The Devil's Puzzle

by Clare O'Donohue

  “I’m Winston Roemer’s grandniece.”

  “I can see a slight resemblance. More to Grace than to her son. Which is a good thing. Winston was an attractive man, in a stern sort of way, but you’d hardly want to take after a man so unhappy with the world.”

  “Was he unhappy?” Molly asked. “Why?”

  “I don’t know, dear. He didn’t confide in me,” Mary said, then turned back to me.

  “How is Jesse, Nell? Is he as scared about marriage as it appears? Or is that just you?”

  “We’re not talking about getting married.”

  “Other people are talking about your marriage, pushing you toward it. I would suggest, if you’re looking for advice, that you put the idea on the back burner for now. You need to be the individual you are first.”

  “Thanks for the advice. What’s your source?”

  “It’s gossip, not witchcraft, despite what you may have heard.”

  “Fair enough,” I said. “What gossip do you know about Winston Roemer? Aside from the fact that he was unhappy.”

  “None, but I do have firsthand information,” she said. She rested her hand on Molly’s. “I don’t mean to bring up sad memories of your uncle. You should know that he was a lovely dancer and he had a wonderful laugh. Deep, throaty. He also spoke several languages: Spanish, French, and Latin, if I remember correctly. He was the one who got me interested in world travel. He told me once I had the potential to be anything I wanted to be and I shouldn’t let small-town gossips get in my way. I had quite the crush on him.”

  “Did that make Ed jealous?” I asked.

  She laughed. “Wouldn’t that have been something? No, dear. Ed and I became involved with each other many years later, after my husband’s death, and only for a short time. I knew Winston when I was a girl of only nineteen.”

  “Did you have an affair with him?” Natalie leaned forward as far as her belly would allow.

  “No. Sadly, no. Winston was not available.”

  “Meaning,” I said, “he was already involved with someone.”

  “Meaning exactly that.”

  Natalie and I glanced toward each other. “Who?”

  Mary smiled. “One of Archers Rest’s finest citizens. Can I get any of you more water?” she asked as she got up.

  “Yes, please,” I said. I was afraid if I said no, it would be my cue to leave, and there was no way I was leaving yet.

  “Who do you think she means?” Molly asked once Mary had left the room.

  “I don’t even know if she was being sarcastic,” I answered. “But if she meant it, then Glad pops to mind.”

  “But she wasn’t prominent then. She was a teenager.”

  “Assuming she meant 1975, and assuming she wasn’t just amusing herself at our expense.”

  “I’m not sure we’re going to get a straight answer out of her,” Molly said.

  “Well, we’re going to try.” I got up and went looking for Mary.

  I found her in the kitchen. As I walked in, she was hanging up the phone. She blushed when she saw me.

  “Do you know who might have killed Winston?” I asked. No reason not to get right to the point.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Lots of people in town didn’t like him.”

  “Lots of people in town don’t like me. People don’t like different. It’s scary when someone insists on being who they are regardless of what people think.” She smiled a little. “I imagine you struggle with that.”

  I took a step back. “Why would I . . .”

  “The town’s own Sherlock Holmes—isn’t that your reputation?”

  “I don’t know if anyone calls me that.”

  “They do. But you have an instinct about people, if what I hear is right. You help others. You shouldn’t run away from that or be embarrassed about it.”

  Now I was blushing. “I’m concerned about my grandmother,” I said.

  “Don’t be. That will work out the way it was meant to. Focus yourself elsewhere.”

  “The quilt show or the murder?”

  “I know my sister. If you don’t pull off the quilt show to her satisfaction, there will be a murder.”

  “Was she the one? The person Winston was involved with?”

  “No, but he would have been her type. She was dating a local boy. Someone her own age. He was cute. He played high school football and ran track. Drove my father crazy because he was, how should I say it, not a member of the country club.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “He became the mayor.”

  CHAPTER 32

  “I don’t think that means anything,” Jesse said as we ate lunch two hours later. “They dated in high school, more than thirty years ago.”

  “It’s just interesting. They don’t seem to like each other now.”

  “What’s hard to imagine is that they liked each other then. Glad dating a local gardener working his way through college? Hardly seems like the type of guy to get her attention.”

  “You mean she would go for sophisticated, worldly men,” I said.

  “No, I mean she would go for rich men.”

  “Like Winston?”

  He tilted his head and stared at me. “He was more than twice her age.”

  “So what?”

  He shrugged. “I guess it’s a possibility, but I doubt Glad will tell us if it’s true.”

  “Speaking of Glad, did you ask her about last night?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Why not? Did you look at what she did to Archer’s grave?”

  “What someone did,” he said. “It was red paint, nearly a whole gallon of it. You were right about that. It must have been the person you saw running into the cemetery, which may or may not have been Glad.”

  “Whoever it was, I didn’t see a paint can in her hand.”

  “I checked with the hardware store and the art store. No one sold that color paint recently. So either someone already had it, or went out of town to get it.”

  “She didn’t want it traced back to her.”

