“It would be the Dames.” The Dames of Caerphilly, while ostensibly a local historical society, had actually been merely a snooty social club dominated by the Pruitts, the family who had run Caerphilly like a personal fiefdom from the late 1800s until a few years ago. I had no idea if the Dames had formally disbanded or if they’d merely lapsed into oblivion after the disgrace and departure of most of the Pruitts, but certainly no one had heard from them in years.
The article went on to report that shortly before midnight shots rang out in an upper floor of the palatial Van der Lynden mansion. Several of the guests attempted to apprehend the jewel thieves. One of the would-be rescuers was killed along with one of the three intruders. The other two robbers were apprehended two days later, but Mrs. Van der Lynden’s jewelry collection, valued at an estimated ten million dollars, was never found.
“Mrs. Van der Lynden never recovered from the trauma of this terrifying night,” I read aloud. “And died of a broken heart shortly thereafter.”
From what I’d remembered reading on her plaque, she’d died sometime in 1993. I wasn’t sure five or six years qualified as shortly thereafter. Or that you could blame the death on a broken heart after so long. And was a broken heart really the reaction someone had to losing ten million in jewelry? Fred Singer, the owner, editor, and chief bottle-washer of the Clarion, did tend to get slightly melodramatic in writing these little historical vignettes.
I opened my notebook-that-tells-me-when-to-breathe, as I called the small three-ring binder that held my to-do lists, and made a note to talk to Fred tomorrow. In addition to being melodramatic, Fred tended to leave out anything that reflected badly on Caerphilly or its inhabitants—anything that might inspire anyone to sue him. A New Year’s ball that ends in a pitched gun battle between a gang of jewel thieves and some of the invited guests? Surely there was more to the story.
I scrolled down to look at the pictures that had accompanied the article. The first few I could easily have mistaken for ’80s photos of the cast of Dynasty—the men looking elegant in black-and-white tuxedos while the women were resplendent in long gowns, big hair, and enough sequins, lamé, and real gems that the onlookers had probably needed sunglasses. I didn’t recognize anyone, but I deduced there were a lot of Pruitts in the crowd, judging from the number of short, stocky revelers whose heads appeared stuck directly onto their bodies without benefit of an intervening neck. And they all had masks, trimmed with feathers and rhinestones and for the most part carried on sticks rather than worn. Easier to manage with all that hair. Evidently a masked ball was very different from a costume ball. A good thing no one had invited me—I’d probably have showed up in some version of my Xena costume, and Mrs. Van der Lynden didn’t look like the kind of hostess who’d appreciate it the way Michael and the boys did.
A third photo showed a mansion—the stately mansion of the Van der Lyndens, according to the caption. It looked curiously familiar. I studied it for a few moments.
“Of course! It’s Ragnarsheim!”
Ragnarsheim was the home of Ragnar Ragnarsen, a drummer who, after surviving two decades in a series of heavy metal bands, had settled down to semi-retirement in Caerphilly. He’d bought a huge house on a large estate and had been busy ever since turning the whole place into his vision of a Goth paradise. I was pretty familiar with the house because a large part of his vision involved miles of intricate ornamental ironwork wrought by me.
How strange to see Ragnarsheim without a single bit of wrought iron festooning it. No gargoyles on the roof. No statues of dragons flanking the front door. No flaming torches, or—
I suddenly found myself yawning massively.
I glanced down at my list. I could type in the next name. But I felt another huge yawn coming on.
“Enough.” I printed the article and stuffed it in my tote. Then I turned off my laptop and closed the cover. “Seven A.M. will be here before you know it.”
I turned off the lights and took the path from the barn to the back door.
The kitchen was spotless. A quick check in the refrigerator showed the boys’ school lunches already packed. In the front hall, their school backpacks and their baseball bags were lined up in a neat row.
I wondered for a few moments if Matt, Robyn’s husband, would turn out to be anywhere near as good a partner in parenting as Michael.
