Breaking the Mould

by Victoria Hamilton

  “What does Bella wanting you to retire have to do with you killing Evan?” Jaymie asked bluntly, but even as she said it, she realized . . . it was money.

  “Shut up. Just . . . shut up! You don’t know what I’ve been through!” She was beginning to cry again.

  Erla was worried about money and her time of influence was running out at the Nezer residence. It was all about the codicil and Finn’s inheritance! Erla didn’t care about her son getting his master’s—which would have required Evan to be alive—she cared about his inheritance. If she left the house, Evan, without her to influence him, could have changed the will back at any time. And for Finn to gain the money from the will, Evan Nezer had to be dead. There was, Jaymie realized, another possible reason it couldn’t wait, or at least . . . this was the moment to discover if her sudden supposition was true.

  She shivered, the cold seeping into her bones and her thighs burning from crouching. The ground was frigid, and poor Austin was beginning to shudder. Jaymie needed to find a way to finish this. “Finn isn’t Evan’s son, is he?” she said softly.

  The housekeeper stared at her, worry in her eyes, her mouth stretched in a grimace. “It doesn’t matter. Finn is in the will now. They can’t take that away from him.”

  Jaymie wasn’t so sure about that. If Evan’s inheritors discovered the truth after his death, and they could prove that the codicil was only in effect because of presumed paternity, there would surely be a legal challenge. “But Evan would have changed it if he knew the truth, right? As a lawyer he started to get suspicious. Did he add up dates finally, all this time later, after so many years had passed? Did he finally figure out what I did, that there is no way a two-months premature baby would be eight and a half pounds?”

  She watched the woman, who had consternation on her face as tears dried in sticky trails on her cheeks. Erla shook her head but remained silent.

  Time had seemed to slow, and Jaymie’s thinking clarified. Images flashed through her mind: the pudding mould on the shelf in the kitchen, cleaned up and put back in place, and what Johnny and Amos had seen, the envelope passing from the pastor to Erla. And she remembered something else: the Nezers had their mail rerouted to the college for the time being. Who worked at the college besides Evan? Pastor Vaughn Inkerman. “It wasn’t possible years ago, but did he . . .” Jaymie’s eyed widened. “Evan got a DNA test done, didn’t he? Their mail was still being routed to the college, so the results were sent there and Pastor Inkerman intercepted them for you.”

  “You shut up,” Erla said, her voice shaking, and the heavy pudding mould in her hand shaking too. Her face was shadowed by the diorama walls, so she had become just a raw, fury-filled voice. “You shut up. You do not know the crap I had to put up with for years from that man: the put-downs, the criticism. And I took it all because Evan said someday he’d make sure Finn was taken care of. And then he went and got him ejected from the master’s program! Finn was crushed, and all ’cause Evan had to be right. Even if he wasn’t right, he had to be right. Even if he had to cheat to make it seem so.”

  She was getting herself wound up, anger taking over from fear and anguish. Jaymie eyed Austin, who was progressing from frightened to terrified. Amos was paler, the scourge of hypothermia upon him. What was she going to do? The falling snow was thickening, blowing into the enclosure. How could she end this? If she screamed, would anyone hear her? Not likely. There’d be no windows open this time of year, and the diorama walls muffled sound.

  Maybe someone would pass by and she could shout. Where were all the dog walkers and health nuts when you needed them? The housekeeper was prowling back and forth, mould still firmly in hand. Jaymie was younger and possibly stronger, but there had to be a better way to end this than rushing her and risking worse injury to the two men and herself.

  Keep her talking. “But, Erla, Evan was going to help get Finn reinstated into the master’s program, right?”

  “Hah! Not even high-and-mighty Nezer could do that. I heard those folks talking that night, the night of the party. They didn’t know, but I heard ’em ’cause they came into the back hall to whisper and plot. Evan had talked to them all right, like he said he would, but Mrs. Belcher didn’t want none of that. She said the college would look tainted if it did so, and she had other fish to fry. She’d been in trouble before, but this time was different. She said she was going to find some way of diplomatically telling Evan it was a no-go. He didn’t really care, she said, not about Finn Fancombe.”

