Crypt Suzette

by Maya Corrigan

  The curtains parted. If Val hadn’t known who was scheduled last, she’d have had trouble recognizing the contestant. Suzette had gathered her hair into two ponytails sticking out sideways behind her ears. She had red spots on her face and wore thick dark-framed glasses. A toilet seat encircled her neck, her head in the seat’s “doughnut hole.”

  She whimpered.

  “It’s Moaning Myrtle!” a boy in the audience called out.

  “Yes,” Suzette sobbed. “I haunt the girls’ bathroom at Harry Potter’s school. I was a student of witchcraft there in the 1940s. I was bullied and then killed. Now I live in the toilet. And I cry a lot.”

  She took a handkerchief-sized rag from a pocket, dabbed her eyes, and wrung it. Droplets of water fell to the floor. The audience laughed.

  “You’re not in a school uniform,” a teenage girl said.

  The costume police again. Val hadn’t even noticed Suzette’s gray tunic with large pockets.

  Suzette moaned again. “That’s true. I’m wearing a maid’s uniform for a good reason. Outside my school, the people whose heads are in toilets are maids. They’re poorly paid and invisible like ghosts to the people they work for. They have every right to moan.”

  A moment of stunned silence followed, and then Bram started clapping. The audience joined in. Dorothy moved forward and thanked everyone for coming to the grand opening, led a round of applause for the contestants, and turned the floor over to Bram. He announced the contest winner. Moaning Myrtle would receive the gift certificate.

  Happy for Suzette, Val returned to the CAT Corner with a slightly better opinion of Bram Muir than she’d previously had. Later, when the contestants gathered the belongings they’d left in the CAT Corner, Granddad congratulated Suzette.

  She was the happiest Val had ever seen her. “Thank you, Mr. Myer. I hope you don’t mind that I borrowed the toilet seat from my bathroom for the costume. I’ll reinstall it.”

  Granddad waved off her concerns. “No hurry. Go out and celebrate your win first.”

  “Okay.” Suzette turned to Val. “Would you take the toilet seat back and put it outside my room? I’ll attach it when I get home.”

  Val agreed and went back to serving customers. When the bookshop closed, Granddad invited Dorothy and Bram to the house for champagne to cap off opening day. Dorothy thanked them profusely for helping, but asked for a rain check on the champagne, saying she was too tired to enjoy it.

  Val left behind the few remaining crêpes and apple pastries for Dorothy and Bram.

  * * *

  At seven thirty Sunday morning, Val went downstairs to the foyer, glanced through the sidelight near the front door, and saw a Bayport Police car pulling up to the curb. Chief Earl Yardley, a barrel-chested man in his fifties, climbed from the car and came up the walk to the house.

  A longtime friend of Granddad, the chief visited the house now and then, but never this early in the morning. Puzzled, she opened the door for him.

  The grim expression on his ruddy face made it obvious that this wasn’t a social visit. “Good morning, Val. Your granddaddy up yet?”

  She looked down the hall toward Granddad’s bedroom door, which was closed, and picked up the sound of rhythmic snoring. “He’s still sleeping. Should I wake him?”

  The chief shook his head. “I’d like to talk to the woman he’s renting a room to.”

  A prickle of anxiety like a tiny electric shock passed through Val. What had Suzette done to bring the police to the door? “I’ll go get her.”

  To Val’s surprise, the chief followed her up the stairs.

  She knocked on Suzette’s door and called her name. No answer. Val tried the knob, found the door unlocked, and peered inside. The room was empty. “Suzette’s shift at the Harbor Inn starts at eight. She should be coming back now from her morning jog.” Val noticed the chief’s eyes flicker at the word jog.

  “What does she look like?” After Val described Suzette, the chief said, “Does she have any relatives in this area?”

  “She never mentioned any.” Val had suppressed her curiosity as long as she could. “Why are you asking about her?”

  “I’m trying to identify a woman found on the side of the peninsula road this morning. Looks like a car hit her. Your description matches her, but that’s not a definitive identification.”

