The Deadly Art of Love and Murder

by Linda Crowder

  Something stirred in the back of my mind at the hint of wistfulness in Frank’s tone when he mentioned Olivia but I pushed it away. “Alex wouldn’t have known what kind of person Olivia was and the idea of accusing Mrs. Nash of murder in order to get the house back is pretty crazy.“

  “Crazy sounds like the sister. Maybe she put him up to it.”

  “She’s crazy, but I don’t think she’s stupid and that was flat out stupid on Alex’s part even just being here and drawing attention to himself.” I sat on the arm of the couch. “Something just doesn’t sit right.”

  FRANK WALKED ME BACK to Mel’s and I finally managed to fall asleep but I couldn’t have been in bed longer than a couple of hours before Mom shook me awake again. “Caribou, wake up.” I moaned, not wanting to get out of my bed. “There’s something going on at City Hall.”

  That woke me up. “What is it? Is Dan okay?”

  “I have no idea. I only know the whole town’s up in arms again.” She let go of me and went to the door. “Get dressed. Bent and your father are already gone.”

  With incentive like that, I out of bed and was in front of City Hall in ten minutes. I don’t usually consider it an advantage to be unusually tall. I’d spent much of my life hunched over, trying not to tower over everyone around me, but today being tall was a gift because I was five people back in the crowd. My mother was hopping from one foot to the other, but all she could see were the backs of people’s shoulders. “What’s happening, Caribou?”

  “I don’t know, Mom. The guards are keeping people outside.”

  “Nonsense! This is the people’s house.” She elbowed through the crowd like an offensive lineman leading his running back into the end zone. Remembering my high school quarterback days, I wasted no time following her.

  “Mrs. K, I can’t let you in.”

  “Donald Lighthorse, stand aside or I’ll take you over my knee like I did when I used to babysit you.” Poor Donny bore the brunt of laughs from the crowd like a trooper, but when my mother puts her mind to something, it’s best not to be in her way. She turned and led the crowd in a chant. “This is the people’s house! This is the people’s house!” There was a sudden surge from behind me and I found myself propelled into the lobby, throwing my arms out in an unsuccessful attempt to stay upright.

  Thankfully, Donny doesn’t hold a grudge. He pulled me to my feet before the wave could flatten me and I found myself face to face with a very angry Anne Buchanan. “You again!” she screamed. Her face looked like a radish from Mom’s garden and there was a dribble of spit cresting the corner of her lip. Her eyes had narrowed when she saw me and she jabbed at me with a bony finger as she spoke.

  I tried to step back, but I was hemmed in by the throng behind me. Anne grabbed my arm, pulling me forward and twisting it behind my back. She spun me around, placing my body between hers and an equally angry Dan. The scene had a disturbingly theatrical quality, though there was nothing imaginary about the pain in my arm.

  Her voice was shrill. “Let him go, Dan Simmons, or I’m gonna break your little girlfriend’s arm.”

  The woman was more than twice my age but she was tall, had twenty pounds more muscle and the hands that gripped me were strengthened by desperation. I wasn’t sure whether to be scared or embarrassed by the fact that I wasn’t able to shake her off. I have got to start working out.

  Alex shouted at her from his cell, “You’re not helping me! Don’t be such a drama queen, Anne!”

  She screamed at him. “Shut up! If you were able stay sober longer than ten minutes you wouldn’t be in that cell.” She kept yanking my arm until I thought she was going to pull it out of the socket. I hoped the little whimpering cries I was hearing were coming from somebody else. It was bad enough to get my arm ripped off by an old woman, I had to go and do it in front of the whole town. I was never going to live this down.

  “Elizabeth Anne Buchanan, take your hands off my daughter this instant!”

  Mom’s voice cut through the insanity, as harsh and effective as a slap in the face. For a moment Anne wavered, but she must have caught the violent look in Mom’s eyes because she shoved me at Dan, sending both of us to the floor.

  She drew herself up to her full height, towering over my mother. “My name,” she said through clenched teeth, “is Anne.”