  She swayed on her feet, swinging the heavy pudding mould. “She was right about that. Evan never cared for anyone but himself. That woman, President Belcher . . . she wanted some high muckety-muck fellow from some organization that wanted a place to put some kind of tank . . . I don’t know what that meant, but it had something to do with money and the economy and . . . I don’t know. But they weren’t about to let Finn back in to stain their reputation.” She spat the last words, but then took a deep breath, steadying. “So that’s when I knew. I had thought Evan might have to die because of the codicil and the DNA test; I couldn’t delay indefinitely. But I knew for sure that night. And it was perfect, so many folks peeved at Evan.”

  Jaymie shivered. She had been in trouble before, but here she was backed into the diorama with walls on three sides, two wounded fellows and a crazy lady in front of her wielding the unlikeliest of weapons. It would be funny if it wasn’t so frightening. And she didn’t know what to do.

  She edged forward, away from Austin. “I can’t figure out how you did it, though. I mean, I know how you killed him—the pudding mould over the head—and you staged it here, in the diorama. How did you know about that?” Her gaze darted around. Was there something in the diorama she could use to clunk Erla over the head with or throw at her?

  “You think I don’t know everything going on? People talk in this town, and I listen. I overheard Amos telling that Johnny fellow about your little scene. I guess he heard it from Bill Waterman, who always gave Amos coffee and food and cigarettes for helping him around the shop. They shifted your diorama in the shed after he painted it, and Bill explained what it was. When it was set up, I knew all about it, and knew exactly how it worked. I always loved that story, you know, A Christmas Carol. Loved the old black-and-white movie, with that Sims fellow, so I read it once, too.” She loomed into a ray of light that came through a crack in the diorama. She smiled, an awful, angry smile. “You know, Ben was in the play at school. So was Finn. Finn played Bob Cratchit, but Ben played Scrooge. Hah! His dad never showed up to the play, though. Evan Nezer Scrooge, I called him once.”

  A nervous giggle burst from Jaymie. “I thought of that too!”

  “Yeah, so it was perfect.” She stilled, and her eyes unfocused. “An hour after the party I was still in the kitchen, working. Of course. Cleaning up other folks’ mess like I’ve done my whole life. They never cared or even noticed how hard I worked. Evan came downstairs after a fight with missy Bella Butter Wouldn’t Melt in Her Mouth and wanted some hot milk. He had indigestion after all that rich catering food, and he didn’t trust no one but me to get it for him. Not after Miss Bella giving him sleeping stuff a coupla times so she could sneak out!”

  “Sneak out?”

  “Sure. She had a boyfriend or two on the side. What woman her age wouldn’t with that old fool in her bed? He figured it out and found the sleeping stuff in her bedside table. She swore up and down it was for her, but . . . he had his suspicions. I knew all about it. Shoulda heard the fights those two had.”

  There was malicious glee in her tone. That, then, was what Erla had meant when she said to Bella that she knew what the supposed mistress of the house was doing behind her husband’s back.

  “Anyway, I knew it was time,” Erla mused. “It was perfect, like a gift from God telling me I was in the right.” There was a reverent hush in her tone as she pondered the universe’s instructions. “I was gonna take him up a warm drink, and then have to haul him all the way down the back stairs
, but instead he just . . . delivered himself to me. So, good old faithful servant Erla fixed him some milk with a good dose of Bella’s sleeping pills crushed into it. I had ’em ready, see. He went to sleep right there in the kitchen, just dropped to the floor. I dragged him out the back door and bashed him over the head with the pudding mould until he was dead. I had a wheelbarrow ready and trundled him through the trees to your dio-whatchamacallit. Easy from there to plant him with that decorative pudding mould over his head.”

  And hammer a stake of holly through his heart. So cold, so calculated. “You planned it ahead of time. You got the holly from my backyard.”

  She chuckled. “Bella was talking about it to Evan . . . making fun of you, you know, copying you offering holly to anyone who wanted it. She was trying to jolly him up lately. Making fun of the lower orders, as he called you all, was one way to entertain him. It wasn’t hard to find your house, and even easier to slip down that alley and steal the holly.”