Then I tiptoed upstairs, where everyone was asleep. I delivered stealth goodnight kisses to the sleeping boys—who had recently decided they were too old for such nonsense—and to Michael. Then I crawled into bed and fell asleep almost immediately.
Chapter 8
“Mom? Are you awake?”
I opened my eyes to find both Josh and Jamie looming over me. Their ability to loom seemed to be increasing exponentially of late, and I wondered briefly how few years it would take for them to zoom past my five-foot-ten height and set their sights on the more ambitious six-foot-four target Michael provided.
“Mom? I said are you awake?” Josh.
“No.” I pulled my pillow over my face by way of emphasis.
“You can’t possibly answer no to that question,” Jamie pointed out helpfully.
“In this case, no doesn’t mean I’m not awake.” I pulled the pillow off my face, the better to glare at them. “It means I don’t want to be.”
“Oh.” Jamie looked slightly chastened. But only slightly.
“But it’s only fifteen minutes before you have to get up anyway,” Josh said. “And Rose Noire has questions about what to feed the parrot.”
“Parrot? What parrot? We don’t have a parrot.” Unless Grandfather had come across a surplus parrot at his zoo and decided to give it to the boys as a present. I’d had to squelch notions like that before.
“The parrot you put in the barn last night.” Josh hadn’t yet mastered the eye roll—after all, he wasn’t yet a teen—but he had the accompanying tone down perfectly.
Enlightenment struck.
“That’s not a parrot,” I said. “That is a toucan. His name is Nimitz, and he’s the one from church, the one Reverend Robyn was taking care of while his owner’s off doing his military service. We’re filling in for her, just for the time being,” I added, to make sure they understood the temporary nature of the bird’s residence here.
“Will he start talking when he settles in and gets used to his new environment?” Jamie asked. Clearly he’d been paying at least a little attention to the many nature lessons Grandfather inflicted on us all.
“If Nimitz does start talking, you should tell Great right away,” I said, using the boys’ new shortened nickname for my grandfather. “Because he’d be the first toucan ever known to talk, and Great would want to do a television special on him.”
“Would we be in the special?” Jamie asked.
“Wait—you mean he’s never going to talk?” Evidently Josh was paying closer attention this morning.
“Never.”
“What, never?” Michael sang from the doorway. He was clearly having a flashback to his appearance in some bygone production of H.M.S. Pinafore.
“No, never!” I sang back. Two could play at this.
“What, never?”
“Hardly ever!”
“He’s hardly ever sick at sea!” we finished in unison.
The boys didn’t say a word, but I could read facial expressions. Theirs said, “At least they’re not doing this in public.”
“Rose Noire needs to know what to feed the … bird,” Josh said. Clearly Nimitz had fallen from his peak of popularity.
“The dumb toucan,” Jamie added.
“You’re not supposed to call anyone dumb,” Josh protested.
“This kind of dumb just means he can’t talk,” Jamie said.
“Mom! Dad!”
“Enough!” Michael said. “Give your mother some peace and quiet—she was up late last night. Tell Rose Noire that the toucan eats fruit, and if she needs more detail, Grandpa or Great can fill her in.”
The boys
thundered downstairs.
“So before they get back, fill me in,” Michael said. “What happened at Trinity last night?”
Ah, well. I was completely awake by this time anyway. And beginning to feel impatient to get things done. So while I dressed and reduced my hair to a more civilized tangle, I gave him a blow-by-blow account of my discovery of Mr. Hagley and the beginnings of the chief’s investigation.
“Damn,” Michael said. “Hagley wasn’t a very likable man, and no one in town’s going to be prostrate with grief, but it’s hard to think of anyone who would actually want him dead.”
“Exactly. I mean, it’s easy to joke, and say that I hope Robyn’s alibied, and the vestry—but as far as I could see everyone was just annoyed with him. No one hated him.”
