The Corpse at the End of the Chapter

by Karen Hayes

  “She was wearing a heavy coat that would have absorbed most of the initial blood,” the sheriff explained, “so there really wasn’t much in the way of spatter. The perpetrator may have gotten some on his hands, however. You do have restrooms, don’t you, Copper?”

  “Yes, of course. But I don’t know if anyone’s even used them so far this morning.” She looked around to ask Monica, then remem-bered that her sales assistant had left with Trevor a little earlier, saying she would be back after they had lunched.

  “I used the restroom a little while ago,” admitted Wendy, who had not left the store, but was sitting in the children’s section. “But that was after the body was found. And I assure you, it wasn’t to wash any blood off my hands. I wanted to get a damp paper towel to revive Ms. Roberts.”

  “Well, let me see your hands, anyway, please, Ms. Barnes, just to eliminate you totally as a suspect.”

  Wendy went over to the sheriff and held out her hands to him. He looked them over carefully and said there didn’t seem to be any evidence that there had been blood on them recently.

  “Maybe I should take a picture of your hands,” he said, and whipped out his cell phone. “I probably should have taken a picture of everyone’s hands. But it’s a little too late for that now.”

  Wendy held out her hands and Harve took his pictures, front and back, and told her she was free to leave.

  “Thank you. I was just kind of, you know, waiting until Lars was long gone. I walked here and I don’t want him offering to let me share his umbrella on the way home.” She rolled her eyes and the sheriff nodded in understanding.

  “Oh, Wendy, you are welcome to stay here as long as you like,” Copper told her. “We’re going to be here awhile, I’m sure.”

  “Maybe just until Ryan gets here with the ambulance. He might be able to drop me at my house on his way back.”

  “Of course. Let me get you a fresh coffee.”

  There was no one left to interview, so Toby went back to the station to get everyone’s statements ready for their signatures, while Sheriff Blodgett awaited the arrival of the ambulance.

  “Well, I’m certainly at a loss,” Copper admitted. “I can’t imagine any of the people who were here today being a murderer.”

  “Me, neither,” the sheriff said with a shake of his head. “But one of ’em had to have done it.”

  “It couldn’t have been suicide?” Wendy asked.

  “No, Ms. Barnes. Not possible. Agatha Lafferty was a rather frail woman, in spite of her, uh, obesity. It required a certain amount of strength to stab her through the heavy coat she was wearing. No chance she could have done it herself. Someone killed her.”

  Wendy shuddered and took another sip of her coffee. She wandered over to Monica’s sales station and picked up a few of the remaining appetizers. The cucumber sandwiches were a bit soggy and there were no more bacon-wrapped shrimp, but one plate still held some of Eve’s wonderful pastries. The perfect complement to the coffee.

  When the ambulance arrived, Wendy allowed herself a few tears as she ran into Ryan’s arms. He quickly calmed her and agreed to drive her home. He and his partner, a young woman named Cindy Doyle, checked Old Mrs. Lafferty’s vital signs to make sure she really was dead (she was) and loaded her into the ambulance for the drive back over the mountain to the hospital morgue in Pleasant View.

  “I hope you took some pictures before we moved the body,” Ryan said.

  Harve held up his cell phone. “Got ’em right here,” he said.

  “Well, be sure to take some more now that the body’s gone,” Ryan reminded him.

  Monica came back then, but Copper sent her home. “We won’t be open for business any more today, dear,” she said, “so just take the rest of the day off. Put on your thinking cap and see if you can come up with some sort of suspect.”

  The girl nodded. “Will you be okay?” she asked.

  “I’ll be fine,” Copper told her. “The sheriff has a few more things to do, then I’m going to clean up as best I can. Although I think I’m going to have to replace that piece of carpet.”

  “Okay. I’ll go help Trev at the station.”

