Murderous Roots

by Virginia Winters

  "Was a woman called Doctor Anne McPhail a library client?"

  "Doctor McPhail. I'd forgotten. She was supposed to meet Jennifer here this morning. She does a lot of her own research, but Jennifer was going to give her access to the archives and help with the local records."

  "Where does she come from?" he asked.

  "She wrote from Toronto and from a small town somewhere in Ontario. She's retired, I think. Genealogy is one of her hobbies she wrote."

  "Did she ask for Jennifer?"

  "No, she asked for me. It is my name on the website as the contact person. I suggested the appointment times. Did she find her?"

  "Yes, she seemed pretty cool about it."

  "She's a doctor. She's hardly going to fall apart, or even let you see her sweat."

  Much like you, he thought. What was the relationship between the librarians? Were they friends, enemies, lovers? Too many questions, too little data.

  "Did she live alone?"

  She stared at the crew removing the section of stained carpet.

  "As far as I know."

  The stain extended to the floorboards beneath. Nancy turned away with a shudder.

  "You didn't know her well?"

  "Not in her personal life."

  "May I have her personnel file, please?"

  "Certainly."

  She took him through a door to the left, into her own office, the one with the corner windows, the leather seating area and the flowers on the desk. Mahogany doors concealed the steel filing cabinet that held the employment records. She handed him the one marked Jennifer Smith.

  Jennifer worked for the library for thirty years from when she was twenty-three years old. Unmarried. Living at 15 Mill Street in a quiet, not very affluent area of town.

  "Do you know who her relatives and friends were?"

  She walked to behind her desk and looked out the window at the small crowd gathering on the front lawn of the library.

  "She has a sister who lives in Burlington. She sees, saw her at Christmas. I think her name is Darlene, but I don't know her married name. Jennifer didn't like me. We weren't friends."

  She turned a suddenly pale face towards him.

  "I am going to miss her, though. How can this have happened? What can have been important enough to kill an innocent person like Jennifer?"

  She covered her face with her hands, and her shoulders heaved as she lost her self-control.

  You're human after all, he thought. A little late.

  "We need you to look at the computer and tell us what was copied."

  She skirted the patch of carpet-less floor and sat down at the screen.

  "This will take a little while if I can do it."

  He took another look around the room. A few books, a computer terminal and the card scanner, stood on the high counter of the oak desk. The phone dangled from its cord. Why? Had Jennifer tried to call someone and been struck down as she did? Or had it been knocked off in a struggle? Or used as a defensive weapon?

  "Adam," Nancy said, "as close as I can get to it, the download included all fifty-three of Jennifer's clients' files."

  "What would have been in them?"

  "I suppose personal information, family history and connections, anything she could find about a person's family and its past. Some of these small and others extensive."

  "Are they damaged?"

  "Oh, yes. An attempt was made to delete them."

  "Can you recover them for me?"

  He knew he was pushing. He needed a warrant for this sort of material.

  "No. I can't give you our clients' personal information just like that."

  She had fully recovered her calm.

  "I'll see Judge Wilmot."

  "You do that, and I'll have your copies ready."

  "No, Nancy, our expert will make the copy. In the meantime, give me your keys. we need to secure the building."

  She didn't like the idea of handing over her keys, but she did and huffed out the door. He spoke to the deputy leaning against the library desk.

  "Dave, you stay here while I see Judge Wilmot. Secure the computer."

  "Okay, Lieutenant."

  Dave was only too happy to stand, uniformed and important behind the yellow tape.

  Adam hurried down the steps of the library, past the little throng of on-lookers and sat in his car to call the judge. This one was going to need a face-to-face explanation. Judge Wilmot held strong opinions about the right to privacy.

  The Judge was busy until later in the afternoon, so he drove over to Jennifer's house. The radio broadcasted the news of Jennifer's death. He wondered how long they'd been at it and who called them. There hadn't been any press at the library.

  Fifteen Mill St. was a blue clapboard house, set back from the street, no fence, with a flagstone walkway bordered by few early tulips blooming in the beds on either side---early for Vermont in April. He had keys from the drawer in the desk Nancy said was Jennifer's. No purse at the scene.

  The door stood open. Backing off, Adam called on his car radio for Pete to join him. Not for him the solo approach. That earned him a bullet in the thigh three years before that took six long months to heal and strengthen. He still felt it in bad .

  Pete, Dave Graham's older brother, solid and professional, was Adam's first choice when he needed back-up. When he arrived, they entered the house, service revolvers drawn.

  The house was trashed. The search was extensive, destructive, and thorough. No computer downstairs. Why take the computer if you copied the files? Maybe the software was special? Maybe they searched the house before the murder?

  "More than one guy did this," Pete said.

  "Yeah?"

  "Moved refrigerator, freezer, even the stove and washing machine. Those are heavy suckers. Need two guys, or it takes you all day."

  "Right. Look for an address book, letters, pictures, anything about family, boyfriends."

  "Boyfriends? Miss Smith?"

  "Look, Pete."