  “I have a hard time believing it was Glad,” he said. “No matter who you saw drive off.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “She was the one who raised the money for a new headstone. She personally suggested the epitaph. Besides, she’s practically a John Archer groupie. Why would she want to vandalize his grave? Much more likely it was her sister. She is strange, isn’t she?”

  I thought about it for a minute. “No, she’s not,” I said. “I actually liked her. She’s very . . . she’s comfortable with herself.”

  “She’s odd.”

  “What’s wrong with being odd? I’m a little odd.”

  He smiled. “You’re good odd.”

  “What, exactly, makes Mary the suspect in everything that goes on in town?”

  Jesse looked around as if he were embarrassed to be overheard. “When I was about ten, she was arrested for threatening to blow up city hall, while the entire city council was inside.”

  “I heard something about that. Do you know why she made the threat?”

  “What do you mean, ‘why?’ Is there a good reason for trying to do something like that?”

  “No,” I conceded. “It just doesn’t seem like something she’d do.”

  “Old friends now, are you?”

  “No. But how could she blow up city hall if she doesn’t leave her house?”

  “She did then. The hermit thing started after that. I’m not sure when. For years she would wander through town, mostly at night. I know some of the older women sought her out for advice and stuff,” he said. “The rumor is she would cast spells for them and read their future. But not like one of those storefront psychics. What she predicted was real.”

  “She pretty much told me she’s just sharing gossip she’s heard.”

  He shook his head, unconvinced. “I don’t know, Nell. She knows things.”

  “She said you’re afraid of getting married.”
/>   “She did?”

  “And she thought that you and I should put the idea on the back burner for a while.”

  He took a breath before speaking. “At this point, any remark I make will somehow get me in trouble.”

  “Look at that.” I laughed. “You know things, too. Maybe you’re a witch.”

  “Me, Mary Shipman, John Archer. The whole town is full of them.”

  Glad might not have been on Jesse’s suspect list, but she was on mine. And if anyone in town was a strange, broom-and-pointy-hat witch, my vote was for her. Something had to explain why the whole town, including Jesse, would be afraid of crossing her, and a spell was as good an explanation as any. I headed down Main Street, figuring I’d grab her at one of her usual hangouts, but Glad, as it turned out, was not an easy person to track down. I called her house, but there was no answer. I called her cell phone, and it went straight to voice mail.

  After stopping in at the library, the local hair salon, and Chic, the only shop in town that sold designer goods, I gave up and started for home. But I didn’t get any farther than the park.

  “I didn’t expect to see you here,” I said to Oliver, who had a canvas set up on an easel, with paints around him and a very familiar furcovered face looking to somehow make it into the painting.

  “Hey ya, Barney,” I said as I patted the dog. Barney jumped up and licked my face, as though he hadn’t seen me for years. “What are you doing, Oliver?”

  “Painting the gazebo with the river in the background. Maggie is auctioning it off at the church fair.”

  I glanced at the canvas, which so far had a primer coat of white and some soft blues mixed into the background, with a light pencil sketch of the gazebo over the paint. “How’s it going?”

  “Look, Nell, don’t think you can get any information from me, okay? I’ve made a promise and I’m keeping it,” Oliver snapped.

  “Promise about what?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m talking about. You go talk to your grandmother.”

  “I would, but I don’t think she came home last night.” I grinned.

  “Should I stop by the shop with a bottle of champagne?”

  “No. Listen, just forget the whole engagement. Eleanor and I are fine as we are. That’s the end of it.”

  “Did you ask her? Did she say no?”

  “I didn’t ask her. I changed my mind, and that’s the end of it.” Oliver’s voice was shaking.

  I reached out and took his arm. “It’s fine,” I started to say, “it’s—”

  “Hey there, folks.” The mayor was walking toward us, with Molly right beside him. Barney walked forward to greet them, but I stayed where I was.

  “Hi,” I called out. “Oliver’s doing the painting for the auction.”

  Oliver’s shoulders stooped and he picked up a brush, halfheartedly painting a streak of blue on the canvas.

  “You two have gotten chummy,” I said to Molly as she and the mayor reached us.

  “The mayor’s been telling me all about himself. Did you know he was the gardener over at my house—Grace’s house—when Winston was alive?”

  “I did,” I said, letting it slide that she called Eleanor’s house “my house.”

  The mayor seemed enchanted with her. “I think you’ve got competition here, Nell. This one has been asking a lot of questions about the old days, about her uncle.”

  “What have you told her?”

  “Well, everything.” He laughed. “I was just so pleased to find out that we had a Roemer in town. A member of one of our most prominent families back for the anniversary! It’s kismet.”

  “So you told her . . .” I prompted.

  “I told her how Winston knew the Latin names of all the flowers I planted. I also mentioned, though I said it meant nothing, that I once overheard Winston and his mother have harsh words about Eleanor.”

  I looked at Molly, who stood expressionless but still seemed rather pleased with herself. “What do you mean, ‘harsh words’?” I asked Larry.

  “I don’t remember what they said. It was some years ago. But I do remember the tone. He was very angry, and he said something about how Eleanor was the cause of it.”

