Breaking the Mould

by Victoria Hamilton

  “It wasn’t yours?”

  “I didn’t have one there yet. I was bringing one this morning.”

  “What did it look like? The one over Nezer’s head, I mean.”

  “It was . . .” She thought, and frowned, focusing on her memory of the scene, as little as she wanted to. “You know what? It’s not a pudding mould,” Jaymie concluded.

  “It’s not?”

  “Nope, it’s a decorative Bundt pan, which to the uninitiated might look like a pudding mould, I guess. It’s one of those enameled ones meant to hang on the wall, not go into the steamer or oven.” Though it still felt like it was targeted at her, it was done by someone who was clearly either not knowledgeable of vintage features or didn’t care. It was absurd that it made her feel the slightest bit better, but it did.

  “So, who killed Evan Nezer?” Valetta asked.

  “I don’t know.” She couldn’t feel sad about Nezer. As cold and awful as it sounded, there were some people whose leaving made the world better. He seemed to be one of them, though no doubt his son would be saddened. She covered her face with both hands, feeling remorse immediately; it was not like her to think that way. Evan Nezer was nasty, but even so, he was a human being, one who loved and was loved, had made mistakes, but who must have had some redeeming qualities. She could generally find it in her heart to have compassion toward anyone, and she must work toward it in this case.

  However, it was a plain fact that his death solved problems for others, no doubt. “I wonder where this leaves Finn Fancombe?” she said aloud.

  “What does he have to do with it?”

  Jaymie told her friend what she overheard the night before, at the Nezer back door, about Finn needing Nezer to speak up for him and get his expulsion from WC rescinded. “Which makes me think . . .” She took out her phone and scanned through past online issues of the Wolverhampton Weekly Howler. “Ah, here it is.” She found the articles regarding the scandal that forced the college to expel Finn Fancombe.

  “What are you talking about?” Val said impatiently.

  “Wait, let me read this and I’ll explain.”

  Valetta smiled at a customer entering the Emporium and popped up from her chair. “I have to go in,” she said to Jaymie. “Someone is here for a prescription. I’ll be back.”

  Jaymie read all of the articles. When Valetta returned she had digested the gist of it, and thought she understood, though it seemed there might be more to the story, given what Finn had said to his mother. “So, Nezer wrote a piece for a literature journal comparing the economic aspect of Dickens’s work to the realities of the financial industry of the day. I don’t pretend to understand, but I suppose writing a nonfiction book, as an expert, you would have to condense or skim over some stuff to maintain the focus of the book. So the article was an extension of his book, fleshing out a part that had been briefly covered.” She paused and squinted. “I think the book leaned more toward the economic theory aspect, rather than the literature, but I could be entirely wrong. Anyway, when it was published, Finn lodged a complaint with the college’s ethics committee stating that significant portions of Nezer’s article came from his master’s thesis. Nezer was his thesis advisor, and as such he had read the draft version.”

  “But Finn was the one who was penalized . . . how did that happen? What did the ethics committee say about his complaint?”

  “At first they supported him, but Nezer lodged a counter-complaint charging that Finn was the guilty one, and had used Nezer’s notes on his thesis verbatim. So that portion of his thesis wasn’t in his own words anyway, but in Nezer’s. The professor couldn’t plagiarize himself, so the complaint was void. Once Finn’s complaint was dismissed Nezer then charged Finn with plagiarism. The ethics board found just cause and expelled Fancombe.”

  “For a first offense? That’s harsh.”

  “It’s a postgrad degree he’s working on. He should know the rules.”

  “Still—”

  “I know. But I think these things are looked upon rather differently in academic circles.”

  “Do you think the college board of governors would have some leeway, though, in how they assessed the punishment?”

  “I don’t know.” Jaymie chewed her lip. “Finn was mad, but mad enough to kill the professor? That doesn’t make sense, especially since he said he needed the professor’s help to get back into the master’s program.”

  “What if Finn confronted the professor that night, after the party, and they argued and he hit him and killed him accidentally?”

  “But why would he stage the body in such a way?” Jaymie asked. She shook her head. “That sounds like a deliberate killing, not an act of passion.”

