The Secluded Village Murders

by Shelly Frome

  “Come on, Emily,” she muttered. “Back to reality.”

  She checked her watch. She had a morning flight and hadn’t even started packing, let alone had a chance to fully prepare.

  Nevertheless, thoughts of Chris’s plight filtered back more strongly than ever, along with something else he recently said. You know something, through-me doesn’t seem to quite work anymore. Getting so I can’t hardly let anything pass in dealing with town folks without wondering. Really beginning to wonder, Emmy.

  With the twisty thoughts beginning to take over again, she looked around, catching sight of Pru’s Victorian doll collection behind another set of glass cabinets. In the forefront were Calico Girl, Little Girl in Cream, Sailor Girl, and Girl in Mauve. Ladies in burgundy and other satiny colors stood in various positions, elegantly fitted-out with umbrellas, pantaloons, crinolines, silk flowers, and all the rest of it.

  She couldn’t help but be reminded of Storytelling Pru’s visits to Emily’s second grade class with her spooky tales, and the time Pru had brought “something special for the girls.” The others ooh-ed and ah-ed over the porcelain faces and gushed over the curls and long eyelashes as Pru told the class what befell these poor maidens in the wilds of the moors overseas in the witchy part of England. This had prompted Emily (who had no patience for dolls and tall tales and would much rather be out playing ball) to sneak off and race away from the school grounds, only to run into Chris and that quizzical Lincoln-esque look of his.

  “Now, now, what’s this?” he had asked.

  Emily only shrugged.

  “Not running away?”

  Emily shrugged again.

  “Emily, do we really want to make a habit of this?”

  “Like my dad, you mean?”

  “Not saying, not my place. Wouldn’t be right to put words into your mouth. You just think about it, that’s all.”

  “I just have.”

  “Oh?”

  “If I had to choose, I wouldn’t want to become a runaway. Much rather take after you.”

  “Well then, you go right back there and stick it out. You never know. Could be more to this than meets the eye.”

  With that, she had eased her way back to face the silly goings-on, like it or not.

  As she was about to do now. She needed to go back upstairs and check on Pru, which was as off-putting as having to deal with Silas. Both of them in some other world, flitting in and out, making communication doubly difficult. All she really wanted to do was see about Chris and get a definite prognosis, then cool down the jumble of vexing thoughts and try to take it from there.

  Chapter Six

  Emily scanned the rear of the house from the lilac bushes to the rhododendron, and laurel to the rose arbor. Looking past the arbor, she finally spotted Pru pulling up weeds behind the ragged zinnias and cosmos, looking like her Little Girl in Cream doll with her ankle-length skirt and ruffled blouse.

  Emily braced herself. Not because Pru was any kind of threat but out of concern for Pru’s grip on reality. She did so much daydreaming that the way things were turning out, she might be more of a hindrance than a help. She wished she could ask her directly what exactly was going on between the three of them, about the altercation that had set them apart. But Pru being Pru would doubtless only go off on a tangent, create some comparable faerie tale, and leave the matter even more convoluted. The only tack Emily could come up with was to humor her while attempting to get her on board. But she had to do it quickly. Then she could see about Chris.

  As Emily headed towards her, Pru widened her eyes like saucers and said, “Ooh, Emily, this is so-o-o good. Come help.”

  Letting Pru chatter away in her singsong voice, Emily joined in the battle against the rain-soaked encroaching weeds, unsure of how Pru was taking Harriet’s sudden departure or if she was even aware of it. Originally, Emily was supposed to meet with all three of them to go over the last-minute details. But with that plan out the window and Harriet’s resolute order to dump her siblings, Emily had to make sure of Pru’s place in the scheme of things.

  “I still can’t get over the way Harriet allowed things to get out of hand like this,” said Pru, stagey as ever. “It’s her job, always has been. Just look at the cosmos. It needs to be staked. It’s as tall as me. And look at the horrid bittersweet climbing up the rose arbor, all tangled up and choking things. It’s a wonder I don’t get caught up and lost in it all. But who would care, ’cause I’m so tiny. Who would even know I was missing and left behind?”

