“Thank you, Amelia. That hit the spot.”
Of one thing, Victoria was sure. None of the five women she’d met with at the lawyer’s office was capable of killing LeRoy Watts, even though each one of the five insisted on confessing to the murder. Since Myrna refused to represent them, either singly or as a group, Victoria felt it incumbent upon herself to clear the five of blame—in other words, to identify the murderer.
“Would you care for more tea, Mother?”
“No, thank you.”
Victoria knew the State Police were working to solve the murder of LeRoy Watts, but they had to wait for autopsy and forensic results, which might take weeks. They were also hamstrung by regulations and restrictions and bureaucracy. Even Casey, the town’s chief of police, had to move slowly through the tangle of rules, regulations, and people’s rights.
Amelia stood and gathered up the plates. “Your expression, I remember it from childhood. You’re determined to solve the murders, aren’t you?”
“I’m determined to help the authorities,” Victoria said with a smile. She fished an envelope out of the wastepaper basket, looked in the marmalade jar by the telephone for a pen that still had ink, and began her list.
“Your asparagus is up,” Amelia said. “My neighbor in San Francisco, Alvida Jones, gave me a delicious recipe for asparagus soup. Would you like that for supper?”
“Perfect,” said Victoria, thinking about her list of suspects rather than supper.
Amelia went out to the asparagus bed, and a short time later returned with a basket of the tender spears and busied herself in the kitchen.
First, Victoria wrote on her list, she’d need to talk with the person who knew LeRoy Watts best, and that was Sarah, his wife. She needed to visit the widow again to see how she was faring, and do that right away.
She’d have to talk to Sarah’s sister Jackie again. Sarah’s and Jackie’s feelings toward each other seemed to go beyond normal sibling rivalry into something quite nasty. Had Jackie trifled with her brother-in-law?
She added Jim Weiss to the list. She couldn’t begin to imagine how he must feel. His wife dead and his only daughter, sixteen years old, so humiliated. How difficult it was to be sixteen.
Then there were the several women she’d recognized in the shower videos. Someone needed to talk with them, and she would be the logical, least intimidating choice to do the interviews. She’d want to know how the women had reacted to that violation of their privacy.
Of course she’d talk to the five knitters who’d received the phone calls. All of them, Victoria, too, had assumed Jerry Sparks was the culprit until they’d found his body. Victoria shuddered at the remembered stench.
Going back to the death of Jerry Sparks. He was Emily Cameron’s first love, her first real man friend. She had every reason to believe LeRoy Watts had killed him. How would she have reacted? Victoria underlined her name on her list of people to interview.
There was Jerry’s landlady. Victoria had no reason to suspect Mrs. Rudge of murder, but she might provide some small clue, some inkling of what might have happened to Jerry.
She added to the bottom of her list, “How can we prove that Jerry Sparks was killed with LeRoy Watts’s Taser? Marks on his body? His clothing?”
Amelia came back from the kitchen, where she’d loaded the dishwasher. “How’s the list coming along?”
Victoria pushed her chair back and reached for the telephone. “I’ve got enough to get me started.”
Victoria dialed the police station, got a busy signal, and hung up. “Casey and I need to make another condolence call on the widow.”
“The poor woman,” said Amelia. “I can’t imagine what it must be like for your husband to be murdered, then find out he was spying on half the young women in town, and have two nine-year-olds to raise.” She wiped the tile counter with a damp cloth and hung it on the towel rack. “Think of how it must feel, trying to keep their daddy’s memory alive without letting them know what a louse he was.”
“I don’t envy her,” said Victoria. She got to her feet. “I haven’t been able to get through to Casey. It’s a lovely morning, so I think I’ll walk to the police station. Will you be all right while I’m gone?”
“I’ll be fine. Elizabeth left her car for me to use, and I thought I’d go into Edgartown to shop.” Amelia gathered up her purse and shrugged into her traveling jacket. “Let me give you a ride to the station house.”
“No, thanks. I can use the exercise.”
