Halloween Party Murder

by Leslie Meier

  “Having a good time?” he asked.

  Lucy gave him her last zombie finger. “Yeah. This is fun, and I’m really happy that it’s so successful. It was a lot of work, but I think we pulled it off.”

  He bit into the crunchy baked pastry, helped it down with a gulp of beer, and nodded in agreement. “Have you seen Ty and Heather?” he asked. “I want to congratulate them . . .”

  Lucy finished the sentence for him: “And find out when you can start demo?”

  “That too,” he said, laughing.

  She scanned the crowd and spotted a tall, gangly scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz movie. “I think that’s Ty over there,” she said, pointing him out. She continued to search for Heather, who, she was sure, would have remained in her flattering Ophelia costume, but saw no sign of a small woman wearing a long, red wig and a medieval robe. “But I don’t see Heather.”

  “The party was her idea,” said Bill. “She wouldn’t miss it.”

  “I didn’t see her come downstairs with the rest of us,” said Lucy, growing concerned. “I think I better go up and make sure she’s all right. That bathtub arrangement’s a bit tricky, and she might’ve fallen trying to get out.”

  “Okay,” said Bill, studying his empty cup. “I’ll get a refill and go talk to Ty.”

  Lucy gave him her empty plate and beaker and headed for the stairs, which were now littered with scraps from people’s costumes as well as a number of discarded paper plates and cups. She made her way through the mess, clucking with disapproval, and along the dimly lit hall to the bathroom.

  Oddly, she thought, the door was shut. Well, maybe somebody was using the toilet, which still worked and was disguised behind a screen. Just in case, she knocked on the door with a few polite taps.

  Receiving no reply, she turned the knob and cautiously opened the door, half expecting a voice to say, “Occupied, just a minute, please.”

  Hearing no such warning, she pushed the door open wider and reached for the string dangling from the old-fashioned ceiling light. Giving it a yank, and blinking from the sudden brightness, she spotted an arm hanging limply over the side of the tub. Dashing across the small room, she found Heather, eyes closed, still lying amid the plastic sheeting, fake bubbles and stringy green reeds. For a moment, she feared the worst, that Heather was dead, but wrapped her hand around that dangling wrist and discovered a pulse. She was alive, but barely. Lucy dashed for the stairs, and help, before it was too late to save her.

  Chapter Four

  Returning to the party, Lucy searched frantically among the costumed revelers for a first responder and finally spotted Barney helping himself to refreshments. She told him about Heather, and he produced his official walkie-talkie from beneath his costume and called for help, at the same time making his way through the crowd and pounding up the stairs. Reaching the bathroom, he handed the device to Lucy and immediately began CPR.

  “Tell ’em it’s a drug overdose,” he said, panting a bit as he compressed Heather’s bird-like chest. “We need ’em fast.”

  Lucy obliged, learning from the dispatcher that the ambulance was already on its way. Moments later, she heard the siren, growing louder as the ambulance grew closer; then it abruptly ceased when it arrived at the haunted house. The party was still in full swing but fell silent as the rescuers entered; Lucy went to the top of the stairs and yelled for them to come on up.

  Then she and Barney stepped aside as Heather was quickly examined. An oxygen mask was fixed to her face, and she was then lifted from the tub and laid on a stretcher. One of the EMTs quickly established an IV line, and then they were off, carrying her downstairs. Lucy watched from the upstairs hall, which gave her a bird’s-eye view of the scene below. She saw them pause at the bottom of the stairs, where they popped open the legs to raise the gurney, which they wheeled through the watching crowd to the door. There they were suddenly confronted by Ty, still dressed in his scarecrow costume. “What’s going on?” he demanded. Recognizing Heather beneath the oxygen mask, he reeled a step or two backward, then gathered himself together and followed them out to the waiting ambulance.

  Lucy turned back, expecting to see Barney, but he was already searching the bathroom for evidence, along with several other officers, including police chief Jim Kirwan, who was dressed as a magician in top hat and tails. Seeing her, Kirwan joined her in the hall. “So tell me what happened,” he coaxed, recording her on his cell phone.

