An Image of Death by Libby Fischer Hellmann Page B

Fouad, my Syrian friend and sometime gardener, says he makes better money in winter, just by hooking a snowplow to his truck. The secret, he claims, is the cost of labor. The Mexicans he hires each summer go back home from November through April, so he pockets pretty much all of his revenue.
    I got to the Volvo and fished out my keys. Mexican gardeners, Greek restaurants, Russian cleaning ladies—the North Shore was becoming an international crossroads these days. I pictured Peter Lorre and Sidney Greenstreet slinking around the backstreets and alleys of Winnetka. I smiled. It would never work. The fez would be a dead giveaway.
    I opened my car door, thinking about hats, white suits, and foreign intrigue. Then I stopped. A man in a Russian-looking hat had been staring at my house the other day. Driving the cleaning ladies’ van. When he realized I’d seen him, he fled. And Rachel had said a van was involved in the delivery of the tape. I spun around.
    Davis was pulling away from the house. I ran after her, waving my arms. “Wait!” I cried. “Hold on!”
    Her brakes squealed, and the Saturn lurched to a stop. She rolled down her window.
    “Officer Davis…” I panted as I caught up to the car. “Remember what Dolan said about imports? You know, gangs from other parts of the world?”
    She blinked. “Yeah?”
    “Well, that would—I mean—that could include Russian gangs, couldn’t it?”
    “Anything’s possible.”
    “I think you should follow me home. There’s someone I want you to meet.”
    ***
    When I walked into Lillian Armstrong’s kitchen, it was clear why she needed a cleaning lady. A tower of dirty dishes balanced beside the sink. Torn Ho-Ho wrappers littered the floor. Open cartons of Chinese take-out, their contents congealed and gummy, lay on the counter. A dirty ashtray sat on the table, the butts smeared with lipstick. The sharp odor of ammonia cut through the residue of stale cigarette smoke. Two cats streaked out of the room as we entered.
    I wanted to take a blowtorch to the place. Instead, I crossed to the window. “Would it be okay if I opened this?”
    Lillian shrugged resignedly, as if I were an irritation she was obliged to endure. She and I didn’t have what you’d call a “neighborly” relationship. In fact, in the five years she’d lived next door, this was the first time I’d been inside her house. The day she’d moved in, she made sure to tell me how she wouldn’t be around much, since she spent summers at her cottage in Michigan and winters in her Florida condo. Glancing around now, I was glad she’d been true to her word.
    A heavy woman with thinning blue hair, she wore a quilted red robe and matching slippers. Despite some tautness around her cheekbones, the result of at least one facelift, pockets of flesh sagged under her eyes, and a wattle seemed to be growing under her chin.
    She took a drag off her cigarette. “You’re lucky you caught me.” She addressed herself to Davis, who stood at the kitchen threshold as if taking another step would land her in a DMZ. “I had to fly up for a doctor’s appointment. Then I got the flu.”
    Given the organisms that were likely proliferating in her house, I was surprised it wasn’t plague.
    “I won’t keep you too long, ma’am,” Davis said. “I just have a couple of questions. Do you engage a cleaning service, Mrs. Armstrong?”
    Lillian gazed around, as if noticing the detritus for the first time, and nodded. “They do a lousy job, don’t they?” She sighed. “But then, what can you expect?”
    Davis didn’t reply.
    “Not one of them speaks a word of English,” She went on. “And they don’t know the first thing about cleaning. How could they? They were milking cows or picking potatoes two weeks before I got them. And the turnover. I get a different one every week. I just get ’em broken in, and there’s a new one.” She rolled her eyes. “I’ve been thinking of changing services.”
    “I’d like the