“Are you sure? It’s quite a long ways.”
“I enjoy the walk.”
After Amelia left, Victoria went to the basket of stale bread she kept next to the stove for the ducks that gathered around the station house. She emptied the bread into a paper bag, slipped on her blue coat, gathered up her cloth bag and lilac-wood walking stick, and hiked to the police station.
“It’s only a quarter of a mile,” she said out loud for no one at all to hear.
For weeks, whenever Victoria walked to the station, she’d watched the coming of spring. It had been unusually cool and long drawn out. First, the patch of old-fashioned double daffodils poked their pointed green shoots through the earth, produced fat buds, then burst into sunny bloom. The daffodils had escaped from Mabel Johnson’s garden years ago and established themselves by the side of the road. The flowers had faded, and now Victoria breathed in the scent of full-blown spring. Lilacs, apple blossoms, and new leaves. She walked briskly, keeping in mind someone had told her not long ago that she walked like a ten-year-old. Occasionally she’d stop to catch her breath, using, to herself, the excuse that she wanted to smell the new-mown grass, wafted to her great nose by a wandering breeze.
At the parking area in front of the police station, Victoria emptied stale bread out of her paper bag onto the grass. Ducks fluttered up from the Mill Pond as she shook out the last few crumbs, folded up the paper bag, and put it back into her cloth bag. Then she climbed the steps to the police station.
Casey looked up from her computer. “Morning, Victoria. What’s up?”
Victoria unbuttoned her coat and seated herself in the wooden armchair in front of Casey’s desk. “Since we last talked, has there been any progress on the LeRoy Watts murder case?”
Casey turned away from the computer to face her deputy. “It’s too soon. Do you have any thoughts?”
“Earlier today, Myrna Luce asked me to meet at her law office with the five women from the knitters’ group who’d formed a posse to go after Jerry Sparks.”
“Hoping to teach him a lesson. Yeah.” Casey picked up the beach-stone paperweight that held down her papers. She ran her hand over the sea-smoothed surface of the stone.
“But Jerry Sparks wasn’t the breather.”
“Nor did he make the shower-scene videos.” Casey straightened her papers and put the stone back on top. “I can’t believe all the paperwork we have to fill out for every little complaint. Kids throwing green apples at cars. Paperwork. Junior Norton told me his father used to take the kids out behind the police station and smack them one, and that took care of it. I can’t even yell at the kids.”
Victoria nodded sympathetically. “Each of the five women insists she killed LeRoy.”
“What?”
Victoria nodded.
“Where did you hear that?”
“They’d asked Myrna to represent them as a group.”
“That’s not legal.”
“That’s what Myrna said. She told them she’d be glad to give them advice, but because of ethical—and legal—considerations, she couldn’t represent them.”
“So then Myrna called you.” Casey smiled.
“Yes. Since I’d already spoken to Myrna before the five showed up at her office, she called me.”
Casey picked up the stone again and flipped it from one hand to the other.
“I don’t believe for an instant any one of them killed him.” Victoria stood up.
“Doesn’t seem likely, I must say
. Have you checked their alibis?”
“I will. But I’d like to talk to LeRoy’s widow again.”
“The State Police have already questioned her.”
“We’re her neighbors. We ought to stop by and see how she is, ask if she needs anything, find out if her sister is still with her.”
Casey sighed, dropped the stone on top of her papers again, and stood up. “I need a break from the phone and this pesky paperwork, and it’s too nice a day to be indoors. Let’s go.”
CHAPTER 27
Sarah answered their knock, holding her knitting up to her face, not quite covering the bruise on her cheek, which had turned from purple to a yellowish green. The swelling was gone. “Good morning, Mrs. Trumbull. Casey. Come in.”
“How are you?” asked Victoria.
Sarah wobbled her free hand, palm down. “So-so. Can I give you a cup of coffee? I’ve made a fresh pot.”