  Trevor Hodges was the privileged son of an attorney with one of the most prestigious law firms in Portland. The family had moved to Portland some years before when Mr. Hodges became a full partner in the firm and decided that commuting two hours each way was not the way to be a successful attorney. But Trevor elected to stay in Misty Valley and work for his uncle, Vince Kinney, at the local gas station/auto repair shop. Trevor waited on customers who came in to pay cash for their gas, use the rest room and purchase treats. In his spare time, which was ample, he polished up his Harley. With Monica helping, he could spend more time on his motorcycle.

  Harve Blodgett was really out of his element. When you’re the sheriff in a relatively low-crime area, you don’t have the practical experience to deal with all of the forensic issues involved with a murder. He didn’t know what good taking pictures of a pool of blood on the floor would do, but he went ahead and took the pictures. He went back to the station and rummaged around until he found a procedure manual that would help him deal with the crime scene. He took the manual back to the bookstore and sat in the reading area, drinking now stale coffee as he read through the book to see what it was he needed to do.

  Copper cleaned up the desk area, sharing the last two pieces of cheesecake bites with Harve, and discarded the soggy sandwiches. She tidied the children’s area and straightened the books on the shelves furthest from the crime scene.

  “Guess it’s a little late now,” Harve said, “but, after reading this manual, I think I may have let the crime scene become a little contaminated. And I guess I should have drawn a chalk mark around the body before Ryan took it.” He put the manual down and got to his feet. “When you aren’t used to murders, it’s hard to know what all you have to do. One thing I can still do, though, is take measurements, even if the body has been moved. You got a tape measure, Copper?”

  “Yes, I think so. Upstairs. I’ll run up and get it.”

  The stairs to Copper Penny’s private apartment were in the back, behind her office and the restrooms, but it did not take her long to come back with the tape measure Sheriff Blodgett needed.

  “Will this do?” she asked. It was a cloth sewing tape measure, not a heavy-duty metal tool, but it would have to do. The sheriff nodded and made his measurements. He took a few more pictures, collected a few fibers, and scraped a bit more of Agatha Lafferty’s blood into a baggie.

  “I think I’ve done all I can do,” he said. “So if you want to try to clean this up, you can go ahead.”

  Cleaning human blood from her new carpet was not what Copper had planned for her afternoon, but it was something that had to be done. Already the sweet, salty, coppery scent of the blood was permeating the store. She had better get started before it dried out too much. First she would need to go to the supermarket and get some heavy-duty cleaner.

  “Harve.” Copper stopped the sheriff as he headed out the door. “It’s been a hectic day and I know you’ve got a lot of paperwork still to do. So I was thinking, why don’t you drop by a little later, say about seven, and I’ll fix us some dinner and we can talk about the case.”

  “Now, Copper, you don’t need to get involved. Leave it to us professionals.”

  “But, Harve, I am involved. The murder happened in my store.”

  “I know, Copper, but...”

  “Harve, I know just as much about what happened as you do. So why not put our heads together to see what we can come up with in the way of possible suspects?”

  “Well, I suppose...”

  “Besides, Harve, when have you ever turned down a free dinner?”

  Harve shrugged and smiled. “If you put it that way...” It was true. Although he did eat from time to time at Marcia Cabot’s café, and on occasion at the Rainy Day Bar and Grill, the citizens of Misty Valley liked to look after their sheriff and he was often inv
ited to join various families for dinner. In fact, Copper and George had had him to dinner numerous times before George passed away.

  “See you at seven,” Copper said.

  * * *

  Even the most heavy-duty cleaner Copper could find did not do a very good job at getting Agatha Lafferty’s blood out of the carpet. Who would have thought the old woman had so much blood in her? Copper mused. Wasn’t that something from Shakespeare? Oh, yes, MacBeth. Who would have thought the old man had so much blood in him, or something like that. She definitely would need to have that bit of carpet replaced.

