And now it was also where Mrs. Klosterman was going off the deep end, psychologically speaking. Which was sort of usual, Natalie had to admit, but not quite as usual as the full-gainer she was performing with Olympic precision today. You could just never really tell with Mrs. Klosterman.
“I’m telling you, Natalie,” her elderly landlady said, having barely touched her first cup of tea, “he’s a Mob informant the government has put here for safekeeping. You mark my words. We could both wake up in our beds tomorrow morning to find our throats slit.”
Mrs. Klosterman was referring to her new tenant, having just this past week let out the second floor of her massive, three-story brick Victorian in Old Louisville. Now, only days after signing the lease, she was clearly having second thoughts—though probably not for the reasons she should be having them, should she, in fact, even be having second thoughts in the first place. Or something like that. Mrs. Klosterman did have a habit of, oh, embellishing reality? Yes, that was a polite way of saying she was sometimes delusional.
Natalie had lived in Mrs. Klosterman’s house—occupying the third and uppermost floor, where her landlady claimed the first for herself—for more than five years now, ever since she’d earned her Masters of Education and begun teaching at a nearby high school. Other tenants who had rented out the second floor had come and gone in those years, but Natalie couldn’t bring herself to move, even though she could afford a larger space now, maybe even a small home of her own. She just liked living in the old, rambling house. It had a lot of character. In addition to Mrs. Klosterman, she meant.
And she liked her landlady, too, who didn’t seem to have any family outside her tenants—much like Natalie herself. Because of the tiny population of the building, the house had always claimed a homey feel, since Mrs. Klosterman had, during its renovation into apartments, left much of the first floor open to the public—or, at the very least, to her tenants. At Christmastime, she and Natalie and whoever else was in residence even put up a tree in the front window and exchanged gifts. For someone like Natalie, who’d never had much family of her own, living here with Mrs. Klosterman was the next best thing. In fact, considering the type of family Natalie had come from, living here with Mrs. Klosterman was actually better.
Of course, considering this potential throat-slitting thing with regard to their new neighbor, they might all be sleeping with the fishes before the next Christmas could even come about. And their gifts from the new guy might very well be horses’ heads in their beds. Which, call her stodgy, would just ruin the holiday for Natalie.
Putting aside for now the idea that she and her landlady might wake up with their throats slit, since, according to her—admittedly limited—knowledge of medicine, a person most likely wouldn’t wake up had her throat indeed been slit, and the relative unlikelihood of that happening anyway, she asked her landlady, “Why do you think he’s a Mob informant?”
Really, she knew she shouldn’t be surprised by Mrs. Klosterman’s suspicions. Ever since Natalie had met her, her landlady had had a habit of making her life a lot more colorful than it actually was. (See above comments about the sometimes-delusional thing.) But seeing as how the woman had survived all by herself for the last twenty of her eighty-four years, ever since her husband Edgar’s death, Natalie supposed Mrs. Klosterman had every right to, oh, embellish her reality in whatever way she saw fit. She just wished the other woman would lighten up on the true crime books and confession magazines she so loved. Obviously, they were beginning to take their toll. Or maybe it was just extended age doing that. Or else Mrs. Klosterman was back to smoking her herb tea instead of brewing it. Natalie had warned her about that.
“I can just tell,” the older woman said now. She tugged restlessly at the collar of her oversized muumuu, splashed with fuchsia and lime green flowers, then ran her perfectly manicured fingers—manicured with hot pink nail polish—through her curly, dyed-jet-black hair. Whenever she left the house, Mrs. Klosterman also painted on jet-black eyebrows to match, and mascaraed her lashes into scary jet-black daddy longlegs. But right now, only soft white fuzz hinted at her ownership of either feature. “I can tell by the way he looks, and by the way he acts, and by the way he talks,” she added knowledgeably. “Even his name is suspicious.”
Natalie nodded indulgently. “What, does he wear loud polyester suits and ugly wide neckties and sunglasses even when it’s dark out? Does he reek of pesto and Aqua Velva? Is his name Vinnie ‘The Eraser’ Mancuso, and is he saying he’s here to rub some people out?”
Mrs. Klosterman rolled her eyes at Natalie. “Of course not. He wouldn’t be that obvious. He wears normal clothes, and he smells very nice. But he does talk like a mobster.”
“Does he use the word ‘whacked’ a lot?” Natalie asked mildly.
“Actually, he did use the word ‘whacked’ once when he came to sign the lease,” her landlady said haughtily.
“Did he use it in reference to a person?” Natalie asked. “Preferably a person with a name like ‘Big Tony’ or ‘Light-Loafered Lenny’ or ‘Joey the Kangaroo’?”
Mrs. Klosterman deflated some. “No. He used it in reference to the cockroaches in his last apartment building. I assured him we did not have that problem here, so there would be no whacking necessary.” Before Natalie had a chance to ask another question, her landlady hurried on, “But even not taking into consideration all those other things—”
Which were certainly incriminating enough, Natalie thought wryly.
“—his name,” her landlady continued, “is…” She paused, looking first to the left, then to the right before finishing. And when she finally did conclude her sentence, she scrunched her body low across the table, and dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “His name,” she said quietly, “is…John.”
Now Natalie was the one to roll her eyes. “Oh, yeah. John. That’s a Mob name all right. All your most notorious gangsters are named John. Let’s see, there was John Capone, John Luciano, John Lansky, John Schultz, Baby John Nelson, Pretty John Floyd, Johnny and Clyde…”
“John Dillinger, John Gotti,” Mrs. Klosterman threw in.
Yeah, okay, Natalie thought. But they were the exceptions.
“And it’s not just the John part,” Mrs. Klosterman said. “His full name is John Miller.”
Oh, well, in that case, Natalie thought. Sheesh.
“But he tells everyone to call him ‘Jack,’” her landlady concluded. “So you can see why I’m so suspicious.”
Yep, Natalie thought. No doubt about it. Mrs. Klosterman definitely had been smoking her herb tea again. Natalie would have to find the stash and replace it with normal old oolong, just like last time.
“John Miller,” Natalie echoed blandly. “Mmm. I can see where that name would just raise all kinds of red flags at the Justice Department.”
Mrs. Klosterman nodded. “Exactly. I mean, what kind of name is John Miller? It’s a common one. The kind nobody could trace, because there would be so many of them running around.”
“And the reason your new tenant couldn’t just be another one of those many running around?” Natalie asked, genuinely anxious to hear her landlady’s reasoning for her assumption. Mostly because it was sure to be entertaining.
“He doesn’t look like a John