Red Rum: A Rosie Casket Mystery

by R M Wild

“Oh.”

  “Why didn’t you show me this?” I said. “The handwriting matches the warnings I got from Macbeth.”

  “I thought it was a prank,” Mettle said. “C’mon? Double, double, toil and trouble? It all ended up being a load of nonsense, didn’t it?”

  “Maybe not.”

  “Double, double? That makes no sense.”

  “No…it actually fits. There were two murders, and then there were two attempted murders. Double, double.”

  “Okay, okay, fine. But what about the cauldron? There was never any cauldron.”

  I looked out across the lake. In the fading lights from the cruisers, the curling tails from the fog glowed red.

  “I’d say this steaming lake looks an awful lot like a cauldron, wouldn’t you?”

  “I dunno. Sounds like a stretch, Ms. Casket.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But whoever sent these notes has been a step ahead of us the whole time.”

  “A friend?”

  I smiled. Both our skin and pants were wet, but sitting across from Mettle was filling me with a supernatural warmth and my heart was doing a little dance in the cage of my chest. Against all odds, he had performed a remarkable bit of deduction and sacrifice, and somehow, miraculously, he had pulled it all off.

  “Or closer,” I said.

  47

  Epilogue

  Before leaving, Mettle provided cover while I rescued my personal belongings from Kendall’s car.

  I placed both briefcases in the trunk of Mettle’s cruiser. Then we left.

  On the ride back to the inn, Mettle asked, “What did you leave in his car?”

  “A few papers,” I said.

  He didn’t need to know that “a few papers” was code for seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars in cash.

  Would the mystery client come after me for it?

  Probably. But he was after me anyway, so what did it matter?

  I rested my head against the cruiser’s passenger window. My temples rattled with every bump and imperfection in the road, as if I were putting my ear to the tracks and listening to the inner workings of Dark Haven from miles away.

  Outside, the conifers and baby white ash mingled in the midnight breeze. The ride was appallingly short; as it turned out, Kendall’s house of horrors was only forty-five minutes from the harbor. On the way to the cabin, he had driven me around in circles for more than two hours to try to confuse me. It had worked pretty well and I felt deeply stupid.

  “Caesar told me they would kill his ex-wife if he didn’t follow their orders,” I said, my voice rattling with the road.

  Mettle took a hand off the steering wheel long enough to pat my knee. “I’ll send a team to watch over her. Maybe that’ll put Caesar on our good side and get him to talk.”

  “You mean if he can talk.”

  “I didn’t hit any vital organs.”

  “Except for his spine.”

  “He lost that a long time ago,” Mettle said. “As soon as he’s vertical again, he’s going to have a lot of questions to answer.”

  “Unless Kendall kept him in the dark.”

  Mettle exhaled. “True. For a man with enough gel in his hair to make a pair of jelly sandals, Kendall was a lot smarter than he looked. There’s no way he’ll talk, not after what was done to Phyllis and Dimitri.”

  I went back to watching the trees. Barring some miracle, I feared we were no closer to finding our puppet master—whomever he was.

  We pulled into my driveway. The Apache was occupying the main spot and Mettle had to park with his bumper hanging out into the road.

  “Maybe you want to pull onto the grass?”

  “And miss the chance for a truck to come around the bend and total this P.O.S.? No way. I had hoped the screwdriver would do the trick, but they just replaced the lock cylinder. They gave Billygoat a Mustang for crying out loud. The whole grille lights up.”

  “Lucky him,” I said.

  Inside, Eldritch was sound asleep on the couch. In my absence, he had done a commendable job of watching over the place and taking care of the mob of zero guests who had visited in my absence. If he and I were going to make this place solvent, we were going to have to do some serious restructuring—beginning with a press release addressing all the negative comments on the website. It was time to push back.

  I shook Eldritch’s shoulder. “You okay?”

  Eldritch roused. He raised an eyelid, recognized me, and yawned. “What time is it?”

  “A little after one in the morning.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. Much better.”

  Eldritch sat up and rubbed his face. He glanced at Mettle. “I can’t believe I slept so late.”

  “You mean so early?”

  “What time is it again?”

  “Why don’t you go home?” I said. “Get yourself some decent rest. After fifty years on the night shift, you’re not ready to sleep when it’s dark.”

  “I’ll get used to it,” Eldritch said. He stood wobbly, gave me a pat on the shoulder, and hobbled for the door.

  “Drive safe,” I said.

  After the door closed, Mettle sat down on the couch and said, “He’s not driving that heap of junk, is he? There’s no way that passed inspection.”

  “It’s stronger than it looks,” I said. “Would you, um, like to sleep upstairs? It’s a lot more comfortable.”

  Mettle patted the couch. “I’d like to stay watch down here if it’s okay with you. We don’t know what kind of repercussions our little sting operation might have had. Plus, Eldritch kept it nice and warm.”