  By the time Copper had cleaned the carpet as best she could, it was after six o’clock and the Book Nook now smelled like strong pine-scented cleaner. She had less than an hour to throw together some dinner. But she was prepared. She’d picked up some ground beef and marinara sauce at the supermarket and she had spaghetti in her cupboard and Parmesan cheese in her fridge. Easy to fix. And the French bread she’d bought the day before would be per-fect for some garlic bread. For dessert, she’d picked up an apple pie at Eve’s.

  As she browned the meat and added the jar of sauce, she thought through the events of the day and went over in her mind all of the customers who had visited her store. Which of them was a cold-blooded killer?

  FOUR

  “I HAVE NO IDEA WHO DID IT,” CONFESSED HARVE as he started in on his spaghetti and meat sauce dinner, “but it has to be someone who was at your opening. Now I interviewed everyone who was there at the time the body was discovered. But were there others who had come and gone before then?”

  “Oh, I’m sure there were,” Copper said. “The mayor and his wife were here right when I opened. They didn’t stay long, just ate a couple of Eve’s pastries, wished me luck, and left. They didn’t stay long enough to have a cup of coffee. And they didn’t even take a peek at any books.”

  “Well, I don’t know if I’d suspect the mayor, anyway. I mean...”

  “Mayors can be the bad guy,” Copper said. “Not that I think ours is, mind you. At least I hope not. I voted for him.”

  “Me, too. Of course, Lars Olson was the only one running against him and who was going to vote for Lars? ”

  “Dr. Lafferty came in for a while, too,” Copper remembered. “I think he actually bought a book.”

  “If Dr. Lafferty wanted to bump off his mother, I hardly think he’d pick your book store as the place to do it.”

  “I didn’t say I thought he did it. I’m just trying to remember who else was at the store this morning. He actually came quite early, anyway, long before his mother came in. And I remember he was dressed to go fishing, which was what Wendy said he was planning to do. I think Conrad Affleck came in with him. Connie didn’t buy anything, though, I’m sure. He has to be the stingiest man around. His wife told me he won’t even take her to dinner on their anniversary. And for Christmas, birthdays, Mother’s Day, etc., he gives her something for the house–like a new iron or something to that effect.”

  Harve laughed. “I know exactly what you mean. You should have heard him try to talk his way out of a parking ticket I gave him once.”

  “Where on earth do you give parking tickets around here?”

  “He was double parked in front of the supermarket. Told me he just had to run in for a quart of milk and didn’t want to waste time or gas driving around trying to find a parking place. The cost of the tablespoon of gas it would have taken to drive half a block was much less than the ticket I wouldn’t let him talk his way out of.”

  Copper shook her head in amusement. “And I understand he drives all the way into the CostCo in Portland to buy most of his groceries—and his gas—because they’re cheaper there.”

  “True. However, he does that when he has other business in the city that he can’t get out of. So he always kills two birds with one stone.”

  “Well, to get back to business, when we’ve finished eating, we’ll go down and take a look at the store’s computer. I know Monica had quite a few sales. That might help me remember who else came in.”

  After he’d had his fill of pasta and garlic bread, Harve managed to polish off two generous pieces of apple pie. They relaxed over a cup of coffee before going back down to the bookstore, where Copper turned on the computer.

  “I don’t do this as well as Monica does,” she said by way of apology, “but I’m sure if you’ll give me a minute, I’ll be able to call up today’s sales.”

  Harve was patient, and it wasn’t long before Copper managed to hit the right keys.

  “Here we go,” she said. “Hmmm, Louise Lafferty was here, too, though I don’t think I even noticed her. She bought a magazine. Do you suppose she did it? I notice the time on the sale was just a little before Lucy found old Mrs. Lafferty’s body. And the magazines are down at that end,”

  Harve shook his head. “I dunno, Copper. As far as I know, Louise and Agatha got on real well. Anything’s possible, though. Keep looking.”

  “Well, Eve was here first thing, of course, bringing the pastries. She bought a cookbook. Cookbooks are nowhere near the end of the aisle. Besides, from the time on this sale, she was long gone before Agatha even got here. In fact, I think she left before any other customers got here, even the mayor. A rainy day like today didn’t have people out and about really early.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “Ruby Stone. She bought a book of poetry.”