“And speaking of Robyn, you’re going to have your hands full today, carrying out her orders,” he said. “How about if you take the boys to school and I drop the church van off with Osgood Shiffley. Then you’ll already be in town with your car instead of having to scrounge a ride back here to get it.”
“Deal,” I said. “So maybe it’s a good thing the boys woke me, since they need to take off in—yikes, five minutes.”
The ride into town wasn’t exactly peaceful, but the boys were in a good mood, and their noisy energy was exactly what I needed to keep me from brooding over the events of the previous night.
And almost enough to keep me from hearing my phone ring.
“It’s Grandma calling,” Josh, whose turn it was to ride shotgun, peered over at where my phone lay on the console between the seats.
“Do you want to answer it and tell her I’ll call her back after I drop you guys at school?” I said.
“Nah.” Josh slouched in his seat.
“I’ll do it.” Jamie’s hand appeared between my seat and Josh’s and snagged the ringing phone. Josh made an unsuccessful attempt to grab it back, then leaned back with a look of utter unconcern on his face.
“Hi, Grandma,” Jamie said. “Mom doesn’t want to talk to you now.”
“That is not what I said to tell Grandma,” I said.
“Dude, really?” Josh muttered.
“Yes, because she’s driving us to school, and doesn’t want to be distracted,” Jamie went on. “But she can call you back after she takes us to school … Uh-huh … Uh-huh … okay. Bye.”
He sat back in his seat and looked very pleased with himself.
“Did Grandma say what she wanted?” I asked, when it became clear that Jamie wasn’t going to volunteer any information.
“For you to call her back. She said that she’s over helping Reverend Robyn with something, and that you’d know why she was calling.”
So after I dropped the boys off, making sure they had their lunches and book bags—but leaving their baseball bags in the Twinmobile, since I’d be the one taking them to the game—I pulled into a space at the far end of the Caerphilly Elementary parking lot and called Mother back.
“Are you still at Robyn’s?”
“No, I just pulled into the church parking lot. Robyn wanted to make sure everything here was okay. So what really happened last night?”
I settled into a more comfortable position and told her. Mother was always a highly satisfactory audience, exclaiming “No!” “You’re joking!” or “Oh, my goodness!” at all the right spots.
“So I assume the columbarium is a crime scene for the time being,” I said in conclusion. “Robyn’s tasked me with talking to the next of kin, and I guess we’ll need a special election sometime soon to replace Mr. Hagley. Although I suppose it would be rude to have it too soon after his death.”
“Poor man.” I could almost see Mother shaking her head sadly.
“What happened to ‘selfish, heartless brute with a spreadsheet for a soul’?” I asked. “Or was it some other member of the vestry flinging that particular insult at him during last night’s meeting?”
“Meg, really.” She was using what Rob referred to as her Mother Voice. Somehow it had less effect on me now that I was perfecting my own version of it for use on the twins. “I can’t believe that you would stoop to eavesdropping.”
“I don’t think it counts as eavesdropping when someone shouts loud enough to be heard all the way from the parish hall to the overflow room,” I said. “I realize we’re all going to have to practice saying nice, polite things about Mr. Hagley for the immediate future, at least in public. But you and I can at least be honest with each other.”
“Good point,” Mother said, in a more normal tone. “Although I really do feel sorry for Junius. He was never precisely the soul of cordiality, but he didn’t go completely off the rails until poor Dolores died. She was such a good influence on him.”
More likely Dolores had catered to her husband’s every whim, made him feel important, and cushioned him against the harsh realities of a world that found him abrasive and annoying. It might have been better for the rest of us if she hadn’t done such a good job of it.
“Robyn says Mr. Hagley has been trying to reclaim his wife’s ashes for a while,” I said aloud. “Any idea why?”
“Well, I couldn’t possibly say for certain,” Mother said. “I’d only be speculating, of course, and I wouldn’t want any unseemly rumors to get out.”