“It smells good,” said Victoria, feeling already full of tea and gingerbread. She unbuttoned her coat and she and Casey followed Sarah into the kitchen. They sat at the table. Sarah laid down her knitting and brought out mugs.
“Sugar? Cream?”
“Black,” said Victoria.
“Cream and sugar,” said Casey.
Sarah poured, then set the pot back on the coffeemaker. She sat down and picked up her knitting again.
“I see you found the other needle,” said Victoria.
“What?” Sarah looked up and then down at her work. “Oh, yes.” She flushed slightly. “It had fallen between the couch cushions.”
“Does it make a difference in your stitches to use different-size needles?”
“Not too much.” Sarah held up the sweater. Three or four rows seemed slightly looser than the rest, but only with a close look. “After I wash the sweater the first time, it won’t show at all.”
Casey stirred sugar and then more sugar into her coffee. “We stopped by to see if there’s anything we can do for you, Mrs. Watts. Is your sister still here?”
“I told her to leave. She was making things worse.”
“Sisters know how to do that,” said Victoria. “What was her problem?”
Sarah worked one stitch after another before answering. “I don’t know how to say this.”
Victoria waited.
Sarah pressed her lips together tightly.
Victoria waited another moment, then said, “If you’d rather not . . .”
Sarah continued to look down at her work. “Roy installed a video camera in her shower.”
Victoria watched her closely. “Oh?”
“He did some electrical work for her a couple of months ago.”
“How did she discover the camera?”
Sarah sighed before she answered. “Jackie’s new boyfriend found it, or so she said. She thought at first he’d installed it as a joke.”
“But he didn’t,” said Victoria.
“No, he didn’t install it. Roy did.”
“You’re sure?” asked Victoria.
“The minute Jackie showed me the camera, I knew it was Roy. When I think how long we were married . . .”
Victoria and Casey glanced at each other.
“Jackie never liked Roy,” Sarah said. “I know I shouldn’t rat on my sister, but I can’t help feeling . . .”
“Feeling what?” Victoria asked.
“Well, it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if she’d killed him. She was always flirting with him, trying to make me jealous. One of her favorite tricks.” Sarah concentrated on her work. “She’s spoiled. Has to have her way. That video Roy took of her taking a shower was the last straw. He refused to pay any attention to her, but all the time he was secretly ogling her in her shower.”
Casey shifted position and the equipment on her tool belt rattled.
“I trusted Roy. I was so sure of him. He was always a decent guy. Only lately . . .” She jabbed a needle into the next stitch.
“Had he been acting different lately?”
Sarah twisted yarn around a needle, hooked it with the other needle, and slipped the stitch off. “Some woman’s been calling him. If I answer, she hangs up.”
“Someone from his past?” asked Victoria.
“I didn’t think so. Now I wonder.”
“Has she ever threatened him?” asked Casey.
“She never says anything. Sometimes she mumbles his name. I’ve never really heard her voice except for the first time, when she asked for him.”
“How long ago did she start calling him?”
Sarah thought for a while. “It may have been a year ago. Just one call when she asked for him, and I didn’t think anything of it.” She knit three or four stitches before going on. “A couple of months later, she called again, just said ‘Roy?’ when I answered, and hung up. I recognized the voice, distinctive, tinny-sounding, as if she was disguising it. Lately, she’d been calling a couple of times a week.”
“That must have been aggravating,” said Victoria.
“It was. But Roy said it wouldn’t do any good to report it to the telephone company or the police.” She laughed bitterly. “I guess he knew, didn’t he?”
“It’s ironic that he was being stalked,” Victoria agreed, then changed the subject, trying to lighten things up a bit. “I’d always liked having a man named Watts as my electrician.”
“That was his idea, Mrs. Trumbull. His family name was something long and unpronounceable. When he was in college he decided he’d go into business for himself, and changed it to a name customers would recognize that would look good on his trucks.”
Casey asked, “How did your sister happen to tell you about the camera?”