  I glanced toward Oliver, who was uncharacteristically quiet. Oliver had always jumped to Eleanor’s defense whether she needed it or not. For him to be silent now made me even more curious about what had happened between my grandmother and him.

  “Nell, I want a word with you.” Larry grabbed my arm and walked me a few yards from the others. “I have something very important, and very delicate, to discuss with you.” He whispered—though the mayor’s whisper was still loud enough for anyone to hear. “I need you to talk with Eleanor for me.”

  “What about?”

  “I was thinking that we could have tours of her house during the anniversary weekend.”

  “It’s an old house, Mayor, but it’s not really historical. It’s been remodeled and the furnishings—”

  “It’s not the house I was thinking of.”

  “The hole in the backyard.”

  He nodded. “Would generate a lot of interest.”

  “There’s no way Eleanor will allow you to do that.”

  “But if you ask her.”

  I laughed. “Not a chance.”

  “Okay. Maybe you’re right about that. It would be a little intrusive to have people walking around her backyard,” he conceded, “so maybe we just have a few people go up there now and take some pictures.”

  “The police already took pictures.”

  “Nell,” he said, his frustration with me boiling up. “We could get a lot of press about a possible Revolutionary War soldier found in a leading citizen’s garden.”

  “Mayor, you know that isn’t true . . .”

  “Look, Nell, this town needs something more than a beautiful spot on the Hudson if we’re going to get tourists up here. I’d like to see that happen, as the mayor and as a business owner. I’ll bet if you ask any shop owner in town, your grandmother included, if they’d like to see more people coming here to spend their money, the answer would be yes.”

  “I know that. But making up some story about a soldier and getting my grandmother to play along isn’t the way to bring tourism dollars to Archers Rest.”

  “Don’t be so sure about that. I’ve already gotten some interest from several newspapers. Regional newspapers. They want to come up and take some photos of the place. All I need is for you to get her to say yes.”

  “I can ask, but I don’t think—”

  “That’s fine. Nell, thank you. I’ll call the newspapers and tell them you will expect them in week or so.”

  “Mayor, you probably should talk to Jesse before you bring a bunch of reporters up here.”

  “I don’t need the permission of my chief of police.”

  “I’m not saying that. It’s just that he’s getting a DNA sample from Winston’s sister.”

  “I know a way to talk to these reporters that hints at something without saying anything. And unless Jesse has a one-hundred-percentpositive identification of the skeleton . . .”

  “Not yet, but . . .”

  “Then all I need is Eleanor’s permission. And I’d rather you got it for me. Talking to Molly has brought up a lot of old memories of my time at the Roemer house. I haven’t shared them all with Molly. Not yet. But I think if Eleanor and I spoke now, it might naturally come up.” As he spoke he looked back toward Molly. “And I think we’d all rather forget any unpleasantness from the past, don’t you?”

  CHAPTER 33

  I walked from the park in a daze. The mayor had threatened me. At least it felt like he had. And Oliver was backing away from a future with Eleanor. Whenever I got involved in an investigation I always searched for the truth. Now what I wanted more than anything was a time machine to go back to the day when Oliver and I came up with the stupid idea of digging up Eleanor’s garden.

  I went toward Someday Quilts. At the last minute I decided I w
asn’t ready to face my grandmother, so I ducked into Jitters in the hopes of talking things over with Carrie. Instead I walked straight into the one person I’d been looking for all afternoon.

  “Nell, dear. You do spend a lot of time in this place.”

  Glad’s voice dripped with a combination of concern, sarcasm, and condescension. If I spent years trying to imitate it, I wouldn’t have managed to pull off such a trifecta of superiority.

  “Most of the town hangs out in here.” I pointed toward the full tables and long line of people in front of us. “Carrie makes the best coffee.”

  Carrie, at the mention of her name, widened her eyes and stared. She had a message for me; that much I could figure out. But since Carrie had a half-dozen caffeine-hungry patrons waiting for her, it would have to wait.

  I settled into the line next to Glad and smiled as friendly a smile as I could. “I’ve been looking for you,” I said.

  “There’s a problem with the show?”

  “No. Everything’s going well. I’m working on my quilt. I have promises now for more than twenty others, and most of the local businesses have agreed to let me display quilts outside their windows.”

  “It’s going to be outside?”

  “Yes. Won’t that be nice?” I asked, more rhetorically than as an attempt at approval. Not that it mattered; I could see Glad wasn’t approving.

  I tried again. “We’ll have quilts up and down Main Street and on several of the side streets in the downtown area. I’m looking for a couple more slots, and of course I have to secure the permits, but I think it will dress up the whole town, making it very bright and colorful for the anniversary celebration.”

  “Assuming it doesn’t rain.”

  I counted to three before speaking. “Well, if it rains, that spoils more than the quilt show,” I reminded her. “The parade, the carnival, and the fireworks are all taking place outside.”

  “Which is why it would have been nice to have the quilt show indoors. So people would have somewhere to go if it rained.” She sighed and looked at me with pity and sadness. “Still, I know you’re only doing your best, Nell. And you’re not very experienced with an event of this importance.”