The Murder of Twelve

by Jessica Fletcher

  Booth leaned forward, stretching himself toward a microphone that wasn’t there. “To tell you the truth, Evelyn, the first I heard of the likelihood of power outages was just now, just like everybody else. But I’ll get right on it,” he said, the look on his face telling me he had no idea who to call to make such arrangements.

  Evelyn wasn’t finished yet. “And what happens with evacuations if the plows can’t keep up with the snow enough for the emergency vehicles to be able to traverse the roads? The latest forecast, as you know, Mayor Sam, is predicting snowfall rates of up to four, even five, inches per hour overnight.”

  It was clear from Booth’s expression that he hadn’t known that either until Evelyn informed him. Fortunately, Mort was there to save the day.

  “Chief Mann and I are coordinating to have a fleet of snowmobiles, driven by our personnel and local volunteers, available if they become needed for reaching anyone in need or distress.”

  “So long as you’ve got the floor, Sheriff Metzger, why don’t you keep it?” Mayor Sam suggested, eager to relinquish that floor as much as possible.

  “Not a lot to say from the Sheriff’s Department’s perspective. We’ll be coordinating all rescue and service efforts with Chief Mann’s people, along with the snow removal teams. We’re going to set up a kind of central command in our squad room, where the town’s emergency command-and-control machines are located, to monitor weather, traffic, and a grid map detailing the state of every street in Cabot Cove. My deputies are setting it up right now, and we’re also making sure the town’s six propane-fueled emergency generators are ready to go.”

  Mayor Sam nodded again, starting to look overly pleased with himself. “Another perfect transition to Ethan,” he said, turning toward my fisherman friend. “What says the head of the snowplow force?”

  Ethan rose from his chair before answering. He knew this town better than anyone else and loathed the change forced upon us by the outside world, especially in summer months. He personally hadn’t changed much in all the years we’d known each other. Sure, his thick hair had gradually gone from black to gray, and he was showing more lines and furrows dug out of his face from all those years at sea. But he had the same rugged build and the strongest hands of any man I’d ever known, scarred and calloused thanks to hoisting fishing nets from the water for so long.

  “I’ve been coordinating with Public Works,” Ethan started, after clearing his throat, “both local and state, to assure we don’t overlap plowing territory. And I’ve brought on twelve additional plow trucks to supplement the two the town owns, which is eight more than usual,” he said, looking toward Mayor Sam. “I’m as confident as it gets that we’re ready for anything.”

  Mayor Sam flashed his trademark nod, which looked like that of a marionette controlled by someone pulling its strings. “Which brings us to Seth Hazlitt. What have you got for us, Doc?”

  “I don’t even know what I’m doing here, tell you the truth,” Seth said, pushing his chair under the table with an annoying squeal. “But I have checked in with the hospital and can reassure folks that they’re fully staffed and will remain so through the duration of the storm. I wasn’t there when they tested their backup generator system, but I was assured everything checked out just fine and dandy.” A scowl spread over Seth’s face that reminded me of what he looked like when he bit into a boysenberry pie he’d been served in accidental place of his customary strawberry rhubarb. “I’ll be waiting out the storm in the confines of my trusty home, where anyone with a phone can reach me. Pretty much everybody already has my number, but I added it to the listings on that Emergency Response page that pops up when you click on the town’s website. I’ve also put myself in charge of making sure all emergency responders are properly fed and am pleased to report that Mara is cooking up a storm of sandwiches, salads, and those famous cookies as we speak. I’ve also arranged to have a bunch of those cardboard boxes filled with coffee on hand at all gathering sites, and you’ll be pleased to hear that this time I remembered the cream and sugar, ayuh.”

  A fresh chuckle lifted through the crowd. Seth was referring to a similar emergency situation a few years back, when a late-season hurricane came barreling up the Maine coast. People didn’t have a lot to complain about in terms of preparation for that, so they harped on the fact that first responders and those seeking shelter had to drink their coffee black.