  Jaymie, despite the danger, was thinking things through. “But, Erla, why the fire? Why set the cider booth ablaze.”

  She swayed into the sliver of light once more, her face twisted in anger. “I never did that, you know,” she said, her voice gritty with anger. “Those cops . . . they questioned me about it, but I never did it.”

  “But Amos said . . .” Ah . . . aha! Amos said it was Erla because of the coat and gray hair. But anyone could don a gray wig and borrow a coat. She had a sudden thought. “Bella did that, didn’t she? Whoever did it used your coat, and she’s the only one who could, other than Evan, and I’m pretty sure he would have taken credit for the arson if he did it.”

  Erla was startled. “That’s why my coat smells of smoke!” she said, taking the lapel with her free hand and pulling it up to her nose. She smiled, an eerie look still. “Well, she won’t be a problem anymore. Maybe she’ll even get the blame for all of this!” She brightened. “Yes! That works out!”

  “You think she’ll stand for that? She’ll tell the cops the truth, and you’ll be up for it. C’mon, Erla, you know she won’t let an accusation . . .” Jaymie trailed off as she saw the triumph on the woman’s face. “Oh, no; what have you done to Bella?”

  She nodded, then shook her head. “No, you don’t understand . . . poor Bella. She did it all, you see, even this! Oh, my goodness!” She giggled, a squawky sound. “It’s all so perfect. Thank you for pointing that out. The note she wrote . . . her suicide . . . I wanted to shut her up and get her out of the way, but this will all work out.”

  Jaymie started shaking, remembering Bella threatening Erla with DNA testing and a court challenge; now Bella was about to pay for that threat with her life! Erla was hell-bent on her path. There was no way out of this alive, not unless Jaymie did something soon. Was there any human kindness left in Erla Fancombe? At first she had seemed not to want to hurt them. Could Jaymie appeal to that side of the housekeeper? “Erla, please, let us go!” Jaymie said, clasping her hands together in prayerful pleading. “I don’t know what else to say, but I don’t think you’re really a killer, not ingrained. You were pushed into it by years of abuse from Evan Nezer.”

  “Don’t make me over into a victim,” she growled. “I’m no victim,” she said, raising the pudding mould over her head. “I will survive—”

  “Tell that to Miss Gloria Gaynor!”

  There was a thump, and Erla dropped to her knees and keeled over as an arc of blood sprayed the diorama walls. Jaymie looked up to see Valetta standing triumphantly—if wavering a little—behind her, holding a shovel in her hand, a tool no Michigander who drove would be without in their car in the winter months.

  “Yes!” Jaymie said, bolting to her friend and hugging her, as Austin leaped to his feet and pulled off his coat, draping it over poor Amos.

  “We need the police,” she said, snatching up Austin’s cell phone. “This madwoman has done something to Bella Nezer.”

  Twenty-one

  “I wish we’d been able to do this yesterday,” Jaymie grumbled, shivering. She hadn’t had enough coffee yet. Two cups was a necessity or she just wasn’t awake. It was Friday morning and the lighting of the tree and new official start of Dickens Days was that very evening, so they had no time to spare.

  “I’m glad you’re here to do it at all,” Jakob said, swinging a hammer and knocking one side wall off the diorama. He had been grumpy since finding out everything that had happened—the danger to Jaymie had been real and he was horrified by it—but was starting to mellow a bit now.

  “I know, I know,” she said, giving him a side hug. “But I am, so let’s do this!”

  Thursday had been taken up with giving a complete police statement, and visiting poor Amos in the hospital, where the police had taken his complete statement, as well as checking in on Austin to be sure he was all right. Shaken and hurt, though not critically, he had taken Thursday off from college but was back at it now, as he had exams to write. He texted her that his art professor boyfriend was suitably impressed and comforting to him, and had made a fuss over Austin, with the bandage on his forehead.

