The Body on the Roof

by Kevin Creager

  Townsend entered reluctantly. “I was never in here. Well, almost never. After Ralph’s death, she had me in here once to see if there were any clothes that I wanted. We were not the same size, but I think she wanted to offer. I took a couple of ties and tie pins, but I don’t know if I’ve ever even used them.”

  “There are a couple of jewelry boxes.” Reasoner pointed. “Would you know anything about her jewelry, either of you?”

  “Not enough to help you. The only pieces I was familiar with were a black pearl necklace that Uncle Ralph gave her and her diamond engagement ring that she always wore.” Townsend looked at her and Reasoner nodded.

  “She still had it when we found her.” Reasoner opened one of the boxes. “And the necklace is here on top.”

  Johnson added. “I only knew that she wore jewelry, but I never bought her any. She said she had all she wanted, and I never really paid any attention to that sort of thing, even what my own wife wore. Those pieces do look like what Grace wore, but I can’t tell you anything else.”

  Townsend opened the other box without asking. “Some of this looks familiar, but only now that I see it. Again, I think the only value is sentimental. She was not big into expensive jewelry. I got her a bracelet once for her birthday, but I think she only wore it a couple of times and then just to let me know that she would wear it.” He moved a couple of pieces with the tip of a finger. “Here it is. No one took that.”

  They closed the boxes and moved across the hall. This apparently was her hobby room and office. The table with the sewing machine and fabrics took up most of the area with a small desk against the right wall.

  “Aunt Grace did like to sew. Her specialty was those blankets or quilts with personal designs or remnants such as T-shirts on them. She liked to give them as gifts – I have two of them, but I believe she also did some orders for friends. You know, like for a grandchild with all their soccer team shirts on it. Or something with all twelve grandchildren names. That sort of thing. One of mine had all my schools and logos and the other was some personal interests.”

  Johnson said, “And I had one with my different organizations and clubs. It was a Christmas present one year.”

  Reasoner looked down at the papers on the desk. “You ever help her with her bills?”

  Townsend shook his head. “She showed me her system once. A pile with due dates to the left. Stamps, envelopes, and return address labels on the shelf above. Her checkbook in the middle and a manila envelope for major receipts to the right. Not complicated. She had few big bills. The house and the car were paid off.”

  Reasoner picked up the checkbook and leafed through the last several pages. Gas, utilities, groceries, nothing jumped out at her. She handed it to Townsend.

  “Anything strike you as out of line, as unusual?”

  He went more slowly through the last ten pages. “No, I don’t know the usual monthly bills, but these seem to be fairly typical amounts. And I don’t know what she would have been buying in these stores, but they seem to be the stores she would usually have shopped at.”

  Reasoner pulled open the drawers, but it was pencils, pens, paper, extra sets of checks, paper clips, and a stapler. Nothing out of the ordinary.

  She did fish out a small red envelope with a bank name on it. “This her safety deposit key?”

  “Could be. I have an envelope that looks like that holding my key.”

  She held it up. “Are you up to looking in it? Maybe she kept something there that no one knows about.”

  He shrugged. “I wouldn’t know what that could be. But then I guess that’s the point. Are they going to let me see in it?”

  “If I’m with you, there shouldn’t be a problem. By now, everyone knows she’s deceased, but I’ll be your authority.”

  “Okay, how about when we’re done here?’

  “Fine.” Reasoner pocketed the small envelope.

  There was a closet, but it held more fabrics and fashion design plans. Also what appeared to be spare linens. She knew that the crime scene people had been through everything, so there wouldn’t be any surprises, although they had just found the tea boxes of money, but there also wasn’t anything for Townsend to tell her about.

  Townsend just shrugged when looking in the guest bathroom. “Looks the same to me.”

  The last room to the left was the smaller spare bedroom. Reasoner was surprised at just how much smaller it seemed. She glanced toward the hobby room.

  “I would have expected this to be similar in size to the other room.”

  “I, I think it just has more stuff in it, with the bed and the dressers and the bookcase. It just looks smaller. And it is a little bit less wide.”

  “And no back window. Just one to the side of the house. That seems odd. The view would have been out back.”

  “I don’t know why. That’s the way it’s always been. At least since I’ve been here.”

  Johnson shrugged. “She once told me that’s the way the house came. She never used this room much, so she didn’t really care. I think it was Ralph’s private sanctum and he liked it dark and secluded. At least that’s what she said.” He took out his handkerchief and dabbed at his eyes.

  Reasoner walked over to the bookcase and noticed that it was right up against the wall. She grasped a corner and gave it a quick tug. It was heavy and seemed to be fixed to the wall. Maybe that made it a stable place to hold more of Mrs. Mathison’s collections.

  Townsend hurried to her side. “Don’t. You might knock over some of Aunt Grace’s stuff. Some of it appears breakable.”

  She backed up a step. “I won’t. Though it appears to be the same kind of miscellaneous whatnots as the living room and the basement. You don’t think any of this is valuable, do you?”

