The Secluded Village Murders

by Shelly Frome

  “Now there you go,” said Will, putting the empty plates in the sink. “I rip out the floorboards upstairs ’cause they’re rotten and squeak. The tiles in the bathrooms are cracked, the caulking around the tub is peeling, the grouting is crumbling. I can see what’s wrong. I can fix it.”

  “You mean if you can’t see it, there’s nothing there.”

  “I guess.”

  Will worked slowly and deliberately with the cleanup chores. Oliver sprang to his feet and began pawing Will’s jeans.

  “Sorry,” said Emily, getting up and reaching for the screen door. “My problem, not yours. I apologize for not helping with the dishes but I’ve got to pack. Didn’t schedule my time right. But I appreciate the early supper.”

  Will tried to backtrack, tried to tell her she was taking this all wrong while wrangling with Oliver’s rambunctiousness. In the confusion, Emily eased out the screen door, crossed the backyard in the darkness, and made her way into to the stillness of the cottage.

  She didn’t know him well enough to get into an argument. Nevertheless, whether anyone could see the rot and peeling, she knew something had to be done.

  As Emily finished packing, she received a phone call from Silas. He wanted her to know he’d worked out some arrangement involving international priority shipping, customs, money wired to his account posthaste, and ABA and FI identifiers numbers. He added a slew of other fuzzy details as he became even more incoherent. The upshot, as far as Emily was concerned, was that he and Pru would be on the scheduled flight and meet Emily in Bath on Wednesday afternoon as originally planned.

  When she asked him about Harriet, Silas muttered, “Yes, yes, what can she be thinking of? So much to take care of on this end. Must go confer with Pru. Good tips and instructions, I see here. So orderly, much appreciated.” Silas muttered a few more non sequiturs and hung up.

  Emily drifted into the narrow living room and sat on the couch. The three-room New England Cape Cod house never bothered her before. It served its purpose, earmarked for her comings and goings. But now, at the close of this Monday to end all Mondays, even the cottage seemed strangely foreboding.

  She looked at the trip map she’d been perusing earlier and realized she should check her e-mail. But she couldn’t keep her mind on any of it.

  As the early evening wore on, her restless thoughts were interrupted by a muffled knock on her door. Then another. Then nothing.

  She rose slowly, unlatched the chain and switched on the outside light. Retreating back toward the B&B were Will and Oliver. Will turned as Oliver obeyed the hand signals to sit and stay.

  “We didn’t want you to go off like this,” said Will, approaching the front step.

  “That’s okay. You’re not involved.”

  “No, but I got to thinking. Process of elimination. Like I said, we can’t let you go off wondering.”

  “Oh?”

  “So, let’s say you get hold of this English lady, this Miranda Shaw. About her McMansion, I mean, where you went and saw that terrible accident.”

  “Give her a call, you mean?”

  “Right. Well, seeing that the trooper did such a slipshod job checking things out, you could tell her—in case she hasn’t heard—what happened to Chris. And get permission for me to look into it.”

  “Mentioning how thorough you are,” Emily added.

  “And how, naturally, she doesn’t want to get sued by what happened on her property to a fella she hired.”

  “And since she’s so far away, it would ease her mind.”

  “That’s the gist of it. All you have to do is get permission. Let me know first thing and I’ll take it from there. You got enough to handle with your loss and your flight plans without wondering about this to boot.”

  Emily nodded. “Okay. Thanks. That’s really helpful.” She wished she could’ve come up with something better, told him how much this meant to her, but “thanks” was all she could muster before he bid her goodnight.

  Reentering the cottage, Emily realized that getting Will to go along without actually spelling out all the troubling circumstances surrounding Chris’s fall might only add to the complications. There was no telling what Miranda Shaw might say or what Will might dig up. But, in the state she was in, this was all she could manage.

  She shuffled into her bedroom with no clue how she was going to contend with her sorrow, her guided tour, and the potential mushrooming of a murky game, armed solely with an ache that just wouldn’t quit.