  “But as a doctor who’s practiced in Cabot Cove for going on thirty-five years now, I’ve got some advice for those of you over fifty.” Seth pushed his chair back and rose to stretch himself across the table, closer to the audience. “Throw out your snow shovel. At least chain it to a wall with a lock you don’t have the combination for. Fact is, research shows a sharp spike of hospital admissions for heart problems two days after storms far less severe than the one about to bear down on us. Why two days, you ask? Because the afflicted can’t get to the hospital the day of the storm. Any questions?”

  When no one raised their hands, Seth sat back down and crossed his arms. He met my gaze and winked. I nodded, not bothering to hide how impressed I was. Once Seth had finished, Dick Mann looked up from checking his phone and whispered something into Mayor Sam’s ear.

  “The chief tells me,” he started, “that we’re now looking at three feet for starters, and any hope of the storm going out to sea is out the window. We’re going to stay here for a time to take any questions you may want to pose individually. But the most important thing right now is for everyone to go home, check your emergency procedures, and batten down the hatches. Once this thing intensifies, nobody’s going to be able to get anywhere for a while, but rest assured, in an emergency we will be prepared to come to you.”

  Now it was Mort checking his phone, shaking his head with a look that told me something else had just come up. At first, I figured it must have something to do with the murder of Private Detective Loomis Winslow out of Boston. As he stepped down off the dais and approached me, though, I could tell it was something else.

  “I’m needed somewhere, Mrs. F. I can drop you off at Hill House on the way.”

  I had risen to my feet, but I made no move to accompany him down the aisle. “And what does this ‘somewhere’ entail?”

  “Nothing that concerns you.” He glanced out the row of windows that dominated an entire wall. “Storm’s picking up. We’d better get you settled so I can check on Adele before I hunker down at the station, maybe set up a hooch just like I did in Vietnam.”

  “You can drop me off after you check on Adele,” I said, referring to Mort’s wife. “Be nice to say hello to her anyway. And I could keep you company.”

  “Where?”

  “Wherever you’re going.”

  “No murder this time, Mrs. F.”

  “I could tell that from the look on your face, just as I could tell it’s still something that could use my attention. Care to give me a hint?”

  “How about something else that makes no sense?”

  Chapter Four

  Anything more on Loomis Winslow?” I asked Mort, as we trudged through the biting winds and the initial fall of snow toward his Sheriff’s Department SUV.

  “Not a peep. Nobody in law enforcement down in Boston is focusing on anything but the storm hammering them. Forecast there just got upped to eighteen to twenty-four inches.”

  “We’ll be lucky if that ends up the case here, Mort.”

  There were two inches on the ground already and the snow was piling up fast. Looking up at the sky was like staring into a dark abyss. And this, we’d been warned, was just the beginning. The dueling fronts predicted to form a meteorological bomb hadn’t even joined up yet. Call this the preliminary match before the Maine event.

  The snow had actually slowed to a mere flurry as we set out through town toward where Route 38 dumped cars onto an access road just short of the WELCOME TO CABOT COVE sign. That sign appeared in distant view
down the long straightaway as we came upon a fancy SUV parked on the shoulder but on an angle that left its tail end in the roadway, both its front doors open. A Cabot Cove deputy’s vehicle parked behind the abandoned SUV had its lights flashing to warn drivers coming in either direction.

  “Passing motorist called it in, Sheriff,” the deputy, whose name I couldn’t recall, told Mort after we’d hopped out of his SUV.

  I used to know all the Cabot Cove deputies by name, but now Mort kept a complement of fifteen on even during the winter months to avoid having to staff up with too many part-timers during the summer. Officers looking for a summer gig like that were usually available because they were either retired or lacking in experience, both a bad fit for overseeing the hustle and bustle of what had become a typical Cabot Cove summer.

  “You got a time for me, Jack?” Mort asked him.

  “I got the call at one seventeen sharp, so I’m guessing a couple minutes before that.”

  Mort approached the abandoned Lexus and peered at its front seat through the open passenger-side door. “In other words, this couldn’t have happened all that long ago.”