  “I suppose.”

  Jaymie was silent for a long moment. She picked up her cup to drink, but realized it was empty and set it back down. “Erla Fancombe said something else interesting though; she warned her son that if someone offended Nezer he’d hit back twice as hard, and that’s what happened to Sarah Nezer.”

  “Oh, really!”

  “Maybe that explains the first Mrs. Nezer taking a bad settlement in their divorce.” She paused and glanced over at Valetta. “I wonder if she gets anything in Nezer’s will?”

  “Not likely. Why would Evan leave her anything when he divorced her?”

  “Yeah, you’re right. This whole scene . . .” Jaymie said, waving her hand at where Sarah was still being attended to by the paramedics. “It feels . . . contrived. I’m not saying it is, it just feels that way to me.”

  “You’re speculating that Sarah killed Evan, planted his body, then ‘happened’ on the scene this morning and staged the faint. You’re already trying to figure out who did it, aren’t you?”

  Jaymie sighed. “I can’t help myself. It’s second nature.”

  “And it keeps you from thinking about a human being done in that way, and what you saw,” Valetta shrewdly guessed.

  “That too.” Jaymie sat in thought for a few minutes. “But in a weird way it felt like part of the scene. You remember that mystery series Dickensian? We watched it a couple of years ago at the same time; it was a murder mystery set in Dickens’s world, only the murder was of Jacob Marley. It made me think of that. There wasn’t much blood.” She didn’t say what she overheard, that Nezer had likely been killed elsewhere and moved to the diorama.

  “I know what that means, kiddo—not much blood, though he died of a head wound—and I won’t tell a soul,” she said, giving Jaymie a sideways glance. “Head wounds bleed a lot, but the bleeding stops pretty quickly after the person dies. Coagulation begins, and once the heart stops pumping, no new blood rushes to the area unless gravity is a factor.”

  “You are a fount of information,” Jaymie said, eyes wide.

  “What can I say . . . the technical aspects of how the body lives and dies interest me. So, anyway, where was he killed?”

  “Good question. And who staged the scene? It would take a particular kind of mind to set that up, I think.”

  “But why? Why do that at all? Why not hide the body, or leave it where it fell, or dump it somewhere? Why stage the scene?”

  “I’d say that would take a lot of anger, or a weird sense of humor. Or, it was a message. But to who?” She glanced over toward the scene of the crime. “Uh-oh, there’s Haskell,” Jaymie said, standing. “I was wondering what we’re going to do about the Dickens Days opening tonight. I mean, we’ll postpone it, right? We have to!”

  “Yeah, it would be a little grim to light the lights while the police tape is still fluttering in the breeze.” Valetta stood and stretched. “You go talk to Haskell. I gotta go anyway. Time and medications wait for no man. Or woman.”

  Haskell strode over and spoke to the detective. It was a long, animated discussion, with much hand waving on Haskell’s part, unusually expressive for the usually reserved fellow. Several of the Dickens Days committee members were milling about, so when he returned to the group, which Jaymie joined, they had an unoffici
al meeting and agreed. The Dickens Days opening and lighting of the tree would be postponed to the next Friday. Mabel Bloomsbury hustled off to make some calls to newspapers and radio stations on both sides of the border, as well as updating the Queensville Heritage Society website. Jaymie texted Nan personally to give her the news.

  As they finalized the details, Bella Nezer, her face without makeup a pale, ravaged, tear-streaked mess, stumbled to the cider booth and beat on it with her fists. “Why? Why?” she cried, trying to pull the shutter off.

  Bernie, who was standing guard on the diorama area, rushed to her side and gently restrained her, calling the paramedics over from Sarah Nezer’s bedside. The two Missus Nezers were both, it seemed, distraught over the death of Evan Nezer, Scrooge.

  Nine

  Becca had arrived in Queensville to work at the antique store after dropping Jocie off at her grandparents’. When she saw the ambulance, police cars and clusters of townies, she bustled over to where Jaymie stood, tweed coat flapping open, purse hiked on her shoulder, a worried look in her eyes behind her glasses. “What’s going on?” When Jaymie told her, she groaned. “Good lord, we’re going to be called Murdertown, Michigan, soon.”

