“Maybe not,” Jason agreed. “But we only have two clear and certain facts thus far—where the skull was found, and where the rest of Mr. X was discovered.”
“Our house and the Fox Cove Inn,” Dad said, and Jason told me he had instructed everyone—the Vermont state troopers, the Hanahan County sheriff’s office, and the Hilleville police force—to look for any connection between the two places.
“It sure wasn’t the architect,” I said. “But I did just learn some interesting stuff from Fanny.” I glanced up and asked Jason if anyone had mentioned Olivia DeMuir to him. “She worked at the Fox Cove during the bordello days, and I have several interesting theories. Cockamamie, maybe, but still—”
“Bordello days?” He shook his head and reminded me those days were ancient history. “The bordello doesn’t matter now, Cassie. Remember the timeline we’re working with.”
“Okay, okay. I know Mr. X has only been dead twenty years,” I said. “But still. About that timeli—”
“It’s crucial,” Jason said. “It’s what your father and I have been discussing.”
Dad cringed at me. “Captain Sterling thinks the body of Mr. X was left at the Fox Cove a long time ago.”
“Twenty years ago,” I said. “We’ve covered this, Dad.”
“But, Cassie.” He kept cringing. “That’s not necessarily true for the skull. Captain Sterling thinks it was left here more recently. While our house was unoccupied.”
I scowled at Jason. “You mean when it was for sale? Like only three years ago? Before Bobby bought the place?”
He nodded, and while my poor father cringed and grimaced, Jason insisted that span of time, between when Sally Tumbleton moved out of the house and my father moved in, was key.
“Okay, so.” I flipped through the paperwork on my lap. “How long a timespan was that?”
“Four months,” Jason said. “At least the realtors can agree on that basic fact.” He frowned. “At least there’s an actual record of that basic fact.”
“Basic?” I dropped the paperwork on the coffee table. “You’re telling me that during this four month period, someone—someone who just happened to be holding onto Mr. X’s skull for the previous twenty years—suddenly decided its final resting place should be our third floor cubby hole? And so they snuck in here, carrying a human skull, and hid it?”
“That’s what I’m telling you.”
I blinked at my father. Dad blinked back.
“Who had access to our house when it was unoccupied?” I asked eventually.
“The realtors,” Dad answered.
“Well then, that’s perfect!” I spoke to Jason. “There was a lock box, right? Those doo-hickies realtors use hide keys. Just ask Oliver for his lock box records and find out which realtors used the key to get in here. Easy!”
Jason shook his head. “Not so easy,” he said, and I noticed my father was back to cringing.
“Oliver threw out the records, girl.”
“What!?” I jumped. “Why the heck did he do that?”
Because evidently there are no rules about holding onto those records. Jason pointed to the paperwork. “Once the final sales transaction is completed, Earle claims he always disposes of the records.”
And evidently, some realtors now use “digital records,” but not Oliver Earle.
“I’m sure Oliver regrets not saving the records,” my father said quietly, and Jason glanced overhead.
“Where are those pencils?”
“Truman has them.” I sat forward. “But even without a record, can’t Oliver remember off the top of his head?” I reminded everyone Lake Bess is a small place. “I mean, how many house sales does the guy have to keep track of?”
“Not many,” Dad agreed, and Jason also agreed to that. He told me Oliver was indeed working on a list of specific realtors for him.
“He promises it will be a short list,” Jason said. “Claims not that many people looked at this house before your father snatched it up.” Another headshake. “But we’re relying on Oliver Earle’s memory. Not good.”
“I’m sure he has an excellent memory,” Dad said, but the look on Jason’s face indicated he didn’t have such faith.
Another headshake. “An incomplete list of realtors, and then those people will be called upon to remember which clients they took through this house.”
I shrugged. “Don’t you think any realtor would remember a client carrying in a human skull?”
Jason rolled his eyes. “I have your neighbors trying to remember also,” he said, and I instinctively stared out the window at the stupid, stupid—
“What do they remember?” I asked.