  He found the address book by the phone, and a Christmas card list, birthdays, medical appointments, dental. All paper. She used the computer for everything at work, but all her personal stuff lay here in plain sight, not in a computer file, and all intact. He found a Darlene Utronski with a Burlington phone number.

  Most of the other addresses were local people in the service industries or professions. She had been involved in volunteer organizations: the hospital, the high school, and he remembered the local little theatre.

  Her furniture and her clothes were all small-town professional, no dramatic flair, nothing out of the ordinary. The top of an old upright piano held family pictures---one of her sister he supposed, with her husband and three kids and another a wedding picture, the bride and groom in old-fashioned clothes, her parents' wedding, likely.

  Cables snaked from a power bar to a desk in the second bedroom. No computer and no file cabinet here. She probably kept all her work on the computer, he thought.

  The crackle of Pete's shoulder radio interrupted the search. He was needed out on the main highway for a four-car collision. This search could be continued later. For now, Adam was going to call on Anne McPhail.

  Chapter Three

  Catherine's Bed and Breakfast, est.1983 asserted the little folk-art sign in front of the rambling clapboard house. Catherine, a Canadian who came to Vermont to marry Greg LaPlante. Greg liked fast cars and Canadian Rye as well as he liked Canadian women, a combination that killed him in the second year of their marriage, leaving her with twin boys, no money, an old house, and a lot of energy. Bed and breakfast fed, housed and clothed them ever since. The boys were sixteen now, and luckily like their mother, not their fiery dad, except for red hair, freckles and a love for football.

  And football it was on the front lawn as Adam pulled up.

  "Hey, Lieutenant Davidson."

  "Hey, guys. How's it going?"

  He passed them with a casual wave and walked up the steps of the white-painted porch. Their moth
er met him at the door.

  "Hello, Adam. This is so awful."

  She smiled at him but with worry on her thin features. She still bore the flat a's of Canada in her voice.

  "Do you want Dr. McPhail?" she asked as she held open the screen door.

  "Yes, I do."

  She called to Anne as she showed Adam to the small front sitting room.

  "Lieutenant Davidson is here, Anne."

  "Thank you."

  She walked into the room and sat down in a green wingback chair across from Adam.

  "When did you arrive in Culver's Mills, Dr. McPhail?"

  "About 9:30am. I had a coffee at Tim Horton's off the highway because I was too early for my appointment. Then I drove into town. The counter girl told me how to find the library."

  She tried not to twist her fingers into knots, a habit when she was nervous.

  "What time did you cross the border?"

  "At 8:00am. I crossed at Thousand Islands and drove through New York. They scanned my passport, of course, so the time should show if that is important."

  She knew it was important. How could she dig herself out of this unless this policeman realized the woman was many hours dead by the time she crossed the border? Surely the Medical Examiner was as competent as he had looked at the library.

  He watched her face. Was she what she seemed, a pleasant, intelligent middle-aged professional, in this mess by accident?

  "Has the medical examiner determined the time of death?" she asked, anxiety putting a little edge on her tone.

  "Not yet. Do you have an opinion?”

  "I'm a pediatrician. Death is not something we have a lot of experience with, not violent death at any rate. But I did notice her blood was clotted, and her hand was cold and stiff when I tried for a pulse. Hours dead, I thought at the time. Why would she have been in the library so early - unless she hadn't left the night before?"

  In spite of herself, Anne was interested in the crime as a mystery. Too much Agatha Christie and Rex Stout.

  "That's a good thought, doctor. What can you tell me about genealogy programs?"

  She looked at him in surprise.

  "Only the one I use. It's called Reunion. I use it to record information as I find it."

  "Does everyone who—what?—studies genealogy use a computer?"

  "Most people do now. There is so much information online that not using one would really hamper you."

  "And would someone like Jennifer Smith use the same program

  "Possibly. She was a professional. It would depend on how many clients she had, and how much she needed to store and cross-reference. She would use other programs also, for her database information she kept to cross-reference with her clients."

  "Did you bring a computer?"

  "Yes, I did."

  "Could I see the program?"

  He hoped she wouldn't balk at showing him, and she didn't.

  "Sure.”

  She loved to talk about, read about, and teach about this subject. She went up to her room for her laptop.

  Adam looked around the little room. Catherine made this a great room to be in, he thought. The furniture was the kind he liked--roomy and covered with pale green corduroy, with a footstool ample enough to take all of a long leg. A large, scruffy, amiable dog, staring at him through the long hair that fell down over bushy eyebrows, occupied this one. He was absently scratching the dog's ears when she returned.

  When Anne booted up, Reunion was on her desktop. When she opened it, she showed him the file set-up, pulling up her own name and the various ancestor configurations it could develop.

  "Can you open your file list for me?"

  "Sure."

  She had only one file, her family.

  "Who are you researching here?"

  "My fifth great-grandmother who may have been a woman called Margaret or Marie Pewadjuonokwe. An aboriginal name obviously. She married a man called Charles Denis de la Ronde. One of my cousins found evidence Margaret was born and baptized here, so I came to follow it up."

  She realized she was running on a bit and stopped talking, gazing thoughtfully at the detective.