  “I was at the party,” began Lucy, speaking rapidly, “and realized I hadn’t seen Heather, so I came upstairs to check on her. I found her in the tub, unconscious, so I grabbed Barney—he was the first person I saw—and he called for help and started CPR.”

  “Why did you think you should check on her?”

  “Well, these tableaux are all kind of patched together, there’s wiring and lights and scenery, and when I didn’t see her at the party, I thought she might have tripped on a cable or got tangled up and fell climbing out of the tub. She was supposed to be the model for a famous painting of Ophelia. Kevin Kenneally was the artist. He might know something . . .”

  “Kevin was here?”

  “Yeah. He was there at the easel,” said Lucy, pointing at the easel, now folded and propped against the wall. His palette was there, too, on the floor.

  “And she was unconscious when you found her?”

  “Yeah. Still in the tub.” Lucy pictured the scene in her mind. “I was afraid she was dead. One arm was out, hanging over the side, and I felt it for a pulse. I thought I felt something, so I ran downstairs for help . . .”

  “You did the right thing,” said the chief, patting her shoulder. “You’ve probably saved her life.”

  Barney came to the bathroom door, and Kirwan turned to him. “You oughta see this, Chief,” he said.

  “Thanks for your help, Lucy,” said the chief, with a nod, dismissing her. Lucy was dying to know what the investigators had found, but the chief had closed the bathroom door behind him, shutting her out.

  Sighing, she went back downstairs, slowly. The Lobster Claws had toned down the volume and were playing a James Taylor tune; a few people were slow-dancing, but most were gathered in small groups, talking quietly. After searching through the living room area, Lucy found Sue and her husband, Sid, standing with Bill in the dining room, just outside the kitchen door.

  Bill quickly wrapped her in his arms. “How are you?”

  “I’m okay.”

  “That was real quick action,” said Sid. “The minute I saw you, I knew something was up.”

  “Barney said it was a drug overdose,” she said, speaking slowly and sounding doubtful. She turned to Sue. “Do you think that’s likely? Do you think Heather was a user?”

  Sue shrugged. “Who knows what people do in their spare time? It’s possible, I guess, but I have to say I never thought that Ophelia gig was a good idea. Too many things could go wrong.”

  “Well, something did,” said Sid, taking his wife’s hand. “I guess we’ll call it a night.”

  “Us, too,” said Bill, wrapping his arm around Lucy’s waist and leading her through the nearly empty rooms, where the Lobster Claws had begun packing up their instruments. The once-festive rooms were now nearly deserted, the floor strewn with fallen paper streamers and crushed cups.

  “Hell of a party,” said Bill, opening the door.

  Lucy didn’t respond. In her mind, she was back in that bathroom, replaying the awful moment when she’d found Heather.

  * * *

  Next morning, she went to the IGA to do her weekly grocery shopping and ran into Barney’s wife, Marge, at the deli counter. Marge was tall and carried a few extra pounds, but they didn’t slow her down. She was a brisk, no-nonsense woman who kept her curly gray hair clipped in a short cut and wore comfortable plus-size knits. After requesting two pounds of ham, two pounds of American cheese, and one pound of roast beef, she greeted Lucy.

  “Terrible news about that poor Heather Moon.” She clucked her tongue and shook h
er head. “Drugs.”

  “I guess she’s got a long road ahead. I hope she goes straight into rehab and gets herself straightened out.”

  Marge pressed her lips together. “Haven’t you heard?”

  Lucy had a horrible sinking feeling in her stomach. “Heard what?”

  Marge wasn’t one to beat about the bush. “She died. She was DOA. Fentanyl, they say.”

  Lucy reached for the glass-fronted deli case to steady herself. “She didn’t make it to the hospital?”

  Marge reached up and took the packs of cold cuts off the counter. “Thanks,” she told the clerk, with a little smile, then turned to Lucy. “They gave her Narcan, did everything they could, but . . .” She shrugged and put the packs of meat and cheese in her cart. “I’m sorry, Lucy. I thought you’d heard. It was on the radio.”