  “Don’t look at me!” Jaymie cried. “I didn’t ask for this to happen!”

  “I didn’t say you did,” Becca exclaimed, startled.

  “Sorry. I’m just . . . touchy. I loved the whole idea of that diorama and now it’s r-ruined!” To her dismay, tears started welling and running down her cheeks and she sniffed. Valetta joined them and patted her on the back.

  Ever practical, Becca fished in her purse and pulled out a tissue, handing it to her younger sister. “I would bet this bout of tears is less about the diorama and more about someone dying violently who you saw hours ago, alive and well.”

  Jaymie nodded and blew her nose. “You may be right. I didn’t like him. But . . .” She blew her nose again.

  “But he didn’t deserve what happened to him,” Valetta finished, hand on her friend’s shoulder.

  Jaymie nodded and took in a deep breath, letting it out slowly, her breath puffing a white cloud. “I’ll be okay.”

  “What’s going on over there?” Becca asked, pointing to the paramedic crews and the two women they were treating.

  “That is the two Missus Nezers,” Valetta said, and explained.

  Becca stared, blinked, and said, “I know Mrs. Nezer!”

  “Really?” Jaymie exclaimed. But of course . . . Bella may have been in Queensville Fine Antiques while she was making over the Nezer ancestral home.

  “I do! She was my history teacher in grade twelve for English literature!”

  Jaymie frowned. “Bella Nezer?”

  “Is that her first name?” Becca said. “At the time she was still using her maiden name, so we called her Miss Laughton, but I remember her married name. Don’t you remember, Val? You, Dee, me . . . we went with her on a kind of informal field trip to some farmhouse in Washtenaw, near Ann Arbor. There was some old author there, uh . . . I’m blanking on the author name.”

  “Oh! I remember,” Valetta exclaimed. She squinted, and continued, “Harriet Simpson Arnow who wrote . . . oh, what was the title?” She glared into the distance, pushing her glasses up on her nose. “Aha! It was The Dollmaker. They were making it into a TV movie, or something, with Jane Fonda. Miss Laughton . . . or Mrs. Nezer—I hadn’t made the connection until you said it; can’t believe I missed that!—wanted to visit her, so she took some of us girls with her on a field trip. But we got there, to the farm, and the woman wouldn’t see us. She died soon after that. Miss Laughton . . . darn . . . Mrs. Nezer was extremely upset.”

  “You visited an author with your teacher?” Jaymie said, looking between her sister and her friend.

  “Of course,” Valetta said. “I remember the day mostly because it was freaking cold and her car didn’t have a functional heater! So . . . winter, I guess.”

  It was one of those odd disjointed moments when Jaymie realized that though she was Valetta’s best friend, Val was Becca’s friend first. The two shared memories and a history Jaymie would never be a part of. She shook her head, puzzled. “Wait, Bella Nezer is only, what, mid-forties? Younger than you two, anyway.”

  “Don’t be rude,” Becca said. “Of course we mean the ex–Mrs. Nezer.”

  “Ohhh! Sarah Nezer. She was a teacher?”

  Val nodded. “Yeah, in the mid-eighties. Still used her maiden name back then. We knew she was married and had heard her married name, but I had forgotten until Becca said it. She was my favorite teacher that year. Smart, funny, driven, a great teacher . . . I admired her.”

  “She was memorable,” Becca added. “She had a loud laugh, and this big mane of golden brown hair that she held back with a colorful headband, and big chunky earrings that dangled to her shoulders.”

  “You would remember the clothes,” Val said, bumping her shoulder against Becca’s. “Until then I had preferred English literature, but she made me love American authors, like Faulkner. She admired women authors, and had met quite a few, like Betty Friedan, Toni Morrison, and she told us how she attended one of Flannery O’Connor’s lectures before the author died. Miss Laughton . . . uh, Mrs. Nezer had a breakdown and left teaching, though.”