  Val looked around the room and spotted a slim wallet near a pile of books on the night table. She unzipped the wallet. “Here’s a photo of her.” She showed the chief Suzette’s non-driver’s ID card.

  The chief peered at it. “That’s our victim. I’m sorry to tell you this, Val, but she’s dead.”

  Chapter 4

  Val sank down on the bed. A lump formed in her throat and she blinked back tears. Could the chief have made a mistake? A woman hit by a car might have injuries that would make her hard to identify with certainty. “Are you sure that Suzette is the woman who was hit?”

  “Sure as I can be without scientific proof, but I should have that soon. I’ll send a team here to dust for fingerprints. We’ll compare them with the prints of the accident victim. I expect to find a match.” He pointed to a heart on Suzette’s ID card. “This shows she’s a donor. Some tissue donation may be possible with the medical examiner’s approval. I’ll take the card with me.” He tucked it into his breast pocket.

  Val sighed. Poor Suzette. And poor Granddad. He’d grown fond of her, and he’d worried about her, convinced she was evading someone. Could he have been right?

  The chief’s words echoed in Val’s mind: Looks like a car hit her. Why wouldn’t he know definitely that a car hit her? Val could think of only one reason. “It was a hit-and-run?” When he nodded, she took a deep breath and said, “You just called Suzette an accident victim. Are you sure it was an accident?”

  Chief Yardley folded his arms. “I don’t know anything for sure.”

  Val stood up, anxious to leave the room. “Let’s talk about it in the kitchen. I haven’t had any coffee yet.”

  “I haven’t either.”

  They went down the back staircase. The outside door Suzette had always used was straight ahead at the landing, which opened to the kitchen on one side.

  Val started the coffeemaker.

  The chief stood next to the kitchen island. “Tell me what you know about Suzette. Where did she live before she moved in here?”

  “Until a few months ago, she worked as a live-in nanny for a professor at Chesapeake College and took classes there. She had that job for two or three years. When the youngest child started school, the family no longer needed a full-time nanny and Suzette left.”

  “You ever talk to the professor?”

  “Granddad did. She recommended Suzette highly.”

  “Did they talk in person or by phone?”

  “Phone.” Val understood the point of his question. Anyone could be at the other end of the line, giving a glowing recommendation. “You’ll have to ask Granddad whether he called a number Suzette gave him for the professor or contacted her through the school.”

  Val handed the chief a mug of coffee, poured one for herself, and took a plate of muffins to the small breakfast table where she and Granddad ate most of their meals.

  The chief sat across from her at the table. “How did the girl wind up in Bayport?”

  “She hoped to transfer to a four-year school after next semester and was saving up money to pay the higher tuition. She couldn’t find any work near the college that paid as well as the desk clerk job at the Bayport Harbor Inn. Without a car, she needed to live nearby.”

  “She could walk there from here.” The chief sipped his coffee. “She have any boyfriends?”

  Val shrugged. “Last night at the bookshop I met the young men in her creative writing group. I think they were both attracted to her. I didn’t get the impression she felt the same way about them. She might have a boyfriend in the community college, though. She took classes there on her days off.”

  “Did she jog every morning?
”

  “She went for a quick jog on days when she worked and a longer one on Tuesdays and Thursdays before she took the bus to the college.”

  The chief sipped his coffee. “What time did she usually leave to go running?”

  “Before seven. As the days got shorter, she was leaving while it was still dark. She could warm up with a brisk five-minute walk and reach the peninsula road when it starts to get light this time of year. She’d come back thirty minutes before she was due at work to fit in a shower and walk to the inn.” Val cradled her mug in her hands. “Do you have any idea what happened?”

  “We won’t know for sure until we get reports from the accident scene investigators and the medical examiner, but it appears the side of the car hit her. She was knocked off her feet and hit the ground headfirst, resulting in traumatic brain injury.”

  Val winced. “Why didn’t the driver stop and report what happened?”