  “No, I hadn’t heard,” said Lucy, who could almost feel Heather’s fluttery pulse beneath her fingers, and could still see the way her long hair fell across her pale face, her colorless lips.

  “It’s a terrible thing; she was so young,” said Marge. “What a waste.” She sighed heavily and put her hands on the cart’s handle. “Imagine going through all that chemo and beating cancer and then,” she lifted one hand in a little wave, “pffft.”

  “Can I get you something?” asked the clerk.

  Lucy couldn’t remember what she’d intended to buy. “Uh, no, thanks,” she said, turning back to Marge. “Her poor husband. They had such plans. They were going to fix up the house and start a family.” She paused, remembering how happy and excited Ty had seemed when they were working together to paint the hallway. “He must be devastated.”

  “I don’t know about that,” said Marge. “The police brought him in for questioning, took him straight from the hospital.”

  “They did?”

  “Of course. Those were illegal drugs, and they want to know how she got them.” She leaned close to Lucy and lowered her voice. “They suspect he actually supplied them.”

  Lucy didn’t like the way this was going. “But that means . . .”

  Marge nodded. “That means he could be tried for manslaughter—even murder, if they can prove a motive.”

  Lucy wandered through the store, shopping list in hand, but even though she knew the store like the back of her hand, she couldn’t seem to find anything. The products all merged together in a blur; she couldn’t tell the Raisin Bran from the Froot Loops, the toilet paper from the paper towels, and the wall of yogurt completely baffled her. Her cart was only half full when she went to the checkout.

  The cashier, Dot Kirwan, noticed right away. “Light week?” she asked, scanning a loaf of bread, then moving on to some canned goods.

  “I’m not myself,” admitted Lucy. “I just heard about Heather Moon.”

  “Jim told me you found her and called for help.” Dot was the police chief’s mother and related to numerous other Kirwans who worked in the police and fire department. She plopped a bunch of bananas on the scale. “Must have been upsetting.”

  “I thought they’d be able to save her.”

  Dot reached for a pound of butter. “These drugs are so risky, I don’t know why people do it. They call it ‘recreational, ’ but I don’t get it; I don’t see how it’s worth risking your life to get high.” She shook her head, scanning a pack of ground beef. “My Danny, he’s an EMT, he tells me half the time you save somebody from an overdose on Friday, and on Saturday you get another call and have to do the same thing all over again. You’d think they’d learn from a close call like that, but they don’t; the first thing they do when they get out of the hospital is get more drugs.” She hit the TOTAL button rather harder than necessary. “That’ll be forty-three nineteen.”

  On the way home, Lucy detoured down School Street past the Moon house. She drove slowly, noticing that the sign advertising the haunted house fundraiser was still in place, the black-painted plywood cutout of a witch on a broomstick still rode above the roof, and strips of yellow crime-scene tape fluttered from the porch. That yellow tape would have been a nice touch yesterday, a sort of macabre flourish, thought Lucy. Today, however, it had an entirely different meaning. It was for real.

  She went through the rest of her weekend chores in a sort of haze: She changed the sheets on the beds and cleaned the bathrooms; she cooked up a big batch of chili and raked leaves off the lawn. She yanked the dying tomato plants out of the garden, but left the leeks and the kale, which benefited from cool weather. She did these things automatically; it was as if her brain had split in two. One half took care of these familiar tasks, while the other half struggled to understand why Heather had indulged in such risky behavior. Why would she take possibly lethal drugs after surviving a grueling battle with cancer? Why?

  That question was still on her mind when she went to work at the newspaper on Monday morning.

  Phyllis greeted her with a small smile, and Lucy noticed she hadn’t dressed with her usual flair. Phyllis enjoyed dressing to suit the holiday, all holidays, and in October went in for sweaters and sweatshirts trimmed with falling leaves, jack-o’-lanterns, and witches on broomsticks, occasionally even going so far as to dye her hair orange. Today, however, she’d opted for a plain, navy-blue turtleneck and jeans; a pair of dangling black cat earrings was her only reference to the coming holiday. “Heck of a thing, a young woman dying like that,” she said, adding a big sigh.