  “Still, you’ve got a heck of a memory, Val,” Jaymie said, marveling once again at her friend’s capacity for spongelike retention. She turned and pushed the hair out of her eyes. A stiff breeze had sprung up; it was drifting leaves along the town’s main street and kept tugging at her hair, even though she had it pulled back in a ponytail. She watched the white-haired woman who was now sitting up, one shaking hand to her head, shooting malevolent looks at the woman nearby, who was arching her back and flailing about, a cluster of paramedics attending her. She shook her head, then slipped off the stretcher, unnoticed, retrieved her abandoned bicycle and walked it away.

  Detective Vestry strode quickly toward them. “Jaymie, I want your statement soon. Keep me apprised of where you are.” She turned and said, “Valetta, we’re hoping the Emporium camera may come in handy again. Can we have a look?”

  “Sure,” Val said. She touched Jaymie’s shoulder, but then led the detective into the store.

  “How is Jocie?” Jaymie asked her sister, thinking with longing of her husband and child.

  “She’s good. There is some secret project going on at the farmhouse and there’s a lot of giggling and hiding stuff.” Becca smiled and clutched her purse to her chest against the stiffening wind. “I think they may be making gifts for their parents.”

  “I have a feeling I know what mine is going to be,” Jaymie said. “Oma Renate had Jocie ask me if I had any allergies, and were there any scents I like in particular. I think it may be bath bombs for me and Sonya. We made some during the summer and I said how much I liked them.”

  “I have to go,” Becca said, looking over her shoulder toward Queensville Fine Antiques. “Georgina has a lunch date she’s eager to make, so I said I’d take care of the store for the rest of the day.”

  “A lunch date?”

  Becca waggled her eyebrows. “A man!”

  “A man?” It boggled the mind. Georgina was often sour, and did not seem to like Jaymie much. To know there was a softer, hopeful side to her . . . it made her want to get to know the woman. “Okay, you go on.”

  Becca touched her younger sister’s shoulder. “Are you going to be okay?”

  Jaymie nodded. “I am.”

  “Be good. Stay out of trouble.”

  Jaymie didn’t respond. She wouldn’t promise what she couldn’t promise. Becca scurried across the windy street to the antique shop. Jaymie folded the shawl Val had given her and laid it on the chair, then hopped down the stairs and hustled to follow Sarah Nezer.

  The woman was in her mid to late sixties, but she was fit, as evidenced by the speed with which she wheeled her bike along the walk against the wind. Jaymie raced to catch up with her and put a hand on her shoulder. The woman whi
rled with an oof of surprise and stared at Jaymie, who had to catch her breath.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Nezer, to . . . to startle you that way.” Huff, huff, huff.

  “Who are you?” She blinked at Jaymie through thick glasses up on the bridge of her nose.

  Jaymie examined her face, a collection of interesting wrinkles, soft skin sagging under her chin and a downturn to her thin lips. She wore heavy glasses, several years out of date, with tortoiseshell-patterned plastic frames. Jaymie tried to imagine her as Valetta described, vibrant and forceful, her favorite teacher. It was odd that, given how big an impression the woman had made on her, she hadn’t remembered her until now, but it was a long time ago.

  “My name is Jaymie Leighton Müller. My sister, Becca Brevard—Becca Leighton back then—had you as a teacher in high school, back in the eighties.”

  The woman frowned, but then nodded after a moment. “I remember her. Pudgy. Dark-haired. Thought she knew better than everyone else. Smart enough, but sassing back all the time.”

  Sassing back? Interesting. It sounded like Mrs. Nezer didn’t have fond memories of Jaymie’s older sister. “You have a good memory for your former students.”

  “I have a memory that is, at times, far too good.”

  “Uh, my best friend is Valetta Nibley. She was in that same class too.”

  The woman’s expression softened. “I remember Valetta very well. Does she still live in Queensville?”

  “Yes, in fact she’s the pharmacist at the Emporium.”

  “Oh. Interesting. I’ve just moved back after being . . . away.” She gripped and released the handles of her bike.

  That explained a lot, why they hadn’t seen the woman before, and why she had slipped from Val and Becca’s memories. So much had happened in thirty years to fill their minds, memories and hearts. It made her wonder, briefly, why Sarah Nezer had such a perfect recall. Did that indicate a life sparse of pleasant recollections?