“Before Roy . . . A couple of days ago . . . Well, the day the boys got into trouble for taking that Taser to school, Jackie came over and tossed this video camera onto the table. I knew right away what it was.” Sarah knit fiercely. “Emily Cameron had come by on Sunday, the day before.”
Victoria leaned forward and set her elbows on the table. “Emily was Jerry Sparks’s girlfriend.”
“Jerry had disappeared. Emily hadn’t seen him for several days and she was worried. She baby-sat for us occasionally.”
“When I saw her at the boatyard a week ago, she was excited about her boyfriend.” Victoria sat back again. “She and Jerry were to celebrate their three weeks of being together that day.”
“The day she came here, she thought Jerry had left her. He’d left a couple of DVDs in her apartment—for safekeeping, he said—and told her to hold onto them for him. The DVDs had Roy’s name on them, so she brought them to me. I had a feeling she was clearing his stuff out of her apartment.”
“We saw the videos,” said Victoria.
“I suppose now the entire Island knows about my husband and his little hobby.” Sarah looked up from her knitting, her eyes magnified by unshed tears. “How could he have done this to me? To me and my boys?”
“Well, what do you think, Victoria?” Casey asked when they were on their way back to the police station. “LeRoy Watts wasn’t LeRoy Watts after all, and his widow is not exactly prostrate with grief.”
“The reality of her husband’s death hasn’t hit her yet. Right now, she’s angry that he’s left her in a mess with two boys to raise.”
“I notice she said ‘my boys.’ Cutting LeRoy out of the family already.” Casey parked in front of the station house and they went around to the side and up the steps. Junior Norton was at his desk, filling out paperwork.
“Afternoon, Mrs. Trumbull. You got a call from your daughter.” He handed her a pink message slip.
“Did she say what she wanted?”
Junior leaned his chair back on two legs and folded his arms. “She said she was worried about you.”
Casey laughed. “How long is Amelia going to be here?”
“Too long, I’m afraid,” sniffed Victoria.
“Have you thought about involving her in some community activity? The library or the arboretum?”
&
nbsp; “I don’t want her to settle here permanently.”
“She has a job out west, doesn’t she? California?” asked Junior.
“She’s a consultant,” said Victoria. “She’s a retired petroleum geologist and can work anywhere as long as she has her computer and her cell phone.”
Junior set his chair down. “She still married?”
“Divorced,” said Victoria.
“What about—”
“If you’re about to suggest we find a romantic interest for her,” Victoria said, “don’t. She’s off men at the moment. She recently broke up with her longtime live-in gentleman friend.”
“Bill O’Malley, your truck driver friend, is about her age, isn’t he?” asked Junior.
“He must be twenty years younger, and I believe he’s interested in Elizabeth. In fact, he’s coming to dinner tomorrow night.”
Junior shook his head. “He’s too old for Elizabeth.”
The phone rang. Junior picked it up. “West Tisbury Police, Sergeant Norton speaking.” He listened, looked up at Victoria, and grinned. “Yes, ma’am, she just came in.” He put his hand over the mouthpiece and handed the phone to Victoria. “Your daughter.”
Victoria frowned. “Hello!”
“Mother, where have you been? I’ve had lunch waiting for you for hours. I’ve been worried about you!”
Victoria felt her face flush. “Amelia,” she interrupted, “I’m busy. I’m dealing with two murders. I’ll be home when I get there. Go ahead and eat your lunch. Don’t wait for me,” and she handed the telephone back to Junior, who hung it up with a grin.
Casey and her sergeant watched Victoria with amused expressions, which didn’t help Victoria’s growing irritation. She settled back in her chair, arms tightly folded, her mouth a firm line.
“O’Malley’s not married,” said Junior, fanning the flames.
“Amelia doesn’t understand why I associate with a dump truck driver.”
“Did you tell her he’s not exactly poor?”
“Bill O’Malley didn’t help, with his good ole boy impersonation.”
“He’s interested,” said Junior. “Likes a challenge. How many wives has he had? Three or four at least.”
Touch-Me-Not Page 16