  The chief drank more coffee. “The driver might not have seen her. It was foggy, not in town, but on the peninsula road where it runs along the Chesapeake. She was on the road in low light before sunrise, wearing dark clothes, and jogging in the same direction as the traffic. Running against the traffic is safer.”

  “When the car hit her, the driver must have heard a thud and seen something. You tend to look in the direction where the noise is coming from. And after the impact, wouldn’t you check the rearview mirror if you heard something hit the car?”

  “She would have landed behind the car and to the side of its path. With low visibility, the driver could have missed her.” The chief bit into his muffin and took a moment to chew it. “We’re gonna request anyone who was on that road around that time get in touch with us.”

  “And if the person who drove into her doesn’t come forward, will you question your assumption that it was an accident?”

  “Do you have reason to believe it wasn’t?”

  “I have suspicions.” Val told him about Suzette’s roundabout routes from work to home and her interest in researching criminals online. “I tried to sound her out last week. When I thought we had some rapport, I asked if she had any concerns or worries. She took a moment to answer. Then she said everything was fine and changed the subject. I think she was tempted to tell me something. And I thought, maybe the next time we talk, I’ll get it out of her.” But there wouldn’t be a next time. “She acted as if she was afraid of or avoiding someone. Maybe that person caught up with her and killed her.”

  The chief shook his head. “A car isn’t a reliable murder weapon. You can’t guarantee the person you hit will die. If you succeed, you’ve used a weapon traceable by the damage to it.”

  “Not if it’s a stolen vehicle.” Something had been nagging at Val, a discrepancy in what the chief had said. “You’d never seen Suzette. The woman on the road had no ID. What made you think she could be Suzette?”

  “She was found by a bicyclist. He spotted her on the side of the road and called 911. He told me she resembled a woman named Suzette he’d seen in costume last night. That rang a bell because your granddaddy had told me his tenant’s name. When I came here, I wasn’t sure if Suzette was the victim or a family member who looked like the victim.” He downed his coffee. “I have to locate your tenant’s relatives, her next of kin. You think your granddaddy has that information?”

  “I don’t know. The Harbor Inn must have emergency contacts for their employees.” Val went over to the counter for the coffeepot and refilled the chief’s mug, pondering what he’d said about the bicyclist. She remembered the bike she’d seen on her first visit to the bookshop. She had an idea about the bicyclist’s identity. “Is the man who reported the accident Bram Muir?”

  The chief stared round-eyed at her. “How did you figure that out?”

  “He has a bike. Last night he saw Suzette in costume. She had big glasses and ponytails behind her ears, not how she looks when running. I understand how he could notice a resemblance, but not realize he was seeing same person. Suzette could fix her hair in a dozen ways and make herself look really different.”

  Val heard the squeaking hinges of the heavy front door and the muffled sound of its closing. “That’s Granddad going out to the front porch to check the weather. He does that every morning. I dread telling him about Suzette. He felt protective of her, and he’s going to be upset.”

  “Leave that to me. I’ll head him off. I’ve had a lot of experience delivering bad news.” The chief stood up. “Don’t give out the victim’s name until we make it public.”

  With that, he left the kitchen.

  Val cleared the table and made fresh coffee for Granddad. Usually, she set cereal in front of him for breakfast, but today he might need something sweet for comfort. She put two muffins on a plate and poured him orange juice. Would he be as skeptical as she was about the chief’s conclusion that Suzette was hit by accident?

  When he came into the kitchen and sat down, he barely glanced at the muffins. He took a few sips of coffee and said, “I feel terrible about Suzette. If I hadn’t offered her a room here, she wouldn’t have gotten hit by a car this morning.”

  Val joined him at the table. “You can’t know that. She’d have rented a room from someone else in Bayport and kept to the same schedule.”

  “But if she came from a different location, she wouldn’t have been at that spot on the road at the same time as the car that hit her.” He stared morosely into his mug.

  Val saw no point in discussing a hypothetical. “Were you able to give the chief contacts for Suzette’s family?”

