Murder, with Peacocks

by Donna Andrews

  “Does he think something could have happened to her?” I asked. Trying hard not to sound too hopeful.

  “Goodness, I hope not,” Mother said. “I think perhaps he’s worried that she may have gotten a little vexed at his leaving her alone all day yesterday. While he and I did all our little errands.”

  “Maybe he’s right. She is supposed to be his houseguest.”

  “Yes, but good heavens, half the neighbors had invited her to visit them or offered to take her places. Your father even came out early to take her bird-watching and she never showed up.”

  “Well, let’s call some of the neighbors and see if anyone has seen her.”

  We called all the neighbors. No one had seen Mrs. Grover. I went over and searched Jake’s yard and the small woods in back of it, in case she’d fallen, broken her hip, and been unable to move, as had happened to an elderly neighbor the previous year. No Mrs. Grover. We braved the dust of the attic and the damp of the cellar to see if she might have been overcome by illness while indulging in a bit of household snooping. Still no Mrs. Grover. There were dishes in the sink and half a cup of cold coffee on the bedside table in her room that Jake didn’t think had been there when he left yesterday morning, but he couldn’t be sure. She had left three suitcases and quite a lot of clothes, but there was no way we could tell if anything was missing. I was quietly amused by the number of small but valuable household items that seemed to have found their way into her suitcases. Things she considered part of her rightful inheritance from the late Emma Wendell, I supposed. Having met the woman, I could easily believe that she would storm off and leave Jake to have fits worrying about her. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t have gotten ill or had an accident. And I privately doubted that she would have gone off, even temporarily, and left all her loot behind where Jake could reclaim it.

  While we were searching, the sheriff turned up at Jake’s house. It was rather unsettling; the sheriff was a cousin, and dropped by quite a lot, but usually his conversations with Mother revolved around family gossip, not police procedures.

  “We’re going to list her as officially missing first thing in the morning,” he announced.

  “Anything could happen between now and then,” Jake said.

  “Frankly, I decided not to wait to start checking around,” the sheriff assured him. “She’s not in any of the local hospitals or morgues, and there are no Jane Does remotely fitting her description. She can’t have taken a plane or train or bus; none of them have a credit card transaction in her name and these days the ticket agents tend to remember anyone who pays in cash. I got in touch with the police department down in Fort Lauderdale, and they’ll let me know if she shows up at home. We could try to get some dogs in here to try to track her in case she’s … wandered off and lying ill someplace.”

  “I’d appreciate that,” Jake said. “I only hope I’m not putting you to all this trouble for nothing. I mean, I’d feel terrible if she just showed up tomorrow and we find out that she forgot to tell me she was going to visit some friend who lives down here. It just has to be some kind of silly mix-up like that, doesn’t it?”

  He looked hopefully up at the sheriff.

  “That’s very probable, Mr. Wendell, but I’d feel terrible if we didn’t do everything we could to make sure she’s all right,” the sheriff replied in the earnest tones he usually reserves for the election season. “If you hear from her, you let us know straight away, you hear? And we’ll call you the minute we find out something.”

  I spent most of the rest of the day trying to do a few wedding-related chores in between fielding phone calls about Mrs. Grover, helping coordinate the search for Mrs. Grover, and reassuring an increasingly anxious Jake that I was sure nothing serious had happened to Mrs. Grover.

  “I certainly hope she really is all right,” I told Dad as we sat on the porch after dinner. “She’s totally wrecked my week’s schedule and probably taken ten years off Jake’s life, the way he’s worrying, but I will feel guilty about resenting it all until I know she’s all right.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I feel mildly guilty for all the little pranks I was planning to play on her.”

  “Let’s resolve to be especially nice to her when she shows up again,” I said.

  “Agreed,” said Dad. “No more little pranks.”

  Thursday, June 2

  I WOKE UP EARLY, COULDN’T GET BACK TO SLEEP FOR WONDERING if anyone had heard from Mrs. Grover, and finally gave up and came down for breakfast.

  “Any news of Mrs. Grover?” I asked.

  “No, but Eileen called,” Mother said.

