she thought the Butlers were a bunch of stuffed shirts.

  “So?” Renie inquired, her chin sprinkled with cookie crumbs.

  “Don’t look at me with those cocker spaniel eyes,” Judith warned, wishing the aspirin would start to give her some relief. “I really don’t want to go.”

  “Please?”

  “No.”

  “I’ll owe you.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “I’ll never speak to you again.”

  “Good.”

  Renie, her round face somehow looking very long, rose from the chair. “Then it’s good-bye,” she said solemnly.

  “Afraid so.”

  Shoulders bowed and head down, Renie walked slowly toward the back door. As she pushed open the screen, she turned around. “I’ll pick you up at eleven-thirty. The tour starts at noon from the bottom of the hill by the opera house.”

  Judith sighed. “Okay.”

  Renie left. Judith closed her eyes and shook her head. She could never say no to her cousin. Indeed, Judith had always had problems saying no to anyone. She was too softhearted. Often it seemed more like a flaw than a virtue.

  Renie flew in through the back door. “Coz!” she cried. “There is an ostrich in your yard! He’s eating your rosebush!”

  Limping through the passageway between the kitchen and the back porch, Judith figured Renie was teasing her. But looming by the flowerbed beyond the patio was an enormous bird that certainly looked like an ostrich.

  “Good grief!” Judith gasped. “That sucker must be eight feet tall! I can’t shoo it away with a broom.”

  “How about an AK-47?” Renie asked, seeking safety next to Judith on the porch.

  The ostrich was ignoring the cousins, its long neck bent down to chomp off not only Queen Elizabeth’s pink buds and blooms, but the leaves as well.

  “I’ll call the humane society,” Judith said. “Maybe this guy escaped from the zoo.”

  “He’s not the only one,” a raspy voice called out from the toolshed door. “You two look like the dogcatcher ought to be chasing you.”

  Gertrude Grover was leaning on her walker, chortling at her own remarks. At the moment, she seemed neither deaf nor ditzy.

  “Very funny, Mother,” Judith shot back. “You’d better get back inside your apartment. That bird must weigh three hundred pounds.”

  “Goodness me,” Gertrude said, her voice suddenly very high and girlish, “he’s almost as fat as you are.”

  “Mother!” Judith was furious. Always sensitive about her
weight even though she could carry some extra pounds on her statuesque frame, Judith had never become immune to Gertrude’s cutting comments.

  “You’re not fat,” Renie murmured, going into the house. “I’ll call the humane society. You argue with your mother.”

  Two heads appeared above the laurel hedge that divided the Flynn property from the Rankerses’. “Yoohoo,” Arlene called, “is that your birdie?”

  “I’m giving her the birdie,” Gertrude put in before Judith could answer. “Phluphtt!”

  “Have you ever seen this thing before?” Judith asked of Arlene and Carl.

  “Not unless it’s one of Arlene’s relatives,” Carl replied in his dry manner.

  The ostrich had moved on to the Sterling Silver bush. “Damn!” Judith cried. “He’s ruining my pet rosebushes. How can I discourage him?”

  “How about making one of your casseroles for him?” Gertrude said. “That’d discourage anybody.”

  “I wouldn’t mess with him,” Carl advised. “They can run about forty miles an hour. You wouldn’t have time to get back in the house.”

  Renie had returned, but she stayed behind the screen door. “The humane society will be here in half an hour,” she said. “They don’t know if an ostrich is missing from the zoo, but they said some people keep them as pets.”

  Having demolished Sterling Silver, the ostrich began devastating Peace. “Go inside, Mother. Please,” Judith urged.

  “What?” Gertrude shot back. “And miss all the fun? I haven’t had this much excitement since I put my girdle on backwards.”

  Judith’s eyes were glued to the ostrich. “Oh, no, not my dahlias! Look at that thing! He’s destroying the garden.”

  “Hey!” Gertrude slammed her walker on the concrete. “Take a hike! Go on with you!” She waved a gnarled hand. “Beat it, or I’ll take out my dentures!”