  In the dream, Emily typed the heading, “For Chris: Preservation of open space” and the computer screen dissolved into the high meadow. Giant chainsaws ripped into a stand of maples and white birch and lopped off their branches. Dynamite blasted away at their stumps. Emily called out, but no one heard. Jumbo threshing machines ground the limbs into sawdust as flatbed trucks carted the strapped trunks away like so many wooden corpses. An excavator shot steel spikes into the ground, shattering the bedrock. Mourning doves scurried away from their nesting sites and white-tailed deer scampered in all directions.

  Emily clicked away at the delete key but there was no response.

  Hovering overhead, a hawk, with its rusty chest and long tail, flew lazily over the rising smoke, eyes closed. The second it blinked, it frantically flapped its wings, rose higher, and circled to no avail.

  More machines leveled everything flat and covered it with asphalt, which turned into a driveway leading up to Miranda Shaw’s fake Tudor.

  Emily tried moving her lips, forming the words “Go back, go back,” but couldn’t stop Chris’s gangly form from scrambling up the ladder. She left the computer and raced to the Green. She stood in front of the bank’s colonnades and shook Brian Forbes and his wife, Martha. They both turned and walked away.

  Across the sea, Miranda’s buxom figure and sleepy eyes came into view. She dialed a number on her mobile as Chris climbed higher. The Curtis House emerged onto the scene, all boarded-up, check stubs scattered across the scraggly front lawn.

  Next, an ornate bridge appeared. It stretched from the Lydfield Green, past Doc’s stocky figure and the Hudson River, across the ocean to Lydfield-in-the-Moor.

  Still mute, running up and down, Emily tried to call for help but it was no use. She froze as Chris reappeared, falling from a great height. Trying to shake herself free, to get to him in time, Emily tossed and turned every which way. The tossing and turning woke her up.

  She snapped on the lamp by the nightstand and stared at the luminous dial on the travel alarm clock. It was almost midnight. Ordinarily, dreams faded within seconds. Those that lingered were inconsequential. Lost in Hempstead or making a wrong turn on the Cornwall coast and getting stuck in an abandoned tin mine.

  But there was no way to shake this one off.

  Her alarm was set for five o’clock; 10:00 a.m. in Bovey Tracey, the town bordering the moors. Miranda Shaw would be languidly readying herself for her day’s activities. When Miranda had stayed at the B&B while overseeing the construction of her Tudor white elephant, she made sure everyone knew her schedule, which included plenty of beauty rest and ample time allotted for pampering. She kept herself youthful with regular hydralessence facials and deep-tissue massages.

  Even so, Emily had decided that when five rolled around, she would give Miranda no slack. She would accomplish something, get an okay for Will to check out the slate roof. That done, she could hopefully doze off one more time, shower, and wolf down some breakfast. Then she would force herself to humor Babs and the little kids at the Central School, make sure Babs was on board to keep her eyes and ears open, catch the shuttle to Kennedy Airport, and take it from there.

  By functioning and getting hold of Harriet, something might come of it. At any rate, it was better than piling up dicey elements ad infinitum. But when five rolled around, the exchange with Miranda was anything but to the point.

  “No, Miranda, listen to me.” Standing barefoot in her pajamas, leaning on the kitchenette counter, Emily tried her best to explain.
“I’m still in Connecticut.”

  “Good heavens,” said Miranda, “it must be the middle of the night. Isn’t this a horrid time to be ringing me?”

  “Yes, but I need to ask you something.”

  “Oh, dear. But how tiresome for you.”

  Hammering and drilling sounds interceded. Miranda excused herself and returned several times. One of Miranda’s evasions was her breakfast tea needed “hotting up.” During another lull, Miranda said, “Much ado, I’m afraid. As ever, modernizing, getting the place all tarted up. Newish fitted kitchen, central heating, swagged brocade curtains, and double glazing. Of course, I simply can’t abide the noise. I tell you, I am about to pop over to the salon for a long and much-deserved respite.”

  As usual, Emily could not get over the fact that no matter what was going on, Miranda thought that the world simply revolved around her whims.