  “Make my day; tell me she’s coming home to pick out a dress.”

  “No, she and Steven are staying over at Cape May,” Mother said. “Such a nice place for a honeymoon.”

  “Yes, but they’re not honeymooning yet. Or ever will be, if she doesn’t get down here to pick out a dress.”

  “There’s still time, dear. Why don’t you fix us a nice omelet?”

  We heard a knock and saw Michael’s face at the back door.

  “Have you seen Spike?” he asked, slightly breathless. “You know, Mom’s dog?”

  “No,” I said. “Damn, we don’t need any more disappearances.”

  “If you see him running around loose, just give him a wide berth and call me,” Michael said. “He’s not really vicious, just terminally irritable.”

  “You might try going down to the beach,” I said, following him out. “Dogs always seem to like that. Lots of smelly seaweed and dead fish to wallow in.”

  “Your nephew and your father suggested that,” he said. “Searching the beach for Spike, that is, not wallowing there. They went down to look.”

  “Or wallow, knowing Dad and Eric.”

  Just then we saw Eric running toward us.

  “Maybe you’re in luck,” I said.

  “Meg!” Eric called, running up to us. “We found something down on the beach! I think it’s a dead animal. Grandpa’s down looking at it!” He ran over to the edge of the bluff and teetered there, pointing down.

  “Stay away from the edge!” I shouted, grabbing for him. “You know it’s not safe. It could cave in.”

  “Come see, Meg!” Eric pleaded.

  “We’d better go,” I told Michael. “We may have to carry Dad up the ladder.”

  “Ladder?” Michael said.

  “It’s a shortcut down to the beach,” I explained over my shoulder as Eric tugged me along by the hand to the next-door neighbors’ yard. “Most people go down to the Donleavys’ house. They have an easy path down to the beach. But Dad likes to go down this rather precarious series of ladders our neighbor built straight down the side of the bluff to his dock.

  “Dad!” I called as we reached the top of the ladder. “Do you need us for anything?”

  “You keep the kids back, Meg,” Dad called up.

  “There’s only Eric.”

  “Just keep him back, you hear?” Dad repeated, sounding anxious.

  “Go on back to the house and see if your grandmother has the cookies ready,” I told Eric, who trotted off eagerly.

  “Is she baking cookies?” Michael asked, with interest.

  “Mother? It’s extremely unlikely. But by the time she convinces Eric of that, he’ll have forgotten all about whatever it is Dad doesn’t want him to see. It’s very odd; I wonder why he’s so worried about keeping the grandkids away.”

  “Surely he wouldn’t want them to see a dead animal.”

  “I don’t see why not. He was always dragging Pam and Rob and me to see dead animals and using them for little impromptu biology lessons. He does it all the time with the grandkids. Unless it’s one of their animals, of course; even Dad has more sense than to do that. Oh, I hope it’s not Duck; he wasn’t following Eric.”

  “Or Spike,” Michael said. “Mom would have a fit.”

  “Meg,” Dad shouted up. “Who else is that with you?”

  “Michael,” I shouted back. “We sent
Eric back to the house.”

  “Good!” said Dad. “Michael, would you mind climbing down here for a minute?” Michael shrugged and started down the ladder. A little too quickly.

  “Take it slow!” I said. “That’s an old ladder; there are a few rungs missing, and a few more will be very soon if you aren’t careful.”

  “Right,” he said, and continued at an excessively cautious pace. I stood at the top of the ladder peering down, rather idiotically, since the bushes were too thick for me to see anything. I could hear Dad and Michael talking in hushed tones.

  “Meg,” Dad called up. “We’ve found Mrs. Grover. Go call the sheriff.”

  “The sheriff,” I repeated. “Right. And an ambulance?”

  “Yes, not that they need to rush or anything,” Michael said.

  “And tell him to come prepared,” Dad added. “There are some rather suspicious circumstances.”

  “Oh, dear,” Mother said, after eavesdropping shamelessly on my conversation with the sheriff. “Poor Mrs. Grover. And here we all were so irritated because we thought she’d disappeared on purpose to annoy us. I suppose it should be a lesson to us.”

