Tutu Deadly Page 3

  He turned off the car and escorted me to the door. I was even a little surprised he knew where I lived, although I shouldn’t have been. He was a detective, and I was somewhat of a suspect.

  My little place was on the bottom floor of a very old building. It had a lot of charm and style, as well as noisy pipes, and was always impossibly cold. The strong points included a wood-burning fireplace, high ceilings, and hardwood floors that were a dancer’s dream. I spent a lot of nights dancing with an imaginary partner on those floors. I doubted they had hardwood floors in prison. I sure didn’t want to find out.

  “Look, Detective,” I said, turning awkwardly toward him after I had put the key into my door, pushed it open, and dropped the food bag on the small table located in the entryway. “I didn’t kill anyone. I’ve never killed anyone in my life.”

  “Your fingerprints were on the cookie-dough container.”

  I didn’t ask why they had my fingerprints on record. I already knew. During a short stint of my life, when I was trying to hold down nine-to-five jobs like everyone else, I had worked for the Weber County Sheriff’s Office as a dispatcher. Fingerprinting was required of all employees who worked with the Bureau of Criminal Identification database. I’d only lasted four months among the fighting, bitchy, back-stabbing women who made up the dispatch department before I quit and returned to teaching dance—probably the only thing I had ever truly been good at.

  I didn’t play well with other grown-ups.

  “Of course they were. I divided the containers out when they arrived. They come in big boxes, and I had to separate them so that we could deliver each order to the moms. It’s a fundraiser, Detective, for my dance team. And I’m the dance teacher.”

  He didn’t look convinced, but he wasn’t really looking at me like I was a coldhearted killer, either. Instead, his blue eyes were burning into me, probing me, and I felt a warmth and a flush I hadn’t felt for a while.

  Great. Attracted to the man who wants to put me away for life. Maybe he’ll come visit me in prison and we can have conjugal . . .

  “Go inside,” he said. “Lock your door. If you didn’t do this, then whoever did is still out there, and if they figure out you haven’t been charged, you could be next. If you didn’t do it, someone wants us to think you did.”

  He waited until I shut the door and turned the dead bolt, and then I could hear him walk away. I peeked out my four-paned side window and watched as he got into his car. He spoke into his car radio and just sat there for a minute, making notes on a pad and occasionally turning to look at my apartment. Each time I would ease back, hoping he couldn’t see my bright eyes at the window. Hoping he didn’t know the effect his incredible physique and handsome face had on me. The man most likely wanted me in prison and I wanted to jump his bones.

  Ain’t life grand? This situation called for French fries. After all, they were from the potato family, and were as close to potato salad as I was going to get tonight.

  THREE

  A lot of people had preconceived notions about what it was like to live in Utah. Most of that had to do with the image people had of Mormons, and how they thought everyone who lived here was Mormon. While to a certain extent this was true—everyone who lived in Utah probably had a relative who belonged at one time or another to the church—Utah was not quite as hostile to non-Mormons as everyone thought.

  I was born to a Catholic mother and a Mormon father. Neither one was religious, although my paternal grandmother, Nana Marian, took me to Mormon Sunday school when I was a kid. I liked it, but that’s just because I got to wear fancy dresses that my grandmother bought me just for that reason, color, and eat cookies after the Sunday school lesson. I didn’t do much listening, so it was best not to ask me about their theology. My entire extent of Mormon knowledge could be described this way: Jesus wants me for a sunbeam.

  That said, I’d lived here in Ogden all my life. I knew a lot of Mormons who knew a whole lot more about their church than I did. I also knew a lot of ex-Mormons, non-Mormons, and even quite a few Catholics. I didn’t know much about that religion, either, but as a kid, I didn’t like it as much because my maternal grandmother only took me to Sunday Mass once and didn’t buy me any new clothing, and they only served food—wafers and wine—to the real members. Plus Grandma Gilly always crossed herself and squinted at me with despair and anger, after I’d broken yet another one of her precious saint figurines, or ran the water over in the tub so it flooded her bathroom. It gave me an aversion to the sign of the cross that was totally unrelated to Jesus.

