Finders Keepers Losers Die by Carolyn Scott Page B

got the address off Roberta then dressed
in a knee-length sleeveless linen dress and headed out. Although it
was early afternoon, it felt like twilight with the dark clouds
gathering overhead. It suited my mood.
    Mrs. Scarletti lived in a part of Renford
where houses were solid but old and in need of TLC. That about
summed up the residents too.
    I cruised slowly down her street and stopped
outside her house. A leafy garden out front shaded a neat, green
lawn, with a brick path leading to the door. The house was freshly
painted and the stoop swept clean. Lou might have been an asshole
but he'd been a good son if the garden was the result of his
Wednesday visits.
    My knocks were eventually answered by a tiny
woman dressed head to toe in black. She squinted up at me through
thick glasses. "What do you want?"
    "Mrs. Scarletti?"
    "Of course I am and you know it. Don't ask
questions you already know the answer to. Don't they teach you that
in the police school? Huh?"
    "I'm, um, sorry. I'm not the police. My name
is—"
    "Not the police? Then what do you want? Who
are you?" She squinted some more and adjusted her glasses. "Oh!"
Both hands flew to her gray cheeks. "Valerie! You must be Valerie.
I know we haven't met yet, but I'd know you anywhere."
    "Mrs. Scarletti, I'm not—"
    "I know, dear, I know, you're not coping."
She opened the door, put her arm around my waist and pulled me
inside. The top of her head barely reached my shoulder but she had
a grip that could cut off blood supply.
    She led me into the kitchen, feeling her way
along the wall. She was almost blind. All the curtains were drawn
and the lack of natural light added to the morbid atmosphere. "Why
don't you open the curtains?" I said.
    "I'm in mourning." She had the voice of a
pack-a-day smoker and the yellowed teeth to go with it. She pushed
me into a chair at the solid wooden kitchen table and gave me a
whiskery hug.
    "You poor dear," she said in her gravelly
voice. "Poor, poor Valerie."
    God help me, I didn't correct her. I don't
know what came over me, but I saw an opportunity laid out before me
like a red carpet. I had to take it. I'd be a fool not to. "I'm so
sorry about Lou," I said, because I didn't know how else to
start.
    Mrs. Scarletti dabbed at her eyes with a
lace handkerchief and sat heavily in the chair opposite. "Thank
you, dear. You're a sweet girl to be thinking of me at this time.
After everything you've been through. After waiting for Lou for so
long, then him finally leaving that bitch of a wife," she spat,
"only to have this happen…"
    She and Valerie had a lot in common when it
came to an opinion on Roberta. Then again, they had the same source
of information.
    "Isn't there someone you can stay with for a
while?" I asked. "A relative?"
    "My daughter's coming from overseas," she
said. "As you know, my sister passed away last year, and her good
for nothing children are useless, so it's just me."
    How depressing. I sort of wished Lou wasn't
dead. Just for a second. Not even that long, really.
    It's a testimony to the complexity of
humans. You have your mind made up about someone—in this case Lou
and how much of a bastard he was—and then someone else turns that
opinion on its head. It seemed no one acted the same around every
single person. Lou behaved differently with his mother than he did
with his wife and differently again when around his friends. I
suppose I was just as guilty of being a chameleon. In fact, I
prided myself on it. Jeez, I wasn't even being me around
Mrs. Scarletti.
    Guilt over not telling her the truth began
to weigh as heavily as the black clouds outside. Thunder murmured
in the distance and light rain fell silently on the trim lawn.
    "My car leaks," I said. "So I can't stay."
It wasn't a lie. The seal on the driver's side door had
disintegrated. "Before I go, can I ask you something?"
    "Of course, dear. What is it?"
    "Did Lou ever give you a wooden box, inlaid
with mother of pearl? It was filled with jewelry."
    "No it's