The answer was not much. As always, Maxine had been in and out quite a bit with her job at the library and with the local newspaper. Jason raised an eyebrow. “And supposedly Wylie doesn’t remember any unusual activity over here either. Even though he works from home.”
“Mr. Mad Scientist is oblivious to the world when he’s working with the FN,” I said.
“The machine is quite noisy,” Dad agreed. “It likely drowned out any noise from the comings and goings over here.”
“Yep. And Wylie told me he never paid attention to the comings and goings over here.” Jason’s eyebrow remained poised at me. “Not until you moved in.”
***
A loud crash overhead, and all three of us jumped.
“What is he doing up there?” Jason asked.
“Spying on us,” I said matter-of-factly. “Badly,” I added and asked about Sally Tumbleton. “Couldn’t the skull have been planted when she still lived here?”
Yes, it could have. And Jason assured us he was looking into Ms. Tumbleton. “She’s moved,” he said.
“To Burlington,” Dad said. “That’s why she sold me her house.”
“No, Mr. Baxter, she’s moved since then. She’s in San Diego now.”
“California?” I asked. “Well now, that’s suspicious.”
“Why?” Jason asked. “I hear the weather’s nice—no snow, no freezing temperatures, no icy roads.”
“Oh, come on!” I said impatiently. “People don’t just up and move from Vermont to California.”
“They do if they get a better job offer.”
My father agreed. “Changing jobs isn’t illegal, girl.”
“No, but I have the San Diego police department checking on a few things anyway,” Jason said. “But think about it,” he added. “If Ms. Tumbleton had hidden that skull, would she have left it here when she moved?”
Umm. Probably not.
He turned to my father. “Did you ever talk to her?”
“At the closing,” Dad said. “She was very sentimental. She even cried a little.”
“She had mixed feelings about selling?” I asked.
“This house had been occupied by the Tumbletons for over a century.” Dad smiled. “Yet she insisted she was glad such a nice person was buying the place. She knew we would like it here, Cassie.”
About then, Truman got impatient with spying on us from above. After a particularly loud banging of—whatever—he hollered down that he had found the pencils. “Can I come down now?”
“You may,” I hollered back, and he and the pets stormed the stairs.
He reached his sweet little fist out to Mr. State Trooper. “I found six,” he said, but Jason stood up without taking the stash.
“Thanks anyway,” he said. “But I’m just leaving.”
“Take the pencils,” I told him and stood up also. “You’ll need them.”
Chapter 33
Jason held up the pencils as we rounded the corner of the house. “Why will I need these?” he asked.
“Hello. Because you’re talking to me.”
We stopped at his patrol car, giving ourselves an excellent view of that stupid “For Sale” sign. Jason again held out the pencils. “You need one?”
“Heck no,” I said all breezy-like. “Why in the world would I need to break pencils?”
I stood up straight and tall. Well, not tall exactly. But definitely straight. “I was momentarily flustered,” I said. “I’m over it now.”
“Over what? Are you telling me you’re over Joe Wy—”
About then, I noticed someone spying on us from Joe’s kitchen window.
Paige.
I sighed loudly, and told Jason to get in his car. “And turn on the heat, for Pete’s sake.”
“You should have put on a jacket,” he said as we climbed in. But he did turn on the heat. “What are we discussing now?” he asked.
“Cockamamie theories.”
He thought about it. “How many so far?”
“Three,” I said. “I’ve labeled them A, B, and C for simplicity’s sake.
***
Yeah, I know. Simplicity wasn’t quite the right word. But I started at the beginning and identified a couple of the key players in my theories. “You know Joe’s father is considered one of the ghost-guys of the Fox Cove?” I asked, and Jason broke the first pencil.
“Your theories start with ghosts?”
“Nooo.” I insisted I was just covering the basic background info, and he assured me he did know about Joe’s father.
“But how much?” I asked. “For instance, do you know who Nate was with the night he got killed?”