  In more recent years, my other grandma, Nana Marian, had begun regularly bringing me copies of the Book of Mormon. I thought she was getting Alzheimer’s, although my father denied it, because I had a whole closet full of those books stashed away. We met for lunch once a month in Salt Lake City at the top of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. Once there, my white-haired grandmother, who stood only about four feet, eight inches tall, would hand me a Book of Mormon and a ten-dollar bill. We’d order lunch—her a light salad, me something substantial and greasy; who knew when I’d eat again—and then we’d dine while we discussed the weather and my mother’s Catholic-bred eccentricities. When lunch was done, Nana would pat my hand with her leathery, cold one and urge me to “read it, dear. It’s true, you know. I want to see you when I die! I want you there with me.”

  I’d agree to read it, she’d pay the bill, and we’d part ways until the next month, when we’d go through the same routine. I got twelve copies of the Book of Mormon a year. Luckily, for Christmas and birthdays Nana Marian gave me clothes. During the summer months, my apartment building would have a large “garage sale,” despite the fact none of us had a garage, and I’d put out a table laden with all my copies of the Book of Mormon, selling them for a buck apiece. I’d get a lot of strange looks and enough money to buy an inexpensive dinner at the Chinese place down the street. Some of the older residents of the building probably thought I knocked over the Mormon-owned Deseret Bookstore once a year or so. I also think they bought the books because they were afraid that if they didn’t their sacred book would end up in the wrong hands. At least that’s the way they looked when they were forking over the dollars, but I wasn’t going to question their motivation too deeply.

  Now I admit I never actually cracked open those books, but that had more to do with the fact that I was essentially very lazy—it was much easier to watch television than to concentrate on a book—than with my rejection of Mormon theology. I was an equal-opportunity rejecter of all things religious. I didn’t care for Mass, got the heebie-jeebies when the Jehovah’s Witness missionaries knocked on my door, and made it a habit to pray only when I really, really needed something—like blueberry ripple ice cream. Now that was worth praying for.

  Every once in a while I would get visits from the Mormon missionaries, looking to increase their membership numbers, and I was usually nice to them, although my niceness didn’t extend itself to agreeing to baptism ten minutes after we’d met. I felt sorry for them. Can you imagine waiting your whole life to serve a mission for God, and being told that you were being sent to the only state populated almost entirely by Mormons? Since I’d never been baptized in any religion, it was no wonder they kept showing up at my door. I was fresh meat.

  So it shouldn’t have surprised me when my doorbell rang at 8 a.m. Saturday. I was startled out of a restless sleep, and I almost screamed. I remembered being chased by Emma Anderson and Sandra Epstein, who were both screaming “Buffoons? Buffoons?” Behind them followed Detective Wilson, holding a pair of handcuffs in one hand and an orange jumpsuit in the other. That’s enough to make anyone scream, and not with pleasure, although just before the dance moms crashed my dream I remembered a wave of pleasure running through my body . . .

  The doorbell rang again and I threw aside the covers and padded to my front door, shivering from the cold. Four days until tuition was due. I was out of fire logs.

  I looked out the peephole and saw the sa
me two missionaries who had visited me three times before. I was starting to regret being nice to them.

  I opened the door slightly and said, “Hullo?”

  “Hi, Jenny!” said Elder Martin, who hailed from Tennessee and had the twang to prove it. “Hope you don’t mind we’re back. Can we come in?”

  Sometimes, you just gotta be tough on these missionaries, or they can’t see the river for the trees. Obviously, I had been too nice before. Time to pull out the big logs. “I’m sorry, but I haven’t cleaned the place up yet from last night’s animal sacrifice.”

  The smile on Elder Martin’s face faded, and Elder Tuatuola, his companion, who came here from Samoa, stepped back from the door.

  “Gosh, Jenny, did we do something to make you mad?” Elder Martin asked.