  “No, no. But we don’t want to break anything anyway.”

  Reasoner cocked her head. Townsend had now inserted himself between her and the bookcase.

  “Do you notice anything different with the objects in this case?” She asked him.

  “Nope, just looks the same to me.”

  “Why don’t you look at it first?” He had been looking at her when he first answered.

  This time he did turn and give it a good look. “I didn’t come in here very often, either. But the shelves look pretty full, and I don’t see any gaps like in the living room cabinet. No, I don’t think there’s anything missing.” He took her gently by the arm. “Why don’t we go back to the living room? Maybe there’s something that I missed the first time.”

  As they went back into the hall, Reasoner looked back at the room. She took a few steps to the hobby room, looked in, then stepped back and looked at the spare bedroom again.

  “That definitely looks much smaller. I think I want to come back and measure it another time.”

  “What for? The size of the rooms can’t have anything to do with Aunt Grace’s death, for Pete’s sake.”

  “Just curious. It’s something different, that doesn’t fit. It’s going to pester me until I figure it out, that’s all.”

  They moved back to the living room, but both Townsend and Johnson stayed away from the corner with the curio cabinet and the fireplace mantel.

  “Well, see anything new?” Reasoner asked.

  “No, I just thought, after seeing the other rooms, that something might hit me, but I’m not seeing anything different than before. Just the same gaps on the two shelves that your people already caught.”

  He tried to smile, but not very successfully. “Why don’t we go take a look at her safety deposit box?”

  As they came back out the front door, Wannamaker folded down his paper, sticking the pencil for
the crossword puzzle behind his right ear. “Everything okay? Learn anything new?”

  “Not particularly.” Reasoner sighed. “A little more personal info about Mrs. Mathison, but nothing that seems to point to murder.” Townsend grimaced at the word. “But, Mike, maybe murder isn’t the right word. I’m thinking more and more that this is an accidental death that was intended to look like even more of an accident, that placing the body on the roof was to cover up that someone else had even been here. I’m beginning to wonder if the missing pieces from her curio cabinet are really the key.”

  She intended her words toward Wannamaker as thinking out loud between colleagues, but he inclined his head in Townsend’s direction, and she belatedly caught his meaning.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Townsend, this is just wild speculation on my part. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  He waved his hand. “That’s okay. I understand that’s what you need to do at first. But do you really think it could have been just an accident?”

  She shook her head. “Please don’t go by anything I just said. At this point, we’re just considering all possibilities.”

  Now that Townsend had seen inside the house, he seemed to be anxious to go. She stuck out her hand to shake his hand good-bye, even if just temporarily.

  “I appreciate you going through the house with me and giving me some insight. Let me know if there’s anything else you can think of, either of you.”

  “Certainly, Stephanie. Thank you for letting me join you. I, I did not enjoy seeing the area where...Aunt Grace died, but I think I needed to do that. I’ll see you at the Summerfield Bank in a few minutes?”

  She nodded, and both men walked back to Harry’s car sitting at the curb and drove away.

  “You were right, Mike. I was thinking out loud, but he didn’t need to hear that. Not till we know for sure what happened.”

  “Well, you could be right about it being an accident. It hasn’t made sense to be a murder. Yet – and yet what could have caused an accidental death in that situation either? Nothing really makes sense.”

  He went back to his crossword. “You don’t happen to know a six-letter word for ‘enigma’, with a ‘z’ in the middle, do you?”

  Reasoner responded, “It will come to you, Mike. I’m sure it will come to you.” She walked over to her car, leaving him to his puzzles.

  CHAPTER 12

  George Peabody sat at his desk staring at the list of four names given to him by Marie Hazlett. These were the other members of Mrs. Mathison’s book club, the Summerfield Literary Society, presumptuously titled by the small group of former teachers.

  Knowing he might as well get on with it, he opened his brown bag lunch, took a bite out of his peanut butter and pepper jelly sandwich, and dialed the first number.

  Larabeth Nelson answered just as he took the second bite and he had to speak through a full mouth.

  “Hewwo, dish ish Shash Pibboddy.” He swallowed quickly. “This is George Peabody from the Summerfield Police. Excuse me, I had to finish chewing my sandwich. I had just taken a bite.”

  “Oh, hello, George. It sounded like one of those pervert calls, and I was trying to make up my mind whether I wanted to listen to more or not. At my age, there aren’t too many opportunities.”

  Peabody got to the point. “Larabeth, I’m calling in regards to Grace Mathison’s death.”

  “Oh, yes.” She took a deep breath. “I thought someone might at some time. It has been very upsetting.”

  “Would you mind answering a few questions?”

  “Certainly, but I don’t know what I can tell you. None of us were there that evening. We have no idea what happened. We were just talking about that.”

  “You were just talking about that? Are you together now?”

  “Yes, we’re all here, even Susan. Did you want to come over and talk with all of us? Or,” and she lowered her voice, “do you want to speak with us one at a time? I don’t know how these...interrogations go. Is that the right word?”