  I frowned. “Whichever makes you comfortable.”

  Mettle grinned. “Besides, you stink, Casket. You smell like a swamp threw up on a drunken hobo.”

  “Whatever,” I said. I turned and headed to the stairs to take a shower. As quickly as a weather vane changing direction in a hurricane, Mettle was back to his old self, crass and cocky.

  I paused at the bottom of the stairs and looked back at him. Mettle had laid back on the couch.

  “You know, for a moment there, I thought death had been kind to you, maybe put things in perspective,” I said. “But I was totally wrong. You haven’t changed a bit.”

  Mettle nodded, considering. “I don’t know if you noticed on Kendall’s video, but right before this whole episode, I asked your foster father to change my will.”

  “You’re right, I didn’t notice anything.”

  “That’s too bad,” Mettle said, putting his hands behind his head and kicking his feet up on the arm of the couch. “I asked him for a rosy-red casket.”

  Thankfully, my phone had survived the rain. The next morning, I went downstairs and Mettle was still asleep on the couch. He had skipped his morning workout and was breathing heavily, but not snoring.

  I sat at the kitchen table and swiped through my contacts to Eldritch’s number.

  He picked up his landline on the first ring. “Hello?”

  “Last night, I dreamt that you and I were working together. In the wake of Herrick’s absence, I dreamt we hosted this giant extravaganza and we invited all the local businesses to improve our reputation and court a mutual partnership. Through this whole mess, I realized I really can’t do everything here by myself. Besides, I could use a good watchman, someone who will help keep the knives out of my back. Do you have any interest in being my official business partner?”

  Eldritch didn’t hesitate. “I think that’s a great idea, Red. It would be an honor to work with you. Count me in.”

  “Fantastic. We’ll get together later this week to go over the details,” I said.

  After saying bye, I hung up and set my phone down on the table, a giant smile spreading to my ears. But then my eyes landed on the antique armchair by the fireplace and my smile faded.

  I picked up my phone again, swiped through my photo album, and pulled up the photo of Chrissy tied to the chair. I zoomed on the chair’s feet and then I got up and went over to the c
ouch and kneeled beside Mettle.

  He was still breathing hard. I kissed him on the cheek. His stubble was scratchy on my lips, but I preferred the roughness to a cheek as smooth as plastic.

  Mettle’s breathing softened, he stirred, and then he looked at me, confused.

  “You’re up early,” he said.

  “And you’re up late,” I said. “No workout this morning?”

  “It’s a recovery day.”

  “Are you doing anything else today?”

  “I’m still suspended, remember?”

  “Do you want to go for a ride? We’ll take my car.”

  We visited all the antique shops within a ten-mile radius of Dark Haven, but by midafternoon, we still had no leads.

  “I don’t know, Casket,” Mettle said. “This is like a scavenger hunt with no boundaries. That antique chair could have come from any place in the country. Heck, for all we know, it could have been bought brand new.”

  “I know, I know, but there’s one more place to try,” I said. We returned to Beacon Street, drove past the inn and the lighthouse, and about two miles from my property, turned into the last shop on my list.

  There, an old saltbox sat behind a junkyard of rusting rubbish, unmowed weeds growing up through all the corroded gaps. There was an old bilge pump, the skeleton of an old fishing boat, even a broken totem pole. I had been avoiding wasting my time on this place—because there were so many rumors about its owner, an old, irascible man by the name of Terry Luther—but now, having exhausted all the other shops, wanted to give it one last shot.

  Apparently, Terry Luther had become a hermit, a real-life Boo Radley who hadn’t been seen in town since I was in high school. Even back in junior high, the kids had traded rumors about him. He was the ghost of Dark Haven—always talked about, but rarely seen. Apparently, he had once had a mummy for sale in his shop. He had once survived a hanging. He had once—

  “What a crap hole,” Mettle said.

  I parked at the end of the driveway, unwilling to risk my tires on whatever shrapnel was hiding in the gravel. “We’re going to have to get out and walk.”

  We climbed out. Mettle took the lead. “Watch your step. This place is a minefield.”

  We headed for the front door. An old sign over the roof read Mainely Antiques. The name was nothing unique, of course. A Maine state flag hanging from the porch was as thin as gauze, as threadbare as a spider’s web.

  We climbed the porch and knocked on the door.

  It was silent. Then, “Comin,” someone said from inside, the Down East accent even thicker than Eldritch’s.

  After a few creaks, Terry Luther stood behind the screen. He was at least ninety. Like a park ranger, he was wearing khaki shorts, a khaki shirt, and a khaki pith helmet. He wore bottle-thick glasses, even thicker than mine, and his bushy gray sideburns encroached on his nose. He looked at Mettle and then at me. The overhang on the porch was long enough, the surrounding woods thick enough, that it blotted out the sun and he was mostly in shadow.