  “Sorry, guys, I’m just really busy right now.” I shut the door then leaned back against it, guilt consuming me. I quickly opened it again. They were just walking away, shoulders slumped, backs rounded in defeat, when I reopened it. Elder Martin’s face perked up when he turned around and saw me standing there. I’m not sure why, as I’m sure I had bed hair from hell. I was also wearing my rattiest pajama pants and a big T-shirt, and was at least five—okay maybe seven—years older than either one of them. Okay, fine, probably ten years. But hey, Mormon missionaries didn’t get a whole lot of female interaction. The rules against that kind of thing were pretty strict. On the first visit, Elder Martin even confided to me that the only time he was allowed to be separated from Elder Tuatuola was to go to the bathroom.

  I told James about this, and for about a month he talked about going on the mission he had opted out of years before. For a Church so adamantly against homosexuality, the missionary pairing seemed like a breeding ground for switch-hitters, at least to me. From the way the two elders at my door were staring at me, I didn’t think that was a problem for either one of them.

  “Uh, Jenny? Can we come in?”

  Could they come in? Was I in the mood to deal with Mormon missionaries and their theology I had no interest in? Elder Tuatuola stood behind Elder Martin, nodding and smiling. After all the time they spent together, they appeared desperate for some different company—female company. Unlike James, they clearly were not so enamored of being around other men all the time. Of course, James was never really serious about Mormon missionary work. The other rules for missionaries—combing the streets daily for possible converts, always wearing a suit fresh off the rack from Mr. Mac, begging meals from strangers, incessant church meetings, and of course, the old “abstaining” rule, which was basically no sex, no alcohol, no fun—just weren’t so appealing to a man who liked designer clothes, expensive food, Broadway shows, and $350 bottles of wine.

  I stared at Elder Martin’s cheerful face, and sighed. I supposed after a few months on the beaded path I might look pretty good to them, even though they were both just at the end of their teens. My thirtieth birthday had come and gone, which in Utah made me old-maid material. Some of the dance moms tried to set me up with friends and relatives from time to time, usually with little success. Did I mention I was a little eccentric?

  “Look guys, I’m sorry. I had a really rough night, and right now all I want to do is go back to bed and get some sleep.” Again the crestfallen look on Elder Martin’s face. This poor kid really needed a girlfriend, which of course he would not be able to even think about until his service for the Lord was over.

  “All right, all right, come in.” They bounded together through the door—evidently, as long as missionaries are together, it is not taboo to enter a female’s apartment—and headed for my kitchen. Once there, they sat in my chairs and looked up at me expectantly, like children waiting for dinner. They didn’t know me very well.

  “Look guys, I really don’t have any food, okay? I’m sorry. You can look around, but don’t be too hopeful. Unless you can perform one of those Bible miracles with loaves of bread and prime rib, you’re out of luck. I’m going to go brush my hair and teeth. I’ll be right back.”

  “It was fish, Jenny,” Elder Martin said as I left the room.

  Yeah, whatever. Like I said, religion wasn’t my strong suit.

  I figured they couldn’t get into too much trouble in my nearly empty kitchen. In the bathroom, I washed my face and brushed my teeth and tongue, and cringed when I looked in the mirror. My straight, long red hair looked fuzzy from a night spent restlessly rubbing the pillowcase as I tossed and turned. I looked like a pom-pom!

  I wetted a comb and ran it over my mane, taming it as best I could. I left the bathroom and went into my bedroom to throw on sweats. I heard the clanging of a pan from the kitchen, and wondered what in the world they could have found to eat in there—maybe the Mormons really did have the true gospel, and those two were in there making the bologna multiply into huge mounds of filet mignon—or something like that. Like my morning hair, my Bible knowledge was fuzzy.

  I had to spend extra time finding socks that didn’t have holes in them bigger than my feet. Four more days until tuition payments were due, and I could buy some groceries, and some new socks, and possibly a new car that started on the first try. Yeah, right. Maybe Top Ramen and cheap socks.