  “You said it,” agreed Lucy, starting to unzip her lightweight parka.

  “I wouldn’t bother to settle in. Aucoin’s announced a press conference at nine at the police station, and Ted wants you to cover it.”

  Lucy glanced at the antique Regulator clock on the wall, which informed her it was a quarter to. “I guess I might as well go now. Maybe I can get some background.” She paused at the door. “Have you heard anything?”

  Phyllis shrugged. “I saw Franny at church yesterday, and she said she hasn’t seen hide nor hair of Ty since he went off with Heather in the ambulance.”

  Lucy knew that Franny Small was the Moons’ next-door neighbor. “That doesn’t mean anything,” said Lucy, unwilling to admit that Ty might have had anything to do with Heather’s death. “The house was a mess; he might be staying with friends.”

  “You’d think he’d come by to check on it.”

  “He’s got a lot to deal with right now,” said Lucy. “His wife just died. The house is probably the last thing on his mind.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  “I’ll know soon enough,” said Lucy, pushing the door open. The little bell was still jangling as she crossed the sidewalk and made her way to the police station on the other side of the street.

  “You can go straight down to the Emergency Control Center,” said the dispatcher, buzzing her through. The Emergency Control Center in the basement did double duty as a meeting space in the cramped police station. Lucy knew the way, taking the stairs located just beyond the locked steel door that sealed the lobby off from the rest of the station.

  A number of chairs had been set up in the underground bunker, and they were already filled by a handful of other reporters. NECN and the Portland news station had set up cameras, which Lucy took to be a bad sign indicating that the DA was prepared to make a major announcement.

  Aucoin and Kenneally entered on the dot of nine, along with Jim Kirwan, and all three took their places, lining up behind a podium containing a couple of waiting microphones. Aucoin was first to speak, thanking everyone for coming. He then cleared his throat and began reading from a sheet of paper. “After a thorough investigation, this department is charging Tyler Monteith Moon, age thirty-three, with first-degree murder in the death of his wife, Heather Moon, age twenty-nine, on Friday evening. It is believed that Moon caused his wife’s death by substituting a lethal dose of fentanyl for the opioid painkillers she occasionally used.”

  Lucy had been expecting this, after her conversation with Marge, but it still came as a shock. She sat for a minute, trying to proces
s this development, trying to reconcile the Ty she’d worked alongside painting the haunted house with Ty the accused murderer. She was struggling to imagine how Ty—or anyone, for that matter—could even dream of killing the fragile, ethereal, beautiful creature that was Heather.

  “And now, I’m passing the mic to my colleague, Assistant District Attorney Kevin Kenneally,” said Aucoin, stepping back so Kenneally could take the podium.

  “I would now like to speak to motive,” he began. “We believe Ty Moon was motivated by the fact that Heather Moon, who had recently undergone chemotherapy for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, had recently come into a large inheritance. Ty Moon wanted the good life, he wanted a family, and he didn’t want to be tied to a sickly wife.” He paused. “Any questions?”

  Lucy’s hand shot up, and she got a nod from Kenneally. “Has Ty Moon confessed to any of this?”

  “No. He denies the charges.”

  Another reporter jumped in. “When’s the arraignment?”

  “Later this morning.”

  “What’s the evidence?” demanded another.

  Kenneally turned to the chief, who stepped up to the mic. “I’m not free to disclose details, but I can say that our investigation found ample evidence that clearly links Moon to his wife’s death.”

  The questions and answers flew fast and furiously, but Lucy just sat there, scribbling it all down in her notebook. Her ears were hearing, her mind was processing the data, and her hand was writing it all down, but her heart was not accepting the information. She simply couldn’t believe that Ty was guilty.

  Chapter Five

  Lucy was just leaving the police station when she got a text from Ted informing her that Ty had hired Bob Goodman to defend him and assigning her to write a profile of Ty. Bob was already at the courthouse, awaiting the arraignment, so she decided to start by calling Rosie Capshaw.