  I felt rather guilty about the uncharitable thoughts I’d had about Mrs. Grover—now, presumably, the late Mrs. Grover. But while I felt very sorry indeed for her, I couldn’t help thinking that if she was going to die under suspicious circumstances, she couldn’t have picked a better place to do it.

  Of course, having met her, I felt sure that she’d have made every effort to die elsewhere if she’d had any idea of the deep personal and professional satisfaction a mystery buff like Dad would feel at the prospect of helping investigate her death.

  Dad examined the body, both on the scene and again at the morgue, once the coroner had arrived from the county seat. He kept trying to discuss the findings at the dinner table and was sternly and repeatedly repressed. I could understand it in Jake’s case; he wasn’t used to Dad, and it was, after all, his sister-in-law. But I found it hard to see how Mother and Rob could still be so squeamish after years of living with Dad.

  Rob and Jake fled after dinner, and Pam and Eric joined us for dessert, and Dad was at last able to discuss what Mother was already referring to as “your father’s case.”

  “And just what is that in English?” Pam queried, after Dad had given a detailed, polysyllabic description of Mrs. Grover’s injuries.

  “There was no water in her lungs, so she didn’t drown,” I translated. “She had a fracture on the left rear side of the top of her skull, apparently from a rounded object; she died within minutes of the fracture; and the way the blood settled in her limbs indicated she may have been moved after death. Right?” I asked.

  “Very good, Meg,” Dad said. “Of course, the moving may have been due to being washed about in the water; hard to tell yet whether it’s significant. And they’ll have to do more tests to determine the precise interval between the fracture and her death; that’s just my estimate. Incidentally, I estimate the time of death as sometime during the day on Tuesday, but, again, the medical examiner’s office will be able to tell more accurately. An examination of the contents of the stomach and the digestive tract as well as—”

  “James,” Mother warned.

  “Well, anyway, they’ll be able to tell,” Dad went on, unabashed. “But there’s one more important thing about the fracture.”

  “What’s that?” I said.

  “Consider the location and angle,” Dad said. Pam and Mother frowned in puzzlement. I fingered my own skull with one hand, recalling Dad’s description.

  “You think it’s homicide,” I said.

  Dad nodded with approval.

  “Homicide? Why?” Pam demanded.

  Dad looked expectantly at me.

  “Try to visualize it,” I said. “The fracture was on the top of her skull. It’s a little hard to figure out how she could do that falling. Unless she fell while trying to stand on her head. Sounds more like what would result if someone hit her on the head with a golf club or something.”

  “She fell off the cliff,” Pam said. “If she was falling head over heels, couldn’t she have landed smack on her head?”

  “From forty feet up? It would have been like dropping a melon on—”

  “James!” Mother exclaimed.

  “Well, it would have,” Dad protested. “Consider the velocity of a straight fall. She would have sustained far more extensive injuries, particularly to the cranium if that’s where she landed. And if her fall was broken one or more times by the underbrush or by intermediate landings, why were there no significant abrasions or contusions elsewhere on the body? No torn clothing, no leaves or twigs caught in her hair or clothes? I don’t believe she fell from that cliff, before or after her death,” he stated firmly. “I believe she was murdered and then left on the beach. The sheriff may not realize it yet, but I do. And I’m going to do my damnedest to prove it.”

  Well, at least someone was happy. I went to bed trying to fight off the uncharitable thought that thanks to Mrs. Grover’s inconveniently turning up dead almost in our backyard, I was now yet another day behind in my schedule. And I had no doubt further interruptions would be coming thick and fast.

  Friday, June 3

  EITHER THE SHERIFF HAD COME AROUND TO DAD’S WAY OF THINKING or he was taking no chances that Dad might be right. When I woke up the next day, the bluffs were swarming with deputies. Well, six of them, anyway, which was a swarm by local standards, being exactly half of the law enforcement officers available in the county. They were searching the beach and the top of the bluff, and had even gotten the cherry picker from the county department of public works, which they drove down to the beach and used to search the side of the bluff. About the only thing of interest they’d found was the missing Spike.