  When I reentered the kitchen I could smell the vanilla-buttery flavor of baking cookies, and Elders Martin and Tuatuola were sitting on my counter, eating raw cookie dough from a container, both of them dipping into the unbaked dough with spoons and savoring the sweetness. I was impressed. Rarely did men appreciate the qualities of unbaked cookie dough. Perhaps there was depth to these two that I had not yet recognized.

  “This good,” Elder Tuatuola said in his broken English.

  “Of course. Unbaked cookie dough is one of the true pleasures of life,” I answered them. “Smells like you baked some, too, though. But I didn’t have any cookie dough. Where did you find the . . .”

  Uh-oh. Warning bells went off in my head. Cookie dough. Dead Sandra Epstein.

  “Stop! Stop eating!” I screamed as I frantically grabbed the carton and pulled it from them, both of them staring at me wide-eyed as they held their spoons full of raw cookie dough just inches from their mouths.

  “Quick, where did you find this?”

  “In your freezer,” Elder Martin answered, a little breathlessly. I suspected after this slightly psychotic behavior from me that he wouldn’t be so eager to visit again, despite his desire to baptize me. Especially if what I suspected was true.

  I ran to the phone and dialed 911, my hands shaking.

  “You’ve got to send somebody quick. I think the missionaries have been poisoned.”

  FOUR

  ELDERS Martin and Tuatuola were carted off to the hospital despite their protests that they felt fine. I watched with despair as the ambulance departed, lights flashing, sirens wailing, wondering just how I was going to explain this one.

  An old guy in a suit had shown up, called by the police, I guess, as he was in charge of the missionaries. After conversing with Detective Wilson—who had shown up shortly after the paramedics, shaking his head, a grim set to his mouth—the Church man gave me a very nasty look before he got into his blue sedan and took off behind the ambulance. I suspected I was in deep shit with the Mormon Church, something I could hardly afford in my line of work. Since the majority of Utah residents were Mormon, and I taught dance to young Utah residents, it stood to reason that lots of my students were Mormon. I imagined my name going onto some list somewhere—a “stay away from this heathen” kind of list—and my stomach churned with fear and angst.

  “Oh, God. Oh, oh God.” I knew I was muttering out loud, but the events of the morning were not exactly calming. Surely one could not be blamed for being slightly hysterical?

  As he walked toward me, Detective Tate Wilson gave me a funny look. Not a good funny look, either, but a “what have you done now?” kind of look, like Grandma Gilly used to give me when I broke something in her house.

  “Tell me again what happened,” he said, his lips tight, his words
terse. I’d already informed him that there had been no cookie dough in my freezer just yesterday, and that I knew someone had put the dough there to frame me—boy, did that sound like an old movie line. “Start with last night after I dropped you off. I know you didn’t leave.” He’d been watching me. A warm rivet of pure adrenaline ran through my body, although I wasn’t quite sure why. Of course he was watching me. I was a suspect, and these newest events just cemented it. Still, he was watching me . . . Watching me.

  “Jenny?” he prodded. I ran down the events of my evening after he dropped me off. Nothing, nothing, and more nothing. Then bed. He gave me another look. Truthfully, the look Tate Wilson was giving me was not the kind of look you wanted to get from a man you had erotic dreams about, and truthfully, the night before, in my dreams, just before he tried to hand me the orange jumpsuit, I had been seduced and was naked on a bearskin rug in front of my fireplace. Of course, in the dream my body was perfectly smooth and thin, with nothing bulging out in an unsightly way. In my dream, tuition had been paid and I had fire logs. Dreams were great. Then reality barged in, and I had a sudden, sharp vision of myself in the orange jumpsuit, behind bars, looking like a creamsicle. A tasty treat for Big Bertha . . .

  “Oh God. Oh, oh God,” I repeated. Detective Wilson rolled his eyes. I ignored him.

  “Tell me again what happened last night,” he said slowly, as though trying to be patient, and not really succeeding.

  “You dropped me off, I watched a little television, and then I went to sleep.”

  I needed a life.

  “And you locked the door, right?”

  I nodded.