  “Poetry? I didn’t even know the woman could read.”

  “Now, Harve, don’t be that way. I realize the woman has some problems...”

  “Has some problems? Copper, Ruby is a problem.”

  Ruby Stone was the town lush–doesn’t every small town have one? Ruby was of indeterminate age, actually mid-forties but tried to look younger, had frizzy, bleached blonde hair, and wore more makeup than three Carol Channings. She was a bartender at the Rainy Day Bar & Grill, where she drank more than most of the customers. But Ruby was a good bartender. In her better days, she had attended bartending school and had the certificate to prove it. She had tended bar for several years in high class clubs in Portland, where she worked her way up to the title of mixologist. Now there are those who will tell you that mixologist is just a high-falutin’ term for bartender, but that would only be partially true. It’s like saying that chef is just a high-falutin’ term for cook. Ruby really knew her drinks. And in spite of her looks and reputation for imbibing just a little too much, Ruby was actually well-loved at the Rainy Day. But Copper admitted she was surprised at Ruby’s choice of reading material. Poetry? Who woulda thought?

  Copper continued going through the orders on the computer. “Here’s Ron Parker. I remember seeing him. He likes spy stories. The book he bought came from the best-seller table. I don’t think he even went down the aisles.”

  “Monica mentioned he had been here. But Ron’s a fireman. He saves lives; he doesn’t take them.”

  “But it seems to me he left shortly before Lucy found Agatha’s body,” Copper said.

  “I thought you said he didn’t even go down the aisles.”

  Copper shrugged. “I didn’t see him go down the aisles, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t.”

  “Okay, we’ll consider him. Don’t know why he’d want to kill Agatha, though. Who else you got?”

  Copper continued to scroll though the sales records. “That’s it, Harve. All the others are people you already talked to. The others that bought, that is. I’m sure there must have been quite a few browsers I didn’t notice.”

  Harve wrote down the names of Louise Lafferty, Ruby Stone and Ron Parker. “Well, I’ll think on these. If you remember anyone else who was here, give me a call in the morning, okay?”

  “I don’t know that Ruby belongs on that list, Harve. Why did you include her?”

  Harve shrugged. “We need some suspects.”

  “But Ruby would have had no reason to kill Agatha. She did work at the library one summer right after she got out of high school, but I doubt she’s even seen
Agatha since she moved back to Misty Valley. I don’t think Agatha frequents the Rainy Day.”

  “She does go there sometimes, but that doesn’t mean anything. I’ll take Ruby off the list, then.” Harve scratched out Ruby’s name on his paper.

  “Okay, good-night, Harve.”

  “’Night, Copper. Hope we get this solved soon.”

  “So do I, Harve. I don’t like the idea of a killer walking around free in our community. It means none of us is safe.”

  FIVE

  THE SKIES WERE BLUE SATURDAY MORNING, with only a few wispy clouds, but the air still felt cool and damp and the decaying leaves in front of the Book Nook were still too soggy to be raked into piles for jumping. The lack of rain did bring more customers to the second day of the Grand Opening of Copper Penny’s bookstore, however. In fact, so many showed up, Copper had to call Eve and order more pastries, and Copper herself ran upstairs to her apartment and hastily assembled a few dozen more finger sandwiches. And she’d asked Monica if she would please call Trevor and ask him to run to the supermarket for her and pick up some more shrimp and bacon—she thought they might even have some ready-made. She was really going to be running up and down those stairs a lot today making sure there were enough treats for all her customers. Oh well, the exercise would not hurt her one bit. And lots of customers were good for business.

  Of course, a good many of the customers did not necessarily come to buy, but to gawk. Everyone wanted to know exactly where the body had been found and eagerly examined the carpet for traces of Agatha Lafferty’s blood, of which plenty of evidence remained, in spite of Copper’s laborious scrubbing. She was definitely going to have a new piece of carpet put in there.