  Miranda excused herself again to ask the workmen to work a bit more quietly. It began to dawn on Emily that she never actually had any idea who she was dealing with. She never knew what arrangements Miranda had with Mr. Shaw, the London barrister, while she flitted around on both sides of the Atlantic. She hadn’t a clue what was percolating beneath Miranda’s purring, pampered tones, least of all what she may or may not have been up to regarding Chris’s headlong rush to her property.

  Regardless, Emily pushed on. “Listen to me, Miranda. Chris fell from your slate roof. He never recovered. He passed away just . . . yesterday.”

  When Miranda didn’t reply, didn’t mention the urgent call she may have made, or ask about the exact circumstances, or even ask when it all happened, Emily said, “Well, I thought you’d care. I thought at the very least you’d want to make sure there was no negligence on your part.”

  Still no response, only the sounds of the workmen.

  Finally, Miranda repeated one of her all-purpose expressions. “Appalling, surely. Emily, I’m rather rushed, and you must be keen to get back to bed.”

  Raising her voice, Emily said, “It’s about your leaking slate shingles in the pouring rain.”

  The hammering noises picked up in intensity.

  Deflecting once more, Miranda said, “I see. Now tell me, when will you be coming round to chat?”

  Given Miranda’s way of deflecting, Emily had no idea what she had in mind.

  Emily told her the tour schedule and when she might be free. Sensing Miranda was about to hang up on her, Emily said, “So you won’t object to Will Farrow checking out your roof?”

  “Who?”

  “Our handyman. Chris thought very highly of him. May I tell him to take a look? At no cost to you.”

  After a barely audible murmur, Miranda said, “I suppose. But that, my dear, is as far as it goes.”

  “The way things are going, I wouldn’t count on it.”

  Yet another delay until Miranda said, “My, my, I must say you sound so distraught. Do get some proper rest. Works wonders when one is unduly under stress. I have it on the highest authority.”

  Instead of insisting that she be notified immediately about Will’s findings, she went on another tangent, sighing over how trying it was for one to forever change one’s digs and mobile number.

  Before Emily had a chance to ask how, in that case, she could be reached with the results of Will’s inspection, Miranda said, “Sorry, I simply must dash. But do pull yourself together. And, in your travels, do make time to pop over for tea.”

  Chapter Nine

  With her suitcase packed, there was only her early-morning encounter with the first graders and Babs to deal with, and Emily would be off.

  But then she became distracted by the need to stock up on fresh fruit and energy bars in Bath and set up a communal survival kit of snacks for the long drive. This fleeting thought may have been some kind of defense mechanism kicking in to keep her inconsolable ache at bay.

  There was also a host of unknowns to think about, including whether Will would show up to see her off, what she might discover when she caught up with Harriet, and what would happen the moment Harriet met with Silas and Pru to create an unholy threesome. At this juncture, there was no way of knowing what form her emotions might take. Ordinarily, she tried to stay coolheaded as advertised and keep her feelings in check. In truth, this conundrum called for a juggling act beyond anything she’d known.

  She found herself standing perfectly still, looking out though the cottage shutters at the beckoning horizon in much the same way she’d looked out yesterday morning. It reminded her of the time she and Chris were high up on a ledge in Mohawk Mountain. They could see the storm that was coming, the billowing clouds overhead, and the sleet that had just passed. She recalled Chris telling her that this was the key to dealing with the randomness of life. To regard everything from such a vantage point—centered and on top of things.

  Breaking out of it, she locked the front door, flung her overnight bag over her shoulder, picked up her suitcase, and headed across the backyard. After a few strides, Oliver’s pale-golden blur came tearing around the side of the B&B and blocked her way. In turn, Will ambled toward her, the morning sunlight glinting behind him.

  Shielding her eyes, she said, “I was just about to throw my stuff in the trunk and ring the bell.”

  “Did you get the okay?”

  “More or less. With Miranda you never really know.”

  “Guess I’ll have to make do with more or less.”

  “Can you go over there soon? While it’s all still fresh and nothing’s been tampered with? Check out what might have happened on the roof by the turret window and caused him to shudder like that?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Great.”