  “What do you two want?” Luther growled.

  I held up my phone as if I were showing him my badge. “We’re trying to finish decorating our house and we were wondering if you’d ever seen a chair like this.”

  Luther lowered his glasses and squinted through the screen. The picture on my phone was of the chair I had taken in Kendall’s bedroom. Luther must have recognized it, for his face drained and went pale, even in the dark behind the screen. His large Adam’s apple dipped and tried to hide beneath his collar.

  “That specimen came in a set of four,” he said, his voice trembling enough to make his sideburns flutter.

  I looked at Mettle. Mettle looked at me.

  “You’ve seen this chair before?”

  “Ayuh. I remember them hooves. Can’t forget ‘em. I used to have the whole set for sale. It’s gone now, though.”

  My heart sped up. “Can you remember who bought it?”

  He shook his head. “Maybe. What’s it to yuh?”

  I swiped through my phone and showed him the picture of Kendall I had taken at the reunion. “Was it this man?”

  Luther barely glanced at it. “That was the man who picked it up, but not the man who bought it.”

  “You barely looked at it. How can you be sure?” Mettle said.

  “I’m sure,” Luther barked.

  “I’m a cop,” Mettle said. “Troop J, state police. We’re looking for a missing person and we think this antique set might be involved. If you can give us any more information—”

  Too eager, I cut Mettle off. “Was the sale recent?”

  “Ayuh. About a year ago,” Luther said.

  I clenched my fists to hide my excitement. If it was only a year ago, then Chrissy might still be alive.

  “What else can you tell us?”

  “The buyer came in here, looked around for a few minutes, and saw the hooved feet and said he had to have it straight away. He didn’t even bother to haggle with the price. I knew right then that he wasn’t no leaf peeper. And the shape of his face was way more familiar than I cared for.”

  “Who was he?”

  “Lemme finish, will yuh?” Luther said.

  “Sorry.”

  “The point is, I wouldn’t sell it to him. Somebody else had already claimed it. A local gal. Phyllis Martin. She lives down the street.”

  “Phyllis Martin claimed the chairs?”

  “Ayuh. You know her?”

  “I used to,” I said.

  “How’s she doin?”

  “She’s—”

  “Here and there,” Mettle said. “Like the wind.”

  Luther raised an eyebrow.

  “Why would Phyllis want the chairs?” I said.

  “She wanted them for the inn, so I promised I would hold them for her. Me and the owner of that inn go way back, you see.”

  My heart skipped. He knew my mother?

  “We go farther back than you two can imagine. So when this fancy feller wanted ‘em, I told him that no matter how much money he had, my chairs ain’t for sale. But the man insisted. Boy, did he insist. He took out his checkbook and said he’d buy my whole blasted property instead.”

  “And what did you say?”

  Luther’s voice quavered. “I told him to go lick himself. I growed up in this house and I wasn’t gonna give it to no one for nothin, especially a fancy freak like him.”

  “And then what?”

  “The man took out a contract, calmly put it on my counter, and made me sign it right then and there. He said if I didn’t sign it, he’d burn my house down.”

  Luther’s hands were shaking at the recollection and I swallowed hard.

  “So you don’t own this property anymore?” I asked.

  Luther looked out the screen door as if he was worried someone was listening to our conversation. “Nope, not no more. The man said he’d come back and claim the house when the time was right. I ain’t seen him since. In the meantime, that pretty boy lawyer you showed me came to pick up the furniture.”

  “Can you give us a description of this buyer?” Mettle said.

  Luther shook his head. “Don’t need to.”

  “Why not?” I said.

  “Cuz, all you gotta do is read the Bible,” Luther said. “It was the son of Satan hisself, little girl. The devil’s dressed in white and clicking his heels three times between every step. If he gets his way, he’ll buy up all the land in Dark Haven.”

  Dear Readers

  Thank you so much for giving my books a chance! As an independent publisher, I wear all the hats, socks, and boots in this enterprise. That means I do all the writing, the formatting, the cover design, and the marketing.

  Although I like to pretend I’m a superhero, I do need help from time to time. In a competitive market, survival as an independent author depends entirely on your support.

  If you liked the book, please leave a review. It doesn’t have to be anything elaborate. Even one or two words can help. The more
reviews the book has, the more I can advertise, the more readers I can reach, and ultimately, the more books I can write!

  The best way to let me know that you would like this series to continue is by leaving a review.

  R.M.

  Also by R.M. Wild

  Lacey Casket Mysteries (1950s)

  A Grave Display

  A Grave, Twice Cold

  A Grave Conviction

  A Graven Image (coming soon)

  A Grave Maker (coming soon)

  Amber Casket Mysteries (1980s)

  The Lost Casket (coming soon)

  The Plastic Casket (coming soon)

  Rosie Casket Mysteries (Modern Day)

  Red Hairing

  Red Mourning

  Red Rum