  “It’s not an interrogation, Larabeth. I just want to find out some things about Grace. No one thinks any of you had anything to do with this. Talking with all of you at once would be good. Maybe somebody remembers something and that memory jars someone else’s memory.”

  “Come on over. Nellie Chamberlain made a cheesecake, you know, the one that always wins at the county fair, and we’ll be here for a while.”

  Peabody quickly finished his sandwich and banana, took a look at the two store-bought cookies he had left, and decided homemade cheesecake sounded much better as dessert. He put the cookies in his top drawer for later – for emergencies he told himself.

  — — —

  Larabeth Nelson opened the door immediately, as if she had been standing behind it. What is this with these teachers and anticipating, he thought. She led him into her dining room, where the others were sitting around finishing up their plates of prize-winning cheesecake. Momentarily, he worried until he saw at the far end of the table that half of it was still sitting in the pan.

  Larabeth pulled up a chair for him, and went to fetch another plate and fork. Peabody looked around the table at Nellie Chamberlain of cheesecake fame, Mindy Rhodes, and Susan Peabody, his own wife, who rarely, if ever, made cheesecake. He had been surprised to see her name on the list at first as, if he was being honest with himself, he had forgotten the actual name of the book club that she had joined a few years ago. It was just one of those things that she did when he wasn’t around.

  Susan leaned over to kiss him on the cheek. “George, how has your morning been?”

  “What you’d expect. We have little to go on yet, but don’t tell anybody. I’m trying to get some background info here. Find out if there’s anything we don’t know, so I’m talking to people who knew her. And you’re one of them,” he added gently to his wife.

  He turned to encompass all of them. “Thank you for inviting me over, Larabeth, and for the cheesecake. You especially, Nellie. I’m sure you’re all aware of what has happened. It seems everyone in town is. At least to some extent or another.”

  “That’s why Larabeth asked us over, George,” Susan interrupted. “We all wanted to pool what we knew and, you know, talk about it.”

  Peabody nodded in response to all of their heads nodding. “We know she had a cat,” he started.

  “Reginald.” Mindy said. “I have him right now.”

  “Reginald. And that Reginald frequently got stuck out on the roof.”

  “All the time,” Nellie added.

  “Yes, frequently, as I said. Usually, Grace would have called somebody to help, but we haven’t heard that she did that two nights ago.” No one said anything. “But we do have reason to believe that someone was over that night, whether to rescue the cat or not. Any ideas who that might have been, ladies? Any ideas at all?”

  Larabeth shook her head. “None of us,” then looked at the others for confirmation.

  “It wasn’t our book club night, or going to a movie, or out to dinner night.” Nellie confirmed. “Ladies of the Manor was on PBS that night, and we all have to watch it.”

  Susan added, “We were, um, doing things together, George, remember?”

  “Yes, I, um, remember.”

  “Do we need an alibi, George?” Mindy sounded concerned. “I live alone, and I wasn’t doing things with anyone.”

  “No, no. You don’t need alibis. I know you didn’t have book club, but we were hoping someone might have known if Grace was going to have some other guest.”

  “Grace did sometimes see Mel Johnson, you know,” Susan said.

  “But I don’t think they were doing an
ything together that night,” Larabeth added. “I remember her saying she was expecting to have a quiet week. Her nephew, Harry, was going to be out of town, and she and Mel were going to wait for the Southern Meatloaf Special Night on Fridays at Mac’s. It was his favorite. It got him in the mood, if you know what I mean.”

  “I don’t think I need to know what you mean.” George looked uncomfortable, but Susan smiled. “We have talked with Mel Johnson. According to him, they didn’t see each other that night. Is there anyone else that she might have had over? Someone that might have just dropped in?”

  Nellie spoke up, “She sometimes did talk with Ms. Bucholtz across the street, but I think she always went over there.”

  “And sometimes some of her neighbors out in the yard,” Mindy added. “But only in good weather. And that wasn’t that night. Nosiree.”

  Susan said, “And some people from church. Occasionally. But, as Mindy said, not in that type of weather. Nobody’s going to just drop in when it’s storming like that. And not that late.”

  “So it was probably somebody she called over?” Peabody asked. “Or somebody totally unexpected? Anybody know anyone with a gray four-door sedan?”

  Both Nellie and Mindy raised their hands and said, “I have one” practically in unison. Then pointed at each other. “And so does she.”

  Peabody sighed. “Yeah, there appears to be quite a few of them.”

  He took a couple of bites of cheesecake while they watched him. Nobody said anything until he was done.

  “Would you like another piece, George?” Nellie asked. “It won the prize at the county fair, you know?”

  “I know, and deservedly so. Ladies, I do have another question,” as he held out his plate for the refill. “We have found quite a collection of knick-knacks in her house. With no real pattern to them. Almost as if they had belonged to different households. Many of them don’t seem to have any personal connection to her. Any idea what was going on with that?”