  “For crying out loud,” I hissed into Dan’s ear, “that’s what she’s gonna get upset about?”

  “Call yourself the Queen of England, for all I care,” my mother responded. “If you touch my child again, I will kill you with my bare hands.”

  A cheer went up from the crowd and Anne literally shook with her anger. Her hands clenched into fists, but she couldn’t intimidate my mother. My mom may drive me crazy sometimes, but nobody threatens one of her kids. She’s like a she-bear protecting her cub when it comes to Mel and me.

  Anne took a step away from Mom, then dropped her voice and raised her chin. “I am too much of a lady to say what I think of you, Marcia King.”

  “Well, I’m too much of a lady not to say exactly what I think of you,” retorted my mother.

  “You tell her, Mrs. K,” shouted Donny Lighthorse, drawing a glare from Anne.

  “You just you watch yourself,” she said, trying to twist her lip into a snarl, but it was hard to take her seriously now that my arm was speaking to me again.

  “Is that a threat?” My mother took a step toward the older woman and a chill ran through me at the shift in her tone. I nudged Dan, who had been leaning back on his hands, enjoying the show.

  He sighed and scrambled to his feet, pulling me up after him. “I’ll take it from here, Marcie.” My mother took the tiniest possible step back and Dan turned to Anne. “Back off.” She didn’t budge. “Do you want me to arrest you for assault?”

  “Do it, Dan!” shouted a man from the doorway.

  “You’re not helping, Earl,” Dan said without taking his eyes off her. “What’s it gonna be, Mrs. Buchanan?”

  She stammered, looking around for some show of support. There wasn’t a friendly face in the room, but she stuck out her chin and stood her ground. “You can’t keep me from seeing my brother.”

  “I don’t want to see her.”

  She wheeled on her brother, striding to the door of his cell. “Shut up, Alex. I’m trying to help.”

  He retreated as best he could. “I don’t need your help.”

  “You tell, her, Alex.”

  “Earl!” yelled Dan, but the fisherman, getting back slaps from his buddies, only grinned at him. Dan turned his attention back to Anne, who was gripping the bars as though she thought she could bend them open. “You want to help him, get out of here and go get him a good lawyer. You can see him again when he gets to Lemon Creek.”

  Anne shook the bars, rattling the door but accomplishing little else. Her shoulders sagged for a moment, then she straightened, releasing her grip. Alex remained pressed against the far wall, out of range should she suddenly decide to reach her arm through. Her voice was controlled, cold. “You’re on your own. Do you hear me? I wash my hands of you. I should have listened to Aggie and cut you off years ago. You don’t want my help? Fine. You can rot in prison in this God-forsaken state for the rest of your life for all I care. I’m done.”

  “Good,” said Alex. His voice was defiant, but I noticed he didn’t get any closer to her. “With your crappy lawyer, I’d probably get the chair.”

  Anne’s back stiffened. Without saying another word, she marched out of the building. I would have felt sympathy for her if my shoulder wasn’t constantly reminding me why I shouldn’t. She wasn’t a woman you’d want to cross, but neither was my mother. I wondered if I’d ever been as ungrateful for my mother’s help as Alex was for Anne’s. I threw my arms around my mother, ignoring the pain, thankful to have her on my side.

  “Okay, folks,” said Dan, breaking the silence that had accompanied Anne’s retreat. “Show’s over. Everybody can clear out now.” He and his crew of volunteer guards star
ted herding the crowd out onto the road.

  I knew they’d head to Mel’s and she was going to need help with them. I gave her another squeeze. “You’d better head back to the restaurant.”

  There was a glistening of tears in her eyes, emotion I’d rarely seen, but she just patted my cheek. “Don’t be too long.” She slipped away with the last of the townsfolk and suddenly, it was just Alex and me in a quiet lobby.

  “Is she gone?” His voice sounded small inside the cell.

  “Everybody’s gone.”

  “She’s a witch.”

  I crossed to the cell door and looked in at him. What a pitiful lump of a man to have killed such a sweet old woman. “She’s not my favorite person either, but she was trying to help.”

  “You see where her help has gotten me.”