  After a moment, Pru beamed and added, “Now tell me, wouldn’t that make a good story?”

  Emily shifted to rooting out a few clumps of creepers overtaking the beds of myrtle. “I don’t know, Pru. Whatever you say.”

  “A story for kids, of course. If you look at the rambling roses and the darn bittersweet, then inside the arbor tunnel of climbing shrub roses, with a little embellishment here and there, I’d say you’ve got something. A battle between beauty and devilish creeping things.”

  “It’s okay, Pru, I get it.”

  Emily continued to hang back. Pru had done so many Let’s Pretend children’s shows in libraries and whatnot, Emily learned early on to slough off most anything she said. Under the circumstances, Emily needed to know not only if Pru was okay but if she was capable of getting at all serious about Harriet’s machinations and perhaps even help keep a close eye on her stepsister.

  They worked in silence for a while, tossing the clumps of weeds into a wheelbarrow. The wide swathe lined with little red flags leading up to the high meadow was close by. But Pru seemed to take no notice. It was as if the flags had always been there, sloping up to the tree line to the proposed construction site. But Emily had just discovered them today.

  “There now, isn’t this starting to look better?” said Pru. “Once they’re staked, they’ll stand up like happy handmaidens.”

  It was getting harder and harder to put up with this nonsense, but Emily nodded anyway.

  Emily carted the wheelbarrow to the pile of scraggly brush behind the arbor and dumped it. As the cloud cover took over darkening the sky once again, Pru quit raking as she started explaining to Emily about the stories she planned to tell at the Twinning portion of the fete. She was booked to keep the children amused by telling tales linked to old timey New England they could relate to.

  “So I thought I’d do my version of The Headless Horseman with a slight British accent. For starters, I mean. To warm the kids up and make friends.”

  “I guess,” said Emily, returning with the wheelbarrow, still trying to assess Pru’s state of mind.

  Sidling up to Emily, her slight frame perfectly erect, Pru said, “Want to know the real reason I’m going? Besides the honor of being chosen to represent Lydfield?”

  Emily didn’t have the heart to tell her the only reason she and Silas were included was to make it “worth the candle.” It was all Emily could do to convince the fete committee of the Curtises’ historical prominence, Harriet’s floral expertise and whatnot, and what Pru and Silas could possibly offer.

  “Okay, Pru,” Emily said. “But let’s keep in mind I only dropped by to see how you were taking all this. How you felt about it and all.”

  “I’ve been corresponding, as you know,” said Pru, disregarding Emily’s concern and carrying on. “And I’ve been informed that beyond the sister village, there’s a soothsayer who knows all the old tales. Lives in a thatched hut. Knows stories about Devon pixies leading people astray on the moorland bogs. And the Dewerstone where the Devil guided a lost traveler over the edge in the fog. And fickle maidens made to run ragged around prehistoric stone circles before they were exonerated. If I can bring these stories back and make them my own, I could restart my whole career. Be booked in libraries and such all over New England.”

  As the cloud cover continued to hold steady, Emily found herself wondering why some of what Pru was saying had begun to slip into that hazy, jangled thread in the back of her mind. Slipped in for
apparently no reason.

  A few glimmers of sunlight appeared and faded. A cardinal pecked at an empty bird feeder and flew off, causing Pru to say, “See, Harriet even let the feeder go to pot. Soon the songbirds will give up on us altogether. And what about the bittersweet? It’s choking the whole arbor. I tell you, it’s strangling it.”

  “When we get back from our trip, we’ll tackle it, okay?”

  “You mean it?”

  “You bet.”

  “Oh, I really hope you mean it.” Pursing her lips, Pru said, “We can’t let Harriet ruin things, can we? That would be a crime.”

  “Exactly. For now, let’s say she’s just gone on ahead, and as far as everything else goes—”

  “Everything else? What do you mean?”