  Thursday also happened to be St. Nicholas Day, and though not Catholic the Müllers set aside that day to celebrate some traditional German St. Nicholas Day customs with the children. Jocie and her cousins stayed with their grandparents and received in their shoes a few small gifts, in Jocie’s case books, her favorite present, and Katzenzungen, little chocolate-covered biscuits named “cats tongues” for their shape. Jaymie was grateful for the distraction it provided for Jocie, so she didn’t have to explain what happened.

  Jakob’s brothers worked the tree sales lot Thursday while her husband helped her through the follow-up to the attack. Jaymie learned during her talk with the police how Amos had happened to be in his predicament. After his close call—he was in the hospital still for hypothermia and the injury to his head, which matched Evan’s perfectly—he had decided to shed his secretive ways and tell everything he knew and everything that had happened. He rejected Erla’s accusation that he was blackmailing her.

  He had seen what he didn’t understand at first, Erla with a long-handled window squeegee, coming from behind the Emporium. That would have been her smearing the CCTV camera lenses with peanut butter, the police figured. He then saw, as he meandered the village streets in the wee hours of Saturday morning, Erla fussing around the diorama the night of the murder. It had taken him a while to believe that she had killed Evan, and he had simply asked her why she did it, he claimed.

  She had told him to meet her at the diorama and she’d tell him everything. She brought the bowl to kill him, there could be no doubt about that. She was talking now, and had made a complete statement as part of what would likely be a plea deal of some sort. Her reasoning was that the pudding mould, a weapon hiding in plain sight, worked once, and would work again. Austin’s desire for a selfie at the murder scene had saved Amos’s life.

  Fortunately for Bella, when the police broke down the door to the Nezer residence and bolted upstairs with paramedics following, she was sleeping soundly, but that was all. Erla had given her pills crushed into her meal, but had miscalculated the amount needed to kill her. She had recovered swiftly, fast enough to confirm that the suicide letter was not legitimate.

  Unfortunately for Bella the police found the gray wig that had fooled Amos, and she was arrested for arson. The police would never have focused so closely on the Nezer household in the arson case, but Bella had hidden the gasoline she used to start the fire in the shed. The police were suspicious of the lengths someone had taken to conceal so common a liquid, but before the wig was discovered and Amos had provided the information he had, they had been unable to establish which householder had been responsible. Bella had lawyered up and been released on bail, but Jaymie suspected that if Erla hadn’t killed Evan, Bella would have. Rumor had it that Evan had talked with his lawyer about divorce, though he had not instituted paperwork yet. He caught Bella cheating, and that voided the prenup, which had a “no ch
eating” clause in it.

  Without a confession they could only guess at many things, including why she had set fire to the cider booth wearing a gray wig and Erla’s coat, but Jaymie speculated that Evan was stalling at getting rid of Erla, and Bella was anxious to have the woman out of her home. Erla was in the way of her plan to kill Evan herself, she had thought. If Erla was arrested for arson, Bella must have thought, the housekeeper would be gone for good. The arrest hadn’t happened, but Bella couldn’t push for it too hard or her own guilt would have become obvious.

  No one would ever know the whole truth of that. Even if Bella had considered killing her husband, would she have gotten up the nerve? It was interesting to Jaymie that Bella had been the one to invite so many people her husband did not like and would potentially clash with, like Valetta, Jaymie and Vaughn, with Brock as an unforeseen bonus. It almost looked like Bella was setting the scene for there to be numerous suspects in his murder. But they’d never know, and you couldn’t convict anyone on what they might have done, given the opportunity.

  Jaymie packed the bits and pieces from her diorama into totes and stowed them in the back of the SUV. Bill Waterman hobbled toward them, looking weak but better than he had. Neither Jaymie nor Jakob had allowed Bill to help, recruiting Johnny Stanko instead to disassemble the diorama structure and tote it to Bill’s barn for storage until they could figure out what to do with it.

  “I got it open, Jakob, Jaymie,” Bill said. “Johnny, I got that handcart we can use and you young fellows can haul it up the hill okay, I think.”

  “I guess I should feel lucky that we can do this at all,” Jaymie said. “Since it was the scene of another crime.”

  “No mystery about this one though,” Valetta said, joining them, tea mug in hand. “We know whodunit, so the police didn’t need to keep the scene closed off, once it was processed.”