Page 23 of A Matter of Pedigree (A Carole and Poopsie Mystery #1)

“S o?” said Mom, when she stepped back inside. “You want the keys?”

“She didn’t take a car,” said Carole.

Mom’s eyebrows shot up. “What?”

Carole shrugged. “She runs to work.” After a moment, she added, “I guess that’s how she stays so thin.”

“That’s un-American!” exclaimed Mom.

“Well, she is French,” said Carole, picking up the duster.

It wasn’t even eight-thirty yet, and she figured the professionals who lived in Prospect Place didn’t keep plumber’s hours and were probably still home, finishing up their breakfasts.

With that in mind, she and Mom began dusting and vacuuming the front hall and stairs.

Good thing, too, because first Mark Lonsdale came down the stairs, carrying a briefcase, only to be followed a few minutes later by his wife, Celerie, who was toting a couple of big wallpaper sample books.

Neither one took any notice of Carole and Mom beyond a little nod and a “good morning.”

Professor Poole appeared soon after, carrying an old-fashioned, accordion-style briefcase that was full to bursting with books and papers that threatened to spill out.

He made it halfway down the stairs, saw them, and immediately turned around and went back up.

Reappearing, he smiled apologetically and tapped his forehead to indicate that he had forgotten something, before making his wordless exit.

That left the building empty except for Millicent Shaw, who had the garden-level apartment, actually the basement.

Carole knew she didn’t work and was afraid she might pop up with an offer of tea and cookies, but she left the house shortly after the professor, carrying an armful of Whole Foods grocery bags.

“We’ve got at least an hour,” said Mom. “Where should we start?”

“Hosea Browne’s apartment,” said Carole, reaching for the knob and finding the door locked. “Darn,” she said, checking out the mechanism. “It’s one of those old ones with the bar that slides across. A credit card won’t work.”

“I thought of that,” said Mom, producing a thin knitting needle and poking it through the large keyhole. A jiggle here, a jiggle there, a firm push, and the door creaked open.

“Spooky.” Carole giggled nervously, following Mom into the dimly lit apartment.

“Yeah,” agreed Mom, busily switching on lights. “This place is like a mausoleum. And how come, if he was so rich, everything looks like it’s falling apart?” She pointed to the threadbare Oriental rug. “I mean, even the Salvation Army wouldn’t take that.”

Carole was looking around, studying the dusty old drapes, the gilt bull’s-eye mirror topped with a ferocious eagle, the enormous highboy atop spindly legs, and wondering where to begin. “Be careful,” she warned Mom. “I bet a lot of this stuff is very valuable.”

“You kidding?”

“No, Mom. You wouldn’t believe the stuff that decorator friend of Connie’s wanted me to buy. Antiques, she said, but it all looked old and dingy to me. She said it was the responsible thing to do, you know, good for the planet.”

“I don’t mind antiques,” said Mom, “as long as they look new.”

“Me, too,” said Carole, pausing to study a dark oil painting of a sailing ship that hung on the wall between the two tall windows. “The Orion ,” she said, reading the blackened brass plate on the frame. “It looks like it’s going down in a storm.”

Mom pointed to some dark figures in the water. “Looks like a bunch of folks are drowning,” she said, shuddering. “Why would you have a gloomy picture like that when you could have a nice Thomas Kinkade with that pretty glowing light?”

“Dunno, Mom,” said Carole, standing in the middle of the room with her hands at her side. “What are we supposed to look for?”

“Evidence,” said Mom, heading for the kitchen. “Like maybe a blackmail letter, something like that.”

“I don’t think he’d hang something like that on the fridge with a souvenir magnet,” said Carole, going in the opposite direction and looking for a study, or at least a desk.

She found it in the next room, a musty-smelling gentleman’s retreat with leather chairs, floor-to-ceiling bookcases, and a huge mahogany desk.

“Wow,” said Mom, following her. “I wish we’d had this stuff for Professor Higgins’s study when the Parish Players put on My Fair Lady. ”

Carole was bent over the desk, flipping through folders containing brokerage statements, bank statements, stock prospectuses, annual statements, departmental budgets, budget proposals, and minutes of meetings.

Turning on Hosea’s computer, she found his email contained more of the same.

“It was all about money with him,” she said with a sigh.

“Money is a big motive,” said Mom, nodding sagely.

“Yeah, but you’d need an accountant to make sense of all this. I sure don’t know what any of it means,” said Carole. “Except that he seems to have a lot of the green stuff.”