Jason stared out the windshield at the frozen lake. “What does this have to do with Mr. X?”
“Bear with me,” I told him, and moved on to Olivia DeMuir. “She was a lady of the night. Which brings us to Theory A—Nate Wylie was with Olivia DeMuir the night he died.”
“You know this how?”
I reminded him it was only a theory, and a cockamamie one at that. “Unfortunately, Cornelius Suitor refused to say for sure.”
Jason jumped. “You’ve talked to Cornelius Suiter?”
“Not until after you.”
A pencil broke while I reported that Cornelius had been very helpful.
“He does know a lot of facts,” Jason conceded, and we moved on to Theory B.
“B,” I said. “Nate and Olivia had a child together, and the child’s name was Oliver.
Jason jumped again. “Excuse me?”
“Oliver, as in Oliver Earle. Oliver Earle Senior, that is. Not our Oliver. He’s Oliver Earle Junio—”
Another pencil broke, and I stopped.
“What is this, Cassie? Do you know any of this for certain?”
“Nooo.” I again explained the idea of a theory, and a cockamamie theory at that. “However.” I held up an index finger. “Fanny Baumgarten thinks I’m onto something, and she’s never wrong. And it is a fact—F-A-C-T—that Olivia had a child, even if Fanny’s not absolutely sure who the father was, or who the child’s child is.”
While Jason broke another pencil, I studied Joe’s house. “Unbelievable, but Arlene Pearson was right again.”
“Excuse me?”
“It would be handy to have their DNA.” I looked up. “You know. To see if Oliver and Joe are actually related.”
Jason skipped a beat. “Are you suggesting I get a DNA sample from your boyfriend?”
“Yeah, right. Very funny.”
“How did you even come up with this idea?” he asked, and I admitted it was a wild guess.
“But her name clued me in. Cornelius told me to think about her name, and so I was thinking about Olivia.” I tapped my temple. “Olivia, Olivia, Olivia, and poof! I thought of Oliver.”
“Poof?”
I also credited my father. “Bobby named one of his characters Daphne DeMuir, and she’s a real flirt, let me tell you, and so I realized DeMuir was a bogus name. Clearly her real last name was Earle. You know, to go with Oliver. Simple.”
“Nothing with you is ever simple.”
I shrugged. “And we haven’t even gotten to Theory C.”
***
Jason poised a pencil. “C,” he said. “Hit me.”
“I think Mr. X is—make that, was—the person who killed Nate Wylie.”
“What!?”
“You heard me,” I said. “I’m guessing that Mr. X shot and killed Joe’s father fifty years ago, and then, about twenty years ago, Mr. X himself got killed.”
“What?” Jason asked again.
“Maxine, and Paige, and I tried to get the name. You know, of the guy who killed Nate Wylie. But we had zero luck.”
Mr. State Trooper skipped a beat. “Who is Paige?”
“Joe’s daughter of course. She’s home for the holiday, and Nate was her grandfather, so of course she’s a little curious about all this.”
“Curious.” Jason shifted position to stare at Joe’s house. “She was the woman spying on us a few minutes ago.”
“Welcome to my world,” I said. “Anyway,” I continued and explained how the person who killed Nate Wylie was a juvenile, which meant the official records were sealed. “But you’re a state trooper,” I said. “You can find out who he was.”
“Why?”
“Hello!” I threw my hands up. “I just told you why. If we find out who killed Nate Wylie, we might just have Mr. X’s true identity. Fanny and I went around and around on this. The math works.”
I ignored the next pencil breaking and asked if he any paper. He mumbled something about regretting this, but pulled a small notepad from his breast pocket. I grabbed it, and one of his pencils, jotted down the math, and handed it back.
“Fact,” I began. “The person who shot Nate Wylie was a teenager. So let’s say he was sixteen years old when Nate was killed, which was fifty years ago.” I tapped the sixteen on my notes. “And let’s say this teenager served some time in juvenile detention or whatever, and then was released. And let’s say that someone knew who this guy was, even though his name had never been publicized. And let’s say that, years later, this someone took matters into their own hands and avenged Nate’s death.”