  Granddad shook his head. “I told him I’d look for the phone numbers of her two references, but they weren’t family.” He lapsed into silence.

  “What’s on your schedule today besides church?”

  “I have an appointment with Mrs. Hill, one of the women who called me about ghost hunting, but I may back out of it.”

  “Why? I thought you were looking forward to it.”

  “I was gung-ho at first. I don’t really feel like bothering now. It seems kinda silly.”

  Val wanted to head off his possible slide into depression. If he had nothing on his schedule, he might go to church and spend the rest of the day in his easy chair, watching old movies. Better for him to get out of the house and talk to people. She’d never expected to be grateful for his ghost-hunting gig, but she was. “Mrs. Hill is counting on you to find what she’s lost, ease her mind about ghosts, or at least listen to her troubles. It wouldn’t be fair to let her down after you promised to help her.”

  “Okay. I’ll talk to her. It shouldn’t take long.”

  Then he’d go back to moping. Val had another idea for keeping him busy and his mind engaged. “Do you think the driver might have plowed into Suzette deliberately?”

  Granddad shrugged. “Earl said it was an accident. He knows what he’s talking about.”

  “He may have second thoughts once he gets the autopsy results or delves into Suzette’s background.” Val took a bite of a muffin, giving Granddad time for her words to sink in. “You thought she was trying to dodge someone following her. If that’s true and a killer targeted her, it wouldn’t matter whether she was living here or somewhere else.”

  “Because whoever wanted to hurt her would have found a way to do it, no matter where she was.” He picked up his mug. “She was trying to investigate someone. Maybe she discovered a crime.”

  “Exactly.” Val now had a way to keep him occupied and feel as if he was doing something positive. “We couldn’t have prevented what happened to Suzette, but we can help now. You and I can dig up some information in case it turns out not to be an accident. Then we can pass on what we’ve learned to the chief so he can catch the culprit sooner.”

  “I can try to find out where Suzette went after she left the bookshop last night. She said she was going out to celebrate. Did anybody see her? Did she meet someone? I can ask at the restaurants and bars that were open last night, but I need a photo of her.” Granddad re
ached for a muffin. “People took pictures of her last night.”

  “We need a photo of the real Suzette, not the one in costume. By the time she left the bookshop, she’d shed the toilet seat, the glasses, and the bands holding her hair in place. The chief took her picture ID with him. It showed her stiff and unsmiling. Maybe I can find another photo of her in her room.” Val crossed the kitchen and took the back staircase to Suzette’s room.

  Suzette’s computer might be a good place to look for photos. It was an older laptop, probably bought secondhand. It would suffice for basic tasks like writing college papers, checking email, and surfing the Web, until it died of old age. She pressed the power button and jiggled the mouse. Darn. The laptop was password protected. The police could probably crack the password, but Val didn’t want to waste time trying.

  She opened the closet to look for albums or photo boxes, but didn’t find any. The shelf above the clothing rod held a couple of winter hats and scarves. The clothes Suzette wore to work—a navy blue blazer with a hotel logo, navy pants, and white tops—were hanging on the rod, along with her rain poncho, a parka, and the gray tunic she’d worn last night, possibly a maid’s uniform. The rest of Suzette’s small wardrobe consisted mostly of jeans, T-shirts, and sweatshirts.

  Val closed the closet door and looked under the bed. She found two empty suitcases and switched her attention to the drawers. No photos in the nightstand drawer. The dresser drawers weren’t nearly as full as when Val had used them for her clothes. Suzette had six folded T-shirts, four long-sleeve tops, and two sweatshirts. Val felt underneath them for a folder or envelope that might have pictures in it. Nothing there. When she got to the bottom drawer, she found a file folder under Suzette’s jeans and shorts.

  The folder contained papers rather than the photos Val had hoped for. She flipped through Suzette’s college transcripts, bank statements, pay stubs, and income tax forms without reading them. Then she came to a couple of stapled pages. The words on the cover sheet sent a chill down Val’s spine: The Last Will and Testament of Suzette Cripps.