  As he said that, my gaze instinctively went in search of footprints in the freshly fallen snow, but there was nothing. I held the hood of my parka up over my face against the determined attempts of the wind to blow it off and eased closer to the shoulder to see if I could detect any tracks there.

  “Careful, Mrs. F.,” Mort warned. “You don’t want to become this storm’s first casualty.”

  I backed off, having seen enough to know there were no footprints there either.

  “Thirty minutes,” I said, drawing even with Mort and his deputy.

  Fighting the wind for even that brief distance left me huffing for breath and picturing those rope lines people use to guide their way outside in the worst wintry places. Plenty had perished when their gloves slipped off that line and they couldn’t locate it again. The old cliché that you couldn’t see the hand in front of your face applied perfectly in this case.

  “Thirty minutes what, Mrs. F.?”

  “The skies opened up for a time then, while we were still at the meeting. Dumped those couple inches we drove through to get here, enough to cover any tracks that may have been there before.”

  Mort’s gaze moved to the shoulder where I’d been standing, looking down at the drop that leveled off into the woods that rimmed the access road. “Long time for a vehicle abandoned like this to go unreported.”

  “Up until a few minutes ago, the snow was coming down too hard for drivers to pay attention to much else besides the road before them. Maybe twenty-five minutes instead of thirty—twenty even.”

  Mort stepped aside and gestured dramatically for me to take his place peering into the vehicle. “Then, by all means, tell me if you can see something I’m missing.”

  There was nothing. The interior of the SUV smelled fresh and new, and the black leather seats were so shiny I thought I might be able to spot my reflection in them. Having never driven, I’m not good at judging the relative merits of vehicles, but one thing I’m pretty sure of is that all these newfangled extras, confusing controls, and touch screens would drive me crazy. I could picture my late husband, Frank, saying we got along just fine without any of that, and in my mind, the more a car could do for its driver, the less its driver paid attention to what they should be doing themselves.

  The Lexus had been outfitted with tailored winter floor mats embossed with the luxury brand’s logo. I stretched my hand inside the passenger side, removing my glove to touch the mat there with a fingertip. It came away damp, and on closer inspection I could see darkened wet patches where snow carried in by the shoe tread of whoever had been in the passenger seat had left its mark.

  I was about to stop my inspection there when, on a whim, I moved to the rear passenger-side door and asked Mort to open it since he was wearing evidence gloves and I wasn’t. The wind caught the door and blew it the rest of the way, taking every bit the hinges would give and nearly knocking Mort off his feet.

  “You plan that gust, Jessica?”

  “So I’m ‘Jessica’ now?”

  “Yup, because Mrs. F. would never do such a thing.”

  “In that case, Mrs. F. thinks you should have a look inside here.”

  Mort drew even with me and squinted, whistling when he saw the same thing I had.

  “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you planted it there to get a rise out of me,” he said, peering backward my way.

  “That’s right. I snuck a handful of gravel from the parking lot of that old mill and dumped it on that backseat floor mat when you weren’t looking.”

  And now we were both looking at a splatter of gravel, present only on the passenger side of the backseat, that seemed identical to what had been caked in the tread of Loomis Winslow’s shoes. Something also occurred to me about how the positioning of the seat itself hid a portion of the floor mat from view, but I couldn’t quite grasp the thought and I let it go.

  “I need to tell you what this means, Mort?”

  “Why don’t you, while I’m still trying to clear my head from you whacking me with a car door?”

  “It barely grazed you.”

  “You were saying, Mrs. F. . . .”

  “Someone who’d been at the old Cabot Manufacturing Company was riding in the backseat. Since there’s no trace of the same gravel on the mats in the front seat, it’s a safe bet the driver and passenger weren’t there with them. And, since there’s no gravel or melted snow on the backseat driver’s side, we’re looking at the driver and two passengers currently missing from the scene.”

  “Since you’re on such a roll, how about telling me what happened to those three, at least the two who were riding up front?”