  He was smiling, taken with her enthusiasm. This woman is exactly what she seems, he thought.

  "Is there anything of value found during research, like lost heirs, anything that would cause someone to steal computer files?"

  "Not likely. Perhaps family secrets though. You know--melodrama stuff--ancestors who weren't quite the sort you wanted in your family or connections you thought were there that weren't; people of the wrong race, or color, or religion, or ethnicity. All that is possible I guess. Do you think her interest in genealogy got her killed?"

  "I don't think anything yet, Dr. McPhail; I'm gathering information. Thank you for your help."

  He stood up, shook her offered hand and went out to the kitchen to find Catherine.

  "Would you like a something to drink?" she asked.

  "No, thanks but if you know anything about Jennifer Smith, I'd like to hear it."

  "Not a great deal but you're welcome to the gossip about what went on at the library."

  Nancy and Jennifer got along, but only just. Two years before, the board chose her as Chief Librarian over long time employee Jennifer. Jennifer was not the type to hold a grudge but proceeded to make herself indispensable to Nancy, to regular library users, and to the many who made internet inquiries. She was a genius at research, especially searching the old records for traces of aboriginal ancestry, and for land claims. Catherine heard quite a few whispers that the board made a mistake.

  As he drove back to the station through the pale light of an April afternoon, he noticed a lot of street-side activity for a Thursday. Little knots of people stood in front of stores and at street corners, eagerly talking. News travelled fast.

  Chapter Four

  Culver's Mills, population 10,000 more or less. Village green, white clapboard houses, a little industry, and a few professionals: it was mostly a service town for the surrounding agricultural community and for tourism. Quiet. Two prominent families: the Culvers whose family settled and named the place; and the Beauchamps - French Canadian likely, although old Mrs. Beauchamp insisted the ancestors arrived direct from France, and not with that the rag-tag bunch north of the border. Pride was a strange thing, Adam thought. Now he cared not at all about who his ancestors were or where they came from. He was who he was. Born in Vermont. Four years in college, two in the marines, ten years a policeman, all here in his home state.

  He parked in front of the courthouse, which also housed the police station. Judge Wilmot should be free now, he thought. Re-elected fifteen times, fair, exacting and no pushover, he wasn't inclined to make a policeman's job more difficult.

  Adam took the stairs two at a time up to the Judge's oak-paneled office. The Judge's secretary, Hazel, was an old friend of his. She looked like a hazel, he thought, with her brown hair and eyes and tanned skin.

  "Hi, Adam," she said.

  "Hi, Hazel. How's it going?"

  He leaned over the desk to shake her hand and peck her cheek.

  "Is he available now?"

  "Waiting for you."

  Judge Wilmot's office was like the man, unadorned. Simple shelving covered the walls, holding his library of law books. An open file folder, a telephone and a picture of his wife, occupied the desktop. Behind it sat the man himself, tall, slightly stooped with age now, but still with the commanding presence of the Marine Colonel he once was.

  As Adam settled into a chair on the visitor's side of the desk, Judge Wilmot offered him a drink.

  "No, thanks, Judge, I'm still working."

  "What can I do for you?"

  "I need a warrant to seize and examine the computer at the library. Someone downloaded files before or after Jennifer died. We need to try and recover them."

  "And the problem?"

  "Those files contain personal information on fifty-three different families who hired Jennifer to research their a
ncestry. I think we may find motive and maybe a pointer to the guy who did this."

  The Judge thought for a moment. "Who would have access to these files?"

  "Me, Brad Compton, our computer guy and maybe a genealogy expert."

  "How are you going to find one of those?"

  The Judge hadn't run across a genealogy expert before.

  "The doctor who found the body could help. She knows a lot about the subject."

  "Is she a suspect?"

  The Judge's eyebrows went up as he looked at Adam across his half-glasses.

  "No, I don't think so."

  "Do you think she will be likely to keep things to herself?"

  "Yes, I do, Judge. She seems sensible, and she's a doctor. Most of them can keep their mouths shut if they have to."

  "Okay, here's your warrant, but you make sure she understands the limits."

  "I will. Thanks, Judge."

  Pete Graham paced at the reception desk. Waving the warrant,Adam called him, and they drove to the library. Young Dave, Pete's brother was still on guard.

  "Anyone try to get in, Dave?"

  "Miss Webb. She was some pissed when I wouldn't let her in."

  "What did she want?"

  Nancy would try.

  "She said she needed some files for her work. I said nothing doing till you got here. I said I'd call her when you came. Is that okay?"

  "Sure, go ahead."

  They were stowing the library's one server and two workstations in the cruiser by the time Nancy Webb parked her late model Volvo wagon beside it. How much did librarians make? He drove a shaky 2008 Chev.

  "Lieutenant, I hope you have a warrant."

  She was way passed pissed off. Enraged was closer to it.

  "Yes, ma'am."

  He handed her the warrant and the receipt for the computers. She read every word, her face turning various shades of purple as she did.

  "How am I supposed to run the library with no computers," she said.

  "Same as you did before computers," he said as he got into the cruiser.