  “You’re blaming your sister for what you did?”

  “I didn’t do anything.” His voice carried a whiff of temper tantrum. “If she hadn’t introduced me to that developer, I never would have been there when the old bat shot herself.”

  I bit back a retort and tried to stay focused. “Anne introduced you to Dickerson?”

  “She met him at some hoity-toity function in Seattle. She likes to get all dressed up and pretend to be somebody.” He spit on the floor of the cell. “He’d been looking for property in Alaska, something run-down that he could flip for a profit.”

  “But she knew she didn’t own the house.”

  He shrugged. “Aggie’d never taken an interest in the house so why should she profit from it? My job was show him the house and get him to make an offer. Anne said she’d take care of the rest.”

  “By forging Agatha’s name? That’s a felony.”

  “Only if Aggie reported it. She wouldn’t have done that even if she’d found out about it. I told you, she didn’t care and she sure doesn’t need the money.” He laid back on the narrow cot and stared up at the ceiling, arms crossed behind his head.

  “So you brought Dickerson up to see the house.”

  “He loved it. Loved the town, the cruise ship trade. Loved the mountains and the setting right on the bay like that. Heck, he’d have made a killing on that house. I told Anne we should double the price.”

  “Anne was there?”

  He went on as though he hadn’t heard me. “And then that Nash bat goes and says she owns it. Told us she’d owned it for years.”

  “But you didn’t believe her.”

  “I thought she was blowing smoke to keep us from selling the house, though why she wanted to live there is beyond me. That place is a dump. You know, you’ve really done a crappy job of taking care of the place.”

  It was my turn to grip the bars and rattle the door, but I didn’t tell him what I thought of his opinion. I wanted to hear him admit to killing Mrs. Nash. “What did you do when she insisted she owned the house?”

  He sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the cot. “What could I do? Anne would’ve killed me if I let this sale fall through. I told Dickerson to take a walk. I tried to talk to her, but she just kept laughing at me and telling me what a disappointment I would have been to my father.”

  “That must have made you angry.”

  “Angry doesn’t mean I killed her. Why should I? I thought she was lying. I told her she wouldn’t pay us rent all those years if she owned the house.”

  “I’ve been wondering about that myself.”

  “She said she did it to protect our father’s reputation, that he hadn’t wanted anybody to know he’d disowned his kids.” He ran his hand over the stubble on his face. “Told me to look up the deed for myself if I didn’t believe her then she told me to get out.”

  Red spots appeared on his cheeks and I wondered if their conversation had made him angry enough to kill. “I would have been furious.”

  “I told you. She threw me out. I went looking for Anne.”

  Again, his insistence that Anne had been in Coho Bay that day. “Did she come down on the boat with you?”

  He shook his head. “She didn’t want to overwhelm Dickerson. She came on the ferry.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she didn’t trust me not to screw it up.”

  “What did she say when you found her?”

  “I didn’t find her.” He sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. “She said she’d be waiting on the trail if I needed her. I figured she must’ve seen Dickerson leave and took off after him.”

  “I’m confused. If you left, and Mrs. Nash was alive enough to ask you to leave––”

  “She was, I swear it.”

  “Then why did you go back?”

  “Because I left my coat there.”

  “You what?” I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting him to say, but I knew that wasn’t it. Dan hadn’t mentioned anything about finding a man’s coat in the house.

  “I left my damned coat in the damned living room and I went back to get it.” Alex punctuated each profanity by slapping his hand against the side of his head. “When I got there, there was blood all over it. I grabbed it and the gun fell. I picked it up!” Much as I hated to admit it, his voice had a ring of truth. Either that or he was a very good liar. “I’m an idiot. Anne’s told me a million times, but my God ... the old dame was sittin’ there, head blown half off. I just dropped everything and ran.” He went back to slapping his head.

  I shuddered, remembering how I’d felt walking into that room and her death had happened weeks before I got there. I didn’t want to think about what it would have been like on the day she died. “Why did you show up at her funeral? Why come back at all since nobody knew you’d been here?”