  I looked about through the storm, which had begun to intensify again. “I have no idea, but the next question is obvious.”

  “What made two people flee their vehicle into a snowstorm and not even bother to close the doors behind them?”

  “Must’ve been in a hurry, Sheriff,” the deputy Mort had called Jack put forth. “Maybe they were being chased.”

  “Or following instructions, orders,” I said as the thought occurred to me.

  “By whoever was in the backseat.” Mort nodded.

  “Something to consider.”

  “Except that gravel could have been left in the backseat yesterday, the day before, or even last week.”

  “Pennsylvania plates, Mort,” I noted. “That would seem to eliminate anything but today or, maybe, yesterday. And the darkened wet patches of rubber around the gravel makes it clear whoever was in the backseat was in it today, and recently, to boot.”

  Making up a clue like this in one of my books and discerning one in the real world were really the same thing . . . only different. Different because I try to stay one step ahead of my readers, while in moments like this I always feel a step behind. The same because such clues help me get a sense of a bigger picture, first blurry and then crystal clear. And what was starting to clarify in my mind here, what I was starting to picture, was whoever had been in the front seat fleeing whoever had been in the back. That would explain their doors being left open. Had the occupant of the backseat followed them into the woods, across the road, or down it? That part of the picture was still blurry.

  “Any chance we can search the woods, Mort?” I posed.

  “Asks the lady who must’ve forgot we’re about to be hit by the biggest blizzard in the state’s history. ‘So, how am I supposed to round up the manpower?’ asks the beleaguered sheriff who retired in the murder capital of America.”

  “Have you ever thought of becoming a writer, Sheriff?”

  Mort winked at Deputy Jack and suppressed a smile when he looked back my way. “No. Have you?”

  I felt my phone vibrating in the pocket of my parka, the ring muf
fled by all that insulation. Smartphones have gotten too big to maneuver easily even without gloves on, so I retreated to Mort’s SUV in the hope it was Harry McGraw calling with something to tell me, hopefully about Loomis Winslow.

  “How’s the storm treating you, little lady?” he greeted, as soon as I answered.

  * * *

  * * *

  I got the door closed and the hood of my parka yanked down in order to continue the conversation. The light coating of snow that had speckled my coat had already melted, freckling it down the front. I unzipped the jacket and settled into the passenger seat as comfortably as I could, while Mort continued his inspection of the abandoned vehicle.

  “Worse is coming fast, Harry,” I told him.

  “You sound out of breath. Please tell me you’re not with Mort at another crime scene.”

  “I’m not with Mort at another crime scene.”

  “You’re lying, Jess.”

  “You told me to tell you I’m not.”

  He uttered a sound like a growl. “Well, I’ve got some things to tell you about the late private investigator you found. I did some checking, asked around a bit, even studied the man’s website, which makes mine look good.”

  “You don’t have a website.”

  “Precisely my point. Okay, so I can’t tell you what case brought Winslow to Cabot Cove, but I can provide a notion as to where his particular areas of investigative expertise lay.”

  I realized how cold it was in the SUV without the heater running. Nothing I could do about that, since Mort had taken the keys with him.

  “I’m listening, Harry.”

  “Loomis Winslow, by all indications, was more of a behind-the-scenes guy. You know, forensic-type stuff.”

  “Assume that I don’t know.”

  “Private investigative work tends to run the gamut from divorces, detailed background checks, active crime investigation, to more wet-oriented work, as in personal protection or bodyguard services. Loomis Winslow’s specialty was none of these. He was the kind of PI you hire when you have reason to suspect financial malfeasance, either business or personal. Somebody close to you stealing from you. You can’t believe it’s happening, and you don’t want to report a friend or family member to the police, so you hire someone like Winslow to dig around and find out if your suspicions are well founded or not. It sounds easy, but this kind of financial scheme or scam tends to be quite complicated with all kinds of layers. I ever tell you I represented a few of those bilked by none other than Bernie Madoff?”