  Emily was not about to get drawn into some endless explanation. Instead, she came right back with, “We have to handle it one step at a time. Play it as it lays, as the gamblers say.”

  “Meaning? Is there something you’re holding back?”

  Reluctantly, Emily skirted around the issue, saying that Chris had had a bad fall and a lead man for the developers had been nosing around. She could have asked Pru about the red flags and all manner of things, but with the way Pru’s mind was still flitting around coupled with Emily’s own anxiety, she wished she hadn’t said “everything else.” Wished she hadn’t spoken at all.

  “So,” said Pru clasping her hands together, “we’re going to have to watch our step. But you’ll be at our beck and call. That’s why we chose you. Steadfast and true.”

  Actually, there was no one else they could have chosen, no one else who had even a vague connection with the Twinning and could set up a semi-exchange.

  “Great,” Emily said. “You just hold onto that upbeat attitude.” Before Pru had a chance to toss in another “What do you mean?” Emily told her that she was on a tight schedule and had to go. She slipped away, got back in her car, and drove off.

  Continuing up the vertical curve, she tooled past the B&B and kept going until she reached an elevation high enough to get a decent signal due to the problematic cell tower. She pulled over, snatched her cellphone out of the glove department and hit the speed dial for the ICU. Perhaps this time the duty nurse could give Emily some idea of how long it might take for a victim of a horrific fall to come out of a coma. Perhaps there was an off-chance the Planning Commission would delay the application for site approval, buying Emily some time to sort things out until Chris regained consciousness.

  But it simply wasn’t to be. The nurse was sorry to inform her that only a short while ago, Chris Cooper had passed away.

  Chapter Seven

  Crying softly, Emily drove aimlessly around the foothills as memories filtered in and dovetailed. She thought of all the times Chris had come over to talk to her mother after Emily’s dad had walked out on them for the last time. Long talks in the kitchen about staying solvent and other matters Emily was too young to understand. Chance meetings atop nearby Mohawk Mountain after the tourists had gone, comparing notes and discussing the changing seasons, threatened habitats of creatures and ecosystems, the preservation of upland tree canopies. Dropping in on Emily from time to time to see how she was doing with her schoolwork and her exploits on the soccer field. Then, more recently, eager to hear all about her escapades in the UK, especially her treks across the rock-strewn moors.

  With the memories came an inconsolable ache. It had no name but would surely stay with her.

  After a while, she remembered her early supper date with Will. She pulled over onto a dirt road. All her energy drained, she took out her cellphone and hit the speed-dial number for the B&B. He answered immediately and she asked for a grace period of another half hour or so. In that laid-back southern drawl of his, he said he was only going to whip up some quesadillas and she could take her time. The weak signal broke off, and she went on a while longer with her looping, aimless drive.

  Emily sat at the butcher-block table, her back to the screen door of the B&B. She barely noticed that for the first time ever, the kitchen was inviting and scrubbed clean. The paneling was white instead of loyalist green, the cupboards a glistening chrysanthemum, the faded linoleum replaced by yellow and white tiles. Twilight was dwindling, but the new light fixtures were aglow. Oliver’s heavy paw was on Emily’s knee, his blocky head nuzzling against her side, his pale-yellow coat blending in with the new decor. But none of this really registered.

  Canola oil sizzled in the cast-iron skillet as Will turned the front burner down and said, “Have I passed the test?”

  So depressed she could barely answer, Emily said, “It’s fine.”

  All the while, Emily hadn’t given Will any inkling of what was really in the back of her mind. After all, they’d never had a conversation that amounted to anything, even though there was always something percolating underneath. Truth to tell, some part of her needed a male presence, a steadying influence, a lingering touch of Chris.

  To try to deflect from her sad news she’d revealed in hesitant drips and drabs, Will continued to tell her more about himself—running a charter fishing boat in the Keys and an air boat in the Everglades and Big Cypress Swamp. Something else about bartending on a riverboat called the Catfish Queen. His present stint with “fixer-uppers” was a trade he’d learned from his “ol’ man” who specialized in repairing damaged beachfront properties from Cape Hatteras to Cape Cod.