  While she fumbled for the keys to her car, Will grabbed her luggage and walked past his pickup to the front of the B&B, flipped her trunk open, and deposited her stuff. After lingering for a second or two, Oliver took off after Will.

  Emily could have followed suit and said her goodbyes out on the street. Instead, she drifted over to his pickup and waited.

  Will reappeared, prompted Oliver to jump onto the truck bed, and latched the tailgate. He eased over, leaned against the side of the cab next to Emily, and crossed his lanky legs at the ankles. A shock of his sandy hair fell over his forehead, but he didn’t bother to brush it back.

  “So when you get to Miranda’s Tudor McMansion,” Emily said, leading the conversation where she wanted it to go. “Can you check for evidence or signs of . . .”

  “You mean what I might turn up?”

  “Yes. Trooper Dave calls them ‘tangibles.’”

  “Well, I’ll tell you this much. If it looks iffy, I will run it by at least one other guy.”

  “Oh? Who did you have in mind?”

  “Depends on what I find.”

  She could tell he was weighing his words to keep things on an even keel. Not one to jump the gun. She’d have to pull back a notch.

  “It’s like the wave patterns down in the Keys,” Will went on. “Wind and clouds, getting a bead on where the marlin are running but—”

  “You’d still like a second opinion.”

  “Yes, ma’am, I would.”

  “From a professional.”

  “You could call it that.”

  Growing impatient, Oliver started slapping his bushy tail against the sides of the truck bed.

  “You see that?” Will said, leaning over, rubbing Oliver’s backside. “He wants to dive right in. Has no notion about steering clear of such things as reefs and shoals.”

  Letting him have the last word, Emily went over, rubbed Oliver’s backside as well and started walking toward her car. Will followed, patted her shoulder, and said, “I’ll let you know soon as I can. We’ll keep in touch. Deal?”

  “Deal.”

  Emily gave him a quick rundown of her itinerary and promised to call from Bradley Airport before she hopped on the shuttle to New York. Will gave her a thumbs-up and touched her hand. Perhaps it was nothing and she was making too
much out of it. But to Emily, the exchange, the touch, and the high sign meant something more. She was not entirely on her own.

  Emily parked, rushed past the bus stop, and saw that the other elementary school kids had already filed in. What awaited her was a hyper Babs Maroon and a very young teacher trying to keep a group of antsy first graders in line. The teacher had the flustered look of someone who had just received her certificate and wasn’t at all sure she could handle this assignment on her own.

  “Not to worry,” said Babs, as Emily took her place facing the wiggling children. “Here she is, boys and girls. Better late than never. Which is not a message you kids should take home with you.”

  Emily forced a smile, recalling that this outing was geared as a cute marketing ploy to attract interest in Emily’s private tours. Babs would tie-in Emily’s jaunt with the kids’ new year and the adventures they would be looking forward to as a “brand new chapters” feature. But as things stood, Emily was playing both ends against the middle. She couldn’t care less about marketing but would partially go along so that Babs would still have a feature to post while, at the same time, enlist Babs as another ally.

  As Emily helped reposition the kids for Babs’s photo shoot, some of them wanted to know if Emily was a Girl Scout leader. Others wanted to know why she wasn’t wearing any makeup like their moms. Whipping out her camera, Babs said, “Let’s just say Miss Ryder owns every shade of beige in captivity and is a no-muss, no-fuss kinda gal.”

  Babbling on, continuing to dig it in over Emily’s apparent disinterest, Babs added, “Unless she’s running in the annual Lydfield charity race. Then she shows up way ahead of time in some bright, spiffy outfit wearing little dabs of makeup. Not exactly girlie, but looking good.”

  The hurried photo shoot called for a group eager to begin classes. As the kids complied with bright, smiley faces, Babs announced, “Miss Emily is going on a Twinning. Lydfield to Lydfield-in-the-Moor—sister villages. Just like twins, which is why it’s called a Twinning. And look, we’ve got a set of towheaded girl twins right up front. Plus, how many of you have sisters of your own?”