  One of the deputies spent several hours and a whole truck-load of Police Line—Do Not Cross tape cordoning off the bluff and the beach for half a mile on either side of where Mrs. Grover’s body was found. Which seemed idiotic until the crowds began showing up.

  Everyone in the neighborhood turned out to watch the excitement, and not a few people from the rest of the county. Mother organized about a dozen neighboring ladies to provide tea, lemonade, and cookies, and the whole thing turned into a combination wake, block party, and family reunion, with Mother holding court on the back porch.

  The only good thing about the gathering was that I met Mrs. Thornhill, the inexpensive calligrapher Mrs. Fenniman had recommended, and turned over Samantha’s invitations and guest list to her. What a nice, motherly woman I thought, as I watched her drive off, her backseat piled high with stationery boxes. Of course Samantha was paying her, but it still felt as if she were doing me a favor by lifting that enormous weight off my shoulders.

  The forces of law and order knocked off at sunset, leaving a lone deputy standing guard. The festivities went on long after dark. About ten o’clock I snuck off to my sister, Pam’s, to sleep.

  Saturday, June 4

  THE SHOW RESUMED AT DAWN, AND SINCE IT WASN’T A WORK day, the crowds were even larger. I pointed out to the sheriff that anyone he might possibly need to interrogate about Mrs. Grover’s death was probably milling about in our yard or the neighbors', rapidly replacing whatever genuine information they might have with the grapevine’s current theory—which seemed to be that Mrs. Grover, arriving early for her appointment with Dad, either fell over the bluff or was coshed on the head and heaved over the edge by a prowling tramp.

  So the sheriff was using our dining room as an interrogation chamber and enthusiastically grilling a random assortment of witnesses, suspects, and fellow travelers. He was concentrating on our whereabouts on May 31, and what we had seen then. Mother and Jake were of no use, of course, since they’d spent the entire day together running errands. I thought it was a very lucky break for Jake that they had. Dad is fond of remarking that in small towns, people tend to kill people they know. The sheriff had heard this often enough to have absorbed it,
and Jake was the only one who really knew Mrs. Grover. And might have had reason to do her in, considering the quarrel I’d overheard. But if her death did turn out to be a homicide, not only Mother but half a dozen sales clerks and waitresses would be able to prove that he hadn’t been within fifteen miles of our neighborhood between 7:00 A.M. and 9:00 P.M.

  The sheriff was particularly interested in the fact that between ten and two-thirty or so I’d been sitting on our back porch making phone calls. Evidently that was a critical time period, and the stretch of the bluff I could see from the porch was the most likely spot for Mrs. Grover to have gone over the cliff, if that was indeed what happened to her.

  “And at no time did you see Mrs. Grover or anyone else enter the backyard,” he said.

  “No,” I replied. “I didn’t see anyone except for the birthday party going on in the yard next door and Dad on the riding lawn mower.”

  He didn’t look as if he believed me. Dad, on the other hand, believed me implicitly, but that was because my evidence supported his theory that Mrs. Grover had not fallen or been pushed but had been deposited on the beach.

  With the exception of Mother and Jake, nobody else in the neighborhood had anything that even vaguely resembled an airtight alibi for the time of the murder. Of course, the sheriff had yet to uncover anything vaguely resembling a motive, either, so the dearth of alibis was not yet a problem for anyone in particular. I began to wonder if there was a homicidal maniac hidden among the horde of locals, who, from their sworn statements, appeared to have spent the day after Memorial Day wandering aimlessly through the neighborhood, borrowing and lending cups of sugar and garden tools and feeding each other light summer refreshments.

  Before Mother could organize another neighborhood soiree, I hid in our old treehouse with a stack of envelopes and a couple of good books. I couldn’t concentrate on either, though, and found myself gazing down on the crowd, wondering if Dad was right and one of them was a murderer.

  I didn’t buy the idea of a wandering tramp. I doubted any stranger could pass through our neighborhood without getting noticed by at least half a dozen nosy neighbors and being reported to the sheriff long before he’d had the chance to knock anyone off.