Which meant she had a very good idea indeed, and only needed a little encouragement to share it.
“Even a speculation would be welcome,” I said. “And I can’t help squelch unseemly rumors if I don’t know what they are.”
“He needed the money,” Mother said.
“What, was he going to try to sell her ashes someplace?”
“No, of course not. He could sell their niche.”
Okay, that made more sense. I’d seen the bills of sale in the church files. Niches weren’t cheap. But still …
“He was that desperate? And how do you know?”
“A whole lot of little things. He didn’t use to like coming to church social events, but lately he hadn’t missed a one—at least as long as there was food. He was always cadging rides to meetings—probably trying to save on gas. They’d had Wilma Shiffley cleaning for them for years, every two weeks, and six months ago he fired her. And terminated his lawn service. A lot of little things that add up.”
I nodded, even though Mother couldn’t see me. Okay, now I also felt a little sorry for Mr. Hagley. Maybe in addition to being a good influence on him, Mrs. Hagley had also been the financially savvy one. And maybe her death had reduced their income—would Mr. Hagley get less Social Security? I had no idea how that worked.
“And then there’s the fact that he’s nine months behind on his pledges to the building fund,” Mother was saying. “Whenever anyone confronted him about it, he’d always have some excuse. Last night it was that he wasn’t going to give the church any more money if they were just going to fritter it away on extravagances like a brand-new luxury minivan.”
“Are we going to fritter any money away on a new van?” I asked. “Because Michael just took the current one over to see if Osgood Shiffley can keep it running for another few months. The list of things that need fixing takes up a whole page in my notebook, and if you ask me, spending any more on repairing it is just throwing good money after bad.”
“We were discussing that very idea last night,” Mother said. “Mr. Hagley and Mr. Sedlak were dissenting rather strongly.”
“The two Muttering Misogynists,” I said. “I do hope Mr. Sedlak stays in good health, or the chief really will be suspicious of the rest of you on the vestry. Getting back to Mr. Hagley—so you think he was going to resell their niche?”
“I’m almost certain of it,” she said. “Did I mention that I’ve seen some of Dolores’s things in the local antique shops lately? That little Chippendale footstool with the crewelwork cover. And that nice blue Wedgwood tea set of hers, the one she always used when she had us over for meetings of the Altar Guild.”
“A lot of blue Wedgwood in the world,” I said. “How can you be
sure it was hers?” Not that I doubted her word—I figured she’d know somehow—some distinctive chip or stain, probably.
“Because I asked,” Mother said.
Okay, that also worked.
“And according to Lettice—it was Lettice Forsythe’s shop I saw it in—that’s not the only thing he’s sold.”
“Poor man.”
We both remained silent for a few moments. Perhaps Mother was also savoring the strange new sensation of feeling sorry for Mr. Hagley.
“Well, I should get busy,” she said. “Because even though we probably need to wait a few days to announce the special election, there’s no reason we can’t start the planning.”
“As long as you’re at the church, could you do something for the chief? I think he’d like a copy of the files about the niches that were disturbed. I left them on top of the file cabinet.”
“Of course. I’ll do that first thing. And when I drop them off, I can find out if he needs anything else.”
And while she was at it, she could try her hand at finding out where the chief was in his investigation. Why should I have all the fun?
Chapter 9
We signed off, and I decided to drop by to see the chief myself. Not to be nosy, of course, but to find out if the coast was clear for me to carry out Robyn’s orders.
I parked in the police station parking lot and headed for the door. But when I reached the sidewalk in front of it, I met the chief coming out.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
“Just wondering if there are any next of kin I can start contacting,” I said.
“I’m on my way to interview Mrs. Washington,” he said. “Who, wonder of wonders, is still at the address we found in the church files. If you like, I’ll text you when I’ve finished with her.”
“That would be great,” I said. “I expect the others will be harder to track down.”
Toucan Keep a Secret Page 5