  But none of this made any impression either. All she could think of was the fact that Chris had no family, no one to look out for him. No one else who truly cared how he had died.

  Pru, being Pru, had called her steadfast. In some way, Pru was right. Emily would not be turning her back by running off to England. She would be going after Harriet and looking in on Miranda Shaw about the call to her Tudor McMansion in the pouring rain. She’d stick with all the tangled threads for Chris’s sake.

  The inconsolable ache began to mesh with the abiding edginess. As Trooper Dave had intimated, her anxiety was no excuse. She knew nothing about police procedure and had no training or business becoming involved in a case that didn’t exist, let alone unlimited law enforcement resources to call upon.

  The only thing she could possibly hang this on was circumstantial and personal.

  Too bad. It was unfinished business and she had to see to it that she could eventually call on someone to step in.

  At the same time, she was aware she had to pack if she was going to carry out the terms of her tour contract. Though she had received a retainer, it was obvious that Harriet was no longer going to underwrite this venture for all three. Receiving the rest of her payment was contingent on Silas coming up with supplemental funds for himself and Pru.

  Once again, Will tried to engage Emily in conversation. “I heard from your mom. She has some idea about redecorating in different colonial motifs, like the B&B she’s been staying at in Lenox. She also asked if I heard anything more about the possible threat of a big condo development next door. Up on the high meadow, I guess she means.”

  Pulling herself out of her stupor, Emily said, “Tell her I’m looking into it like I told her earlier. And please sidestep any reference to Chris Cooper’s passing. My mom is skittish enough. It would just do her in.”

  “She deserves a little time off, you mean. Before dealing with the fall foliage season.”

  “If you like.”

  Will folded ingredients into two tortillas, including bits of fresh shrimp, and tossed together a salad.

  Oliver began begging, resting his chin on the table top as a ploy as Will placed a bowl of nachos before her.

  Will ushered Oliver into the living room where Oliver plopped down with a sigh, facing Emily with his head resting on his paws as another ploy. Any other time, Emily would have paid Oliver some attention. But Emily was no longer part of any other time.

  Standing in the alcove, his lanky body blocking Oliver’s forlorn gaze, Will turned to Emily and said, “He’s still kind of a baby, as I guess you wel
l know. Don’t pay him any mind.”

  Emily began to notice that Will moved with an easy rhythm. Even his faded jeans and Levi’s shirt looked as though they just happened onto his frame, not something he deliberated over. From every indication, he took things in stride. A factor that might come in handy. Someone calm, who didn’t jump to conclusions. Someone who wasn’t directly involved. Exactly what she’d unconsciously been looking for.

  They ate mostly in silence, Will biding his time, still uneasy about how to handle the situation, Emily commenting now and then about how good the quesadillas were.

  Still deflecting, Will asked about Oliver’s big adventure that morning. Trying a little harder, Emily told him about the wild turkeys and encountering this streetwise guy by the name of Doc on the high meadow. She mentioned Doc’s cellphone call and promising to “take care of the situation right away,” her own hurried call to Chris, and the awful thing she’d witnessed, his dreadful fall from the roof of the Tudor McMansion that she would never get over.

  “Trooper Dave would only give a ‘look-see,’” she added, “which was not much better than nothing. But he did mention something about casting a shadow.”

  “Meaning?”

  “To do any more, he needs something that would cause some concern. What he calls ‘casting a shadow’ is a prerequisite for police intervention. He also called it ‘probable cause.’”

  Will took a deep pull of his Corona before speaking.

  “Now hold on. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate you had a horrible experience. And I understand how you might feel about Chris passing away like that so suddenly. I mean, I knew him. Really nice guy who set me up here, after all.”

  He took another pull from the bottle of beer before adding, “I do think it’s worth checking out this Doc character. But you see, that’s where it gets tricky. ’Cause people say things they don’t mean. They also do things and don’t have a clue why.”

  “Not like carpentry and repairs.”