She was feeling depressed and anxious, convinced that the morning had been a waste, and wishing she hadn’t given in to Frank but had gone to the hospital instead. When her cell phone rang, she snatched it frantically, terrified that Frank-O had taken a turn for the worse.

“ Bonjour, cherie ,” chirped a voice. Her mother’s voice.

“Wow,” said Carole, “they’ve really improved long distance. You sound like you’re …”

“At the airport!”

“DeGaulle?” asked Carole.

“ Non, cherie , T. F. Green!”

“You’re here in Providence?”

“ Mais, oui !”

”Quelle horrible surprise ,” sighed Carole.

Paula Filardi Prendergast was not amused. “What do you mean? Aren’t you happy to see your mother?”

“Sure I am, Mom …”

“Call me Polly.”

“Right. I forgot. Sorry. It’s just that this is such a bad time.”

“It seems to me that there’s never a good time with you,” complained Polly.

“That’s not true. It’s just that Frank-O is in the hospital …”

“ Mon Dieu ! What’s wrong?”

“He was in a fire.”

“A fire! Is he okay?”

“They’ve got him sedated. They say he’s doing fine, but I don’t think we’ll really know until he wakes up.” Carole sighed. “And then there’s Frank; he’s under indictment for murder.”

“I knew they’d catch up with him sooner or later,” said Polly.

“How can you say that?” demanded Carole. “He’s innocent.”

“Of course he is,” said Polly, stifling a giggle. “Now, cherie , you can’t leave me here at the airport. How soon can you come get me?”

Carole looked at Mom. “I’m kind of tied up until noon,” she said.

“Noon!” exclaimed Polly, so loudly that Mom could hear her across the room. “I can’t wait that long. What kind of daughter are you, anyway, who would leave her mother friendless and alone in a foreign country …”

“Mom, this is not a foreign country. You’re American, remember?

” Paula Filardi had been a typical Federal Hill housewife when Carole was growing up, but when her second husband, Carole’s stepfather, died shortly after Carole’s marriage to Frank, she took a job as a social secretary for a wealthy Newport socialite.

She quickly adopted a new name, Polly, and a new husband, Jock Prendergast, owner of two Kentucky Derby winners.

The marriage didn’t last, but the nickname did.

As soon as the divorce was finalized, Polly packed up her bags and her generous settlement and moved to Paris, where she’d lived in expat comfort ever since.

“I know I’m an American, but try telling that to those customs agents.

This cute little dog ratted me out. In my defense, I didn’t know you can’t bring in unpasteurized cheese.

I had that bleu d’Auvergne that Frank likes, but they took it!

And then they searched all my bags. I had to watch as they pawed through my lovely Chantal Thomass lingerie.

It was so embarrassing.” She let out an exasperated breath.

“You’re never too old for pretty lingerie, never!

But the way they looked at me, you’d think they’d never seen a black lace thong or a bustier. ”

That was the last thing Carole wanted to think about. “Mom, why don’t you call an Uber?” she asked, lighting on a solution to the problem.

“An Uber! Who do you think I am? Some college kid, coming home for the weekend?”

Carole took a look around the apartment and decided she was wasting her time.

She could spend the rest of the morning searching, but she wasn’t going to find anything, and there was no point in keeping her mother waiting at the airport.

The sooner she got her settled, the better. “I’m on my way,” she said.

“What about the cleaning?” asked Mom, as Carole headed for the door.

“Do you really think they’ll notice?” asked Carole, waving her hand at the hallway. “And we did most of it, anyway.”

“Okay,” said Mom, picking up her bucket of cleaning supplies. “Let’s go.”

But when they got to the Corolla, they discovered they weren’t going anywhere. An ugly yellow boot had been fastened to the rear wheel.

“What am I going to do?” wailed Mom. “Christina Fornisanti has to babysit her grandkids this afternoon over in Warwick.”

Carole was tapping her foot, but it didn’t have the same effect in her flat, dog-walking boots as it did in her Louboutins.

“Okay, Mom, this is what we’re going to do.

You call Ginny Ferrara—she knows somebody in the park ing division, or maybe she knows somebody who knows somebody.

I know there’s some sort of connection. Here, take this,” she added, stuffing a bunch of fifties in Mom’s hand.

“For expenses. Meanwhile, I’m calling an Uber. ”

They both got busy on their phones, Mom working through her network of contacts and Carole heading for the corner, where she waited for a silver Mercedes SUV. Her mother wouldn’t settle for less, she knew.

When the car pulled up, she hopped inside and sailed off, giving Mom a parting wave.

Carole realized she was still in her cleaning lady disguise and probably looked as if she didn’t have two cents to her name. “This isn’t how I usually look …” she began.