  “I left my coat there. I couldn’t remember if there was anything in the pockets that would link it to me. Anne told me to stay on the boat and she’d go talk to the cops to find out what they knew.”

  Why would he lie about something so easily disproven? It was true Anne had been there that day because my parents saw her, but Dan would have mentioned if she’d gone to City Hall. “Why draw attention to yourself by making a scene at the funeral?”

  “You ever spend three hours on a boat with Anne telling you what a jerk you are? I was drunk outta my head. I don’t even remember being there.” He got up, grabbing one of the bars to stay on his feet and I took a step back. “Look, what’s it matter? I’m dead. I’ve never had nothing but bad luck my whole life. We shoulda bull-dozed that house years ago.”

  “Cry me a river, Tilamu.” Dan came up behind me and slid his arm around my waist. “Don’t listen to his sob stories, Cara.”

  “I’m telling you, Simmons, that woman was already dead.”

  “Tell it to the judge.” Dan pulled me away from the cell door. “You’d better get over to Mel’s. The whole town’s turned out for this.”

  “What about him?” I asked, nodding toward Alex.

  “He ain’t hungry.”

  “No, I meant what he said about Anne.”

  “I didn’t do it.”

  “Zip it, Tilamu.” Dan shook his head. “Perps tell all kinds of stories, Cara. There’s no evidence Mrs. Buchanan was anywhere near Coho Bay when Mrs. Nash was killed and there was no coat in the house.”

  “Yes, but––”

  I rubbed my shoulder. I wasn’t satisfied, but Dan knew more about these things than I did, even if he’d only been a beat cop in Fairbanks. “Where’s Anne now?”

  “I don’t know and I don’t care as long as she isn’t here.” He gave me a quick kiss then pushed me toward the door. “Save me some coffee.”

  The sun had risen while I’d been inside and was casting a thin golden light on the town giving the buildings an eerie quality. Though I’d help lay every log and drive every nail in it, my gallery looked foreign. I leaned on a post and tried to persuade myself to go help feed the hoards. I took a few steps, but it wasn’t until my feet hit the mud and gravel path leading to the residential area that I realized I wasn’t headed to the restaurant.

  I found my
self on the doorstep of the Tilamu house, reaching into the mailbox. Dan had been in and out of the house so many times, it had been simpler to keep the key on site than for him to come and find me every time he needed access. I supposed I should take it back now. I unlocked the door and dropped the key in my pocket as I walked in. It felt like an eternity since I’d found Mrs. Nash’s body.

  I shrugged off my coat and laid it on the counter. I avoided looking at the living room. I hoped Olivia would tear the house down, if only because I didn’t want to clean that room. I walked through the two larger bedrooms, then into the small bedroom that would have belonged to Alex, not sure what I was looking for. His bitterness about his family had shaken me. I’d liked Doc and it seemed like a betrayal to think of him as anything other than a loving father.

  The closet door was standing open and I went to close it, not that it mattered but for some reason it annoyed me. Glancing up, I noticed an attic access panel, shoved off to one side, leaving an opening a few inches wide. The crime lab must have been very thorough to have searched the attic and I stood on my toes, trying to move it back into place but my fingers only skimmed the surface. I’d need something to climb on, but the room held only a bed and dresser. Cursing the compulsion that was driving me to straighten up a house that would likely be torn down, I went to get a chair from the dining area. A moment later, I felt something crash into the back of my head. I staggered, throwing out my arms to catch myself but someone shoved me hard in the back and I fell forward. My head, already stinging from the first blow, thudded against the wall.

  I saw stars. Collapsing onto the floor, my back to the wall, I tried to focus my eyes on my attacker. Dimly, I registered danger, but my mind was too foggy to force my body into motion. “Anne? What are you doing here?”

  “What are you doing in my house?”

  “It’s not your house.” I gingerly fingered my head, relieved I didn’t find any blood since my head was still swimming. “What were you thinking hitting me like that? You could have killed me.”

  “What are you do snooping around my house?” There was a manic edge to her voice that was setting off alarm bells loud enough it’s a wonder she didn’t hear them.