“By decapitating the teenager, now turned adult,” Jason said. “Are you listening to yourself?”
I was. And I agreed it was really, really gruesome. “But that is how Mr. X died,” I said. “That is a fact, right?”
A pencil broke in answer.
“Back to the math.” I again tapped the notes on Jason’s lap. “The dental work,” I said. “Mr. X was killed about twenty ago. Fifty years ago—that’s when Nate was killed—minus that twenty years, leaves us with thirty years in between. Add thirty to the sixteen, and that teenager would have been about forty-six when he got killed, and—”
“And Mr. X was in his forties when he was decapitated,” Jason finished for me. “Well, I’ll be damned.”
Me too, actually, since I couldn’t believe Mr. State Trooper was buying any of it. “It’s simple arithmetic,” I said. “Even if it is complicated and confusing.”
Jason looked up from my notes. “This could be pure coincidence,” he said, and I agreed it could be.
“But there is one other clue that points to Theory C,” I said.
“Hit me.”
“The Honeymoon Cottage at the Fox Cove,” I said. “Olivia DeMuir lived and worked there, and Nate Wylie was shot there. Put two and two together, and it may have been symbolic—gruesomely symbolic—that the killer put Mr. X’s skeleton there. Right there! In that cottage.”
Jason blinked. “You know where the body was found?” he asked. “That information is usually kept under wraps, Cassie.”
Maybe, but I reminded him I had spoken to a lot of people that week, and he went back to studying my notes. “You do realize if Theories A, B, and C pan out, that brings us to Theory D?”
“D?”
“D and E,” he said. “Whoever avenged Nate Wylie’s murder would have to be someone who was affected by Nate Wylie’s murder.”
Affected by—
I stared out at the frozen lake. “No,” I said firmly. “Do not go there, Jason.”
&nbs
p; “We have to go there, Cassie. If your theories are correct, and they very well might be, the two people most interested in avenging Nate Wylie’s death would have been—”
I jumped. “No! No, no, no! Not Oliver, and not Joe.”
Jason raised an eyebrow. “Why not?” he asked, and about then I caught a glimpse of Mr. Mad Scientist before he backed away from his kitchen window.
Chapter 34
My father and Truman were already at the table when I got back inside. “You could have asked Captain Sterling to join us for dinner,” Dad told me.
“Umm. Umm. No, thanks.”
He looked up. “Are you okay?”
“Fine,” I mumbled and stumbled into my seat.
“What were you and Captain Jason talking about?” the little guy asked.
“Oh. Umm. Things.”
“What things?”
“Just—things.” I mouthed a desperate “Help me,” to my father, and for once, the old man cooperated.
Well, sort of. Dad asked about my outing with Paige Wylie, and the kid grabbed onto that. “What did you and Paige talk about?” Truman asked me.
I blinked at Charlie. “Things.”
“Momma Cass?”
I looked up. “Yes, Sweetie?”
“Are you okay?”
“Fine!” I spoke up, all chipper-like, and suggested we change the subject. “So, like, what’s happening in the Hollow Galaxy?” I nodded to my father. “What’s up with Evadeen Deyo, the skittish-no-more?”
“Good question.” Good old Bobby took the bait and announced that Chance Dooley was quite impressed with his newly non-skittish girlfriend. “Indeed,” Dad said, “with just the slightest bit of coaxing, he has convinced her to go to the Gala after all.”
“What about the sashayla?” Truman asked. “Evadeen’s not nervous about dancing, anymore?”
Apparently not. Dad reminded us that, dancing or no dancing, Evadeen is smart, beautiful, and talented.
“All the gala-goers will just love her,” I said confidently, and my father told me I had hit the nail on the head.
“Oh, yes.” He chuckled. “One predicts Evadeen Deyo will make quite a splash at the Fayla Yayla Gala. Just goes to show how being skittish gets a girl nowhere.”
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